Tundra Kill Read online

  Active wondered, but Mercer gave a thumbs up and turned the smile on him. “Off we go, eh, Nathan?”

  “Absolutely, Suka.” Active cast a sidelong glance to see if the summer would leave her eyes. She took a tiny lapel mike from Pudu and clipped it to her parka hood.

  As they taxied from the Lienhofer apron eastward down the runway, the west wind rattled the 207 from behind so hard that Active wondered if the flaps would come off. After all, from the Cessna’s perspective, it was flying backward at thirty or thirty-five miles an hour.

  Cowboy didn’t seem to notice. He spoke into his headset and scrawled notes on a clipboard strapped to his right thigh. Active assumed he was filing a flight plan and going over the forecast again with the FAA.

  Halfway down the runway, Cowboy hit the left brake. The plane spun on its main gear and stopped with the nose pointed down a belt of asphalt ending at the shore of the Chukchi Sea. The wings rocked in the river of frozen air rolling off the ice. Active was a little more convinced he could see the water sky.

  Cowboy voice came over their headsets. “All set? Everybody strapped in?”

  “Posilutely,” Mercer said.

  “Good here,” Active said.

  “Me, too,” Pudu said from the front.

  Cowboy pushed the throttle forward, the engine snarled, and the 207 leapt into the sky like a startled cat. Before Active could check on the water sky, Cowboy banked right and wheeled over the village to head across the Burton Peninsula and the inlet behind it, toward the mouth of the Isignaq River. In a few miles, they ran out of the coastal haze. Ahead now was only incandescent spring sun and the broad white embrace of the Isignaq Valley, the meanders, sloughs, and cutoffs of the big river still deep in hibernation in the brush-nubbled bottomlands.

  A HALF-HOUR UPSTREAM, Isignaq village came into view, a pretty hamlet perched on the north bank of the Isignaq River where Siksrik Creek came in.

  Active gazed over Mercer’s shoulder as the village’s hilltop airstrip crawled across the bottom of the 207’s side window. He glanced forward and saw from Cowboy’s profile that the pilot was also hooked on the sight. Active hoped Cowboy would let it pass in silence, but, no, he spoke.

  “Takes you back, huh?” came his voice in the earphones.

  Active looked at Mercer and at the back of Pudu’s head. Neither showed any sign they had heard Cowboy.

  “Is this just us?” Active asked.

  “Roger that,” Cowboy said. “I got the other two switched off.”

  “Yeah, it takes you back.” Isignaq strip was where Cowboy had crashed and killed Grace’s aunt, Aggie Iktillik. That event had delivered Nita into the hands of Grace’s father, which had yanked Grace back to Chukchi from shell-shocked exile in the Aleutian fishing port of Dutch Harbor.

  And then Grace’s father, Jason Palmer, had ended up shot to death, supposedly by Grace’s cancer-ridden and dying mother, who supposedly did it to keep him from raping Nita the same way he had raped Grace all those years ago and fathered Nita.

  Active took the story on faith, because he would take anything on faith if Grace Palmer said it while she looked at him with those quicksilver eyes. Besides, Jason Palmer’s killing was a city case, and Active had been a state trooper at the time, so it had been mostly not his problem.

  But the cancer had finished off Grace’s mother before the case came to trial. So it was still open as a technical matter, still buried somewhere in the archive boxes Active had inherited with the new job from the late Jim Silver, who had been Chukchi police chief at the time. Now it was Nathan Active’s case, glowing like a radioactive ember in those archive boxes.

  Active realized Cowboy hadn’t said anything more. “You all right, buddy?”

  “As much as I ever will be, I guess.” Cowboy’s voice was husky in the headphones. “If I just hadn’t pushed so hard.”

  “If it hadn’t happened, Grace would still be in Dutch Harbor and I’d still be…still be sleeping with perfectly nice village girls who deserved a lot more than I had to give them.”

  “Like Lucy.”

  “Exactly,” Active said. “Like Lucy.”

  “Who can figure this shit out?” Cowboy said after a while.

  “Not me,” Active said.

  “Me neither.” There was a click, then static spritzed over the headsets. When Cowboy came back on, he was himself again. Or playing himself.

  “So, folks, if you’ll look out the left side of the aircraft, you’ll see beautiful downtown Isignaq, tonight’s rest stop for the mushers of the Isignaq 400. Speaking of which, we should pick up the race leaders in another half hour or so.”

  Cowboy followed the main channel of the Isignaq upstream, a thousand feet or so above the riverbed, wings about level with the tops of the bluffs and ridges lining the banks. Here and there, bands of caribou worked their way up the slopes, buglike with distance as they drifted north in the spring weather toward the calving grounds on the coastal plain of the Beaufort Sea.

  Once they came upon an ancient Chevy Suburban speeding upstream along the well beaten trail on the river ice. “Hey, it’s Roland Sweetsir,” Cowboy said. “Must have some folks going up to watch the racers come by.”

  He dropped the Cessna’s nose, dived down to treetop level and roared past the rusty old rig, wings rocking.

  “Roland’s still running Isignaq Ready-Ride?” Mercer asked. “Get out!”

  Active looked back at the Suburban and saw an arm emerge from the driver’s side, waving back at the Cessna.

  “Oh, yeah,” Cowboy said. “His river taxi business is still going strong. Roland’s a lot cheaper than a 207 and he can go in worse weather than us. Of course he’s a lot slower, too, plus you never know when he’s gonna hit overflow and go through, but the village folk keep riding with him.”

  They spotted the first dog team twenty-five minutes past Isignaq village, a string of the compact little huskies that had proved best for long-distance races. The musher at the back of the sled kicked with one foot and stood with the other on a runner.

  “That’s not Brad,” Mercer said from beside Active. “Why isn’t he in the lead?”

  Active studied the team as they roared over and Cowboy dropped the Cessna’s nose to swing around for another look. “Not Brad?” Active said. “You could tell? I didn’t even have time to count the dogs.”

  Mercer shot him a look and even Pudu pulled his eye from the viewfinder long enough to give Active a warning glance.

  “Brad’s all red,” Mercer said. “Red parka, red snow pants, red sled bag, red harness on the dogs, red everything. His sponsor is Dodge, you know, and they like red. It’s the power color, Nathan.” She pointed out the window as Cowboy pulled past the team again. “This guy’s got a blue bag and blue harnesses on the dogs and…my God, tell me he is not wearing Carhartts! What is he, homeless?”

  “That’s Bunky Ivanoff, ma’am,” Cowboy said. “You remember him. He’s got a camp way up the valley by a caribou crossing there, a few miles this side of Tuttuvak. Lives out most of the year, hunts and fishes all the time, gets a lot of respect. I brought him and his dogs down to Chukchi last week.”

  “Sounds like one of them old-time Eskimos, all right,” Pudu said. “From early days ago.”

  Mercer was silent. “Oh, Bunky Ivanoff, yes, I think I do remember him. A fine Alaskan and a credit to…the entire Chukchi region!”

  Active was pretty sure Mercer had been about to say “to his people” until she noticed the camera on her.

  “Hell of a musher,” Cowboy said. “Great guy, too. He runs—”

  “I’m sure he is,” Mercer said. “But where is Brad? We need some footage of me waving at Brad. I told him not to use Buster.”

  “Buster?” Active said. “Is that one of—”

  “Buster’s good enough as a team dog or a even swing dog, but he’s no leader. I told Brad not to put him in the lead, but would he listen to me? Duh!”

  “There’s a problem with Buster?” Active said.
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  Mercer and Pudu shot him more looks.

  “He’s male,” Cowboy said.

  Mercer touched Active’s arm. “Females make the best leaders, Nathan. Or, as dog breeders call them, the bitches. Everybody knows that.”

  She seemed to expect an answer, but Active couldn’t think of one.

  “Everybody but you and Brad, apparently,” Mercer said at last. But she gave him a smile. “All right, Cowboy, let’s see if we can find him. What on earth is his problem this time?”

  Cowboy wheeled the Cessna into a wide, easy circle over the brush and snow banks of the riverbed and they continued upstream.

  A mile farther along, they encountered another team, this one with green dog harnesses and sled bag. Another mile, and they spotted the team with the red rigging. There at the back, kicking from the runners in his red parka, was Brad Mercer, now known as the First Mate, thanks to an anonymous blogger called Tundrabunny who had stuck him with the nickname. The First Mate’s leader was the biggest animal in the team and very masculine-looking. Active surmised this must be the inadequate Buster.

  “Humph,” Mercer said. “Third place. How’s that gonna look? How far do they have to go, Cowboy?”

  Cowboy studied his instrument panel and pulled at his chin. “Trail miles? Ah, maybe one-forty to the mandibles on Beach Street.”

  “So he could pass Bunky before they finish.”

  “Yeah, right,” Pudu seemed to mutter. Mercer didn’t hear.

  “I’m sure he will, ma’am,” Cowboy said.

  “He better,” Mercer said.

  The First Mate spotted them and made a big show of waving as they approached.

  The governor made a big show of smiling and waving back as they roared past. “Yep, that’s Buster,” she said with a grimace. “Dammit, the man will not listen. You get that, Pudu?”

  “Arii, Mom. I was kinda shooting into the sun, all right. Cowboy, could you go around so we’re coming the other way when I shoot him?”

  “Roger that.” Cowboy started a big turn to the left and soon the First Mate and his team came into view through Mercer’s window again. This time, the plane’s right wing, not the left, pointed at the sun.

  Mercer repeated the wave and the smile for the camera. “How was that one?”

  “Pretty good, all right,” Pudu said. “But maybe one more, ah?”

  “One more!” Cowboy groaned over the headsets. “We’re—”

  “One more will be fine,” Mercer said. “Right, Cowboy?”

  Cowboy didn’t answer, but he circled for a third pass.

  After this one, Pudu said he had enough video and Cowboy asked what his passengers wanted to do next.

  “Walker village is another ten or twelve miles up the river,” he said. “If anybody needs a, er, ah, rest break, we could set down there for a few minutes. Or, we could boom on back to Isignaq for the night.”

  “Oh, Isignaq by all means,” Mercer said. “Pudu and I have several events this afternoon, then I have to greet Brad when he pulls in for the night. We certainly didn’t drink any coffee this morning and I’m sure a couple of bush rats like you two wouldn’t do it before getting in a Cessna, right?”

  “Not me,” Cowboy said.

  “Not me,” Active lied. But he figured his bladder could tough it out for another half hour or so.

  “Roger that.” Cowboy pushed the throttle forward, the note of the engine deepened, and soon they were topping the cliffs along the river again.

  “What the hell is that?” Cowboy said over the headsets as they cleared the last treeless, snow-breasted ridge blocking their view downstream.

  Then the intercom went silent. Active surmised Cowboy had switched over to the Cessna’s radio to talk to the FAA about the thick batt of wool that blanketed the lower end of the Isignaq Valley.

  Cowboy clicked back onto the headsets. “The FAA says the weather got a little ahead of itself. Chukchi’s flat on its back and Isignaq village ain’t a whole lot better.” He rolled the Cessna into a turn. “Looks like it’s Walker for us tonight.” He came out of the turn and aimed the Cessna’s nose upstream again at the Isignaq valley’s radiant uplands. The pilot’s shoulders relaxed. Active realized he hadn’t noticed they were hunched.

  “Cowboy,” Mercer said. “Pudu and I need to get into Isignaq. You’re the original scud-runner?”

  Long seconds passed before Cowboy answered. “I did my share of that when I was young and wild. Now I’m old and careful.”

  More silence crackled over the headsets. Mercer twisted in her seat and peered back at sea of fog behind them. “Oh, Cowboy, you’re overexaggerating. It doesn’t look that bad.”

  Cowboy’s voice clicked on. “Yo, Nathan. It’s just us now. Any thoughts here?”

  “Me? What do I know? You’re the pilot. What’s your gut telling you?”

  “It’s telling me I did what the governor wants a hundred times back in the day, and here I still am.”

  “And here you still are,” Active said. “Your call.”

  “That stuff’s only a couple-three thousand feet deep. If things go sideways on us, I guess we can punch up through it and get into the clear and head back up to Walker.”

  They glimpsed a scatter of buildings basking in the sunlight on the left bank of the river four or five miles ahead. “That Walker?” Active asked.

  “That’s Walker,” Cowboy said. The right wing dropped, the Cessna started another turn, and Walker vanished behind them.

  The headsets sprayed more static and Cowboy crackled on again. “I guess it can’t hurt to take a look.” The Cessna rolled out of the turn, its nose pointed at the gray-black wall downstream. Cowboy added power and the nose angled up. “We’ll head for Isignaq village on top and see if we got enough visibility down through this stuff to land.”

  “And if we can’t?” Mercer asked.

  “Then we’ll come back up here, drop down to treetop level and do some good old-fashioned scud-running.”

  “Excellent,” Mercer said. “I’m sure we’ll make it in. I get a little testimony whenever God has something in mind for me.”

  Active shot her a sidewise glance. A little testimony? If she was kidding, it didn’t show.

  Ten minutes later the upstream edge of the scud passed under their wings and the river, ridges, and tundra vanished beneath them. Active peered downward and saw only an impenetrable gray murk. It was like looking into three thousand feet of dirty dishwater.

  “Arii,” Pudu said. “I never see nothing down there. “

  “Me, neither,” Active said.

  “Cowboy?” Mercer said.

  The Cessna’s left wing dropped and Cowboy stared down into the fog. “Scud-running it is,” he said. The Cessna did another one-eighty and a few minutes later they crossed the upstream margin of the fog bank. Cowboy chopped power and put the Cessna into a wide spiral toward the sunlit, blue-shadowed riverbed. He ran a finger over the chart on his knee, scanned the ridges along the banks and nodded. “Got it,” he said over the intercom. “We’re about five miles upstream of Shelukshuk Canyon. Pretty easy run from here down to Isignaq village if ya got even a quarter mile of visibility.”

  He leveled off a couple of hundred feet over the brush and lowered the wing flaps for slow flight. They sailed toward the fog bank, so solid and forbidding that Active found himself bracing for impact as they hurtled into the wall of mist.

  Now he could see the riverbed when he looked straight down, but the terrain to either side vanished within a couple hundred yards. A quarter mile of visibility? He wondered if Cowboy had half that.

  He looked forward. Cowboy’s shoulders were hunched again and he strained into the seat harness, his head on a swivel. Ten seconds straight ahead, a glance left, then right, then ahead for another ten seconds.

  Then Active noticed that Cowboy didn’t just look down at the river bed when he glanced sideways; he also looked at the wing struts and the undersides of the wings. And he spent more time looking sideways. Now
it was the path ahead that got the glance, then it was back to the wing.

  Active looked where Cowboy looked and in an instant understood the pilot’s hunched shoulders. Ice sheathed the leading edges of the struts and the underside of the wing. Even as Active watched, the ice under the wing seemed to get a little thicker and creep back a little farther.

  Active glanced ahead to check Cowboy’s shoulders and saw why the pilot wasn’t looking forward any more. Ice now glazed most of the windshield. Cowboy could see only sideways.

  Active had been aboard before when a Bush plane encountered icing, usually just a thin white rime on the struts and wings, with no hunched shoulders involved. But he had never seen ice like this, not so rough and building up so fast. Always before, Cowboy and every other Bush pilot Active had flown with had turned back at the first sign of serious ice, or shoved the throttle forward to climb through the clouds into the sunlight above. This kind of ice weighed down the plane and spoiled the airflow over the wings. This kind of ice could drag a plane out of—”

  “Shit, Nathan,” Cowboy said over the headset, his voice high and tight. “We got fucking freezing rain here. The weather service didn’t say anything about freezing rain.”

  There was a flurry of clicks and Cowboy, sounding more himself now, spoke again as the engine roared to full throttle and the nose lifted. “Sorry, folks, this ain’t gonna work. We’ve gotta get on top and go back up to Walker to wait this out.”

  “But, Cowboy—” Mercer began.

  “Sorry, Governor. The weather’s in charge today.” Mercer gazed out her window as the riverbed faded into the mist. “Couldn’t we just turn around and follow the river upstream till we’re out of it again?

  “Not safe to make a turn down in this canyon with visibility this low,” Cowboy growled.

  The riverbed sank into the dishwater and then it was the four of them and their thoughts and the snarl of the engine as the Cessna labored upward and the ice crept backward under the wings and thickened on the struts.

  Pudu pulled his camera back onto his lap and stared into the void. “Arii, Mom. I don’t like this.”

  “Be a man,” Mercer gritted. “And keep that damned camera rolling.”