A Cold War

by Alan Russell

  Hamilton shook his head again. “I think I remember all that so vividly because it was a more innocent time back then, or at least it felt that way. Alaska wasn’t used to mass murders. The world wasn’t used to mass murders. Sounds silly, but to me it felt like the Silka shootings opened Pandora’s box in this state. He tainted Alaska forever.” He looked over at Martin. “You ever wonder if evil leaves behind a trail?”

  “What do you mean, like some kind of ghost?”

  “No, not like that. I’m thinking that it kind of poisons everything around it, and the evil seeps into the landscape, unseen but felt.”

  “You mean like an evil toxic dump?”

  “Something like that,” Hamilton said, nodding. “I’m not talking a Stephen King novel. But I’ve been in places where bad things have happened and I’ve felt this darkness, and I kind of wonder if it calls to its own.”

  “You think Grizzly was attracted to this area because of that?”

  “I think it was more a case of his wanting to be far from any probing eyes.”

  “If he’s alive,” said Martin, “and he’s the one who took Elese, I want to be the one who kills him.”

  Hamilton tapped his ears. “That engine is sure loud. I’m afraid I didn’t hear what you just said.”

  Martin nodded and said no more, understanding the hint.

  “The Mafia likes to say revenge is a dish best served cold,” mused Hamilton. “If that’s the case, this place surely fits the bill.”

  As frigid as it was inside the plane’s cabin, Hamilton knew it was a lot colder outside. Although he’d lived in Alaska all his life, what struck him was how devoid of people this landscape was. The wilderness was both exhilarating and threatening.

  Hamilton continued with his spotting, looking out the windows and scanning the area around them with binoculars. Like most people he was used to seeing man-made environments. That thumbprint was noticeably absent. Only snow and ice covered the ground.

  He lowered the binoculars when the single-engine plane began bobbing on the wind currents. Up until then the flight had been remarkably smooth, but once the turbulence began, he suspected his face looked green.

  “Did I ever tell you I’m not too keen on flying?”

  “Not in so many words,” said Martin, “but your clenched palms, sweaty face, and terrorized looks kind of clued me to your condition.”

  “And you thought you would soothe my nerves by flying just above the tree line with the wind shaking the plane?”

  “I did it for you; I was afraid you’d complain about not being able to see.”

  “What’s the last thing that goes through a bug’s head when it hits a windshield?”

  “What?”

  “Its ass.”

  Martin took the plane up.

  “In search of Bumfuck, Egypt,” Hamilton said. “That sounds like a bad reality TV show. I wonder how Tomcat came up with that one.”

  “I thought cops knew all the off-color slang.”

  “I thought we did, too.”

  “Having spent a few years in the Land of Lincoln, I can tell you about B. F. Egypt. If you go to South Illinois, you’ll find towns with names like Cairo, Thebes, and Karnak. The area is known as Little Egypt. Before the interstates were put in, traveling from Chicago to South Illinois wasn’t an easy proposition. If you were traveling from the Windy City, those little Podunk towns seemed like they were deep in the sticks.”

  “If BFE means the middle of nowhere, I’d say we’ve arrived.”

  “No argument here.”

  Martin exhaled a vapor trail. The heater was going, but the plane was still freezing. “It’s colder than a Siberian well-digger’s ass,” he said. “Anyone would be crazy to live here this time of the year.”

  Hamilton rubbed his hands in agreement. “It’s so cold, if you lived here you’d have a tough time even having warm memories.”

  Below them, he thought, it looked like a pen-and-ink etching, everything black and white and stark. He didn’t say it, though. People were never comfortable with poetic cops.

  He raised his watch for a look. “It’s noon in Alaska. You know what that means?”

  “What?”

  “Happy hour.”

  If you went by the disappearing sun, it would be hard to argue. Martin nodded but didn’t smile. “Before too long we’ll have to turn back,” he said. “These days are just too damn short.”

  “December in Seward means you get about five hours of daylight between sunrise and sunset. And here the days are even shorter.”

  Both men grew silent, weighed down by the approaching darkness. They flew in silence for another quarter of an hour.

  “We’re not very far from Grizzly’s lake,” said Martin, “but I think it’s time to wave a white flag.”

  “No argument here. I was beginning to get tunnel vision anyway.”

  “You’re not done with your looking. We’ll be flying a little bit of a different route back, so you’ll need to keep staring out your window.”

  “Great,” said Hamilton.

  He rubbed his eyes while the plane turned around, and once more took up his rubbernecking. They were about fifteen minutes into their return journey when he saw it. He sat up straight and pointed to a spot off to his right. “What the hell is that?”

  Martin craned his neck to look through the window at where Hamilton was pointing. On the ground below them, it looked like red paint had been scattered around the icy landscape.

  “Could it be blood?” asked Martin.

  “Blood wouldn’t be that color,” said Hamilton. “It usually looks more like rust than whatever that is we’re seeing.”

  Martin angled the plane lower for them to get a better look. “What about a wolf kill that got scattered around? Maybe they were feasting just as it began hailing or sleeting. That would have iced everything up. And it would explain why everything is splattered all about.”

  “That’s no wolf kill. And what we’re seeing isn’t blood.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say we’re looking at tomato sauce.”

  “Tomato sauce?”

  “Maybe spaghetti sauce.”

  “That’s quite a spill of tomato sauce.”

  “Not if a couple of those Costco seven-pound cans exploded all over the ground.”

  “You really think that’s what we’re seeing?”

  Hamilton nodded. “You toss one of those cans out of an airplane, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it ruptured and splattered everywhere. And that’s just the kind of provision a mountain man would be packing. They stock up on big bags of beans, rice, and pasta. All you need to do is add some wild game and tomato sauce, and you got yourself something almost edible.”

  “But why would anyone throw seven-pound cans of tomato sauce out of an airplane?”

  “You’re the pilot. You tell me.”

  Martin thought about it for a moment and said, “If it wasn’t a prank or an experiment, there’s only one good reason. They needed to lose weight in order to gain altitude.”

  They’d flown past the red landscape; Martin began the slow process of turning the plane around to get a better look at what was below. To Hamilton it felt as if they were doing a strafing run. They flew close to the ground—too close for his comfort.

  “Okay,” he announced, “it sure as hell looks like tomato sauce. Now stop scaring the hell out of me and get the plane up in the air.”

  “How about I find a place to land, and we get a sample of what we’re looking at?”

  “That sample is going to have to wait. I don’t want to be a statistic. Let’s get out of here while there’s still light.”

  Martin sighed and then nodded reluctantly. “So close,” he said.

  “The spaghetti sauce isn’t going anywhere.”

  “When are you available to return so that we can search the area?”

  “I’m tied up most of this week.”

  “There’s nothing y
ou can do?”

  “I’ll try.”

  “We’re close, I know it. The plane Grizzly hired likely iced up, and they had to throw out provisions.”

  “You like jumping to conclusions.”

  “It’s him,” said Martin.

  Instead of commenting further, Hamilton asked, “You hungry?”

  Martin nodded and said, “I’m starved.”

  “I don’t know about you,” said Hamilton, “but I got this sudden hankering for Italian.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Nina was praying more than she ever had. She prayed for help and guidance, but most of all, she kept praying for a miscarriage. She wished she had the kind of faith to fear no evil while walking through the valley of the shadow of death. But she was scared of plenty of things, starting with Baer.

  No time for a pity party. She had to find a way through that valley of death. She was pregnant and felt like shit, there was a psychopath who had to be dealt with, and the world around her was scary and frozen.

  Tough and be tougher.

  I am a runner, Nina thought, and runners don’t give up on a race. Marathoners find a way to get to the finish line. It doesn’t matter if they’re in last place. They still finish. And that’s what she had to do.

  Baer stood outside her pen, waiting for her to stop retching. Nina knew that he wasn’t looking out for her as much as he was the cause of her indigestion. When she finished spitting up, he handed her a bowl of broth. In the mornings it was all she was able to keep down. He’d placed some hardtack in the bowl. The broth had softened the hard biscuit, and Nina took a few bites of it.

  “I’m not sure about you going out with me today,” he said.

  Ever since learning she was pregnant, Nina had made a point of working outdoors with Baer. Yesterday she’d shoveled dog shit and chipped away dog piss. Baer had done the heavy lifting, carting everything away to compost, but Nina hadn’t used her pregnancy as an excuse to avoid work. Now, more than ever, she felt the need to act. There was no way she wanted to give birth in the wild, far from medical help. She had to find a way to get away well before then.

  “I’m sure,” she said.

  “I’ll be checking the traplines today. There’s not enough snow on the ground for me to harness the team, so that means walking more than a dozen miles today, most of it over hilly terrain.”

  “That sounds better than being cooped up here.”

  “You look like you’re ready to throw up.”

  “I can hold it down.”

  He frowned. “I’m not sure if working the traplines is something a pregnant woman should be doing.”

  “Do you want me to have a healthy child? It will need to be healthy to survive nuclear fallout. Even a fever can be fatal to a baby if it doesn’t develop a strong immune system.”

  She knew she was playing not only on Baer’s end-of-world fears but also on Daniel’s death. She could likely tell him anything about prenatal care and he would accept it as gospel. The advent of her pregnancy had changed their relationship. That was something Nina was trying to use to her advantage.

  When he didn’t immediately answer, she said, “There have been all sorts of studies showing that a mother’s exercising makes the fetus stronger. The worst thing you can do to a developing baby is to keep me penned up.”

  She spoke with such conviction that she almost believed what she was saying, even though she had no conception of whether it was true or not.

  “Okay,” Baer said.

  It’s conditioning, thought Nina, pushing to keep up with Baer. I’m preparing for the race of my life.

  But she’d never had to do conditioning with her stomach flip-flopping and her hormones at war. Still, she wasn’t carrying all the extra weight that Baer was. In his pack basket were traps, stakes, a small shovel, an ax, snares, scents, lures, and bait. That was in addition to water, food, and an emergency tarp. Nina wouldn’t have been surprised if he were carrying fifty pounds of equipment and supplies.

  They were both wearing snowshoes, which made their walking easier. Nina assumed her snowshoes had once belonged to Elese. They were constructed of lightweight high-tech material. Because she weighed so much less than Baer, walking on snow was actually easier for her. Nina couldn’t afford to be carrying much in the way of extra weight when she tried to escape. That meant she’d have to make the attempt before she was five months into term. After that time her body would betray her with too much extra weight.

  “Something’s in the snare,” said Baer.

  Be dead, prayed Nina. The last animal, a muskrat, hadn’t been. The animal had been caught in what Baer called a floating raft set. He’d dispensed the muskrat with a shovel, all the while extolling the virtues of its meat, fat, and fur. It was all Nina could do to not throw up.

  “It’s a marten,” he said, sounding pleased.

  Nina was glad to see that the cat-size animal looked to be as stiff as a board. She watched as Baer removed the wire from the marten’s neck.

  “It looks like a mink,” she said.

  “Same weasel family,” said Baer, “and same fierceness, but bigger. This one struggled so hard it strangled itself. Sometimes they’re so desperate to get away they wrench hard enough to break their necks.”

  Nina wondered if those marten purposely killed themselves. What would she do to escape the line?

  Baer ran his hand along the dark fur and said, “Beautiful pelt. Of course, when it ends up in a stole or coat, it’s not called a marten anymore. I guess that doesn’t sound expensive enough. It becomes a sable.”

  He tossed the stiff animal into a burlap sack he was carrying in the pack basket and began setting another snare.

  Nina turned away from him and tried to hide her gagging, but of course he noticed. “With all the shit that’s happening in the world,” he said, “you should be thankful. Having a baby out here away from the wars will likely save its life.”

  Hearing his garbage was almost enough to make Nina puke again. “Are you serious?”

  He nodded. “Terrorists are gathering weapons of mass destruction. And let’s not forget the nuclear threat posed by Russia, China, and Pakistan. People don’t realize there are about fifty wars going on right now. And any one of those could be the tinderbox that sets off the whole world. People think America is secure. They don’t realize when the time comes how fast the Lower Forty-Eight will be toast. Of course, so will the rest of the world. The only spots on the globe where anyone will have a chance of survival are places like this.”

  “And after that apocalypse, it’s your job to repopulate the world?”

  He either didn’t hear her sarcasm or chose to not respond to it. “There is nothing more important than family.”

  His words sounded long-rehearsed.

  “There are women who might like this kind of . . . adventure,” Nina said. “Why not go find a pioneer woman who wants this kind of lifestyle?”

  “I couldn’t afford to spend my life looking.”

  “But you might have found a woman who loved you.”

  “Believing in romantic love is the worst mistake a man can make. Or a woman. What easier way is there to deceive someone? The notion of love only leads to regrets and disappointment and worse.”

  Once again, to Nina’s ears it sounded like he was repeating what someone else had said, or remembering what someone else had done.

  “Did your father love your mother?”

  Baer’s face showed his dislike of her question. “She betrayed him. And she betrayed me.”

  “How did she do that?”

  “She left like a thief in the night. You don’t leave your family.”

  The words sounded wrong. Baer wasn’t one to say things like “thief in the night.” But his bitter father might have. He might have said those words over and over to his young son.

  “I heard her,” said Baer.

  “What did you hear?”

  “I heard her when she was leaving. I think what alerted me wa
s that she was trying to be overly quiet. She was about to go out the door when she saw me. I saw her surprise—and fear. She whispered for me to go back to sleep. And she begged me not to tell.”

  “But you did?”

  His only answer was a shrug.

  “Losing a mother at any age is difficult,” Nina said.

  “She made a bad choice. She paid for that choice.”

  “Do you understand how those abandonment issues have followed you?”

  “‘Abandonment issues,’” said Baer, his tone clearly disdainful. “When I was in Fairbanks, I saw a T-shirt that caught my eye. It said, ‘If You Love Something, Set It Free.’ And right below that it said, ‘And If It Doesn’t Return, Hunt It Down and Kill It.’”

  Nina wondered whether he’d hunted down and killed Elese.

  “If you’re done puking,” he said, “let’s get moving.”

  After fifteen minutes of hard walking, Baer came to a stop and began setting up some snares.

  “Stay off the game trail,” he warned Nina, gesturing her over to the side.

  It took her a few moments to make out what he was referring to. The trail was distinguished by a flattened area that had overgrowth on either side. It was in that space where Baer was positioning his snares.

  Nina looked a little more closely and could make out some paw prints. There was also some scat visible along the trail. She’d heard Baer comment more than once, “Shit and spoor will tell you all you need and more.”

  She watched him repositioning sticks and brush and realized he was putting up obstacles to try to get the animals to take the path he wanted.

  “You’re trying to direct the game,” she said.

  “No shit, Sherlock. I did the same thing with you.”

  “The only thing I remember is tripping.”