“Holy high-protein cow turds! Is that you, Mojo?” Wasner exclaimed.
“Yep, it’s me, Wazzy,” Marcus answered.
“Hell, yeah! Get your butts over here. If Johnson’s in it, there’s got to be some fun ahead.”
“We’re on the way, Chief. Give us ten minutes.” The staff sergeant pressed the speakerphone button a second time, and the phone call disconnected. He rose from his desk and started for the door, Marcus right behind.
“You know Chief Wasner?”
“Absolutely,” Marcus replied. “We did about half a dozen missions together and shared a couple of training groups at Coronado. He’s one of the best SEALS in the teams. And he makes a killer home-brewed stout, to boot.”
“He called you Mojo.”
“My middle name is Orlando—Marcus Orlando Johnson. Mojo to my closest friends.” Marcus paused for effect, then added, “You may continue to call me Top.”
“Aye, aye, Top,” Beckwith responded.
“I’ll follow you over to Wasner’s office in my Jeep,” Marcus said as they headed out the door.
Ten minutes later, they pulled up to another building that looked almost identical to the one they had just left on the other side of the Army base. The large, white sign in front of the non-descript building was emblazoned with the emblem of the US Navy Reserve Arctic Inland Training Command.
Master Chief Warrant Officer Harley Wasner stood outside the front door waiting for them when they pulled up. As the men parked their vehicles, Wasner approached Marcus’s Jeep.
“Well, I’ll be dipped in camel dung! It is you! I thought they’d shelved you in some old federal warehouse back east, with a ‘do not disturb under penalty of unimaginably violent death’ sign tacked to it.” He threw his arms out and gave Marcus a bear hug, eliciting a deep grunt as he slapped his friend loudly on the back.
“Yeah, well, so did I. At least, I was hoping to retire, that is. I don’t know about living in a box in a warehouse, though.” Marcus replied. “Fate, as it turns out, has decided otherwise. Let’s step inside and talk.”
As they moved in, Marcus asked, “So, what are you doing up here, anyway?”
Wasner replied, “My boys and I are here for a month of arctic training while between deployments.”
“Naval training in the interior of Alaska?” Marcus asked. “Don’t they know there’s no ocean for five hundred miles from here? For that matter, all the rivers are harder than concrete for another five months. Leave it to the staff wonks to come up with a plan like that.”
“Hey now, Marine! Easy does it. This was my idea,” Wasner replied.
“Well, I never took you for a wonk, but I guess people do get goofy in their old age.” Marcus smiled as he jibed his friend.
“I may be two years older than you, but you’ll still never be able to catch up with me, you grubby little leatherneck turd.”
Staff Sergeant Beckwith walked behind the two older men, watching and listening to the display of banter as they moved down the hall toward Wasner’s temporary office.
Marcus continued as they entered the office. “As much as I’d like to sit back and yuck it up for a while, there’s some business going on that needs our immediate attention.” He turned to Beckwith. “Shut the door, Staff Sergeant.”
The younger man did as told and then joined the other two sitting at a gray metal desk in the center of the room.
Marcus retold the story of the North Koreans on the back of the Air Force base. He also added the account of what happened the night before at Linus’s store with the two Albanians. Wasner listened attentively to the whole thing without speaking.
When Marcus finished, the Navy Chief Warrant Officer leaned back in his chair. “Well, that Air Force sergeant was right in one respect. You certainly are crazy. But not in the way he was thinking.”
He sat upright and continued, “If there’s one thing I know and trust, it’s Mojo’s mojo. If you saw these baddies back there, they are there. And if the Air Force doesn’t want to do anything about it, then I believe that grants us imminent domain rights to the subject in question. We are, after all, federal employees, just like them.”
Staff Sergeant Beckwith asked, “Why not take it to Homeland Security? It seems to me that there’s probably a link between those Albanians and the North Korean guys. If this is domestic terrorism, that’s up their alley, don’t you think?”
“One thing you will soon learn, young man,” Wasner said, “is that Homeland Security, the FBI and all those guys, are in this whole war bureaucracy way over their head. If you want instant action, they are not the way to go. Their highly capable agents, many of whom come from our own ranks, are up to their eyeballs in paperwork and require the permission of their bureaucratic civilian bosses before they can take a crap. They may not even be able to take a cursory look into the situation until the tangos are long gone with whatever they came for, or worse, have killed a lot of innocent people in their beds.”
The younger man nodded in his understanding and said, “Well, if you don’t mind a tagalong, I haven’t had a good adrenaline rush since Iraq.”
Marcus looked at him. “You sure? This is an unauthorized mission.”
“That’s easy to fix. I’m the acting CO up here until the major gets back next month. It can quickly become an authorized mission as needed.”
Wasner stood up and let his face spread in a broad smile. “I knew there was something I liked about you, Beckwith.” With that, Wasner picked up the receiver from the black telephone on the desktop and dialed an extension. “Moore, get the gang into my office ASAP.
