In the Barren Ground

by Loreth Anne White

  Her heart thumped a steady drumbeat as she buckled on her duty belt and strapped on her bullet-suppression vest. She retrieved her sidearm from the small gun safe in the adjoining bedroom, checked her rounds, and holstered it. Never again would she leave her sidearm unsecured. She’d learned the hard way, was lucky to still have a job, but had lost everything else.

  She whistled for her dogs, flicked off the upstairs lights, and started down the wooden steps to what served as the police station.

  She opened the outside door and let out her dogs. While they did their business, she filled their water bowls, and grabbed her to-go backpack, which included survival gear. She selected a rifle, shotgun, and ammunition from the gun room plus bear bangers, air horn, flares. Mentally she ran through her checklist while pulling snow pants over her uniform and stuffing her arms into her fur-ruffed down jacket. Donning her lined boots and regulation muskrat hat with warm earflaps, she snagged her gloves off the side table. She opened the door to call for her dogs. They came bounding in, fur cold to the touch.

  Before leaving, she called the RCMP operational communications center in Yellowknife, reported the attack, gave coordinates, and requested a coroner’s team. Twin Rivers was connected to the outside world via a NorthTel satellite communications system. A large dish in the communications enclosure outside received satellite signals that were then converted and relayed to a small cell tower, which in turn broadcast to a tiny cellular network in town. Outgoing calls operated in reverse. Internet, television, and radio signals were transmitted the same way. However, their local network remained only as good as a clear line of sight from the dish to satellites in orbit. Heavy snow, seriously foul weather, technical malfunction could all knock them off-grid entirely.

  “Be good now, boys,” she said, giving each one a ruffle and a kiss. “When Rosalie comes in she’ll feed and walk you, okay?”

  Hurriedly, she gathered her gear, clicked off the lights, and locked up behind her.

  When she’d arrived in Twin Rivers they’d given her a tiny log cabin closer to the river, which she’d really liked, but when it became apparent that she’d have to man the fort herself until reserves arrived, she, Toyon, and Maximus had moved into the apartment above the station usually reserved for the station commander.

  Outside the air was brittle. High clouds obliterated the stars. It was minus eleven Celsius. She fired up the truck, loaded her gear, and headed for Jankoski’s cabin on the outskirts of what passed for town. Her wheels crunched through the frozen snow crust, headlights poking twin yellow beams into the blackness.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Jankoski,” Tana yelled as she banged on his door with the base of her gloved fist. No answer. She banged again, louder. “Jankoski!” A dog barked somewhere.

  Tana tried the door. It was unlocked. She creaked it open, stepped inside. The place was hot, reeked of stale booze. She flicked on the living room light. And there he lay, passed out on the sofa. Shirtless, hair mussed. A day or two’s worth of growth on his face.

  Two whiskey bottles on the floor. One empty.

  She swore. “Wake up, you loser.” She prodded him with her snow boot. He cracked open an eye. It took him a moment to pull her into focus. “Tana, hey, whassup?”

  “You’re shit-faced.” She kicked at the empty bottle, sending it spinning across the wood floor. Fury rode her hard. Memories, bad ones, reared ugly heads. “No bloody respect for yourself, you know that? Or the job. You’re supposed to be on fucking standby. We got a call.”

  He struggled into a sitting position. His skin was slick with sweat. He stank. Tana winced as her stomach did a dangerous little lurch.

  “What call?” he said.

  “Fucking loser,” she muttered as she stormed toward the door.

  “Wait!” He scrambled to his feet, swayed, and grabbed for the back of a chair. “I can handle it. I’m coming—”

  “Like hell you are.” She slammed his cabin door shut in his face, stomped down the wood stairs, and climbed into her idling truck. The cabin door was flung open behind her. “Tana!” he called into the night. “It’s a one-off, okay, no need to report this, right?”

  She gassed the engine and spun her wheels, kicking up a spray of snow crystals as she took off in the direction of the airstrip. Anger thumped through her veins. Along with all sorts of other feelings and fears she did not want to articulate. A guy just didn’t sit down and consume a bottle and a half of spirits and was then still able to talk if it was a “one-off.” She had no time for that. Wanted to have no sympathy for him. Bastard was putting her head in a place she did not want to be.

  The treelined track that led to the small airstrip and hangars was eerily silent, shadows lurching in her headlights. She caught the occasional glimpse of animal eyes glowing green in the dark. She drew up outside Crash O’Halloran’s house behind the “airport.”

  Tana sat for a moment in her truck, watching his house, thinking of Timmy, feeling as though she was about to strike a deal with the devil. But it was either him, or fail to get out to the wolf attack site tonight.

  Tana banged on O’Halloran’s door, praying she’d find him in a better state than Jankoski. The door opened almost immediately, startling her. Warm light spilled out into the night. His dark-blond hair stood on end. He wore a tight, long-sleeve tee. Tattoos poked out from the base of his sleeves. His jeans slung low on his hips. He grinned, and it put dimples into his rugged, weather-browned cheeks, amusement into his light-green eyes. He reminded her of a scarred and cocky junkyard dog. An edginess crackled through her. Because he intimidated her. Just a little.

  Then she glimpsed Mindy Koe in the room behind him, snuggled on the sofa, watching TV. Mindy saw Tana’s keen and sudden interest. The girl gathered a blanket around her shoulders, got off the sofa, and exited the living room.

  Fuck.

  Tana glared at him. “You sober?”

  “Unfortunately.”

  “‘Unfortunate’ is exactly what I’d use to describe both you and Jankoski,” she said. “I need a flight. WestMin mining camp. Can you get me in, stat?”

  He studied her face for a moment. His eye contact was brazen, intimate. Tana held her ground, resisting the urge to blink, or swallow.

  He glanced skyward, scratched lazily at his stubbled chin and neck, and then looked toward the small wind sock billowing gently at the end of his porch.

  “It’ll have to be a straight in and out,” he said. “Several storm fronts approaching. First wave could punch through before morning.”

  “You can leave me there, fetch me tomorrow once it’s clear.”

  “If it’s clear,” he said. “What’s with Jankoski?”

  “He’s unavailable.”

  A slow, sly smile creased his face. “Let me get changed. Then I’ll get the ol’ Beaver girl warmed up.” He closed the door in her face.

  Tana cursed under her breath, removed her gloves, and fumbled with her cell phone. Wind was already increasing, tiny crystal flakes beginning to prick her cheeks. Coyotes yipped in the woods, their cries rising in pitch and excitement. She wondered what had been killed as she pressed the Dial button. When her call picked up, Tana said, “Rosalie, I’m flying out with O’Halloran—been a fatal wolf mauling north of the WestMin camp.” She gave Rosalie the details, then said, “I might not make it in tomorrow. Can you look after my boys, let them out, feed and water them? Their kibble is in the kitchen upstairs, moose meat in the fridge. I’ve left the door to upstairs unlocked.”

  “No problem.” A pause. “So, where’s Jankoski?”

  “He no longer works for us.”

  “Was he wasted again?”

  “Again? So he’s a drunk? Why did no one tell me?”

  “Most people out here run into trouble with liquor now and then, Tana. Who’s going to take his contract—Crash?”

  The man who likely flew in the illegal alcohol that almost killed Timmy Nakehk’o. The man who has an underage woman in his house right now. Not on he
r life.

  “We’ll find someone. This is a one-off. He can send you the bill.”

  Crash exited his door dressed in an antique leather bomber jacket lined with shearling. He wore an old leather flight cap and metal-rimmed goggles perched across his brow. He brushed past her. Not a word. She turned in his wake and saw that the back of his jacket sported a faded cartoonlike image of a big-breasted, naked woman with wings. He was dressed like a freaking World War II pilot? She watched as he made for the airstrip and unlocked the gates that opened into the fenced-off runway area. He paused.

  “Coming, Constable? You can park next to the hangar.”

  Tana muttered another curse under her breath and crunched toward her truck. She drove around to the hangar while he ran through his exterior flight check and opened the cargo door. He folded the back passenger seat forward, hopped in, and helped load her gear up into the barrel chest of the de Havilland Beaver. It was mustard yellow with a fat burgundy stripe down the side. Cartoon teeth had been painted around the prop. It looked heavy. It looked capable of eating a smaller Cessna or Super Cub for snacks.

  “You sure the WestMin strip is long enough to land this thing?” she said.

  “You want to take all this gear, you’re going to need this plane,” he said as he took the bag containing the electric fencing from her and stuffed it into the back. He held out his hand for her backpack, to which she’d strapped her shotgun and rifle. “Might not have quite the short-takeoff or landing performance of a smaller bird, but it handles comparably to a Super Cub or Helio.” He met her gaze. “You can of course use Jankoski, if you prefer.”

  She hefted her pack up toward him in silence. He stashed it, and said, “Go around to the passenger side and jump in. Headgear is on the seat.” He closed the cargo door in her face.

  Tana inhaled deeply and went around the plane. She climbed in, seated herself in the copilot seat, and put on the earphones she found there. The cockpit was tiny, spartan, and cold. When he took the pilot’s chair his arm butted up against hers.

  He began to work the wobble pump manually in order to pressurize the fuel lines. It clunked like a primitive crank. Then he pressed the start button. The engine whined and coughed like a car engine struggling against a flat battery to turn over before it caught. He gave it throttle and the whole plane shuddered and rattled to life. Tana wondered if Jankoski, even in his state, might have been a better bet with his Cessna.

  O’Halloran taxied out into position at the end of the runway.

  “So, where’s the old flying outfit from?” she asked with a nod toward his jacket, trying to distract herself as the engine built rpms and the Beaver shook at the seams to be let go.

  “My grandfather’s. He was shot down over Holland.”

  “How’d you get his gear, then?”

  “They gave it to my dad, after my grandfather’s body and wreck were found by some Dutch school kids. My dad also became a pilot. Taught me to fly when I was fourteen.”

  “That’s her age, you know?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Mindy. She’s only fourteen. Did you know that?”

  He glanced at her, something dark and fleeting in his face caught by the cockpit lights. A slow grin curved his mouth, setting those dimples back into his weather-beaten cheeks. “Is that what you think?”

  She said nothing.

  “Mindy and I are just friends.” He drew his goggles down over his eyes and suddenly looked every bit the Black Devil, or the Blond Knight. Or whatever a battle-worn, World War II flying ace was supposed to be named. All he needed was a silk scarf. “Besides, you don’t look a whole lot older than her yourself, Constable.”

  “If I catch you,” she said quietly into her mouthpiece, “I swear, I’ll put you away. Statutory rape.”

  He shot her another glance. Heat seemed to crackle off his body. It was tangible. A warning. “Is that right?” he said.

  “That’s exactly right,” she said into her mouthpiece.

  “What happened at the mining camp—why do they want you?” he said as he let his plane rip onto the snow-covered runway.

  “Wildlife incident,” she said, pressing her hands tight against her thighs.

  “What kind?”

  “I’ll know when I get there.”

  He watched her face for a moment, as if measuring her mettle, and she wished to God he’d just watch where he was going.

  “Ready, Constable?”

  “As I’ll ever be.”

  And the Beaver lifted, barely, just getting enough height for her fat belly to miss the tips of the black spruce that lined the end of the runway.

  “So here’s the safety drill,” he said as they chugged higher into the sky and banked north into the black, endless emptiness. “Survival equip is stashed in back. Unless it’s scattered all over the ground.” He gave a dark chuckle.

  Tana closed her eyes and concentrated on not throwing up. And she tried not to think about where he might have gotten his charming nickname.

  CHAPTER 4

  Out of the blackness a smattering of lights emerged at the tip of a lake that gleamed like a sheet of dark glass. Below that inky water lay the kimberlite cores of diamonds, and on the south shore perched the WestMin exploration camp.

  O’Halloran brought his Beaver in low, aiming for a strip of lights demarcating the runway. The wings wobbled wildly in a sudden downdraft that blasted from the cliffs to the east. Tana’s heart surged into her throat. Her grip tensed on her thighs as the ground yawed toward them, snowflakes hurtling like asteroids into the windshield, the prop sending a staccato beat across their line of vision. But O’Halloran steadied his plane just in time. Wheels touched frozen whiteness with a snick and they bounced, and bumped and slid down the runway.

  At the end of the strip, near two Quonset hangars, a man and a woman huddled in jackets beside an ATV, their faces ghostly under the harsh, white lights of a generator-powered, portable floodlight tower that stood nearby.

  O’Halloran taxied off to the side and brought his chunky Beaver to a stop. It was snowing lightly, wind currents from their plane making flakes shimmy in laughing circles as if in celebration of their landing alive.

  Tana removed her headset, opened the passenger side door, jumped down. O’Halloran went into the back, opened the cargo door, and started to hand her gear to her. As she took her heavy pack, rifle, and shotgun from him, a small, wiry man approached with a spiderlike stride that made him appear canted to one side.

  “Harry Blundt,” he called in a high-pitched voice, thrusting his hand forward as he neared. Tana set her pack down, shook his hand. His grip was cold, dry, vise tight. He vibrated with an electrical intensity. The woman he’d been waiting with remained near the quad. She’d turned to watch a big, burly guy who was carrying gear out of the hangar.

  “I’m the camp boss,” Blundt said, moving from foot to foot as if cold, or simply unable to keep still. He stood a head shorter than Tana, far shorter than she’d expected for a man preceded by such larger-than-life tales. But she recognized him immediately from the media. Blundt had been variously described in reports as awkward, hyperactive, uber-intense, ADD, but a brilliant geologist–treasure hunter from the interior of BC. He was the man who’d discovered the diamonds beneath Ice Lake while De Beers and other major mining outfits had deemed this area barren of the precious gems. If Blundt’s WestMin mine panned out, if he managed to secure all the requisite government approvals and investment backing, he was on his way to becoming a very, very rich little man. His intense, dark eyes bored up at her from inside their deep-set caves below a thatch of gray brow. He reminded her of a beetle.

  “Constable Tana Larsson,” she said, pulling on her gloves. Her breath clouded in front of her face. She reached up and took her pack with the electric fencing from O’Halloran, set it down on the hard-packed snow with the rest of her gear.

  “Markus is prepping to take you in,” Blundt said. “A terrible thing to have happened. Terrible. Mark
us has one quad all juiced up and safety checked already, busy on the other. He’s my security man, top guy, good, very good, ex-African mines, here, can I carry something for you?” Words shot out of Blundt’s mouth and tripped over each other at a machine-gun clip. Tana had read about his idiosyncratic, staccato-like speech, how he jumped from one topic to another as if his mouth couldn’t keep up with the speed of the ideas firing in his brain. It could drive a person nuts, she’d been told.

  She’d heard also about how ruthlessly Blundt drove his crews. He never tired himself, and he expected no less of others. He’d even worked his fourteen-year-old son to the breaking point. The resulting clash had been legendary. Harry Blundt was quite simply a Northwest Territories and Yukon diamond legend, not much different from the idiosyncratic characters of old.

  Tana hefted her pack onto her shoulders, and glanced up at O’Halloran. He still had another bag of hers to hand down.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll bring over the last of this stuff.”

  She hesitated, then said, “Thanks.”

  “The attack site is about three hours north of here on quad,” Blundt said as he led Tana in his crablike scuttle toward the waiting ATV and hangars. The woman stood smoking, watching them approach.

  “Northeast side of the lake is the only really navigable route up Headless Man Valley. Bit rocky, some swampy muskeg halfway in, where a river feeds into the lake. That part can be tricky, but it should be mostly frozen by now. Then it gets steep. Big boulders up to the esker ridge. Slick with snow and ice right now. Will have to trek the last section up to the cliff base where Heather found them. Terrible, terrible thing. My guys shot four of the wolves. Probably more scavengers there now.” Blundt’s gaze darted up to Tana, then went to her shotgun and rifle. “You came alone?”

  “I’m all there is.”

  “Terrible thing,” he said, again, and Tana wasn’t sure whether he meant the attack, or the fact she was solo.

  Hard snow squeaked under their boots. The air was sharp, a brisk breeze coming off the water, trailing wisps of mist in behind it.