Village of the Ghost Bears (24 page)

“Here’s McAllister’s camp on the near side of that ridge up ahead. We’ve gotta come around back of it, drop over the crest, and dive down through this canyon here.” Cowboy’s finger traced it out on the chart. “When we pop out, we’ll be about a quarter-mile from the camp and doing around one-sixty, one-seventy, so we’ll be overhead in about five seconds. That’s how long we’ve got to look things over, maybe five seconds, because once we’re past, we sure ain’t coming back.”

Active nodded. “Okay.”

“We don’t want to fly right over it,” Cowboy continued, “because we won’t be able to see anything directly under us. So I’ll angle to the left a little bit, and the camp will be off our right wing when we go past. That way I can concentrate on not hitting a mountain while you look it over. Sound right?”

Active nodded again. “Sounds right.”

Cowboy grinned. “Fun, huh?”

“Yeah,” Active said after some thought. “It is, actually.”

Cowboy worked his way toward the foot of the ridge behind McAllister’s camp, staying low and using the terrain for cover. Finally he made a turn and started along the back side of the snow-draped ridge. In another seven minutes, Cowboy pointed the Cessna up a draw toward the crest. As they sailed over the top, Active caught a momentary glimpse of a little cluster of buildings three miles or so ahead on the valley floor. Then McAllister’s camp vanished behind a rock wall as Cowboy dropped the Cessna into the canyon and began his downhill run.

Behind him, Pingo screamed “
Arii
! That’s Qavvik’s mountain! We can’t go here.” Active’s seatback jerked. Pingo must have been kicking it. Active turned and lunged for Pingo’s throat over the backrest. Pingo threw himself as far back as his restraints would allow and kicked Active’s seat again.

“You gotta get him under control,” Cowboy shouted over the intercom. “We’re committed here.”

Active was unbuckling himself when he saw Pingo jerk, then slump into his seat. “You’re carrying a Taser, Alan?”

“Roger that,” Long said. “Good thing, ah?”

Active settled back into his seat and returned his attention to their descent through the canyon. The needle on the airspeed indicator swept through one-fifty, one-sixty, one-seventy, and finally came to a quivering stop between one-eighty and one-eighty-five, the wind screaming through the wing struts as they plunged toward the valley floor.

The ridge to their left dropped away, and suddenly they were out of the canyon, G-forces jamming Active into his seat as Cowboy jerked the Cessna out of its dive and rocked into a hard left turn.

He leveled the wings just above the willows and they barreled down the little creek that trickled out of the canyon. Ahead on the right, McAllister’s camp was a big two-story lodge and a cluster of smaller outbuildings. Active registered impressions more than information: nobody on top of the lodge or the other buildings; on the tundra in front of the lodge, a man pausing, knife in hand, over what might be the rib cage of a caribou, his face turning up, flashing white and surprised as they roared by; another man, in the act of opening the outhouse door, letting it swing shut as he looked up to watch them.

Then they were past the camp and roaring toward McAllister’s landing strip on a patch of slightly elevated ground along the creek bank. A landing strip that was devoid of anything resembling an airplane.

Active felt the tension drain out of him as he nudged Cowboy and pointed at the strip. “I don’t think he’s here.”

Cowboy eased the Cessna’s nose up and made an arc to the right as they gained altitude. “Guess not,” the pilot said, peering under the right wing at the empty strip. “But where the hell is he? Delilah said he headed up here last night. Maybe we oughta land and search around the camp.”

“I saw a couple of guys in the yard as we went over,” Active said. “How about we try the radio?”

Cowboy looked like he wanted to say “Duh!” but he just switched on his radios and tuned one to a new frequency. “McAllister’s Camp, this is the Cessna that was just overhead, over.”

A minute or two passed as Cowboy repeated the call once, then twice. Then the headset sprayed static, and a woman’s voice said, “This is McAllister’s. Who’s that?”

“Probably his cook,” Cowboy said over the intercom. He tapped the little boom microphone on Active’s head set. “You want to talk to her?”

Active nodded and identified himself to the woman. “We’re attempting to contact Dood McAllister. Can you tell us his whereabouts?”

“What you want him for?”

“I’m sorry, that’s confidential. Can you tell us his whereabouts?”

“He take off maybe couple hours ago, say he’s going to pull out his spike camp over there at One-Way Lake.”

Active gave the cook a roger and looked at Cowboy.

“You want to go in?” the pilot asked.

“We’ve got our search warrant,” Long said from behind them.

After a moment’s thought, Active shook his head, then realized nobody had seen him do it. “No, let’s go after McAllister,” he said over the intercom. “If he’s running, this may be our last good shot at him.”

“All right,” Cowboy said. “But I gotta have a pit stop.”

Ten minutes later, the Cessna was bounding to a halt on a rolling ridge a few miles from McAllister’s camp. Cowboy and Active jumped down, stepped away from the plane, and relieved themselves on the tundra. Long hauled a still stunned-looking Pingo out and allowed him the same relief.

“Why would Dood go to One-Way Lake?” Cowboy asked after Pingo had been reattached to a rear seat—ankles, too, this time. “If he knows you guys have him figured out, why doesn’t he just run for cover somewhere? Or go hire a lawyer?”

“Maybe there’s evidence over there,” Active said. “Maybe he took something off Jae Hyo Lee. Maybe he lied to the cook and he’s not even there. All I know is, we have to stay on him.”

“I don’t know,” Long said. “Go after him at One-Way Lake without backup? Serving a search warrant on his camp would be one thing, but—”

“If he’s running, I don’t see where we have any choice.”

“But he’ll hear us coming and—” Long stopped as he caught the look on Active’s face. “Yeah, yeah. Think long, think wrong.”

Active gave a slight nod of approval, wondering about Long’s reluctance to confront McAllister. He filed it away and turned to the pilot. “How far is it?”

Cowboy leaned into the Cessna and retrieved his chart. He spread it on the plane’s tail, holding it down with a forearm so the wind wouldn’t take it, and calipered the distance to One-Way Lake with a thumb and forefinger. He eyed the span for a moment. “Seventy miles, plus or minus. Half an hour, maybe.”

“So what’s your plan?” Long said in that same reluctant tone.

“Fly in there, look it over, figure something out,” Active said.

“And if McAllister’s waiting?”

“Figure something out. Okay, Alan?”

Long said nothing. Cowboy grunted and bent over the Cessna’s tail again. Active and Long leaned in to follow his finger across the map.

“This one may be a little dodgier. If he’s at One-Way, his Cessna’s going to be parked on the ridge above the lake.” Decker tapped the spot on the map. “Here. And there’s no way to come at it without being seen ourselves.”

Active studied the chart. One-Way Lake was in the foothills on the south side of the Laird Mountains above the valley of the Isignaq River. One of the canyons radiating from the mountains appeared to open onto the top of the cliff above the lake. He drew a forefinger along its route. “How about we come down through here and pop out over the ridge, like we did just now?”

Cowboy shook his head. “We got two strikes against us. Number one, McAllister’s spike camp is probably right up that same canyon. That’s why he uses that ridge to get to it. So we come down through there, he’s gonna see us. And number two, you see what’s moving in over there?”

Cowboy turned away from the map pointed at the Laird Mountains on the far side of the Katonak River. The peaks were topped with shreds of cloud and the dangling veils of gray that meant falling snow.

“In order to get over the Lairds and into that canyon above One-Way, we’d have to go right through that stuff. And even I don’t fly around in the clouds if I know there’s rocks in ’em.”

Active studied the clouds, which appeared to be moving toward the Katonak a little as he watched. “So how do we get over there?”

“We might be able to sneak through Igichuk Pass to the Isignaq side, all right. But seriously, what do we do when we get to One-Way?”

“You got binoculars?”

Cowboy nodded.

“Let’s stand off at a safe distance and glass the situation, then decide.”

Cowboy nodded again. “About all we can do, I guess.” He glanced at Active with the bush-pilot grin he got at moments like this. “Let’s jet. We’re burning daylight.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THEY CLIMBED INTO THE Cessna and cranked up. The engine still had some heat left, and Active opened his parka gratefully as warm air filled the cockpit. Cowboy taxied uphill a few yards, then locked the left wheel, goosed the throttle, and rotated the plane into takeoff position. Soon they were bounding along the whitish mat of reindeer moss and chert that covered the crest.

A gust caught them, and the plane soared off the ridge, the right wing lifting in a way that made Active think of McAllister’s account of the crash that had killed Budzie Kivalina at Driftwood. Cowboy corrected the roll and climbed southward toward the Katonak River. The climb continued until the plane was level with the bottoms of the clouds draping the slopes of the Laird Mountains on the far side of the Katonak. Cowboy hunched forward to peer at the approaching peaks. Active had learned that this hunch was a bad sign in a bush pilot.

“Trouble?”

Cowboy gave one of his rumbling grunts and looked at the chart on his knee. “Fifty-fifty on Igichuk Pass,” he said. “If it’s closed, we gotta go way around like this to get over there.” He traced a long arc on the map, running along the north slope of the Lairds to where the mountains sank into the Katonak Flats less than fifty miles from Chukchi. From the Flats, Cowboy’s finger indicated, they would have to double back and fly up the Isignaq along the south slope of the Lairds to reach One-Way Lake. The pilot tapped one of his gas gauges. “But if we have to do that, we’ll have to run in to Chukchi and refuel first.”

“It’s your call,” Active said.

“Can’t hurt to take a look.” Cowboy continued his scrutiny of the Lairds as they reached the Katonak, followed it upstream to the mouth of the Igichuk River, and headed into the mountains. Now they were skimming the bellies of the clouds spreading north from the Lairds. Snow streaked past the windows. Active peered ahead but could not spot the pass, or guess the chances of it still being open.

Active studied Cowboy, trying to decide how serious the situation was. The pilot seemed to have relaxed a little. He was farther back in his seat and even looking out his side window at the valley below. He dipped a wing as they passed a spot where a creek fed into the Igichuk near a long, silky gravel bar. “There’s a nice little hot spring down there,” he said. “Good place for a getaway with someone sweet when the weather’s nicer. I could drop you guys in there.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Active said.

They continued up the Igichuk until a hard left turn around the end of a rocky granite ridge put them in a mountain bowl of gray talus slopes whitening with snow. Clouds capped the bowl like a lid on a pot.

Active looked for a way out and finally spotted a saddle up ahead that looked as if it might lead through to the south slopes of the range. It was at the same altitude as the Cessna and pretty much socked in, so it was hard to see over. “That the pass?” He pointed.

Cowboy nodded.

“The clouds are right down on it. Maybe it’s time for a one-eighty.”

“Ah,” Cowboy growled. “We came this far.”

Cowboy rolled the plane into a turn and followed the curving wall of the bowl. Active wondered about this indirect approach for a moment, then realized they would have no escape route if they flew straight at the pass and found it closed. This way, if it was closed, they could complete the circle inside the bowl and backtrack down the Igichuk.

Active watched as the pass crawled closer on Cowboy’s side of the plane. Through the mist and snow, he thought he glimpsed a rock-walled valley on the south side, with a thread of water in its center diving toward the Isignaq River far below. Cowboy yelled “Here we go!” over the intercom, and the world rotated ninety degrees as he snapped the plane into a punishing left turn. He leveled the wings just in time to skim across the saddle so low that Active thought for a moment he had decided to land and taxi to the far edge.

Then the terrain fell away, Cowboy dropped the nose, and they were under the clouds and in relatively clear air, hurrying down the rocky valley Active had glimpsed moments earlier. He let out a long breath and looked at the pilot, who was lounging back in his seat and scratching his nose with a thumbnail.

“Nice work,” Active said.

“What was?” Cowboy asked, all nonchalance. Then the bush-pilot grin spread over his face, and he raised his eyebrows. He consulted the chart and peered down the valley ahead. “Another few minutes and we’ll pop out of this canyon. One-Way Lake will be eight or nine miles off to our left. That ridge above the lake will be closest to us, so I’m gonna head straight for it while you glass it with these.”

He reached into the pouch on the back of Active’s seat and dug out a set of compact Nikon binoculars. Active took them, draped the strap around his neck, and adjusted the focus for his eyesight.

“You got a plan yet?” Cowboy asked.

“First let’s see if he’s there.”

They continued down the canyon, jolted occasionally by turbulence, as the snow diminished almost to nothing. The wall to their left dropped away, and they could see in the distance what even Active’s unpracticed eye recognized as the ridge above One-Way Lake.

Pingo shouted “
Arii!
” and there was a commotion from the back seat, followed by silence.

“I showed him the Taser,” Long said over the intercom.

Active lifted the binoculars to his eyes and scanned the ridge ahead.

“Yeah?” Cowboy prodded.

“Nothing yet. Well, one speck that could be—hold on! Yes, it’s definitely a 185.”

“Anybody moving?”

Active was silent, the toy plane on the ridge growing in the binoculars as the Lienhofer Cessna ate away at the distance. “Nope,” he said finally. “Nobody around it. I think I can see tiedown ropes under the wings.”

Cowboy grunted. “Let me take a look.” He put the glasses to his eyes for a moment and gave a chuckle of satisfaction. “He fucked up.”

Active took the glasses back and studied the plane on the ridge. “How’s that?”

“He parked it at the end of the strip.”

“Eh?”

“If he would have parked in the middle, I wouldn’t have had enough room to land. This way I can.”

Active said nothing, still glassing McAllister’s Cessna.

“Do you want to land?” Cowboy asked.

“Let’s look it over first.”

Cowboy banked the Cessna into a wide circle a couple of miles off One-Way Ridge, and Active scanned the make-do landing strip on the crest and the valley climbing into the mountains above. The snowline was a couple hundred feet higher than the ridge and the lake was still open, except for a crescent of ice under the bluff at the upper end.

“McAllister must be back in there at his spike camp, right?”

Cowboy nodded. “Seems like.”

“And we can’t flush him out from the air?”

Cowboy peered at the clouds shrouding the peaks above the ridge. “Negatory. It’s socked in tight up there.”

Active chewed the situation over in his mind.

“We could land on the ridge and wait him out,” Cowboy said. “He’s gotta come back to his plane eventually. And when he does, there’ll be three of us to his one. Not counting Pingo.”

“Maybe,” Long said. “Unless he waits till dark and sneaks up and picks us off.”

“No problem,” Cowboy said. “We’ll just leave at sunset and—shit, look at that!”

A red four-wheeler with a little trailer in tow was bouncing down from the mountains toward the Cessna parked on the ridge.

Cowboy was at the outside of his circle, the farthest point from the ridge. Active looked at the pilot, now hunched forward in the seat again. “Can you land and block him before he gets rolling?”

“I think,” Cowboy said. He dropped a wing, and the Cessna wheeled to the right, heading for the lower end of the strip on the ridge.

Active swore under his breath as the seconds ticked past on the clock on the Cessna’s instrument panel and the ridge loomed larger in the windshield.

Cowboy rolled into a tight left turn and snapped out on course for an uphill landing on the ridge, pointing straight at McAllister’s plane squatting at the far end. By now, the four-wheeler was parked beside it, and there was no sign of the tie-down ropes Active had seen earlier. Nor was there any sign of McAllister. He must already be inside, Active was thinking when the propeller jerked, then spun into a blur. McAllister’s plane began to roll, a plume of powdery new snow streaming off the ridge behind it.

The Lienhofer Cessna bounced onto the crest, once, twice, and then was down and rolling fast.

“Cowboy?” Active shouted as the planes closed in on each other.

“Hang on,” the pilot said, his hands a blur at the controls. “I got it.” The windshield filled with McAllister’s plane, just lifting off. Cowboy swerved the Cessna left. The engine roared and, so fast that Active couldn’t sort it out, McAllister’s plane vanished, and they were headed straight for the tundra at the foot of One-Way Ridge. Then Active realized what had happened: Cowboy, rolling too slowly to take off, had plunged the Cessna off the side of the ridge and was now diving down the slope to get up to flying speed.

“Cowboy.”

“No sweat,” the pilot said, easing the Cessna out of its dive a few yards from the bottom.

“We should maybe be a little more conservative about some of these things in the future,” Active said after a long silence.

“You bet.” Cowboy bared his teeth in the bush-pilot grin. He pulled the Cessna’s nose up and started a climbing turn back toward the ridge. “You see Dood anywhere?”

Three pairs of eyes scanned the horizon. There was no sign of a Cessna 185, other than the one they were in.

“Where’d he go?” Long said from the back seat.

“Let’s just see.” Something in Cowboy’s tone said he already knew the answer. He pushed the throttle forward, and the Cessna roared over the ridge above the lake. “Whattaya think?”

Active didn’t say anything. He just admired the view. A quarter-mile out in the lake, McAllister’s plane was sunk up to its wings, with McAllister himself huddled on top, in the snow spitting down from the ragged gray overcast.

“I didn’t figure he had enough room to get up flying speed before he hit the lake,” Cowboy said. “That’s why I went left.”

Active regarded the pilot in silence. How could a man who consistently talked liked a fool—who had actually said “Let’s jet” only a few minutes earlier—be such a genius in an airplane? An idiot one moment, the most competent member of the group the next.

Cowboy rolled the Cessna into a slow circle above the lake. “I gotta give him credit, though. Most guys would end up on their backs if they had to ditch a 185, but Dood kept ’er upright.”

“We better get down there before he swims ashore and takes off,” Active said.

Cowboy snorted.

“I don’t think so,” Long said. “Most Eskimos can’t swim, all right. They never learn. The water’s too cold.”

McAllister looked up at them as they passed over, then stepped down onto the engine cowling, grabbed a propeller blade sticking out of the water, and jumped off. His head went under, and for a moment only the hand grasping the propeller was visible.

Then he surfaced, hauled himself onto the nose, and made his way back to his place atop the wing.

“See?” Long said. “He can’t touch bottom. He’s stuck.”

“How long will it float?” Active asked.

“Maybe long enough to ground out if he hadn’t filled his tanks yet when we chased him off the ridge. Plus, he’s got that cargo pod on the belly, so, if it was empty too. . . .” Cowboy pointed at the waves rolling down the lake. “And One-Way’s pretty shallow at the lower end.”

To Active’s eye, it did appear the plane had already moved a few yards toward the outlet at One-Way Creek. “I think we better get down there.”

Cowboy nodded, broke out of the circle, flew down the lake, made a tight turn to the right, and set them down on the ridge again.

“Alan, you stay here and watch Pingo,” Active said as they bounced to a stop near McAllister’s four-wheeler with its trailer-load of red jerry jugs. Cowboy jumped out and used McAllister’s tie-downs to tether the Cessna against the wind rolling out of the hills.

“Stay here?” Long said. “You’re going to take on McAllister by yourself?”

“I doubt he’ll be in any shape to cause trouble.” Active nodded toward the Cessna in the lake. McAllister was huddled on the wing-top, hugging his knees and betraying no inclination to test the water again.

“I could help,” Cowboy growled. He rummaged in the duffel compartment at the back of the cabin and came up with a big revolver in a leather holster. “This is a .357 Magnum. It stopped a grizzly once, so it sure oughta stop Dood McAllister.” He flipped out the cylinder and spun it to check the loads.

Active glanced at Long, then at the pilot. Who would he rather have at his back if McAllister turned out to have some fight left?

“Alan, keep Pingo handcuffed to the seat till we get McAllister in custody, then bring him down.”

Long’s face fell, but he climbed back into the plane.

“Let’s go, Cowboy,” Active said.

Decker had parked the Cessna at the upper end of the ridge, beside the cliff where Active had found Jae Hyo Lee’s rifle stuck in the rocks five days earlier. The sides of the ridge here were nearly as steep as the cliff, so they hurried along the crest to the foot of the ridge, then made their way down the slope to One-Way Creek and forded the stream at a spot slightly shallower than their boots.

The Cessna was no longer moving, presumably grounded. The wing was just under water, and the only part showing above the surface was a propeller blade. McAllister was still on the wing, standing upright and slapping himself in an apparent effort to fight off the cold. Active and Decker raced to the nearest spot on the shore.

“What the hell you assholes doing?” McAllister yelled. “You wrecked my plane. You gotta rescue me now.”

“
You
wrecked your plane. And you’ve got bigger problems than that,” Active yelled back. “You’re under arrest.”

“What for? I didn’t do anything.”

“You killed Budzie Kivalina and Jae Hyo Lee and then eight more people when you set the Rec Center on fire. That’s not wrong?”