by Jay Forman
Frazer leaned over and looked up above the tarp. “It’s a Hughes chopper. A big one.”
“You didn’t tell anyone where you were going, did you?” Aileen asked me.
“No, because I didn’t know where I was going.” I slipped my hand into my left pocket. I wanted to feel the satellite phone, wanted to reassure myself that it was still there.
“They’re probably taking a crew up to the mine.” Frazer said as he stuck the gun into the waistband of his jeans. “Okay, I’m off. I shouldn’t be long.”
“I guess I should show you around the place,” Aileen waved her arm. “This is the campsite.”
“Mind if I take a few pictures?”
“Nothing that identifies where we are, though.”
“Like what? We’re in a forest in northern Ontario. I don’t think anyone’s going to recognize that tree,” I pointed to a black spruce, “and say, oh I know where that is.”
“You’re probably right.”
I snapped enough shots to cover everything and then she pulled the flap on the tent open.
“Want some of in here?”
“Sure.”
She seemed to be very proud of her housekeeping skills, even in the bush. Everything was neat and tidy: the two sleeping bags in the tent had been smoothed flat; an extra pair of hiking boots – one on each side of the tent, both pairs about the same size – were lined up perfectly straight; Frazer’s backpack was pushed up against the right side of the tent, Aileen’s against the left side; they both had a small stack of books near their pillows; there was even a battery-powered light for reading between the sleeping bags. The only close-up I took was of the blue-topped Optima battery they were using to power the light. It was a 12-volt marine battery.
It was warm enough to take my parka off when we stepped back outside, but I still kept it close; lying it across my lap when I sat down in the folding canvas chair that didn’t have a rifle leaning against it. Aileen sat in the chair with the rifle and I somehow managed to ask her what hopefully sounded like intelligent questions about her prospecting life. She relaxed enough to let me start recording her answers. I carefully angled my phone so she wouldn’t see the screen; wouldn’t see that I’d clicked on the compass app. If I had to make a run for it I wanted to know where I was going.
I thought I could faintly hear the blades of a helicopter starting to whirr in the distance, but dropped that thought right along with my cell phone when the crack of a gunshot ricocheted through the trees. There were two more shots while I was bending down to pick up my phone and a weird metallic scraping sound. Then silence.
“What was that?” I asked Aileen.
“I’m not sure.” We both sat in silence for a minute or two, listening. “If the wind’s blowing right we can sometimes hear the big drills at the Victor Mine. Maybe that’s what it was?”
I doubted it. Yes, sound could travel farther over water and we were sort of near water, but there was no way that we’d be able to hear drilling happening over 200 kilometres away. And even if it was drilling that we’d heard, it didn’t explain the gunshots. We were too far away from the lodge for the shots to have had anything to do with the bear hunt, if that was even happening after the Bernice situation.
Aileen shrugged her shoulders and continued her story. I let my phone record it and only half listened to what she was saying.
“… and I was planning on finishing the job alone, but then Frazer showed up. You could have knocked me over with a feather when I opened my door at the Northern and saw him.”
It would have to have been an ostrich feather. Aileen was a big woman.
“I mean, he knew I was going to be here. We spent a couple of days together in Thunder Bay before going our separate ways, but I didn’t expect to see him again for months. Up until now, he’s had no interest in what I do, but someone in Wunnumin heard about what happened to Ross and told Frazer so he—”
I almost dropped my cell phone again when the satellite phone in my parka pocket rang.
“Why do you have that?” Aileen asked me as I pulled the phone out.
“The chief gave it to me.” He’d shown me how to make calls, not answer them. “He said I should have it just in case.”
“In case of what? Is he tracking your coordinates with GPS? Are you out here trying to find out where I’m staking?” Aileen stood up and loomed over me.
“No! I haven’t asked you a single question about where you’re staking.” Because I didn’t have to – Jack was going to get that information. I finally figured out how to answer the phone. “Hello?”
“Lee?”
“Adaya?”
“I’m looking for Jack. Is he with you?”
“No. Why are you calling me on this phone?” She was the person who always knew how to reach Jack. I felt my stomach start to sink.
“The chief gave me the number.”
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t want to worry you. It’s probably nothing. I’ll try him on his cell again.”
“What’s going on, Adaya?”
“There might be a problem. I got a call from the JRCC—”
“Don’t hide behind acronyms! Tell me what the hell is going on!”
“It’s the Canadian Armed Forces Joint Rescue Coordination Centre. The 406 on the Sikorsky was activated a few minutes ago.”
“What is that?”
She paused just long enough for me to know that I wasn’t going to like what I heard next.
“It’s the emergency locator beacon.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“He crashed?” I grabbed my parka and jumped out of the chair. I wanted to run, but I didn’t know where to run to.
“We don’t know that yet.”
“I know which direction he was heading in, he flew over a while ago, I can go—”
“No, Lee, let Search and Rescue handle this.” How could she stay so calm? “The beacon has already sent out the GPS coordinates of the Sikorsky and a SAR team in Winnipeg started their 30-minute call-out ten minutes ago. They should over your location very soon.”
“How soon?”
“Within two hours.”
“Two hours? Tell them to go faster! There are planes all over the place here, tell them to get out there looking for him! I can—”
“Lee, I have to go. I have to call the JRCC back and let them know that this is real.”
No! It wasn’t real! It couldn’t be real! “What should I do?”
“I’d suggest you head back to Webequie. I’ll call you back just as soon as I know something.”
“Everything okay?” Aileen’s voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere very far away.
I was still holding the satellite phone to my ear, but no sound was coming out of it anymore. No, everything wasn’t okay. Everything was … was what? I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. Jack crashed?
He couldn’t, wouldn’t. He was so careful! Usually. Except for when he said idiotic things about wanting to use night vision goggles to fly. But he hadn’t done that. He knew, better than anyone, how quickly things could go wrong during what was supposed to be a perfectly normal flight. It was the reason why he’d learned to fly! The reason why he always had to have his hands on the controls! He hadn’t let anyone drive anything he was in after his parents were buried in the Arctic tundra because of their pilot’s error. Jack didn’t make errors like that!
And he had George with him. George had flown fighter jets on missions over war zones, for Christ’s sake! And he never crashed them.
Jack Hughes, if you did something stupid I’m going to kill you!
Not kill you, kill you. Because I want you alive. You are alive, damn it!
You have to be.
You promised you’d never leave without me.
I felt a tear roll down my cheek.
“Lee?”
A shot of adrenaline washed away the haze of shock and brought everything around me back into focus. “I have to go back to Web
equie.” I smacked the tear off my face. “Now.” The voice that came out of my mouth sounded calm. Calm like Adaya’s. I rolled my parka up into a ball around the satellite phone and turned to start walking back to the river shore. “Now!”
“What’s wrong?” Aileen had to walk quickly to catch up with me in the woods.
“A friend of mine …” Really? I was going to keep the ‘friend’ charade going at a time like this? “His helicopter may have crashed.” May have. It wasn’t for sure that it had.
“Let me go first, you don’t know where you’re going.”
I let Aileen get ahead of me. She was right. I didn’t know where I was going. If I tried to look ahead … “Walk faster, please?” Damn it, the woman had legs as long as a giraffe’s! Why couldn’t she pick up the pace? The toe of my hiking boot clipped the heel of one of her boots. I didn’t do the Canadian thing and apologise. Instead, I made damn sure that I did it again and again until she was moving at a fast enough speed.
She was winded when we got to the shore. I was still controlling my breathing. I refused to let myself hyperventilate, no matter how much my body wanted to.
“Where’s the boat?”
“Frazer’s still out in it.”
“So what do we do now? Swim?” If that was my only option, I’d fucking well swim.
“He’s right there.” Why did she sound like she was talking to a moron?
I looked at where Aileen was pointing. I’d been so focused on the patch under the tree where the boat was supposed to be that I hadn’t looked at the big picture – the picture that included Frazer and the boat heading toward us. Damn it, he had a paddle in there. I’d seen it. Why couldn’t he use that to help speed up?
This was good. Anger was taking over. I could deal with anger.
“What’ll it be, ladies?” he called out as he held up something in each hand. “Squirrel or whitefish?”
Throw the fucking dead things out of the boat! They’re slowing you down.
“Lee has to get back to Webequie. A friend of hers may have been in a helicopter crash!” Aileen yelled at him.
He pulled in closer to the shore, but not fast enough for me. I ran toward him, then into the water and grabbed the side of the skiff and hauled him up onto the grassy shore.
“You mean the Hughes chopper that went over earlier?” He had to scramble to turn off the pathetic engine and tilt it up before its baby propeller hit the bottom. “You know somebody who works for Hughes?”
No, you big fucking hairy beast! I know Hughes! “Yeah.” I grabbed the two dead squirrels he was holding and hurled them on the ground.
“Where’d it go down?”
If I knew that I’d be calling Adaya, the JR-whatever, and the fucking Prime Minister to tell them to get their asses over there. “I don’t know.”
“Gee, I hope they’re okay.” He took his sweet ass time picking up his fishing rod and dead fish and stepping out of the skiff onto the shore.
“Did you see anything when you were upriver?” Aileen asked him.
“Nothing.”
I’d already thrown my parka into the boat and was sitting in the stern, my hand on the lever to lower the engine again. I’d pushed the boat out into the water as I got into it, so Aileen actually had to utilize the length of her legs to get into the bow. I didn’t wait for her to sit down before shifting the gear lever into forward. Stupid fucking electric motors! And I’d argued with Jack when he said that electric cars weren’t cars, that they were appliances? He could drive the biggest, most gas-guzzling thirsty cars in the world from now on, as often as he wanted, and I’d never say a word. He was right. The engine on Aileen’s skiff had all the power of an eggbeater.
My anger must have been showing on my face, because Aileen didn’t bother suggesting that she might like to steer her own boat. It wasn’t as if I was going to get lost.
I kept looking up, hoping to see some sort of military aircraft overhead. But I only saw ravens. And one eagle. And a V-shaped gaggle of Canada geese heading south. And the white contrails from an airplane thousands of feet above us.
Jack had taught me that word – ‘contrails’.
Damn it! I hated heading away from Jack. He was somewhere behind me, but I knew that I wouldn’t be able to find him. I had to get back to where he’d be in the very near future. They’d bring him back to Webequie, right? For sure. Because even if he had crashed, he wasn’t hurt. Maybe he’d just bumped down too hard? He’d said something about the landing gear on his helicopter. Maybe he’d just had a tire pop?
That didn’t explain why he wasn’t answering his cell phone, though. Maybe his phone was like mine and didn’t get reception up here? Who was I kidding? Not me, that was for sure. Jack had the best electronic toys in the world. He’d have a phone that worked everywhere.
I bent over and unwrapped my parka to find the satellite phone.
“Hi, it’s Jack …” I listened to his entire message; I wanted to hear his voice.
How much time had passed since Adaya’s phone call? I hadn’t been paying attention. Time stopped when she called.
But I had paid attention to how much time it took to get to Aileen’s camp. Forty-five minutes on the ATV. Almost an hour in the floating eggbeater. Another 15, maybe 20 minutes hiking through the woods.
I looked up again. Where the hell was the search plane?
I saw something big and black coming in from the west. That couldn’t be it. It was way too big to land in the middle of the bush. The only thing that could do that was a helicopter.
But the black speck got closer and lower. And it wasn’t black. It was grey. And it was really big. What good was that going to do? Maybe there was something smaller coming after them?
It had four big propellers. Propellers? Seriously? This wasn’t some sort of ‘we’ll get to it when we can’ mission! Why hadn’t the military sent something with jet engines?
The fat plane flew right over us, getting lower and lower. The air shuddered from the sound and the power from those engines. Propellers weren’t so bad, after all.
I spun around to watch the plane as it swept over the forest east of us.
“Switch seats.” Aileen was already standing up, bent over, and stepping over the seat in the middle of the skiff.
I didn’t bother slowing the engine down. I just let go of the throttle and crawled up to the bow of the boat. Something crunched when I stepped on my parka.
The big plane got so low down that it looked like it was brushing against the tree tops. Then it suddenly started going up again, sending black smoke trails out of each engine.
Not up, you morons! Stay down where you can see him!
The plane made a sweeping turn, swooped down low over the forest again and right over us. Then up it went again. Another sweeping turn. As it flew back over us again the back end of it started to open, like a whale dropping its lower jaw. An orange speck fell out of the back of the plane. Then another one. I saw two bright orange parachutes open and float down into the trees.
The plane went up high again. It made another sweeping turn and then headed straight for us. The back end was closing. And the plane wasn’t turning around to go back to where it had dropped the two parachutes.
What the hell were they doing? Jack didn’t need a pizza delivery! He needed to be rescued! The plane kept heading toward Webequie.
Turn back! You can’t leave him out there!
But it didn’t turn back. It got lower and lower and eventually disappeared behind the trees.
Aileen drove at full speed into the shore and we hit with the force of a dry sponge bouncing off a cushion.
I scooped up my parka and found out what had made the crunching sound when I’d stepped on it – the chief’s satellite phone. Great! Just fucking great! Now Adaya wouldn’t be able to get in touch with me. But I was closer to Webequie. That was something.
I almost wiped out when my foot slithered across the bottom of the skiff. I’d stepped on a plastic Ziploc b
ag that had some metal plates in it, plates like the ones Joshua and I had seen on Ross and Aileen’s prospecting stakes.
Aileen pulled the boat up onto the shore. I yanked on it so hard that it almost took flight like a balloon.
I wanted to drive the ATV, but Aileen beat me to the power seat. I barely felt the bumps as we raced through the forest and didn’t care when a branch swiped across the scar on my cheek.
Joshua was pacing around the fire pit behind the lodge when we finally made it to the end of the path.
“We got a call from Hughes saying you were coming back. I’ve got a boat waiting for us,” he said as he ran beside me down to the dock.
“Have you heard anything?”
“They’re bringing them to the res and then the Hercules will transport them to Toronto.”
Toronto? “Why? Why do they have to go—”
He cringed, as if he was about to pull off a bandage that had been stuck on a hairy bit. “It’s where the best trauma unit is.”
My camera bounced against my hyperventilating chest. “Who’s hurt?” It was only two words, but they came out just as jerkily as River’s words had come out when he’d been talking about his missing extra special rocks.
“I don’t know, I swear.” He grabbed my arm and stopped me from getting into the freight canoe that was tied up to the side of the dock. “We’re taking this one.”
A fibreglass boat with a big beautiful black 90 horsepower Mercury engine on the back of it was moored across the end of the dock.
Even over the roar of the Mercury I could hear the helicopter that was coming in low and fast over us. I looked up, hoping to see a stylized diamond on the belly of it. Instead, I saw De Beers written on the side of it. I watched it land on the island.
We didn’t head to the northern end of the island. Joshua steered further south and we pulled up to a dock. A real one. Not a floating one. I left the parka lying on the bottom of the boat and tossed my camera down onto it. I didn’t know where I was running to, but I still ran. Was the airport close?
Not close enough. Joshua’s truck was waiting for us up on the road, and Sara was sitting in the driver’s seat. She had the engine running.
