by Stan Jones
“OK, Mom.” He swiveled in his seat and aimed that camera at her.
Mercer looked straight into it and flashed a campaign grin. “Yee-ha!”
Active leaned over and peered between Cowboy and Pudu’s shoulders for any lightening above that would mean they were about to break out on top, about to burst into that luminous heaven of sunlight and blue sky above the clouds, free of the fog and freezing rain and ice that wanted to turn Cowboy’s 207 into a falling coffin.
Nothing, no change in the gray mass overhead.
He shifted his gaze forward and peered past Cowboy’s shoulder at the instrument that told the story of the Cessna’s struggle to get above the icing. The instrument was called the vertical speed indicator, if Active remembered right. It had a black dial with white numbers and a white needle that pointed straight left if the plane was in level flight. If the needle angled upward, that meant the plane was climbing. If it angled downward, that meant the plane was diving.
Just now, the white needle was angled up, but not by much. Active was too far back to read the dial in the half-light of the cabin, but it looked like the needle was indicating maybe four hundred feet a minute of climb. At that rate, they should get through three thousand feet of cloud in seven or eight minutes.
The problem was, a Cessna 207 on a cold day should climb a lot faster, even with four people on board. Active was pretty sure he had seen this very Cessna climb seven or eight hundred feet a minute with a similar load. If the ice had already cut the climb rate in half, what were their chances of getting on top before the plane became unable to climb at all?
As Active watched, the white needle dropped a little towards the horizontal. Cowboy glanced at it, then at a part of the instrument panel Active couldn’t see, then lowered the nose a little. The white needle dropped a little closer to horizontal. Now they were climbing two hundred feet a minute if they were lucky, Active figured. He watched, paralyzed, as the needle continued to drop until it finally pointed straight left. Zero climb, and the engine screaming at full power.
He leaned his head against the side window and craned his neck to look up again. Still no sign they were close to breaking out. He tried to read the altimeter, which was right above the vertical speed indicator. Did it really say they were only at two thousand feet?
Cowboy clicked onto the headsets as the vertical speed indicator dropped below horizontal. “Listen, folks. This airplane’s given about all it’s got and we’re not gonna come out on top of this stuff. We have go back down through it till we spot the terrain and I can find a place to set us down. So everybody look out your window and keep your eyes peeled for anything that looks like a hill or a rock or a bush or a creek bank. And when you see it, yell out real loud and say which side.”
The pilot dropped the nose a notch and backed off the throttle as the airspeed built. The engine note eased and the needle on the vertical speed indicator slid downward until it stabilized at what looked to Active like a descent rate of a couple hundred feet per minute. Then he remembered Cowboy’s instructions and fixed his gaze on the gray chaos outside his window. Gray chaos with slabs of jagged granite in it.
Time crawled past. What if they hit a mountain and he never saw Grace Palmer again? How much thicker was the ice on the wing? Had they been droning down through these ice clouds for five minutes or thirty? Would Grace Palmer end up on back on the street if he didn’t make it through this? What if he’d taken up with Lucy, spent his life in the glow of that sunny normalcy of hers, instead of with the irresistible and damaged Grace Palmer? Would he be any happi—
“Cowboy!” Pudu shouted. “Isn’t that Shelukshuk Mountain? On the right! On the right!”
Cowboy shot a fast glance out Pudu’s window. “Yeah, and that’s Shelukshuk Creek,” he said. Then he backed off the power, nudged the ice-crippled Cessna into a gentle left turn, and they started down.
Now Active could see it, too, a brush-bearded furrow of white crossing a slope toward the Isignaq River, invisible and an unknown distance away in the fog.
“We can work our way down to the Isignaq, then follow the bank upstream to Walker,” Cowboy said. He glanced at the ice on the underside of the wing. “Assuming we stay in the air long enough to get out of this crap.”
Cowboy nursed the Cessna along the thread of the creek until the bank of the Isignaq swam dimly into view, then eased into another turn and started upstream, shoulders hunched harder than ever against the harness.
The pilot added power again and again in the effort to keep the Cessna in the air. The roar of the engine built up, the ice built up, and, Active sensed, the airspeed dropped. Cowboy lowered the wing flaps a notch farther and that seemed to stabilize the situation for a minute or two. Then the airspeed began to bleed away once more.
“It’s just us, Nathan,” Cowboy said over the headset. His voice was high and tight again. He didn’t sound like Cowboy. “I’m about out of airspeed, altitude and ideas here. We gotta set down and I need you to do what you can for the governor back there. Try to help her with what I’m gonna say next.”
Another click, and Cowboy was back on the intercom to all of them. Somehow, he had recovered his Bush pilot drawl. “Folks, this airplane’s about done flying, so we’re going to have to land. There’s a slough about a mile ahead that usually blows clear of snow this time of year, and I’m gonna head for that. So slide your seat as far back as it will go, buckle in tight, and hold something soft in front of your face if you can find it.”
Active put his arm over the seat back and fumbled through gear in the Cessna’s cargo space. Finally he fished a down mummy bag through the safety webbing and passed it to Mercer, who cradled it in front of her. Active couldn’t reach anything for himself, so he crossed his arms in front of his own chest.
Cowboy lifted his right hand from the throttle and raised his arm over his head. “Everybody look up here. You see my arm? There’s a good chance we’ll finish this upside down. If we do, wait till we come to a stop, then brace one arm hard against the ceiling over your head like I’m doing now to help break the fall, then unbuckle your seat belt. Everybody got that? Governor, Nathan, take anything sharp out of your pockets and put it in the seat back in front of you. Pudu, you give your camera to Nathan and let him put it in the cargo space behind the seats.”
There was a scramble in the cockpit as everyone complied, then another click, then silence. Then a hurricane howled in as Cowboy swung the bottom of his window out a few inches and peered ahead through the resulting slot.
“Arii,” Pudu said.
“What’s going to happen?” Mercer asked over the intercom. “Cowboy?”
More silence.
“I think he switched off so he could concentrate,” Active said. He pointed at Cowboy, his face in the hurricane as he nursed the plane through the fog with only—as far as Active could see—a fringe of willows and alders along the riverbank for navigation.
Slower and slower, lower and lower, the Cessna slogged through the murk. Then the plane jerked into a left turn and a squeal sounded that Active recognized as the stall warning.
“Cowboy?” Mercer said.
The 207 shuddered and sagged out of the air. Active braced for impact, but it never came, and he realized they were rumbling across a field of river ice, bare except for a spiderweb of snowdrifts a few inches high.
Cowboy raised the flaps, brought the plane to a halt, pushed open his door, and vomited into the blast from the propeller.
No one spoke as he pulled his head back in, closed the door, stopped the engine, and flipped switches to “OFF”.
Active looked out at the wing and strut on his side of the plane. The ice had to be an inch thick in places. He could see one propeller blade on his side. It was sheathed with ice on the leading edge, too.
Cowboy still hadn’t said anything. Neither had Pudu or the governor.
“Thanks, Cowboy,” Active said into the thunderous silence. “Nobody else would have—”
�
��Would have gotten us into this mess?” The pilot sounded at once bitter and mournful, a man who had pushed himself past the limits of his competence, as when he had killed Aggie Iktillik.
“Would have gotten us down in one piece, I was going to say.”
“I knew you could do it, Cowboy.” Mercer’s tone was bright. She sounded like a mom taping a child’s drawing of a rainbow to the refrigerator.
“Just doing my job, ma’am,” Cowboy said, back in Bush pilot mode.
“Now what?” Mercer asked.
“Now we wait,” Cowboy said. “The FAA in Chukchi knows where we are, at least generally. I told them what we were doing before we started down. I’ll turn on our emergency beacon and a satellite will tell ‘em exactly where we are in a few minutes.” Cowboy reached out and flipped another switch on the instrument panel, this time to ON.
“And then what?” Mercer asked. “Will they send a helicopter?”
Cowboy shook his head. “Not even a helicopter can fly in this crud. They’ll probably send snowgos from Isignaq. Or Walker, maybe.”
“What? How long will that take?”
“Hard to say,” Cowboy said. “Sometime tonight, maybe tomorrow.”
“No, I have appointments and events.”
Cowboy opened his door, swung his legs out, looked back at Mercer, and raised his eyebrows. “Right now, I gotta cover this engine and then hit the bushes. There’s tissues in the seat backs if anybody else needs to.”
He climbed out, zipped the oil-stained Bush-pilot parka with its duct-tape patch, pulled up the hood, dug the orange engine cover out of the baggage compartment in the plane’s nose, and bungeed it into place.
Then he trudged off across the slough, Sorels crunching on the snow as he faded into the murk.
“Nathan!” Mercer’s tone was outraged. “Can’t you do anything?”
Not a damned thing, Active said to himself. To Mercer he said, “I think he needs a moment. I’ll go talk to him in a bit.”
Mercer said nothing, just pulled her phone out of a pocket.
He debated telling her the odds of getting cell bars on the upper Isignaq but decided against it and stepped out of the plane.
Mercer put the phone away with a “hmmph!” She looked ready to snap, but she climbed out and zipped up. She reached into the pouch behind the front passenger seat and came up with a packet of Kleenex, then climbed down and stalked off in the opposite direction from where Cowboy had gone.
Active climbed out, zipped up and covered up, then swung around to what must be south, as that was where the murk was lightest. The sun was still above the horizon, but the long slow slide into evening would come in a few hours and their slough would be black as only the Arctic wilderness could be on a foggy night. At least it wasn’t too cold—five below at most, he estimated—with just a light breeze moving. Either the wind hadn’t reached this far upriver yet, or it was petering out as it spread inland. Snow sifted down, snow with pinpricks of sleet in it when it hit his cheek. He started across the ice after Cowboy.
He found the pilot sitting on a downed spruce, a Marlboro between his lips and a lost look on his face.
“Hey, buddy.”
Cowboy dragged on the Marlboro and didn’t speak for a long time. “A man is what he does,” he said. “And when he can’t do it anymore, then he’s not.”
“You can still do it. You just had the governor of Alaska on your case.”
“Yeah, but why did I listen?”
“She’s got something.”
“I know, but what?”
“Charisma,” Active said. “Something. You want to do what she wants.”
Cowboy nodded, took a drag, and exhaled. “And you think she’ll think you’re not a man if you don’t do it.”
“Mm-hmm,” Active said.
Cowboy smoked. “And a man is what he does.”
Active stepped a few paces away from the lost cause and relieved himself. Cowboy would have to extricate himself from the conundrum.
“Be getting dark before long,” Active said.
Nothing from Cowboy.
“We need to do any organizing here?” Active motioned at the Cessna, a ghost plane in the fog. “Put up a tent or something?”
“Whatever she wants.” Cowboy shrugged. “I got an Arctic Oven in my emergency stuff. But we could wait it out in the plane. We’ve got enough gas to keep warm by running the engine every couple hours. I’ll taxi over close to the brush here and we’ll build a fire. Nothing like a fire to brighten things up. Plus, I got some pilot bread and freeze-dry in my emergency stuff, mac-and-cheese, chili, I don’t know what-all.”
“Arigaa, real bellywarmers,” Active said.
Cowboy stood and stretched and they headed for the plane, Sorels crunching in the fog. “She puts some kind of whammy on you,” he said.
“Mm-hmm.”
Their heads jerked up as one.
“What the hell!” Cowboy said.
“Was that a rifle?”
The crack came again, then again and again. Active broke into a run.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Saturday, April 12
ACTIVE REACHED THE Cessna first.
Cowboy puffed to a stop beside him a few seconds later. The plane was deserted. “Where the hell are they?”
Active peered into the fog and shook his head. He made a megaphone of his hands and shouted into the murk. “Governor? Pudu? Hello-o-o-o-o?”
No answer, then the rifle cracked again.
“Come on,” Cowboy said. “I think I got a direction on it.” He sprinted off the same way Mercer had gone minutes earlier. Active followed, noticing now that a trail of boot tracks led the same way.
“Over here, guys,” came the governor’s voice. “I got us a caribou for dinner!”
The trail led to the edge of the slough, up the snowy bank, and into the willows, where they found Mercer and Pudu standing over the downed caribou, a bigbellied female with spiky little antlers. Judging from the blood on the gray-brown fur, she had been hit once in the stomach and once in the ear. And judging from the red snow, she had thrashed out her last moments in agony until someone had put the kill shot through her ear.
“Come on, Pudu, get some more video.” Mercer put her foot and the butt of a rifle on the caribou’s shoulder. “I spotted a little band in the toolie bushes here while I was using the facilities, so I went back to the plane and looked, and sure enough, you had this trusty old .308 in your survival gear, Cowboy, so I got Pudu and his camera and we came back with the rifle and I shot the caribou and Pudu got it all on tape and now we’ve got ourselves a real Bush Alaska dinner! And it’s gonna look great on YouTube.” Mercer beamed at her son.
“Arii, Mom, I told you not to shoot a cow, they’ve got their babies in them now.” Pudu poked the animal’s swollen belly with a boot. A rivulet of half-digested reindeer moss oozed out. “And you gut-shot her.”
“Oh, never mind that,” Mercer said. “Leave it out of the frame. Just get me and the caribou’s head and shoulders in the shot.”
“And then I had to finish her off for you because you didn’t want blood on your clothes!”
“Pudu. Get your camera.”
Pudu thrust gloved hands into the pockets of his snowgo suit and glared at his mother. “This is dumb.”
“I said, GET. YOUR. CAMERA.”
Pudu dropped his gaze and turned to pull the Canon from its case on the snow a few feet away.
“Teenagers!” Mercer said with a bright smile.
“Governors,” Active muttered to Cowboy.
Pudu flicked on the camera’s light and taped for a minute or so as Mercer posed in the glare.
“You want me to get some video of you cutting it?”
“Please, Pudu. I’m pro-life, remember? You’re seriously asking if I want to be on camera when that calf gets cut out if its mother’s belly? Seriously? Is that what you want?”
“Arii, Mom,” Pudu said. He put the camera away, pulled an Old Timer fol
ding knife from a zipper pocket on the leg of his snowgo suit and opened the blade, muttering what Active thought might be, “Like you could cut caribou anyway.”
Mercer didn’t hear, or pretended not to. She turned the bright smile on Decker. “So, Cowboy, whatcha got in that survival kit we could throw in the pot for some caribou stew?”
The pilot shot Active a resigned glance before he spoke. “A lot of Mountain House. I guess there’s some chili mac in there, maybe some potatoes and broccoli?”
“Mmm,” Mercer said. “Pudu, you bring up the backstrap and we’ll be eatin’ like real Alaskans tonight!”
Pudu grunted and slid the blade in at the cow’s anus, then drew it up the midline of the belly, deftly parting the hide without puncturing the stomach lining underneath. He flipped off his gloves and began separating hide from muscle with bladelike motions of his hands.
“Um, Governor?” Nathan said as they started for the plane. “He will bring all the meat, right? Otherwise, Tundrabunny and the other bloggers will be all over you for wanton waste.”
“Of course,” Mercer said. “We’ll take it with us to Isignaq and Pudu can get video of me giving it to the elders.”
Active nodded, feeling a little dizzy. There was no end to the woman. “And, um, you do have a hunting license, right? Otherwise, Tundrabunny—”
“Of course, Nathan. I’m the governor of Alaska. And call me Suka, OK? Like I said?”
“OK,” Active said. “Suka.”
“Governors,” Cowboy muttered.
“I GOTTA HAND it to you, Governor,” Cowboy said an hour later as he lit a Marlboro. “You make a mean caribou stew.”
They were sitting on bedrolls and spruce boughs around a pretty nice campfire Pudu had made by scavenging wood from deadfalls. Cowboy had thrown a cup of avgas from the Cessna’s tanks on top of the pile and tossed on a match to start what he called a Bush pilot fire. Beside it, the remnants of the stew were freezing to the sides of the pot on Cowboy’s camp stove.
As they cleaned their bowls and licked their spoons dry, Cowboy’s face lit up. “Wait a minute, I think I’ve got dessert.”
