A pause as he listened.
“Yes, sir, I understand, but this is something about North Korean Special Forces infiltrating our base.” He nodded his head up and down. “Yes, sir, North Koreans.”
The staff sergeant glanced over to Marcus and pointed to the phone receiver, mouthing the words “O.D.”. He smiled belittlingly at the retired Marine. His expression displayed a distrust of Marcus’s mental state. He returned his attention to the phone. “I don’t know. Maybe it is part of the exercise, but I don’t think so.”
The staff sergeant nodded and said, “He doesn’t seem to be, but you never know. His breath doesn’t stink.” He paused again. “Okay, sir, I’ll ask.” He turned back to Marcus. “Uh, sir, the captain asked me to ask to you if you are drunk.”
Marcus’s face reddened as anger seethed within him. “No!”
Turning back to the receiver, he replied, “He says no, sir.” He turned back to Marcus and asked, “What is your background that makes you think you saw North Koreans out there?”
Marcus rolled his eyes impatiently. “Twenty years of Marine Force Recon, that’s what. I just retired last summer.”
Into the phone, the country boy staff sergeant said, “Twenty-year Marine. Force Recon, he says. Yeah, could be.” The staff sergeant nodded his head in agreement to something he was hearing. “Well, sir, I’ll ask him.”
He turned again to Marcus and wiped tobacco drool from his chin. “Could you point it out on that map for me? The location where you saw them? ”
He motioned to a map on the wall that showed the boundaries of the whole of Eielson Air Force Base, as well as parts of Salt Jacket and Moose Creek.
“Definitely,” Marcus replied. Relief eased across his tense body as he felt that they were finally taking him seriously. He walked over to the map, found Johnson Road, and ran his finger a short distance up the map, then off to the side, following approximately the trail he had driven that morning. His finger stopped at the spot at which he saw the Korean soldiers. “Right there. They are in this area, right here.”
The sergeant put the phone receiver back up to his face and said, “He’s got it, sir—section J.” He paused, squinted at the map, and pointed toward the section numbers on its border. “What is that number there, sir?”
“Six,” Marcus replied.
The staff sergeant turned back to the phone and repeated, “Six. J6 on the wall map in here. Yes sir, I know. I don’t see any either.”
Marcus heard the voice on the other end get loud, but couldn’t make out the words.
“All right, sir. Will do. Out here.” He hung the phone up and turned back to Marcus.
“Well?” asked the retired Marine. “Is he coming or what?”
“No, sir, he is not coming.” The sergeant shook his head. “The area you pointed out has no bunkers in it, sir. That is flat out wilderness in there. I don’t know what you think you saw, but there is nothing out there for no North Korean Special Forces to be interested in.”
Marcus could feel his blood beginning to boil. “Look, you! I know what I saw, and I am telling you that you need to get someone up there. I am Master Sergeant Marcus Johnson, USMC Special Operations Command. I would not make something like this up!”
“No, sir,” the staff sergeant replied. He wiped his sleeve across his chin again and continued. “You ‘were’ Master Sergeant Marcus Johnson, USMC. You are now Mr. Marcus Johnson, civilian. The war is over for you, Mr. Johnson. Now go home and chill out.”
Marcus’s face became hot. Veins bulged and pulsed in his temples. He slammed his hands down on the counter, barely resisting the urge to throttle the ignorant country bumpkin. The staff sergeant jumped back in alarm and put his palm on the grip of the pistol that hung from his belt. He scooted back as far as he could and stammered, “Now, you just get out of here, Mr. Johnson, or I’m going to arrest you for assaulting a police officer.”
Anything more Marcus did or said would only end with him spending a night in jail. He wheeled around and left the guardhouse.
He stormed across the parking area, steam rising from his hot, flushed skin in the frozen night air. He leaped into the waiting jeep. He slammed it into gear and shot back out to the highway. All four tires of the jeep spit a stream of sand and gravel against the wall of the guardhouse as he rocketed forward.
Marcus had to find someone who would both listen to him and react quickly. He fired the Jeep off toward Fairbanks. Half a mile out of Eielson, he was going nearly eighty miles per hour when he passed a state trooper coming the other way.
“Oh, great! Just what I need now,” he shouted, angry that he hadn’t seen the police car coming sooner.
Much to his surprise, the patrol car just kept going, as if the trooper hadn’t noticed him.
“Well, there’s a stroke of luck. Cop must’ve busy looking at his donuts.”
As the trooper car disappeared in the distance behind him, Marcus ran through a list of possible contacts in his head. Nearly all the people he could think to call in a situation like this were either in Camp Pendleton or Washington D.C., but he didn’t have access to them anymore since he was retired. Even if he could get through, it was after 20:00 on the east coast, and nobody was in the office.
Then an idea occurred to him. Although it was a long shot, there was
