by Marc Cameron
“Hours ago, my dear.” Abbey said. “Hours ago.” She handed Beaudine a cup of coffee as well. “I don’t know how you like it.”
“I like it now,” Beaudine said, taking the cup with both hands and using it to warm herself.
“It’s six thirty-five, dear nephew.” Abbey shrugged. “You can go back to bed if you’d rather, but I thought you might want to know we have another break-in—with the same chamomile print in the track.”
“Where?” Quinn was instantly awake.
“Another airplane hangar, about a quarter mile from the charter office where we went last night,” Abbey said. “Looks like your Russian scientist might have slept there. The guy who owns the place is pretty hacked off. I guess they ate the pastrami sandwich he had planned for his lunch today.”
* * *
Five minutes later Quinn had splashed water on his face and stuffed his gear in the waterproof pack. Two minutes after that, he and Beaudine sat in Abbey Duncan’s Tahoe heading back out toward the airport in the steel gray grip of predawn twilight.
“This your first trip to the bush?” Abbey asked, glancing at Beaudine in the rearview mirror.
“It is,” Beaudine said through a long yawn.
Abbey kept her eyes forward on the snowy road. “They say you find three things out here: money, missionaries, and misfits.”
“Which are you?” Beaudine said.
Abbey shrugged. “Jury’s still out.”
“No it’s not,” Quinn said.
The trooper radio on the dash crackled to life.
“Hey, Abbey,” the voice said. “I got more news about those folks you were lookin’ for.” It was Angus Paul.
“We’re on our way to take a look at the break-in now,” Abbey said. “Whatcha got?”
“Just talked to Millie Beaty at Tusk Charters. She says Earl flew out to Bornite Lodge about fifteen minutes ago with an older man and a teenage girl.” Gussaq was the not entirely friendly word Inupiaq people used for white people.
Abbey kept the microphone to her mouth, but shot a look at Quinn. “Interesting,” she said.
“You better come over here,” Angus said. “There’s somethin’ else you need to see.”
* * *
Angus Paul was waiting at the perimeter fence, still wearing no more than his light jacket against the morning cold. He held the gate open so Abbey could drive the Tahoe straight inside, and then jumped in his truck to follow her across the snowy taxiway. Private aircraft heaved against their tie-down ropes in a steady breeze. A few had quilted wing covers and appeared to be well maintained. Far too many were tattered and covered in snow, icicles drooping from their props as if they were sad at being abandoned by their owners.
“How far away is the Bornite Lodge?” Beaudine asked when they’d gotten out of the car. She wore her waist-length jacket hunched up around her neck. Her thin fleece watch cap was pulled all the way down around her ears, eclipsing all but the tiniest wisps of frosted hair.
“About two hours northeast,” Abbey said. She turned to Angus Paul. “You said there was something we needed to see.”
Angus’s eyebrows shot upward, the Inupiaq equivalent of nodding his head. A homemade sign bearing the image of a huge bull walrus hung on the small metal hanger behind him. It was the base of operations for Tusk Air Services.
He turned around without a word and started toward a bare patch of snow outside the hanger. Quinn motioned for Beaudine to follow.
“The Tusk plane was parked here when everyone got on board,” Angus said, squatting low and holding an open hand over a patch of snow ground. “See that track there?”
Quinn leaned in close enough to see the faint impression of a chamomile flower in the tread. “If we’re right, that’s your Dr. Volodin and the girl heading for the lodge.”
“That’s not the most important part,” Angus said. “Millie said three other guys came by right after Earl took off. She described ’em as Russian thugs. They told her they were supposed to meet a friend—some old guy. Sounds like it might be your escaped scientist.”
“He didn’t escape,” Beaudine said. “We just need to talk to him.”
“Anyhow,” Angus said, giving her a wary eye that said he didn’t quite believe her. “Millie feels really bad about it, but she accidently let it slip Earl was headed to the Bornite. They musta chartered Corey Morgan’s plane because Millie saw ’em leave a few minutes later.”
Quinn mulled over the new information. Russian thugs trying to locate a Russian chemical-weapons expert on the day after the attacks turned this into an entirely different mission.
Beaudine was on her phone immediately, talking to what she called HBO—Higher Bureau Offices. The pinched look on her face and the way she kept throwing her arms in the air said the conversation wasn’t going the way she wanted it to.
The roar of another airplane overhead pulled Quinn from his thoughts. Landing lights twinkled in the gunmetal morning sky as a blue-and-white Piper Cherokee Six crabbed in, angled into the stiff wind.
“That guy’s coming in early,” Abbey said. She craned her head to watch the plane touch down before she turned back to Quinn. “I’ll go to talk to Millie and see if I can get a better description of those three Russians.”
Quinn couldn’t help but grin as the newly arrived plane taxied off the runway and rumbled across the lumpy ice and snow toward them. “Actually,” he said, his voice rising to be heard over the roar of the approaching airplane. “I need you to do me a favor, Aunt Abbey.”
“Of course, my dear,” Abbey said. “What is it?”
“We have to get out to that lodge and our ride just got here,” Quinn said. “I need you to loan Agent Beaudine a bigger coat.”
* * *
Beaudine was still arguing with someone in the Bureau hierarchy as the pilot of the Piper Cherokee applied the brake to one wheel and gunned the engine to spin the plane so it faced back toward the runway before coming to a complete stop. A slightly built Alaska Native girl climbed out. Her chopped orange hair, uneven as if it had been cut with a pair of garden shears, hung almost to her shoulders. A pink fleece swallowed her up, two sizes too big and grimy around the cuffs from constant wear. A black ball cap was embroidered with LOVITA AIR in bold pink letters. Her faded jeans were ripped above both knees in the way city girls found stylish, but Quinn knew was evidence of the intensity with which Lovita Aguthluk lived her life.
“What in the actual hell?” Beaudine groused, hand over her phone. She enunciated each word like the angry Texas girl that she was. “How come she gets to wear denim jeans? I thought you said cotton kills.”
“All bets are off with the folks who live out here.” Quinn grinned. “We’re just wannabes. They’re tundra tough.” He nodded to the little thing walking toward them. “Especially her.”
“Quinn!” Lovita squealed when she saw him, standing on tiptoe to smile and give him a stiff wave like a schoolgirl with a crush. She was the twenty-two-year-old niece of his friend James “Ukka” Perry from Mountain Village down on the Yukon River. Giddy as she was at seeing Quinn, Lovita was an extremely traditional Alaska Native woman. A prominent tattoo of three green lines ran from the tip of her chin to her lower lip, tying her visually to the ways of her Yup’ik and Inupiaq Eskimo ancestors. At the same time, orange hair and a half dozen tiny stainless steel hoops in her left ear put her squarely in the modern world of a young adult trying to make a statement about her individuality. Lovita had become a pilot as soon as she was old enough to get her license, spending every penny flying and maintaining the Piper Super Cub she’d inherited—even saving Quinn’s life with her flying skill. Quinn recognized the young woman’s potential as soon as he met her and took her under his wing as best he could. With his help and a healthy dose of grant money, she’d recently invested in the twenty-five-year-old Cherokee Six and started her own bush charter service.
Quinn had contacted her before he left Anchorage. The roads leading out of Nome didn’t go anywhere, but
there were quite a few of them and he thought a dedicated aircraft might come in handy in the search for Dr. Volodin. He figured he might as well give a little business to Lovita Air.
“That little nubbin of a thing is flying you out to the lodge?” Abbey looked up long enough to grimace before going back to rummaging through the back of her Tahoe. Every so often, she’d find something she deemed important enough to stuff into a tattered waterproof duffle.
“She is indeed,” Quinn said. “That little nubbin is one of the best pilots I’ve ever flown with. We’ve been through a lot together. I trust her.”
“Well that’s something.” Abbey paused, sniffing an extra pair of her pink wool socks before stuffing them into the duffle. “Because it looks to me like you’re about to head into the bush with an FBI lady who’s going to fight you every step of the way.”
Quinn shot a glance at Beaudine, who stood twenty feet away, gritting her teeth and grinding her cellphone against her ear. “She’s too busy fighting herself to have much of a war with me.”
Lovita ran up and threw her arms around Quinn, pulling him down in a tight squeeze that lit up his bruised ribs. She smelled of cigarettes and smoked salmon and was amazingly strong for such a little woman.
“What’s this?” Quinn frowned, eyeing the wad of punk ash—a mixture of leaf tobacco and burned tree fungus—she has tucked under her lower lip.
She groaned. “Don’t you start with me,” she said. “I’m still tryin’ to quit smokin’. One thing at a time.”
“Well, quyana,” Quinn said, using the Yup’ik Eskimo word for thank you. He decided it was best not to hound Lovita on her tobacco use since she’d flown through the darkness to get to him. “I know it was short notice.
“It’s okay,” Lovita said. “I saw the biggest herd of walruses ever, hauled up on a sandbar out in the sound.” She winked. “But I’m still gonna charge you for the flight.”
Quinn explained the change of plans and the need to make the two-hour flight out to the Bornite Lodge rather than just flying around the Nome area. Putting her pilot hat back on, Lovita nodded quietly then pulled a small salmon-colored book from the pocket of her pink fleece. It contained descriptions of virtually every airstrip in Alaska.
“Us Eskimos got a sense about the weather, but lemme check with the gussaq weather guessers just in case. I’ll top off with fuel.” She looked at her watch. Quinn smiled when he saw it was a TAG Heuer Aquaracer identical to his. It was big for her small wrist, but she didn’t seem to care.
“We can be in the air in twenty minutes,” she said, checking the weather on her iPhone while she spoke.
Quinn thought about the men with Russian accents who’d just taken off in pursuit of Volodin. “Ten minutes would be better,” he said.
Lovita raised both eyebrows. A silent “okay.”
Aunt Abbey came around from the back of her Tahoe with a duffle in one hand and a long black case in the other.
“Take my AR-10,” she said, handing the bags to Quinn. “I put three thirty-round mags in the case.”
“A state gun?”
“An Abbey gun.”
“Best aunt ever.” Quinn grinned in spite of the uneasiness in his gut. He kicked himself for coming to the bush with nothing but his pistol. A ten-millimeter had the equivalent stopping power of a .41 Magnum, but the rifle would make him feel better.
Khaki Beaudine stomped back a moment later in her own little bubble of discontent. She looked like she could melt the snow with her glare.
“Jackasses,” she muttered to no one in particular before turning to Quinn. “And, how come she gets to call herself an Eskimo? I was told they didn’t like it.”
“Some do, some don’t.” Abbey smiled. “I figure I’ll leave it up to them.”
“What did your brass tell you?” Quinn asked.
Beaudine rolled her eyes. “I gave my A-SAC a rundown of what we have going on.” The A-SAC was the assistant special agent in charge—always spelled out with the FBI since for some reason they didn’t want to be referred to as sacks. “Considering we got Russians chasing our guy, you’d think he’d free up some help for us. But nooooo.” She wagged her head for effect. “The stupid shit said every other agent in the Bureau is too busy running down more promising leads. I’m supposed to go to this lodge and interview Volodin, then report back.”
“Good,” Quinn said. “We need to go out there anyway. Since you have orders, I’ll let the FBI voucher out the cost of the air charter.”
In truth, Quinn didn’t mind not having a large group of backup agents. If Palmer hadn’t ordered him to take Beaudine, he would have left her behind as well. Some things, like dealing with thugs—Russian or otherwise—were best done alone, with as few witnesses as possible.
Chapter 19
Near Bornite Lodge, Alaska
Yegor Igoshin stared at the back of the pilot’s head. He would ultimately have to kill the man; that went without saying. Gachev was larger, so he sat in the front seat of the Cessna 206 to the right of the pilot, a young and underfed man who explained that he was building flight hours as a bush pilot so he could eventually work for a major airline. The idiot droned on as much as the airplane’s engine. Thankfully, Gachev would be able to fly the plane out once their mission was complete.
Mikhail Orlov sat next to Igoshin in the backseat, their shoulders overlapping one another in the cramped cabin. None of the men were small, each weighing well over 200 pounds. Igoshin was the tallest of the three and as a soldier, clean-shaven. He had deep brown eyes and kept his dark hair cut close to his scalp. Gachev and Orlov were soldiers once, and like Igoshin, had enjoyed the certain loose latitudes of behavior Russian soldiering brought them. Instead of staying in when their military commitments were up, they had moved on to the more lucrative world of the professional contractor—which, it turned out, provided an even wider latitude when it came to behaviors. They had let their beards go, and their hair reminded Igoshin of two shaggy dogs. Their kit, however, the weapons and gear in the bags on the seat behind them, was in perfect condition. Igoshin’s rifle, an American Remington 700 chambered for the powerful .338 Lapua Magnum topped with a Nightforce 5.5-22 power scope, lay lengthwise in a padded case in the back of the plane. One way or another, he was going to try it out on this trip, even if it meant letting the pilot make a run for the river. Igoshin made a lucky shot during his last deployment to Chechnya, killing a separatist leader with his Kalashnikov. An officer, who’d needed something positive to report to higher command, walked off the distance and announced in front of everyone that it was an 800-meter shot. It was probably half that if Igoshin was lucky, but it was enough to get him decorated so he had not argued. Russian needed her heroes—one of them might as well be him. Everyone assumed Igoshin was a crack shot and he began to believe them. He found he actually had an aptitude for long-range shooting and made an honest 1100-meter shot at the range. But he’d been sitting at a table, with the rifle resting on a bag. He’d yet to break in the rifle on a living, moving target.
Perhaps this would be the trip.
When they weren’t actually on a mission, each of the three men spent their time exercising their bodies or abusing them with vodka and women. Far from the sculpted muscles of the American gym rats, these men were thick and brutish, preferring the raw power of a barbarian to the look of a body builder.
Spitting rain shot past the wings and trailed along the windows as the little airplane banked into a tight downwind on their approach. The cloud ceiling was high, well above three thousand feet, providing a clear view of the lodge nestled among the pockets of green forest and brown tundra below. Out of habit, Igoshin built a mental map as they overflew the facilities.
Five small cabins fanned out behind the main log building, each with a matching red metal roof, shiny and wet from the rain. Even when viewed from over a thousand feet up, the lodge itself was impressive for such a remote location. It was built of peeled logs well over a foot in diameter with a gabled roo
f and a massive front porch that ran the entire length of the building. Four balconies jutted from the second floor of what the Russian guessed was the back of the building, leading him to believe there were at least four guest rooms upstairs. A wooden deck, complete with outdoor Jacuzzi, ran between the east end of the lodge and the bank of a small tributary that connected to the larger Kobuk River, two kilometers to the north. A long, slender building that Igoshin guessed was a workshop or garage separated the lodge from the runway.
There was no sign of anyone at the lodge, but they’d met another aircraft in the air a half hour before that was heading back toward Nome. Certainly this was the one that had brought Dr. Volodin and the Chukchi girl. They had strict instructions to capture the doctor or kill him and bring back some type of canisters that they were forbidden to open. Back in Nome, Orlov had pointed out that anything they were forbidden to open was likely worth a great deal of money—and all three men were considering their options as the babbling pilot slowed the aircraft on final approach.
A tall man wearing a green raincoat and a brown slouch hat stepped out of the shop building and walked through the drizzle toward the plane as it taxied onto the gravel apron at the end of the runway and stopped. A moment later an equally tall woman with her gray hair in long braids stepped out of the same building to join the man. The couple waved in unison.
“That’s Adam and Esther Henderson now,” the pilot said, peeling off his headset and hanging it over the yoke. “They’re usually not too busy this time of year, but I’ll wait around to make sure they have a cabin for you.”
“That would be most welcome,” Igoshin said. He spoke English but didn’t like the taste of it.
Igoshin pulled his rifle case from between the two back seats and climbed out the side door after the others.
Adam Henderson stepped up to shake everyone’s hand in turn. “I don’t remember when we’ve had so many people come in the same day without reservations,” he said. “We still have rooms in the main house. I’ve already winterized the cabins.”