Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  “The lodge is off of our left wing,” Davydov said, bringing the Cessna around in a shallow bank.

  “Hopefully they are still here,” Yakibov said, sneering.

  Davydov gestured out the windscreen with the flat of his hand. “We are going to be here until the storm passes. The wind in those clouds would turn us on our heads.”

  Kravchuk scanned the area below with a pair of powerful Komz binoculars. “There is one airplane at the end of the field.” It was getting dark, but the man’s eyesight was almost as good as Zolner’s. “Two male individuals standing in the river north of the small buildings,” he said. “I believe they are fishing.”

  Davydov glanced at Zolner, fighting a buffeting crosswind as he brought the Cessna in line with the gravel airstrip. “We know your target came here,” he said. “But what of the other team?”

  “They are professionals,” Zolner said. “If they have not yet reported in then something has happened to them.”

  “And what of the others in the lodge?” Kravchuk said.

  Zolner took a long breath, exhaling through his mouth with a slight pause at the bottom, the way he did when he was preparing to shoot. Correct breathing was important in all aspects of life and helped to settle his mind.

  “Do not worry, my friend,” he said. “I will let you take care of them. Colonel Rostov has been very clear. There can be no witnesses.”

  Chapter 33

  Alaska

  Something heavy dug into Khaki Beaudine’s ribcage. No matter how much she willed it to move, her right arm refused to obey. Her head twisted unnaturally to one side, nose against a cold, orange blur. Beaudine briefly considered that she might be dead, and if she was dead, the fact that everything around her smelled of wood smoke and gasoline didn’t bode well for her final destination—not that she was surprised. Then she realized she needed to pee. Her toes wiggled, so she was relatively sure she wasn’t completely paralyzed. For one panicked moment she thought she might still be trapped in the airplane, but then she remembered the blizzard. Surely she would have frozen to death had she still been trapped in the plane. The orange blob in front of her nose smelled like a plastic pool toy and brought back distant childhood memories of trips to the lake . . . before things went crazy with her family. She had a vague recollection of Quinn dragging her through the snow.

  A fire popped and crackled outside, casting dancing shadows against the tent wall. Beaudine could feel the reach of its warmth on the top of her head. Beyond the fire, a gossamer curtain of green and purple swept across the sky, ebbing and flowing, brilliant in the surrounding blackness. The mournful howl of a wolf lingered over the lumps and shadows of the snowy ground. It was an incredible sight, beautiful despite the terror of the situation. Beaudine tried to rise, but every muscle and bone rebelled, pressing her back to the rocky ground.

  Pain cleared away the fog of sleep, and Beaudine slowly came to realize the weight across her ribs was an elbow. The body connected to that elbow was tucked in beside her, breathing gaspy breaths against her neck. There appeared to a sleeping bag laid out underneath them and some sort of foil space blanket above, but it was Jericho Quinn who provided most of the warmth that enveloped her.

  The longer she was awake, the more Beaudine realized how badly she hurt. Her knee was on fire. Her left eye seemed to be glued shut, and she was pretty sure she’d cracked a front tooth. Even the slightest movement of her neck sent excruciating bolts of fire arcing down her spine, but she could move it, so that was something. She knew all too well how to work through pain.

  She tried to push herself up on all fours, causing Quinn to draw back his arm and roll away, not exactly in recoil, but like someone who didn’t want to loose an important appendage.

  “Sorry.” His voice was deep and came with a phlegmy morning cough. Hearing it brought back memories of the crash and with them, images of Lovita’s death. Babying her neck, Beaudine rolled onto her side so she faced Quinn. Even this small movement brought a stab of pain to her hip, but it was a worthwhile trade in order to get a better look at her surroundings in the orange darkness of the shelter.

  Beaudine felt the welcome warmth of the fire reflecting on her face.

  “Wait a minute,” she said. “If you were still asleep, how do we still have a fire?”

  “Don’t worry,” Quinn said, his exhausted voice muffled against his own arm. “It wasn’t the little people. The storm stopped about an hour ago and I got up to add more wood then.”

  Beaudine relaxed a notch. She’d always thought of herself as a wilderness girl, but the woods she knew didn’t come with plane crashes, creepy little goblins, or killers named Worst of the Moon.

  It could be noon for all she knew. Dancing flames cast long shadows from the scrub willows onto the gravel bluff overlooking the river. Everything looked cold and sinister and much larger than it actually was. A curtain of black closed in beyond the reach of the fire, but this was Alaska, so darkness accounted for a large chunk of day at this time of the year.

  Beaudine used her elbow to nudge a heavy pocket of snow that sagged the tent, sending it sliding down the fabric with a hiss to the drifts along the base. At least six inches had fallen during the night.

  Quinn lay on his stomach, one arm trailing by his side, the other up under his face like a pillow against the rocky ground. Healthy black stubble from the day before had grown into a respectable beard overnight. Dark hair pushed up over his ear in lopsided bed head.

  Beaudine rubbed her nose with her sleeve and suddenly realized she now wore the same type of black merino wool underwear that Quinn had on. Her life before the crash seemed much too long ago to remember what she’d been wearing, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t black wool. She fought the urge to ask who had dressed her, deciding she’d rather live with the fantasy that she’d changed out of her wet clothes on her own while in some sort of stupor and just couldn’t remember it.

  A sudden twinge of pain above her left eye made her reach up and touch her forehead. The flesh was tender, swollen and caked with blood. The pain eased some after a moment, falling back to a sickening ache.

  “We’re going to need to take care of that before we do much else,” Quinn said, looking at her wound, chin against his bent arm. “Do all your bones bend in the places they’re supposed to bend?”

  “So far,” she said, clearing her throat. “Something’s going on with my wrist. Hope it’s just a sprain. How about you?”

  Quinn arched his back, wincing slightly, but keeping it to himself if anything important was damaged.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “This feels like shit.” Beaudine’s fingers explored the crusted mess on her forehead. “How bad is it?”

  “You could see out of both eyes last night,” Quinn said. “But you’re going to need stitches before we go anywhere.”

  “I don’t want to even think about that,” she said, rubbing her wrist. “My watch must have come off in the crash. What time is it?”

  Quinn rolled up on his side. He pulled back the edge of the tent directly over his head so he could look up at the stars. He appeared to find what he was looking for, closed his eyes and counted quietly using his thumb and fingers.

  “About five A.M.,” he said at length.

  “You can tell by looking at the stars?” Beaudine eyed him hard with her good eye. “Who are you—Daniel Boone?”

  Quinn nestled back down in the bag. “I looked at my watch a little bit ago.”

  “Sure you did,” Beaudine said. “Jacques told me you were Daniel Boone.” She turned a little, stretching her neck by degrees, and saw the snow-covered lump in the moonlight that she realized was Lovita’s body. “I’m really sorry about your friend.”

  Quinn rubbed the stubble on his face and stared into the night. “Thank you,” he said, his voice still thick, and now with the added heaviness that comes with losing someone very close. “I can’t just leave her out there on the rocks . . .”

  Quinn wriggled f
orward, waiting to climb to his feet until he was well out of the survival bag so as not to rob Beaudine of the relatively warm bubble of air. She watched him shrug on his heather gray wool shirt and step into the unlaced boots he’d stashed just inside the door of the shelter. He disappeared into the darkness looking completely at ease in his floppy boots, unbuttoned shirt, and long johns.

  He wasn’t gone for more than two minutes but Beaudine felt a flood of relief when she heard the crunch of his boots on snow and gravel.

  He stooped to look into the opening of the shelter, shining a tiny flashlight into the corner beside his pack. “There’s some akutaq in that white container,” he said. “It’ll warm you up until I get the fire going again.”

  Beaudine nestled deeper into the sleeping bag, trying to take advantage of the warm spot Quinn had left. It hurt her face when she turned up her nose, but she did it anyway. “I don’t think this Texas girl’s stomach could handle reindeer lard and sugar.”

  “I’m serious,” Quinn said. “I don’t know what Lovita has in the survival kit but I guarantee you it won’t have as much food value as akutaq.”

  Beaudine eyed the plastic container like it might bite her.

  “Caribou fat?”

  “Lovita is . . . was a traditionalist,” Quinn said. “It’s got a lot of berries too.”

  “Look, I’m not trying to . . .” Beaudine shook her head. “I just, I mean . . . sugar and lard. ’Nuff said.”

  “I get it.” Quinn shrugged, absent any malice. He seemed more interested in kicking snow away from the coals of his fire than schooling her about food prejudices. “Up to you, but we’ll need our strength to go after Volodin.”

  Beaudine perked up and poked her head out of the thin foil bag.”

  “We’re still going after him?”

  “Someone has to,” Quinn said.

  “And how are we supposed to do that? We don’t even know which way he went.”

  “I didn’t say we were going to catch him,” Quinn said, a gleam in his eye despite the situation. “Seriously, we know he was headed toward Needle Village before the crash. If I’ve got my bearings right, we’re maybe ten miles away once we reach the main river.”

  How far are we from the river?”

  “A couple of miles, I think,” Quinn said, adding another log to the fire. “Lovita put us down to the south of the river, which is too bad because it’s boggier on this side. The tundra around here isn’t frozen yet. Two miles jumping from tussock to tussock will be like running a marathon. I think we’ll have to follow the streambed all the way down. It’ll be a winding route, but might be the only way without sinking up to our knees.”

  He looked completely at home squatting there, poking the flames with a charred piece of willow. Both their jackets had frozen into stiff wads overnight. Quinn propped both on the top of the split boulder. Steam began to rise immediately from the damp wool and fleece.

  Quinn stared into the flames, shaking his head. “I’ll make another trip out to the plane and see what else we have in the way of supplies.”

  “Back into that water?” Beaudine shivered just thinking about it.

  “Afraid I have to,” he said.

  “Well, I gotta find me a place to use the little girls’ room,” Beaudine said, stifling a groan as she finally pushed up on all fours still inside the foil bag. Cold air rushed in around her, bringing a shiver that collided with the pain in her hip. She was tempted to retreat, but nature called.

  She slipped her feet into the frozen boots Quinn had staged for her inside the shelter opening, just out of reach of the snow. “I don’t suppose we have any—”

  Quinn reached in the pocket of his wool shirt and held up a plastic baggie containing a small roll of toilet paper, rescuing her from having to ask for it.

  “This stuff is like gold out here,” he said. “Every time we go hunting my dad has what we called “the TP talk”—makes everyone in camp promise to be a folder and not a wadder. ‘Wadders are wasteful,’ he’d say when we were kids and threaten to make us use spruce cones if we ran out.”

  Quinn went back to poking at the fire, looking completely serious about toilet-paper etiquette.

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Beaudine said, snatching up the toilet paper. She turned to go, but stopped after one step, staring into the shadows. They seemed even darker now. The wolf howled again. It sounded far away, but it was impossible for her to tell in the snow. “I don’t suppose you’d loan a girl a flashlight . . .”

  * * *

  Quinn had just finished hanging the rest of their wet clothes around the boulder when Agent Beaudine came hustling back into camp.

  “I heard something out there,” she said. “It sounded big. You think it might have been that wolf?” The long johns looked like yoga pants, but were made to fit Aunt Abbey, so they hung a little looser in the seat on Beaudine.

  “Hmmm,” Quinn mused. “Probably not a wolf.”

  “That’s a relief,” Beaudine said.

  “More likely a bear,” Quinn said. “We’re camped right on a bear trail. I saw all kinds of tracks last night.”

  Beaudine’s eyes narrowed. “And you didn’t think to tell me this before I wandered off into the forest by myself?”

  Quinn chuckled. “Did you want me to come with you?”

  She thrust the plastic bag with the toilet paper roll back at him without answering. “I only used four squares, in case you’re a counter.”

  Quinn arched his back, introducing his old injuries to the new ones he’d gotten from the crash, before looping the headlamp around his neck and starting for the river.

  Beaudine looked up at him from where she warmed her hands by the fire. “Where are you going?”

  Quinn sighed. In the bush, the harsh practicality often chased away the niceties of life. “I’m going to keep the ravens from eating my friend.”

  Chapter 34

  The northern lights cascaded across the sky in dancing curtains of green and purple, incredibly bright now that Quinn had the fire behind him. He crunched the thirty feet down the gravel slope to the water, hardly looking up.

  The mangled wreck of the airplane was a silver shadow in the black water. The Aurora and crescent moon reflected off the snowy landscape, giving plenty of light.

  A night of snow and heavy rain upriver had caused the little creek to swell and jump its banks, changing the terrain just enough to throw off Quinn’s bearings. It took him a moment to find the white lump of snow that was Lovita’s body, and he was horrified to find that the stream had flooded enough to cover her legs and now lapped at her waist. It was a foolish notion, but Quinn couldn’t help but worry about how cold she must feel in the icy water and moved quickly to drag her body to higher ground.

  “Don’t worry, kiddo,” he whispered, gently brushing the snow from her face. Her body was stiff, but she looked like she was asleep. “I’ll get you to your airplane until I can come back and do things right.”

  Quinn swallowed hard, patting his young friend on the shoulder as if to comfort her. He looked out at the water that just hours before had come to his knees. Now, it would easily reach his waist.

  Shaking the snow off a nearby willow bush, he removed his shirt, and then peeled off his woolies, draping them on the bare branches to stand naked along the bank.

  The frigid water pushed the wind from his lungs as surely as if he’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. If there was an upside, it was that the cold numbed his feet so the stones didn’t hurt quite as much. His teeth chattered, his muscles ached, but the overwhelming need to find Volodin drove him forward.

  It took him five agonizing minutes standing in the rising stream to pry open the wing locker where Lovita kept the survival gear and medical kit. He grabbed the second sleeping bag as well, and his Aunt Abbey’s AR-10 rifle. Frigid water shoved at his hips as a stiff current rolled loose stones under his bare feet, threatening to push him down with every step.

  He had little feeling le
ft in his legs by the time he’d carried all the gear back to shore and picked up Lovita’s body for the return trip. She was light, barely a hundred pounds, but cold and circumstance had weakened him to the point of collapse. He fell twice, floundering in the icy water and nearly letting her get away from him. Shivering uncontrollably by the time he reached the door, he could just fit Lovita’s body into the airplane. She was still stiff, so he had to slide her in at an angle on the roof of her airplane, between the inverted seatbacks. His brain fogged with anger and cold, he stood at the door, at a loss for what to do next. His mother would have said some kind of prayer. Instead, Quinn clenched his jaw to silence his chattering teeth and leaned inside the plane on his belly. He put a hand on his friend’s cold forehead and told her good-bye.

  It took another full minute to get the door bent back shut and bend the latches into the locked position with a multi-tool he’d carried out for that purpose. It wouldn’t be enough to slow down a hungry bear—but he hoped it would keep her safe from wolves and ravens for a while—and it was the best he could do.

  Quinn took a step toward the bank, then turned, overwhelmed with the sudden need to know what had happened to cause the crash. The aircraft had overturned on impact so he had to stoop and use the multi-tool to open the engine compartment, playing the beam of the headlamp around the charred mess. Burned oil made it almost impossible to tell one piece of the engine from any other, but the tool marks were clearly visible. Quinn had worked on enough motorcycles over the years that it didn’t take him long to find the problem.

  * * *

  Khaki Beaudine was up and dressed by the time Quinn walked into camp wearing his long underwear and unlaced boots. He was deathly pale, and she couldn’t tell if he dropped the load of gear because he wanted to put it in front of the tent, or if his shivering arms simply gave out at that particular spot. He shot a wild look at her, but didn’t speak, moving immediately to squat in front of the fire, arms outstretched, as close as physically possible without bursting into flames himself. Clouds of steam escaped the fabric of the black long johns.