Chapter 34
The phone on the commander’s desk rang. He picked it up, motioning to Wasner and Marcus to wait. “Commander Stark.”
“Sir, this is Glenda in dispatch. The white suburban has been sighted in a driveway on Panorama Drive off Farmer’s Loop Road. FPD is awaiting your orders to send in SERT.”
“Thanks, Glenda. I’ll get right back to you.” He hung up the phone and looked back up at the two men in front of him.
“FPD found the suburban. It’s up on Panorama Drive, off Farmer’s Loop, just like your man Choi said.”
“Well, I’ll be,” Wasner said. “That little fell must really want his freedom in the good old US of A.”
“Let’s move, then,” Marcus said. “The team is still here and stoked up, so we can move on them now before they run.”
“I want to use SERT,” Stark interjected. “This is a residence. We only know that the vehicle is out there — we don’t know if it was stolen and put back, or if they just dumped it in someone else’s driveway to throw us off. Your men will be backup in case it goes bad, but mine will have a little more restraint if it turns out we are at the wrong place.”
Wasner spoke up. “Commander, my men are all experienced in hostage rescue and in civilian protection. These guys we’re up against are probably in it to the death. It doesn’t make sense to send cops up against them — your men may end up getting killed. Let them back us up, but let my men go in first. My men are much more prepared to die than I suspect yours are — not that it’s going to happen.”
Stark thought about this for a moment, then nodded in agreement. “All right, but be careful. If there are any civilians present, their safety comes first.”
The phone on his desk rang again. “Stark here.”
“Chief, this is Wyatt. We’ve found out what the stuff in the vial is, or at least, what it does.” She repeated a summary of the lab findings.
Stark’s eyes grew wide. “Oh, for God’s sake! How could someone make something like that?”
Stark told the two warriors what Lonnie had told him.
“Holy Nazi nightmare!” Wasner said. “No wonder they wanted to dig that stuff up. They could wipe out the world with that crap.”
“Let’s move,” Marcus said.
Wasner ran into the hall, calling for his men to assemble at the trucks. The SERT team came out of the building right behind them, ten troopers dressed in camouflage BDU’s and ten SEALs with over whites covering their combat clothing.
They had a quick briefing in the parking lot, then the teams mounted their vehicles and headed out. They followed Airport Way to University Boulevard on the west side of Fairbanks. They sped north on that road. After a few miles, the name of the road changed to Ballaine Road, then after several more, the name changed again to Farmer’s Loop Road. The convoy of two of the SEAL F350’s, Marcus’s Jeep, the city hazmat containment van, and half a dozen trooper and police squad cars rolled fast, but without lights or sirens.
Choi was left behind in the holding cell at the public safety building. This was for everyone’s benefit — they didn’t need him changing his mind once he was near his compatriots, and for his own safety, as those compatriots would no doubt kill him if they saw him with the Americans.
By a quarter past two AM,the teams were on Panorama Drive. They stopped their vehicles out of sight of the blocky house on the treed lot. The police and military personnel stayed hidden behind a thick stand of spruce about twenty yards from the driveway. Steam billowed out of the open vehicle doors into the frigid night air as officers and warriors climbed out of their vehicles.
The temperature had dropped even further. It was so cold that the moisture in their noses crystalized immediately when they inhaled the frozen air after leaving the warmth of the cars.
“Man,” said one of the cops. “We’d better make this fast or someone’s going to end up with frostbite.”
Marcus and Wasner crept forward to get a view of the house and its approaches. The house sat back almost two hundred feet from the road. Trees surrounded the yard, gradually thinning out until they ended about seventy-five feet from the front of the house and thirty to fifty feet on the sides and back. The white Suburban crouched quietly on the driveway in front of the garage door. Through night vision glasses, Marcus and Wasner made out several sets of tire tracks on the driveway.
Wasner raised a pair of highly sensitive thermal imaging binoculars and scanned the house. Through the optics of the binoculars, pale green images of body heat floated ghostlike behind the walls of the structure. Two men were awake and moving downstairs in what appeared to be the kitchen. One more was upstairs in a seated position. It looked like he was on the toilet. A fourth was lying down in what was probably his bed.
Wasner saw no other heat images in the house. The people inside were unaware of what was coming. Marcus and Wasner went back to the rest of the group and planned their approach.
“The SEAL team will go inside. Forester, you and your team take the back door and go up. Mojo and I will take the front door and clear the main floor. Look out for a basement, too, just in case I missed something. Also, be advised — we need to verify who they are before we shoot. Do not shoot without verifying that these are our guys. I don’t want you to have killing some kid’s granddad on your conscience. If they raise a weapon, though, take them out fast.”
A low murmur of “Aye, aye’s” and “Yes sir’s” sounded their understanding.
“SERT, you guys set up snipers on all the windows and the vehicle — also watch that garage door. We don’t know if there’s some other vehicle they may use to try to escape. Have your medics and the haz-mat team ready. There will be casualties tonight — hopefully, only theirs.”
“Got it, Chief,” came the response from the SERT commander, a trooper lieutenant named Rausch.
Wasner continued. “Forester, you will be interpreting for us as needed with the Koreans. Trooper Wyatt will be back up for that. Be ready to do it like we did back at the cabin, but we have to work faster this time. It’s also possible there are some Albanians involved here, too. Mojo ran into a couple Eastern European tango-types just before he got us involved. If you need an interpreter, Mojo here also speaks that talk like a native, so we have that area covered well.” He stopped and looked around. “Any questions?”
“Uh, Chief?” Miller asked.
“Yeah, what is it, Miller?”
“I gotta pee.”
“What?” snapped the Chief.
“I gotta pee so bad, I can taste it!”
“Tie it off and get out of here!”
Miller was joking. He had made quite a show earlier of peeing while Wasner and Johnson were checking out the house. He was surprised at the fact that his little friend had instantly felt the extreme cold on being exposed and tried to shrink itself back into his snowsuit before he could get started with the bladder-emptying operation. The negative-forty air temperature froze his urine solid by the time it contacted the ground. He made a two-inch-high pile of pee on the road.
A quiet eruption of snickers rustled through the group as they moved into the trees around the house. They made their way through the knee-deep snow swiftly and quietly. Moments later, the group had gone around the house and were in position fifty feet from the back door.
Marcus and Wasner and their team waited in the ditch beside the road. Once the back door team was in place, they would advance swiftly across the open ground of the front yard. Wasner’s radio hissed with the sound of Forrester’s voice.
“Chief, we’re in position, and ready move on your command.”
“All right, on my mark, advance to the doors. SERT, are you on target?”