Blue Wolf In Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

  Out of the blue she said, “I had a long talk with the chief. He wants me back in the academy, but in the fall class. The pin in my arm might not come out for six weeks, maybe longer. The collarbone pin comes out in two weeks. I didn’t like what the chief proposed, but he talked straight to me, Grady, and I said okay. I didn’t want to, but he was making sense. That means you’re stuck with me until fall!”

  “Great,” he said, in part because the chief had talked to her. “But you can’t come with me. You’ve got a cast, pins, bruises.”

  “I can do this, Grady.” Her tone told him she had made up her mind and once set, she was not likely to back off. The snow was getting heavy, and her cast was a problem, but if she was game, he thought he could help her manage it.

  “Let’s get you packed.” Like him, she had all the necessary gear and kept it organized.

  She threw her good arm around his neck and kissed him hard. He wasn’t sure if it was her cast banging his head earlier or this particular kiss that left him seeing little specks of colored light.

  Service and Nantz reached the meeting site before the others and drank coffee while they waited. There was already three inches of fresh snow on the ground and more falling in large wet flakes. “Good thing we have the sled,” she said.

  “You won’t be doing much riding on the sled in your condition. After a few years of winter patrols most of us have bad backs.”

  He noticed that she didn’t argue with him.

  Zambonet arrived just before noon. Shark Wetelainen and DaWayne Kota were in a second truck with Gus Turnage. Bobber Canot drove a third truck. All three vehicles pulled snowmobiles and four-wheelers on trailers.

  There was no sign of Limpy Allerdyce.

  They met by the trucks, their breath forming clouds as they talked. The temperature was right at freezing. Zambonet shook hands with Nantz. Kota nodded. Shark and Gus hugged her and Service saw that she didn’t cringe or pull away. Shark’s hug was that of a bear and it had to hurt, but she betrayed no pain.

  They all got cups of coffee and Zambonet took out his charts. They were sheathed in acetate and backed with stiff cardboard.

  “Jesse put the wolf here late yesterday,” he said, tapping the map with his grease pencil.

  Service studied the map. Fulsik’s position put the animal on the south edge of the Fish Creek Section, about a mile from where they were parked. Service kept glancing down the road, wondering where Allerdyce was.

  “We takin’ da sleds?” Shark asked.

  “No,” the biologist said. “We’ll drive the trucks in as close as we can get and make camp. If we tranq the blue, we’ll want to be close.”

  “The animal could have moved on by now,” Service said, scanning the area for Allerdyce again.

  “She’ll be around here,” Zambonet said. “This snow will help the wolves hunt.”

  “But if she’s moved?”

  “Jesse’s gonna be upstairs in an hour or so,” Zambonet said. “If he can get off the ground. Houghton’s gettin’ pounded by heavy lake-effect snow.”

  “And if he can’t take off?”

  “We still could get lucky,”

  “If she hasn’t moved,” Service said.

  “Right.”

  Nantz spoke up. “If your pilot can get out of Houghton he can land in Escanaba and operate from there. The snow down there is always lighter. There’s a better chance of Delta County staying open than Houghton.”

  The biologist seemed to ponder what she said. “That makes sense. We have a second bird down there equipped for the mission. If Jesse has mechanical problems, he’ll have a backup there. Swede Pahlberg’s our contract pilot in Escanaba. I’d call him, but he took his family to Tennessee for Thanksgiving. He won’t be back until Tuesday night.”

  Nantz nudged Service. “What about Tucker Gates?”

  “I don’t know him.”

  “He flew me back from Lansing,” she said. “He’s a great stick. He used to fly fires for me. I’m sure he’d do it.” Her face flushed as she talked.

  Zambonet studied her. “There’s no time to train a new pilot.”

  She said, “Train me and I’ll fly with him. It’s just ADF and GPS, right? Direction and sound?”

  “Basically,” the biologist said.

  “We can do that,” she said brightly. “I’ll call him.”

  Service followed her to the truck and lit a cigarette while she used the cell phone. As the number rang she held out her hand and mouthed, “Smoke.” He fumbled as he handed her a cigarette and tried to light it for her. He’d never seen her smoke, so what was this about? She exhaled a ragged cloud of smoke. Obviously she had not been smoking regularly.

  “Tuck? Maridly. The DNR needs a pilot to fly a wolf. How’s the weather over there?” She laughed and said, “Cool. They’ll walk me through procedures and I’ll meet you at the airport. Let’s shoot for a fifteen-thirty takeoff.” She nodded several times. “I’ll be there soon as.” She looked at Service, holding the phone against her chest. “Can you ask Zambonet where the bird is and if he can get it serviced?”

  Service left her and asked the biologist where the plane was, and who would prep it. He also told him that Nantz and Gates were looking at a 3:30 p.m. takeoff. Zambonet said the bird was at Markham’s Air Service and he’d make sure it was ready, adding, “No way I can train them for a takeoff today. Besides, they fly only if Jesse can’t get out of Houghton.”

  Walking back to his truck Service saw Limpy and another figure on the edge of some cedars fifty yards away. They were dressed in white camo, standing there like ghosts. Even at fifty yards Service recognized the camo suits as Pinclidotis, top-of-the-line gear from the Italian sporting goods manufacturer. It was difficult to lock on to the notion of Yooper poachers buying thousand-dollar hunting suits, but Allerdyce was not the average poacher, and he knew Limpy’s army never went wanting for reliable equipment and tools. The clan might live and act like savages, but their gear was second to none. Which made him wonder who among the clan was responsible for researching such things. He made a mental note to think more about poachers and technology later.

  Pushing his curiosity aside, he relayed to Nantz what Zambonet said, and she passed the word to Gates, said, “See ya, ’bye,” and abruptly snapped the cell phone shut.

  “Yogi says he can’t train you for a takeoff today. There’s not enough time.”

  “Baloney,” she said. “I have to drive back to Escanaba. He can talk to me on the cell phone while I drive. It will save time. We’re gonna be on the radio when we fly, so we can get used to talking to each other. I can do this, Grady.”

  He didn’t want to argue with her. “Only if Fulsik can’t get out of Houghton. If Jesse gets out, he flies and you and your friend support, okay?”

  “Yes dear,” she said, rolling her eyes like a kid.

  Service left her in the truck and walked toward Allerdyce. The boy with him was under twenty, a little over six feet, cadaverous, his face ruddy from the cold. “This here’s Aldo,” Limpy said. Allerdyce looked at the boy. “Tell ’im.”

  “The she-wolf’s joined up with the blue,” he said. “They’re about two miles off, where Fish Creek flows into the Mosquito.” The boy spoke distinctly with no hint of his clan’s idiosyncratic approach to language.

  “How close can we get our vehicles?” Service asked.

  “Close if you’re cautious,” the boy said. “There are a couple of old tote roads back that way. It’s pretty uneven, but you can get through. There’s no water over the road.”

  Could this boy really be related to Limpy?

  “Got da squaw along?” Limpy asked the boy.

  The boy nodded toward the cedar forest to the south of them. “She’s with the wolves.”

  “Youse hump ’er in da woods do ya?” Limpy c
ackled.

  “Grampa,” the boy said with obvious discomfort.

  There might be hope for the kid, Service thought. “Let’s go meet the team.”

  Limpy said, “Aldo will go on ahead.”

  The boy faded into the trees and was gone. Limpy watched him go. “’Fraid that boy won’t make it with us,” he said. “Got too many pineapples. How do youse tink dat happened eh?”

  Service blinked. Pineapples?

  “Mebbe some stranger got into Corona back den. Dat one, he went to da high school Republic and did good. Now he’s talkin’ college.” The old man cackled. “An Allerdyce at da college.” He shook his head in disbelief.

  Zambonet was already briefing Nantz. The wolf collar had a preset frequency and the plane had an antenna mounted on each wing. The idea was to keep flying the signal until it got louder, then went silent, which would mean the collared wolf was below. Something about turning off one antenna at a time and sometimes both and Service couldn’t follow the biologist, but Nantz nodded attentively, asking questions. When they hit silence, she was to toggle the GPS and relay the coordinates to the ground team. There were more details, but Nantz wanted to get going, and she and the biologist arranged to talk by cell phone during her drive.

  Everything was happening too fast for Service.

  “The blue has joined the female,” he told Zambonet.

  The biologist looked over at Allerdyce and frowned. “Opinion of the resident expert?”

  Allerdyce laughed and said to Service. “I like dis one.”

  Zambonet’s expression suggested the sudden affection would remain unrequited.

  “The wolfies’re near where da Fish and da Mosquito gets tagedder,” Limpy said. “Boot two miles over to da sowt.” He pointed.

  “We can drive the trucks in,” Service added.

  Gus and Shark had already unhooked the trailer with Service’s snowmobile and were transferring his gear to Gus Turnage’s truck. Nantz’s face was bright red, her skin shiny.

  “Maridly?” he said. She did not look well.

  “I’m fine,” she said with an edge to her voice. “After sitting on my ass all this time, I’m glad to be useful again. I’m sorry to steal your wheels,” she said.

  “You fly only if Fulsik can’t.”

  “I know.”

  He walked her to the truck and kissed her. She handed him his cell phone and charger. “I’ve got my own,” she said. “You’ll need yours.” He watched her drive away, the truck fishtailing on the rutted road.

  Bobber Canot was huddled with Allerdyce, who was using a stick to make a map in the snow. Canot was nodding, asking questions in hushed tones. They acted familiar with each other.

  “Shall we put the show on the road?” Service asked.

  Canot said, “Limpy’s shown me the way. I’ll lead and he’ll ride with me.”

  Kota would ride with Zambonet. Shark and Gus would follow. Service would bring up the tail on his sled.

  Before the convoy headed out, Service pulled Canot aside. “Do you know Allerdyce?”

  “People out in the woods as much as us tend to cross paths. I don’t condone what he does for a living, but Limpy knows his way around out here. That’s for sure.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  Bobber Canot grinned. “That old man always has an angle and from what I know, it somehow always reduces to money.”

  Always reduces to money, Service repeated silently as he wriggled into his snowmobile suit, pushed down his helmet, got his machine off the trailer, and started it up. Where was the money for Limpy in this?

  As the convoy began to move he pulled down his face shield and locked it. A biologist and his tracker, a fanatic fly fisherman, an Indian game warden, a straight-arrow CO, two generations of poachers, a Chippewa woman, Nantz, a pilot he didn’t know, and him. One more and they’d be the dirty dozen.

  29

  Jesse Fulsik was grounded in Houghton by heavy lake-effect snow, and Nantz was being prepped by Yogi Zambonet via cell phone as she drove to Escanaba to meet Tucker Gates.

  Service was antsy about her flying and listened to snippets of one side of the cell phone tutorial as he worked with the others to put up the tent and settle the camp. Shark Wetelainen, ever attuned to the weather and environment, had brought along a military-surplus wall tent, sixteen by twenty feet, and it took most of the group nearly thirty minutes just to scrape snow so that the canvas floor would be on relatively clear ground. It took another hour with all of them working together to erect the unwieldy frame and clumsy canvas shelter, staked and roped into place.

  It was Limpy who pointed out the site for the tent, a suggestion that all but Service and Bobber Canot questioned, but after much discussion the group grudgingly agreed that Limpy’s site was the best and set about to get it ready. The tent had a small woodstove in the corner and straight metal pipe to vent smoke. All of them but Limpy gathered dry wood and broke it or cut it into pieces to fit the stove. They started a woodpile inside the shelter while Limpy drank coffee and offered directions like a supervisor.

  All the while, Yogi was on the phone with Nantz.

  “Right, right,” Yogi said. “There’s an H-style antenna on each strut. You have a radio monitor and the GPS. You have the collar freq, right? You fly volume and sound. You want to make course corrections to keep the sound steady and loud. Keep both antennae engaged until you establish a rough location—within a quarter mile. Then shut down one antenna and listen. If you have a weak signal, bank into a turn and fly the signal to maintain volume. If the signal fades, switch the first antenna off and turn on the other one. You may end up flying a corkscrew course. The bird has a stall package to let you go low and slow. Keep altering course until you get a steady, strong signal. Then you fly the heading that keeps the signal beeping like this: click-click-click, zip. When you get nada, hit your GPS to mark the spot. That means you just passed over the animal. Got it? Click-click-click, silence, fix the coordinates. When you think you’ve got the animal pinpointed, switch on both antennae and fly directly over the animal. Same deal: click-click-click, silence. Hit your GPS again and relay these coordinates to me. These are the numbers we need down here. Usually the pilot gives us visual landmarks to mark the spot, but with this cloud cover, you’re not going to be able to do that.”

  Zambonet paused to listen. “A couple of hundred yards, but don’t worry about that. You find her and we’ll take it from here. Make radio contact when you get to the area.”

  The biologist grinned weakly and looked at Service. “She asks good questions. I hope they can do this. It isn’t easy. Usually I test my pilots by putting a collar in the woods and seeing how close they can come. Two hundred yards is what we need. If a pilot can’t pass the test, they don’t fly for me. With the velocity of the plane, two hundred yards is about as close as they can get from the air. We usually want a clear sky to do this, but we won’t have that in our favor today. It’s really, really not easy,” Zambonet said, shaking his head.

  Service grinned. Nantz could do it. He wondered how she was holding up. “What’s the Escanaba weather?”

  “Flyable, so far,” the biologist said.

  It was just before 4 p.m. when Service heard the single-engine Cessna 182. He heard the pitch of the engine changing sharply, almost like it was sputtering, and instinctively looked skyward into the snow. He didn’t like the sound, but got Zambonet’s attention and jerked a thumb upward.

  Zambonet got on the radio and began trying to raise the plane. “DNR Wolf Air One, this is Wolf Ground One.” He repeated the call several times.

  Finally there was a garbled reply. “Wolf . . . Gr . . . Air, ov’r.”

  “DNR Wolf Air One, you are breaking up. We’ve got poor atmospherics. Go to backup freq, copy?”

  Service heard the biologist’s receiver
click twice, a signal that the aircraft had heard the instruction.

  Then Nantz’s voice came through clear and strong. “Wolf Ground One, Wolf Air One is on backup freq, how do you read me?”

  “Five-by-five,” Yogi said. “We’re gonna be out of light soon. You hearing anything up there?” To Service he said, “Not that the light we have down here is worth squat.” Service studied the sky. There was a faint glow backdropping the falling snow. He could make out the silhouette of treetops, but not easily. Official sunset would be in less than twenty minutes. At ground level it was already dark.

  “That’s a roger, Ground One.” Nantz sounded relaxed, confident, in control.

  “Say altitude, Air One.”

  “Angels are ground plus five hundred feet,” Nantz radioed.

  “Careful,” Zambonet said, rubbing his hands together.

  “Roger that,” Nantz said. “Our charts show no vertical obstacles in this area. We can drop a bit lower if you want us to.”

  “Negative,” Zambonet said. “Negative descent, maintain current altitude. Let’s play the cards we’re dealt.”

  “Tuck thinks he can get under the clouds,” Nantz said.

  Zambonet’s response was immediate and clipped. “Negative, negative. Maintain current altitude. Copy?”

  “Wolf Air copies. It’s a bit bumpy up here. It might be smoother lower down. Can you give us a short hold-down?” Nantz asked.

  Service could hear Nantz pressing to get every edge she could. In her shoes, he’d do the same thing.

  “Maintain altitude, transmitting now,” Zambonet said, depressing a switch on the radio, and looked at Service. “ADF. Their receiver will pick up on our signal, give them a heading to us.” He got back on the radio and read off the camp’s coordinates from his GPS.

  “Roger, Ground One, we’ve got you and we also have a collar signal and we are commencing runs.”

  Nantz sounded calm. The biologist looked at Service and raised an eyebrow in admiration. Service felt a surge of pride.