Soldiers of the ASDF are not paid unless called to active duty deployments by the governor. There had been several dozen such paid call-ups since 9/11. Staff Sergeant Michaels, a computer network technician by trade, and the dozen mostly younger men in his command had participated in exactly zero of these paid call-ups. His unit had always been ready to go, but much to his chagrin, never got the call. Despite the letdown, he insisted on keeping the men of the 492nd Alaska Coastal Scouts ready to move and constantly had them in training—as often, that is, as they were willing to attend, and his wife was willing to let him go.
Michaels and three of his men had taken it upon themselves to do some extreme cold-weather training in the mountains of the Alaska Range. The forecast called for cold but tolerable temperatures between –30 and –40. The small thermometer Michaels carried in his web gear showed it was hovering around –50 degrees. The sky was clear and the stars bright. That indicated it was only going to get colder.
Concerned with the safety of his men and not wanting to risk cold-weather injuries, Michaels ordered them to pack up and head out before it got any colder. As long as they kept moving, their bodies would generate enough heat to keep them from freezing. If they were to stop and make camp, the temperature could easily get one or more of them badly injured or killed.
Each man wore an insulated neoprene facemask, called a gator, both to protect the skin of his face and to warm the air before it entered his lungs. At forty below, the moisture in one’s nose freezes on every inhalation of raw air. At fifty below, boiling liquid, when tossed in the air from a cup, instantly freezes as it falls to the ground, forming itself into perfectly shaped tiny BB-sized ice pellets.
If the temperature drops to –60 or colder, life comes into jeopardy. Exposed skin, especially the fingers, ears, and nose, will freeze solid in under three minutes. If a person stops moving, they will begin showing symptoms of hypothermia within fifteen minutes. If not properly dressed, that person could freeze to death in under thirty minutes.
Michaels, originally from Fairbanks, had experienced temperatures as cold as –75 on two occasions. He knew they needed to get out of the mountains before the cold became deadly.
Corporal Terrence Jones, a thirty-year-old carpenter from Wasilla with no family and no military experience other than six months in the ASDF, led the patrol as they made their way back to the vehicles they had parked in a pullout beside the highway. Following behind him were twenty-one-year-old Corporal Michael Phelps, a second-year ROTC student at UAA, and Sergeant Charles Barnes, a thirty-one year-old family man with three small children. Barnes, a former Air Force cook, worked as a souschef in one of Anchorage’s many classy restaurants.
After a three-hour hike, they topped a ridge that brought them to within sight of the highway. Their vehicle waited for them in a paved turnoff less than a mile away.
Blue and red flashing beacons from two police cars pulsed across the road near their truck. A pair of spotlights brightly illuminated the highway ahead of the police cars as well the turnoff.
“What’s going on up there?” Michaels asked.
“Dunno, Sarge,” Jones replied as he slid his binoculars from the case clasped on his web gear. He peered toward the highway and said, “Looks like some kind of a checkpoint or something. Two troopers with a barricade blocking both lanes.”
“A check-point? You mean like a sobriety checkpoint? In this weather?” Phelps questioned.“Dang. The troopers must be desperate for tickets to sit out in this crap.”
“No kidding,” replied Barnes, “Especially at this time of the morning! It’s freaking half-past three a.m. and fifty below zero! Who in the hell do they expect catch driving drunk this far out in the boonies, anyway—Jack Frost?”
“Maybe they’ll let us sit in their cars while my truck warms up.” Michaels said. “Let’s get moving. My feet are numb.”
The ragtag squad of militia soldiers trundled across the deep snow, carried by large, military surplus wire-mesh snowshoes. It was twenty minutes before they descended the ridge and crossed the last mile of nearly flat snow-covered tundra. The last few hundred yards was easy, as a recent wind had cleared most of the loose snow and caused a thick, hard shell to form across the surface of what remained.
Michaels shone a beam from his flashlight and called out to the troopers as they approached. “Hello, AST! 492nd Scouts coming in to your area!”
“Who?”
“State Defense Force!”
One of the troopers turned a spotlight in the direction of the voices. “How many are you?”
“Four,” Michaels replied as they continued walking forward. “And we are armed. We’ve been on an exercise for a couple days.”
“Michaels?” called one of the troopers.
“Yeah,” Michaels replied. “Who is that? I can’t see you with that light in my eyes.”
“Sean Brady.”
“Oh! Hey, Sean, what in the world are you guys doing out here?”
“That’s what I was going to ask you. We’re here because we were ordered to be out here, but what about you? I thought you guys were a coastal unit.”
Trooper Brady and Staff Sergeant Michaels had gone through a specialized SERT training course together earlier in the year. Michaels was the first ASDF member allowed to actively train with state
