“I’m sorry, sir,” she replied, “I did get some information while he was groggy, but then his medication ran out and he started to swell up and spit blood at the same time, so the nurse wanted to loosen the straps. Somehow the guy came to and managed to mash me in the forehead before I could do anything about it.”
The commander stood there, staring at Wyatt. He rubbed his fingers down the length of his chin. “According to Harland, he threw you half way across the room. Then he pulled the IV tube from the unit and blew into it till his heart exploded.”
“Yeah. I saw part of it,” she said ruefully. She rose from the exam table. “Sir, he was a North Korean soldier. While he was still under the influence of the drugs, he told me his name was Lieutenant Ho Jik Hyun, People’s Army. Then he mumbled some crazy stuff about a general and something in the earth, a man named Choi finding it, and someone paying. When I asked him about Mr. Kim, he called him Colonel Kim, then said ‘get the guns’ and ‘turn off the lights’. That’s when everything happened. As the drugs ran out, he must have sobered up long enough to realize what he had said and killed himself before he could do more damage.
“Sir, he used a specific word—Juche,” she continued, “It’s a North Korean term for their religion of communist philosophy. This guy was a North Korean spy. And our Mr. Kim is his boss. And his boss is some general.”
“Damn!” Stark ran his fingers stiffly across his furrowed forehead, trying to squeeze the stress out. “Albanian terrorists, North Korean spies—this thing is getting bigger by the minute. Looks like we have no choice but to bring Homeland Security into this thing. ”
“How’s Kim?” she asked.
“He’s coming around, but he ain’t talking about anything. We’re going to have to put a suicide watch on him as well until we get this thing figured out.” Stark pulled his hand away from his forehead as if remembering something. “Those supposed land mines, by the way, weren’t explosives at all. They were some kind of electronic gadget. The CSI guys are trying to figure it out, but they are some kind of complicated computer device that no one there could readily identify. They got some ex-Navy weapons expert who works at TVEC to look at the things.”
The two got up to leave.
“Sir.” Lonnie waited for Commander Wyatt to make eye contact with her. “I think Marcus may be in this thing too.”
“Your ex-boyfriend is a terrorist?”
“No, sir, he’s on our side—that much I know. But when I was at his cabin earlier this evening, a bunch of rough-looking men pulled up and started loading weapons and gear onto several snowmobiles, the tactical, quiet kind used by Special Ops. At first, he said they were buddies of his and he was helping them on a training mission, but the feeling in the air was different. They were headed onto the back range of Eielson somewhere, and would have left about an hour before I got to town.”
“Did he tell you anything about what they were doing?”
“No, sir, but when I pressed him on it, he said t it may be related to the two Albanian guys.”
“I’m going to get the Feds.”
Chapter 19
Training Area
Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska
18 December
20:30 Hours
Marcus led Wasner’s SEAL team on the trail until they came to the point at which he had stopped earlier that morning. The men dismounted their snowmobiles and spread out in a defensive perimeter. They crouched in the snow for fifteen minutes, weapons at shoulder-height, acclimating to the silence around them as they scanned the forest through their night vision glasses.
Wasner’s team carried an assortment of firearms, including Heckler & Koch MP5 10mm submachine guns and COLT M-4 Carbines, both with silencers attached. Two of the SEALs carried high-powered sniper rifles, one a suppressed Heckler & Koch PSG-1 strictly for use against animate targets, and the other, a suppressed Barret Model 82A1 .50 caliber. The fifty-caliber rifle uses an armor-piercing projectile the size of a man’s index finger and has an effective range of 1800 meters. It is technically (and according to international military treaties) only to be used against motorized vehicles or for breaching fortifications. It was not designed for use against flesh-and-bone creatures, like humans. This law was seldom observed on the battlefield.
All weapons were wrapped in white tape along most of their length, revealing only small patches of the black metal of the sights and receivers.
Once satisfied that no one had seen them, Marcus rose from the snow without a sound. The others followed his cue. He spoke softly into the radio headset.
“There was a sniper position up ahead earlier this morning. Be aware that he may still be there or may have moved to a better location. We should see his heat signature through the night vision, but just in case, be ready.”
The men quietly moved forward. Small, oblong snowshoes kept them high on the surface of the dry, powdery snow. Marcus took point. The others fanned out in two lines of seven men each, with three yards between each man and five yards between each line.
Snow glistened in the shimmering pale glow of the moon. The light reflected against the trees and sent randomly skewed shadows in all directions. They crept through the trees in silence until Marcus gave the signal to stop. He motioned to Wasner, in the first line of SEALS. The chief moved up beside him.
“Over there.” Marcus pointed to the left, about thirty yards in front of them.
“That mound is where the sniper was this morning. He seems to have moved, though. There’s no heat signature around it. The work site is about fifty yards past it.”
Wasner
