Code name, p.9
Code Name, page 9
“Mr Blake,” Grandpa began, “I’d like you to meet my grandson Mark.”
The man extended his hand in welcome, but his eyes did not change expression, no smile softened the hard and serious look of his face.
“Glad to meet you, Mark.”
“Yes, sir.” Mark reached out and shook hands with the tall stranger.
“Your grandfather has been kind enough to let me stay here for a while. He tells me you’re an unusual boy, with a serious mind, able to learn quickly, especially capable as an outdoorsman. I hear you’re being tormented by a couple of bullies. Is that right?”
“Yes sir.”
“Come inside. Let’s visit for a while.” The man stepped through the doorway and showed them to the interior of the cabin.
Only one small window allowed light and ventilation to enter. Mark was amazed at how plain the room was. One corner held a small cot with a sleeping bag on it. A bent-willow chair and small table were tucked against another wall. An olive drab duffel bag stood in the corner.
Mark was astonished. He always knew their family didn’t have much; not nearly as much as the other kids at school. Not that he felt deprived. His folks always took good care of him. They made sure he had clean clothes and enough to eat, but he understood the difference between the haves and the have-nots. This man had nothing at all – only a small candle on the upturned lid of an old jar for light, and a small tin stove for heat and cooking.
Blake saw the boy studying the cabin’s contents and smiled. “What’s the matter, son?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Mark said, “I was just noticing that you don’t have much.”
Blake chuckled. “A man doesn’t need much, if he knows a few things. Actually, this hooch is a lot better than what I’ve had for the past few years. Life’s pretty good here.”
Grandpa rested his hand on Mark’s shoulder and explained. “Mr Blake spent the last four years in Viet Nam, fighting a jungle war. He was part of a special recon team that was always on the move, always behind enemy lines. He had no place to come home to at night. And unlike the McGriff boys, if the enemy caught Mr Blake, they wouldn’t have just beat him up; they’d have killed him.”
Blake sighed, “But not before trying to torture information out of me.”
Blake hung his head and there was a long moment of silence. Then he looked straight at Mark. “I haven’t talked to anyone except your grandpa about this. It’s a hard subject …”
“Don’t worry, Mr Blake.” Mark reached out and touched his arm. “You don’t need to talk about it, if you don’t want to.”
“Well, talking about it is probably the best thing I can do for myself, but I may need to go slow. Your grandpa picked me up when I was hitchhiking a couple months ago, just back from Nam and no place to go. We talked, and he told me I could stay as long as I want in this cabin. So here I am. I’m deeply indebted to your grandpa for his kindness. I’ll do what I can to teach you how to deal with the McGriff boys. And other stuff too, if you want to learn.”
Mark beamed. “Thank you.” Then his eyes fell to something hanging on the far wall.
Blake saw what the boy had spotted. He stepped across and took the beret from the nail, then handed it to Mark.
“Wow!” The boy held it reverently. “I’ve heard of the Green Berets, but I never thought I’d meet one.”
“I’ll teach you what I can for as long as I’m here,” Blake offered. He took the beret and fitted it over Mark’s head, sloping the front down across his forehead above his right eyebrow and ear. “Kinda big for you right now; but you’re getting an early start, so you’ll be better than I ever was by the time you’re my age.” He took the beret and hung it back on the nail.
“I’ve watched the way you move over the ground. You’re pretty good. I want you to practice leaving no tracks when you come to visit me every week. Your family and your schoolwork are most important, so we’ll get together when it doesn’t interfere. Okay?”
“Sure!”
Blake turned to the older man. “When?”
“Saturday is best.”
“Saturday it is then.”
Every Saturday from then on, Mark met with Blake. He learned combat survival, in which escape and evasion are prime elements. He learned to trap fish and small animals with hand-made traps constructed of stones and sticks and cordage he had twined from fibers he stripped from local plants.
He learned how to use natural surroundings for cover and concealment, for shelter from the elements and for hiding from an enemy. He learned to move silently, to use the night as a cloak, to travel the most unlikely route, to outwit and outrun an enemy. “You must own the night,” Blake told him. “But when it’s daylight, you must own the bush.”
To Mark, the McGriffs were the enemy. After a while he began to enjoy his ability to evade them, leading them on a chase through briars and bogs that left them panting and bloody and frustrated.
Blake taught him that it is possible to avoid detection, even when the enemy is within a few feet. “The secret of escape and evasion is nothing more than to remain unseen and unheard.”
Mark turned the game into a way of life and, from that time on, the McGriffs never succeeded in finding him once he had disappeared into the woods or swamp.
Blake also taught him that sometimes it might be necessary to fight. Blake himself had a horrible scar across his jaw where an enemy blade had barely missed his throat during hand-to-hand combat.
“The time might come when someone will corner you, and you need to know how a smaller man can overcome a larger opponent.”
Blake’s policy was that a fight should be avoided at all cost. But when a fight was unavoidable, it had to be fought with explosive violence. By suddenly detonating from dead-calm to extreme fury, the enemy would be stunned and temporarily vulnerable. Kicks and blows to especially painful parts of the opponent’s body were justified. And depending upon circumstances, deadly force might be the only answer.
“But junior high school is not a place for deadly force. The McGriffs, nasty as they are, will not kill you. All they want is to make your life miserable. So, let’s give you plenty of other options in case those guys ever manage to corner you.”
With martial arts skill came serious responsibility to avoid using greater force than was needed. Conflict avoidance was always preferred, and the fighting arts were never to be used to show off or to intimidate. To Mark, there was something secretive and highly disciplined about becoming skilled in the techniques Blake taught.
Every Saturday afternoon, after chores were done, Mark met Blake at a predetermined place – somewhere different each time. The boy had to navigate to the rendezvous point using only a rough description Blake gave him, and he had to leave no tracks.
They spent the day and long into the night practicing survival techniques, stealth, and hand-to-hand combat. Blake was good about adjusting the level of training to match Mark’s abilities, but the young boy swiftly became surprisingly capable.
For more than a year, Blake stayed in the cabin. He needed the time alone as a transition between Viet Nam and what he called ‘the real world’. But his time with Mark was therapeutic as well. Talking about his experiences and teaching someone who simply accepted him as a hero and never questioned the morality of the war helped him open the windows of his soul and let some of the pain escape.
Blake knew that the best therapy was to work through the bad memories, take possession of them, and then let go. One therapist in the army hospital told him that the most harmful things in our lives are like a rogue elephant with a rope around its neck. If we hang onto the rope, the elephant can drag us through the jungle, beating us to a bloody mess. As long as we are willing to hold onto the rope, the elephant is free to make our lives miserable. But if we recognize that we are free to release the rope. It is our choice to either hold on and die or let go and live.
Blake’s way of releasing the rope was to teach Mark.
After a year, Blake moved from the cabin to the tack room in the barn. It was more comfortable, and he was ready to meet the rest of the family. He never went into town, but he joined the family for meals and prayers and worked as a hired hand.
Grandpa died first, then Grandma a year later. As the youngest, Mark was the last of the kids still living on the farm. Blake had been there more than five years, helping Mark’s dad keep things together for the elderly couple. When they were gone, Blake had no more reason to stay. Mark’s dad could handle what was left of the farm himself.
Grandpa had invited Blake to the farm, and Mark had become his closest friend. The man had been the boy’s mentor, had taught him how to fight and how to survive. They were as brothers. But with Grandpa gone and Mark ready to graduate and leave for college, Blake knew it was time to move on. One night, without a word, he simply vanished, taking his duffel bag and his few possessions with him.
When Mark went out to the barn in the morning, the tack room was vacant. On the wall, hanging from a nail, was a green beret with a note attached. “Mark, you’ve earned it.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Those early years of training would be put to the test now. “I knew what was ahead,” Mark said. “Blake had taught me enough about search-and-destroy missions that I knew how trackers thought and I was familiar with the tactics they would use to locate my trail. Eventually, bloodhounds, infrared, starlight scopes and a massive number of people would be involved, searching from the air and on the ground.
“As I worked my way quickly through the wet forest, my thoughts turned to Laura. Will she find my note? It was a cryptic message that would mean nothing to anyone but her. Will she know what she needs to do?”
I could see the worry lines grow deep across Mark’s forehead as he began to relate this part of his story. In a moment of haste, I spoke up.
“You had to leave Laura behind. You had no choice.”
His eyes flashed and he leaned forward, closing the distance between us to an uncomfortably short space. “That’s easy for you to say! I would have given my life for her. But the plan fell apart. What I did was intended to save her. There was nothing I could do but hope she would be able to execute her part of our plan.”
“Tell me about the plan,” I said.
He sat back, and that helped me breathe a little easier.
“Late one night,” Mark said, “we started talking about contingency plans. We needed to figure out what to do if the U.S. government were ever deeply compromised.”
My eyebrows shot up, and he noticed.
“Look, to the average citizen such things sound absurd, but in our line of work, we knew the realities. We saw what happened in countless countries around the world when governments were destabilized and overthrown. When a new regime takes over, people who have worked in the intelligence community are among the first to be hunted down and eliminated, because they are considered a threat to the new regime.
“We knew that America, for all her strength, was not immune to such a disaster. If it ever happened, we’d be considered persons of special interest. The question was: what would we do if we suddenly needed to either vanish or die in a government takeover? I admit that it probably sounds like a bizzare concept to you, but to us it would be foolish to have no contingency plan.”
My eyes were on him, trying to understand the kind of threat he and Laura had obviously felt while working for a covert government intelligence agency. He studied me, I think looking for some recognition of sympathy. Then he continued.
“Just take my word for it, it was important. Over the course of several months, thinking about and discussing our options, we developed a strategy that we thought covered all contingencies, even one in which we were separated at the moment of escape. Now, all I could hope for was that Laura would understand my message. There was nothing I could do to reach her.”
****
After clearing the fence, Mark pushed through the bushes and walked faster, his thoughts in turmoil. He ached to turn around and rush to Laura’s rescue, but knew that would bring certain death to both of them. At least there was some hope this way. Their plan had included the possibility of being separated, having to escape and evade alone and independent of each other, working their way to a rendezvous point. If only she could read the note, understand its message and then get away. If she could do that, there was a chance. But what if she couldn’t?
Mark shook off the thought and studied the terrain ahead. Suddenly, it all seemed so clear. He had to escape capture and rendezvous with Laura. He needed to get the story about Viper and Rook and Blake and the murder and the drug deal with bin Laden – the whole bloody mess – to someone in the media who could expose the truth. Then, to save their own lives, he and Laura needed to go so deep undercover that no one would ever find them.
****
“As I thought about it,” Mark said, “I saw what was going to happen. It would be the same for me as it was for John Blake, except that Blake had been lucky to come out of it alive. To hide the truth now, Gates must concoct a story implicating me in some treachery, to justify having me hunted down like a rabid dog. I knew there would be no end to the pursuit. Leo Spence had said that there were others involved in the dealings with bin Laden, drugs, weapons, money. Who were they? Who else wanted me dead to shut me up?
“I didn’t know who all the players were, but if they were part of Viper, I knew they were not people to be messed with.
“I was only a few hundred yards from those who were trying to catch me. Capture would only be momentary, with the kill soon after, my body turning up in a few days, the apparent victim of some accident.
“Rain poured out of the sky. I wiped my face with a bare hand and searched the forest shadows for some way to save my life.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Pages 56–63, Dr Knight’s notebook #1
NIA sat atop a rural knoll, with no other buildings in sight. Headquarters occupied the center of the grassy property and was fronted by a park-like landscape of flower beds, bushes and stately maples. Asphalt parking spaces surrounded both sides and rear of the building. Then there was the fence – raw galvanized chain link, ugly in contrast to the beauty of the rest of the complex. Beyond the fence was an old forest, crowded with ancient trees and dark with tangled undergrowth.
The property fronted County Road 18 and was graced by a large stone entry gate and a low wall. From the road, there were no identifying marks. Anyone driving past might think this was an insurance company headquarters, or something equally innocuous. No passer-by would suspect that inside the superficially peaceful walls desperate men were frantically organizing a search-and-destroy mission to hunt down and exterminate one of their own.
Within an hour, the normally peaceful NIA headquarters took on the appearance of a military camp. Olive drab deuce-and-a-half trucks in the parking area unloaded uniformed soldiers who looked like they were ready for war.
With an initial perimeter nearly two-thirds of a mile in length, a lot of manpower was needed to begin a search. Roland Gates was calling for a 10-meter grid search, which meant more than 100 men were needed just to begin the operation.
Every step away from the fence line, the perimeter got longer. One mile from ground zero, the perimeter measured more than six miles, and required hundreds of men just to cover the perimeter, not to mention the number of searchers that were needed inside the circle for the actual brush-beating hunt.
Ten miles from NIA, the state police established blockades on all roads, paved and unpaved. There were men on every waterway at the ten-mile perimeter. Not a creek or culvert went untended. NIA operatives were stationed at every airport, boat dock, railway depot, and bus terminal within a hundred-mile radius of headquarters.
The intent was to slam shut any possible escape route. By jumping out to such a distant perimeter, Gates felt confident that Mark was still between the jaws of the vise. All he had to do was tighten the jaws until his prey was caught.
Half a mile from NIA, Mark squatted beneath overhanging branches, his chest heaving from the sudden exertion of escape. He needed to conserve his energy if he had any chance of eluding his pursuers. It was not enough to try to outrun those behind him. He knew that in front of him was a wider perimeter that was tightly guarded. Mark couldn’t outrun that.
He was trapped in a squeeze play with trackers behind him trying to force him into the hands of those ahead. But he had a plan. In this forest there was excellent cover and concealment all around, and the techniques Blake had taught would help him make use of that to elude the enemy.
After catching his breath, Mark cocked his ear and listened for the distant sound of those behind him. For a long moment he listened, barely breathing, to avoid disturbing the silence. Everything was quiet, except for the noise of incessant rainfall and wind in the trees.
The chase was on – of that he was sure, even though he could not see or hear anyone coming. But it wouldn’t be long. A security reaction force was poised to spread out and cover the NIA grounds first, with a larger force combing the forest within half an hour. He had to slow down and figure out his next move. To keep going forward would only tighten the noose as he moved into the perimeter forces ahead. Somehow he had to slip behind the search line, back to an area that was already considered clean by the search teams. He glanced up at the pouring rain. “Thank you,” he whispered, grateful that the rain muffled the sound of his movements.
He had been traveling fast, to put distance between him and his pursuers. Even on the run, Mark placed his feet with care avoiding bare soil that was now becoming mud. Each step was deliberate, contacting the ground with the full surface of the foot, rather than a heel/toe stride that would gouge and disrupt the ground.
To those who are not practiced at the technique, walking in this manner seems clumsy and slow. Blake had taught him the Chinese martial art and exercise form of tai chi. After those five years of dedicated training, he could move with cat-like grace and absolute silence, leaving behind precious little evidence of his passing.
