Alaska Republik-ARC (38 page)

The twenty-four troopers, five sergeants and one first lieutenant all grinned at him.

Maybe this is the size of force I should have led all along
.

“Todd and Foster have perimeter guard, the rest of you are dismissed.”

The men scattered to their duties and the few distractions of Klahotsa, Bachman’s store being first and foremost. N’go walked over to Riordan.

“Are you sure that there will be no retribution for the shootings, Tim?”

Away from others, rank disappeared between them.

“What can they do, send a cop? The Dená are all wrapped up in their little civics class. Everyone is too busy to investigate three shootings.”

“I have my doubts of that, Tim,” N’go said carefully. “
Everyone
has friends.”

“You’re proof of that!” Riordan said and laughed.

106

Near Clahotsa on the Yukon

Colonel Del Buhrman didn’t like all this snow. It put a damper on their efforts. Not to mention it was getting damn cold for guys from the Republic of California. But they knew who their quarry was and where they could be found.

They had stopped in Nowitna to ask questions and replenish their supplies. At the Titus Brothers Mercantile they asked if anyone had seen any strangers.

“Why you askin’?” Sergi Titus gave Major Smolst a hard stare.

“Because someone murdered three innocent men on the river eight days ago. We want to find them before they kill someone else. That all right with you?”

Sergi pulled back, glanced around the busy room, and then nodded toward the back of the room. “Follow me, please.”

Smolst followed but grabbed one of his men to come too. Sergi Titus didn’t argue about the extra man when he saw who it was. He led them through a door and spoke only after the door shut.

“My cousins, Prospero and Iago Titus, were driving back from Delta and met this man who came in by himself, no vehicle or anything. He was hungry and tired and said he was going to Klahotsa, could they give him a ride.”

Smolst squinted at the man. “Prospero and Iago?”

Sergi grinned and shrugged. “My Auntie Ruth likes to read. When the twins were born she was reading a lot of Shakespeare. What can I say?”

Smolst laughed. “So did they give this fellow a lift?”

“Sure. This is the bush. Everybody helps everybody.”

Smolst frowned and said, “So why—”

“Allow me to finish. My cousins were immediately suspicious of the man because of his destination. The man who runs Klahotsa is a tyrant, a cheat, and not to be trusted.”

“Who is that?” Smolst asked.

“Bachmann. He showed up in Klahotsa one day about ten years ago with a signed deed for the store. Everybody who looked at the paper said it was the signature of the old owner, Konstantin Demientieff. But no one ever saw Konstantin after that: he had vanished.”

“So you pulled us back here to tell us that?” Smolst said.

“No. There are two men out there in our store that we don’t know. They could be Bachmann’s men.”

“Did your cousins give you a description of the man to whom they gave a ride?”

“Yeah, they did.” Sergi described Riordan perfectly and succinctly.

“We won’t forget your help, Sergi. You have our thanks.”

“Just be careful, Major Smolst. Bachmann has gathered a number of men around him, all strangers to us, and they are all killers. Let us know if we can be of more help.”

“Is there a back way out of this room?”

“Through that door, Major Smolst.”

Smolst walked out and found Colonel Buhrman. After telling him the situation, they decided to find the two spies. It didn’t take long.

“So who are you people?” Buhrman asked the two men tied to adjoining trees about half a kilometer from the village of Nowitna.

“We’re—” said the first.

“Tellin’ you nuthin’!” said the second.

Buhrman pointed at the second one. “Peterson, Kyle, take this guy over there about a hundred meters, make sure you’re out of hearing from us, and question him further.”

While the man was moved, Buhrman stared at the first man as if he could see through him. After five minutes of silence, growing increasingly nervous throughout, the first man blurted, “Listen, we haven’t done anything wrong!”

“So what
have
you done?” Colonel Buhrman asked in a disinterested tone.

“Some training, that’s all.”

“Training?”

“Yeah. Basic tracking, some fieldcraft, a bit of marksmanship…”

“Using what kind of weapons?”

The man licked his lips. Light snow started falling which gave the space around them more visual intimacy.

“Uh, .30-06 mostly. Just run-of-the-mill weapons.”

“What kind of rounds did you use?”

Fear suddenly radiated from the man’s eyes and Buhrman knew he was close to long-sought answers.

“B-bullets. Just regular bullets.”

“There’s this thing I have, not sure what to call it, but I absolutely know when someone is bullshitting me. As soon as this thing goes off in my gut, I start losing control of my better nature. And then I tend to hurt people who bring this thing on me.

“You have just slipped into that category.” He lost his good-natured mien and sharpened his voice. “And if you want to live through the next hour, you need to be truthful with me, otherwise at the end of the hour you will be begging us to kill you!”

“Th-this is crazy! I don’t know any—”

“Is Bachmann paying you enough to die under torture?” Buhrman demanded.

The man’s face blanched and he nearly fainted.

“Answer me!”

“No. No, he isn’t.”

“How many men does he have?”

“Th-thirty. Two dozen troopers like me, five sergeants, a first lieutenant and that g-gawddamn major.”

“That would be Major Riordan?”

“Yeah. If you know everything, why you asking me questions?”

“To see if you’ll lie to me and then I can hurt you.”

“L-look, this thing with Bachmann has gone all wr-wrong from the beginning. I haven’t hurt anyone and I want out of this mess.”

“What’s your name?”

“C-Clarence Needham.”

“Where were you born?”

“Ohio. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Because if I let you go and I find out you lied to me, I will hunt you down and kill you.”

“I haven’t lied to you, dammit!”

“I haven’t finished asking questions yet.”

Needham chewed his lower lip, and despite the growing cold, sweat ran down his forehead.

“Who shot those guys in the riverboat three weeks ago?”

“Smythe, Lockhart, Innoko Mike, and Murphy over there.” He nodded toward the man Smolst and two soldiers were interrogating.

“What kind of rounds did they use?”

“Mercury tips.”

“Why?”

“Bachmann wants us to kill some people and he thinks we’ll only have time to get off a couple of shots.”

“What people?”

“Some Indians who he says are pushing him around.”

“How many of these pushy Indians does he want to kill?”

“We’re training to hit six people at once.”

Murphy screamed something at Smolst, drawing their attention. Smolst knocked the man flat.

“He’s got a boot knife,” Needham blurted, “and he’s fast with it!”

Murphy came off the ground and lunged at Smolst. Colonel Buhrman snapped up his rifle and shot Murphy through the head. He lowered the weapon and stared at Needham.

“You just redeemed yourself somewhat, Mr. Needham.”

Smolst walked over, glanced at Needham and then gave Buhrman a sidelong look. “I knew you were fast, Del, but that was amazingly quick.”

He gave Smolst a big grin. “I wish I could claim full credit, but Mr. Needham here told me that Murphy had a boot knife. We would have hung him anyway; he was one of the killers.”

“Well, you’ve certainly done better with Mr. Needham than I did with Murphy. I couldn’t even get him to tell us his name.”

Needham cleared his throat. “When you people came into the mercantile, Murphy knew you were looking for the shooters. He thought we could bluff it out and get away later.”

“You’ve stopped stuttering!”

“I knew I could talk my way out of your threat, but I also knew Murphy would kill me if I did.”

“You’re not out of the woods yet,” Buhrman said.

Needham’s mouth twisted into a small smile. “But I’m willing to tell you everything I know.”

Colonel Buhrman smiled in return. “Heinrich, let’s find some transport back to Tanana. We have a trap to set.”

“What about Murphy?”

“Pay someone to bury him and forget where they did it. Mr. Needham, you are my prisoner for now. Sergeant Papke and Corporal Badberg here will see to your accommodations.”

The two had come up behind Needham and he didn’t know they were there until they nudged him and pointed toward the mercantile.

“So what kind of trap do you have in mind?” Smolst asked.

“The best kind, of course!”

107

Tanana, Provisional State of Doyon, Alaska Republik

Sergeant Major Tobias answered his knock on the door.

“Colonel Yamato, please come in. The general is expecting you.”

Jerry stamped as much snow off his feet as possible and then entered the warm apartment, pulling off his large, fur-lined mittens. “I have never been this cold in my entire life!”

“Jerry, how good to see you!” Wing said, entering the room. “I see you have learned how to dress for the Alaskan winter.”

Jerry hung his parka on a hook near the door, draped his wool scarf over that and pulled off his knit cap and jammed it into the parka hood. He sat down on a chair and untied his mukluks.

“It’s a good thing I agreed to work for you folks when the weather was warm. I’m not sure I would have agreed so readily if I had already spent a winter here. The thermometer outside my cabin only goes to minus forty and the mercury has been down there for a week!”

“It’s about sixty below zero right now,” Wing said, “but you seem to be doing fine.”

He pulled off the mukluks and fished out the felt booties and put them on over his heavy socks. “I had no idea when I was given these things that they would save my life.”

“Your wolf parka is one of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot of them.”

“Won’t it smell like wet dog if it rains?”

“You don’t wear a parka like that in the rain,” she said. “You wear your old RCAF raincoat.”

“I just hope it warms up enough to rain someday.”

Tobias and Wing both laughed.

Grisha walked into the room. “What’s all the noise? Oh, hi, Jerry, glad you made it.”

“General,” he nodded. “Good to see you, sir.”

“Jerry, you’re in my home.”

“Sorry, Grisha, this takes some getting used to.”

Wing laughed. “It’s January! You’re more set in your ways than my grandfather was.”

“Not fair, Wing,” Jerry said. “Military titles have a reason. I’ve been bending my head into the military mold for five years now. Some of this stuff is habit forming.”

“What do you hear from Magda?” she asked.

He sighed before he could stop himself. “She misses me. Hell, I miss her! She doesn’t understand why I have to be here and she has to be there.”

“Why does she have to be in Delta?” Grisha asked.

“Grisha, if my future father-in-law was more intimidating than he already is, he would be illegal.”

“What does
he
have to do with it?” Wing asked. “It’s Magda’s decision.”

“Well, this isn’t exactly San Francisco. I can’t just ask my fiancée to move in with me.”

“You don’t think that people who love each other don’t live together before marriage up here in the frozen north, not to mention people who just
like
each other?”

“Wing, I couldn’t ask her to do that!”

“You mean you
haven’t
? Jerry, you’re in your twenties, but you’re acting like a man in his fifties!”

“And there’s a lot of attention on me from every direction. I wear a uniform that has no tradition or history. We are all making that history and we have to be somewhat circumspect to be responsible to the People.”

“Bravo!” Grisha shouted and applauded.

“Jesus, you
are
my grandfather!” Wing said, feigning shock.

Jerry tried to smile but his heart wasn’t in it. “I think she has a point, you guys. Why do I need to be up here in Tanana. Couldn’t we talk by radio?”

“Sure,” Grisha said, abruptly losing his grin. “And everybody north of the 55th Parallel would be in on the conversation.”

“We don’t have secure communications of any kind?”

“A courier that you trust is about it. We use the old Russian telephone system for most of our traffic. Although we don’t need operators any more, anyone could tap into a phone line that goes for hundreds of miles through the wilderness.”

“I could act as your liaison from there if we had regular meetings. I could fly back and forth in one of the P-61s the RCAF gave us.”

Grisha’s grin flashed back. “Ah, now I understand! You get to see your girl
and
you get to fly!”

“I think it sounds like a good idea,” Wing said. “We need to spread our people around more.”

“But Tanana is the capital of the republic, or will be.” Grisha waved one hand in the air.

“Are you sure of that? It will be up to the first legislature to sort out—if we ever sort out the legislature.”

“Wing has a point, Grisha.” Jerry suddenly reflected that he used to think the RCAF was informal, but he had never before called his commanding officer by his first name. “Once each state gets set up and sends a delegate to the AR Council, there’s going to be a fight over the location of the capital.”

“Well, they won’t be putting it farther north, that’s for damn sure,” muttered Grisha. “I’m just afraid that if they put it in Sealaska, the Tlingits will dominate the government.”

“Which is what the Tlingits, Aleuts, and Eskimos think the Dená are doing now,” Jerry said quietly. “Major Lauesen said his people are getting that message from all directions.”

Grisha rubbed his jaw, and stared at something only he could see. “Well, I’ll be amazed if they all send a delegate. I’m afraid they’ll all declare themselves republiks and do it all their own way.”