Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  He’d been gone the better part of an hour, and Beaudine had spent the time watching Quinn’s shadow moving back and forth in the darkness, and punctuating her worry with the few useful chores she could think to do. She’d nearly collapsed with relief when he finally switched on his headlamp. The tent was still up but she’d stuffed the sleeping bag in its stuff sack along with the folded Mylar bivy blanket. Trails of her boot prints crisscrossed the snow along the gravel bar, disappearing into the darkness where she’d braved wolves and bears and creepy little gnome people to search for firewood. It seemed silly now, but she was inordinately proud of the large pile of deadfall she’d been able to find.

  Quinn looked at the wood and gave an approving nod. He opened his mouth wide, going through a series of grimaces to get the blood flowing in his cheeks, wincing as cold and numbness surely gave way to warmth and revitalizing pain.

  “Give it to me straight, Jericho Quinn,” Beaudine said. Her Texas accent twanged as strongly as her mama’s when she was nervous. “Just how bad are we screwed?”

  “Pretty bad.” Quinn stood, stepping into the pants he’d left warming on the boulder, and then shrugged on the fleece jacket. Warm now, he looked at ease, as to begin going through their meager pile of gear. Beaudine watched as he opened an empty plastic bag and scooped it full of snow before setting it aside. Using the headlamp, he searched through the first-aid pack, taking out a bottle of water and what looked like a small multi-tool, and setting them on top of the rifle drag bag to keep them off the ground. “I’m pretty sure the Russians disabled the Emergency Beacon. But even if anyone is looking for us, they won’t be looking for us here because Lovita had to leave her original flight path to Needle Village in order to find a suitable place to set down.”

  Beaudine took a deep breath, letting the reality of their situation sink in. “And we can’t build a signal fire because that would just bring this Worst of the Moon guy right down on top of us.”

  She dabbed at the wound on her face with the cuff of her woolies, pulled down over the heel of her hand. She’d managed to get the crusted eye open but she could feel the angry flap of skin on her forehead, just above her left eyebrow. It wept blood constantly, blurring her vision and forcing her to keep wiping it away.

  Quinn found what he was looking for and stood, turning to her, firelight flickering off his face.

  “I think I’ve stopped shivering long enough to get you stitched up,” Quinn said. “Then we need to pack the rest of our gear and get on the trail.”

  “Like John Wayne always said.” Beaudine gave a nervous laugh. “We’re burnin’ daylight.”

  “Burning moonlight,” Quinn smiled. “If we’re not on the trail well before the sun comes up, there’s no way we can catch up to Volodin before the Russian hunter gets to him.” He threw more wood on the fire, and then untied the support line to take down the nylon tube tent, which he spread out like a tarp between the fire and the boulder. Positioning the headlamp in the center of his forehead, he stretched a pair of latex gloves from the first-aid kit over oily hands and sat on the second sleeping bag with his back to the boulder. The bag was still inside the vacuum-sealed wrapper and formed a two-by-two-foot compressed square that made for a perfect seat cushion.

  “Okay,” he said, waving a gloved hand over the top of the tarp. “That should keep you dry and out of the snow. I need you to lie down here as best you can—on your back, so you’re looking up at me.”

  Beaudine froze. “With my head in your lap?”

  Quinn nodded. “That’s the idea.”

  She moved grudgingly, maneuvering her bruised body so the back of her head rested on Quinn’s thigh. She peered up at him with the eye that wasn’t crusted shut. He smelled like wet wool and wood smoke—smells she’d never found particularly pleasant but were oddly comforting at the moment. He wore the headlamp but hadn’t switched it on yet, and looked down at her smiling, as if it wasn’t weird that he was patting her forehead in the middle of the Alaska wilderness. She knew he was merely assessing her wound, but the flickering firelight and her reclining vantage point made it feel tender, and the circles she ran in didn’t offer that sensation very often.

  She closed her eyes and tried to concentrate. “You ever sew anyone up before?”

  “You’ll make seven,” Quinn said. “If you count myself, and the pig and two goats at field labs during Pararescue training.”

  “Two people?” Beaudine said, her good eye flicking open. “You mean to tell me you’ve only stitched up two live people?”

  “I’ve practiced on a lot of pig feet,” Quinn said, winking. “Look, stitches are a last resort in the field. We should really wait until we get back, but you’ll need both eyes for the work we have ahead. There’s superglue in the kit, and I’ll use it when I can, but it’s not likely to hold up on the deeper areas.” He held his hands back away from her face as if to get some sort of go-ahead to continue.

  Beaudine sighed. “Well, two is two more than I’ve ever done, so I guess you’re the expert.”

  “I am,” Quinn said, sounding sure enough of himself to calm her nerves a notch. He held a small syringe over her face so she could see it. “I need to irrigate the wound. Make sure we got all the crud out before I close it. I can probably get by with six or seven stitches above your eye and close this one over your nose with butterfly strips or glue.

  “There a mirror in that kit?”

  “It’s pretty small.” Quinn rifled through the pack that sat on the tarp beside him until he found a two-by-three Lexan mirror with a signaling pinhole in the middle. “You want to look at it before and after so you can sue me for malpractice?”

  Small or not, the mirror did the job. Beaudine flinched when she saw the angry gash that ran in a diagonal red line across the bridge of her nose and up to her scalp. It was a scar she’d live with the rest of her life—and it was eerily familiar.

  “Well, hello there, Merline,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Quinn had waited much too long to clean the wound and had to use several canteen cups worth of watered down Betadine and the syringe to work loose all the dirt and debris that had made it inside. He knew it must have been extremely uncomfortable, but Beaudine lay quietly as if she were napping.

  “I got a feeling this is where it’s about to get real,” she said when he stopped irrigating. “Aren’t you supposed to give me a bullet or something to bite on?”

  Quinn held up the Ziploc bag of snow so Beaudine could see it without moving her head. “You’ll still feel the sutures,” he said, “but the cold should numb the area up a little.”

  As gently as he could, he held the baggie to the tender skin over the worst portion of the gash, just above her eyebrow. He took her hand and moved it on top of the bag so she could keep it in place before turning his attention to the small wax-paper envelope that contained the sterile cutting needle and suture material. There should have been a hemostat in the kit, but if Lovita had ever had one, he couldn’t find it. He’d have to make do with the tiny Leatherman Squirt he carried is his pocket virtually every day of the year. Absent a hemostat, the small pliers would serve as a passable needle driver.

  Quinn pinched the curved needle with the tip of his Leatherman. Just under an inch in length, it was sharpened to cut rather than merely pierce, and attached to a foot and a half of black monofilament suture line. He moved the bag of snow and turned Beaudine’s head slightly, putting the wound perpendicular to his body to make it easier to work.

  Beaudine’s good eye popped open and looked up at him. Her lips trembled slightly as she spoke. “I know this is gonna hurt,” she said. “But I’m pretty good when it comes to pain. Pain was a pretty normal thing in our house when I was growing up.”

  “Who’s Merline?” he asked to pass the time.

  “My mama.” Beaudine’s voice was stretched tight, as if he’d hit a nerve with more than the suture needle. “I was sure Jacques told you.”

  “He said you had a rou
gh childhood.”

  “Did he tell you my daddy shot my mama in the head when I was eleven?”

  “He did not,” Quinn said, needle poised a fraction of an inch from Beaudine’s wound. So that was what the cryptic message was all about.

  “Just sew, okay . . .” Beaudine closed her eyes and fell back limp in his lap. “I guess that pretty much sums up all there is to know about me.”

  “I doubt that, Khaki,” he said, driving the blade of the needle into pink skin along the center point at the deepest portion of the wound.

  Beaudine’s lips trembled, but she didn’t flinch.

  “She forgave him, you know,” Beaudine continued with her life story as if the telling of something so awful might ease the pain of her present situation. “Can you believe that? The son of a bitch shot her in the head, and she forgave him. Bullet went in over her left eye and sorta skirted around under the skin but didn’t go through the skull.” Beaudine gave a little shrug, almost causing Quinn to stick her with the needle where he didn’t intend to. She must have felt him pull back. “Sorry,” she said, looking up through a watery eye. “I’ll be still. Anyhow, Daddy did two and a half years in Angola state pen for attempted murder, but the parole board let him out on accounta Mama bawled her head off at his hearing. Worst part about it—well not the worst part, but a bad part anyhow—me and Jacques, we used to be really close, you know, when we were kids. My mama and his mama are sisters. But after my daddy got out of prison, Jacques’s father wouldn’t let my family come around. And who can blame him?”

  Quinn kept sewing, unwilling to step into whatever this was with a question.

  “They’re still together, you know, if you can believe it.” Beaudine tried to shake her head at the thought of such a thing and tugged against the needle, causing her to wince in pain. “Sorry,” she said again. “I guess it’s no wonder I’m a bitch . . .” She suddenly looked up at Quinn, both eyes wide the way he imagined she might have looked as a frightened little girl. “Sorry for vomiting up my past like that. Could you please talk for a while? Mama used to say words to me when things got really bad, it didn’t even matter what the words were, as long as I had something to hang on to during the worst of it.”

  “Okay.” Quinn said, relieved to change the subject. He was sure Beaudine’s family issues would come up again. Beaudine’s problems were far too complicated for a hit-and-run conversation. Old wounds had a way of opening up in times like this, especially if they had festered. On some level it hurt Quinn to see another human being carrying around that sort of pain, but he’d never been much good at providing more than a listening ear—surely one of the many reasons his wife had given him the boot.

  They were both quiet for a time while Quinn tried to think of something to say. He used the tip of the Leatherman to throw near perfect surgeon’s knots with surprising dexterity considering how long it had been since he’d sutured a comrade at arms. It took a certain kind of detachment to cause pain to a friend in order to help them. Detachment—now there was something he was good at.

  “It looks like Lovita’s plane was sabotaged,” he said at length. “Someone crimped one of the oil lines.”

  “Had to be that big Russian bastard who came in last,” Beaudine said. “Glad you clobbered him with the fire poker. I’m surprised her instruments didn’t tell her anything.”

  Quinn used a small pair of scissors from the trauma kit to cut the monofilament after he completed each suture. The longer he worked, the more he came to realize this was going to require more stitches than he’d originally hoped. He kept up his pace without mentioning it, thinking it better to finish the most painful part of this gruesome business as quickly as possible.

  “Lovita’s a great pilot,” he said. “But the saboteur was tricky. She would have thought we had oil pressure when she did her run-up before takeoff, but with no way to circulate, the engine overheated and eventually blew. We’re lucky we didn’t burst into a ball of flames.”

  Firelight reflected off Beaudine’s face, but her eyes remained closed. Quinn of all people knew the tremendous amount of trust it took for someone in her line of work to close her eyes and let a near stranger get near her with a sharp metal object.

  She gave a small shake of her head, barely moving at all. He wouldn’t have even noticed it had she not been nestled against his thighs. “Doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why sabotage the plane if they planned to kill us all anyway before we got in it to fly away?”

  “Good point,” Quinn said. “But killers can’t afford to have any loose ends. They couldn’t account for every guest. The big guy who hit Lovita was outside taking care of the oil line before he came in and saw what was going on. Half the people in Alaska have some sort of pilot’s license. Say those guests who happened to be out fishing turned out to know how to fly—or even Volodin for all we know. The sabotage would have eventually taken care of them even if they were able to slip by the Russians. Burning the plane would have thrown up a fireball that risked drawing a passing aircraft to the lodge.”

  “I guess I can buy that,” Beaudine said.

  Quinn’s needle pierced a piece of inflamed skin, and she gave a real flinch for the first time since he’d started the process. A tiny tear formed in the corner of her good eye. “Women cry from tension, you know,” she said, staring at the sky. “Not because we’re weak.”

  “So my mother, ex-wife, seven-year-old daughter, and girlfriend tell me,” Quinn said, smiling and thinking of the four women.

  “How much longer?”

  “We’re not quite half-way there,” he said.

  Beaudine took a series of long cleansing breaths, like she was going into labor, and settled in again. “All righty then,” she said. “What say you teach me how you tell the time with the stars like you did.”

  “I can do that . . .” Quinn resumed his stitching as he spoke, using low, even tones. “Big dipper rotates counterclockwise around the North Star like an hour hand on a twenty-four hour clock. Midnight is at that top, with one, two, three, and so on running around the left side of the circle.”

  “Counterclockwise.” Beaudine said, eyes closed, as if repeating the line from a bedtime story.

  “Right,” Quinn said, snipping the ends of another surgeon’s knot. “You draw a line from the North Star through the two pointer stars on the cup of the dipper. That line points to the correct time on the circle March sixth of every year.”

  “Do what?” Beaudine stared at him, seemingly oblivious now to the pain from the cutting needle. “What happens if you want to know what time it is on the other three hundred sixty-four days of the year?”

  “Ahh,” Quinn said, tying another knot. “You can do that, too. All it takes is a little math—”

  “I’m gonna stop you right there, mister,” Beaudine said. “Khaki’s brain doesn’t respond so well to mathematical things.”

  “Funny,” he said. “I’ll bet you do math every day and don’t even think about it.”

  “Not this gal, sweetheart,” she said. “Me and math, we got us an understanding. It leaves me alone, and I leave it alone. There’s a reason I went to law school instead of becoming an engineer.”

  “No worries then,” Quinn said. He smiled as he snipped the line on the twelfth and what he hoped would be the final suture. “We’re not likely to use too much math on the rest of the trip.”

  Quinn returned the needle to the paper envelope and finished off the wound on either end of the stitches with butterfly bandages and superglue. He covered the entire length of the wound with a thick line of antibiotic ointment and then taped on a gauze bandage before patting her gently on the shoulder.

  “What?” she whispered, eyes closed, sounding sleepy.

  “You can get up,” Quinn said. “We’re all done here.”

  “Dammit,” she said, still not moving. “I should have had you teach me the math.”

  Quinn looked at his watch, too tired to bother with the stars. “Less than two hours u
ntil sunrise,” he said. “Time to start walking if we want to catch Volodin alive.”

  Beaudine sat up, running a hand down the front of her jacket to compose herself. “You sure it’s safe to hike out there in the dark with all the wolves and bears and et cetera?”

  Quinn knelt by the tarp, cataloging their gear in his mind as he divided it between their two packs.

  “I’m not worried about wolves or bears,” he said. “It’s the et cetera that will kill us.”

  Chapter 35

  The hardy, weather-bitten souls who lived in Siberia were fond of saying that there was no road, only a direction. To Feliks Zolner, there was no direction, only pursuit—whichever way it took him.

  He woke well before dawn, having slept the deep and dreamless sleep known only to men who possessed no conscience. Zolner and his men had left only the fool, Igoshin, and the pitiful couple who owned the place alive. They had killed the fishermen and young pilot quickly and without fanfare. Zolner had chosen the largest suite on the top floor. The room the Hendersons reserved for special guests, it boasted a king-size bed with an enormous down comforter and enough feather pillows to smother a horse. His profession made sodden sleeping bags the norm during a chase, when he was fortunate enough to have a bag or sleep.

  A hunter at heart, Zolner lived a life of purposeful stoicism. He relished the small, relative comforts of a leaky shelter during a downpour or a warm parka against the teeth of a blizzard. Clean, Egyptian cotton sheets were a seldom-seen luxury, and he was happier that way. In truth, the softness of the lodge ran contrary to Zolner’s nature. A life of ease rendered people lazy, careless, and prone to mistakes. Extravagance made one soft, and to be soft was to be dead. Hardship sharpened the intellect and the body like grit polished a stone. His mother had been the best hunter he’d ever seen, and as far as he knew, she’d never eaten anything richer than wild cherry jam. He was certain the poor woman had never owned more than two pairs of socks at any given time.