by Mark Kelly
“Wow, did you guys see that?” Emma said, pointing to the large, almost pure white bird which had perched on the uppermost branches of a dead pine tree. It sat motionless, nearly invisible against the overcast sky, looking down at them. “What kind of bird is that?”
“A Snowy Owl,” Chenney answered.
“I thought owls only came out in the night.”
“Most do, but not those guys. It’s hunting.”
As if on cue, the bird launched itself from the top of the tree and gracefully swooped down over the open field, skimming the surface of the snow until it snatched up a small rodent and flew away. It disappeared over the top of the trees with its meal wiggling frantically beneath it.
“Geez, did you see that?”
Chenney nodded. “They’ve got incredible eyesight. It probably saw tracks in the snow and then when the mouse made a move, the owl went for it.”
Watching the owl gave Simmons an idea. The freshly fallen snow was like wet paint. Any disturbance in it would be visible from a distance. “We need to be higher. Can you get the helicopter here?” he asked Dines.
“Sorry, Professor. Abrams had the same thought this morning, but General Leduc ruled it out. There’s too much territory to search and not enough fuel.”
“I understand,” he said. “But I’m not talking about a full-scale search over the entire region—just the vicinity around here. Look, I’ll show you what I mean. Do you have a map?”
“I’ve got one,” the Bison’s driver replied. He disappeared inside, returning a few seconds later with a topographical map.
Simmons took the map and opened it. He held one corner of the map against the metal side of the APC and motioned at Mei to hold the other.
“Show me where we are, and where the gas station is,” he said to the Bison’s driver.
The driver took off his glove and pointed to a spot near the lake.
“We’re here.”
Then slowly moving the tip of his finger along a thin red line, he traced out the path they had taken on the highway.
“I’m not exactly sure where, but the gas station is somewhere around here.”
Simmons spoke to Dines. “When you saw Saanvi and the woman she was with walking along the highway towards the gas station, whereabouts on the map was that?”
Dines pointed to a position an inch south of where the driver had guessed the gas station was located.
Simmons glanced at the map’s scale markers. “That’s about two miles. What time was it when you saw them?”
“Around 2:00 p.m.”
“That means they would have reached the gas station around three o’clock.”
“How do you know?” Dines asked.
He shrugged. “It’s a guesstimate. An average person walks at a speed somewhere between three and four miles per hour. In snow, with a pack, my guess is you’d be lucky to even manage two miles per hour. We know they didn’t spend the night at the gas station, but they couldn’t have walked forever either. Also, there aren’t that many roads that branch off the highway around here. If we assume they kept going north for, say another eight hours at the most, that would put them somewhere in this area.”
Using his finger, he traced out a rectangle sixteen miles long and four miles wide and said, “That’s sixty-four square miles. A helicopter should be able to search an area that size in approximately one hour if it does four passes and each pass is a mile apart.”
“You sure about this, Professor?” Dines asked skeptically.
“No, I’m not sure about anything. But I don’t have a better suggestion and time is running out. We need the helicopter for an hour. Can you make that happen?”
Dines had a gleam in her eye when she said, “I’m not so good with math, Professor, but I’m pretty good at motivating people to get shit done.”
She started to turn towards the driver. Get me the base on the—”
“All ready on it, Sarge,” he said, disappearing into the Bison.
“There it is.”
Dines pointed, and the words came out of her mouth at the same time the wup wup wup sound from the helicopter reached Simmons’s ears.
It had taken a fair bit of yelling, and more than a few threats, but true to her word, Dines had managed to convince Abrams, and Abrams in turn had somehow convinced the general to send Little Bird.
Simmons watched the small helicopter swoop in over the horizon. Soon, it was hovering a hundred feet above them, the blowback from its rotors churning up a mini-blizzard. He shielded his eyes against the blowing snow as he spoke to Dines.
“Where is it going to land?”
Dines gave him the look she reserved for especially stupid questions. “Land? It’s not going to land, Professor. We’re surrounded by trees and there’s five fucking feet of snow on the ground with god knows what below it.”
“Then how are we going to board?”
“We aren’t. All we need to do is tell them where to search. Actually, you’re the one who is going to tell them where to search.”
Simmons looked up. The pilot waved through the helicopter’s transparent bubble canopy and pointed to the microphone connected to his headset, signalling he wanted to talk.
“Get me the handheld,” Dines yelled at the Bison’s driver.
The man disappeared inside the APC, popping up a moment later with a small portable radio. Then with no warning, he tossed it to Dines. She stretched out her arm at the last moment and caught it just before it disappeared into the deep snow.
“Jesus, I said hand it to me, not lob it like it was a goddamn grenade.”
The pilot’s voice crackled through the radio’s speaker. “Sergeant Dines, if we’re going to do this, we need to do it now. There’s another cold front coming in. If the wind gusts above twenty-five knots, I’m calling it a day.”
Dines keyed the mic. “Roger that. Appreciate you coming out to give us a hand.”
“Our pleasure. When you’re ready, give us the MGRS coordinates for the search grid.”
Dines looked at Simmons who shrugged and said, “I don’t know what that means.”
“Doesn’t matter, I do,” Dines replied, looking pleased she knew something he didn’t.
She motioned Mei and Emma closer and said, “Ladies, would you mind holding the map while I give the professor a quick lesson on the Military Grid Reference System? It seems they never got around to teaching map reading in that fancy school of his.”
Simmons listened while Dines explained. The system, a geocoordinate mapping system for locating points on the earth, was surprisingly logical, and he was able to quickly locate the coordinates. Dines handed him the radio and he keyed the mike.
“From south to north, the corners of the search grid are: 1702, 2102, 1204, and 1596,” he said.
“Copy that,” the pilot replied and read them back. “We’re starting now. Stay on this frequency and we’ll update you on anything we find, over and out.”
“What now?” Simmons asked Dines as the helicopter headed off to the south flying just above the treetops.
“No sense hanging around here,” she replied. “We might as well head back to the highway.”
A few minutes after they reached the highway, the radio in her hand crackled with static and the pilot’s voice came out of the speaker.
“This is Little Bird. First pass completed. We’re swinging around to begin the second. It’s getting choppy up here. We should be able to finish the grid before the bad weather arrives, but I’m increasing our airspeed to 60 knots. I’ll be back to you as soon as we have something to report, over and out.”
Disappointed, Simmons sat back on the Bison’s cold metal roof. Searching was one thing, but the waiting was excruciating. As he reached for Mei’s hand to give it a squeeze, the radio squawked again.
“Little Bird to Charlie-One, over.”
Dines quickly brought the radio to her mouth. “Go ahead.”
“Uh…we have something about a mile and a half north-west of the search
grid. Looks like a trail in the snow. We’re swinging around to take a second look, over.”
Dines glanced at Simmons and said, “Don’t get your hopes up. There’s a lot of wild game in the bush around here.”
She keyed the radio’s mic. “This is Charlie-One to Little Bird, any idea what made the trail, over?”
“Can’t tell yet, Charlie-One. Most likely deer. There’s a small herd south of the lake.”
Simmons watched Mei hunch forward, her shoulders slumped in disappointment. He moved closer. “Mei, It doesn’t mean anything. There’s still a lot of area to search. We’ll find her.”
A minute later, the pilot radioed back. “Little Bird to Charlie-One, It is not a deer trail. I repeat, not a deer trail. Do you copy, over?”
Dines keyed the mic and spoke. “Copy that. Are you positive?”
“One hundred percent—unless you know of a species of deer that lives in a cabin.”
Simmons leapt up and scrambled across the top of the Bison towards Dines. He almost knocked her off as he reached for the radio. “Quick, ask him if they can hover over it, or land.”
“Sit the fuck down, Professor,” Dines snarled, moving the radio out of his reach. “If I drop this in the snow, we won’t be asking them anything.” Her expression softened and she said, “Look, we don’t even know if it’s her, but hang on and I’ll see what they can do.”
She brought the radio to her mouth. “Little Bird, any chance you can land?”
“No can do on the landing, but gimme a sec and I’ll try and bring us in a little closer,” the pilot answered. The radio went silent, but crackled back to life a few seconds later. “We’re at fifty…forty…thirty feet. Hang on, wicked wind sheer bouncing us around—Whoa!…”
There was the sound of an alarm going off. Then cursing in the background. Simmons looked up, expecting to see a ball of fire in the sky.
Seconds later, the pilot’s voice came back on the radio. “Little Bird to Charlie-One, it’s too rough out here. We got close, but we’re calling it a day. The cabin is approximately six miles west-north-west of your current location with GPS coordinates of 45.98° North and 77.40° West.”
“Roger that,” Dines replied. “Did you see anyone?”
“Negative. If there’s anyone down there, they’re either deaf or dead.”
Deaf or dead…The hope Simmons had felt earlier evaporated. He lifted his head and looked in the direction where they had last seen Little Bird. The small helicopter rose from behind the trees, swaying violently in the howling wind.”
“Good luck, Charlie-One. This is Little Bird, Over and Out.”
42
Are you a local?
With those final words, the pilot dipped the helicopter’s nose in a farewell salute before turning south and heading back to base.
“What now?” Simmons asked Dines as she wrote the GPS coordinates on the map. “We need to know if Saanvi is dead.” He glanced at Mei and Emma and they nodded. “Can we reach the cabin on foot?”
“Not without snowshoes,” Dines answered.
“Do you have any?”
“There’s a pair in the crew cabin, but I have a better idea, Professor.” She pounded on the Bison’s roof.
“What’s up, Sarge,” the driver asked, poking his head through the hatch.
“Call in Chenney and Taxson.”
The driver disappeared into the crew compartment. Moments later, the whining sound of snowmobile engines filled the air. The two scouts pulled their machines up next to the Bison and turned off their ignitions.
“What’s up, Sarge?” Chenney asked.
“You’re from around here, right?”
“Yeah—Point Alexander, why?”
“We found a cabin where the girl might be at, but it’s in the middle of fucking nowhere. Come up here, and I’ll show it to you on the map. I want to see if you have any ideas on how to get to it.”
Chenney stepped off his snowmobile and sunk into the snow. Using the metal hand-holds, he climbed up the side of the Bison and knelt down beside Dines.
She showed him the cabin’s location on the map and he nodded. “Yeah, I think I kindda know where that is. Never seen a cabin out there, but my pops took me deer hunting in that area a bunch of times when I was a kid.”
“How did you get there? Did you have to walk?”
Chenney snorted. “Fuck no…My pops was the laziest bugger I ever knew. There’s an old logging road that’s mostly overgrown now. We’d park the pick-ups just off the highway and ride the three-wheelers in. It was a twenty or twenty-five minute ride.”
“Could you find it again?”
“The logging road? I think so. There’s a big mother of a pine tree next to it. Pops didn’t want to put a trail marker where the other hunters could see it, so he made my brother climb up the tree and nail a bicycle reflector to the trunk. It’s probably still there…might be another ten feet higher though. That was a few years ago.”
Dines gave a quick nod. She stood and spoke to everyone. “Okay, you all heard what he said. It’ll be on the right-hand side of the road. Keep your eyes peeled for the reflector or a break in the forest that looks like it might have been a road or a trail.”
With the snowmobiles in front, they headed south on the highway. Simmons glanced at Mei and Emma. Both had a serious expression on their face as they scanned the desolate landscape, searching for the reflector.
“There it is!” Emma shouted, jumping up on the Bison’s slick roof as it lumbered down the road. She pointed at a tall pine tree. The reflector was thirty feet up and almost exactly where Chenney had said it would be.
Simmons reached out and grabbed hold of her jacket a fraction of a second before Dines called a halt and the Bison lurched to a stop. “Can we drive in there?”
Dines stood with her feet apart and her hands on her hips studying the rough trail and shook her head. “No way we’re taking the Bison in there.”
She motioned at Chenney and Taxson to ride in and check it out. The two snowmobiles left the highway and headed down the logging road, weaving between the saplings and scrub brush.
Simmons took a couple of careful steps across the top of the Bison and squeezed in between Mei and Emma. “If she’s out there, they’ll find her.”
They both nodded, but neither spoke as the snowmobiles disappeared from sight, and the buzz of their engines faded to nothing.
“They’re coming back,” Emma shouted ten minutes later. She pointed down the logging trail as the two riders and their snowmobiles reappeared in the distance.
“What’s the deal?” Dines shouted at Chenney when he pulled his snowmobile up beside the Bison.
He stood on the seat and yelled over the rumble of the machine’s engine. “Sarge, I’m sorry. We went as far as we could on the trail. I haven’t been back there in years and everything looks different in the winter. I lost my bearings and didn’t want to screw around in the bush and risk getting stuck.”
Dines looked like she was going to tear a strip out of him, but her expression softened. “It’s not your fault. Get your ass up here. We’ve got GPS coordinates for the cabin. Let’s see if we can find landmarks on the topo map you can use to locate it.”
As Chenney climbed off his snowmobile, Dines spread the map out on the Bison’s roof. Using a ballpoint pen she pulled out of a zippered pocket on her coat sleeve, she drew a small X on the map to denote the Bison’s current location. Then moving her finger across the map, she found the spot where the helicopter pilot had indicated the cabin was located.
“It looks like there’s a ridgeline running north-northwest between the two,” she said. “There’s no road shown on the map, but I’d bet my left tit the logging trail runs along the southern side of that ridge.”
“Why do you say that?” Simmons asked.
Dines pointed to another spot on the map. “Because I’m pretty sure that’s the clearing the guys in the copter reported. It’s close to the cabin and was probably once full of
old growth pines. Back in the day, when the lumber companies cut a trail through the bush to get to the timber they wanted, they’d follow the easiest path, and the easiest path in this case runs south along the ridgeline.”
Unable to find a flaw in her logic, Simmons placed his finger on the map and traced out a path. “So, the logging trail starts here, continues through this valley to the south of the ridgeline, then does a hard right and continues for another half mile.” He tapped a spot on the map where the contour lines were close together. “That looks like a steep hill, and if you’re right about the loggers taking the easiest path, I doubt they would have tried to go up and over it. The trail probably ends there.”
“My thoughts exactly, Professor.” Dines glanced at Chenney. “The cabin is on the other side of that hill—got it?”
Chenney took a long hard look at the map. “I think so…ridgeline…valley…hill…clearing.” He frowned. “But it sure would be easier if we had a GPS, Sarge.”
“Well, we fucking well don’t unless you can pull one out of your ass. Can you find the cabin—yes or no?”
Simmons turned to Chenney and said, “How about if I come with you. I can read the map and navigate while you drive.”
When Dines didn’t object, Chenney nodded.
“I’m coming to,” Mei said as she took a step across the Bison’s roof towards Simmons and Chenney. “If Saanvi’s hurt, I’m the only one who can help.”
“No, I don’t—”
“Good idea, Doc,” Dines said, overruling Simmons’s objection. “You can ride on the back of Taxson’s machine, but the four of you better get your asses in gear.”
“I want to go too.”
Dines held out her hand like a school crossing guard and blocked Emma from moving. “Sit your ass back down, missy. You’re not going anywhere. We don’t need another lost kid.”
“I’m not a kid and I can—”
The look in Dines eyes silenced her. Emma pouted, then sat back down.
“Go,” Dines said to Chenney, “And go fast. My guess is you’ve got less than thirty minutes before we get a shit-ton of snow dumped on us…again.” Simmons followed her eyes as she glanced over his shoulder. A line of ominous-looking clouds filled the entire horizon to the north.
