Stone Cross

by Marc Cameron

  “We’ll have to adapt,” Warr said. “That’s the AST way. Didn’t they teach you that at Sitka? And anyway, the marshals aren’t on snow machines. They’re using dogs.”

  “Dogs?” Fisk scoffed. “Are you kidding?”

  “Wish I was.”

  “Do the marshals even know how to run dogs?” Fisk asked. “Because I don’t know how to run dogs.”

  “Birdie Pingayak knows how,” Warr said. “And I got a feeling this Cutter character is a fast learner.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Less than half an hour from the time Donna Taylor shot Ned Jasper and fled north through the willows, Birdie had eleven yipping Alaska huskies ready to go. Each dog was hitched to a long cable gang-line via a tug-line that ran from the rearmost point of a webbed harness that went around the animal’s chest and front legs. Except for the leader, each dog was also secured to the gang-line by a shorter length of rope attached to its collar. This neckline kept the excited dogs pulling parallel to each gang-line, working together. Absent a sled, the tail-end of the cable was, for the time being, attached to a stake driven into the ground. The dogs reared up on their hind legs like excited horses, pawing at the air, straining against their harnesses, yelping and yipping, eager to run. Birdie explained to Cutter as she worked that she was using Digger and Hawke as wheel dogs, the two that would be hitched directly forward of the sled. Though known to be hardheaded as a box of rocks, these were two of Gordon’s toughest, strongest remaining dogs. As wheel dogs, they would bear the largest load during a turn.

  She chose one of Gordon’s older dogs as the single leader—a rangy, amber-eyed male named Smudge. At just over fifty pounds, the dog’s brooding manner and agouti coloring gave him the look of a small wolf. Smudge was tried and true, Birdie said, but the main reason she’d picked him was because Donna Taylor had taken Smoke, Smudge’s litter mate. Gordon habitually ran the two dogs together as leaders, so it stood to reason that Smudge would be on a seek-and-find mission for his companion the moment they took to the trail.

  Jolene arrived on her ATV before the last dog’s tug-line was hitched, pulling a ten-foot dogsled with a flat toboggan bottom and spots for two drivers to stand. The dogs went crazy at the sight of the sled, jumping in place, arching their backs into the harnesses.

  The sled was called a double-trainer. It had an arched wood handlebar situated about a third of the way back, behind a short basket for gear or a tired dog. There was a second handlebar three feet farther to the rear on the runners for another musher. Birdie explained that her father had used this sled when he’d let her come along with him to train his team. The main musher, which would be Birdie on this trip, stood at the forward bar nearest the dogs. The driver and passenger positions each had spring-loaded brakes they could step on to slow the dogs if needed. Birdie had a spiked length of rubber snow-machine track she could deploy when going downhill—or any other time she wanted to add a little more drag. There was also a metal anchor called a snow hook, with two curved claws she could set as an emergency brake when they stopped, if she wanted to step away from the sled.

  Judge Markham stood to one side watching the procedure unfold, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. The storm blew steadily now, not in gusts, but like a fan blowing out of a deep freeze. Snow didn’t so much fall as shoot in sideways from the west, scouring exposed skin, drifting against anything that stood still.

  “Have you ever mushed before?” Markham asked, loud enough to be heard over the wind and yodel-yelping dogs.

  Cutter pretended he didn’t hear, busying himself instead with strapping Ned Jasper’s pack of emergency gear beside Birdie’s dry-bag in the small basket area at the front of the sled. He’d brought the insulated bibs from inside the cabin, but decided to pack them instead of putting them on, for the time being. Temperatures were still in the teens for the moment, but they were apt to keep falling as the storm blew through. Cutter had no doubt he’d be jogging as much as he rode on the sled, and he expected the merino wool long johns and Fjällräven pants would keep him warm enough, while still allowing him access to his weapons. Ned had graciously loaned him his scoped .270 rifle. The smaller Winchester cartridge was certainly no match in size for the gun that had killed Rolf Hagen—a beefy .404 Jeffery—but Cutter wasn’t hunting Cape buffalo. If it came down to a gunfight, the .270 Winchester had superior reach, and plenty of power for the dangerous game he was after. Lola would keep her M4, and follow with the troopers once she had the judge on the plane back to Bethel.

  “Okay,” Birdie said. She threw her parka hood back so she could be heard. The guard hairs of the rich chocolate-brown wolverine ruff enveloped her roundish face like an Alaska postcard. Snowflakes landed on her lashes and stuck there like tiny fluffs of feather down. She put a hand on Cutter’s arm to make sure he knew she was saying something important. “Eleven dogs give us lots and lots of power. The ground is frozen, snow’s not too deep. It’s gonna seem like we’re flying. I’ve watched Donna run the dogs. She’s tentative, so we might catch her quick.” Birdie sniffed from the cold, then rested a beaver mitten on the rear handlebar. “Hang on tight. Really easy to tump over on a corner if we’re not careful. You’re gonna do what I do. Lean when I lean, kick when I kick. Don’t forget to yell if you fall off. Commands are simple. Gee, haw, hike, whoa.” She handed him a headlamp, like the one she already wore around her forehead. She kept hers off for now so she didn’t blind him as she made these last preparations to hit the trail.

  “But you’ll be giving the commands,” Cutter said, strapping the light over his wool hat. He wasn’t the nervous sort, but this was completely foreign to someone who’d spent most of his life in Florida.

  Birdie grinned. “Of course. But I won’t have to do much. The dogs want to go. They’re gonna feel our energy.”

  At that moment, the wheel dogs, Digger and Hawke, turned and glared over their shoulders, as if to say, What are you idiots waiting for?

  Cutter looked at the dogs, then at Birdie. “You think they know we’re chasing someone?”

  “These are race dogs,” Birdie said, a gleam in her brown eyes like she was as ready to go as the dogs. “I guarantee they do. Besides, Smudge is gonna go hunt for his sister. The rest of them will follow his lead.”

  Judge Markham stepped closer, his questions no longer rhetorical. “Are you sure it wouldn’t be wiser to take snow machines?”

  Birdie dabbed the moisture off her nose with the back of a mitten, then shook her head. The movement was almost lost in the huge parka ruff. She raised her voice to be heard over the moaning wind. “Snow machines are too loud. Donna would hear us coming a mile away.” She checked her rifle, then patted the handlebar again, signaling to Cutter that it was time to go.

  “We gotta run silent,” she said, “so we gotta run dogs.”

  * * *

  It made no logical sense, but the traditional tattoo on Birdie Pingayak’s chin made Cutter feel like he was in more capable hands, as if she were an incarnation of one of her ancient Yup’ik forebearers who knew the old ways that would keep them alive—someone who whispered to sled dogs. The here and now made that notion more of a reality, considering Cutter’s view. Three feet in front of him on the sled runners was a Native woman clad in a traditional fur parka and caribou skin mukluks, rifle slung crosswise over her back.

  Birdie half turned, pressing the fur hood aside to give Cutter a quick glance. She checked that he was where she’d told him to be, then pulled the metal claw anchor from the snow. Lifting her foot off the brake, she smooched at the dogs, raising her voice above the moaning wind.

  “Let’s go, Smudge. Hike! Hike!”

  The dogs leapt against their harnesses, breaking the runners loose from the snow. Her left foot on a runner, Birdie kicked with her right, like skating. Cutter followed suit, helping the dogs as the sled began to pick up speed. The team gave a few last yelps and squeals, then increased their pace, settling into a quiet rhythm before they’d reached the spot where Donna Taylor’s
tracks cut into the willows. Birdie and Cutter stood with both feet on the runners, knees slightly bent, kicking for balance now and then and when the dogs needed an extra boost up an incline or through a drift. The only sounds were the hiss of runners over frozen ground, and the whistle of wind through the willow scrub. Birdie and the dogs were in their natural element. Considering the other dangers ahead of them, so was Cutter.

  He chuckled, despite the situation. They didn’t talk about this in the academy.

  Using sled dogs for important missions wasn’t exactly unheard of in Alaska. Rangers in Denali National Park still relied on teams of Alaska huskies to work the backcountry where motorized vehicles were restricted. Every year, dozens of mushers raced in shorter races like the Kuskokwim 300 in Bethel, as well as grueling races like the thousand-mile Yukon Quest between Whitehorse and Fairbanks. The world-famous Iditarod is 1,049 miles, inspired by the Nome serum run in 1925.

  Growing up in sunny Florida, where your jacket got traded in for an honest to goodness coat if the thermometer got anywhere close to sixty degrees, the fifty-below temperatures of the serum run had been unfathomable to Arliss when he was a boy. He’d devoured any book or magazine article about adventure, hot or cold. The Nome serum run was his perfect story. Heroic and difficult.

  In 1925, Nome was hit with a deadly outbreak of diphtheria during one of the worst blizzards in history, with temperatures dropping below minus fifty and windchill a mind-numbing eighty below zero. Airplanes were relatively new in 1925, and in Alaska, only used in the summer months. Flying the flu serum to Nome in that weather was deemed too risky for the finite supply of serum. The idea that men and dogs would brave frostbite and death to relay vital serum through six hundred miles of remote wilderness in blizzard conditions seemed to nine-year-old Arliss Cutter like the purest form of adventure.

  And now, he was here, standing on the runners of a dogsled, hunting for a killer, or, more likely, killers. It wasn’t a serum run, but it was an adventure, and despite the grisly circumstances, Cutter was enjoying himself. He might have even smiled had his face not been so cold.

  CHAPTER 36

  “She should be here by now,” the dark one called Rick said, staring into the stove with his only eye. “What do you think is keeping her?”

  The horrific winds outside felt as if they were about to blow away the log walls. Sarah sat on her rude bed and wished they would go ahead and do it. She would have preferred the bitter cold to a warm cabin with the man with one wild eye.

  They’d left her hands untied the last time they’d taken her outside to pee. She was almost as tall as the one with the red ponytail—she’d heard Rick call him Morgan—but she certainly didn’t look like much of a threat. Her badly swollen jaw and shattered teeth made it impossible to close her mouth all the way. This left her with a constant line of drool that she had to dab away every few seconds with the sleeve of her fleece. She lost all track of time, but she’d been there long enough that her sleeve was soaked with her own spit and blood from her badly chapped skin. She sat with her back against the log wall, legs out in front of her. David was still tied to a rough wooden chair in the corner, his head lolling back and forth like he was constantly falling asleep and then snapping back awake. Rick had marched him outside a couple of times, and she’d been surprised and relieved when she didn’t hear a shot. Sarah didn’t think she was in love with him anymore. They were obviously in this mess because of something he’d done. Still, he was a human being, and he was her husband. He needed comfort, but they wouldn’t allow her to touch him. She tried to make do with whispered words of encouragement, but Rick had beat him so hard she wasn’t sure he could hear, or if he could, if he was still coherent enough to know what was going on.

  Morgan seemed to be the nicer of the two, if you could call someone nice who kept you tied up until your hands almost fell off and then stood by while someone beat your husband’s face to a bloody pulp. He’d warned Rick that he should cool it, that he was never going to find out what he wanted to know if David died. Sarah got the impression that they had already asked a lot of questions while she was unconscious. She was too scared to ask what the questions were. Rick didn’t go into detail now. He just screamed the same thing over and over: “What happened?” or “Tell me the truth!” or some variation of the two. It was about to drive her insane.

  She’d felt sure Rick would kill her when Morgan had gone. Her mind was already feverish with terror and shock. She told herself that Morgan was leaving because he was too kind to be there when One-Eyed Rick murdered her. She’d cowered in the corner of her hard bed for hours, expecting to be stabbed, or strangled, or hacked to death at any moment. One-Eyed Rick seemed the type to do his killing face-to-face.

  As it turned out, the one-eyed man hardly said a word to her. His slaps to David had become more restrained, as if he didn’t quite trust himself not to take the prisoner’s head off. He went to the window often, wiping away the condensation with a nasty red shop rag he kept on a nail there. He paced a lot, like a wild thing in a cage. The cabin was small, and he was rarely out of striking distance if he’d wanted to hit either David or Sarah. Once, he caught her looking at the big rifle he kept in the corner next to the door.

  “Bad idea,” he’d growled. “That thing kills on both ends.”

  She’d looked away, terrified that any response would only set him off.

  “You want to know what happened to my eye?” Rick touched the scar where his eyeball used to be with a thumb and forefinger as if he were trying to open it wide.

  Her tongue shot nervously across her swollen lips.

  “It offended me,” Rick said, as if the notion was so easy to understand. “It offended me, so I plucked it out. That’s what the Bible says to do. Your husband offends me . . .”

  Morgan finally returned with some coffee and a new hat, throwing open the door to make a grand entrance with the raging storm behind him. She’d sobbed in relief when he came in. That was stupid. She was no better off. This one would give her no more than a sad smile when he shot her in the head. And maybe he wouldn’t enjoy it quite as much as One-Eyed Rick.

  At least she could move her jaw now. Her broken teeth still throbbed anytime air got to them, and the pulsing flame in her brain was the worst agony she’d ever had to endure. Surely Morgan wouldn’t have helped and set her jaw if he planned to kill her anyway. There was something in his face, like David’s cruel streak, only so much worse. He was only feigning kindness to control her.

  “Sorry,” Morgan said, sliding a metal cup of coffee across the bed toward her. “There was milk but no sugar.”

  Rick glared at her. “Don’t even think about throwing the coffee in his face.”

  Something inside Sarah clicked, and she laughed maniacally, wincing as she leaned forward to take the coffee. She’d had enough.

  “It’s like you’re reading my mind, you ignorant, one-eyed ape.”

  Morgan opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, smiling softly instead like he wanted to shield her from something bad. But she already knew. She’d never been more certain of anything in her life.

  They were going to kill her. She could not fathom a single reason why, but there was no way around the truth of it. She was going to die because of something in her witless husband’s past. The idea that David Mead—a guy who drew smiley faces on the toes of his boots—had anything of value locked away in his brain was beyond laughable. But he had to know something, something he’d kept hidden from her. Not even a week after they’d arrived at Chaga she’d realized she hardly knew the man. And now this. Had he been involved in drugs? Or some robbery where the money was lost? The information was important enough that these men had killed Rolf Hagen when he got in the way. Sarah suspected they would eventually use the threat of torturing her to convince David to cooperate. If threats didn’t work, they’d rape her in front of David, or just beat her slowly to death. One-Eyed Rick would enjoy that. Yes. That was it, she was a weapon to use against Dav
id. That was the only possible reason to keep her alive.

  The mood in the cabin had changed over the last few hours, ever since Morgan returned. It was dark outside, and it felt incredibly late, but instead of sleeping, the men had grown more active. They’d snorted something earlier, to keep them awake no doubt, and they were now bouncing off the log walls. One-Eyed Rick still swabbed the window with his rag every time he paced by, but the falling temperatures were quickly turning the condensation to a layer of greasy ice. Morgan stoked the fire, and put on more coffee. He went so far as to give a few sips to David. They’d given Sarah softened crackers a few times—it was all she could manage with her jaw and teeth. But this was the first time she’d seen them offer David anything. Morgan even dabbed away some of the blood on his face, as if to make him more presentable.

  Sarah ran her tongue over broken teeth, bringing a spark of intense pain to the back of her eye. She was getting used to the pain. If anything, it brought more clarity.

  Whatever they were going to do, it was going to happen soon.

  Soon.

  She certainly hoped so.

  CHAPTER 37

  “Whoa!” Birdie shouted over the storm. “Whoa, Smudge.”

  The dogs slowed, grudgingly at first, the snaps on their lines jingling as the sled hissed to a halt. Birdie stepped on the brake, raising her left hand in the universal sign to stop. Cutter assumed she was making a fist, but it was impossible to tell in the oversize beaver mitten. He followed her example and stepped on the brake at his station as well.

  They’d broken through the trees and willows onto open tundra. The sailor in Cutter guessed the wind at forty knots or better. It hammered the dogs, forcing them to lean into it when they stopped. Headlamp beams illuminated a faint trail ahead left by Donna Taylor’s team. Cutter had learned in the last hour that sled dogs tended to defecate as they ran instead of waiting for a break. Eight dogs left a considerable amount of sign for Birdie’s team to follow, but even that was quickly being eroded by the scouring snow.