Ice Hunt (10 page)

He toggled back and forth between infrared and night vision. Finally, he lifted his rifle and targeted one of the red blobs as it pounded toward him. The snap of twigs and crunch of snow echoed all around. He fired at the shape.

The blast paused the others, but the one he had fired upon let loose a tremendous roar—a bloodcurdling, primeval sound—and thundered toward him, faster, unfazed. The bellow of rage was answered by others. The group hammered down upon him.

He fired and fired again. But nothing slowed the monsters. His lungs burned, his heart pounded in his throat. He ripped away the goggles, crouching, rifle up.

The roaring filled his head, chasing away any thought and sense. He swung around and around, surrounded by the dark and the snow.

Where…where…where…

Then from the snow, dark shapes flowed, massive, creatures of nightmare, moving with impossible grace and speed. They set upon him, not in fury, but with the unstoppable momentum of predator and prey.

11:54 P.M.

Matt stood beside Mariah, lead in hand, and listened as the hunter’s screams echoed up to him. They did not last long, cutting off abruptly. He turned away, walked his horse over the last rise, and set off toward the lower valleys. By morning, he wanted to be as far gone from the area as possible, vanished deep into the thicker, taller woods of the lower slopes of the Brooks Range. They still had at least two days of hiking to reach the single homestead he knew in the area, the only place with a satellite radio for a hundred miles.

Craig sat atop the mare, pale, shaking slightly. He finally spoke after they had crossed the rise. “Grizzlies…how did you know they’d be around here?”

Matt spoke dully, watching the dogs nose ahead. “I trashed a bottle of blood lure down in that hollow earlier. By now a good number of bears should be attracted to the area.”

“And…and you walked us right through there?”

He shrugged. “The snowfall, the dark…they’d most likely leave us alone as long as we didn’t bother them.”

“And that bottle you set up in the tree?”

With his military background, he knew how to quickly rig a simple trap. “More blood lure,” he explained. “I figured the fresh explosion of scent would draw those nearby and keep our grenade-toting friend occupied.” Matt shook his head in regret—not for the hunter, only for the wounded bears.

They continued on. Matt trudged along, wondering for the thousandth time who the men were that had hunted them and why. If given the time or the opportunity, he would have liked the chance to interrogate one or the other. They were clearly professionals with a military background. But were they active service or hired mercenaries?

Matt slipped out the dagger he had confiscated from the first hunter. He flipped it around, examining it with a penlight. No insignia, no manufacturer’s mark, no unique design. Purposefully void of any indication of origin. He wagered if he had examined the men’s rifles and pistols, the same would have been true. This alone suggested the pair were more than just mercenaries. Such men didn’t concern themselves with wiping all traces from their weapons.

But Matt knew who did.

A black ops team
.

Matt remembered Craig’s story of the Navy’s gag order on the drift station. Could it be their own government? After spending eight years in an elite Green Beret team, he knew that sometimes hard choices, sacrifices, had to be made in the name of national security.

Still, Matt refused to believe it. But if not us, then who?

“Where are we going now?” Craig asked, interrupting his ponderings.

Matt sighed, expelling these worrisome thoughts for now, and stared out at the snowy woods. “We’re heading to someplace even more dangerous.”

“Where’s that?”

His voice tightened with regret. “My ex-wife’s cabin.”

3

Trap Lines

APRIL 8, 10:02 A.M.
GATES OF THE ARCTIC NATIONAL PARK

Jennifer Aratuk stood, club in hand, over the trap. The wolverine glared at her, hissing a warning. Its rear end bunched up as it guarded its own catch. The dead marten, a cat-sized weasel, lay snared in her father’s trap, its black pelt stark against the snow. It had been dead and buried in the fresh fallen snow, its neck broken, but the wolverine had reached the trap first and dug it up. The wolverine, a male, was not about to relinquish its frozen prize.

“Get outta here!” she yelled, and waved her cudgel of alder.

The white-masked beast snarled and jarred toward her a foot, then back. A display that basically meant “fuck you” in wolverine. Fearless, wolverines were known to stand against wolves when food was involved. They were also equipped with talonlike claws and sharp teeth set in bone-crushing jaws.

Frowning but cautious, Jenny considered clubbing the creature. A stout knock on its skull would either drive it off or addle it long enough for her to collect the marten. Her father collected the pelts and traded them for seal oil and other native wares. She had spent the last two days running his trapline. This consisted of hunting down his snares, collecting any catches, and resetting and baiting the traps. She did not relish the chore, but her father’s arthritis had gotten worse the past year, and she feared for him alone in the woods.

“All right, junior,” Jenny said, conceding. “I guess you did get here first.” She used her club to reach and unhook the snare line from the branch of the cottonwood. With the line free, the marten was released. She nudged its body.

The wolverine growled and snatched at the marten, sinking its teeth into a frozen thigh. It backpedaled with its prize, hissing all the way as it retreated through the snow to some hidden burrow.

Jenny watched it waddle with its catch, then shook her head. She wouldn’t tell her father about this, passing on a chance to get a marten
and
a wolverine pelt. He wouldn’t be pleased. Then again, she was a county sheriff, not a trapper. He should be happy enough that she spent a week of her two-week vacation each year helping him with his damn traps.

She headed back to her sled, tromping in her Sherpa snowshoes. The overnight trip to run the traps was not wholly a chore. During the last three days, a storm had covered the national parklands with two feet of thick snow, perfect for her to run her team one last time before the true spring melt. She enjoyed these outings, just her and her dogs. It was still too early in the year to expect any tourists, hikers, or campers to be about. She had this section of the national park all to herself. Her family cabin was just at the outskirts of the parklands, in the lowland valleys. Her father, as a pure-blooded Inuit native, was still allowed to subsistence-hunt and -trap within certain areas of the park as a result of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980. Hence her current overnight trip with her dogs.

The usual barks and yips from her crew greeted her as she returned. She unsnapped her snowshoes’ bindings and kicked them off. Collecting them up, she secured them atop the sled. Underneath were her sleeping bag, a change of dry clothes, a hatchet, a lantern, mosquito repellent, a plastic container of dry dog food, a soggy carton of Power Bars, a twist-tied bag of ranch-flavored Doritos, and a small cooler of Tab soda. She undid her shoulder holster, swung the service revolver over one of the sled’s handles, and cinched it in place next to a leather-sheathed ax.

Next she shook free of her thick woolen overmitts. She wore a thinner, more manageable pair of Gore-Tex gloves underneath. “Okay, boys and girls, off we go.”

At her command, those dogs still lounging in the snow climbed to their feet, tails wagging. The team was still harnessed to the gang line. She only had to go down and tighten their traces. As she did, she patted each dog in turn: Mutley and Jeff, George and Gracie, Holmes and Watson, Cagney and Lacey. They were all strays or rescue animals, a motley bunch of Lab mixes, malamutes, and shepherd crosses. She had more back at home, composing a full team of sixteen, with which she had run the Iditarod from Anchorage to Nome last year. She had not even placed in the top half of the sled teams, but the challenge and the time with her crew was victory enough for her.

With everyone ready, she grabbed the snub line and gave it a jostle. “Mush!”

The dogs dug into the snow. With a furious row of barking, they set off at an easy pace. Jenny walked behind them, steering. The wolverine-burgled trap was the last of the line. She had run a complete circuit, out and back. From here, it was an easy three miles to the cabin. She hoped her father remembered to leave a pot of coffee simmering this morning.

She guided the dogs along a slow sweeping set of switchbacks over a sparsely wooded rise. She stopped them at the top. Ahead, the world opened up. Ridge after ridge climbed to the horizon. Spruces, flocked with snow, shone emerald in the sunlight, while stands of hardwoods—alder and cottonwood—painted the landscape in subtler shades of greens and yellows. In the distance, a silver river ran over cataracts, dancing brightly.

She drew a deep breath of the cedar-scented air. There was a cold, barren beauty to the lands here. It was too much for some, not enough for others. The sun, rare in the past few days, shone sharply but warmly on her face. Across the clouded skies, a single hawk circled. She followed its path a moment.

These were the lands of her people, but no matter how much time she spent out here, she could not touch that past…not any longer. It was like losing a sense you never knew you had. But it was the least of her losses.

Turning attention back to her team, she lowered her snow goggles against the fresh glare, then climbed onto the sled’s runners and called to the dogs, “Eyah!” She snapped the line.

The dogs leaped in their harnesses, racing down the far slope. Jenny rode the runners, steering and braking as needed. They flew across the snow. A sharp gust of wind tossed back the hood of her fur parka. She reached to yank it up, but it felt good for the moment to feel the rush of cold wind against her cheeks and through her hair. She shook her head, loosening and flagging a long trail of ebony hair.

She lifted her foot off the brake and let her rig fly down a long straight run. The wind whistled and the passing trees became a blur. She guided the team around a gentle curve along a wide stream. For an endless moment, she felt in perfect harmony with her dogs, with the steel and ash of her sled, with the world around her.

The crack of rifle fire startled her back into her own body.

She jumped with both feet onto her brake, casting up a rooster tail of snow behind the sled. The rig and team slowed. She stood straighter atop the runners.

Again an echoing blast of a rifle split the quiet of the morning.

Her experienced ears told her the direction from which the gunfire had come—her cabin!

Fear for her father flamed through her.
“Eyah!”
she yelled, and snapped the line.

Horrible scenarios played out in her head. Bears were out and about already, though they rarely ventured so low. But moose were often just as dangerous, and the cabin was near the river, where the thick willow browses attracted the yearling bulls. And then there were the predators that walked on two legs: poachers and thieves that raided outlying cabins. As a sheriff, she had seen enough tragedy in the wilds of the Alaskan backcountry.

Panic made her desperate, reckless.

She dug around a sharp bend in the river. Ahead, a narrow pinch squeezed between a cliff of granite and the rocky stream. She realized she was speeding too fast. She tried the brake, but a patch of ice betrayed her. The sled fishtailed toward the cliff.

There was no avoiding it.

She hopped to the runner farthest from the cliff and used all her weight and the momentum of the too-sharp turn to tilt the sled up on one runner. The underside of her rig struck the icy cliff face. Steel screeched across rock.

Clutching and praying the sled didn’t tumble on top of her, she clung tight to her handles, giving up the dogs’ snub line. With the line loosened, the dogs took off at a full sprint. The sled dragged behind the furious team.

Jenny held in a scream—then it was over.

The cliff fell away and the sled landed hard on both runners, almost throwing her off. She scrambled to maintain her perch. The dogs continued their relentless charge for home. They knew the cabin was only a couple hundred yards off.

She made no attempt to slow them.

Gasping, Jenny listened for gunfire, but all she heard was the blood pounding in her ears. She feared what she would find at her cabin. One hand unsnapped her pistol holster. She left the gun in the holster, not trusting herself to run the rig and hold a weapon.

The sled raced alongside the river. She was now following the same track upon which she had left yesterday. A final wide bend and her cabin suddenly appeared ahead. It was built in a meadow where the stream swung around and emptied into a swollen river. Beyond the cabin, her sheriff’s plane floated at the end of a stout dock.