65 Below

By Basil Sands

A red-hot apocalyptic thriller from a writer “penning stories pumped with enough adrenaline that you’ll suffer from insomnia until you read the last word” (Jeremy Robinson, New York Times–bestselling author).

A nearly forgotten bunker in the frozen wastes of Alaska is hiding a weapon that could end the world. And only Marcus Johnson and his team can keep it from falling into the worst possible hands.

Retired Marine Master Sergeant Marcus “Mojo” Johnson—back on his family homestead in rural Alaska after twenty years of chasing bad men—enlists an elite team of combat veterans and personal friends to intercept the enemy before it releases a decades-old secret that can’t be destroy and was never meant to be found. And it all plays out in the brutal, beautiful Alaskan wilderness, in sub-zero temperatures where human flesh freezes in mere minutes.

The chase is on, and only Mojo and his allies can stop the apocalypse before it begins.

Praise for Basil Sands and his thrillers

“Basil Sands’s Ice Hammer is a gripping, can’t-put-it-down series that works at every level. It’s got it all: love, war, treachery, and heroism. A home run!” —John Gilstrap, New York Times–bestselling author

“Sands is fearless in his storytelling, and tireless in his quest to connect directly with his audience.” —Scott Sigler, #1 New York Times–bestselling author

“Basil Sands has a knack for blending action and intrigue in an all-too realistic setting. In Karl’s Last Flight, the future is reminiscent of our recent past. I just hope there are heroes like Basil’s heroes fighting on our side.” —Evo Terra, founder of Podiobooks.com

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 11, 2016
• ISBN: 9781682613290

Book preview

Beckwith, from his hide beside a tall cluster of alders, slowly turned his suppressed M-4 toward the North Korean sergeant. He aimed carefully and acquired a perfect sight picture of the man’s head on the peg at the end of the barrel. Beckwith slowly curled his finger around the trigger. He exhaled slowly as he squeezed.

An explosion of movement suddenly erupted above his head. A large white owl burst out of the branches in which it had been silently perched. The loud flapping startled the Marine as he fired the shot. The bullet went high. A puff of white foam stuffing burst from a small tear the shot made as it scraped against the outer shell of the soldier’s parka hood.

Soo, also startled by the bird, heard the rifle’s puff. He felt the heat of the bullet zip by his head, tugging at his hood as it passed. He spun in the direction of the bird and saw the movement of Beckwith’s body as he adjusted back into position to fire a second shot.

Ambush! the Korean shouted to his comrades. We are being ambushed!

He raised his rifle to fire on the Marine. Beckwith fired a three-round burst. The bullets tore into the soldier’s torso. Soo’s body jerked in a spasmodic death dance.

The dying man’s finger squeezed around the trigger on his rifle as the rounds smashed into him. His shot tore branches from the alders above Beckwith.

Soo dropped to his knees in the snow and raised his rifle again to try another shot before the life drained out of him. Staff Sergeant Beckwith didn’t give him another chance. He fired another three-round burst directly into the man’s hooded head. The top of Soo’s head burst in a shower of blood, brains, and parka stuffing. His body slammed backwards into the snow as if the North Korean soldier had been hit in the face by a giant hammer.

65 BELOW

BASIL SANDS

A WINLOCK PRESS BOOK

Published at Smashwords

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-68261-329-0

65 BELOW

© 2016 by Basil Sands

All Rights Reserved

Edited by Monique Happy Editorial Services

Cover art by Covers by Christian

This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

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Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Epilogue

Dedication

About The Author

More High-Action Entertainment From

CHAPTER 1

Suburban Neighborhood

Seattle, Washington

16 June

19:25 Hours

The knife was razor-sharp. Shock morphed into terror as Michael realized first that he could make no sound, then that he could not breathe. There was no pain, but he knew something was very wrong. He reached up to grab his throat. When his hand touched his neck, his head flopped at an awkward angle. Blood jetted upward in two powerful streams, spattering against the ceiling and walls with rhythmic pulses that left abstract patterns, symbolizing his quickly draining life.

From Nikola’s perspective, Michael stood upright for a long time, longer than he had thought possible. He had slit many throats in his life. Most grasped their throat and collapsed, or just crumpled and died. Nikola stared back in amusement.

Don’t look at me like that, Michael. You killed yourself, Nikola said. Did you actually think I would let you lead the infidel here, then just allow you to walk away?

Michael’s lips moved in a soundless response.

Sorry, I didn’t hear what you said.

His eyelids fluttered in rapid spasms. Blood spurted in a final massive geyser. The dying man’s eyes rolled back and at long last he collapsed to the floor. Blood continued to ooze from his half-severed neck, soaking into the fabric of the old carpet. Seconds later, red and blue strobes of police and FBI vehicles flashed on the street outside. Nikola called out to the other men in the house.

Now is your time, brothers!

The response came with the sound of shattering glass. A moment, later a burst of automatic weapon fire exploded from upstairs. Nikola glanced out the window toward the mass of police cars. An officer rose from behind a patrol car to shoot. His skull burst in a cloud of red, spraying goo on the men behind him. His body tumbled backward onto the pavement. A medic ran to the downed officer, and all hell broke loose on the house. Every weapon in the mass of police officers and FBI agents exploded to life at once.

Nikola reached for a black box on the coffee table. He picked it up and set it on the dead man’s chest. With two flicks of a finger, he armed the high-explosive magnesium bomb. It would leave almost no trace of the bodies, and incinerate everything it came in contact with. Wood, flesh, glass, even metal. The houses on either side would likely also be destroyed. In sixty seconds, the other men in the house would join the legions of martyrs who had gone before them, whether they realized it or not.

Nikola stepped into the kitchen and entered the pantry. He yanked a metal handle on the floor and lifted the crawl space access, then ducked into the darkness. Dust and dryer lint scratched at his throat and forced a sneeze out of his nose. He scurried toward the outer foundation wall on his hands and knees. The gravel surface cut into his palms. He found the small escape tunnel and slithered in on his belly. The narrow space was barely wide enough for his thick frame. He fast-crawled ten meters until reaching the Seattle sewer system access tunnel. The air flew from his lungs as a jolt of hot compressed air shot him out of the tiny tunnel, slamming him against the far wall of the sewer. His ears screamed against the blast of sound.

Heat waves seared his clothes as he sprinted through the barely lit tunnel. He scrambled up a ladder, loosened the access cover, and climbed out onto a seldom-used bike trail, then vanished into the evening twilight.

CHAPTER 2

Richardson Highway

East of Fairbanks, Alaska

17 December

16:00 Hours

Damn! When it gets dark out here, it’s dark as death.

Eugene Wyatt drove as fast as conditions allowed down the Richardson Highway in his beige Ford F250 Crew Cab pickup, with the Tanana Valley Electric Cooperative logo emblazoned on the doors. It was only four in the afternoon, but the late December sun had already long descended, leaving the land in total inky blackness. His three-year-old Golden Retriever, Penny, sat on the passenger side of the wide bench seat. She turned and stared out the window apparently not into the conversation. The dog’s breath shot a burst of steam onto the frigid glass a few inches away every time she exhaled. Her tongue hung limply over the teeth of her open mouth.

On any typical evening, there would have been brightly lit signs atop tall poles in front of the gas stations. He’d usually see neon beer advertisements pulsing blue, red, and yellow from within the windows of busy bars as he passed through the small city of North Pole, then the even smaller town of Moose Creek. Tonight, only the glow of candles and oil lamps flickered dimly between the curtains of the scattering of homes along the highway. The power was out everywhere.

Eugene looked at Penny, who stared transfixed out the truck window. The frost from her breath created a ring of ice crystals on the glass she appeared to be studying. The weather had warmed up significantly in the past few days after an unseasonal cold snap that held the land at negative fifty for several weeks. The red mercury line on the thermometer now hovered at a livable zero degrees Fahrenheit.

Eugene remembered the line a comedian had used on TV the night before.

If it’s zero degrees, does that mean there’s no temperature?

The humor of the line dissipated fast. There had never been an outage like this in Eugene’s thirty years in Alaska’s electricity business. At first, the authorities thought it was a local failure within the Tanana Valley Cooperative area. It wasn’t long before they discovered it was much bigger.

The phone company went out at the same time. Cellular towers failed. The whole of the Interior region of Alaska, an area the size of New York State, was thrown back into the 19th century in an instant.

The only places that had not gone completely dark were the hospitals, airport control tower, and the Public Safety Emergency Operations Center. Those systems had automatic physical disconnect from the main power lines, taking them completely off the grid until the main power returned.

Once the Tanana Valley Electric Cooperative technicians had gotten established with satellite phones and were able to communicate with public safety and the other electrical utilities throughout the state, they were surprised to discover that the outage covered nearly a third of the land mass of the state. Every city on the shared power grid had gone dark at about four-thirty that morning.

The problem, the technicians agreed, was somewhere in the Tanana Valley area, since the outage had started there. Anchorage, four hundred miles to the south, went dark nearly five minutes after the lights turned out in Fairbanks, the Golden Heart city.

Eugene scrunched his eyebrows in contemplation as he went back over the details for the hundredth time that day.

Every city on the grid goes out all at the same time, and we can’t find a single point of failure. The talk radio guys are going to eat us alive on this.

The previous summer, several of the most popular AM talk radio hosts had prophesied that just such an event would occur if the state went through with connecting the Electrical Intertie system. Now they had fodder to boost their ratings for the next six months. Such talk would no doubt fuel massive amounts of legislation and investigation, and probably lawsuits without end.

Penny turned and looked at Eugene. She cocked her head sideways, as if she was trying to read his mind. Then, in apparent exasperation at the enormity of it all, she sighed and lay across the seat, putting her head on his lap.

An unusual number of consecutive disasters had wracked Alaska in the past year. A late spring thaw meant that crops were not put in until the end of June, resulting in a scant harvest by the time September’s temperatures dropped back to freezing. A particularly busy forest fire season in July was followed in August by a major flood along the Tanana River. Then there was the Halloween earthquake.

A 9.1 on the Richter scale, it was centered about one hundred miles north of Salt Jacket. That massive trembler had turned the ground into Jell-O for almost thirty seconds while kids were out trick-or-treating on Halloween night. Buildings swayed as far as Japan and Siberia. The shock waves rocked seismographs in Chile and South Africa. A few weeks after the earthquake, there came an unexpected deep freeze, which gripped the Interior in its icy fingers six weeks earlier than usual.

Eugene gently stroked Penny behind the ears. The dog’s golden brown hair shimmered reflectively in the pale green glow of the dashboard lights. He spoke his thoughts aloud in hopes that something he heard himself say would make sense.

All systems were fine. No icing anywhere. No lines down. No surges reported anywhere on the grid. No earthquakes or abnormal aurora activity. Not even a brown-out. The crazy thing just turned off. Well, puppy, I have no idea.

The whispery soft sound of the dog’s breath drifted quietly from the seat beside him. She had fallen asleep. He continued to the small wilderness community of Salt Jacket, forty miles east of Fairbanks.

Although sparsely populated, Salt Jacket was home to one of the largest, most powerful electrical substations in the Interior Region. It transferred electricity that powered huge sections of the pipeline and funneled thousands of watts to a series of military training facilities at the backside of Eielson Air Force Base.

Even though two other TVEC crews had checked it earlier in the day, as maintenance chief for the second largest power company in the state, Eugene felt obligated to recheck each of the four largest stations himself. More than anything, the drive to the last station in Salt Jacket gave him time to think things over again.

Eugene turned north from the highway onto Johnson Road, a bumpy, twisting chip-and-tar-paved road which wound back nearly thirty miles until it abruptly ended in the vast wilderness of the Eielson Air Force Base training area. The substation was only seven miles up the road, near the pipeline’s Pump Station Eight.

A mile past the pump station, a chain-link fence marked the end of the civilian-owned portion of Johnson Road. Signs restricted access to the back section of the Air Force Base. It was not much of a restriction, though, as the gate generally stood open, frozen in deep piles of plowed snow.

As Eugene rounded a sharp bend in the road, a sudden bright flash of headlights blinded him. Another vehicle straddled the centerline of the road, barreling toward him. He pulled the steering wheel sharply to the right to avoid hitting the oncoming truck that lurched hard to the other side of the road. Penny leaped up in surprise from his lap and slid uncontrollably to the floor in front of the passenger seat.

In the split-second when the side of the other truck crossed in front of his, Eugene saw the Tanana Valley Electrical Co-op emblem on its side and a large black number 48 on the fender panel just in front of the driver’s door before the truck sped off into the night.

Whoa! Good Lord! Eugene exclaimed, his face reddening as he processed the knowledge that he was nearly killed by one of his own employees. Who the hell was driving that thing?

He considered chasing down truck number forty-eight to fire the driver on the spot, but decided it would be wiser to find out who it was first. He reached for the satellite phone that hung from a peg on the dashboard and hit the speed dial for his main office. A young man’s voice answered, TVEC control center.

This is Chief Wyatt. Who the hell is driving number forty-eight? he shouted into the receiver. His Oklahoma drawl was still strong after three decades in the North. That idiot almost drove me into a snow bank out here on Johnson Road.

Uh, sorry sir, I don’t know who’s driving forty-eight. Give me a second to look over the log real quick.

There was a pause on the line. The young man came back.

Sorry, chief, nobody’s driving number forty-eight. It’s still right here in the yard, according to the logbook. No…wait…there’s a note here that says it’s at Magnuson’s Body Shop, getting some work done on it.

Who is this, Franklin?

Yes sir.

Son, you’d better check on that thing and make sure it’s still at Magnuson’s. And if it ain’t, call the police and report it stolen, because I swear, it was number forty-eight that almost hit me head on just now.

Aye, aye, sir…I mean, yes, sir, Franklin replied.

And knock off that Navy talk, son. You’re back in the real world now.

Sorry Mr. Wyatt. Six years of it kind of grew on me.

There was a loud beep beep in Eugene’s telephone handset.

Yeah, well, check on that vehicle for me ASAP. Let Andy know that I’m here at the Salt Jacket station and will call back in after I get a look around. My batteries are getting low and I left the car charger in my office, so I’m going to get off now. Out here.

Damn. It’s a good thing I didn’t chase them yahoos. They might have been a couple of doped up gangbangers who would have killed me for kicks.

The tires of the F250 crunched on the snow as he pulled off Johnson Road and up to the entrance of the Salt Jacket substation. Eugene’s headlights illuminated the heavy gauge chain-link fence. It appeared to be securely locked. He shut off the engine and opened the door of the truck.

Before he could step down, Penny leaped over him. She landed on the ground with acrobatic lightness. Eugene stepped down after the dog. Penny took several steps, then spread her hind legs and peed on the ground a few yards from the truck. Once finished, she took off at a full run into the woods.

Hey! he shouted after the dog. Don’t get lost! We’re only going to be here a few minutes.

Eugene pulled the fur-trimmed hood of his parka over his head to hold out the biting cold that nipped at his ears. His cheeks stung from the cold. The temperature had dropped since he left Fairbanks.

Eugene approached the fence. He put his hand out and tugged at the handle. It was securely locked. He reached up to press the silver metallic buttons on the battery-operated combination pad. Just as his finger touched the first number, an unexpected deep whir and throb made his heart jump.

The security lights of Pump Station Eight exploded to life on the other side of the tall trees that obscured it from view. It had been so dark in that direction that he had forgotten how close the pipeline was. Eugene regained his composure and finished punching the combination into the keypad. The gate slowly clanked open. He entered the compound and was heading for the small control shed when a firm voice called out behind him.

Can I help you, sir?

He turned to see the bright beam of a flashlight pointed at his face. Below the beam, Eugene made out the shape of the muzzle of a weapon.

Who are you? he called back.

Pipeline security. Show me some ID or you are going to have to leave.

He unzipped the top of his parka and pulled out the ID card strung around his neck. These guys were not stereotypical shopping mall security rent-a-cops. Doyon Services, who held the contract for pipeline security in perpetuity, only hired the most professional and potentially most dangerous guards to fulfill their role in protecting one of the country’s most valued resources. Most of these were former military police, and many had served as Marines or Special Forces. They were paid almost as much as the security consultants the government used as mercenaries in the war on terror, and they were worth every dime of it.

The guard moved forward, shining his light on Eugene’s badge. Once he was close enough to read it, he said Good evening, Mr. Wyatt. I’m Officer Bannock, Watch Corporal tonight up at Eight.

A single mercury lamp on a tall pole above the substation started to hum. It slowly began to glow to life, but still provided almost no light.

Do you mind if we step into the shed and I turn on the switch in here? said Eugene.

Sure, go ahead.

Bannock pointed his flashlight to the door so Eugene could see to put his key in it.

Eugene opened the door and stepped inside. He flipped a switch to the right of the door as he entered. A bright fluorescent light flickered to life. The ballast inside the light fixture added another layer to the increasingly loud hum of the station’s massive copper coils and the room’s numerous devices.

The back wall of the room was a mass of gauges and switches, set in floor to ceiling gray steel casings. Whenever Eugene walked into one of these rooms, he thought of the fifties science fiction movies from his childhood in which such devices lined the wall of Buck Rogers’ spaceship. A table and two chairs that looked like they were probably WWII surplus sat in one corner, and a small desk with a LCD computer terminal was crammed in the opposite corner.

Once inside the lighted room, Eugene turned to see the guard’s face. Bannock was a tall, muscular man in his early forties, retired military by his demeanor. An MP5 submachine gun hung over his shoulder from a black nylon strap. He wore it comfortably, as if it were a part of his body. The long, black Maglite had been placed back in its holster on his pistol belt.

I guess those other two technicians must’ve fixed the power just before you got here, eh? Bannock asked.

You saw them? Eugene responded. What’d they look like?

Yeah, I saw them. Two white males, in their late twenties or early thirties. They showed valid-looking Tanana Valley ID cards. One was named Adem, the other was Nikola.

Did you see what they were doing?

Negative. I heard the noise over here during our shift change and came by just as they were closing the gate. I heard them talking, but I was too far away to understand the details of their conversation. They weren’t speaking English at first, but when they heard my boots on the snow, they switched immediately.

What language were they speaking?

Albanian.

Albanian? Eugene asked. How the hell would you know it was Albanian?

I retired from the Special Forces three years ago. Knee injury. I did several years in the Baltics and had a lot of contact with northern Albanians among the Kosovo Muslim Militias.

Muslim Militias? Eugene replied. Are you saying these guys are terrorists?

I didn’t say that specifically. But I wouldn’t rule it out.

Well, I’ll be damned, Eugene said. What else was suspicious about them?

The guard paused for a moment, and then said, "It’d be easier to list anything not suspicious about them. There was serious bad tension around them. They had just left and I was heading back to the pump station to make a report to send in to the troopers when I heard you pull in. I thought it was them returning, so I came back."

Yeah, they almost ran into me head-on down the road a ways, Eugene said.

Bannock nodded in reply. Well, Mr. Wyatt, I’ve got to be getting back and file a report of contact. Everything I mentioned to you, the hard facts that is, will be in my log back at the station, if you want to see it.

Thanks. I’ll be gone in five minutes.

Officer Bannock turned around and started to open the door when Eugene called out, Hey, Bannock, could you do me a favor?

Bannock turned back. Sure, what do you need?

If those men return, or for that matter, if anyone comes in here for the next week or two, could you let your guys back there know to give me a ring on my cell phone? He handed Bannock his card.

No problem, the officer replied. You know, we could do even more than just call you. We have some pretty good surveillance gear at our disposal. With your station being in such close proximity to the pipeline, I could justify monitoring your property for our own security reasons. All I need is your permission, and we can set up round-the-clock electronic surveillance.

Thanks. That’d be greatly appreciated, Eugene replied. If your boss gives you a hard time, tell him to call me. Me and him go back a ways.

Have a good night, sir.

Bannock raised his fingers to his forehead in a relaxed salute and walked out into the darkness.

Eugene logged onto the computer on the corner desk and accessed the systems report in hope of finding something that would give him any clue. The last line before the system went down showed everything running normally at the half hour checkpoint. The next lines, which had been appended upon system reboot, read:

Abnormal Shutdown 0430 hrs 081217

Error Code: 000 Unknown Source Disrupt

What the hell? The computer doesn’t even know what happened.

Eugene printed the report and rose from the desk. He zipped his parka back up, turned off the lights, and then headed out the door into the now brightly lit area outside. The mercury lamp had finally reached its full intensity and cast a pale white glow onto the building and equipment around him. White steam billowed from his nose and mouth as he exhaled into the frozen air.

From where Eugene stood, he turned to gaze around the yard. He saw no sign of physical damage. If there had been a transformer fire, it would have been on the report. Even if it weren’t, he would be able to smell the tell-tale odor of burned electrical equipment, which he did not.

As he walked toward his truck on the other side of the gate, Penny slowly trotted back from the woods and waited beside the door of her master’s vehicle. She sat down and her tail wagged happily, sweeping the snow behind her in a doggy version of a snow angel.

My goodness, that’s a good dog. You came back without me calling, he said aloud to his canine companion.

CHAPTER 3

Phantom-like wisps of white steam rose from the thickly insulated tan canvas fabric of the Carhartts coveralls, Alaska’s most common winter outer garment, which hung on a peg protruding from the log wall. Heat waves like tiny translucent serpents wriggled in the air from the surface of the black iron woodstove in the corner. From within the dull, black metallic box crackled and popped the arrhythmic music of old-fashioned warmth. In a fairly new leather recliner, the only sign of modern comfort in the cabin, a man slowly awakened from a heavy slumber. The muscles in his bare arms rippled beneath a sheath of brown skin as he brought the chair to an upright position and stretched like a lion rising from the shade to hunt.

Marcus Johnson was but one member of a small community of rural Alaskans who lived partway between the old-fashioned frontier lifestyle and the 21st century.

Half the residents of Salt Jacket existed without at least one of the major modern conveniences of power, plumbing, or telephone. A good number of those folks were missing all three. Marcus was in the latter group.

For most, it was the lifestyle they preferred. They commuted to their jobs at Eielson Air Force Base twenty miles to the west, or all the way down to Fairbanks, thirty miles past that. After spending the day in high-tech offices or running noisy construction equipment, they unwound on the drive home, where they would enter the world of silence. It was a world unknown to urbanites in the lower forty-eight.

Few city people have any idea just how quiet the world can be off the grid. More accurately, what they do not understand is how noisy their urban surroundings are. In the quiet of the small cabins and houses of this deeply forested paradise, there is no hum of electricity, no buzz of fluorescent lights, no whir of computer terminals. No television noise or constant droning of traffic. No human chatter or incessant scraping of people walking the streets all hours of the day and night.

The only sounds are the natural sounds of life, of the living world. When a person relaxes enough, the wilderness comes alive with the light tick of a bird’s bony toes as it walks on a fence, or the muffled snort of a moose snuffling at a willow branch fifty feet away. At times, one can hear the crackling of a leaf falling off a branch and drifting to the ground.

That’s why most of the residents of the forest stayed here. That’s why Marcus came back to his

Reviews for 65 Below

[jetangen4571 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

military, terrorism, law-enforcement, action-adventure, suspenseRiveting! Fast paced thriller made even more exceptional because it is narrated by the author! Great characters with real depth made me feel like I might have worked with some of them in another setting. Don't miss this one!I was really lucky to have won the audiobook in a giveaway, but now I want to find more! Especially as it's read by the author!