The bodies of the dead men lay strewn about. Their limbs splayed at odd angles as the blood that flowed from their wounds coagulated on the ground into already freezing puddles.
The men circled the hole, weapons pointed into the opening. Philips held his Taser up and ready to fire as they drew near.
Forester called out in Korean, “Raise your hands and come out of the hole!”
A lengthy silence followed.
“Miller, fire a warning shot against the wall of the hole.” Wasner said.
A single round exploded against the sidewall. A shower of frozen dirt and ice sprayed outward from the impact.
Inside the hole, Sergeant Choi cried out. The rock-hard ice cut into his flesh.
Forester called out in Korean. “Raise your hands and come out, or we will shoot again.”
Slowly, two gloved hands rose above the opening of the hole, followed by a hooded head.
“Don’t shoot, I am coming out. I need to use my hands on the ladder.”
“Is there anyone else down there?”
“No, there is no one else. I am alone. It is the truth.”
“Come up the ladder.”
Sergeant Choi put his hands down to the rail of the ladder and started to climb up. As he was coming, he slipped a hand into his pocket. He moved quickly, trying to pull his hand out fast.
Wasner shouted, “Philips, hit him!”
Philips pulled the trigger on the Taser, sending the two high-voltage electric wires flying toward the North Korean’s body. The prongs pierced through his jacket and touched his flesh. The contact created a circuit for the 25,000-volt charge to explode through Choi’s body. A bright light flashed from inside his coat and Choi convulsed violently, then fell face down to the ground just outside the hole. His body twitched erratically from the shock.
Forester reached down and checked his pulse. “He’s still alive and well, but he’s going to have a massive headache in a little while.”
Miller rolled him over onto his back and carefully pulled out the hand that had gone into the pocket. Choi’s fingers were wrapped around a small glass vial, just larger than a standard high school chemistry lab test tube, topped with a rubber stopper and filled with a clear yellow liquid.
“This must be the stuff they were mining for.” He handed it up to Wasner.
The stopper was sealed with a hard, waxy substance. Wasner handed it to Marcus and said, “Looks like some kind of chemical or biological agent. Must’ve been buried here ages ago.”
“They said another team had gotten away already before we arrived on scene. We’d better get out of here and catch up with them.” Forrester said.
Wasner called to the rest of his men on the radio. “Fletcher, you guys get back to the snowmobiles and see if you can catch up with the ones who got away. They probably had a vehicle, a truck or van of some kind, back on the road. If you don’t find them by the time you get to Mojo’s house, wait for us there. We’re going to take the prisoner and make our way back as well.”
Fletcher replied, “Aye, aye, Chief. Let’s move it, boys!”
Wasner took a black plastic box from his coat pocket. He removed a spare set of lenses for his night vision goggles from its foam rubber-padded interior and put them in his inside coat pocket. Then he put the vial into the space the lenses had occupied — it was a good-enough fit. The box shut with a snap and he sealed it by twisting a small latch at its lip, then he put it back into his pocket.
The team ran the fifteen hundred yards across the snow back to the trail. Ten minutes later, they piled on their snowmobiles.
The swirling lights of the aurora still danced over their heads as they jetted back up the trail toward the road in the moonlit night.
Chapter 20
The Marines formed a defensive perimeter several meters into the jungle upon landing. The squad leaders gathered around Lieutenant Reeves, the twenty-six year-old Welsh officer in command of 2nd Troop. He scanned the map to gain their bearings and verify the direction of the mission village. Reeves folded the map and stuffed it into the pocket of his tunic.
“All right, it’s due west for two-and-a-half miles, then we hook back to the south and come from the opposite side. Like they said in the briefing, watch for these rebel bastards. They’re sure to be near, and will certainly be awake with all the noise that plane made.”
The group of thirty-two men started off. Corporal White led in the point position. The Marines moved with cautious speed, stopping every hundred yards to listen to the jungle around them.
The plan laid out in Plymouth was to pass the village by half a mile then make their way back in a wide arc in hopes of flushing out, or drawing out, any RUF rebels who may be in the area.
The jungle was dark and dense, although not as thick as some of the Southeast Asian or South American jungles Marcus had been in before. Night animals skittered up the trunks of trees or froze in place among the branches, watching in wide-eyed silence as the strange human creatures walked by.
Within thirty minutes, they made the hook south and started back in a wide, sweeping arc toward the mission. No enemy had been detected.
At the outskirts of the village, Lieutenant Reeves placed four snipers around the perimeter to protect their exit. The remainder of the men moved cautiously into the village. It was composed of a collection of huts and a larger two-story wood-and-stone building that, according to intelligence, housed the orphans, the priests, and their staff.
It was only eight pm, but the village was silent. They had expected movement of some kind.
“What’s going on here?” asked Barclay. “It’s too quiet.”
“Where are the people?” someone else whispered.
“Maybe they are all early-to-bed types,” replied Lieutenant Reeves into his radio microphone. “1st Squad, check the huts to the left of the main building, 2nd Squad, take the right. 3rd, with me into the main building.”
The three groups moved toward their assigned buildings. Sergeant Barclay, NCO in charge of 3rd Squad, followed Reeves to the main building, Marcus and six other Marines spread out behind him.
“This is seriously bloody eerie,” Barclay whispered into his microphone.
Barclay, Corporal Jamison, and Marines Stokes and Klein got into position to open the door of the house, assault-style.
Suddenly one of the men from another squad cried out. “Bloody hell! Bloody Goddamned hell! We’re too late!”
“Lieutenant!” shouted a Marine to the left of the main building. “Lieutenant, there’s a pile of bodies in here! Women and kids! Oh, Jesus!”
The sound of a man retching into the dirt splashed through the darkness. Several Marines cursed. One openly wept at the sight of the dead children.
Lieutenant Reeves ran to 1st Squad to see what they had found. He signaled for Barclay and his men to wait at the main building.
As he crossed the halfway point of the open space, the night exploded into a terrifying cacophony of machine-gun chatter and screaming men. Flames erupted from the barrels of rifles, which fired from every window and most of the huts. More fire poured onto them from the shadows of the jungle around the village.
A dozen men fell. Those not killed instantly screamed in pain as the bullets ripped their flesh. The Marines who could returned fire toward every muzzle blast they could see until their own bodies were torn asunder by the attackers’ interlocking fields of fire.