Mike and Lisa Nelson snuggled in their Wiggy’s FTRSS bags, gradually getting warm after a numbing all-night march. Mike rubbed his hands together vigorously. They took turns rubbing each other’s feet, trying to restore circulation.
The air temperature outside the tent hovered around 5 degrees Fahrenheit. It would peak at just 10 degrees that afternoon. Just before he drifted off to sleep, Mike told Lisa, “Tonight will be one to remember. I wish Dan Fong was here to be in on it.” Outside, Kevin stood the first day watch.
Contact with a local rancher in January in the sixth year of the Crunch had provided Michael Nelson’s company with a valuable piece of intelligence: Potlatch was recently re-garrisoned by a company of the Belgian Chemical Corps, and their security was lax. The five-member raiding party consisted of the Nelsons, Kevin Lendel, and the Carltons. The snow had stopped for the present, but Kevin’s pocket barometer was falling, telling them that more was on the way. There would be a half moon rising that evening, but it would be obscured by clouds.
At 7 p.m., Mike left alone to conduct a patrol leader’s recon of Potlatch. He picked out a hillock two-hundred-and-fifty yards south of the nearest house.
There, he spread out his poncho, rolled out his FTRSS bag, and set up his Bushnell spotting scope on its stubby tripod. Through the scope, Mike saw the Belgians change guards at 9 p.m. and midnight, right on schedule. At twelve-fifteen, Nelson headed back to the ORP. The raiding party struck their tents and reloaded their gear in their packs. At twelve-thirty Mike gave his revised op order. Then they did a final inspection. Two noisy canteens were silenced by combining their contents. When the cold weather had set in, in November, they had delubricated their guns and lightly relubricated them with Moly Coat—powdered molybdenum disulfide. Nonetheless, they manually tested their actions to ensure that they weren’t frozen shut. Then they set off in a widely spaced single file, with their rifles and shotguns at port arms beneath their ponchos.
As they approached the town, the whine of a generator grew steadily louder. Mike had been told by the rancher that he should expect it. The Belgians had brought with them a trailer-mounted fifteen-kilowatt generator to power their lights, radios, and some small space heaters. On a listening halt, Mike smiled and whispered to Lisa, “This will be great. Not only will their night vision be ruined by the lights, but the noise of the generator will cover the noise of our approach.” Mike had been told by the rancher that there were no civilians left living in town. There would be no confusing the bad guys and friendlies. They had also been told that the guard changed every three hours.
The Belgians in the garrison company had originally been trained and equipped for chemical warfare decontamination. Here in America, their primary duty was to act as garrison soldiers. Most of their duty hours were spent guarding various facilities and manning roadblocks. Only occasionally did they get to use their cylinders to eliminate resistance fighters that the infantry had found hiding in bunkers. Their field SOP was to suit up and gas the bunkers and then leave for three days. Then they would return, again wearing their Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) suits and protective masks with green ring filters, in case any residual gas remained. Then they would drag out the bodies and gear. They liked the duty. The occasional gassing gave them the chance to gather plenty of booty. Because they were almost the only unit in the region with full MOPP suits, nobody else could handle their loot. If an officer from another unit made a fuss, they would offer them the doubled black plastic trash bags with the jocular warning, “Here, go ahead, take these! But, of course, remember that they are contaminated with VX, so be careful.” Then the officers would make a quick and polite exit, leaving the bags behind. Incidents like those made the Belgians laugh.
Most of their time was spent in town garrisons, getting drunk. Occasionally some hashish would come in the mail pouch from friends in Belgium. Then they’d have their big parties. Sometimes they could even catch a local teenage girl to gang rape. The Belgians would have otherwise liked being posted to Potlatch, but there were no residents left in town. It wasn’t as much fun without a few rapes.
Despite the Corps-wide “two-man rule,” there was only one sentry on duty when Mike’s raid patrol arrived. He was slightly drunk. His name was Per Boeynts, a Flemish-speaking Walloon private from the countryside northeast of Brussels. He hated being posted to UN peacekeeping duty in America. In the last year he had developed into a chronic alcoholic. At one-ten a.m., he stood just inside the doorway of what had been the sheriff’s office, trying to stay warm. His coat collar was turned up, and he was wearing his long underwear, a set of cold weather fatigues with cold weather liners, a sweater, and his heavy wool greatcoat. Still, he felt cold. The thermometer read 3 degrees Fahrenheit. Per wondered what that equated to on the Celsius scale. He could hardly wait the hour and a half until his relief was due. Then he could get back to bed.
Per had left a pair of Dutch-made night vision goggles on the chair by the orderly’s desk. By SOP they were supposed to be hanging on a cord around his neck. He hadn’t bothered to put them on, because the lights in the buildings would cause them to shut off automatically, anyway. The night sentries often cursed 1st Sergeant Van Duyn for making them carry the stupid things.
But it was SOP, he said, so they were ordered to carry them whenever on night guard duty.
Like the other pickets, he had been ordered to walk in a circuit outside. But Per decided that tonight it was too cold, and the snow was above his boots.
When he walked in it, he got his lower trouser legs wet, and that made it feel even colder. Just inside the open door was good enough for him. After all, 1st Sergeant Van Duyn was asleep, so he wouldn’t ever know the difference. He turned toward the desk to get another cigarette. As he flicked the lighter, he was struck at the base of his skull with a heavy ball-peen hammer. He fell on the desk and then rolled and landed on the floor. The hammer came down twice more, now on his temple.
After he was sure that the soldier was dead, Mike tucked the hammer back into his belt. It had become his favorite sentry removal tool in recent months.
The private’s rifle—a bullpup Steyr AUG with a forty-two-round magazine—was leaning up against the door molding. A thorough search of the office revealed the night vision goggles, a gray-green duffel bag, some local maps, a duty log book, rosters, and a jumble of papers and faxes written in four different languages—French, German, English, and what Mike surmised was Flemish. He also found six spare loaded thirty-round AUG magazines in an engineer’s pouch, an M17A2 gas mask, an angle-head flashlight, two spare odd looking screw-in batteries that he assumed were for the night vision goggles, a brown cardboard box of ten olive drab U.S.-made batteries that looked like D cells marked “BA-3030,” four sealed MREs, a walkie-talkie radio of a sort that he didn’t recognize, four automatic atropine injectors, a jar of Belgian instant coffee, a German-English/English-German dictionary, and half a carton of Cuban cigarettes.
Mike removed the magazine from the AUG and cleared its chamber. Then he flipped the rifle’s barrel release button and removed the barrel assembly. It was much more compact in two pieces. Mike stuffed everything but the gas mask in the duffel bag to be sorted out later.
He strapped on the duffel bag, underneath his poncho. He picked up his gun—a Remington 870 with tritium sights— waiting just outside the door along with his gloves. As he stepped outside, he could see Kevin approaching, carrying a plastic ammo can in each hand. Kevin whispered, “They are all billeted in the church building next door, all right. Their trucks are an absolute gold mine! Lisa found some cylinders marked with the skull and crossbones and ‘VX.’ That’s nerve gas, isn’t it?”
“It sure is nerve gas! Non-persistent type,” Mike replied enthusiastically. “I read about it in one of Todd’s Army manuals. It just takes a few parts per million and everyone it touches is dead in thirty seconds. A couple of tiny droplets the size of a pinhead will do the job. We certainly want to take all of those. I’m setting that as our new top
priority.”
All of them but Doug left fifteen minutes later, heading southeast, carrying the gear that they had removed from the trucks. They had with them three twenty-pound VX cylinders that felt like they were filled. Their valves were secured with safety wires. Doug Carlton followed their trail in the snow and caught up a quarter hour later. They slogged on through the deep snow in silence. As they topped a high hill, they turned to look back to the north. In the distance they could see the flames of the vehicles, generator, and billets building burning.
The patrol covered nearly six miles before dawn. It started to snow again heavily, and the wind came up stronger, still from the south, drifting the snow.
It quickly obscured their tracks. As the morning light gathered, they made an abrupt turn in their direction of travel and moved a quarter mile into a dense stand of timber. They set up a new bivouac site with the tents widely spaced.
Once they were out of view of the others, Della kissed Doug, and declared, “I’m so glad that you’re alive. That was one gutsy maneuver!”
Doug replied, “Well, somebody had to do it, and there was no reason to risk more than one of us. Besides, I’m the one with the most experience in a M17 series mask.”
“Tell me how you did it,” Della implored.
Doug paused from his work erecting the Moss Little Dipper tent and answered, “Well, first I scouted out the billets. They had everything closed up tight except for one door. They had a heater of some sort running in there. I could feel the heat coming out the door, and hear its fan roaring. It made great cover noise. The door was left cracked open because they had a fat power cable from the generator leading in. I stepped well away from the building and tested the wind. It was slow and steady from the south. I cut five six-minute fuses for the grenades. One for the generator, one for each of their trucks, and one for just outside the door. The generator was in a rectangular cabinet with a flat top—how convenient for a thermite grenade.” He grinned.
He pulled the green rain fly out of the stuff sack, and continued, “As for the trucks, I opened their hoods and put the thermite grenades on top of the engine blocks, just in front of the air cleaners. Luckily, the Belgians’ rigs don’t have hood padlocks like most U.S. Army vehicles. I put the VX cylinder you set aside for me—the one that felt half-full—with its butt end poking in the door.
I taped the thermite grenade in the notch between the valve stem and the body of the cylinder, so the thermite glob would be sure to cut the end of the casing off. From what I’ve heard from Lon about compressed welding cylinders and dive tanks, it probably took off like a rocket into the building once it began to vent.
“I checked the wind again, just ’cause I’m paranoid, then I lit the fuse for the grenade on the VX cylinder. I dashed over and lit the ones on the trucks, and then the one on the generator, and I beat feet out of there. After a couple of minutes, I watched my Bulova as I ran. Just before the first of the grenades was going to start its burn, I stopped, masked, and cleared. Then I started out after you again. It’s a good thing that you folks left a clear trail in the snow.
The visibility in one of those masks is the pits, especially in low light. And, I could hardly breathe with the mask on, so I had to slow down my pace. I took it off just before I caught up with you folks. Those things feel very claustrophobic. I was really happy to take it off. For VX, I really should have been wearing a full MOPP suit, since you can absorb that stuff right through your skin. But we didn’t have one. Oh well, at least the mask would have given me a bit of protection if the wind had shifted.” Doug finished clipping on the rain fly and delivered, “It was no big deal, Dell. It was all really quite easy.” Della kissed him again.
• • •
Major Udo Kuntzler never went anywhere without his bodyguards. He had selected an American E-5 and two E-4s for the job. All three were recently Ranger school qualified. All three carried flattop M4 carbines with Trijicon ACOG scopes and MELIOS infrared laser sights. They also were each issued Beretta M9 pistols and AN/PVS-5 night vision goggles. He made sure that they were provided plenty of ammo to practice with. Kuntzler’s personal weapon was a Heckler und Koch MP-5K PDW. He never went anywhere without it, either. He jokingly referred to his bodyguards as his “praetorians.”
He called the HK PDW his “American Express Card.” He often jested, “I don’t leave home without it.”
Kuntzler was the UN adviser to the 3/2 Cavalry Brigade. He had been chosen for the job because he had both a strong grasp of tactics and good command of both spoken and written English. As the UN adviser, he was expected to go wherever the brigade went. He usually traveled in HHC-01—the headquarters company’s M3 Bradley CFV. Once in a while, he would go out to oversee individual line companies.
On February twelfth, Kuntzler and his bodyguards were driving up Highway 95 in a Humvee to “liase” with the company commander of Bravo Company of the 3/2. He had to brief him about an upcoming search and destroy mission. Kuntzler worked on his op-order notes as they drove north. As usual, they were written in English. He wanted to do everything that he could to fit in, and to seem less foreign. Soon after they passed through Moscow, the Humvee struck a mine. It was a small “toe popper,” but enough to blow out the left front tire. On the icy road, this event was more than sufficient to skid the Humvee into a deep ditch on the west side of the road. The left wheels were deep in slush, and the Humvee had nearly flipped over. The driver tried driving out, but despite four-wheel drive, the wheels spun helplessly. Even if they could get it out of the ditch, they would have to change the tire to get going again.
There were no other vehicles in sight. Kuntzler weighed his alternatives.
There was no radio in the Humvee. Due to lack of maintenance facilities, radios were a scarce item reserved for command posts and maneuver units.
Rather than wait where they were until help arrived, and perhaps risk contact with a resistance patrol, he decided that they would hike back to the security checkpoint at the outskirts of Moscow. It was just two kilometers away.
His guards put on their gloves and then their woodland pattern Gore-Tex over their M65 field jackets. The Gore-Tex coats had brown “bear suit” cold weather liners. Kuntzler was wearing just his fleck pattern field coat. He wished that his coat had a liner, and a hood like the Gore-Tex. Since today was to be a liaison visit rather than a field operation, he was wearing his sky blue UN beret.
His ears started getting cold soon after he stepped out of the Humvee. They had walked slowly, carefully eyeing the ground for evidence of mines.
They had already spread out to a safe interval. Just as Kuntzler passed a telephone pole, there was an explosion. His sensations were overwhelmed. There was a roar of gunfire. A horrible burning sensation stung his face, his eyes, his mouth. For a few moments, he couldn’t breathe. He fell to the ground gasping.
His eyes were full of tears, and he couldn’t see. He heard shouts and loud footsteps. He was kicked hard once in the testicles. The MP-5 submachinegun was simultaneously ripped from his hands. Then he was quickly handcuffed, searched, and blindfolded. His eyes were tearing uncontrollably and his sinuses were dripping heavily. Kuntzler heard more men shouting, and barking dogs.
Within minutes, he was bound hand and foot and strapped onto a dogsled. He heard a man yell, “Vive la Maquisards!” as the sled pulled away. Kuntzler had no idea which direction the sled was traveling.
The ambush had been set up forty-five minutes before. The ambushers hid in the clumps of grass and snowdrifts, sixty yards back from the road. They had placed five toe poppers in the northbound lane of the road. They were staggered slightly, so at least one of them would be run over by a tire. Next, they buried a plastic baggie filled with a half-pound of CS powder that they had extracted from a Smith and Wesson riot control grenade. The baggie was buried just beneath the snow on the west side of the road. A one-third stick of dynamite with a blasting cap was wired directly below it.
The ambush went almost ex
actly as planned. The Humvee arrived ten minutes after their intelligence source said it would. They had hoped that after hitting the mine it would roll completely over, but lying at a 35-degree angle in the ditch was good enough. It wasn’t going anywhere. Within a few minutes, the soldiers were out of the stranded Humvee and approached the kill zone on foot. Two of the soldiers carried M4 carbines. Using a locking cable release, Jeff switched on the tripod-mounted video camera to record the action. He waited until his intended target—the man with the different style uniform and the briefcase—was a pace in front of the CS mine. Then Jeff Trasel command-detonated it with a Claymore clacker. Tony, Teesha, Ian, and Mary hosed down the three guards. Their target was overwhelmed by the cloud of CS powder and was easily subdued. Lawrence Raselhoff and his Moscow Maquis came out of the tree line just as planned, just after the shooting stopped. One dogsled headed straight to the ambush site. The other carried a Maquisard to search the Humvee.
At first, they were all elated by the fact that they had captured so many fine weapons and night vision devices. They didn’t realize it until later, but they had also just captured some very important documents and the man who would become the most valuable intelligence asset in the Pacific Northwest theatre of operations.
• • •
The UN Regional Administrator was angry. Reginald Snodgrass had a reputation for having a bad temper. On two occasions he had carried out summary executions right in his office, with a revolver. When he was mad, he didn’t care if he made a mess. Someone else always cleaned it up. His staff tried to find things to keep themselves busy and away from the building on his “bad hair days.” In this instance, he was angry because he didn’t like having to leave his warm office in the dead of winter. He much preferred having people come to his office in Lewiston for meetings, where he felt secure.
This particular meeting was to be held at the abandoned town of De Smet, nineteen miles north of Moscow. Granted, it was a convenient central location for the commanders of the garrison forces and the civilian authorities from Coeur d’Alene, Lewiston, Moscow, Pullman, Kellogg, Sandpoint, and Saint Maries to meet. But Reggie didn’t like the meeting spot. One of his advisers had been ambushed within earshot of Moscow, just five days before. Anything outside the city limits of Moscow was bandit country, in his book.
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