Marcus dropped to his knees and fired into the jungle and huts in front of him. Everywhere he saw the flash of a blast, he put a three-round burst. Men of both armies screamed in agony as the white-hot bullets crisscrossing the night sky ripped their flesh.
Somewhere to his right, a hand grenade exploded, the sounds of men crying out echoed into the air. Several bullets smashed into the stone wall behind Marcus. He dropped to a prone position in the dirt and continued to return fire, changing magazines as he emptied his ammunition into the plentiful targets that surrounded him.
There was a loud hiss to Marcus’s left. He jerked the rifle in that direction and shot a burst into the torso of a man who a moment fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the same moment. The shadowy figure tumbled backwards, silhouetted in the blast from his RPG. Marcus watched the smoke trail of the rocket as it traced through the sky. The scene moved in a surreal slow motion. There was a loud boom, white light, heat. Marcus tried to raise his head back up to resume firing. Everything around him looked lopsided.
He attempted to fire his weapon, but couldn’t remember how. The world around him became a blur of movement. White spots danced before his eye to the tune of the incessant ringing in his head. Then everything went black.
Chapter 21
Marcus, Wasner, and the remaining SEALS tied up the prisoner and used a sled the dead men no longer needed to drag him back to the remaining snowmobiles. They attached the sled directly to the back of one of the machines and headed out. They were almost fifteen minutes behind the first team. Once they reached the road, they turned south toward Salt Jacket. As the team crested the last hill before leaving Air Force property, they came in line of sight of Marcus’s cabin where it sat silently in the darkness.
Wasner keyed his radio. “Fletch! Did you find them?”
“Negative, Chief. We’re waiting at the cabin.”
“Go ahead and load your gear in the trucks so we can move out quickly as needed.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
“Wazzy!” Marcus said into his mike, “I want to pull into the pump station. Charlie Bannock is one of the guards there. He might have seen something.”
“Charlie Bannock! The Special Forces wuss?” Wasner continued, “Man, this is like Old Home Day!”
When they arrived at the pump station gate, the rest of the team took the prisoner down to the cabin. Marcus and Wasner approached the gate on their snowmobiles. The guard stepped forward, talking into his radio. His MP5 was slung low, pointed toward them. His hand was on the pistol grip, finger extended alongside the trigger guard. A tense expression was on his face as the armed warriors drew near.
“Evening, gents. How can I help you?”
Marcus took off his hood and night vision glasses so the guard could see his face. A visible flush of relief spread over the guard, and he smiled. “Johnson? What in the world are you doing out here this late? I thought you were on the trap line.”
“I was. Something came up. Is Charlie here?”
“Yeah, he is. Hold on.” Bill pressed the talk button on the radio mike attached to the shoulder of his parka. “Charlie! Get up here — Marcus Johnson is asking for you. And he’s armed.”
The guard looked back at Marcus and Wasner. “So, what’s up with all the gear? And who’s your friend?”
“This is Harley Wasner, Chief of a group of SEALS I’ve been running around with tonight.”
“Howdy, Chief,” the guard replied. “I’m Bill Simmons, former Ranger myself.”
“Bill was on Operation Condor Retribution in ’06,” Marcus said.
“Glad to make your acquaintance, Bill,” Wasner said. “I was there, too. As a matter of fact, it was my team that did the laser designators for those cave bunkers that had you boys pinned down. That was one hairy day, as I recall.”
“Yes, it was, Chief. Yes, it was.”
Charlie Bannock came out to the gate. “Marcus! What’s up?” He turned toward the other man and stopped, mouth wide open. “Wasner? Holy cow! What brings you all the way up here? Didn’t they tell you there’s no ocean in the interior?”
Wasner smiled and said, “Well, Charlie ol’ boy, it’s like this. The Marine here became quickly overwhelmed and did the only obvious thing he could do, which was call in the Navy.”
“Figures.”
“We’ll have to chat later,” Marcus said. “We’ve got serious business.”
“Yeah? Does it have to do with those Albanians who were sneaking around here? That lady trooper was here asking questions a few hours ago, right when I came on shift.”
“Maybe. We just got into a firefight with a bunch of North Korean commandos back there on Eielson. They were digging into some old bunker and taking out what looked like tubes of biological or chemical agent. We killed eight of them and took one prisoner, but some others got away before we showed up on scene.”
“Crap,” Bannock said, a look of dismay spread over his face. “I thought I was done with all this stuff!”
“Yeah, well,” Wasner replied, “it just showed up in your back yard, son.”
“We need to know if you or your men saw any vehicles coming out of the Eielson area within the past three hours,” Marcus said.
Bannock ran his thick fingers over his short-cropped hair. “I’ve been inside doing paperwork for the whole shift so far. And Bill here just came on twenty minutes ago.” He turned toward the guardhouse and said, “Let’s take a look at the logbook.”
Inside the guardhouse, Charlie opened the evening logbook. On the page under the current date were five entries: one stating a delivery from the Doyon supplies office, one of a single snowmobile with a teenaged boy who was doing “brodies” on the road in front of the gate. The third and fourth entries were Trooper Wyatt coming and leaving, and the fifth entry was a report of a single white Chevy Suburban heading out of the Eielson area at a high rate of speed with no headlights on.
“That’s them!” Marcus exclaimed. “Do you have surveillance video that may have caught the vehicle?”
“Do we have surveillance video?” Charlie replied. “Since the event with those Albanians, I decided to try out some of my new stuff. We just happen to be running several motion-activated cameras along the road and at the TVEC station.”
He led them out the door of the guardhouse and onto the base. “Bill, keep an eye on their machines. We’ll be right back.”
They walked to the main building on the pump station base and entered a brightly lit office through a thick metal door.
Inside, Bannock motioned them to seats in front of a bank of computer screens and video camera monitors. He sat down at the center of the console and pointed to a screen.
“This one is the road to the north. And this one is Johnson Road to the south. It shows us a real-time picture on here all the time, but the computer only records actual movement of anything bigger than about the size of a large dog.”
Bannock put his hand on a computer mouse and clicked an icon on the center screen. “So, let’s see if there are any recorded entries.”
The video viewing software opened, and within seconds, displayed a listing of every recorded movement the cameras captured that day. Date and time stamps were posted next to the filenames of the recording.
Assuming that the last entry would be Marcus’s group of snowmobiles, Bannock clicked on the file just above it in the list and watched it. The software brought up a video that played automatically. It showed a large white Chevy Suburban drive by with no headlights on. The camera’s night recording capability was exceptional. It rendered a very clear picture from a distance of ten yards.