by Michael Cole
“Looks like someone couldn’t hold their drink,” Sutton remarked.
“Whatever the case is, they left here in a hurry,” Seymour said, glancing at Hawk. He walked through the large room until he came to a closed door on the other side. He carefully peered inside before stepping in completely. He had entered a storage room, full of rations marked with Korean labeling. In the corner of the room were three large metal fuel barrels. “These guys really don’t care about sanitation, do they?” he said to himself, before adjusting his microphone. “Ivan, Rex, this is Seymour.”
“Yeah…” Rex’s voice answered.
“I need you guys to put your muscles to use,” Seymour said. “Come get these fuel barrels and take them to the generator. See if we can get some power in this place.”
“You got it,” Rex said.
“Don’t we want to secure the rest of the bunker?” Hawk asked.
“I’d rather we get the lights on, first,” Seymour answered. “I don’t want any surprises.”
Ivan bared teeth and grunted as he wrapped his arms around the large barrel, bending his knees to lift. Rex watched and began to snicker. Ivan glared at his friend, who turned away to grab a second barrel.
“The hell you laughing at?”
“Good lord, dude…at least buy it a drink first,” Rex said. He knelt to grab ahold of the next barrel.
“Oh yeah?” Ivan straightened his legs, lifting the heavy barrel over his shoulders. “You’re the one who’s bending over. Just sayin’.”
“Should I just shut that door and let you two get it over with?” Terrie remarked. Both men looked at her, their faces souring with disgust. Ivan, deciding to play along, forced a smile.
“Why? You jealous?” Chuckling to himself, he carried the barrel past her, turning left to exit into the operations room. Rex lifted his fuel barrel and followed. Their eyes strained as the sunlight greeted them outside the bunker. After placing his barrel beside the generator, Ivan unscrewed the cap. Rex set his barrel down alongside Ivan’s, then stretched his shoulder out.
As he did, he looked at Easley. The skinnier mercenary patrolled around the building, watchfully keeping an eye on the tree line.
“Hey, kid,” Rex said. Easley stopped and looked over at him. “Be careful dude. You’re a target in plain sight. There’s not much to use as cover outside this building.”
“Got it,” Easley said, making a “peace” sign with his fingers before continuing his patrol.
The fuel cap for the generator was located along the side, as the machine itself was nearly as tall as Ivan. He unscrewed the cap and inserted the plastic funnel. Lifting with his legs, he tipped the barrel toward the funnel. Gas guzzled into the enormous fuel tank, gradually liberating the container of its immense weight. Within minutes, the entire tank had been drained.
“Damn,” he said. He knew the generator was big, but did not expect it to contain such a large amount of fuel. “Whatever they were doing in there, they were using up a lot of juice.”
Rex yanked on the ignition cord. The gears slowly turned and died. Rex yanked again. The gears turned and sparked. The generator roared to life.
Seymour listened to the generator start up. Lights started illuminating from the computers as they came back to life. Overhead lights in the operations room began to flicker. Dull mechanical sounds echoed through the facility as the power spread throughout the facility. As the lights in the planning room came on, Seymour and the team looked around, finally able to clearly see their surroundings. Seymour looked to Hawk.
“Alright, download your…”
Blaring audio alarms pounded their eardrums. Red strobing lights flashed from the ceiling. Seymour reactively raised his weapon, scanning the area for any threat.
A voice sounded from the speakers.
“Security Alert! Containment breach! Security Alert! Containment Breach!”
The bunker had gone from quiet and dark to disorienting and chaotic. The team hurried throughout the bunker. They checked along the walls, computers, and radio panels, desperately looking for any device that would silence the deafening alarm. Adrenaline shooting through her body, Terrie moved back into the operations room. The flashing lights illuminated the room, bringing to life details she didn’t notice prior. One of which was another doorway. Sharing the same color as the wall, while also being covered in layers of dust, it was easily concealed in the dim light, and they had moved right past it. Grains of dust billowed into a thin cloud as Terrie opened the door.
Peering inside, she saw a spiraling stairway leading up to the upper level. “Boss!” Terrie called to Seymour. Barely hearing her call, Seymour rushed over to her. She pointed to the stairway.
Seymour hated stairways. They always made for an easy ambush site when securing a facility. He pointed his weapon upward and started up. Terrie went up next, followed by Hawk, while Sutton and Nagamine remained to locate the alarm panel.
The strobing lights nearly blinded Seymour as he moved up the spiraling staircase. It ended at a closed metal door. He grabbed the lever and pushed it downward. The door opened slowly by mechanical gears. Not having the patience to wait, Seymour thrust a kick into it. The door burst open, and Seymour stormed inside, rifle pointed.
Red and green lights flashed throughout the enormous room. The siren, like that of a tornado drill, was even louder. Terrie moved up the stairway, stopping momentarily at the upstairs doorway. Her ears felt as though they would burst from the overload of noise. Gritting her teeth, she entered the room.
Seymour turned to Hawk as she entered. “Alright, Agent, how do we turn this damn thing off?” Though standing next to her, he had to shout. Hawk scanned the room. Her eyes observed several large panels to the far end of the large room. One was indeed a circuit panel. She dashed over to it, dodging lab tables and scattered supplies like asteroids.
She tore the panel doors open and studied the switches. The flashing lights and blaring noise made reading the labels nearly impossible. Finally, she located the emergency alarm panel. She flicked the breaker switch, causing the strobing lights to vanish. The flick of another switch killed the audibles.
The command post went silent, lit now only by normal overhead florescent lights. Drawing a huge sigh of relief, Hawk turned and leaned back on the wall. Her heart was still racing, having just settled from the tense firefight. Her head pounded, as though the alarm still echoed in her brain. The chaos, however brief, had almost completely wiped whatever energy she had left.
Seymour drew a quick breath as he composed himself. He scanned his eyes throughout the room, quickly determining there was no enemy presence. The second level appeared to be one large room, stretching out nearly as wide as the bunker.
During the war, the second floor contained a layout similar to the one below. Several adobe walls created chambers for troop quarters, armory, machine gun operating chambers, offices, and a radar workshop. The inner walls had been collapsed, turning the upper level into one large laboratory. Abandoned lab equipment lay scattered about. Broken glass fragments from vials and beakers had littered the floor.
Equipment, such as lab meters, bench scales, nucleic acid sequencing kits, and so many others that Seymour had no knowledge about, lay about on the various tables. Some of the tables were neat and organized, while others were in complete disarray. Sequencing computers were powered down, connected to electronic microscopes and SPECTROLAB metal analyzers.
Geez, how’d they get all this shit up here? Seymour thought. Looking back at the stairwell entrance, he had his answer. Like everything up in this lab, the staircase was added in during the science team’s reconstruction of the bunker. Originally, it contained nothing other than a ladder. Being unable to get a hydraulic lift into the command post, they built a stairway to physically haul the materials into the second floor. Practically the entire bunker had been cleaned out.
“A waste of good history, even if they were on the wrong side,” he commented out loud.
“Wi
th the terrain on this island, Dr. Trevor insisted that converting this bunker would be faster than constructing a new lab,” Hawk said.
Passing by several tables, Seymour gazed at a stable isotope analyzer. The machine had powered on, illuminating several chemical charts on a screen. He looked over at Hawk.
“Whatever that vaccine was, this is where your people developed it,” he said. Once again, Hawk did not answer. Her silence was enough of an answer in itself.
Large machines, resembling X-ray devices and MRI’s, were abandoned on the opposite side. Though similar, Seymour knew these were not medical devices. Near these machines was a sealed glass cabinet. Inside were three hazmat suits. Orange and black in color, with a hooded helmet and square glass face, they hung side-by-side on posts.
As Hawk rested, she noticed a sliver of light coming in through the nearby wall. Stepping away from the panels, she realized the light was not coming in through a window, but from a circular hole in the wall. The cavity walls were blackened, smelling like asphalt. The hole had been “burnt” nearly all the way through, exposing small cracks in the remaining inch of concrete.
Hawk walked through the lab, gazing at dried blood smeared onto the floor. Her breathing grew heavy as she walked further down. Some of the tables had been smashed through the center, as if a gigantic hammer had crashed down on top of them.
She found Seymour staring at the far wall. It was made of metal, grafted into the cement walls. It contained a single doorway. He recognized the metal wheel opening mechanism, like that on a hatch door, and the metal bars that extended from its side. It was intended to be a secure entrance, leading into a metal atrium where another seal door would lead into the chamber.
Only it wasn’t secure. The exterior door had been swung wide open, and the interior was ajar.
“Oh no,” she murmured. Though soft, her voice was alarmed.
“What’s going on?” Terrie asked. Hawk rushed through the open doorways.
“Don’t you need a suit?” Seymour asked. He watched the agent step around the interior door. Her voice growled, a combination of anger, shock, and despair.
“No….NO! Those stupid fucks! They opened it!”
Seymour and Terrie rushed in after her. After passing by the steel interior door, they found themselves inside a large, dull rectangular room with windowless grey walls. Hawk’s face was animated with rage as she stared at a large metal object in the center of the room. The only way Seymour could think to describe it was a huge oval-shaped coffin. Twelve feet in length, it lay across, supported by stilts. Its exterior appeared similar to metal, though it was the smoothest, finest exterior he had ever seen. The bottom had a single triangular-shaped cavity. Over the top, twin doors had raised off the main body by small levers. Seymour and Terrie shared a glance, one as confused as the other. Seymour turned to Hawk.
“What the hell was in there?”
CHAPTER
20
With their guns strapped to their backs, the three North Korean soldiers crawled over mud and roots as they neared toward the bunker. Hearing the sound of the alarm confirmed to them the underlying purpose of the strike team’s presence. The alarm had gone silent, replaced by the constant drone of the generator. Looking ahead, they could see pure sunshine breaking through the jungle. They were close.
They moved in a triangular formation, their most experienced soldier taking the lead. He crept to the perimeter line, keeping back several inches as he peered between the leaves at the bunker. They were looking at the southeast corner. To the right was the main entrance. The generator crackled and popped in the grass twenty feet in front of it.
Standing guard were two large men, built like Greek statues. The soldier saw the M60 machine guns they held; the same weapons that killed so many of his comrades. Inside that bunker were those who fought alongside him; the cowardly bunch that ambushed a platoon of unsuspecting soldiers.
Rather, the soldier justified his platoon’s defeat by deeming the attackers cowardly. Moreover, they felt angered and insulted to the interference. The contents of that bunker, the findings by the scientist, by right, belonged to their homeland and Supreme General. It was not to be abused by the Western world, nor any other nation or culture.
However, deep down in his mind, he feared the truth. A team of seven-to-eight soldiers had outwitted and outgunned his superior force. They were defeated by a group with less firepower, ammo, personnel, and according to his indoctrination, inferior training and moral stance.
The soldiers knew radioing for extraction would be a useless venture. If successful, it would only lead to their deaths. Once their commanders in their homeland learned of their humiliating defeat, the soldiers would certainly be executed as an example of the punishment of failure.
Their only chance would be to eliminate the assassins.
The two other soldiers spread out, taking position six feet apart from each other. Concealed behind the plants, they observed the two men standing guard near the generator. They moved back and forth, speaking to each other in their English language. Though the soldiers didn’t understand, the two brutes appeared to be mocking one another.
Two large men; two easy targets. The leader developed a plan: gun down the guards and draw the remainder of the squad out. As they exit the main door, they would gun them down.
The leader lowered his eye along the sights of his assault rifle, gesturing to his comrades to take the other.
“Shh…” he quietly signaled, removing his finger from the trigger. From around the corner of the bunker, a third individual appeared. He held his gun in hand, while conducting a standard looking patrol around the perimeter. The soldiers grinned. One target for each of them.
They slowly spread apart to take firing position. They would engage simultaneously, killing all three targets at once.
One of the soldiers moved along on his belly, pushing up dirt and grass as he positioned himself. He squeezed his hand over the grip. He moved his other arm to rest against the barrel.
His arm snagged on something. Something thin. Thin as wire.
Flames burst in his face as the trip flare ignited, shooting a ball of flame into the trees.
“Holy…” Easley shouted as the trip flare shot upward. Looking to the point of origin, he saw the motion in the plants. Human figures, wearing dark uniforms, had nearly jumped in place, reactionary to the flare. Gun barrels were pointed, both in his direction and toward his friends.
Easley lifted his gun and squeezed the trigger.
A spray of red splattered the plants as several of Easley’s bullets hit their mark. The two remaining soldiers jumped back, seeing the skull of their unlucky comrade completely decimated. Realizing their plan was compromised, they fired return shots and quickly retreated into the jungle.
A flood of bullets passed by Ivan and Rex, one of them grazing Ivan’s left shoulder.
“Agh! Son of a…BITCH!” Ivan yelled. Rex fired his M60 into the jungle, then rushed to Ivan’s side to check the injury. The bullet had passed clean through the meat, leaving a large gash and series of burn marks.
“Report contact!” Seymour’s voice yelled through their headphones. Easley rushed toward the tree line.
“Three shooters! One of them down. I’m in pursuit of the other two!”
Ivan quickly stood up, blood freely dripping down his arm. “I’m fine!” They watched Easley dash into the jungle after the soldiers. Ivan huffed and puffed, his face mad with anger. He felt an immediate thirst for payback. “Let’s go!” He shouted. He and Rex darted into the jungle, Ivan furiously cursing each step of the way. “Oh, those FUCKS! No FUCKING way am I letting that kid hog all the action! Those bastards are MINE!”
********
Easley ducked under a low branch as he tore through the jungle to catch up with the assailants. Every few seconds he would catch a glimpse of them. Determined to get away, they managed to stay roughly a hundred feet ahead of him.
“This is Seymour. Easley? Wh
at’s your status?”
“In pursuit. Hostiles moving southeast of your position,” he said.
“Easley, withdraw. We’ll regroup and track them. Withdraw to the…”
A series of deafening gunshots forced Easley to dive for cover. Rolling around a thick group of roots, he hugged the ground. Several bullets zipped by, shredding leaves as they ripped into the terrain. Peeking around a gap in the roots, Easley looked for the shooter. A muzzle flash gave away their position. They were aiming several yards to his left, meaning they were unaware of his exact position. Just as he aimed, the soldiers took off again, moving out from his line of sight.
“Damn it,” he cursed. He sprang to his feet and darted after them. He barely moved three steps when a small circular object hurled through the air toward him. Moving through the air like a softball, it breezed past his head. It was small, dark green in color…a grenade! Easley accelerated his sprint, running clear of the blast zone. Knowing Ivan and Rex were somewhere behind him, he tapped the microphone on his headset. “Grenade!”
Just as they heard Easley’s warning, the two brutes heard a dull clang as the explosive hit the ground. They couldn’t see it, nor pinpoint its exact location, other than it landed somewhere ahead of them. They instantly turned and dove, as an explosive fiery flash encompassed the jungle several yards away, spouting razor sharp shrapnel into the surrounding area.
After the blast quickly faded, Ivan and Rex climbed to their feet, no harm done other than their tempers worsened.
Easley hunched slightly as he ran, feeling the force of the blast behind him. Looking ahead, he saw nothing but jungle. Having lost any visual of the hostile force, he could only hear their fleeing footsteps along with the rustling of plants several yards ahead.
He pressed on, determined to finish the mission. He came upon another thick wall of plants. He tucked his head down and sprinted through it, ignoring the pricks and splinters. He burst through, immediately encompassed by sunlight. He looked up, seeing the small clearing.