by Jade Alters
Taming Her Bears
Jade Alters
Contents
1. Lee
2. Natalia
3. Darkhorse
4. Natalia
5. Josh
6. Roy
7. Darkhorse
8. Natalia
9. Josh
10. Darkhorse
11. Lee
12. Roy
13. Natalia
14. Lee
15. Josh
Afterword
Also by Jade Alters
Lee
The whipping helicopter blades overrode the sound of the wind lashing the ocean into a fury as it circled around so close to the chopping water, it splattered up over the landing skids.
“Time to get your feet wet, seaman,” yelled Darkhorse in my ear.
I crossed my arms over the inflatable life-saver, squatted at the door, and turned a somersault into the ocean below. Even through my insulated suit, I could feel the water’s chill. I gasped as I came up for air, my nose red and cold. The released tube inflated automatically.
The fisherman had been treading water but was starting to panic. He’d been too long in the ocean, had swallowed too much of the salty surf that washed up over him. He saw the life-saving tube and began waving his arms up and down, drowning himself. I caught him in a half-nelson, from behind, hauling him toward the tube. Within seconds, the helicopter was hovering directly overhead, dangling a harness and ropes.
The fisherman clung to the tube, his mouth wide open and gasping for breath, water streaming from between his lips. I wrapped the harness around him, buckled him in, and gave a thumbs up to Darkhorse before I started looking around for other survivors. Roy was harnessing in a fisherman who was barely conscious. Blood gathered around an abrasion on his head. I saw one other survivor clinging to a plank and swam over to him, shouting over the roar of the storm and the helicopter’s blades, “How many were in your boat?”
I had to repeat myself before he caught it. “Four,” he shouted back.
Four. Shit. I scanned the wreckage area, trying to locate another body. Nothing. They weren’t more than a half-mile from shore, though. If the fourth man was a good swimmer, it was possible he had reached land. However, the weather wasn’t going to make it easy to find him. Rain was pelting furiously on the ocean and steaming up a fog on the mainland. I signaled for the harness and hitched up our third fisherman.
It was a story heard often in the dark, treacherous waters where the Pacific meets the Arctic. The fishermen had been several miles from shore when the storm began moving in. They had tried to reach safety, but their skiff was buffeted with the first winds, driving it toward a treacherous underwater rock cropping. The boat ground along the edge of a sharp rock, splitting the bottom through the middle. In the storm, they hadn’t been able to tell how far out to sea they were, or if there was any possibility of rescue.
“You were lucky the harbor master saw you out on the water,” said Captain Josh from the pilot’s seat. “He called you in.”
“I hope you find Harry,” said one of them miserably from under his wool blanket. “It won’t be the same without him.”
I put another blanket over him and handed him a cup of coffee. “You were close to shore. He could be there.”
“We were wearing vests, but they got shredded up on the rocks and weren’t much good anymore. Maybe Harry’s came out better.”
“Maybe it did. Your vests still saved you from the rocks.”
You don’t tell people to give up hope—not out here. Hope is the only thing that keeps everyone going. We hope for a better summer. We hope for a good hunt. We hope to survive the winter.
“I radioed for another chopper,” shouted Josh toward the back. “We’re taking the three of you to Valdez hospital. You need treatment for hypothermia.”
They weren’t well-positioned to protest. Two of them were under breathing masks. The third gentleman—the stalwart one who had clung to a piece of board and was now telling us their tragic tale—was shivering so hard, the floorboards clattered.
We had barely settled on the landing pad and delivered our fishermen to the waiting arms of the medics, and were thinking about steaks and show girls, when Captain Josh ordered us back into our seats. “Look lively, girls. They haven’t found the fourth fisherman yet. We’re doing a sweep of the coast.”
I stifled a groan. The fickle autumn weather had left us to deal with a flurry of incidents over the past few weeks—an oil barge that had been marooned off-course, a fishing vessel that had grounded, a plane that went down near the Aleutians. The winds had a will of their own, turning and twisting and snatching things right up out of the sky. We were out on assignment more often than we were on dry shore.
“Don’t worry,” said Darkhorse, slapping my knee. “Cindy Moore will be there when we get back. She dances all night.”
I shrugged. “She’s been talking a lot of weird shit lately. She says she can’t trust anyone because of Denisovich.”
“Who the hell is Denisovich?”
I spread my hands, palms out. “How the fuck should I know? She can’t trust me because she can’t trust anyone, so she can’t talk about him.”
“Does she know you’re Coast Guard?”
“That’s just it. She doesn’t trust anyone who makes a living piloting the ocean. That’s just how she said it, piloting the ocean.”
Darkhorse leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. “That’s stark raving cuckoo.”
The storm had let up enough along the coastline that the clouds were peeling back, revealing a solid wall of conifers marching up to a narrow, sandy beach. We fell quiet as we scanned the ground litter intensely, looking for a sign of the missing fisherman. We were about fifteen minutes into the sweep when Josh received a message over his headphones.
“They found him. About five miles north of here. He washed up on a shoal, unconscious but alive.”
He started to turn the chopper around, but then did a wide swing. “Is that smoke?”
He was pointing at one of the nearby islands that hung like jewels in the Valdez bay. Darkhorse grabbed a pair of field binoculars and leaned out the open helicopter door, only his hand gripping the metal rail to keep him from falling. “Affirmative. That looks like smoke. We should probably get the fuck outta the way.”
The captain was already starting the swing, his brow pressing into a tight furrow. “The rain would have put out the fire by now, but I want to know what caused it. That’s a lot of smoke.”
Captain Josh is a lunatic. The more adverse the weather, the better he likes it. We’re the first responders’ first respondents to the worst crises on the ocean. He swung about so sharply, Darkhorse had to pull himself in with a “whoop!” to keep from flying out the door.
“Damn, Josh,” he chided. “Don’t be so eager for my baptism.”
The captain answered back, “Quit riding the skids like a horse.”
“Can’t help myself.”
It was probably the truth. Darkhorse was the same way on the cutter. He would lean over the bow as far as his balance would allow and grin right into the face of old man wind. He rode the boats the way a cowboy rides his horse.
The island was primarily one dense growth of trees, with two or three seasonal shacks built close to the shore on the east side and a boat harbor to the south. The smoke was coming from the far western end. Josh eased the chopper until it was breezing just over the trees, with a clear view of the landscape below the cloud cover. There it was—a fried-out patch sitting next to a stream about a half-mile inland.
Darkhorse scanned it qu
ickly with his binoculars. “Looks like someone’s lodge burned down. Just an all-around bad luck day.”
“We’ll call it in,” said Josh, picking up altitude and heading toward the main shore.
What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion, but felt lightning fast when thinking back to it afterward. We all heard a loud “ping” coming from the tail. Darkhorse half-stood and shouted, “What the fuck? Did we get shot at?” At the same time, Josh was fighting for control over the craft which began lurching and circling, nose to tail.
The copter tipped dangerously to its side and the ocean reared up, spinning drunkenly. We were about to do a nosedive. “Jump!” commanded Captain Josh. “Everybody, jump.”
I didn’t need any more persuasion. I jumped.
Natalia
I told Rhoda not to trust the bikers. They weren’t the kind that usually hung around—road warriors on the weekends, working a nine-to-six job during the week, just using the wilderness as a playground for their bikes. There was something harder, more intense about these guys when they showed up at Pioneer Pete’s, the lodge all the locals went to on the weekends to let their hair down and try again at relationships that didn’t work the first time around.
Rhoda couldn’t resist. The dudes had money. They had good drugs. They had kick-ass bikes that could follow a mountain goat’s trail. Rhoda had short-circuit attractions when it came to men. She liked men that drove big cars and big bikes. She liked men with money. The more they flashed, the better she liked them. When the bikers asked if we wanted to take a spin, I went along, hoping to keep her out of trouble.
I cursed under my breath. I was a state trooper; I should have at least been carrying a gun. I didn’t think about it at the time. I was off-duty, ready to hook up with a good-looking hunk of muscle and bone. They had all kinds in Valdez—the brawling fishermen that couldn’t wait to spend their money after three months at sea; the pipeline workers with arms of steel; construction workers; fish and game. Valdez wasn’t really on my beat, just a nice place to drop in on when traveling from Haines to the South Central.
What really pissed me off was that I hadn’t seen this coming. I was prepared for trouble along the trail. The dudes weren’t really that bad looking, they just had a way of looking narrowly at each other. They were speaking with their eyes, and it made me uneasy. My trusty Buck knife was tucked inside my boot, where it always was, and there were only two of them. I could take them both on. My dad didn’t raise a wimp—he raised a ball-busting officer of the law.
But our chaperones didn’t stop along the trail. They arrived at what looked like an ordinary biker’s club. Several other bikes were parked in the yard, and live music was jamming inside. I thought I knew our bikers well, but apparently, they still had a few surprises for us. This spot was popular. The club was rocking like I hadn’t seen since the last time I went to a Talkeetna festival.
I didn’t recognize anybody there, although the girls all seemed to be from the villages. They all had that village-girl look to them: wide-eyed, overly excited, their complexions too healthy to be biker whores. That should have tipped me off, right there. The bikers always had a handful of worn-out, drug-addicted fans lurking around their clubs, willing to do anything they were asked. These girls were just innocents taking a ride in the fast lane.
I let my guard down. I mingled. I downed a couple of beers. I was beginning to enjoy myself. As a group, I’ve seen worse, like the fat, balding types that don’t realize they no longer look twenty and the ones that forgot their toothbrushes. These guys were a little seedy, a little too cold around the edges, but the big guns were in all the right places. I started getting into the scene.
The last thing I remember was leaning against a wooden supporting beam, talking with one who seemed mildly better-looking than the others. His eyes seemed kinder, his smile more sincere. Then, I was out. Just like that.
I cursed again, struggling with the ropes. They had slipped something into my drink, just like I was a rookie. Pathetic. “We’ve got a lively one!” announced someone. I tried to peek through the blindfold. I knew I was on a boat. I could feel the ocean waves under me, hear the whine of the engine.
A voice answered back in Russian, then said in heavily accented English, “Take the blindfolds off. We’re almost there.”
Daylight streamed into my eyes and I squinted them shut. When I opened them again, I saw that we were in a large speedboat, zipping between a cluster of islands. I wasn’t very familiar with the island chains. They followed the entire mainland, from the Panhandle to the Aleutians. I could be anywhere. I was sitting in the bottom of the boat, bound and gagged, with Rhoda and two other women.
“Take the rag out of their mouths, too,” instructed the Russian pilot. “They can scream now. Scream all they want. Nobody will hear.”
I squirmed backward as far as I could when the crewman bent over to release the gag. If only I could reach my boot, but my arms and wrists were bound too tightly. “Scream now,” sneered the crewman, untying the gag. I cursed and spat in his face. He backhanded me hard enough to crack my forehead against the side of the boat.
“Not too much!” ordered the pilot. He was steering the boat toward shore, shouting over his shoulder. I saw a hand-hewn wooden pier bobbing in the water and a small fisherman’s cabin. He slowed down until the engine was only a quiet mutter. In a more controlled voice, he added firmly, “No damage. We want no damage. We want perfect.”
One of the girls was screaming. Rhoda and the other one were both crying in deep, despairing sobs. I blinked back tears of my own. I wasn’t giving these slimeballs the satisfaction. “She thinks she’s a tough girl, a real bad ass,” the crewman remarked with a grin. “She’ll break. They all break.”
“But not for you.” The pilot pulled up alongside the pier. Two men dressed much like the bikers, in leather jackets and jeans fitted tightly around the butt, came out of the cabin and rushed down to the pier to help with the tie-off. With the boat secure, the pilot picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Tough girl, eh?” He made a signal with his free hand. “Let’s bring them in.”
There were three other girls already in the cabin, all from the party. They were also bound, hand and feet, and left discarded on the floor. The four men apparently intended to burrow in for a couple of days. A stack of firewood was piled near the door, and the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room was crackling and pouring out heat. On top of it was a tea kettle and a pot of beans. A table in one corner was littered with junk food wrappers, fast food leftovers, and paper plates. The men wandered in and out, taking turns guarding us and eating whenever they pleased.
The pilot murmured something to the crewman, who opened a water bottle. “Anyone thirsty?”
We all were. Still hungover from the party and the effects of the drugs, we opened our mouths as obediently as baby birds. I hesitated, but the cap had been sealed. The water was clean. I let him pour it into my mouth, and it dribbled down my chin. My throat felt hot and dry. The water was soothing.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” said one of the girls.
The pilot scowled but indicated with a lax hand that someone should untie her feet and take her outside. Her guard left the door open in front of him. I scooted around to see where he was taking her. Their john was a collapsible frame and canvas porta-potty. Her guard stood in front of it until she came out, then hauled her by her elbow back to the cabin and pushed her inside. She stumbled and rolled across the floor, her feet kicking out. The guard laughed and grabbed her ankles while she squirmed helplessly.
“Oh, I’d do ya, hon. I’d do ya, but the boss says no damage.” He drew her knees together and ran his hand up the soft inner thigh. “Sorry I’ve gotta do this. I’d rather see your legs spread wide, but this is how it goes. You’re merchandise, hon. You’re going to fetch a pretty penny.”
He re-wrapped her ankles quickly, tightly enough for her to cry out, then chuckled and slapped her on
the bottom. “It’s not that bad. You might as well get used to how things are gonna be.”
I glanced at the pilot who, so far, had intervened with rough play. But he only watched in amusement, clearly not at all concerned with psychological damage. We were cargo. “Anyone else like use potty?” he asked. Despite our discomfort, we declined for as long as possible, not relishing the manhandling we would undoubtedly receive in return.
It was late in the evening when we heard the mutter of diesel engines chewing up the coastal waters, growing louder as the boat came closer. The men grew excited. They blew out the kerosene lamps and stood at the door, weapons ready. When the pilot gave the signal, they all filed out.
In the dark, I saw my chance. I rolled close to Rhoda and nuzzled at her hands. “In my boot, I have a knife. Pull it out. We’ll fight our way out of here.”
“I can’t, Natalia.” She was sobbing. “I’m afraid they’ll kill us.”
“Do you want to be a slave?”
“I want to live!”
I heard a series of gun shots. The girls in the room all screamed. I think I did, too. But I felt more rational as soon as I did and began listening closely. Only one volley of shots. Either someone had been taken by surprise or it had been a signal. If I was going to do something, I needed to do it now.
I couldn’t get Rhoda to help, so I tried loosening the ropes on my own. I hadn’t gotten very far when the men came back in. They were all stamping their feet and patting each other on the back. The pilot relit the lamps and beamed. “Your lucky day. Your ride is here.”
They weren’t in a hurry. They packed up gear and equipment and went over the details of their big heist, partly in English, partly in Russian. “Hey!” I shouted out. “I have to go to the bathroom.”