Keera bent to check. “A flashlight … a hat …” she reported, presenting a University of Washington baseball cap like the one Janice Farrell had worn. “And a book.” She handed Ray a thick text: Paleo-lndians and the Rise of Thule Culture.
Ray fanned through it, gave the inside cover a cursory glance and handed it back. “What about in there?” He pointed to a pocket to Keera’s left.
She fished a hand though it. “Breath mints … Granóla bar … No-Doz?” She offered the small container for Ray’s inspection. “What are they for?”
“They help you stay awake. Sort of like coffee, except stronger. Anything else?”
Keera produced a penlight, then a book of matches. “That’s it.”
Nodding, Ray sighed. It shouldn’t have surprised him. What had he expected to find in a parked float plane? Illegal drugs? Guns? He pressed himself through the seats and checked the back. There wasn’t much to check: two uncomfortably narrow plastic chairs with shoulder harnesses. He ran a hand under each seat. Dust. A stray bolt. A luggage ID tag with a blank window. Another candy-bar wrapper. Twisting in the chair, he popped open one of the rear cargo bays. The narrow compartment contained a set of flares. He tried to imagine stuffing a backpack into the space, much less a summer’s worth of gear. There had to be a larger bay somewhere. He tried the other cargo hold and discovered a discarded duffel bag and a wadded up Gor-tex windbreaker. In one of the pockets of the jacket he found a bandanna. In the other, a Baggie of prehistoric gorp.
Closing the bay, Ray scooted out the door, onto the pontoon. The Otter bucked with the shifting weight but quickly stabilized. Running his hand along the body of the fiiselage, he felt a depression. Then his fingers recognized a handle. He jerked on it. When nothing happened, he twisted. The handle did a 180 and a four-by-four section of the fuselage swung open with a creak. Peering in, Ray judged the compartment to be about five feet wide, almost ten feet long. The entire tail was hollow. Unfortunately, nothing noteworthy had been stored there: a topless wooden crate, a stained nylon stuff sack that had probably once held a sleeping bag, an old, deformed Frisbee, and, in the recesses of the hold, a red, metal gas can that was lashed to the side by a web of straps. Pulling himself up into the hold, Ray glanced into the crate. Empty. He picked up the stuff sack, tossed it aside. Out of curiosity, he nudged the fuel can. It sloshed, then clunked. The latter was an odd sound, as if a coconut had been dropped into the can.
He was reaching to twist the cap when he noticed the wires—red, black, yellow, running from the can, through a tiny hole in the fuselage. He tried to think of a practical reason that a gas can would be wired to the plane but couldn’t. Maybe it was some sort of auxiliary, emergency fuel tank, in case the main tank was low on fuel. But that would require hoses. He looked, but there weren’t any.
Removing the cap, he craned his neck to peer inside. The smell of gasoline rose to meet him. The can was almost half-full, the trio of wires disappearing beneath the surface of the murky liquid. He tugged gently on the wires. There was a clunk as a hard object rocked against the side of the can. The wires were attached to something heavy. He pulled on them again and slowly reeled in what felt like a baseball-sized rock.
As it emerged from the gas, Ray’s first thought was that the block of orange was small for its weight: three pounds packed into a three-by-five-inch rectangle. His second thought was that it contained drugs. Wrapped tightly in cellophane, it resembled a small brick of dope. As it neared the circular opening of the can, he began to wonder if it was clay. He could see the texture through the plastic wrap: solid, smooth, supple …
His next thought robbed him of breath. Still holding a fistful of yellow, red, and black wires, the brick of claysuspended a few inches below the rim of the hole, he froze.
It was at that moment that his overwrought brain chose to submit the obvious: in all of his life, he had never been this close to a bomb.
THIRTY-FIVE
P-L-AS-T-I-Q-U-E
Ray squinted at the tiny black letters and the dime-sized skull and crossbones below them as the orange brick dangled from his trembling hand. The word rang in his head as the pendulum accelerated, the block of explosive swinging perilously close to the sides of the fuel can.
What now? Let the bomb back down into the gas? Hope the buoyancy of the fuel would keep it from banging against the bottom. Or try to withdraw it without whacking it against the mouth of die can.
What if he simply released his grip and made a leap for the door? No. He wouldn’t beat the explosion. And what about Keera? If she was still in the cockpit, she would be engulfed by the flames. Ray, who was no expert on plastic explosives, guessed that there was probably enough there to reduce the Otter to dust.
“Keera!” he called. “Keera! Get out of the plane!”
Nothing. She probably couldn’t hear him from the cockpit. In the absence of a reply, he studied the bomb. The three wires ran to a black square of hard plastic attached to the bottom of the block of explosive. A detonating device, he supposed. Or a timer? There was no digital readout, like bombs always had in the movies, no red glowing numbers ticking a countdown. This was a simple weapon. Simple and deadly.
“Keera?”
“What?” Her head shot up into the cargo bay, and Ray nearly had a coronary. He flinched and the bomb clanked against the can, once, twice, three times …
“Get off the plane!”
“Why?” she whined.
“I found a bomb, okay. Get off. Go back to the Community Center.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“Get off.” His arm was shaking now, not from fear so much as fatigue.
Closing her eyes, Keera took a deep breath. “We need Raven help.”
He watched her for ten seconds. “Keera, get off. Please …”
“The Voice says to … to unhook the ignition wires.”
“The Voice?” His biceps was burning, the bomb dipping toward the fuel.
She disappeared through the door and the plane began to rock.
“Get off the plane!” Ray called after her. His shirt was heavy with sweat, his arm wavering as if he had palsy. He would have to do something soon. Better to die trying than die crouched next to the can.
He eyed the webbing that held the can to the side of the bay. If he could work the can free … No. The wires were connected to something beyond the wall. If he yanked them out, the thing might go off. Besides, how could he lift the can out of its canopy while trying to keep the bomb from colliding with the side again?
The futility of the situation was weighing upon him, thoughts of death, of leaving Margaret a widow, his unborn child fatherless adding to the sense of desperation when the plane bounced gently again and Keera reappeared.
“Got it.”
“Got what? I told you to …”
“I got the wires unhooked from the ignition.”
Ray started to ask how she accomplished that, how she even knew what an ignition was, but decided to leave that for later.
“Go ahead, try to pull them through,” she suggested.
He glared at her, then at the spot where the wires left the bay. “Pull them through?”
“Yeah. Try it.”
The word try made him nervous. If you tried but failed to do something while suspending a brick of explosive inches above several gallons of gasoline, you wouldn’t get another chance. There was no such thing as the old college try when it came to plastique.
He took a long, slow breath. Tugging on the wires, he felt them grow taut. “You unhooked them?”
Keera nod. “Pull.”
Somehow Ray wasn’t comfortable with the idea of blindly yanking on the wires. He tugged again and felt them catch, then give. Slack! A wave of relief swept over him as he reeled the wires in through the hole. It was tempered by the understanding that even when he had the entire string inside the bay with him, he would still be holding a bomb.
A minute later, he was gripping a nest of tangled wire with one hand,
still grasping the business end with the other. The bomb was now free. Encased in a fuel can, lashed into the cargo bay, but electrically speaking, free.
“How did you know it wouldn’t detonate when you unhooked the wires?”
She shrugged. “The Voice said it wouldn’t.”
“Does the Voice have any other sage advice?”
Keera closed her eyes. Thirty seconds later, “Nope. Nothing.”
“Nothing …” Ray muttered. He glanced at the wires, at the gas can, at the bomb. “Okay. Here’s the play. You get off, then I climb out and try not to set this baby off.”
“Okay. And I’ll ask for Raven help.”
“You do that.” He waited as she mumbled a prayer and slid out of the bay and off the plane, then waited for the rocking to stop. When it did, he gave himself another minute to size up the situation and try to come up with a less dangerous solution to the problem. Having done that and come to the conclusion that no, there was no other way out, and yes, he was in fact screwed, he acted decisively. Dropping the ball of wire, he used his free hand to work the can out of the web holster. The orange block clanged against the can.
He pulled the can free of the webbing and held it with his knees. Now he was not just hunched over a bomb, he was clutching one between his legs. With slow, deliberate movements, he backed out of the bay, the metal ringing as the plastique banged against it.
Reaching with a foot, Ray half stepped, half fell to the pontoon. The can came with him. As he tumbled backwards, his hiking boot missed the float. He instinctively released the can and fought to grip the strut of the wing. The can dropped, careened off the float, and bounced onto the dock, performing two full somersaults in the process. It thudded to a halt five yards away, spilling gas on the rotting wood. Ray braced himself for the explosion. It was only when it failed to come, when his body wasn’t torn to shreds by the blast, that he realized he still had the bomb. The plastique was right there, hanging from a tangle of wires like a prize salmon. He stared at it, wide-eyed.
“Nice move!” Keera congratulated from shore. “How did you do that?”
“I have no idea,” Ray admitted, continuing to gawk at the bomb.
“Now what? What are you going to do with it?”
“I have no idea.” Stepping carefully to the dock, he sank to his knees.
After the stars had retreated from his vision, Ray gently laid the bomb on the dock. He was suddenly weak, void of energy, on the verge of collapse. Rolling the wires between a thumb and finger, he bent to examine their entry into the black square of plastic. Now that the bomb was no longer connected to the ignition of the Otter, did that mean it was deactivated? Nothing but a chunk of impotent orange clay? Or could it still go off?
He assumed that without an electrical charge, the thing was safe enough. But the wires … They made him nervous. Should he disconnect them? Or should he just toss the bundle into the river? Maybe someone in town knew about bombs. He laughed out loud at this. Sure. Kanayut probably had several explosives experts.
He glanced in Keera’s direction and waved her back. “Go farther up the beach.”
She frowned at him, slumped her shoulders, and grudgingly complied, trudging along the shore. When she was safely out of range, he sat cross-legged, addressing the bomb as if he knew precisely what to do. He took hold of the bundle of wires. Disconnect them, he told himself. He determined the order by how threatening each one seemed: red he equated with fire and blood, black was symbolic of death, yellow implied suffering.
Grasping the red wire, he gritted his teeth and pulled. It twanged loose. No fire. No blood. He did the same with the black. No death. Yet. Closing his eyes, he wiggled the yellow wire free. Painless. Piece of cake.
He had rendered the brick powerless. Either that or the thing was going to explode in thirty seconds, spraying bits of Raymond Attla into the Anaktuvuk River.
He leaned back on his hands and watched the water rush past, genuinely grateful to be alive. A minute later he dragged the backpack over, coiled the wire, and stuffed it into a pouch, then bundled the plastique in three shirts, burying it in the deepest pocket. Evidence. There were probably no prints. The job struck him as professional. Besides, the gas would have smeared any prints. Still, it was something to go on. You couldn’t just buy plastique at Walgreens. Back in Barrow he could track down the manufacturer.
Back in Barrow … That sounded good.
“Ready to go to Red Wolf?”
He stared at Keera, resisting the urge to answer truthfully. “Show me where you unhooked the wires.”
She led him onto the pontoon, through the cab, out the pilot’s door. Standing on the float, she lifted a metal hatch and tapped the engine. “Right there.”
Ray noted the carburetor, the spark plugs, the distributor cap … And there beneath Keera’s outstretched finger was the ignition. She was right. The bomb had been set to explode when Farrell pushed the button to start the plane, the same button Ray had pushed in the cockpit. He tried to swallow but couldn’t.
“Come on,” he said, ready to get off the plane for good.
“Where are we going?” Keera asked. “Red Wolf?”
“The Community Center,” he told her.
They jumped back to the dock and started up the beach, Ray on feeble legs, Keera bouncing energetically along beside him.
“When are we going to Red Wolf?”
Ray ignored her. He eyed the dancers, surveyed the crowd, silently prayed that Betty had managed to locate Dr. Farrell and he could leave this carnival.
“I’m sure we’re supposed to go to the mine.”
The word mine triggered something in Ray. Didn’t they do blasting at mines? With explosives? Dynamite usually. But maybe nowadays they used more sophisticated materials. As much as he hated to admit it, Keera might be right. Given the facts he had discovered thus far—a missing archaeologist, a plane set to explode, a severed head, a mining operation with a vested interest in making sure papers declaring the area a historical site were never filed … Yes. They needed to visit Red Wolf. Or rather, he needed to visit Red Wolf. Ray wordlessly consented to do so if Betty didn’t have anything for him.
The Community Center was quiet. With the luncheon over, the throng had dispersed to participate in and view various festival activities. According to an events board just inside the door, a carving and beading exhibit was being held at the Thompson Building, wherever that was. Ray poked his head into the dining area. Two elderly women were clearing the tables, tossing paper plates and cups into Hefty garbage sacks.
Turning to the door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY, Ray was about to try the knob when it opened and a power forward emerged.
“Hi, Reuben,” Keera greeted.
After shooting Ray a disapproving glare, Reuben’s face melted into a soft, almost childlike expression. “Hey, Keera.” He scowled at Ray again. “This guy bothering you?’’
“No. This is Ray. He’s a Lightwalker.”
Reuben observed him skeptically. “You sure?”
“Uncle says so.”
“I need to use a phone,” Ray told him.
Reuben sniffed at this. “You going to the bead display?”
Keera shook her head. “We’re looking for Dr. Farrell.”
“Dr. Farrell?” Reuben echoed. “What for?”
“If I could use the phone …” Ray interjected.
“Something happened to him.”
“A phone. Any phone.”
“Something … bad.”
“Bad? Like he could be hurt? Or in trouble?”
“Even a pay phone. I’ve got a calling card.”
Keera nodded. “I had a vision.”
Reuben looked stricken. “You did? About Dr. Farrell?”
Another nod. “Uncle saw most of it too. It was Nahani.”
“Nahani …” the security guard said in a whisper. “He said he thought someone was after him.”
“Who did?” Ray wondered.
“Dr. Farrell. Last
time he was in the village. When he gave me the box.”
“What box?”
“A box of his things. He said to put it in a safe place, in case something happened to him.”
“Well …” Keera sighed. “It did.”
THIRTY-SIX
REUBEN LED THEM through the EMPLOYEES ONLY door, down the narrow, vacant hallway, into a storeroom marked JANITORIAL SERVICES.
“I put it in here.” He flipped on the light. “It was the safest place I could think of.”
Ray examined the small, overcrowded room and decided that Reuben was right. It looked like a safe place to hide something. Two metal shelving units were pressed against the wall, each loaded with a confusing assortment of file boxes, canned goods, and office supplies. In the corner, a stack of cardboard boxes leaned its way to head level. Folding chairs sat in stacks. A Mayflower dishpack near the door held an assortment of toys and jigsaw puzzles. The remaining floor space was consumed by a hill of rolled-up rugs and a life-size model of a caribou that was missing half of its antlers and one leg.
It reminded Ray of a pack rat’s attic. As he watched Reuben scramble over the rugs, wrestling the bull en route to one of the shelving units, it struck him that the room contained nearly everything except janitorial supplies.
Pushing aside cartons of Wite-Out and paper clips, the security guard hunched to retrieve a slender box. It bore an Apple computer logo and the word: PowerBook. Battling his way back to the door, he asked, “What do you think happened to Dr. Farrell?”
Ray opened his mouth to offer a vague answer, but Keera blurted, “He’s dead.”
“We don’t know that,” Ray said with a frown.
Keera was nodding with certainty. “He’s dead. I saw Nahani kill him.”
“We aren’t certain where he is, that’s all.” Ray tried.
“His body is upriver,” Keera said. “His head is downstream.” Turning, she squinted at Ray. “You saw his head.”
‘ I saw someone’s head. We haven’t determined whose.”
“He’s dead,” Keera assured Reuben.
The big man’s face sank into a mournful expression. “That’s too bad. I liked Dr. Farrell.” After a respectful pause, he asked, “Did anyone tell his wife?”
Season of Death Page 23