Ancestor

by Scott Sigler

  “Right,” Alonzo said. “’Cause Michigan is high up on my list of tourist spots. Especially Detroit.”

  “Most of the state is just fine,” Sara said. “I grew up near here, town called Cheboygan.”

  Alonzo nodded. “You grew up here. Yeah, that explains a lot.”

  Sara flicked out her right hand and slapped Alonzo’s shoulder. He laughed, then turned in his seat and called back to Colding. “How ’bout you, bro? Where you from?”

  “Georgia. A little town outside of At—”

  “Let’s just land the plane, shall we?” Sara said. Colding leaned back. Alonzo let out a long whistle. They were at least five minutes from landing, but no one mentioned that. Seemed Sara wanted to keep the conversation all business, at least where Colding was concerned.

  From the observer’s seat, Colding had a stunning view out the front canopy. Black Manitou Island looked mostly white, dotted with patches of brown and green. The island ran almost perfectly southwest to northeast. Colding referred to the map in the manila folder. Ten miles from tip to tip, three miles across at the widest point. Deep bays and fjords made it resemble a tropical archipelago. A wide, sandy beach surrounded the coastline.

  Alonzo affected a southern drawl. “How close is the nearest gawd-dayum town? Da-na-neer-neer-neer-neer-neer-neer-neeerrrr.”

  “This is Michigan, you idiot,” Sara said. “Put away the Deliverance banjo.”

  Colding checked the map again. “You won’t be doing much partying with the locals. Closest town is Copper Harbor, about three hours away by boat.”

  Alonzo groaned. “How far by plane or chopper?”

  “Irrelevant,” Colding said. “Once we land, no air traffic off the island.”

  “Fuck,” Alonzo said. “Looks like I’ll be dating Rosie Palms and her five friends for a while.”

  “Wrong girl,” Sara said. “Around here we call that Dating Miss Michigan.”

  Colding kept flipping through the folder. “It’s a bit more accommodating than it looks. Says here the place used to be a four-star resort. Marilyn Monroe supposedly stayed there.”

  The island grew in size, now filling the forward horizon.

  “No radar,” Alonzo said. “They have an airstrip but no radar?”

  “Uhhh …” Colding flipped through more pages. “They only turn it on for landings and takeoffs. Danté doesn’t want anyone wondering why an island in the middle of the lake has functioning radar.”

  As if on cue, a small ping sounded through the cockpit.

  “Radar, check,” Sara said. “Looks like they’re ready for us.”

  Colding leaned forward again. “Fly the length of the island before you land.”

  “Please,” Sara said.

  Colding looked at her. “Please what?”

  “Fly the length of the island, please.” Sara continued to look out the window, never turning to meet Colding’s eyes. “Until we land, I’m in charge, remember?”

  Alonzo looked at Sara, a funny expression on his face. He craned his head to look back at Colding as if to say, What’s that all about? Colding just shrugged.

  “Eyes on the boat, ’Zo,” Sara said. Alonzo turned back to his normal position.

  So this was how it was going to be. Well, once on the island, there was plenty of room to steer clear of this woman.

  “Captain Purinam,” Colding said. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could you kindly fly the length of the island before landing? Please?”

  “Why, it’s no trouble at all,” Sara said. “Standard procedure, really, you didn’t even have to ask.”

  Alonzo gave her that funny look again, then shrugged and turned back to his duties.

  Sara took the C-5 north, wide of the island, then banked back and closed in on the northeast tip. Colding traced their path on the map as the C-5 flew over. Rapleje Bay split the northeast end of the island into a pair of mile-long, snow-covered tongues. Rocks peeked through the snow in many places, brown and gray, or black with fresh snowmelt. An inch or two of powder covered the ground, clumped on the bare branches of oaks and poplars and weighed down the boughs of thick evergreens.

  Just past the bay, they flew over a neat little farmhouse and a good-sized red barn with a black tar-shingle roof. Gray shingles spelled out the word Ballantine in five-foot letters. Colding saw cows milling about a snow-dusted pasture outside the barn, then a running flash of something small and black. Probably a dog.

  A road led away from the barn. The C-5 seemed to fly down the road’s slightly curving length. To the left of the road, he saw fields long since grown fallow, spotted here and there with young poplars and pines. To the right, the island’s center ridge angled up a good five hundred feet. In the dead center of the island, a square wooden tower rose up from that ridge like a small cabin on tall stilts. Next to it stood a thin, metal-frame communications tower painted in red and white, two boxy devices mounted high on its sides. At the top, a compact radar array spun in a steady circle.

  Alonzo pointed at the wooden tower. “What’s with the Smokey the Bear action?”

  Colding flipped through the folder. “It’s an old fire watchtower. Has an air-raid siren and everything. The metal tower has the secure satellite uplink to Genada. And a jammer that blocks all communications in or out.”

  “A jammer?” Sara said. “Then how do you talk to someone on the other end of the island?”

  “Regular old telephone poles,” Colding said. “Totally self-contained, not connected to any outside system. Look on the right side of the road—landlines running to all the buildings. All the occupied buildings, anyway, which looks like … a total of five, including the hangar.”

  “Five houses,” Alonzo said. “Yeah, this place is jumping all right.”

  They passed the island’s center, leaving the two towers behind. To the left, Colding saw an idyllic little harbor on the southeastern coast. Blocks of jagged granite surrounded the island, peeking up just past the water’s surface. Only the approach into the harbor looked clear. Massive piles of broken concrete and big rocks made up the harbor wall, turning the endless Lake Superior waves into minor chop. A large white fishing boat, maybe a thirty-footer, sat moored to a long black dock.

  Along the road, overgrown trees crowded in among scattered houses. Most of the places looked abandoned. He saw just three buildings that seemed well maintained: a single house, then another barn and house combo. Large swatches of churned-up mud inside fences indicated the barn was a working one.

  Not far past that farm, they flew over an open space surrounded by a cluster of small buildings. Colding couldn’t make out much, except for a solid-looking gray stone church with a tall bell tower.

  Near the island’s southwestern tip, the forest gave way to a snow-covered lawn edged with orderly rows of landscaping trees. At the back of the lawn perched a three-story brick mansion that overlooked the estate like some lord’s castle from old England. The mansion’s high position gave it a commanding view of Black Manitou’s southern tip: a sandy beach lined with rocks, then nothing but water as far as the horizon.

  A half mile due south of the mansion, a wide, flat clearing snaked through the woods like an oversized golf course fairway. Colding had to look at the paper map to see the logic—if you drew a visual line from end to end, the fairway had a mile-long space down the middle. Just wide enough to land a C-5. Danté Paglione had built a landing strip so that it didn’t look like a landing strip, at least to any probing satellite.

  And that satellite camouflage philosophy bled over to the hangar. Colding actually didn’t see it at first, and had to spot-check the map before the visual clicked. The hangar was as big as the one back on Baffin Island, but with wire mesh over the roof that sloped down to the closely surrounding trees. A dense pack of fake pine-tree tips stuck up from the mesh. From the ground it probably looked like the worst camouflage one could imagine, but any satellite or even a plane flying at normal altitude would see nothing other than a wooded hill.

>   “Sightseeing is over,” Sara said. “Let’s get her on the ground.”

  Alonzo nodded. “Roger that.”

  Sara banked to the left, taking the C-5 back out over the water as she circled around. Surprisingly, the landing was as soft as any commercial flight Colding had ever flown.

  The C-5 slowed to a crawl as Sara taxied it into the fake-hilltop hangar.

  NOVEMBER 9: HOW’S IT GOIN’, EH?

  AS THE C-5’S turbines idled down, the Twins lowered the rear ramp and P. J. Colding walked out of the plane. The place looked and felt oddly familiar: another big-ass hangar, cattle stalls on one end, big-ass open doors looking out into a snowy landscape. And, of course, a fuel truck—he made a mental note to find someplace else to park it.

  Just as his feet hit the hangar’s concrete floor, a black Humvee and a beat-up old red Ford F150 pulled into the cavernous opening. A painted logo on the Hummer’s hood read OTTO LODGE. Two men stepped out, both wearing black parkas with the lodge logo embroidered on the left breast. Colding recognized the men from the personnel pictures in the folder Magnus had given him: Clayton Detweiler and his thirtysomething son, Gary. Clayton maintained the mansion and most of the island. Gary was the driver of the boat the C-5 had flown over on the way in, and was also the island’s only regular connection to the mainland.

  The Ford truck produced three more people: a taller man almost Clayton’s age, and a man and a woman in their early thirties. Colding recognized them from the personnel pages as well: Sven Ballantine, James Harvey and Stephanie Harvey, respectively.

  Clayton walked up and extended his hand. He moved with the hitch of an overweight, older man plagued by a bum hip. His every other step brought the clinking of metal from the plus-sized key ring hanging from his belt. The way he carried himself the sound seemed more like the clinking of a gunfighter’s spurs than the jangle of a janitor’s keys. Colding shook the offered hand, feeling the man’s rough skin and thick calluses.

  “Welcome to Black Manitou, eh?” Clayton said. “Clayton Detweiler. You must be Colding.”

  Colding couldn’t place the man’s accent. He’d never heard anything quite like it. Clayton wore a scowl so deeply entrenched with permanent wrinkles it might have been the only expression the man had ever shown. A three-day growth of bristly gray beard made the wrinkles look deeper, more defined. His thick gray hair was combed straight back, looked oily-wet, and smelled of Brylcreem. Spots of dirt, grease and what appeared to be several mustard stains dotted his black down jacket.

  “Nice to meet you,” Colding said. He turned to the younger Detweiler. “And you must be Gary, our link to the mainland?”

  Gary nodded and shook. The guy looked like a living Abercrombie & Fitch ad. His parka was fresh and clean. Oakley sunglasses hung from a cord around his neck. A deep tan covered skin that was already turning leathery. He wore a hemp necklace and a small gold loop in his right ear. Gary had a little bit of an odd, rich smell about him, something that Colding knew but couldn’t place.

  Colding shook hands with Sven and James. Each managed a fifty-cow backup herd. Sven was a heavyset older man, perhaps sixty, his old-fashioned mustache and sandy blond hair liberally peppered with gray. The mustache mostly hid a rather disturbing crop of nose hairs. Mostly. Sven looked like he should be riding shotgun with Sam Elliott in some old western.

  James had the big-necked look of a former football player—a lineman, not a quarterback—and could have been a poster boy for the phrase “cornfed.” Stephanie had a wide-eyed smile and, of all things, curlers in her red hair.

  Colding reached out to shake Stephanie’s hand, but couldn’t because she thrust a Saran Wrap–covered plate at him.

  Brownies.

  “Here ya go,” she said in an accent just like Clayton’s. “My family recipe, eh?”

  “Uh, thanks.” Colding took the plate.

  James poked his wife in the shoulder. “Since when is our family name Duncan Hines?”

  Stephanie put her hands on her hips and gave her husband a dirty look. “I’ll have ya know I put in da walnuts.”

  “You’re a walnut,” James said.

  “Your face is a walnut,” Stephanie said.

  Clayton rolled his eyes. “Oh, for Christ’s sake. You two put a sock in it.”

  “You’re a sock,” Gary said. He didn’t have the strange accent, just a normal midwestern twang.

  Clayton shook his head in annoyance. “Sweet Jesus, all of you shut your pieholes. Well, there ya go, Mister Colding. You just met everyone on Black Manitou Island, population five. Time for all of us to get back to work. Just wanted to have you meet everyone so you wouldn’t be asking me stupid fucking questions all goddamn day.”

  “Actually, Clayton, there’s a lot I need to know. Looks like you guys take great care of the mansion and the grounds.”

  “What, you’re surprised?” Clayton said. “You thought an old hick like me couldn’t take care of business?”

  This just wasn’t Colding’s day for making friends and influencing people. “That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “I been in charge here for thirty years, eh?” Clayton’s eyes narrowed beneath bushy gray eyebrows. “Just ’cause Danté said to take care of you don’t mean I snap to your orders like a trained dog. You got it?”

  Gary rolled his eyes, as if he’d heard his father’s shitty attitude a million times before. The others looked around uncomfortably.

  “Now hold on just a second,” Colding said. “We need to set a few things straight, right now.”

  Before Colding could continue, Clayton looked away, up into the C-5’s rear cargo door. Colding heard light footsteps on the ramp.

  “Hey, Peej,” Sara said. “Who’re your friends?”

  “We were clearly having a conversation here,” Clayton said. “Who da hell are you, eh?”

  “I’m da pilot, eh?” Sara said, her voice a perfect imitation of Clayton’s accent.

  Clayton leaned back a bit, the scowl still on his face. “You makin’ fun of da way I talk?”

  Sara laughed. “Only a little bit. I grew up in Cheboygan. Used to spend my summers vacationing near Sault Saint Marie.”

  “Michigan side or Canadian side?” Clayton asked.

  “Da Michigan side, of course. I’m a Troll.”

  Clayton’s face lit up in a genuine, friendly smile. It made him look like a completely different person.

  Colding stared, dumbfounded, as Clayton extended his callused hand. Sara shook it and introduced herself to the five Black Manitou natives. Where Colding’s intro had been awkward at best, Sara’s felt like old friends reconnecting. Her natural charm relaxed everyone around her.

  Sara saw the plate in Colding’s hands. She lifted the Saran Wrap covering and pulled out a brownie as casually as you please. “Oh my, these look delicious. Who made them?”

  “I did!” Stephanie said. “You can come over sometime and have some coffee. I made those brownies and they’re my favorite ’cause it’s an old family recipe.”

  The woman’s speech reminded Colding of an overly happy machine gun kicking out rapid-fire words.

  Sara took a bite, chewed, then laughed. “We must be related. Tastes a lot like my family recipe.”

  “Okay,” Colding said. “Enough with the brownies. Captain Purinam, if you could attend to your duties, I want to have a talk with Clayton.”

  “Not now,” Clayton said. “Didn’t I tell you I got fuckin’ work to do?”

  Colding had been through way too much in the past few hours to put up with this crap. He felt his temper slipping and started to talk, but Gary spoke first.

  “Say, Dad,” he said. “You have to run me back to the boat anyway. Mister Colding can ride along, get a feel for the island. Fifteen minutes there and back. He is from Genada, Dad. You know, the guys who pay you?”

  Clayton looked away for a second. He seemed annoyed at his son’s logic. “Yah, fine,” he said. “I’ll take you, Colding, but only if Sara comes.”
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br />   “I’m in,” Sara said before Colding could manage a word. He felt like his few hours of sleep had slowed his reaction time or something—everyone was beating him to the punch.

  “Captain Purinam,” Colding said. “Don’t you have work to do?”

  She shrugged. “Nope. The boys have it covered. Let’s road-trip.”

  Clayton reached out and grabbed a brownie off Colding’s plate. He bit in, a few crumbs falling and sticking to his stubble. “Good stuff, Stephanie.”

  Stephanie beamed. “Thanks!”

  “Can you and James hang out here and show people da mansion?”

  “Sure!” Stephanie said. “I’d love to. We can walk back ’cause it’s not really that cold out yet and we don’t mind at all, do we, James?”

  James didn’t bother saying anything, because Clayton had already walked away. The old man got into the Hummer and slammed the door shut behind him.

  Colding looked at Gary. “Is your dad always like this?”

  Gary smiled an easy smile. Colding still couldn’t place that smell.

  “Unfortunately, he is,” Gary said. “But don’t worry about it, man. He’s the hardest worker you’ll ever meet. And if you need something done, it’s done. Okay?” He asked the last word as if it were a signature on a contract, a contract Colding would just have to accept because that’s the way it was. Gary obviously didn’t want his father catching any shit.

  “Okay,” Colding said. “I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  Gary smiled and nodded slowly, not just with his head, but also with his shoulders. “All right, man. For being so cool about it, I’ll give you shotgun.”

  “So kind of you,” Colding said, seeing instantly that Gary had eyes for Sara. Gary turned and climbed into the back of the Humvee.

  Colding glared at Sara. “You’re just coming along to piss me off.”

  “Yep,” Sara said. “But don’t worry, plenty more where that came from.”

  “Fine, whatever. And what was with that whole Troll comment, and that eh thing?”