Alaska Republik-ARC (11 page)

She wondered if Jerry knew how many of his fellow pilots had died that day. In the time since they had been together, she had completely forgotten to mention the subject. So many things had happened…

The planes roared over them and the middle craft waggled its wings as they lifted to higher altitude.

“They saw me!” Jerry was nearly hoarse. He turned and grinned at her. “They saw me, Magda.”

“I’m glad they know you’re here. I just hope they can send a land party to help us.”

He went still for a long moment and then looked around. “Yeah, they’d play hell landing here, wouldn’t they?”

“Come on, I’ll bet they’re waiting for you in Delta.” She moved down the trail.

“Here comes another one,” he said in a tone full of hope.

A single plane flew low over them and a small parachute capered down in the turbulent wake.

Without a word Jerry raced to where the small chute would land and caught it in his hands. Ripping off the square yard of silk, he threw it aside and tugged at the lead-weighted cylinder. In moments he unscrewed the white metal device and the cap fell into his hand.

Jerry pulled a small roll of paper out and tossed the tube away. Magda picked it up and stuffed it into her pack next to the small parachute and the white metal cap. They might be everyday junk to Lieutenant Gerald “Bigshot” Yamato, but they were treasures to her.

She had only figured out five uses for each item before Jerry said, “They want to know if I am who I am, and if we have three allies behind us in a truck.”

“Truck?” they said together.

Magda jumped in immediately. “If anyone can find a tool they need within a hundred miles, my mother can. She once found a 9mm wrench my father needed to repair his plane, she found it six miles away at an old mine site.”

“Your father is a pilot?”

“My father is everything,” she said fiercely, nearly tearing up again. She stopped and thought for a moment.

Damn, I’m getting my period!

“We have to signal by pointing to our left for ‘yes,’ and to the right for ‘no.’ ”

“Okay,” she said. “I’ll point where you point.”

As they pointed with all four hands, the aircraft roared over them again and waggled its wings as it angled up into a sky the color of her mother’s old trade beads.

“I sure hope we didn’t just save the collective asses of three Russians,” Magda said.

“Damn. I didn’t think of that.”

“Don’t worry,” she said with a wide grin, “it’s Mother. I was just scattering your mind.”

22

51 miles east-southeast of Delta

The speedometer registered 10 km and Bodecia knew insanity lurked within a few more miles at this mind-numbing pace. If she increased the speed, it tossed her patients around like dried fish in a wagon. The rapid flight from the Russians had nearly thrown Rudi out of the truck bed.

She had apologized as she made him comfortable once again. Pelagian lay askew, but comatose. A small fear grew inside her but she didn’t look at it.

So now she advanced slowly, worried she would lose both of them if she sped up, or Pelagian if she didn’t. The aircraft hadn’t come back. The huge smoke column prominent in her rearview mirror attested to some success in their mission.

She wondered if they had already known about the large concentration of Russian machines or if they had just come looking for Jerry Yamato.
Either way,
she mused,
they did pretty good
.

And saved my aging butt.

The broken willow limbs, almost exactly a meter and a half off the ground and repeated every fifty meters, told Bodecia she followed her daughter and the lieutenant. Her smile widened. In all her years she had never met anyone like Magda.

Even as a small child, Magda knew her own mind. From the time she was 22 months old, she picked her own clothing and would wear nothing else put on her. At four, when asked if she planned on taking another bath, she replied: “It’s my body and I’ll do what I want with it.”

That’s when Bodecia knew she had a challenge. She and Pelagian had decided during a five-minute conversation that they had an equal to guide, not a child to rear. And to be friends with her daughter at this point in their lives was such a joy.

Magda always had a vote and a damned good reason for it. She excelled as a teacher but had no administrative leanings whatsoever. Bodecia had been worried about her emotional distance to everyone around her.

“Not any more,” Bodecia all but shouted aloud. “She’s smart; she won’t do anything foolish until the times are safe for such things, I’m sure.”

The trail ended at the Czar Nicholas Highway and she eased the truck up onto the more level surface, shifted gears and increased speed.

Hours later Bodecia fought fatigue, feeling stretched beyond her own bounds. Carefully she stopped the truck and killed the engine, just sat in the seat and listened. She knew the road was cut off behind her, thanks to Lieutenant Yamato’s squadron, and since the Russians knew it by this time, nothing would be coming toward her.

Slowly, the birds called, tentatively at first and then back to full-lunged declarations of territorial dominance. She unwittingly drowsed. Sound of movement woke her.

She listened, waiting with accelerating heart to discover if she faced danger. There, a scraping sound behind her. She twisted, and through the rear window saw Pelagian trying to crawl out of the truck bed.

In a flash she was out of the cab and beside him, holding his arm to ease him back into a more comfortable position.

“What are you doing, husband, trying to hurt yourself?”

He lay back with a small gasp and peered up at her.

“I thought I had been taken prisoner. Where did you get this vehicle? Where are we?” He flashed his usual “Captain Alaska” facade for a moment but faded fast.

“I think we’re about forty-eight or forty-nine miles out of Delta.” She went on and told him about the truck and the Russians and the fighter planes.

“I’m sorry I missed all the excitement,” he said with a wheeze.

“Let me look at your wound,” she said, using a firm no-nonsense attitude.

Pelagian acquiesced without a murmur, adding to Bodecia’s unease. She carefully peeled off the bandage and laid it aside.

It took all of her self-control not to curse.

The wound wept with a foul-smelling discharge. The raw edges of the bullet hole presented an angry, raw appearance. It wasn’t healing and she didn’t know what else to do.

Rudi suddenly sat up upright, and then groaned.

“Be careful, dammit, you’re injured.”

“Apologies, I’m sure.” He squinted at Pelagian. “How is he?”

“Look for yourself, Sergeant.”

“Your wound is infected,” he said to Pelagian. “Must be sterilized.”

“How?” Bodecia asked.

Rudi gave her a wry grin. “So happens our needs mesh. Human urine is sterile and I have a quantity.”

“You’re going to piss on me?” Pelagian returned the wry smile. “All I can say is, it better work.”

“You’re right, Rudi. I’m surprised I had forgotten that,” Bodecia said.

“Please to hold him up, and look away,” Rudi said.

She braced Pelagian up and looked away toward the north, toward Delta. They had to be no more than three hours from town.

Where are Magda and Jerry?

The sound of water ceased.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Pelagian said, “hardly any sting at all.”

Bodecia wiped the wound with the cleanest cloth she owned. “Now I will pack it with fresh sphagnum moss.”

Rudi frowned. “Moss?”

“Sphagnum is also sterile.”

“Ah, good to know.”

She wrapped him with her last bandage. “Would it be better for both of you to sit in the cab with me?”

“It couldn’t be any worse,” Pelagian said.

“Agree.”

“Well, let’s get going then.”

Bodecia drove with lip-chewing determination, dodging every large rock she spied in the road surface. The truck bumped and jerked across the road as the two passengers grunted or moaned with each small collision.

“Why are you driving so erratically?” Pelagian asked, exasperation evident in his voice.

“I’m trying not to hurt you.”

“Just get there so we can be finished with this.”

“Agreed, speediest route is best,” Rudi said breathlessly.

“As you wish, gentlemen.” She stepped on the accelerator and nearly hit the tank leveling its 80mm cannon at them. She slammed on the brakes but neither of her passengers complained.

“Is Russian tank,” Rudi whispered.

“Turn off the engine, please,” Pelagian said quietly.

On each side of the tank, four men with machine guns covered them.

“Sure.” She switched off the engine.

The men were not soldiers of the Imperial Russian Army. She studied them carefully. All four held their weapons steady, never relaxing, never taking their eyes off the occupants of the truck.

Their uniforms were not the solid brown of the Russian Army, but more like the parachute Jerry had used: mottled patches of drab colors that blended easily in the shadows—just like the uniforms she had pulled out of the air for the dead Russian lieutenant. For the first time in a very long time, Bodecia felt frightened.

“Well, the letters made with gauze, on the top of the cab, say ‘Dená,’ but who are you people?” a voice said at her shoulder.

She started and swung her head around to look at the questioner. Like the others, blotches covered his face and matched his uniform, yet without disguising his relative youth and sharp handsomeness.

“Who are you?” she asked without thinking.

He snapped to attention. “Major Riordan, commander of the International Freekorps, and pleased to meet you.”

“Bodecia, wife of Pelagian,” she said, trying to keep the heat from her voice.

“Now there is a name I have heard.” Major Riordan smiled and nodded at the two men in the cab. “Does it belong to one of these men?”

Before Bodecia could speak, Rudi stiffened to attention.

“I am Pelagian, and I am the ruler of this land on which you trespass.”

“You don’t fit the description.”

“My people protect me. I am described in many ways.”

“None of them mentioned your heavy Russian accent, but they did admire your mastery of five Athabascan dialects.” In Kuitch’an, Major Riordan asked who was the other man in the truck cab.

“You are wasting our time,” Bodecia put all her irritability into her voice. “I have two injured men here who must get medical attention soon. We don’t care who you are, just leave us be.”

Major Riordan said something to the nearest soldier, who immediately vanished into the willows and birch bordering both sides of the trail. The other soldiers continued to cover them with their weapons.

“Madam Bodecia, we care very much about who you are. Our intelligence discovered that you and your husband,” he pointed at Pelagian, “are well regarded locally, therefore you have great value.”

How did these strangers know so much about the area?

“Great value? You plan to kidnap us for ransom?”

“Crudely put, but essentially true. Please surrender the ignition key.” He held out his hand.

She glanced around at the leveled weapons; none had wavered. Bodecia looked up at him. “Russian military vehicles do not have ignition keys; only a button one pushes.”

“That’s true, I had forgotten. Please exit the vehicle.”

“My husband and our friend…”

“Will be cared for immediately.”

The soldier returned followed by five men, two of whom carried collapsible litters.

“What’s the problem, Major?” asked the oldest man in the group.

“We have two injured men, Doctor Revere. What are their injuries, Madam Bodecia?”

She spoke to the doctor, “A gunshot wound in the large man and internal injuries from a long fall in the other.”

The other four men opened the truck door and transferred Rudi onto one of the litters before reaching for Pelagian.

“Who shot him?” Major Riordan’s voice went crisp.

“Russian soldiers.”

“They caught you stealing this truck?”

Doctor Revere carefully removed Pelagian’s bandage and peered at the wound.

“No. I stole this truck because they had shot my husband and I needed to get him home.”

“How long ago was he wounded?” the doctor asked.

“This morning? Yesterday morning? It’s been at least eight to twelve hours ago. I know it’s infected.”

“Quite the opposite, I’m happy to say. Seems to be healing nicely.”

Bodecia pushed through the soldiers and looked for herself. The angry redness had mellowed to a scab-edged pink. She wondered what Rudi had been drinking the previous twelve hours.

“For the record, Madam Bodecia,” Major Riordan said behind her, “you and your two companions are my prisoners.”

“So you’re not really an army, you’re bandits?”

Color appeared high on his cheeks and his voice tightened. “We are the finest mercenary unit in all of North America, and we’re sure not worried by anyone south of Texas, either. You are possible enemy combatants and therefore a threat.”

“Two wounded men and an old woman?” She laughed in his face. “Take responsibility for your actions, Major. You’re really a bully and a thief.”

“Why are you trying to make me angry?” The tightness slowly leached out of his tone, and he focused on her.

“Because I don’t like you.”

His smile bordered on glacial. “I’m beginning to feel the same way about you.” Riordan motioned to a trooper who moved up next to Bodecia. “Corporal Burnett will see to your accommodations. If you cooperate there will be no problems, if you don’t cooperate, you will be the problem.”

“This way, ma’am,” Corporal Burnett said.

Bodecia followed him.

23

Tanana Aerodrome, Dená Republik

Grisha didn’t look down as he moved on crutches toward the aircraft. For an instant, his mind flashed back to the last plane on which he had left this place—they all looked alike to him. He increased his speed as he pressed forward.

“Grisha, please slow down,” Wing said in a low voice, “or I’ll trip you and have you carried in a litter.”