Red North!

Red North!

  By

  Mark Lemke

  Dedication

  The main character in the book is named after Nicholas Connor, born in the eye of a great typhoon as it passed over Naha, Okinawa.? May he grow up to be as strong and proud as his daddy!

  PROLOGUE

  ?

  ?

  Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC)

  US Army Special Forces

  Area of Operations: Classified

  Date: Classified

  I

  As I struggled to open my eyes, I felt my head pounding.? I slowly came to realize that I was laying face down, choking on dust, and not able to hear very well.? It was difficult to focus on where I was and what I was doing.? Something inside of me said, 'Get up!? Keep moving!'? Without knowing exactly why, that's what I did.? I pushed myself up to a kneeling position, found that that worked, and then to a wobbly standing position, after which I took off running as best I could-slowly at first, limping as if working out the kinks-then picking up speed as my limbs and joints loosened.? I knew I wasn't running to get away from somebody, but rather that I was running toward something, the purpose of which was on the fringe of my consciousness.? Even though my recollection of why was vague, I knew I couldn't stop to figure out what that was. ?I ran on, sure-hoping-that the reason would reveal itself before I got 'there'.? I was vaguely aware of pain in my back and legs, finding it odd that I considered that irrelevant.? I just needed to keep moving.

  As I ran through streets and by buildings, I remembered that I was in a town-somewhere in a third-world country by the looks of it.? The 'buildings' were mostly one story and made of brick and mud.? Roads were dirt or stone.? While the town was not modern by any measure, it appeared to be functional and, to a point, clean.? People were almost non-existent, which I realized gave me one less thing to worry about, as if people were a threat to me.? Up ahead, there was a building that looked like it might provide some cover.? Cover from what, I didn't know, but I sensed it was what I needed.? Running toward the building, I saw that it had an alcove with a recessed door.? Good.? Quickly stepping into the shadows provided by the niche, I instinctively reached down and drew out my Yarborough, a knife with a 7-inch blade of CPM S30V stainless steel.? Why would I know those details?? I didn't know how I knew, but I knew; and I remembered that a Medal of Honor recipient gave it to me in some kind of ceremony.? I held it in my left hand, so I assumed I was left-handed.?

  I slowed my breathing as if that's what I'd been trained to do, and the world around me came slowly into focus.? There was a throbbing in my head, like I had cotton in my ears, so I had to rely on other senses to figure out where I was and what I wanted to do next.? I carefully leaned forward to look around the corner of the building and then back toward the direction I'd come.? I saw three men lying dead on the road.? More importantly, I saw two more shouting, in what I assumed was some Chinese dialect, pointing in my direction and running toward me, with automatic weapons at the ready.? My mind started processing information.? I didn't even try to figure it out.? It was almost instinctive, which was good, because I still didn't know where I was or what I was supposed to be doing.?As the two men who I'd identified somehow as 'threats' neared me, I exhaled and sprang out from the recess to attack them.?This was probably the last thing they'd expected, because they slowed down and hesitated. ?For reasons I couldn't explain, I did not.?

  With surprising speed, considering the pain I felt in my back and legs, I rushed toward the one closest to me.? I switched my hold on the knife so the handle was forward and the blade was laid back, next to my forearm.? When I got to the first guy, I swung my arm forward, as if throwing a punch while running past him.? With a wide sweeping motion, the Yarborough sliced across his throat, causing a huge gash that immediately spurted dark red blood.? To push the knife into his chest cavity in an attempt to find a vital organ would have required me to have to pull it out again, and that would have taken time that I didn't have.? As the knife cut through his windpipe and severed his carotid artery, he dropped to his knees and grabbed his throat, losing his grip on his rifle.? I bent over, dropped my knife, and picked up the dying man's weapon, laying down a withering field of fire in the direction of the other man.? He died with his mouth and eyes wide open, but died nonetheless.? I turned back to the man kneeling in the dirt, bleeding out at the neck, and put one round in his head.?He fell to the ground and didn't move again.

  I reached down, picked up my knife, wiped the blood off on my pant leg, and sheathed it.? I stood still and looked for the next threat.? Sensing none, I stood still for a moment, disconnected memory fragments just beyond my reach.? I looked down at the weapon I was holding, knowing in an instant that it was an AK-47; a selective-fire, gas-operated assault rifle capable of firing rounds of 7.62x39mm with a muzzle velocity of 2,400?ft/sec, first developed in the Soviet Union by a guy called Mikhail Kalashnikov.? It had a distinctive sound when fired and was a reputable weapon under a variety of adverse conditions.? I seemed to know everything about the rifle, but at the moment only cared that it was a weapon and that I was holding it and they weren't.

  I felt a surge of adrenaline because I had a weapon other than my knife, gratified that I was standing up, and that there was no one in my direct field of vision trying to kill me.?Something told me to keep moving.? Time was of the essence.?The fog in my brain was lifting and a sense of purpose was starting to come back to me.? My team was in trouble, but where were they now?? As I took off running again, the blood pumping to my brain helped revive me.? Memories were surfacing like flashbacks, dots were connecting, and reason replaced instinct.? We'd been tracking the whereabouts of a particularly well-armed, well-connected terrorist cell. ?Without thinking about it, I recalled that the guys we'd been looking for had infiltrated a business being run overseas-something about trying to destabilize an entire industry.? The breadth of our involvement was unclear, but I remembered why I was there.? We started in Hong Kong and followed the trail out here-to wherever 'here' was.

  Holding the Yarborough helped me remember I was part of the US Army's elite Green Berets. The media called us the masters at the dark arts of counter-terrorism.? We just shook our heads when we heard that kind of bullshit.? There were no 'dark arts' that we knew about.? We were just guys that hit harder than the next guy, had good intel, and had the courage to finish whatever we started.

  Memories started exploding in my mind, causing my heart to race as I remembered hearing 'Danger close!? Danger close!' in my earpiece. I looked off to the right and recognized the building where I'd sent Billy to maintain overlook. Why didn't I see him or hear him now?? Several large, well-armed men had come crashing through two doors from the building left of where I'd been standing and descended on us. I heard the distinctive sound of Billy's rifle as he cracked off five quick rounds.? I saw three of the men drop before they got to us, but there were just too many of them.? Protocol said Billy had to break off for fear of hitting one of us.

  Eric leapt over me and grappled with one of the men who was preparing to shoot me.? He wrapped one arm around the guy's head and positioned his other hand on the man's jaw. ?With a sharp, quick twisting motion, he broke the man's neck, severing his spinal cord and terminating his life functions.? The guy went limp and fell to the ground in a heap when Eric let go of him.

  It hadn't been enough though.? They'd started swarming all over us. One of them clubbed Eric over the head with his rifle and I saw Eric go limp. Two men grabbed him and started to run out of the building, dragging Eric behind them. I struggled with three guys working to restrain me.? They were big but undisciplined fighters.? It took me a while, but I'd somehow gotten the better of them.? I stood and looked at the chaos around me.? Most of my team seemed intact, but Eric was nowhere in sig
ht.? The last time I saw him, he was being hauled out of the building we were in, toward the center of that shit-hole of a town.

  I turned to Tim and told him to get on the radio and get an evac helicopter to the rendezvous point.? I was going to find Eric.? I gave Tim ten minutes.? If I wasn't back by then, he had orders to get the hell out of there.? He had the information we'd collected and it was imperative that we got it back to HQ, regardless of the cost.? I could tell by looking at Tim that he didn't like that one bit but knew better than to argue.? He knew I was right, but that didn't mean he had to like it.? He paused for a moment and looked at me.? Then he turned, signaled the others, and disappeared out the back of the building.

  I took off running. From our previous intelligence on this group and our workup on this operation, I knew the building they would probably take Eric to.? It was heavily fortified and hard to sneak up on. It was a good position to defend and the most likely spot they'd head. But the element of surprise was on my side.? They weren't expecting me to crash their fucking headquarters.? I knew I couldn't waste time waiting until they could regroup or get fortified. I didn't get very far, though, when I saw someone lob a grenade in my direction. I ran perpendicular to it as fast as I could before it exploded, but it caught me nonetheless.? I was far enough away when it exploded that it wasn't lethal, but it peppered my back and legs with shrapnel.? The blast knocked me down and the concussion ruptured blood vessels all over my body.

  That was the last thing I remembered until I woke up face down in the dirt.

  II

  My head was mostly clear now, but hurt like a sonofabitch. I knew all I needed to know.? I knew why I was running and I knew where I was going. I also knew I'd weaken soon. I was bleeding, and that's never good.? So I just kept moving, and moving quickly.

  As I ran, I checked the magazine to see how many rounds I still had.? Not enough.? I would have to make each shot count.

  No time!? No time!

  I picked up the pace and started to sprint.? Eric was in trouble and that was enough motivation for me. Standard operating procedure for these assholes would be to film Eric's execution, likely through beheading, for propaganda purposes.?That just wasn't going to happen so long as I was alive.

  The fortified building I was sure they were holed up in was just ahead.? Hopefully they hadn't had time to stage lookouts-I'd find out in a minute.? I kept pressing ahead. They were probably just inside, hurrying to get their camera equipment set up.

  Nobody was shooting at me-yet-which was a good sign they didn't know I was there.? I took a bead on the front door and kicked it in while at a dead run.? It slammed open and everyone in the room looked at once in my direction, startled and angry.? Eric was on his knees in the middle of the room-alive-with one big guy holding onto him. He was bleeding profusely and his head was down with his chin resting on his chest.

  The surprise at my sudden entrance lasted just long enough for me to put two into the head of the guy to my left. The guy to my right went down with two center mass shots.??That was it.? I was out of bullets. I dropped the AK-47, took my knife out and lunged at the guy closest to me. He stopped being a threat when he could no longer breathe through his throat.

  In the confusion of the moment, Eric summoned his remaining strength, reached up to the guy holding him, caught him around the neck, pulled him over his shoulders, and slammed him to the ground. The man was large by anyone's standards, and no doubt a capable fighter, but one on one nobody could best my guys.? Within minutes, Eric and I were the only ones still breathing. As I looked down, I saw I was standing in a pool of blood, some of it probably my own, and my world and everything in it became vague.

  As I woke up, I struggled to open my eyes, which wanted to close again immediately.? My lips were parched; and as my mind gained consciousness, the pain returned.? Only this time it was more like a dull throb and not the stabbing sensation and searing heat I'd felt earlier.? I wasn't laying in the dirt, either.? This time I was on a cot of some kind and mostly just felt groggy. I'd been told morphine does that to you.? Trying to get my bearings, I opened my eyes and kept them open this time to look around.? I was in what looked like a tent or some kind of field hospital and everyone around me was Caucasian, allowing me to relax.? Tim was standing there, looking at me.

  "Hey, Nick.? You're finally awake.? I thought you were gonna milk this and stay sleep all day.? How you feeling?" he said with a smile on his face.

  "I think I stubbed my toe," I replied.? "How bad is it?"

  I knew two things. Tim was as fine a Special Forces medic as there was.? And he wouldn't lie to me.

  "You'll live," he said. "But we need to get you to a real hospital."

  Still groggy and not knowing how I got there, I had to ask. "What about Eric?"

  "You really don't remember?" asked Tim, as he adjusted the IV drip in my arm.? "He's a little worse for wear but you got him out.? He's on a helo heading for a hospital.? He'll be fine."

  I relaxed a bit, but only a bit.? "And the others?"

  Tim stopped fiddling with the IV and looked me in the eyes. "We took some casualties.? We lost Billy and Dave.? But the others are okay."

  I sank back in my bed.? I felt defeated.? Billy and Dave gone.? My eyes stung and my breath got shallow.? I'd known both of them well.? It was clich? to say I spent time with them, drinking beer at their homes and having dinner with their wives and families.

  Tim saw my despair.? "Hey, are you kidding me?" he said. "You got the rest of us out of that shithole in one piece.?None of us would be alive if it weren't for you. You got bullet holes all over your damn body. Your back is full of shrapnel, and your legs look like Swiss cheese.? And that was before you got Eric out of there."

  He paused for a moment, looking closely at my face, no doubt trying to tell if I was still dazed or trying to absorb all this information.

  "You left a path of destruction from one end of that town to the other.? There were dead guys all over the place.? And many of them appeared to have died from knife wounds.? We were waiting at the evac point getting ready to ex-fill out of there when you came limping over the hill, with your right arm under Eric's shoulders and your Yarborough in your left hand, dripping blood."

  Tim then lowered his voice to a whisper.? "That was the most awe-inspiring display of reckless bravery I've ever seen, man . . . or will ever see."

  I wasn't sure but it looked like Tim's eyes were tearing up as I put my hand on his arm just before dropping into to a drug-induced unconscious state.

  ?

  CHAPTER 1

  TWO YEARS LATER