Tundra Kill

by Stan Jones

  “Yeah, right,” Cowboy said with the familiar grin. “At times like this, a woman thinks with her hormones, not her brain.”

  Active gave a noncommittal grunt

  Cowboy started his walk-around and Active stepped back to watch the ancient, lover-like ritual between plane and pilot. Cowboy ran a gloved hand along the front edge of the propeller to check for fresh damage from the gravel airstrips where Chukchi’s Bush pilots did most of their business. Then he checked the fronts of the wings with the same tenderness, shook the wing struts, moved the ailerons at the back of the wings, waggled the tail flaps up and down, and swung the tail fin back and forth.

  “Think it’ll fly?”

  “Posilutely.” Cowboy punctuated it with a pretty good imitation of the governor’s wink.

  Active turned to look down the runway. “Hear that?”

  Cowboy cupped a hand to his ear, peered east, and grimaced. Like most Bush pilots who’d been at it long, he’d lost some hearing. Active sometimes had to shout to be heard.

  Together they watched the sky over the snow-covered folds of tundra past the runway’s end. Then Cowboy pointed southeast. “Got ‘im. Right there, see?”

  Active picked it up, too—a landing light, glowing dull orange through the snow haze kicked up by the wind.

  They watched as the pilot rolled his wings level on final approach, set the 737 down with a chirp from the tires, and taxied for the Alaska Airlines terminal.

  Active looked at Cowboy. “Here we go.”

  “I guess,” Cowboy said.

  They walked from the tarmac through the Lienhofer office and out the customer door into the parking lot, where they climbed into Active’s Chevy.

  Two minutes later, they pulled up at the terminal and Active switched off the truck as the jet’s turbines whined down. They went inside and watched as the 737’s rear door swung open and a truck-mounted airstair rolled up.

  For a while nothing happened, then Mercer pulled up outside in a bronze Ford Expedition with a teenage boy in the passenger seat and a decal from the late City of Chukchi on the door. Mercer stepped down, dressed in a snug black snowgo suit and scarlet down parka with a sunburst ruff of wolf fur, and hurried into the terminal. The teenager rushed after her with a video camera on his back and Mercer somehow talked herself and the boy through security and onto the apron. Mercer hurried up the airstair while the teenager positioned himself at the foot.

  Cowboy looked at Active. “What’s she doing?”

  “Beats me,” Active said. “She just told me to meet her here when the noon jet came in. What’s with that old city Expedition, anyway?”

  “I guess how our former mayor ended up with it when she left office to go to the legislature.”

  “Ah, that would explain it. And that’s her son with her?”

  “Right. ‘Pudu,’ they call him.”

  “Wait, she’s not…”

  Mercer stepped out the doorway of the jet with a curly-haired white man Active recognized as Phil Ackerman, her chief of staff. She paused at the top of the airstair, Ackerman at her elbow, to don sunglasses and wave at her son and his video camera as the wind pulled at the ruff of her parka.

  “My God, she’s faking her own arrival,” Active said.

  Cowboy chuckled. “I guess the press mob doesn’t follow her around like they used to.”

  “Not so much, no.”

  “But she’s gonna make the big announcement while she’s here, right?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe she just put out that rumor in hopes the reporters will show up when she hits the primaries Outside.”

  Behind the governor, other passengers were visible as they waited, more or less patiently, for her to get out of the way.

  Mercer pulled out a phone, pressed it to her ear and started down the steps. She waved at the imaginary crowd a few more times, then gave Pudu a throatslashing gesture to turn off his camera. Finally she entered the terminal.

  There were a few cries of “Suka” as people recognized her. A teenager put up an iPhone and got some video as the governor caught Active’s eye and walked over.

  “Chief Active, Cowboy.” She gave them the campaign grin. “All set for our big adventure?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Cowboy said. “The plane’s ready to go. In fact, it’s the ladies—”

  “No! Do not tell me it’s my favorite Cessna! With the purple livery?”

  Cowboy nodded. “Yes, ma’am, Five-Five-Two-Five-Sierra. The ladies’ model.”

  “No way!”

  “Yes, ma’am, I thought you’d want it. For old times’ sake.”

  “Same old Cowboy Decker, I see.” The videographer moved up and trained the camera on the governor. Mercer beamed and said, “Gosh, it’s good to be back in Chukchi! Oh, and, Nathan, this is my son, Pudu.”

  The videographer bumped Active’s fist and grunted a hello to Cowboy.

  Ackerman stepped up and spoke into Mercer’s ear. She nodded and the aide took a seat in the terminal’s waiting area.

  The governor turned to Active. “You guys wanna move my stuff and Pudu’s from the Expedition to your rig and we’ll get going?”

  “Do we need to drop Mr. Ackerman somewhere?” Active asked.

  “Oh, no,” Mercer said. “He won’t be staying. He just flew up to give me a status report on things in Juneau. He’s flying right out again.”

  Active and Cowboy headed out to the Expedition. “Some status report,” Cowboy muttered as they unloaded gear and transferred it to Active’s Chevy.

  “Ackerman’s just here for show,” Active said. “So it’ll look like she’s actually doing something while she’s here.”

  “Ah,” Cowboy said. “Good honest work, politics.”

  “Always and evermore. But what was that about the ladies’ model? For old times’ sake? Anything you need to tell me here?”

  “Keep the customer happy,” Cowboy said. “That’s the Lienhofer motto. Always has been.” He pulled the brim of the ball cap over his eyes and wouldn’t meet Active’s gaze.

  In a couple of minutes, the Chevy was loaded and they were rolling, with Mercer in front beside Active and Cowboy and Pudu in back.

  Active started to turn right for the half-block trip to Lienhofer’s but Mercer touched his arm and pointed uptown. “Can we take a minute to look at the seawall project, Nathan? I want Pudu to get some video. My Reagan for Rushmore petition already got nearly a million Likes on Facebook, but I need a good solid local accomplishment in my ads too when I hit the primary states in a couple of weeks.”

  Active nodded and threaded the maze of little streets near the airport, worked his way to Beach Street, and started along the rampart of boulders and corrugated steel that in theory would save the street, perhaps the whole village, from the fall storms that howled in from the Chukchi and battered the shoreline with ice floes. The work was on winter hiatus, with a few remaining stacks of rock and steel guarded by orange traffic cones.

  Active felt her hand on his arm again. “Let’s stop here.”

  He parked the truck on the ocean side of the street.

  “How’s the project going?” she asked.

  “Well enough, I think. They’re supposed to wrap it up right after breakup. It’s mostly cleanup left now.”

  “And that date’s pretty solid?”

  “As solid as anything gets around here.” He shrugged.

  Mercer’s eyes frosted over. He sensed he had let a little too much Chukchi into his attitude.

  “The borough’s doing everything possible to make the deadline,” he said. “The whole town’s thrilled that you got us the money to protect Beach Street. In fact, the mayor’s giving you an award at the mushers’ banquet, but you’re not supposed to officially know about it.”

  “Then I officially don’t,” Mercer said with a satisfied nod. Active relaxed a notch. The governor craned her neck to look into the back seat. “Pudu, let’s get some video, OK?”

  Pudu peered out at the snow whirling off the d
rifts and wrinkled his nose in reluctance. “Arii, this wind will get in the mike. The audio will be too noisy.”

  “That’s OK. I can do a voice-over later.”

  “The camera might be too cold already from being in the back of the truck and the buildings are blocking the sun.”

  “Then you shouldn’t have left it back there.”

  “Arii,” Pudu said again, but he went to the rear and dropped the tailgate.

  Mercer checked her makeup with the selfie camera in her phone, then put her hand on Active’s sleeve again. “Nathan, do you mind? Walk with me along the shore here and explain the project while Pudu shoots.”

  “What? Me? Don’t you want the mayor or somebody? Public safety’s not really involved.”

  “Come on, I’ll make ya famous!” She shot him a grin.

  “Of course.” Active flipped up his hood, climbed out of the truck, and went to the tailgate, where Pudu was putting a battery into the big Canon video camera. “Any way I can help?”

  “She’s the one you better help.” Pudu cut his eyes toward Mercer in the passenger seat.

  Active took a look. The governor’s body language suggested a measure of impatience.

  “You’re supposed to open the door for her,” Pudu said.

  “Seriously?”

  Pudu raised his eyebrows. “You’re the bodyguard, ah?”

  Active put on his game face, walked to the Chevy’s passenger door, and pulled it open. “May I?” He put out his hand.

  Mercer stepped down, put her arm through his, and drew him to the edge of the street. Pudu came around the truck with the camera and Mercer became all business. She unlinked arms and said, “Could you stand on my other side, please?”

  When Active didn’t get it, she pointed at Pudu and raised her eyebrows with an apologetic look.

  Then Active understood. He was between Mercer and the camera. He stepped around her to the edge of the seawall and they waited. Then Pudu said, “OK, we’re rolling, Mom.”

  “All right,” Mercer told Active. “We’ll just walk along here. You point at the sheet piling, up and down the waterfront, that kind of thing, and say whatever comes into your head.”

  Active pointed north, up the waterfront toward the cranes at the freight docks, as Pudu shot away, then swept his arm to point south. “As you know, Governor, we have a pretty serious combination of currents along the beach here, some of it from the Katonak River mouth a few miles north and some of it tidal currents from the Chukchi Sea, and all of it apparently exacerbated by global warming…”

  He stopped as the governor squeezed his arm and pointed at the sheet piling below their vantage point on top of the seawall. He bent over to see what she was pointing at. “Officially speaking, Nathan, I don’t believe in global warming,” she said. “Luckily, we’re not wearing mikes, but…”

  “Ah,” Active said. He fake-pointed where Mercer had fake-pointed and they resumed their stroll. “And down here we have the sheet piling, thanks to your own efforts, of course.”

  “And it’s working, I see.” She pointed at the slabs of ice jumbled against the seawall.

  “It is indeed. We had a big storm from the southwest right after freezeup last fall, and the ice slammed in pretty hard.”

  Mercer nodded and gazed up Beach Street. “In the old days, we’d get what they call ivu and that stuff would ride up the shore and right out on the street like an uphill avalanche. Couple times, it even knocked into some of the houses.”

  “Our engineers assure us it will hold off the river and the ocean for at least thirty to fifty years.”

  “Especially since we don’t have to worry about global warming?” Mercer asked with the grin.

  “Exactly,” Active said.

  They were far enough down the beach that the videographer was behind them. “You don’t have to point and wave now,” Mercer said. “We can just chat.”

  “OK.”

  “First,” she said, “thanks again for agreeing to be my bodyguard. It’s overkill for Chukchi, I know, but it seems to come with the job.”

  “No problem. It’ll be good to check in with my village safety officer in Isignaq.”

  She nodded. “And how are you feeling about the director’s job today? We really could use some new blood in that office.”

  “I’m giving it serious thought, Governor. Thank you for considering me.”

  “Nathan.”

  He froze. Time stopped. It appeared the hammer was about to fall.

  “Keep moving,” she said. “Pudu’s still rolling. And call me Suka, remember?”

  “Look, er, Suka,” he said. “I really am grateful. But I have things here—”

  “Grace and her little girl?”

  “Nita?” he asked. “She’s actually Grace’s cousin. Grace adopted Nita after her mother, Grace’s aunt, died in a plane crash.”

  Mercer nodded. “I saw something about that in the records. Tragic, absolutely tragic. And Grace’s father dying like he did. What a sad, unlucky family.”

  The records? Mercer had looked into the records of the Jason Palmer case? He was still groping for words when Mercer caught his expression and touched his arm.

  “Just due diligence before I offered you the job. You can’t be too careful these days.” She turned and looked back up Beach Street. “Think that’s enough footage, Pudu?”

  “I’ll try check.” Pudu worked the buttons on the camera for a few seconds, then peered into the viewfinder. “It’s good, all right. We could go now.” He headed for the truck.

  Mercer watched him go. “You know, he can talk white when he wants to. But he wants to talk Chukchi.”

  Active again could think of nothing to say.

  “I can’t get him to stay in Juneau, he just wants to be up here. One day he’ll be like the rest of them—how’s huntin’, how’s fishin’, how’s the weather? And basketball, of course.”

  “It is a religion here.”

  Mercer brightened. “Let’s hit the trail, shall we?

  CHAPTER SIX

  Saturday, April 12

  “LOOK LIKE a water sky, ah?” Pudu shaded his eyes and squinted west through the haze.

  Active tried it with his sunglasses on, then off. The wind whipped the guard hairs of his wolfskin ruff into his eyes. He blinked away the tears. “What? I don’t see it.”

  “That dark place out there?” Pudu pointed across the ice.

  Active stared over the fuselage of Cowboy’s Cessna 207 again. Maybe there was a black band along the horizon, maybe not. If so, it was far out to sea.

  “Water sky?” Mercer said. “What’s that?”

  “It’s when there’s open water somewhere out in the ice, Mom,” Pudu said. “The clouds over it are real dark. You remember, ah?”

  “Thank you, Pudu, but I was asking our pilot. Cowboy?”

  Cowboy shoved up his Ray Bans to survey the horizon, then shook his head. “Could be.”

  “Open water?” Active said. “In this cold? Does that—”

  “Yeah, it probably means weather coming.” Cowboy dropped the sunglasses over his eyes again. “Fog, a little snow maybe, warmer probably. We go, we might wish we hadn’t.”

  “It’s certainly not warm now,” Mercer said with a shudder. “Can we go back inside while we make up our minds?”

  Cowboy led them into the Lienhofer office with its smells of cigarette smoke, ancient vinyl furniture, and the oil heater in a corner. At least it was warm, Active thought.

  Cowboy spread the aviation chart for northwest Alaska on the counter and swept a hand along the coast from Nome to Cape Prince of Wales, where Alaska almost touched Siberia. “They’re already getting it a little bit along here—Nome, Port Clarence, Tin City.” He ran his hand north up the shore toward Chukchi. “The FAA says we’ll probably have it in a couple-three days.”

  “But we’ll be back tomorrow,” Mercer said.

  “Sometimes the weather gets ahead of the forecast.”

  Mercer rattled s
carlet fingernails on the counter. “Or it never shows up. This is the Arctic. It could stay clear for the next week. Right, Cowboy?”

  “It could,” Cowboy said. “But I don’t know how likely that is.”

  “Governor, ah, Suka, maybe you should just wait here in Chukchi for the race to finish,” Active said. Could the water sky get him out of the bodyguard assignment?

  Mercer looked at Pudu, who still had the video camera slung over his shoulder, then at Active. “We’ve got plenty of video of me walking around Chukchi. I didn’t come all this way to be grounded by a little weather that may not even happen.”

  She turned summer eyes and the campaign smile on Cowboy. “You can get us through, right, Cowboy? You’re the famous Bush pilot. Don’t I remember the village girls calling you Clouddancer?”

  Pudu snickered. Did Cowboy blush under the leathery skin he had acquired from years of Arctic sun and wind?

  “Sure, yeah,” the pilot said with a shrug. “Weather craps out on us, we can sneak into one of the villages upriver till it blows over.”

  Mercer looked at Pudu, then Cowboy. “All right, then. Let’s do this!”

  They trooped out to the plane, where a brief discussion arose about seating arrangements.

  Mercer wanted to sit in front, beside Cowboy. Pudu pointed out that he would have to shoot from behind, which would permit no good angle to capture the governor’s profile as she viewed the tundra, mountains, mushers, dog teams, and her husband.

  “Good point, Pudu,” Mercer said. Pudu climbed into the right front seat with his camera and Cowboy swung into the pilot’s seat beside him. Mercer took the left rear seat, Active the right, and they donned headsets.

  Mercer looked out the 207’s side window, then forward at Pudu. “This angle gonna work for ya, Pudu?”

  Pudu twisted in his seat, pointed the camera at Mercer, and peered into the viewfinder. “I think so, Mom. Arii, it’s kinda dark inside this plane, though. I might have to use my light so you’re not too backlit against the snow.”

  He pressed a button on the camera and a light came on above the lens. In the glare, Mercer looked like a suspect in a mug shot.

  Pudu checked the viewfinder again. “Yeah, that should be good.”