Blue Wolf In Green Fire

by Joseph Heywood

  He came out of his reverie to find a grinning Limpy Allerdyce standing next to him.

  “Kinda hard ta untie all da knots in da ole noggin sometimes, eh?” The old poacher handed him a cup of coffee and they went outside to have a smoke. When they got outside, Limpy took out a small flask and tipped some whiskey into Service’s coffee. “Java, hooch, smokes, whatever it takes in our line of work, eh?”

  Our line of work indeed, Service thought. They touched cups together and stood in the howling storm, poacher and guardian, side by side, joined for the moment in mutual pursuit. Grady’s ex-wife had accused him of having a death wish, but she had been wrong. He wanted to live big and hard on the roller coaster, to live like this, where scores got kept and nothing but unknowns loomed ahead.

  30

  The group drove their snowmobiles to Aldo’s cave-camp and found him outside and waiting for them. Had Limpy radioed ahead? Service wondered.

  “They haven’t moved,” Aldo announced.

  “What’s he talking about?” Zambonet asked.

  “You’ll see,” Service said.

  Service, Zambonet, Limpy, and Canot followed Aldo on foot across a low-slung hill into a shallow valley lined by naked tamaracks.

  A small woman was standing in the lee of dark, dense cedar slash. She wore knee-high mukluks over deerskin breeches dyed dark green. A black bearskin anorak stretched to midthigh. Her hood was down, her long black hair whipping in the wind, ice clots glistening. She was short and wide, with a long face and prominent cheekbones. She smelled heavily of castor oil and held Aldo’s hand while he introduced her.

  “This is Daysi,” Aldo said. “She’ll show you.”

  She tugged on Aldo’s sleeve, stretched up, and whispered to him. Aldo spoke for her. “Just two, Daysi says. Otherwise, too much scent. Wolves don’t like how people smell.”

  Canot and Zambonet followed the girl into the cedar slash.

  Limpy stared at his grandson, who ignored him. Service poked Limpy and led him back to the snowmobiles. Thermoses were taken out, coffee poured. No cigarettes were lit. DaWayne Kota offered a tin of chewing tobacco. They waited silently while the wind whistled harmonics through the rocky terrain and tree branches rubbed like fingernails dragged down blackboards, leafless limbs rattling like drumsticks in a grating cacophony.

  When the lookers returned with Aldo and Daysi, Yogi Zambonet looked both elated and confused. Canot was grinning like he had just scraped clean a winning instant lottery ticket.

  Zambonet let Bobber Canot explain. “There’s a series of drumlins and the animals have been in the popples. Good vegetation in there, grasses layered underneath the snow, maybe the result of an old fire, definitely not cutover regrowth. It looks like a rendezvous site, but not quite, and it’s too early for dens. I can’t figure out why they’re here like this.”

  Service saw Daysi start her whispering routine again, but he said, “Daysi?” before Aldo could serve as her spokesman.

  “I know where they’ll den,” she said shyly.

  “Too early,” Zambonet said. “Way too early.”

  “Maybe it’s her first time,” Daysi offered, avoiding the biologist’s gaze.

  “They’re animals,” Yogi said.

  DaWayne Kota spoke up. “I think she means maybe this will be the female’s first pups and she wants to have things just right.”

  “They don’t think like humans,” Yogi said.

  “Sometimes they just act like us,” Aldo said.

  Zambonet nodded and turned to Bobber Canot. “Will the traps hold?”

  The tracker looked at the others. “Our traps are designed to hold bears, but last year we trapped a ninety-pound male gray wolf that straightened out the drag chains.”

  “That kinda stuff happens,” Shark said. He had been trapping and hunting most of his life.

  “Three-quarter-inch steel?” Canot countered.

  Wetelainen shook his head and stared off into the distance.

  “That one last year had five-inch tracks. This fella’s bigger. Heaps bigger. Seven-inchers,” he said. “Like pie tins.”

  “My kids don’t get that large,” Zambonet said.

  “This animal was trapped in Saskatchewan,” Service reminded the biologist.

  “They get bigger up there, but this . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence.

  “The traps’ll hold,” Bobber Canot said. “I think I can get down some decent sets. I took a good look at this fella’s tracks. He follows the female, and their moves around obstacles are predictable. I’d like to give it a try. I’d sure like to see this big fella,” he said with relish.

  Zambonet thought for a moment. “Can you get your sets down by dark?”

  “Sure.” Canot looked at Wetelainen. “You wanna help?”

  “You betcha,” Shark said, his eyes flashing.

  It took ten minutes to get their traps and scents. Canot held up a trap. It was black. “The MB seven fifty,” he said. “It goes five, six pounds, and it’s strong enough to hold a big bear. Leghold type with double underspring, offset jaws; we grind the jaws smooth to prevent injury, boil the traps in alder bark to knock off the metallic sheen, and set them flat on the ground, which makes them easier to hide. Each trap has two drag chains.” He rattled the huge chains.

  “What about bait?” Shark asked.

  Canot dug several plastic bottles out of a pack. “Castor oil and ‘Just Mice.’ You ever see that movie Cry Wolf? About a cockamamie wolf researcher up in the Arctic? He s’posedly lived with the wolves and discovered they lived exclusively on rodents. Was a buncha bull mostly, them eatin’ just mice, but they sure seem to like the smell of ’em just fine.”

  Service watched the two men heft their packs and head out. Shark and Bobber were a lot alike, he decided, happiest when they were stomping around the bush.

  Zambonet exhaled, his breath dissipating in the wind. “We need to be closer to the wolf, but we’ll have to wait until they actually get him in the trap. When Bobber has him we’ll take the sleds in and use one of them as a table to do what has to be done. Our first concern is the safety of the animal. We’ve got about one hour from the time we drug him. We’ll need to move fast. I’ll use the poke-stick to immobilize him. I’ll hit him first with ketamine, one cc per ten pounds of estimated weight, followed by xylazine. He’ll be awake the whole time, but unable to move.”

  He quickly checked off what had to be done. “As soon as we start on him, I’ll install a head shroud so he can’t see, insert a digital rectal ­thermometer, and tag his left ear.” Zambonet showed the approximate location on his own ear. “Red for Michigan, yellow for Wisconsin, green for Minnesota. The tags let us see at a distance if a tagged animal is ours. He won’t be able to see, but he’ll hear everything we do, and this will jack up his heart rate. When his heart rate increases, so does his temperature. We measure pulse and temp. The two give us a measure of stress. His temperature is critical. We don’t want it to exceed one-oh-six. When we’re done, I’ll stick him with yohimbine and then we’ll carry him back to the trap site and monitor him to make sure he’s gonna come out of it all right.” Zambonet looked at the others to see if they were listening.

  Daysi said, “Can these drugs hurt him?”

  Zambonet didn’t pull his punches. “The muscle relaxants can cause problems—even kill an animal—but that’s never happened to one of my kids, and it’s only rarely happened in Alaska where they do this a lot. The relative risk-to-benefit ratio is good. The other shots will protect against parvovirus and other canid diseases. We have to knock him down to help him, but he won’t feel any pain,” the biologist said.

  Daysi said, “If you want, Aldo and me want to help.”

  The biologist nodded his assent. “First we measure length and girth, and weigh him. I’ll take a skin scraping to check
for mange. After that, we inoculate with ivermectin and penicillin. Last we apply eye ointment.”

  Zambonet took his two new assistants aside to teach them procedures and get his gear ready.

  Limpy sat on a log watching and smiling at everyone like an imbecile. Everything about Allerdyce’s behavior bugged Service, but he had other things to think about now.

  Kota, Service, and Gus Turnage went to explore.

  When they got out of earshot of the others Service told them, “There’s a wolf killer headed here. We need to look at where the animals have been moving, see if we can find places where a long shot might be possible.”

  “Why a long shot?” Kota asked.

  “Single-round fifty cal,” Service said.

  Kota nodded.

  They followed drifted-over wolf tracks through the wind, sometimes losing their way, but Kota and Service always managed to refind the tracks. After considerable hiking and looking around they squatted under a tree and talked.

  There was a relatively clear area in front of them, at least a hundred yards long, but narrow. The wolf tracks passed diagonally across the area into dense balsams on the side of a low rise to the west.

  Service looked at Kota. “They go through here to get to where the woman has been watching them. Wolves are like people. They like trails and shortcuts. They follow the same paths.”

  Kota scanned the surrounding ridges. “It could be a killing field,” he said grimly.

  “Okay, let’s take a look,” Service said. “No radios.”

  He sent Gus up one ridge and Kota up another. From below he used hand signals to guide them to locations that looked like good shooting perches. They were to approach each site carefully, not leaving tracks in the immediate areas they were scouting. After ninety minutes of looking, Service motioned for them to rejoin him.

  “Goin’ from or to their area, I’d want to get me a quartering side shot from up there,” Kota said, pointing at his ridge. “Good shot from there,” he added.

  “My shot would be more north–south and longitudinal on the body,” Gus reported. “If you want a trophy, you’d want a side shot to make sure you had the best angle on vitals.”

  And less chance of ruining the head, Service thought. The wolf killer always took the head, and he wondered why.

  “Okay, let’s get back to the others and clear the area. The animals may start to move around when it gets dark.” Which wouldn’t be long.

  Service told Gus, “McCants and Grinda are joining us. They’ll cover one perch and we’ll take the other. We’ll get the tac plan worked out tonight.”

  The others were on their machines and waiting for them. “Traps set?”

  “Let’s hope,” Canot said as they cranked up and headed back to camp. Aldo and the girl remained behind. Limpy looked back at Daysi from his sled in a way that made Service’s skin crawl.

  McCants and Grinda were waiting in the tent, gear unloaded, sleeping bags laid out, snowmobiles ready. Grinda was cleaning her forty-caliber SIG. She nodded when she saw Service. McCants high-fived him and smiled.

  While dinner cooked, Limpy went outside to smoke. Service joined him.

  “You ought not look at the girl like that,” Service said.

  Limpy cackled. “Da womens want da same ting, Sonny. All of ’em da same, you mark my words.”

  Nantz called that night. “Weather’s lifting tomorrow morning. We can fly.”

  Service passed the phone to Zambonet, who said, “That’ll help. We want you to fly the female. When we get the male collared, he’ll become primary. Good luck.” He handed the phone back to Service and left to talk to Canot.

  Nantz said, “I talked to McKower today. She said the captain’s resting comfortably, complaining about being in the hospital. You men.”

  “The chief there yet?”

  “Tonight, Lis says.”

  “How’re you?”

  “Ready to fly,” she said. “What’s going on there?”

  “We have traps down. Now we wait.”

  “I hate waiting,” she said. “For anything.”

  He understood.

  There was a noon message from Shamekia on the cell and he called up the number and punched it in.

  She answered her own telephone. “You’re late at the office,” he said.

  “I needed to talk to you. A message wouldn’t do. The shooter’s name is Kitty Haloran. You remember the discussion we had about Minnis?”

  Service searched his memory. “A couple of women came over and blew his identity. Minnis disappeared.”

  “Haloran was the second CARP person to come out, and not a defector. My sources say she was sent to find and kill Bridget Galway, whom you know as Larola Brule.”

  “Brule was IRA?”

  “Affiliated group, not CARP, and a low-level functionary but with a grudge and she gave the Brits invaluable information.”

  “And ended up with Fish and Wildlife?”

  “As did Minnis. He’s known now as Carmody.”

  Service sucked in a breath and let it out slowly. “Fish and Wildlife doesn’t deal with this kind of thing.”

  “They do if they owe favors to other government agencies. And Minnis was effective. You would be amazed at the sins agencies will forgive in the interests of finding competent people.”

  “Why would Fish and Wildlife need a killer?”

  “They don’t. They needed somebody fearless, and Carmody is that. Since he’s been here his record has been exemplary. With one exception.”

  “Genova?”

  “Right on. FBI surveillance has seen him several times over the past eight years.”

  “Why didn’t they pick him up?”

  “The Feebs on the scene probably don’t know his background. To them he’s just a Fish and Wildlife special agent with a taste for the lady.”

  “Bullshit. They’ve put the hot lights on SuRo since the get-go. Why?”

  “That one I can’t answer.”

  “Where’s the Haloran woman?” Service asked.

  “Disappeared.”

  “New identity?”

  “Nobody knows anything. She’s still wanted. Do you want me to turn all this over to the feds?”

  “No, we’ll let it play for a while.” He would tell Freddy and let him carry the information back when it made sense to do so.

  The sheriff arrived just before midnight, cursing and covered with snow. “Tipped my bloody snowbug over,” he said. “Piece of shit. I’m gonna have to get outriggers,” he said with a grimace. “Twisted the shit out of my wrist.” He handed an envelope to Service. “A lot bloody quicker than U.S. Postal snail mail and a good deal cheaper. I saw your captain. He doesn’t look so good.”

  Service talked his friend through the information Shamekia had passed along as they looked at the photograph of Kitty Haloran. “A real looker,” Freddy Bear Lee said. “You wouldn’t look past that face. You want me to hang with you or talk to our illustrious team leader?”

  “Stay. I’ll ask Shamekia to fax the photos to Nevelev, and give her Haloran’s identity and leave it at that.”

  “What about your boy?”

  “He’s somewhere in the area now and close to finishing our case. We’re trying to trap the blue as we speak.”

  “If Haloran came for a payback to Larola Brule, she’s probably back in a hole in Europe by now.”

  “Could be,” Service said. Right now his only interest was the blue wolf and Pidge Carmody. What a mess: a blue wolf in a green fire.

  31

  When the cell phone buzzed in the middle of the night Service quickly wriggled out of his sleeping bag and went outside.

  “Get your wolf trapped?” Carmody asked in a low, roily voice.

  Servic
e blinked in the dark and swallowed hard. He had said nothing to the USF&WS man about trapping a wolf. “What was that?”

  “Fookin’ amateur,” Carmody whined. “You heard me, boy. You’re trappin’ a wolf. The wolf. Down the darker stairs, where blue is darkened on blueness,” the undercover man mumbled. “That from the distinguished D. H. Himself, ever mindful of all things carnal and what’s more carnal than the takin’ of life?”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “Bloody fookin’ amateur,” Carmody whispered. “You’ve a rat in your knickers, man, down there chewin’ off yer fookin’ manhood and passin’ information to the lady here as coolly as one of Auntie’s readers.”

  Service’s mind raced. Allerdyce had pointed him at the blue. Then Carmody reported that Johns had a finder who had pointed her into the Mosquito. And he had seen Limpy using the FRS radio. The conclusion was inescapable: Allerdyce was the rat!

  “What’s this rat’s angle?”

  “Ah, the angle, asks he. Tiz the oldest of all, man: punts, pence, pounds, pennies, coin-a-the-realm, euros—a finder’s fee if ye will, and so to speak.”

  Could this be true? There was no doubt that Allerdyce was motivated by money, but the old man had sworn repeatedly that he would never poach in the Mosquito, that the arrangement he had agreed to with Service’s father also applied to the son. If Limpy was working with Wealthy Johns, why had he tipped him about the blue and then volunteered to help? The rat had to be Limpy, but what the hell was his game? The man was a lawbreaker, but he wasn’t stupid. There had to be an angle he wasn’t seeing.

  “Where are you?”

  “Well ye should ask. Me lady’s acquired a caravan, the best money can buy. All the comforts, ye might say, hot water, a loo, her succulent and ondulatin’ self.”

  “Where?”

  “A boundless vision visits upon us, an untamed peninsula, vast wastes of forest verdure. It surroundeth in silence and ice. A bit foggy on the origin of that paraphrase.”

  “That’s a bit on the ambiguous side.”

  “Sorry, boyo. I’m a bit turned about, you see. But the lady insists we reside within stalking distance.”