It was more than an hour before the biohazard team allowed the crime scene unit to enter the house. They too donned protective suits against the threat of contamination by the deadly bacteria.
Adem’s remains had been taken out, wrapped in several layers of protective material, and placed in a hermetically sealed vehicle that backed up to the door of the house. The biotechs took every precaution to ensure that no trace of the infectious substance was left behind, and had scoured the room and all of the places past which his body went with a heavy-duty bleach solution to decontaminate the house. To ensure the complete encapsulation of the substance, they removed everything from that room in tightly sealed wrappings, even the floorboards.
Trooper Wyatt was among the crime scene team members, along with two FBI agents and two Alaska Bureau of Investigations agents. Typically, a chem/biohazard scene would not be entered so soon. Johnson convinced the powers that be that they had to get the remaining operatives fast or there would be a lot more trouble.
According to Sergeant Choi, there were at least two other North Koreans who were unaccounted for. According to the relatively fresh tire tracks in the snow leading from the empty side of the garage, the two missing men had left before the raid.
The CSI team said the tracks belonged to an SUV, probably a Ford Explorer. Choi was brought to the scene and questioned about vehicles by Forester. Choi said he had seen some of the men driving in a brown or dark red SUV, but he didn’t know enough about American vehicle models to be able to tell what kind it was.
The two FBI agents were searching upstairs while ABI took the garage. Wyatt and Edwards scoured the kitchen and main floor for any sign as to where the two men may have been headed.
In the kitchen, Wyatt noticed a phone book on the counter. A pencil stuck out from between its pages in the restaurant section. A blank pad of yellow sticky notes sat next to it.
She didn’t recognize the names of the restaurants. She closed the book again and took a look at the cover. It was not a Fairbanks phone directory. She should have noticed that right away, due to its thickness. This was the city Yellow Pages directory for Anchorage.
She opened it back up and looked at the ads on the page. The pencil had been stuck in the section of Italian restaurants in the Anchorage area. Lonnie glanced over to the note pad beside the book. A faint indentation was barely visible on the top page. She took the pencil and rubbed its graphite tip side to side across the yellow pad.
Emerging from the paper against the dark background of the pencil’s shading was the impression of a seven-digit phone number. Wyatt ran her finger down the long list of numbers on the page. A moment later, she found a match. The Bella Vista Italian Restaurant in Eklutna.
She pressed the talk button on her radio and called for Commander Stark.
“7–4, 7-23.”
“Go ahead, Wyatt.”
“Sir, I think I know where they went.”
“Where?”
“They’re headed to the Anchorage water supply in Eklutna. The whole city is supplied by the Eklutna Reservoir.”
“Get out here. Let’s put a plan together.”
Stark called Johnson and Wasner, along with the FBI and Homeland Security agents at the incident command post.
“All right, folks.” Stark demanded, “How long ago would they have left?”
Agent Hansen from the FBI answered, “It couldn’t have been less than three hours, or more than four hours ago, according to when they left the site in Salt Jacket. I’d say they probably left less than an hour before we got here.”
“Agreed,” Wyatt answered. “That would put them somewhere between here and Cantwell, but definitely no farther than Willow.”
Stark pointed at the trooper manning the main radio and said, “Close off the road to the Eklutna Reservoir completely. Also, get some sobriety checkpoints every fifty miles from Healy to Wasilla. Put an APB out for a dark-colored SUV with two Korean men in their twenties or thirties.”
Agent Hansen spoke up again. “The Army’s mobile hazmat unit is still on standby.”
Stark wheeled toward Marcus. “Johnson, you and Wasner take a couple of your men and get down there in a helicopter. I want you staged at the town of Sunshine. You’ll be on standby until we find out exactly where they are. I will dispatch more SERT to the area, but we’re running out of usable manpower. Most of these guys have been on duty since we picked up Kim last night. Wyatt, I want you down there with Johnson in case we need a translator.”
“Yes, sir,” Wyatt replied.
Within twenty minutes, Wasner, Johnson, Wyatt, and two of the SEALs, PO2 Clark and PO3 Forth, were standing in a heated room next to the helipad at the public safety building waiting for the state’s new Blackhawk helicopter to warm up.
Once airborne, the pilot brought the craft to its maximum speed and shot through the night like a comet on its way to the trooper post at Sunshine.
Chapter 37
Almost every one of the thousand residents in the small town on the south bank of the Tanana River were fast asleep. The town, known by the name of the smaller river just to the west, had originally been one of the primary trading stops on the riverboat route that carried miners, trappers, and homesteaders, as well as their supplies, between their wilderness homes and the local native villages until the highway bridge was built in the 1968.
In more recent times, Nenana had become internationally famous for an event called The Nenana Ice Classic. The event surrounds betting on when a large wooden tripod set on the ice of the frozen river in early spring will topple into the river through the thawing surface. Bets are placed throughout the state. The winner is the person who guesses the time of the collapse to the nearest second, taking a prize of as much as $300,000 home for their trouble.
The red wine-colored Ford Explorer pulled under the awning next to the pumps at the only twenty-four hour business in the city of Nenana — Aurora Gas and Goodies. The men originally intended to bypass the town altogether. Twenty miles back, a tractor-trailer had jackknifed coming down one of the steep highway passes between Nenana and Fairbanks. It blocked the entire road, which was only two lanes wide, until a massive Peterbilt tow truck came and dragged it straight again. The mishap put them an hour and a half behind schedule.
Lieutenant Shin and Sergeant Sun got out of the SUV and walked into the station to use the toilet and purchase energy drinks and snacks for the drive. As they entered, the clerk came out of a back room, suffering from a terrible-sounding hacking cough. “You guys are out late, aren’t you?” said the twenty-something clerk once he caught his breath.
His crooked name tag dangled from its pin on his left breast. Large black letters spelled “Mikey” on its white surface. Mikey’s eyes looked as though he had been slicing onions before they came in. The acrid smell of burned marijuana swirled in the air from the back near the restrooms. “It’s getting pretty cold to be driving around, ain’t it?”
“Yeah, you could say that again,” Shin replied in perfect, unaccented English. “We’re heading south, though; hopefully it’s going to be warmer down there.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got to go through the mountains. And the radio forecast said it might get into the negative sixties tonight.” The clerk stared at Shin with an increasingly glassy expression.
“So, what you been smoking back there, man?” Sun asked with a smile, his English also flawless.