Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  “The main house is quite acceptable.” Igoshin brightened.

  “I’ll go put on some more bacon,” Esther Henderson said, peering at the three men with narrow eyes. “You do eat bacon, don’t you?” She gave Igoshin a look that said if he didn’t eat bacon, he could get right back on the airplane.

  “Bacon is also acceptable,” the Russian said looking around. The buildings seemed bunched much closer together now that he was on the ground and not a thousand feet up. “I assume our friends have arrived before us.”

  “If you mean Kostya and his daughter, then yes, they have.” Henderson took off his hat and ran a hand through thick gray hair, nodding his head. “I was just calling them in for breakfast. They must have taken a walk downriver a ways because I can’t seem to locate them. We have a father and son dentist team here as well but they’re likely off fishing somewhere and won’t be back for breakfast.”

  A stiff gust of wind carried in the sweet smell of wet willows and brought with it a stronger squall of rain. Esther looked at the pilot. “You can’t fly out in this. You may as well come in and have breakfast too.” She turned to make her way back to the lodge, seemingly oblivious to the rain.

  Adam Henderson snugged down his hat and hunched the rain jacket up around his shoulders. “This should bring your friends back in a hurry.” He offered to help with the bags but didn’t argue when the men demurred, turning instead to scurry after his wife. Corey, the young pilot, trotted up beside Henderson, and the two men began to talk of the fat grayling and Arctic char in the nearby river.

  Igoshin paused to let the two men get a few yards ahead, then leaned in so only Orlov and Gachev could hear him. “This fishermen father and son could be a problem,” he said. “Whatever the case, we will do nothing until we locate Volodin.”

  Orlov raised a thick brow and stared back, as if letting the words seep in to his thick skull. “I see no sign of the doctor or the girl. This man says they have walked away.”

  “They are here,” Igoshin said, nodding to the scrubby trees along the water and endless miles of tundra that stretched out beyond the woods. “There’s nowhere else for them to go.”

  “And after we have Volodin?” Orlov said.

  “Then—” Igoshin gave a benign smile. “Then we will kill them all.”

  Chapter 20

  The Cherokee Six, Lovita Air’s one and only plane, was set up to carry six passengers, two in the cockpit, two facing aft directly behind the cockpit, and two more facing those in a vis-à-vis configuration. The rear seats could easily be removed to allow space for more cargo through a small door on the left side of the airplane.

  Quinn sat up front beside Lovita behind a second set of controls. He didn’t really care for small planes since they put his immediate destiny in the hands of someone else, but working in bush Alaska made flying a constant necessity. In any case, sitting next to Lovita was much more pleasant than being in the back with the spitfire Agent Beaudine, who, since the conversation with her boss, was engaged in what Jacques would have called one long hissy fit.

  “No offense,” Beaudine’s voice came across the headset intercom. “Does it make you mad that they call this plane a Cherokee?”

  Lovita shot a glance at Quinn. “It’s a great airplane. Fast, strong, nimble. Native name fits if you ask me.”

  Beaudine nodded and sat back, lost again in her own world.

  Quinn’s leg bounced in time to the Imagine Dragons song spilling out of Lovita’s green David Clark headset. Her orange hair bobbed back and forth as she mouthed the words to “I Bet My Life on You.” Quinn smiled. Mattie loved that song—and it suited all three of them perfectly.

  Lovita had brought smoked salmon strips—Quinn’s favorite—and a plastic margarine tub of akutaq, also known as Eskimo ice cream. It was a blindingly sweet concoction made from whipped fat, sugar, and berries. Most people now made it with Crisco but Lovita preferred the more traditional ingredient of caribou fat. Tasting surprisingly like buttercream frosting, the rich stuff was the perfect survival food when the temperatures dipped. Beaudine turned up her nose at both treats, but Quinn had gone through a half-dozen salmon strips twenty minutes into the bumpy flight. Each strip was roughly the size of a fat fountain pen and dried to the consistency of soft jerky. A piece of silver gray skin ran up one side of the smoky, orange-brown flesh. The fish still contained plenty of its natural oil, and Quinn could feel the nutrients and energy flowing into his body with each greasy bite. Strips just like these had been carried into the backcountry by Eskimo and Athabaskan hunters for centuries. Some whites called the stuff squaw candy, but in Quinn’s experience, calling it that was a good way to earn a kick in the teeth from a Native female.

  Unable to help himself, Quinn took another strip from the plastic bag between the seats and used his teeth to peel off the skin. He held the skin out to Lovita who popped it in her mouth the same way she’d done each of the earlier strips. She seemed to love the skin as much as the smoky meat—enough to make her spit out her punk ash tobacco—and chew on it like gum while she flew the plane.

  As a start-up, Lovita Air had no access to the fancy navigational aids and avionics. Her console was made up of simple analog instruments that gave her measurements like oil pressure, altitude, and direction of travel. A handheld GPS attached to the dash with Velcro provided her with a moving map, but she generally navigated with a paper chart and compass, preferring traditional navigation as well as traditional food.

  Suddenly animated, Lovita’s voice crackled over Quinn’s headset. “Look at all those caribou off my wing.” She slowly shook her head as if it was hard to believe. “Must be thousands of them.”

  Quinn lifted out of his seat so he could look. He turned to point them out to Beaudine who slumped in the backseat with her eyes closed. She’d taken off her headset and put in earplugs, which Quinn decided was just as well. She was looking a little green, the bumps likely making her sick to her stomach.

  “Thank you for helping me out with my business,” Lovita said, turning down the volume on her music. She used a paper towel to pick up an errant piece of salmon strip from her seat and popped it in her mouth before cleaning up the oily spot. “The way I figure it, I’ll be able to get a loan on a second plane and hire another pilot in about three years.”

  “You’re a good investment.” Quinn couldn’t help but smile at the energy that oozed from the tiny Native woman.

  “So far as you know.” She grinned back at him, her head almost disappearing into the neck of the well-worn pink fleece. “I joke.” The traditional tattoos on her chin only added to the mischief of her grin. If anyone could grow a charter business in the remote corner of the world, it was Lovita.

  “We’ll be coming up on the lodge in two minutes.” She leaned forward to consult the GPS, and then nodded off the nose of the aircraft. “I’ll overfly it so I can make sure what the wind is doing down there and you can have a look before we set down.”

  Quinn nodded, turning to wave and get Beaudine’s attention. “We’re nearly there,” he said when she removed one earplug.

  “Good,” she said. “Because I need to pee.”

  “There’s another plane off the strip,” Lovita said.

  Quinn pointed out the window to the Cessna parked at the end of the runway so Beaudine would see it.

  “That’s Corey Morgan’s 206,” Lovita said, blushing. “He’s kinda got a crush on me. Keeps tellin’ me we should get together and raise lots of bush-pilot babies.”

  “I’ll have to have a talk with the boy,” Quinn said, feeling a rush of paternal jealousy.

  “That’s Adam Henderson going inside now,” Lovita said. “He’s the owner. Always feeds me breakfast when I bring clients out here. I like him.”

  Quinn was quiet now as he studied the buildings around the lodge and started building a map in his mind. It was fine to eat salmon strips and dream about future business plans while they were flying in, but now he needed to focus on Dr. Volodin and t
he dangers surrounding him. Odds were that the men who’d come after him were FSB, making certain he didn’t intend to defect. A defection could make for a sticky situation if Quinn got in their way.

  Things appeared to be peaceful—but questioning the way things appeared kept Quinn alive when he should have been otherwise.

  “Agent Beaudine,” he said. “You carry my aunt’s long gun but keep it out of sight.”

  Beaudine canted her head and glared. “Let’s remember one thing, okay. I’ve heard about your tactics. You’re working for me out here, not the other way around. We’re not going in with guns blazing.”

  Lovita shot Quinn a protective look, and for a moment, he thought she might climb over her seat and claw out the agent’s eyes.

  “Suit yourself,” Quinn said. “My aunt’s rifle is there if you want to use it. But good tactics are good tactics, no matter who’s in charge—and out here, we are our own cavalry. No one is going to show up and rescue us.”

  Agent Beaudine snatched up the rifle case and slung in over her shoulder.

  Quinn turned back to Lovita. “Would you mind staying with the plane until we check things out. If you hear shooting, take off and try to get a call out on the radio to the troopers.”

  Quinn knew the chances of getting a call out over the radio from this far out were slim to none. He also knew Lovita was so devoted that she would never leave him behind unless she had a mission—but telling her to made him feel better.

  * * *

  Two minutes later Lovita brought the Cherokee to a stop at the end of the gravel runway, far enough behind the Cessna that either plane could make an easy getaway without turning around. She watched as Quinn and the whiny FBI agent made their way to the front porch. The agent grudgingly carried the rifle in a flat case over her back, out of sight. Lovita could tell there was something bugging the woman, something heavy. Whatever it was, that was just too bad, because Lovita’s first allegiance was to Quinn. If the grouchy agent popped off again at Quinn when they were in the air, Lovita resolved to fly loops until she puked her guts out.

  Standing by her airplane, a good fifty yards away from the porch, Lovita tried to hear what Quinn was saying but the drizzling patter of a steady rain made it impossible. She didn’t really care. She trusted he would do what he had to do and then come back to the plane when he was ready. She thought Corey Morgan might come out to see how she was doing, but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead, Adam Henderson came back to the door. He smiled at Quinn and waved, so Lovita turned her attention to the weather. She didn’t mind flying in the rain, but the clouds to the north were growing darker by the minute. She intended to be an old pilot, not a bold pilot, and if Quinn didn’t finish with his business before the front rolled in, they were all going to stay the night at the lodge.

  With little else to do but wait and watch the clouds, Lovita decided to do what pilots did and try to check the forecast. She’d just reached the door of the airplane when she heard a crunch in the gravel behind her. Smiling at the thought of a chat with her friend and fellow bush pilot, she turned, expecting to find Corey Morgan standing behind her. There was no one there.

  A wet wind rustled the dark boughs of the spruce trees along the runway. The few golden leaves that clung to white birch fluttered and hissed, sending a chill up Lovita’s legs. A flash of movement caught her attention, and she peered into the tree line. From the time she was a toddler, her grandmother and aunties had told her stories about the enukin, small, gnome-like beings that dressed in caribou skin and lived in little houses beneath the mountains. Sometimes enukin helped stranded hunters, but they were impish in nature so they could just as easily bring misfortune.

  The wind picked up again, shaking the airplane and whipping the treetops. Her back to the Cherokee and peering hard into the darkness of the forest, she caught a flit of movement—but missed the crunch of footsteps in the gravel behind her. She’d never seen one of the little people, but her granny had, and whatever it was out in the woods, it was definitely the right size to be an enukin . . .

  Gravel crunched again, somewhere near. She cocked her head to one side, straining to figure out where the noise came from amid the swirling, moaning wind. She heard it again, coming from directly beneath the airplane. A half breath later something grabbed her by both ankles, jerking her feet out from under her. She slammed face first into the gravel. It was on top of her in an instant, pounding her face with big, hamlike fists—much too large to be an enukin.

  Chapter 21

  New York

  Bowen made a quick call, then asked Thibodaux to drive directly from Petyr Volodin’s apartment to the Brooklyn office of the U.S. Marshals Service. The supervisory deputy happened to be one of his academy mates, and let them in with a promise to reset the alarms before they left.

  Bowen believed in gathering all the intel he could when he hunted someone, and he ran computer searches on both Petyr and his girlfriend to check national criminal histories. He’d printed two sets of everything he found, including photos, and threw together two powder-blue investigative folders. It was four in the morning when he finished, and Cheekie’s was closed by the time they got there. Rather than banging on more doors and tipping their hand, they’d decided to postpone their hunt in favor of a couple of hours of much needed sleep.

  Thibodaux picked Bowen up at his hotel at eight a.m. looking more well rested than he should have. The chilly morning air, along with a stainless-steel mug of black coffee, helped to make Bowen feel almost human again. By the time Thibodaux worked his way through the sea of yellow cabs and clogged morning traffic to hit the Brooklyn Bridge that carried them over the East River, he was ready for business.

  A large neon sign made up of two tilted wine glasses forming the outline of a female backside, hung above the red double doors of what could have only loosely been called a gentleman’s club. Nikka Minchkhi’s rap sheet noted that she lived in a small apartment above the place. Thibodaux drove around the block to get a better view of the back entrance. He parked the rented Taurus along the curb a half block away beside a kids’ playground that seemed to Bowen to be horribly close to a tittie bar.

  “I think I’m more excited to find this spittin’ stripper than I am to find Petyr the Wolf.” Thibodaux tapped the steering wheel with his big hands. “He’s gonna be boring next to her.”

  “She’s our best bet to find him.” Bowen leaned back in his seat and opened the blue folder to flip through Minchkhi’s file.

  Thibodaux stared out the windshield, deep in some thought. “She worked until the wee hours of the mornin’ not counting any . . . side business. My bet is she’s still sleepin’ this time of day.”

  “No rest for the wicked.” Bowen sighed. He set the file on the dash so he could check out Cheekie’s website on his phone. “Apparently there’s enough of a demand for skanky pole dancers during the day that they open back up in a few minutes.”

  He slipped the phone back in his pocket and returned to the file to learn what he could about Nikka Minchkhi.

  Originally from Tbilisi, Georgia, she had apparently come to the U.S., as did many women from Eastern Europe, with the promise of a job to be a nanny that somehow evaporated when she arrived. Since then she’d been arrested nine times for prostitution, the first shortly after she’d gotten to America when she was only eighteen years old. She looked terrified in that booking photo but still relatively normal in well-kept brunette hair and a loose gray sweater that hung off a pale shoulder. The arresting officers and the prosecuting attorney had been certain the girl was forced into prostitution and basically living as a slave—but Minchkhi had steadfastly refused to give them any information. The charges had been dropped.

  Something happened after that first arrest because the photos that came afterword became increasingly terrifying. Apart from her crimes in the sex trade, Nikka had a record for shoplifting, a couple of minor drug offenses, and one arrest for stabbing a fellow prostitute in the thigh with the pointy end of a ra
ttail comb. Each time, she’d also been charged with resisting arrest and assault on a police officer—and each time, the charges were reduced to disorderly conduct.

  “I’d like to see what the judges would charge her with if she attacked one of them,” Thibodaux said, perusing an identical copy of her arrest record from behind the steering wheel.

  Bowen chuckled. It was impossible to dispute the point.

  The last five of Nikka’s later booking photos portrayed a tall woman with broad shoulders caught mid-swing in a fight with the jail photographer. Bleached blond hair stuck out in all directions like some sort of Medusa. Heavy makeup ringed tired, but still crazy, blue eyes. Ruby red lipstick smeared a full mouth, as if she’d been interrupted while trying to wipe it off. In one photo, her face looked as if it had been ground against a curb, complete with a giant raspberry of pink flesh on a swollen cheek. Another showed a split lip and a broken front tooth. Black eyes and torn clothes were common to all the later booking photos—along with blotchy red flesh from beneath her sullen chin that Detective O’Hearn told them about.

  Bowen looked up from the file at the Marine. “Fighting a girl is bad enough,” he said. “Naked girls are the worst.”

  “You’re tellin’ me.” Thibodaux shuddered. He tossed his file folder on the center console and put a hand on the door. “Guess we better get this show on the road.”

  Bowen sat up straighter. “I usually like to sit and watch the address for a bit—see who comes and goes.”

  “You kidding me, Gus Gus? Lookin’ at your wounded face I’d peg you for more of a barge-in-and-see-who’sin-there kind of guy.” Thibodaux checked over his shoulder out the window for traffic, ready to fling open the door.

  “Depends on the moment,” Bowen said. “If things are chill and nobody’s getting hurt, then it’s better to wait.”

  Thibodaux let out a deep sigh. “Sittin’ and starin’ at the outside of a strip club ain’t much of . . .” His voice trailed off, and his jaw fell open.