Ice Hunt Page 3

  The plane tilted on one wing, then the other. Its height bobbled, engine coughing. Matt could imagine the pilot struggling to look for a place to land. It was outfitted with floats, as were most bush pilot planes. It only needed a river wide enough upon which to set down. But Matt knew none would be found up here. The tiny stream beside his camp would eventually drain into the wider Alatna River that ran through the center of the park, but that was a good hundred miles away.

  He watched the Cessna scribe a drunken path over the valley. Then with a grind of the engine, it climbed enough to limp over the next ridgeline. Matt winced as he watched. He would’ve sworn the floats brushed the top of a spruce tree. Then the plane was gone.

  Matt continued to stare, ears straining to listen for the fate of the plane. It was not long in coming. Like the sound of distant thunder, a splintering crash echoed from the neighboring valley.

  “Goddamn it,” he mumbled under his breath.

  He watched the skyline, and after a long moment, he saw the telltale streak of oily smoke snake into the dirty-white sky.

  “And I thought I had a bad day.” He turned to his camp. “Saddle up, boys. Dinner will to have to wait.”

  He grabbed up his Army jacket and crossed to his mare, shaking his head. In any other place in the world, this might be a rare event, but up here in Alaska, the bush pilot myth was alive and well. There was a certain macho bravado in seeing how far one could push oneself or one’s aircraft, leading to unnecessary chances. Over the course of a year, two hundred small planes crashed into the Alaskan wilderness. Salvage operators hired to recover the planes were backlogged for almost a full year. And it was a growth industry. Every year, more planes fell. “Who needs to dig for gold,” a salvage operator once told him, “when money falls out of the damn sky?”

  Matt saddled his mare. Planes were one thing, people were another. If there were any survivors, the sooner they were rescued, the better their chances. Alaska was not kind to the weak or injured. Matt had been reminded of this fact all too well himself today when he went eyeball to eyeball with a four-hundred-pound grizzly. It was an eat-or-be-eaten world out here.

  He secured his tack with a final tug and tossed on his saddlebag with the first-aid kit. He didn’t bother with his one handheld radio. He had traveled beyond range three days ago.

  Slipping his moosehide boot into a stirrup, Matt pulled himself into the saddle. His dogs danced around at the edges of the camp. They knew they were heading out. “C’mon, boys, time to play heroes.”

  SEVEROMORSK NAVAL COMPLEX

  MURMANSK, RUSSIA

  Viktor Petkov stood at Pier Four, bundled in a long brown greatcoat and fur cap. The only markings of his rank were on the red epaulets and the front of his cap: four gold stars.

  He smoked a cigar, Cuban, though it was all but forgotten. At his back rose the Severomorsk Naval Complex, his home and domain. Bounded in razor wire and concrete blast barriers, the small city housed the massive shipyards, dry docks, repair facilities, weapons depots, and operations buildings of the Russian Northern Fleet. Positioned on the northern coast, the city-complex faced the Arctic Ocean and braved the harsh winters of this hostile land. Here were forged not only mighty seagoing vessels but even harder men.

  Viktor’s storm-gray eyes ignored the ocean and focused on the rush of activity down the length of the pier. The submarine Drakon was almost ready to be tugged away from her berth. The shore-power cables were already being hauled and secured.

  “Admiral Petkov,” the young captain said, standing at attention. “On your orders, the Drakon is ready to be under way.”

  He nodded, checking his watch. “Once aboard, I’ll need a secure landline before we leave.”

  “Yes, sir. If you’ll follow me.”

  Viktor studied Captain Mikovsky as he was led down the pier to the gangway. The Drakon was the man’s first command assignment. He recognized the pride in the other’s gait. Captain Mikovsky had just returned from a successful shakedown cruise of the new Akula class II vessel and was now taking the admiral of the Northern Fleet on a mission whose specifics were still sealed from all eyes. The thirty-year-old captain—half Viktor’s own age—strode down the pier like the cock of the walk.

  Was I ever this foolish? Viktor wondered as they reached the gangway. Only a year from retirement, he could hardly remember being so young, so sure of himself. The world had become a less certain place over the past decades.

  The captain preceded him, announcing the admiral’s arrival shipboard, then turned back to him. “Request permission to be under way, sir.”

  He nodded and flicked the stub of his cigar into the waters below.

  The captain began issuing orders, relayed through a bullhorn by the officer of the deck positioned atop the sail’s bridge to the crew on the pier. “Lose the gangway. Take in line one. Take in line two.”

  A crane hauled the gangway up and away. Line handlers scurried among the bollards and ropes.

  Mikovsky led the way up the steel rungs of the conning tower. Once there, he gave final orders to his officer of the deck and junior officer of the deck, then led Viktor down into the submarine itself.

  It had been almost two years since the admiral had been aboard a submarine, but he knew the layout of this boat down to every screw and plate. Since he was an old submariner himself, the designs had passed through his office for inspection and comment. Despite this knowledge, he allowed Mikovsky to walk him through the busy control station and down to the captain’s stateroom that he was commandeering for this voyage.

  Eyes followed him, respectfully glancing away when caught. He knew the image he presented. Tall for a submariner, lean and lanky. His hair had aged to a shock of white, worn uncharacteristically long to his collar. This, along with his stolid demeanor and ice-gray eyes, had earned him his nickname. He heard it whispered down the boat.

  Beliy Prizrak

  The White Ghost.

  At last, they reached his cabin.

  “The communication line is still active as you requested,” Mikovsky said, standing at the door.

  “And the crates from the research facility?”

  “Stored in the stateroom, as you ordered.” The captain waved to the open door.

  The admiral glanced inside. “Very good.” He slipped off his fur cap. “You’re dismissed, Captain. See to your boat.”

  “Yes, Admiral.” The man turned on a heel and departed.

  Viktor closed the stateroom door and locked it behind him. His personal gear was piled neatly by the bed, but at the back of the small room was a stack of six titanium boxes. He crossed to the sealed red binder resting atop the stack. One finger checked the seal against tampering. It was secure. Across the face of the binder was stenciled one word:

  It was a name out of legend.

  Grendel.

  His fingers formed a fist over the folder. The name for this mission had been derived from the Nordic tale Beowulf. Grendel was the legendary monster that terrorized the northern coasts until defeated by the Norse hero Beowulf. But for Petkov, the name carried a deeper meaning. It was his own personal demon, a source of pain, shame, humiliation, and grief. It had forged the man he was today. His fist clenched harder.

  After so long…almost sixty years…He remembered his father being led away at the point of a gun in the middle of the night. He had been only six years old.

  He stared at the stack of boxes. It took him a long moment to breathe again. He turned away. The stateroom, painted green, contained a single bunk, a bookshelf, a desk, a washbasin, and a communication station that consisted of the bridge speaker box, a video monitor, and a single telephone.

  He reached and picked up the phone’s receiver, spoke rapidly, then listened as his call was routed, coded, and rerouted again. He waited. Then a familiar voice came on the line, frosted with static. “Leopard, here.”

  “Status?”

  “The target is down.”

  “Confirmation?”

  “Und
er way.”

  “You know your orders.”

  A pause. “No survivors.”

  This last needed no validation. Admiral Petkov ended the call, settling the receiver down into its cradle. Now it started.

  5:16 P.M.

  BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA

  Matt urged his horse up the ridgeline. It had been a hard climb. The neighboring valley was a thousand feet higher in elevation. Up here, snow still lay on the ground, thicker in the shadow of the trees. His four dogs were already loping ahead, sniffing, nosing, ears perked. He whistled to keep them from getting too far ahead.

  From the ridgeline, Matt surveyed the next valley. A spiral of smoke, thinning now, marked the crash site, but the forest of spruce and alder blocked the view of the crumpled plane. He listened. No voices were heard. A bad sign. Frowning, he tapped his heels on his mare’s flanks. “Off we go, Mariah.”

  He walked his horse down, mindful of the ice and snow. He followed a seep creek trickling through the forest. A mist hung over the thread of water. The quiet grew unnerving. Mosquitoes buzzed him, setting his teeth on edge. The only other noise was his horse’s steps: a crunching sound as each hoof broke through the crust of ice over the snow.

  Even his dogs had grown less ebullient, drawing closer, stopping frequently to lift noses to the air.

  Bane kept a guard on point, sticking fifty paces ahead of him. The dark-furred wolf mix kept to the shadows, almost lost in the dappling. As the companion of a Fish and Game warden, Bane had gone through a canine search-and-rescue program. The dog had a keen nose and seemed to sense where Matt was headed.

  Once they reached the valley floor, their pace increased. Matt could now smell burning oil. They headed toward it as directly as the terrain would allow, but it still took them another twenty minutes to reach the crash site.

  The forest opened into a meadow. The pilot must have been aiming for it, hoping to land his craft in the break in the forest. He had almost made it, too. A long gouge crossed the meadow of yellow milk vetch, directly across the center of the clearing. But the landing field had been too short.

  Off to the left, a Cessna 185 Skywagon lay smashed into the forest of green spruce. It had jammed nose first into the trees, wings crumpled and torn away, tilted tail end up. Smoke billowed from the crushed engine compartment, and the stench of fuel filled the valley. The risk of fire was great.

  Walking his way across the meadow, Matt noted the clouds, heavy and low, that hung overhead. For once, rain would be welcome up here. Even more encouraging would have been any sign of movement.

  Once within a few yards, Matt yanked the reins and climbed off his horse. He stood another long moment staring at the wreckage. He had seen dead bodies before, plenty of them. He had served six years in the Green Berets, spending time in Somalia and the Middle East before opting out to complete college through the GI Bill. So it was not squeamishness that kept him back. Still, death had touched him too deeply, too personally, to make it an easy task of stepping amid the wreckage.

  But if there were any survivors…

  Matt proceeded toward the ruined Cessna. “Hello!” he yelled, feeling foolish.

  No answer. No surprise there.

  He crept under a bent wing and crunched through broken safety glass. The windows had shattered out as the fuselage crumpled. From the engine compartment ahead, smoke continued to billow, choking him, stinging his eyes. A stream of gasoline flowed underfoot.

  Matt held his arm over his mouth and nose. He tried the door. It was jammed and twisted tight. He stretched up and poked his head in the side window. The plane was not empty.

  The pilot was strapped into his seat, but from the angle of his neck and the spar piercing his chest, he was clearly dead. The seat next to the pilot was empty. Matt began to crane around to check the backseats—then a shock passed through him as he recognized the pilot. The mop of black hair, the scraggly beard, the blue eyes…now glazed and lifeless.

  “Brent…” he mumbled. Brent Cumming. They had played poker regularly back when Matt and Jenny were still together. Jenny was a sheriff for the Nunamiut and Inupiat native tribes, and because of the vast distances under her jurisdiction, she was of necessity a skilled pilot. As such, she knew the other pilots who serviced the region, including Brent Cumming. Their two families had spent a summer camping, their kids romping and playing together. How was he going to tell Cheryl, Brent’s wife?

  He shook himself out of his shock and poked his head into the back window, numbly checking the rear seats. He found a man sprawled on his back, faceup. He wasn’t moving either. Matt started to sigh when suddenly the man’s arms shot up, a gun clutched between his hands.

  “Don’t move!”

  Matt startled, more at the sudden shout than the threat of the gun.

  “I mean it! Don’t move!” The man sat up. He was pale, his green eyes wide, his blond hair caked with blood on his left side. His head must have struck the window frame. Still his aim did not waver. “I’ll shoot!”

  “Then shoot,” Matt said calmly, leaning a bit against the plane’s fuselage.

  This response clearly baffled the stranger. His brow pinched together. From the man’s brand-new Eddie Bauer Arctic parka, he was clearly a stranger to these parts. Nonetheless, there was a hard edge to him. Though having just crashed, he clearly had kept his wits about him. Matt had to give him credit there.

  “If you’ll put that flare gun down,” Matt said, “maybe I’ll even think about finishing this rescue mission.”

  The man waited a full breath, then lowered his arms, sagging backward. “I…I’m sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about. You just fell out of the sky. In such rare cases, I have the tendency to forgive a lack of gracious hospitality.”

  This earned a tired grin from the man.

  “Are you hurt?” he asked.

  “Head took a good crack. And my leg’s caught.”

  Matt leaned through the window, having to stretch up on his toes. The front section of the plane had crimped back, trapping the man’s right leg between the copilot’s seat and his own. So much for just having the man crawl through the window.

  “The pilot…” the man began. “Is he…”

  “Dead,” Matt finished. “Nothing we can do for him at the moment.” He tugged again at the door. He wouldn’t be able to free it with brute strength alone. He tapped one knuckle on the fuselage, thinking. “Hang on a sec.”

  He crossed back to Mariah, grabbed the horse’s reins, and walked her closer to the wreckage. She protested with a toss of her head. It was bad enough being pulled away from the pasture of milk vetch, but the burning engine smell spooked her, too. “Easy there, gal,” Matt soothed.

  His dogs simply remained where they lay sprawled. Bane sat up, ears perked, but Matt waved the wolf down.

  Once close enough, Matt ran a rope from the saddle to the frame of the plane’s door. He didn’t trust the handle to be secure enough. He then crossed back to the mare and urged her to follow. She did so willingly, glad to leave the vicinity of the foul-smelling wreckage, but once she reached the length of her tether, she stopped.

  Matt coaxed her with tugs on her reins, but she still refused. He slid behind her, biting back a curse, then grabbed her tail and pulled it up over her hind end. He hated tailing her like this, but he had to get her to pull. She whinnied at the pain and kicked a hoof at him. He tumbled away, letting go of the tail and landing on his backside. He shook his head. He and the female species never did know how to communicate.

  Then Bane was there, barking, snapping at the horse’s heels. Mariah might not respect Matt, but a half wolf was another thing. Old instincts ran deep. The mare leaped ahead, yanking on the tether.

  A groan of metal erupted behind him. Matt rolled around. The entire tilted fuselage of the Cessna canted to the side. A shout of alarm arose from inside. Then, with the popping sound of an opening soda can, the crumpled door broke away.

  Mariah reared up, but Matt returned
to calm her. He undid the saddle hitch and walked her away, waving Bane off. He settled her at the edge of the clearing, then patted her flank. “Good girl. You’ve earned yourself an extra handful of grain tonight.”

  He strode back to the wreckage. The stranger was almost out of the plane. He was able to slide his trapped leg along the edge of the two crammed seats until he reached the open door. Then he was free.

  Matt helped him down. “How’s the leg?”

  The man tested it gingerly. “Bruised, and the worst damned charley horse, but nothing feels broken.” Now that the man was free, Matt realized he was younger than he first appeared. Probably no more than his late twenties.

  As they hobbled away from the wreckage, Matt held out a hand. “Name’s Matthew Pike.”

  “Craig…Craig Teague.”

  After they were well away from the plane, Matt settled the man to a log, then shoved away his dogs when they came up to nose the stranger. Matt straightened a kink from his back and glanced back to the plane and his dead friend. “So what happened?”

  The man remained silent for a long moment. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “I don’t know. We were heading to Deadhorse—”

  “Over in Prudhoe?”

  “Prudhoe Bay, yes.” The man nodded, gingerly fingering his lacerated scalp. Deadhorse was the name of the airport that serviced the oilfields and township of Prudhoe Bay. It was located at the northernmost edge of Alaska, where the North Slope’s oil fields met the Arctic Ocean. “We were about two hours out of Fairbanks when the pilot reported something wrong with the engine. It seemed he was losing fuel or something. Which seemed impossible since we had just tanked up in Fairbanks.”

  Matt could smell the fuel still in the air. They had not run out of juice, that’s for sure. And Brent Cumming always kept his plane’s engine in tiptop shape. A mechanic before becoming a bush pilot, Brent knew his way around the Cessna’s three-hundred-horsepower engine. With two kids and a wife, he depended on that craft for both his livelihood and his lifeline, so Brent maintained his machinery like a finely tuned Rolex.