All the women stop what they’re doing and stare at me.
A woman closest to me sexily walks over saying, “Can we help you?”
I stand confused as to where I am.
The woman walks up to me and, gazing into my eyes, asks,
“My name is Katrina, what’s yours?”
“John.” Before I could stop myself I’d already told her my name. Then I thought.
Idiot!
No sooner had I said that than two Russian Special Forces guys burst into the room. I punch the first guy in the face, who falls into the second guy.
I escape the room as gunfire erupts from one of the women (I think)!
I run down the second story platform looking for any means of escape. The entire room of scientists scrambles in all directions as gunfire targets me.
As I’m running I’m thinking,
This is what we call ineffective fire. Trouble is, a few inches closer and it will be very effective, ’cause I’ll be dead!
As I come to a vein in the mountain, I pull my Glock.
Good thing, as I have to shoot a Spetsnaz soldier running toward me who fires his machine gun. The soldier immediately falls.
I stop and grab the lifeless soldier’s PP-2000 sub-machine gun.
I then make my way down this jagged rock tube, looking for the doctor who saved my partner’s life.
Another soldier opens a door and I take him down with a quick burst of my newly acquired machine gun. It’s a little heavy and not very accurate, I think as I continue down the vein.
I look into a room with bars on a door and there she is!
Tatiana, the Russian doctor is tied to a chair and beat to a pulp.
Ducking inside the room I untie the poor doctor. I lift up her head as she sees it’s me.
“I don’t think I properly introduced myself, I’m John Denning.”
Now I realize she’s too weak and her mouth so swollen that she can’t speak.
“Never mind. How do we get outta here?”
She motions to the door and to the left.
I pick her up and as we run out of the room to the left. Gunfire erupts at my ‘6’ (Directly behind me). Running away from it, I turn a corner and suddenly there are three veins in which I could go.
I take the one on the right and am immediately hit in the arm by Tatiana’s fist. She motions to go back.
After I figure out what she means, I then take the middle vein.
She hits me again and I finally figure out she means to take the vein on the left.
This is the only one of the three that is not lit. I have to stop and turn on the flashlight on my iPhone.
“Are you sure?”
“Da!” she barely slurs.
“Okay.” I hand the doctor my phone. “Here, hold this.”
As I carry her, she holds the iPhone flashlight toward my feet.
As I carry her through this vein, I’m thinking:
Hell of a week! Hell of a week!
We finally near another gated door with bars across our path. I now realize, we are in another one of those air vents as a large fan begins blowing air.
Problem is the gate is locked.
“Great! Now what?”
The doctor reaches for her shoe and takes it off. Confused, I pick it up and out falls a key.
With it, I open the steel bars that look like a jail cell door and then have to run with her around a bend in the vein. Light rushes in to the cave entrance just ahead.
We act like vampires who haven’t seen daylight for months as we shield our eyes from the brightness. It’s not sunny but it’s clearly far brighter than the light I’ve seen in almost twenty-four hours.
The sun has already set long ago behind the 2,302-foot mountain.
Snow covers this entire area and there are not many trees up this high.
I’m confused as we are clearly higher than where Al took me into the mountain.
I check my pockets and pull out my cellphone:
No service.
“Damn!”
I figure, What do I have to lose? I try to send a text to the Ketchikan Police Chief.
The text read…
AMBUSHED
BOKAN MT.
PARTNER SHOT…
I accidentally hit send but the phone says: Not Delivered.
“Damn it!”
“I have ta go back, Tatiana.”
She tries to speak but is having difficulty. I lean over to try to hear what she’s saying.
The doctor says,
“Go.”
“Leave your phone.”
“I’ll keep texting.”
“Lock the gate.”
I hesitate but realize she’s right. I hand her my phone and say,
“I’ll be back for you.”
I stand, unlock the steel door and step back into the mine.
I look back at the poor, beat up doctor who risked her life for us and I think to myself:
“Well, I’ve already lived a week longer than I thought I would!”
Ketchikan, AK
Diary of Police Chief — Robert Stone
Christmas Day
The sun had already set.
I’m the Chief of Police of Ketchikan, Alaska.
My name is Robert Stone, and up until today I was a by the book kind of cop.
I’m really tired of never seeing my family for any of the holidays. We all have to work. But I guess I shouldn’t complain, as my biggest case was usually a missing dog or pulling a police cruiser out of Thomas Basin.
Our department owns this 2000 Ford Escape that can barely make it up and down the hills in town.
I hate this car!
The engine really never ran properly again after my deputy “accidentally” ran the SUV into the basin. I suspected my deputy had been drinking on the job but never did a breathalyzer, blood, or any other test as he’s my son, and, besides, I desperately needed the help.
It also helped that his mother had a twenty-year career as an emergency dispatcher for the entire region and, is my wife!
So, my deputy son, in plain clothes, is following MAA after he arrived from Portland, Oregon. I left several text messages with that FBI, Denning, guy.
“We don’t know where the hell he is!”
I’m pulling into the lot when my deputy calls over the radio:
“Dad, I think I just lost our suspect. He was in the bar and went to the bathroom. I just checked the bathroom. He’s gone.”
“I’m on my way over.”
I shook my head, thinking, I better not find out my kid has been drinking again on the job. I call Tony’s mother on the two-way radio, “Yura?”
She answers, “Yes?”
“Make sure everyone knows we lost our suspect. Put out that picture of him and say: If anyone sees him don’t do anything but call me immediately.”
I don’t want any trouble.
I like my town just the way it is. Nice and quiet!
Too bad I never saw my phone, which was upside down on the seat, of the squad car.
I didn’t want trouble but trouble was not far away.
Bokan Mountain
Russian Command and Control Center
Two GRU soldiers walk up to a very large and very sophisticated door.
It looks much like the large, steel door of NORAD inside the Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado before the facility was pretty much shuttered.
This door has multiple biometric scans.
They put all five fingers of their right hand on a scanner.
Then they place their entire face in front of another scanner.
Finally, something right out of a Star Trek movie:
A laser shoots thousands of tiny grid patterns across their entire body.
You still cannot get in unless a security team visually sees you and then opens the door from the inside.
The first Russian does the dance and the door opens.