Warren Murphy: By Eminent Domain

Right now, most of the men in the chopper would have preferred a giant. At least it would be something they could see from a distance. What they were actually after was unknown.

Something had happened somewhere down there in the Alaskan wilds. Something that warranted pulling a group of trainees from their exercises.

One of the men pressed a gloved hand to his headset. He'd found that he could get it to work sometimes if he pushed the loose wire trailing into his right earpiece.

"Sir, do you know what this is all about?"

Most of the men couldn't hear the question. The ones who could strained to listen to the reply. "Some kind of problem with some pipeline workers," Major Race H. Fordell replied over the scratchy headset. Their commanding officer was staring down at the pipeline.

"Couldn't the Guard check it out?"

The Major shook his head. "We were closest."

"Lucky us," another man mumbled.

Since his microphone was broken, the words were swallowed up by the howl of the rotor blades.

The First Civil Support Battalion had been conducting training exercises near the Chandalar River 150 miles north of Fairbanks when the call came. They were scrambled and soaring east in ten minutes.

The pilot was ordered to give it all he had. The vibrations were so great some feared the Huey might start rattling apart around their heads.

The men in the helicopter weren't true soldiers. Some in the Alaska State Defense Force had some service training, but many did not. Even though the ASDF was considered a military force-to be deployed during state emergencies-the civil servants of the ASDF really existed as backup to the Alaska National Guard.

In the back of the chopper, shaking hands wiped sweat from nervous brows.

A matching patch on each man's sleeve depicted a swimming wolf. Above was the legend 1st Bn, and below were the letters ASDF.

The Seawolves were based in Juneau. Only sheer dumb luck had plunked them down in the middle of nowhere this day. At the moment none of the men was feeling terribly lucky. A few of them jumped when the pilot's urgent voice crackled over the headphones.

"I think you'll want to see this, Major."

Major Fordell hopped from his seat and swept to the cockpit.

"What have we got?" Fordell asked tightly. He was already scanning the forward terrain.

"Down there, sir," the pilot said, pointing. "Dead ahead."

Squinting, Major Fordell spotted a cluster of trucks. They looked like toys. Bunched together, they sat cold and alone on the pipeline access road. A fat hose ran from the back of the last truck, vanishing over the hill that ran parallel to the road.

"Vacuum truck," Fordell said. "Those are the guys who radioed in." He pointed to the hill. "Let's see where they went."

Nodding, the pilot swept across the abandoned trucks and up the face of the hill. The instant they'd crested the top, the pilot felt his fingers tense on the stick.

"Sir," he whispered, his voice low with sudden shock.

Beside him, Major Race Fordell's mouth thinned. His unblinking eyes showed not a flicker of emotion. In the valley below them the pipeline stretched like a metallic serpent. Underneath its massive support members, dozens of bodies lay scattered like abandoned dolls.

Hovering over the hill, the pilot cast a frightened eye at the Major. In the back of the Huey the men had taken sudden sick interest in the gruesome scene below.

"What happened, Major?" the young pilot asked. Race Fordell's expression never wavered.

"That's what we're here to find out," he said flatly. "Take us down."

Nodding numbly, the pilot aimed the chopper for the valley floor. At Fordell's orders, he touched down just long enough for the eleven men in the back to spill out. Skids had barely pressed to frozen ground before the Huey was once more airborne. Buzzing like an angry insect, it soared off down the valley in the direction opposite the one from which it had come.

The hum of the rotor blades faded to silence. Alone on the ground, the eleven ASDF men picked their careful way around the dead.

Stepping cautiously through the pool of crude oil, Major Fordell squatted near a pair of bodies.

Joe Abady was flat on his stomach, his chin resting on the black ground. Almost as black as crude oil, blood had frozen to the hole in his forehead. Near the APSC foreman, Brian Turski lay on his side, his head gaping wide from a single, point-blank gunshot. Wordlessly, Major Fordell stood.

There was no sign of anyone else in the area. They'd detected no other vehicles on the flight up. Snowfall had been too low this winter for snowmobiles. The chopper was searching now in the other direction. If the pilot could turn up nothing from a visual sweep, that left only two possibilities. The hostiles had either been airlifted out, or they were still in the area.

The ASDF men were looking everywhere, clustered tightly around Fordell, their rifle barrels fanned out. "This was an ambush," the Major said with certainty. He kept his voice low. "We're looking for foxholes, burrows, trapdoors. Stay alert. Let's move." Swallowing their fear, the men spread out across the narrow valley floor. Their eyes trained on the ground, they began moving south.

Major Fordell studied not just the ground. Every now and then his eyes flicked up to the pipeline. It hung above their heads, big and menacing.

A few hundred yards from the massacre they found nothing. Some of the men were allowing the first slip of relief to hiss from between their chapped lips. Major Fordell remained tense. As he walked along the frozen ground, his eyes and ears were alert to everything around him.

There was no doubt in his mind this had been an ambush. The hole in the pipe back there was manmade, designed to lure the pipeline workers into a trap.

Could be whacked-out environmentalists trying to shut down the pipe. Hell, maybe it was agents of OPEC trying to screw with domestic oil production. No matter who it was, there was no way they were going to get past Major Race Fordell.

A flash of movement to his left drew the Major's attention. For an instant the air seemed to gel into a fuzzy solid. The instant it did, Major Fordell felt a rough tug at his hands.

His gun disappeared.

Just like that. Disappeared. Vanished as if sucked into a parallel dimension.

His fingers clenched empty air.

Panic flooded his hollow belly. Before he could even give voice to his shock, before he could alert his men, Fordell felt a blinding pain crack the side of his head.

He dropped to the seat of his pants, stunned. When he grabbed at the injured area, his gloved fingers returned slick with blood.

"Major, what happened?" a nearby ASDF soldier asked worriedly. His young voice suddenly dropped low. "Oh, God."

Nursing shock, Fordell looked up woodenly.

His gun had reappeared. It was clutched in the hands of a swirling figure. The barrel was aimed at Major Fordell.

The Major tried to blink the figure into focus. He wasn't sure if it was head trauma or something else, but it seemed impossible to see the man clearly. Then all at once the intruder seemed to snap into reality.

The strange figure wore winter combat fatigues. A matching ski mask covered his face. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of black goggles. The gun aimed at Fordell's face never wavered.

Whoever he was, his intentions seemed clear enough. Race Fordell wasn't taking any chances. "Shoot him!" the Major yelled.

His men ignored the order.

Still sitting on the ground and staring down the barrel of his own rifle, Major Fordell glanced at his men. What he saw made his heart freeze in his chest.

There were more of the commandos. All around. Dozens of them. They had somehow stepped out of the air to ambush Major Race Fordell and his ASDF weekend warriors.