65 Below (21 page)

The man in the hole looked down, then disappeared beneath the lip of the opening. A moment later, he stood back up and handed a box of something to one of the two men who stood at the top. He reached up and one of the others helped him to the surface. The one who was walking down toward them called out.

“Captain Park, Sergeant Soo is coming in, but I cannot reach Kil and Pak. Hwang is also not responding.”

“Tell Soo to find them on his way in. We must leave immediately.”

Staff Sergeant Beckwith spoke into the radio. “There’s movement behind me to the southwest of the clearing. One man approaching.”

“Must be Sergeant Soo,” Marcus replied.

“Kill him,” Chief Wasner ordered.

Beckwith, from his hide beside a tall cluster of alders, slowly turned his suppressed M-4 toward the North Korean sergeant. He aimed carefully and acquired a perfect sight picture of the man’s head on the peg at the end of the barrel. Beckwith slowly curled his finger around the trigger. He exhaled slowly as he squeezed.

An explosion of movement suddenly erupted above his head. A large white owl burst out of the branches in which it had been silently perched. The loud flapping startled the Marine as he fired the shot. The bullet went high. A puff of white foam stuffing burst from a small tear the shot made as it scraped against the outer shell of the soldier’s parka hood.

Soo, also startled by the bird, heard the rifle’s puff. He felt the heat of the bullet zip by his head, tugging at his hood as it passed. He spun in the direction of the bird and saw the movement of Beckwith’s body as he adjusted back into position to fire a second shot.

“Ambush!” the Korean shouted to his comrades. “We are being ambushed!”

He raised his rifle to fire on the Marine. Beckwith fired a three-round burst. The bullets tore into the soldier’s torso. Soo’s body jerked in a spasmodic death dance.

The dying man’s finger squeezed around the trigger on his rifle as the rounds smashed into him. His shot tore branches from the alders above Beckwith.

Soo dropped to his knees in the snow and raised his rifle again to try another shot before the life drained out of him. Staff Sergeant Beckwith didn’t give him another chance. He fired another three-round burst directly into the hooded head of the man. The top of Soo’s head burst in a shower of blood, brains, and parka stuffing. His body slammed backwards into the snow as if the North Korean soldier had been hit in the face by a giant hammer.

All hell broke loose in the clearing. The North Korean soldiers raised their weapons and fired into the perimeter around them. The SEALS returned fire with rapid, surgical precision. In less than twenty seconds, all of the men in the clearing were down. The one that had been in the hole was still alive, the only one not in the line of fire.

Marcus, Wasner, and four of the SEALS closed in on the clearing. Four of the SEALs covered them while the rest of the team scouted the area for survivors.

“Philips,” Wasner called out, “get that Taser ready. I want this guy alive.”

“Aye, aye, sir” replied Philips. He reached into his pocket and grabbed the handle of the sinister-looking black plastic stun gun. When he flipped the switch, the Taser hummed menacingly with its own life force.

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.

1. Chapter 20
   

Flashback

Thursday, May 14th, 1998

Two Miles Northeast of Bukurana Mission

Sierra Leone, Africa

19:15 Hours

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. “1
^st
Squad, check the huts to the left of the main building, 2
^nd
Squad, take the right. 3
^rd
, with me into the main building.”

The three groups moved toward their assigned buildings. Sergeant Barclay, NCO in charge of 3
^rd
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.

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.

Johnson Road

Salt Jacket, Alaska

19 December

22:45 Hours

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?”