by Ward Larsen
She went to the body, bent down, and studied things more closely. The climbing rope appeared worn, and had broken at a point that looked particularly frayed. The victim wore a belt with carabiners and quickdraws and anchors, no two pieces of hardware seeming to match. His climbing backpack was what a middle-schooler might use to haul textbooks. She looked up the ice-shrouded mountain and saw challenges everywhere. Nothing seemed wrong with the greater picture. It happened every year or two—a hiker or would-be adventurer went careening off the eastern face. The western trail was more forgiving, but it didn’t have the same view of the city, a dramatic panorama that begged for an Instagram moment.
Lund stood. “Can you get him down?”
“I’ve got some help on the way with a basket,” said Doran. “We’ll manage.”
“Okay, do it. And thanks for the heads-up.”
“No problem,” said Detorie.
Relationships between permanent Kodiak residents and Coasties, who generally rotated in for three-year tours, were not always founded in warmth. Lund, however, by virtue of her longevity—she could have left four years ago—was more accepted than most. She dropped her spent cigarette on the ground and twisted it out with her toe. Then, suspecting the two men were watching, she picked up the butt and stuffed it in her pocket.
Doran said, “Too bad about that rescue swimmer we evac-ed out last month.”
Lund paused a beat. “Yeah, I know … I heard he didn’t make it.”
“Those guys are in great shape,” he said respectfully. “He was really banged up, but when he lasted two days in the hospital here, I thought he might pull through.”
“You saw him?”
Doran chuckled. “Not much choice. They called me in the middle of the damned night—I helped transport him to the Lear.”
“Oh, right.” She thought back, and remembered what she’d heard about it. “I was told he went out on the daily eastbound Herc.” The air station ran a regular C-130 Hercules flight to Anchorage.
“Nope. Definitely a Lear, civilian model, geared-up for med-evacs.”
Lund tipped her head to say it wasn’t important. She started back down the hill at a cautious pace—as the body behind her proved, down was the dangerous part. She gripped the same sturdy branch where the plateau dropped away, and took one last look at the scene. She was at a point in her career where she was getting reliable instincts, and the accident in front of her seemed nothing more than that. Too much youthful vigor, too little caution. All the same, something clawed in the back of her mind.
She turned her attention to the terrain, setting a careful course, and as she took her first steps down the slope a chill rain began to fall.
8
DeBolt had never been so cold in his life, a grave statement for an Alaska-based Coast Guard rescue swimmer. The temperature had dropped precipitously, and he was lurching through the forest with leaden legs, ricocheting from tree trunk to rock like a human pinball. He’d seen nothing more of the assailants, but that was hardly a relief given the utter darkness. He doubted he would hear them either, the noise around him like an oncoming train as the forest canopy was whipsawed by gusts and pelted with rain.
He wondered how much ground he’d covered since leaving the beach. A mile? Two? It would have to be enough. In both training and operations, DeBolt had faced some of the harshest conditions on earth with considerable tenacity. Now, for the first time ever, his legs defied his commands. He twice ended on his knees in wet moss and muck. When he got up the second time he nearly ran into the building.
He stood back at first and tried to make sense of the shadow. It looked different from the nurse’s place, larger and more rustic, a Lincoln Log beater. There were no lights inside, no signs of life at all, and by the time he’d staggered around two corners to reach what had to be the front door, he didn’t care if anyone was home. He gripped the door handle with two frozen hands and found it locked. Not having the strength to curse, DeBolt reared back, put his shoulder down, and threw himself at the door, more a guided collapse than a controlled strike. There was a sharp wooden crack as something gave way, and the door swung open. He stumbled inside, bringing the wind with him. It stirred stagnant, mold-infused air. The place was completely dark. DeBolt felt the wall for a light switch, found one, and flicked it up. Nothing happened.
He tried to shut the door, but the frame and latch were ruined, and the wind won another battle, slamming it back decisively against the inside wall. DeBolt ignored it, turned into a pitch-black room, and began feeling his way through the place with outstretched hands. His shin struck a table and he maneuvered around it. A floor lamp went over with a muffled crash, and he ended up on his knees. Then, finally, he found what he wanted—a six-foot length of fabric that could only be a couch. He crawled onto it and stretched to his full length, aching and depleted. There were no more visions. Nothing at all but an inexorable blackness.
* * *
The assault team commander, a former Green Beret, called off the search after an hour. The team assembled at the targeted cabin. He immediately assigned a two-man detail to deal with the woman’s body, and sent a third outside to monitor the perimeter. Only then did he turn on the lights in the cottage. The leader set his weapon down, pulled the earbud from his ear, and surveyed the damage. A few overturned pieces of furniture, some holes in the woodwork. It wasn’t bad, definitely containable. But they’d sprayed over a hundred rounds into the beach and surrounding sea. Messy, he thought. Very messy.
The storm outside had peaked, but conditions would be extreme until daybreak. That was in their favor. Maybe the only thing that had gone right all night.
“Dammit!” he said. “I can’t believe he wasn’t inside! Who goes to the beach on a night like this?”
He was venting to his second in command, a crew-cut man with a cinder-block build, who responded, “He made the perfect move to go for the water. It was dumb luck—we know this guy’s not an operator.”
That much was true. They’d never been given their target’s name, which seemed peculiar. But the mission briefing had included the fact that he was a rescue swimmer in the Coast Guard. “We knew he was a swimmer. We should have planned for that contingency.”
“I say the ocean did the job for us.”
The commander stared at his second, weighing it.
“He took at least one hit,” said the crew-cut man, trying to make his case. “We found a trail of blood. Swimmer or not … Michael Phelps couldn’t have survived the riptide and those waves.”
“Maybe not. But carry that idea forward. If he washes up on a beach tomorrow, what happens? It would be a suspicious death, which means an autopsy. The briefing was very specific about the male target—get rid of his body with no traces.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“I don’t know, but it seemed important.”
The crew-cut man cursed like the Army grunt he’d once been.
The commander acquired a faraway look. “Dead or alive, we have to find him. Obviously, there’s no way the five of us can cover the entire shoreline. We’ll have to ask the front office to put out feelers with local law enforcement. If somebody finds him washed up, we go in fast with our provisional federal IDs, claim jurisdiction. Then we get the body out of sight before anybody figures out what’s going on.”
“Okay. And if the guy is half fish and actually survived?”
“Then we track him down.”
“How?” asked the second in command.
“We put ourselves in his shoes. If you made it back to shore, what would you do? Would you go to the authorities?”
The subordinate thought about it. “Not a chance—not based on what we know.”
“Exactly.”
The crew-cut man frowned. “There’s something else we should consider.”
“What’s that?”
“What if someone saw him here, saw the two of them together? Our target might get blamed for the nurse’s death … at the very l
east he’d be a person of interest.”
The commander’s brow furrowed as he considered it. “True. Every law enforcement agency in the state would start looking for him. We can’t let that happen—far too much attention.” He looked around the room, contemplating how to handle it. “All right, so if he didn’t make it our hands are tied. We recover the body as fast as we can. But on the off chance that he did survive … it might be in our interest to help him avoid the authorities.”
“How?”
“By covering his tracks for him.” He explained what he wanted done.
“Okay. Then what?”
“Then we find him and provide some long overdue closure.”
“If he did survive, and if he could move, where do you think he’d go?”
The commander only looked at his protégé, implying he should answer his own question.
The crew-cut man thought it through, then said, “True. It’s the only place that makes sense.”
The explosion came forty minutes later. Manufactured by an artfully designed gas leak, closed windows, and a precisely governed ignition source, it could be heard miles away. Yet because there was still thunder in the distance, only one neighbor, an elderly woman who lived halfway to the main road, recognized the blast as something unnatural. When her 911 call was logged, at 12:07 A.M., a beleaguered dispatcher explained that due to the severe nor’easter, first responders were at a premium. Unless loss of life or severe injury was impending, or already proven, there was no one available to investigate a report of an explosion in a remote area. Someone would look into it tomorrow, the dispatcher promised. Possibly in the morning. Afternoon was more likely.
9
It was nine that evening when Lund tracked down PO3 William Simmons’ commander. Lieutenant Commander Reggie Walsh was nursing a beer at the Golden Anchor, the on-base sports bar. The bad news about the accident on Mount Barometer had already reached him by way of the wives’ network—in all branches of the service, there was no more lightning-paced intelligence organization.
“I’m sorry,” said Lund from the stool next to him. She already had a dark beer in hand thanks to a bartender with a quick wrist and an infallible memory.
“Me too, he was a good kid,” said Walsh. “Never gave me a lick of trouble.”
“How long has he been here in Kodiak?”
“A little over a year. Will was an aviation maintenance technician—worked mostly in the spares and expendables section, issuing and ordering parts.”
Lund inquired about the other young man who was involved, Simmons’ climbing partner, and Walsh had nothing bad to say about him. “They were just a couple of kids, indestructible and looking forward to life.” He explained that both young men seemed adventurous, constantly hiking and borrowing kayaks, and that Simmons had inquired about attending rescue swimmer training.
“I was going to recommend him too. He was friends with a couple of the ASTs on station, guys who’d been through the program. But now…” He took a long draw on his beer. “At least I won’t have to make the notification—had to do that once, and it’s lousy duty. Will wasn’t married, and his family hails from Georgia. I’ll make some phone calls tonight, find out who’s going to knock on the door. They need to have everything straight going in.”
Lund spun her mug by its handle. “So tell me something—were you around a few weeks back when we lost that helo?”
The lieutenant commander stiffened. “That investigation is hot and heavy right now, so I can’t say much about it. It was one of our birds, and the place has been crawling with investigators. I can tell you they looked at our maintenance records long and hard last week, but found no evidence of mechanical issues. That crew was trying to pull a guy out of a raft in twenty-foot seas with wind gusts over eighty knots. I guess that’s why the flyers get paid the big bucks.” He looked at her warily. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m not involved in the safety investigation. I was just wondering about the young man they brought back—the AST who almost survived. I’d heard he was flown out to Anchorage on one of our C-130s, but then today somebody told me he was airlifted out on a civilian Lear.”
Walsh seemed to stand down. “I wasn’t there, but one of my mechanics was doing an inspection that night. She told me a small jet came to pick him up.”
“Isn’t that strange?” she asked. “I mean, doesn’t the Coast Guard usually handle their own med-evacs?”
“Usually, yeah. But it’s not my end of the operation.”
Out of nowhere, a third voice entered the conversation. “You knew him, didn’t you, Shannon?”
Lund looked up and saw the bartender addressing her. She hadn’t been to the Golden Anchor in months, but the guy remembered her beer and her name—which put him two up on her. He was stout, in his mid-forties, obviously nosy and with a bear-trap memory. He’d probably make a good detective, she thought.
“You knew DeBolt,” he pressed. “I remember you being here with him once or twice.”
“Once,” she said. “It’s a small base.”
It had been six months ago, a strictly professional encounter in which Lund had tracked DeBolt here, finding him in the middle of a unit hail-and-farewell party. She’d needed to interview him regarding a rescue in which a trawler captain had been plucked from a rocky beach—even four hours after his boat had sunk, the man was stone drunk, so much so that he’d fallen out of the helo when they arrived back at Kodiak. Someone had decided to build criminal charges against the captain, although it hadn’t been Lund’s section. After filing her report, she’d never tracked the disposition of the case. But she definitely remembered DeBolt, with his sharp blue eyes and cool confidence. He was one of the elite: well trained, exceptionally fit, and, she was sure, very intelligent. His death was the kind of thing that frightened people in the service, in the sense that if it had happened to him, it could happen to anyone.
Lund tipped back the last of her beer, and regarded the two men in turn. “So tell me, do either of you gentlemen know where Simmons lived?”
Not surprisingly, it was the barman who said, “Apartment house just outside the gate. A lot of the enlisted guys end up there. Do you need to take a look at his place?”
“I probably should.”
“I can get you in.”
Lund raised an eyebrow. She looked at the cash register receipt on the bar in front of her and saw her server’s name printed near the top: Tom.
“It’s a small town,” said Tom the bartender. “My wife keeps the books for the guy who owns the building, does some sales work on the weekends. She has keys for all the units. I’ll tell her you’ll be by in the morning.”
“Right,” she said. “A real small town.”
* * *
DeBolt opened his eyes to light that was blinding. He squinted severely, trying to make sense of things. An open doorway, beyond that swathes of blue sky and trees. Remnants of last night came hurtling back. The storm, the killers, fighting for his life in the surf. He remembered Joan Chandler sprawled motionless on the ground. In the air and on the sea, DeBolt had faced more than his share of trials, and he took pride in his ability to stay calm under pressure. But after last night—jumping into the Arctic Ocean from a helicopter seemed like child’s play.
He struggled up to a sitting position, and the couch creaked beneath him. DeBolt felt a host of new pains. Looking at his bare feet, he saw cuts and bruises. A new gash on the outside of his calf was very possibly a gunshot wound—a personal first. His head ached in the vicinity of new scrapes and contusions, which was at least different from the generalized pain he’d been battling for weeks. The soreness in his shoulder was more familiar, an aggravation of the injury from the crash. After allowing a few moments to get his bearings, DeBolt looked around the room, seeing it for the first time. It was similar to the cottage where he’d spent the last month, only more dated and worn. He guessed the place hadn’t been lived in since summer. Maybe the summer before.
He st
ood and felt the grit of sand under his feet. DeBolt searched out the bathroom. He avoided the mirror at the washbasin, and turned on the tap. The faucet spit a stream of brown muck, but eventually ran clear—cold only. He cupped his hands under the faucet, girded himself, and plunged his face into the icy water.
* * *
DeBolt braved a quick shower, the cold reminding him of the Atlantic. In a cabinet he found shaving supplies and even a new toothbrush in its packaging. He cleaned his wounds, found bandages for a few, and then began foraging through the largest bedroom. At least one of the cabin’s owners was male, and roughly his size. A pair of boat shoes were two sizes too small and bit into his heels, but they were better than nothing at all. In a bedside table he found a twenty-dollar bill, and scrounged a few more dollars in loose change from a kitchen drawer. DeBolt kept a mental log of everything he took, in vague hope that he might someday repay the owner.
His stomach reminded him that he was due a meal, but the kitchen had been cleaned out save for a box of sugar packets and an old can of asparagus. As he drew a glass of water from the tap, DeBolt decided there were issues far more critical than breakfast.
Last night he had witnessed a murder, the only person he knew in Maine having been killed by a squad of armed men. He didn’t know who they were, but he recognized a military operation when he saw one. He’d worked regularly with components of the DOD and DEA on missions involving smuggling and drug interdiction, and DeBolt himself had been trained by the Coast Guard on small-unit boarding and assault tactics. Yet there was one glaring disconnect with what he’d witnessed last night: those men had killed without hesitation. There had been no warnings to their targets to stop or surrender. No rules of engagement or abiding of laws. They had only wanted him and Chandler dead. That wasn’t how legitimate military units operated.