AK 239: The Enemy Is Already Here

Bokan Mountain, AK

^{The Factory}

I somehow manage to find my way down a vein into this huge room with a nuclear reactor in the center.

This room has been hued out of solid rock. A jagged roof and walls give an ominous look to the place.

I’m standing here when it dawns on me:

“Oh my God, this is a bomb factory!”

I’m a little slow but that seemed so obvious that I can’t believe it took me this long to see. I’m about thirty feet above the floor of the modern looking room. I’m standing on a metal grate. It looks just like a small power plant that you’d see in any electric generating facility.

Large tubes look to be pumping water in and out of a nuclear reactor in the center of the room.

Many scientists hustle around checking equipment.

I see that scientist we met on the dock scurrying around.

His lies got my partner shot: Oh, he’s on the list, I said to myself.

But I’ve got more important things to do first as a more immediate problem has just arisen.

Two guards walk out of a room overlooking the reactor room dragging the Russian doctor, Tatiana, who looks to have been beaten and tortured.

They haul her to another vein in the mountain that has not been remodeled.

They drag her limp body and I’m not sure she’s alive.

I look back to the floor and see a scientist with one arm as the other arm is totally missing!

“Ruddy! I knew that son of a bitch was alive!” I mumble out loud.

I notice the guards aren’t looking and I try to creep toward the area where the doctor was taken. I’m forced to duck into a room so as not to be seen.

As I close the door behind myself, it looks as if I just walked in to a Miss Universe pageant.

I think I’ve gone to another planet.

Five of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen are playing in a game room.

The room is filled with sofas, Ping-Pong tables, chessboards, and flat screen video games.

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…

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!”