Drone Chase

by Pam Withers

  “Thanks, Ray,” Mom says as she’s pulled to her feet by Dad. “How was school?”

  “Good.”

  Outside, an engine sputters and roars. The high-pitched honk of Min-jun’s quad makes everyone turn toward the window. My parents look from the figure sitting on the ATV to me.

  “Hey, Mom, Dad. Min-jun offered me a ride. Okay?”

  “You and Min-jun are friends?” Mom fails to hide a slight frown as she straightens up beside her fully anesthetized patient. Most mothers would be happy about a first friend in a new school, especially a next-door neighbour they sort of know, but I can see her measuring how that weakens her bargaining power on the return-to-New-York campaign.

  “Min-jun is good driver,” Mr. Kim says.

  “Okay. Be back for supper,” Dad calls out as I grab my backpack and pass Mr. Kim and Granddad to step out the front door.

  “He’ll be back in five minutes after falling off that rust bucket,” Granddad announces loudly enough for everyone, including Min-jun, to hear. “Sean, is yer wife done making all that bloody racket on the porch? Saints preserve us! Can’t get me an afternoon nap around here no-how.”

  “Sorry about Granddad,” I say, staring at Min-jun’s mud-spattered machine, which looks like a wannabe army jeep on its fourth tour of war.

  Min-jun laughs. “He’s our official valley grump, but with a good heart. Hey, like my stripped-down two-up? A little tippy on sharp corners, but lots of snap for a fifty horsepower.”

  I have no idea what he has just said, but I give him a thumb’s up.

  “You’re joking about the bear kidnapping, right?” he asks.

  As I lead him behind the house for a look, I give him a quick rundown of events.

  “A set of four off-road traction tires stopped, then squealed off here, for sure,” Min-jun says, studying the dirt alley beside our back gate. “Did you see them load the bear in? Catch a licence plate number?”

  “No,” I admit.

  He crosses the lane and examines the grass and bushes leading up the hill. “No sign of a young grizzly here recently, not that I’m an expert. It’s possible he got shoved into the pickup truck. But why anyone around here would want a —”

  “Is it okay if we ride up to the Logan brothers’ place, then? The ones you said have a dented red pickup truck?”

  He hesitates. “Sure, whatever. But don’t go accusing them or anything. Not the kind of guys you want to mess with.” He shows me where to climb into a small sitting space behind him. It has a wimpy backrest and side bars to hold onto. The noise and jerk of the take-off make me panic-grip the bars. Having exchanged my beret for my dad’s New York Yankees cap, I clamp a hand on it to keep it from flying off, nearly bouncing off the vehicle in the process.

  We bump along Bella Coola’s potholed roads, then leave town, heading up into the mountains on a steep dirt track. Ten minutes later, a high fence with a barbed-wire gate and two giant padlocks blocks us. Min-jun applies the brakes in the choking dust.

  “I’ve been here before to buy firewood, and it was locked then, too. Oh well, we tried.” He starts to turn his ATV around, but I lay a hand on his shoulder till he switches off the ignition. I scan the big, dusty property. The faded ranch house is surrounded by rusted farm equipment, a collapsing barn, and a collection of weed-infested wrecked cars. No animals or crops in sight.

  “That’s the one,” I say, pointing to a beat-up Ford pickup truck parked in front of the house. I leap off the quad.

  “Hello! Anyone home?” I shout. “Hmm, we need to climb the fence and search around for Hank.”

  “We? Not me, dude. And not you unless you have a bulletproof jacket,” Min-jun says.

  Telling myself he’s joking, I search for footholds in the fence but don’t find any. And the barbed wire on top of the gate would wreck my best jeans for sure.

  “Let’s walk around the place at least,” I suggest.

  “What?” Min-jun screws up his face, then shrugs and parks his ride off the road, behind some bushes. We’re a third of the way around the fence, close to the barn, when two large, snarling dogs tear out of the farmhouse straight for us, crashing into the fence and leaping up, saliva running down their chin.

  “What the —” Min-jun backs up. “What if they jump this fence and maul us?”

  The Plott hounds are making such a racket that it sets off more dogs in the barn.

  “Not going to happen,” I say, drawing myself up to my full height. “No!” I instruct our would-be attackers in a deep leader-of-the-pack voice. “Go home. Now!”

  Min-jun looks astonished as the sleek hunting dogs with bulldog-like brindle coats take their paws off the fence, observe me for a minute or two, then trot silently back to the house.

  “Hank?” I call toward the barn.

  Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I swear I hear his cry from inside.

  Then, for the second time in twenty-four hours, a shotgun blast rips through the air beside me. Min-jun disappears in a zigzagging sprint toward his stashed vehicle. I’m about to follow when a man appears from the barn and walks to within feet of the fence.

  “Who the hell’re you, and what’re ya doin’ ’ere?” A pinched-faced, fortysomething guy with a full beard and moustache approaches, holding a hunting rifle. He’s wearing a tan vest covered in ominously bulging pockets over a black-and-red checkered flannel shirt, camo pants, and army boots. Real-man Bella Coola fashion.

  “Hey,” I manage to say through a tight throat. “I’m Ray, Daniel McLellan’s grandson. Just moved to Bella Coola with my parents, the veterinarians. Been hiking and I’m lost, I guess. Sorry if I upset your dogs. Can you point me toward the road to town, please?”

  “There’s only one road, idiot. Now git ’fore I let all my dogs out,” he says in a gruff voice.

  “Nice hounds,” I say. “They’re what, about three? And that one’s expecting soon.”

  The man frowns as he looks from me to the dog I’m pointing to.

  “Shiny coats, lean bodies, and healthy gums. Guess we won’t be seeing them in our clinic anytime soon. But you know we’re there if you need us. Have a great day.” I tip the right side of my baseball cap to him so that the left side still hides my ear.

  “Out!” he shouts, shaking his gun. “We don’t need an effing vet. I’m the vet ’ere. Went to high school wi’ your dad, by the way. And ya don’t recognize me, do ya?” The tone is scathing, like he and my father were never really best buddies, which wouldn’t surprise me somehow.

  “Oh,” I say, surprised. “We’ve met? Probably when I was younger, here on vacation.” Maybe before he grew that moustache and beard that hide most of his face?

  “Out!” he repeats, and I can tell he means it.

  Adrenalin pumping, I nod and back away a bit before turning to hurry to the quad.

  “You’re full of it, but you’ve got nerve,” Min-jun informs me, shaking his head and waiting for me to climb into his back saddle. “That was Oakley, the older brother. He has a younger brother, Orion. Both are bad news. Did you seriously tell him his dogs have healthy gums? Okay, dog dentist, let’s dip. If those two have your cub, it’ll be a bear rug by tomorrow.”

  Bear rug? I turn away so he won’t see me wince. “You knew they were like that but brought me up here anyway?”

  He shrugs and smirks. “Your initiation, new boy.”

  So I’ve been played. Or so he thinks. I bite my tongue. “Well, we’re not done yet.” I pull Bug and his controller out of my backpack. “We’re going to stay behind this bush but get a close-up of what they’re up to.”

  Min-jun’s eyes widen and he blinks a few times, then leans forward. “Your funeral,” he says, staring at my little ’copter.

  Ten minutes later, I say, “Do you want to try the first-person-view goggles?” I fit the FPV goggles on his head. That way he can see what Bug’s camera is seeing at the same time I can on my less-clear mini-tablet.

  “Frickin’ amazing,” he mutters as I launch the
drone up to a bird’s-eye view of the farm. “Oakley’s using a mini-vac on the back of their truck. Orion’s holding his nose like whatever they’re vacuuming up stinks. How come they don’t hear this thing over their heads and shoot it out of the sky?”

  “Vacuum cleaner’s noise, I guess.” I veer my machine toward the barn and in through one of its glassless windows.

  “Hey! Did you see that dog jump up and almost bite it?” Cole says.

  “Yeah, thinks it’s a Frisbee or something.”

  “Okay, okay, Ray, you’re making me dizzy spinning around inside like that. Why are you hovering over that big dog cage? Hey, no bear in the place, bro. Just another pack of dogs ready to eat us alive.”

  “Not just any pack of dogs, Min-jun. Plott hounds.” I fly my drone back through the open window and to base.

  “Who?”

  “Bear-hunting dogs.”

  “Oh. How would an uptight city boy know that?”

  “My grumpy granddad. And who says I’m uptight?” I punch him lightly in the shoulder. He whips off the goggles, a grin stretched wide above his dimpled chin, and punches me back as my drone settles neatly on the patch of ground beside us.

  “You’re right,” I tell him, folding up Bug and returning him to my backpack. I climb into my quad seat. “We didn’t see Hank. But he’s there, or was. I swear I saw some of his hair in the back of the truck. I’ll put the conservation officer guy onto them tonight and maybe have Hank home by morning.” Yeah, a part of me knows Hank might not be here, might even be dead, but I’m way too stubborn and optimistic to let that thought win.

  “Officer Anderson?” Min-jun says doubtfully. “Maybe.” He fires up the quad.

  “I owe you, Min-jun. Like maybe a pizza tomorrow? Does Bella Coola have a decent pizzeria?”

  My driver spins his machine around as tightly as a mob getaway vehicle. “Any more smartass questions like that and I’ll push the rear-seat ejection button. Hang on or —”

  Luckily, my palms are already wrapped around the support bars, and the valley wind blows away the rest of his words.

  CHAPTER SIX

  HANK’S NOT BACK by morning — it’s a professional development day, which gives us a break from school — but I call Officer Anderson, and the conservation officer says he’s on it. My entire body sags with happy relief, until I realize Granddad overheard me and knows what’s up.

  “Kidnapped by the Logans?” He shakes his head and points a trembling finger at me. “Yer a right eejit” — that’s Irish for idiot — “with a wild imagination, grandson, raising a stink for naught! I reckon yer mother has let you watch too many crime movies. The thing got cut loose and then just wandered off, like they do. It’s good riddance to the yard-crapping little beastie anyway. How dare you phone my friend Evan Anderson!”

  But if I’d asked the old man first … I slink away from Granddad’s temper with guilty confusion.

  My dad sticks his head into the living room from the clinic. “You ran into Oakley Logan? We were in the same class. Were so-so friends. We both wanted to be veterinarians.”

  “But?” I prompt.

  Dad shrugs. “He didn’t have the grades or money. Worked in the previous vet’s office for a while as an untrained assistant. I’ve tried to have coffee with him since we moved here, but he seems to have a chip on his shoulder.”

  “Jealous,” Mom suggests as I move into the clinic and watch her mending a young dachshund torn up last night by a cornered raccoon. “There are rough-and-tough hicks around here,” she adds. “Can you hand me the scalpel, Sean?”

  “Don’t you need a hemostat first? He’s —”

  Does Bella Coola know how lucky it is to have two first-class vets?

  I contemplate Dad growing up here, and how his enthusiasm for the place showed whenever we were here on vacation. He was always trying to pass along knowledge and a love of nature to me in a gentle way, not like Granddad’s be-an-outdoorsman-or-else approach.

  On my thirteenth birthday, Dad gave me a camera, then took me to the Belarko bear-viewing platform along the Atnarko River in Tweedsmuir Provincial Park, about forty-five minutes east of Bella Coola. Surrounded by electric fencing and staffed by BC Parks staff and volunteers from the Nuxalk Nation, it was a zone where we could see and photograph bears as they dove and splashed in the river, played with their cubs, and caught and ate salmon.

  “Look,” Dad whispered, pointing.

  We could hear the moms grunting at their babies, watch the youths wrestle each other playfully, and marvel at how nimbly the cubs climbed trees. I lifted my camera and clicked away. We weren’t allowed to talk, or move quickly, or make any noise. We could only whisper as we watched the great creatures, in awe.

  The rangers at the platform seemed to know every visiting grizzly by name: Bent Ear, Lady Diver, Y-Bear, and the Rowdy Twins, for instance. I watched Bent Ear for a long time, wondering if his appendage buzzed and roared when memories of whatever trauma caused it came back to him. I wondered if he tried to hide his disfigured ear, and whether sows were attracted to or repelled by it.

  “That’s one of our largest, a male,” the ranger whispered to us, pointing to a furry creature standing on his hind legs that made me shrink back, shuddering. “Six hundred kilograms, or thirteen hundred pounds. Ten feet tall when he stands up like that.”

  I backed up involuntarily as the park ranger kept talking. Dad smiled reassuringly. Later, we watched one mother grizzly dip a quick paw into the river, bring up a three-foot-long pink-tinged forty-pound Chinook salmon, and squeeze till the eggs squirted out like jelly from a doughnut right into her waiting mouth. Then she licked up every spilled egg from the nearby rocks and tossed the rest of the salmon away like it was a useless wrapper. Dad and I chuckled together, holding hands.

  “Look how much she’s wasting,” I objected.

  Dad grinned. “They do that only in the height of the salmon season. When there are fewer fish, they eat everything. Sometimes twelve salmon a day, the equivalent of thirty burgers. But the eggs and brains are the most nutritious, and they need to fatten up to survive the winter.”

  “Yeah, they get so fat they have to dig belly-sized holes to lie down comfortably,” I said, remembering something I’d read. I pictured them like kids on a sandy beach.

  “That’s right,” the ranger whispered, winking at Dad. “And in the early spring, it’s the opposite. They’re thin, hungry, and cranky.”

  Now, I think sadly, it’s Granddad who’s thin and cranky, and his only son has rushed to Bella Coola to care for him. I respect that, even if I miss New York City.

  I head outside and cross the yard to unlock the large padlock on Granddad’s workshop. I stride into the back room of the workshop. Granddad hasn’t kicked me out of it since I sort of claimed it as my own.

  Drone batteries line one scrubbed-down shelf. My soldering iron, wires, screwdrivers, tapes, and zip ties are piled up on another. On the back wall above the shelf are drone diagrams and Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada posters of UASs. I’ve moved stacks of Granddad’s yellowed hunting magazines off the floor to make room for a table with an iron clamp to do my soldering. My two projects in progress sit on the workbench, like Pinocchio puppets awaiting a wand. Or, more like, waiting for me to insert parts from a mail-order package that arrived yesterday.

  I pull up a grimy swivel chair and breathe in the space’s peace and quiet. Working on my drones awhile will distract me from thinking about Hank. All this Officer Anderson needs to do is show up at the Logan farm, search their barn, and find Hank wherever those guys have hidden him. The brothers can’t let dogs loose on a conservation officer. Anderson can gently load the bear into his official truck and drive it back down the mountain to us. Hank will be home in hours, I tell myself. Anderson will allow him to stay here because we’re vets, and Mom and Dad will let Hank hang around till he’s healed. Granddad will mumble an apology (yeah, right). Optimistic, for sure, but I’d rather be an optimist than
think about the alternatives. Meanwhile, I’ll put in some time here, in my family-combat escape bunker.

  First, I pull out the infrared thermal sensor that came by mail yesterday, my heart beating fast. My thermal unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, a.k.a. Skyliner, is nearly complete, just missing a few final touches. I’m especially excited about his underbelly custom pickup hook, kind of like one of those claws that pick up stuffed toys from a two-dollar-a-play vending machine. The hook can’t carry much weight, only about a can of soda, but hey, it’s way cool anyway, especially given the drone’s ability to see in the dark. Yeah! Skyliner’s like a bat that can fly with a fig or grasshopper in its grip. For now, he’ll work with my smaller batteries, but I’ll need to make improvements if I want this baby to fly the thirty minutes he could. I make some quick modifications to the thermal sensor with my screwdriver, strap in a few wires, and click the hook into place underneath the belly of the beast on the gimbal. Skyliner is going to be perfect for spying at night.

  Next I lift up my smaller, palm-sized drone, a.k.a. Butterfly. “You, little monarch, are going to be my perfect daytime spy in the sky. Just need to figure out how to power your on-board computer chip without draining the batteries too much.”

  I set her down delicately and tinker for a few minutes until I punch in enough power for the computer. (I have no idea why I consider Skyliner and Bug males and Butterfly a female. But I’m the dad, right?)

  Since Butterfly is now ready for a test phase, I grab the remote, take the tiny drone outside, and find a clearing to launch her. She does well at first, gliding swiftly through the air like a hummingbird on a beautiful spring day. Then the breeze picks up and Butterfly starts beeping. Damn. The on-board computer is losing connection with my controller! She drifts back and forth, then tilts and descends directly into a heap of Hank’s day-old scat. My shoulders droop and my nose scrunches as I lift her out with pinched fingers. After brushing off the reminder of Hank in the grass, I scan the surrounding slopes.

  “Hank!” I call out. And more softly, “Hank?”