Darpa Alpha

weather forecast.

“I’m tired of this damn weather,” Freeman opined formally to no one in particular, but his tone alerted his teammates that the general, in the manner of George Patton, was about to voice a direct request to the Almighty to intercede on behalf of Operation Bird Rescue. Before this, however, Freeman gave instructions for Gomez and a marine corpsman to do what was possible as soon as possible for Eddie Mervyn who, despite having received an infusion of saline, seemed to have slipped further into coma. Freeman prayed they could keep Eddie alive long enough for the SpecWar warrior to be medevaced out by one of the choppers in the second wave.

Both Russian captives were visibly alarmed when the American general, whom Abramov, Beria, and Cherkashin had described as a madman, suddenly took off his helmet and, holding it under his left arm, his AK-74 cradled in the other, bowed his head. The Russian duo were clearly alarmed by the general’s body language. Was it the prelude to executing prisoners?

While the four marines, including the corpsman who was helping Gomez with Eddie, exchanged uneasy glances, the general’s SpecWar team, with an ease obviously born of practice, formed a protective square around their general who, amid the sounds of intermittent gunfire far and near, began his prayer, his hair turning white with the snow that showed no sign of abating.

“Almighty God, we beseech Thee in this battle to afford us better weather so that we might vanquish our terrorist foes and destroy their evil here and forevermore. Amen.”

With this, Freeman put his helmet back on and turned to Salvini. “Sal, cut ’em loose.”

As Sal drew his SAS knife, the younger of the two ABC Russians, a lean, short man in his early thirties who didn’t speak English, stiffened in fright, looking imploringly at his comrade, who did know some English, for an explanation of what was happening. Had the mad American’s prayer been for his prisoners? A last rite before he executed them?

“General!”

It was Gomez in shock, his face crumbling, his shoulders shaking in a futile effort to dam his emotions, so that the moment he’d called the general, every man present knew that Eddie Mervyn was dead. Freeman’s eyes were turned intently upon the two prisoners, not wildly ablaze with anger but with an unblinking cold rage. It was the kind of rage they’d seen in the eyes of Comrade General Abramov, the commander of the tank and armored company, when Abramov had been told that one of their terrorist clients had tried a double cross on a big payment for a railcar full of Igla shoulder-fired MANPADs shipped from the nearby railhead at Kamen Rybolov and across the wooden bridges of the marshes to the south. There was no pity in the comrade general’s eyes. Instinctively, the two Russians, still sitting on the ground, moved their backs against the trunk of the big fir tree, as if it might give them some protection from what the American might do. They watched nervously as the Americans’ general got down on one knee, looking at the dead American who had been his comrade in arms. As inconspicuously as possible, the two prisoners looked at the marines and the rest of Freeman’s team for any expression or body language that might convey what the prevailing mood might be amongst them, whether the grief would turn to anger, both prisoners knowing what they would do had the situation been reversed. The edict from Abramov, Beria, and Cherkashin had been unequivocal: All of the American “gangsters” were to be summarily executed. And the edict wasn’t confined to the Americans, as demonstrated by ABC’s ruthless “cleansing” of those “elements” in the civilian population around the lake who had had the temerity to protest ABC’s takeover. Dozens of corpses had been dumped in the vast, surrounding marshlands.

As Freeman, handing his AK-74 to a marine, looked down at Eddie Mervyn’s boyish face, he was also seeing the faces of the dead, the murdered at DARPA ALPHA, and the smoking funeral pyre of the thousands at Ground Zero. Taking off his gloves, he closed Eddie’s eyes, but the eyelid muscle retracted the lids, and Aussie Lewis handed Freeman two small stones that did the job, Freeman having been as insistent as any DI on Parris Island that his men not carry any change into combat.

Freeman rose quickly from the snowy ground of the wood and then, with an abruptness that belied the gentleness he’d shown kneeling by Eddie, he asked Aussie Lewis whether the wood’s perimeter had been secured.

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are the bastards now?”

“Don’t know for sure, General, but most of the noise is coming from the north of us, about two miles away. I’d say they’re giving Tibbet hell.”

The general didn’t respond, but turned abruptly toward the prisoners, and Aussie Lewis saw in his eyes the metamorphosis from soldier to avenger of all those Americans murdered since 9/11. “Which one of you speaks English? A little!” This phrase was said with such menace that the Russian who spoke English was reluctant to admit to the fact, but he remembered that it was one of this man’s soldiers whom he had told, “I speak a little.” He raised his hand so tentatively, “I do, sir,” that he might have been a schoolboy terrified of his teacher.

“Now you listen to me, you son of a bitch!” The general was taking his sidearm from its holster. “You understand ‘son of a bitch’?” he asked the Russian.

The prisoner nodded, the cold fury in this American’s face so obvious that the Russian’s throat constricted, rendering him temporarily unable to speak, and he could feel his skin now itching like crazy.

“Sir,” interrupted the marine.

“What?”

“Sir, I think I hear armor ’bout a quarter of a mile away to the west.”

This only added to the general’s sense of urgency. He was still glaring at the hapless Russian. “Do you understand—”

More freight-train-like rushes came shuffling through the pristine air, the rounds exploding with a roar which, though muffled by the snow, nevertheless was still deafening, and left the general’s ears ringing.

“Stand up!” Freeman ordered them. “You know why I asked you to stand?”

The smaller of the two whey-faced prisoners looked imploringly at his English-speaking partner. What was going on?

“You want us to stand,” said the English speaker. “We stand.”

“You’re standing,” Freeman told them, “because I do not shoot men when they are sitting. You understand that, you terrorist turd?”

It was clear to Chester that while the Russian didn’t cotton on to every word, he understood readily enough and was terrified.

“Now, you told us you came from the H-block, from the building, but you know nothing about the building. Correct?”

The Russian nodded, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously. “Correct, Admiral.”

Chester bit his lip to stop himself from smiling. He could see that the Russian was far too terrified to even try making a joke.

“I am a general,” Freeman told them unsmilingly. “And you have murdered thousands of innocent men, women, and children.”

The English-speaking Russian found voice to tell his comrade what had transpired.

“Nyet, nyet!” the Russian speaker was repeating.

“Da!” retorted Freeman, with such resounding authority both men fell silent. He fixed his stare on the English speaker. “Your name?”

“My name?”

“Yes, goddammit. Your name!”

“Ilya. My comrade’s name is Boris.”

“Ilya, you and your comrade know more about ABC’s setup than you’ve told us.”

Ilya was shaking his head as vigorously as Boris had. “We have not been inside much. I swear on mother’s grave.”

It was never good practice to talk too much to prisoners, Freeman knew. Their names and conversation lent humanity to their otherwise sullen or scared faces. But Freeman, as Colonel Tibbet had told his marines, kept in mind the sight of the seemingly endless funeral processions after the terrorist attacks on America since 9/11, and the bravery of the victims, the people on Flight 93 and the scientist at DARPA ALPHA with “RAM” and “SCARUND” written on the note in his hand.