Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  Snow dampened their approach on the gravel, but Quinn and Beaudine moved quickly once they left the trees, going straight to the hollow-core door without stopping. Rifle over his shoulder, Quinn held the Kimber at high ready as he booted the flimsy thing and button hooked to his left around the threshold, just inside the twelve-by-twelve-foot room. Beaudine followed him inside immediately, hooking right as per their prearranged plan. She held the AR-10 high, moving in a slight crouch, elbows tucked like a professional shooter.

  An Inupiaq boy in his mid-teens lay in his sleeping bag on a rough wooden frame across the room. He sat straight up and faced the door at the thud of boots on plywood. His sleepy eyes went wide and both hands flew up to shield his face.

  Quinn lowered his pistol once he saw the other two bunk frames were vacant.

  “Who are you guys?” the boy said, his voice remarkably calm for being woken up at gunpoint.

  “FBI,” Beaudine said, lowering the AR-10.

  A smile spread over the boy’s face. “No crap? You guys are really FBI?”

  “We’re after a fugitive,” Beaudine said. “Thought he might be here.”

  “That was friggin’ awesome,” the boy said. “You busted in here like a friggin’ HALO game.” He suddenly noticed Beaudine’s wounds and gave her a somber nod. “Your fugitive do that to you?”

  “Plane crash,” Quinn said, wanting to speed things along. He started to tell the boy about Lovita but decided it better to wait. “My name’s Jericho. Do you happen to have a cell phone?”

  “Only works when I’m in sight of the village.” His face brightened into a smile. “They just built a new tower out here last year.” He swung his feet onto the floor. He wore dingy gray cotton socks that had once been white, green nylon basketball shorts, and a stained T-shirt of the same color. At least a dozen dark purple hickeys encircled his neck, just above the collar of his T-shirt. He rubbed his eyes, then extended a hand toward Quinn. “I’m Brian. Brian Ticket.”

  Quinn gave him a fist bump. “I know some Tickets. Any relation to Lawrence?”

  Brian coughed, still waking up. He scrunched up his nose and wrinkled his brow, the Inupiaq equivalent of shaking his head “no.” “Those are the upriver Ticketts. Upriver Ticketts have two Ts. Us downriver Tickets have one T.”

  Beaudine’s face screwed into a grimace. “What’s with all the love bites, Brian Ticket with one T? Somebody try to suck your face off?”

  Brian looked at the floor without answering.

  “It’s a thing they do in the village,” Quinn said, grinning at Brian Ticket. “I’m betting you had an away basketball game last week, didn’t you?”

  “Shungnak.” Brian nodded. “My girlfriend don’t trust them upriver girls. She wanted to let ’em know I was already taken.”

  “Well, she did a good job of it.” Beaudine gave a low whistle, shaking her head at the hickey damage. “You’re lucky she didn’t decapitate you.”

  Beaudine used the .308 to gesture toward a stack of small cardboard boxes that were on a small wooden table, the only other furniture in the room. Quinn counted five. They were flat, about two inches thick and each about six-by-six-inches square.

  Beaudine let the rifle fall against the single point sling, parking it so it hung just in front of her handgun. She picked up one of the boxes to study it. “Why in the everlovin’ hell would anyone need a bunch of wax toilet rings out here where they don’t even have toilets?”

  “To patch the boat,” Brian said. “There’s a big hole in the side. Usually works great but my genius brother-in-law hit a rock and broke the shear pin on the motor yesterday. He and my nephew loaded up our other boat with the caribou we caught and went back to Needle to get a spare sheer pin. I got stuck here guarding his old piece of junk boat.

  Beaudine’s hands shook as she set the box back on the table with the other four. The after-effects of the cold-water crossing were catching up to her fast.

  “Okay, Brian,” Quinn said, holstering his Kimber. “My friend and I are going to hurry and get into some dry socks, and then we’re going to need to borrow your boat.” He shrugged off his pack and dropped it on the plywood floor between his feet. Sitting on the low bed, he stripped off his soaked boots to put on his last dry pair of wool socks.

  Brian leaned back against the plywood wall on his bunk. “I told you guys, the boat’s broke. We have to wait for my brother-in-law to bring back some welding rod to use for a shear pin.”

  Quinn wiped as much moisture out of the boots as he could with a dry bandana from his pack. “When is your brother-in-law coming back?” he asked without looking up.

  “He had to cut up three caribou last night. And, he’s been away from my sister for a few days, so I’m sure he’s sleeping in a little with her this morning . . .” He winked. “I joke . . .”

  “This is serious, Brian,” Beaudine said. She leaned back with one foot stretched out in front of her, struggling to pull the dry sock over her shriveled wet foot. “This guy we’re after is a very bad man. We’re going to have to try and fix your boat.”

  Quinn held up his hand, motioning for her to stop talking as he peeked out the window. The roar of a low-flying aircraft grew louder as it flew directly overhead. He watched through a gap in the tarp as it flew by slowly

  “I counted three heads,” Quinn said, throwing the pack over his shoulders. “They’re following the river.”

  “Who’s following the river?” Brian said.

  The sound of the engine seemed to hang there for a moment, before fading slowly into the distance.

  Beaudine brightened, shooting a hopeful glance at Quinn. “Do you think someone’s looking for us? Your Aunt Abbey, maybe?”

  “Not likely,” Quinn said, peeking out of the grime-covered plastic to make certain no one was using the same tactics he had used to sneak up on the shack. He turned back to Beaudine. “The storm would have kept any planes trying to get out to the lodge grounded through last night. And absent a visit to the lodge, it’s too soon for anyone to even know we’re missing.”

  “So it’s Worst of the Moon?” Beaudine dropped her head as if being murdered from a distance was a forgone conclusion.

  “Wait, wait, wait!” Brain threw aside his sleeping bag and shot to his feet. “Did you just say Worst of the Moon? He’s coming here?”

  Quinn raised both eyebrows, the silent affirmative in Inupiaq culture. “That’s exactly what she said.”

  Brian rubbed his face with both hands, looking as if he might throw up. “Holy shit . . . sorry, FBI lady. I mean holy crap, holy, holy, holiest of all craps. If Worst of the Moon is a real person . . .”

  “You’ve heard of him then?” Beaudine said.

  Brian collapsed backward to sit on the edge of the bunk again. He drew his sleeping bag around him like a security blanket and shook his head slowly, mouth hanging open. “The Elders tell us kids these stories, you know, like Long Nails, the creepy old hag who gallops around on all fours eating kids who go into the beach grass. You can hear her toenails clicking on the earth when she comes after you. I figured the stories were just to keep us from wandering off and getting hurt.”

  “Like the fairytales about the little leprechaun people.”

  “Enukin?” Brian looked up, deadpan. “No, enukin are real. My dad’s seen ’em lots of times. So’s my mom.”

  Beaudine rolled her eyes and glanced at Quinn. “You think they saw our tracks when they flew over?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Quinn said. “Caribou hunters are leaving tracks all up and down the river.” He started for the door, nodding to the pile of boxes on the table. “Brian, grab one of those wax rings and lets go see about fixing your boat. We’ve got to get to Needle ASAP.”

  * * *

  Melting snow dripped from the tarp roof, splattering into a rapidly forming moat of black mud around the heated shack. Just as Brian had said, the battered aluminum boat had suffered a gash in the hull just below the waterline. Quinn estimated it to be about ei
ght inches long and nearly an inch wide. Smears of flaking yellow wax around the damage gave evidence that it was an old wound and plumbing material had been used several times in the past. The battered shaft of a motor that had been removed from the transom now lay under the boat, semi-protected from the weather. Quinn grabbed the badly nicked prop and dragged the motor out in the slushy snow with both hands.

  He spun the prop and glanced up at Brian with a narrow eye. “Your brother-in-law do all this?”

  “My sister’s husband is a great hunter.” The boy gave a toothy grin. “He just ain’t such a good boat driver.”

  “Thirty horse Nissan,” Beaudine said. “Tough motor.”

  “I know Worst of the Moon is breathin’ down our necks,” Brian said, “but I’m telling you it’s useless until my brother in law gets back from Needle. We looked all over the place for something to use as a shear pin.”

  The shear pin was a piece of soft metal rod about an inch long that was soft enough to give way when the propeller struck a fixed object, preventing damage to more expensive parts of the motor. Without it, the propeller spun freely, providing no power to push the boat forward.

  Quinn looked up river toward Needle, thinking, then turned to Beaudine. “You mind helping Brian push some of that wax into the hole, and I’ll take a look at the motor.”

  “How about you patch the boat while I take a look?” Beaudine said. She took off her parka shell and spread it over a stump before setting the AR-10 on top to keep it out of the snow. “I’m not tryin’ to take over again. It’s just that the only good times I ever had with my daddy were when we were working on small engines. Sometimes, for a minute or two, I could even pretend he wasn’t a murderous bastard.”

  Brian looked down at his feet, good manners overshadowing his youthful curiosity.

  Quinn took the wax ring. “Be my guest,” he said.

  Beaudine knelt in the snow beside the motor, using her multi-tool to remove the pin and nut that held the battered propeller in place. “Shear pin’s toast all right.”

  “Told you.” Brian shrugged.

  “But I can fix it,” Beaudine said, leaning over to grab her rifle. “Just so happens the brass end of a rifle cleaning rod makes a perfect shear pin if I use my Leatherman to cut it down to size.”

  “And my aunt keeps a small cleaning kit in the butt of her rifle.” Quinn gave a nod of genuine admiration. He hoped he would have come up with such a fix.

  Chapter 39

  Quinn and Brian Ticket dragged the aluminum skiff down to the riverbank before attaching the hundred-pound motor. Beaudine provided over-watch with the AR-10. There was little in the way of gear so it didn’t take them long to load the boat. Brian disappeared into the shack for a moment, then came slipping down the muddy bank wearing his pack. His rubber boots made perfect tracks in the snow as he approached the skiff.

  “Needle’s only four miles up river,” the boy said. “But it still takes us about twenty minutes to get there.”

  Quinn attached the fuel line that connected the six-gallon plastic tank to the motor. “You’re not coming,” he said. “It’s safer for you here.”

  “Screw that news.” Brian set his jaw in fierce defiance but softened immediately when he met Quinn’s gaze. “You don’t understand about Worst of the Moon. He’s a giant. There’s only fourteen families in Needle, and most of the men are out hunting. I gotta go back and help you.” Brian stared across the Kobuk, his eyes unfocused. “A lot of people go missing out here. Could be the land that takes ’em, or maybe it’s Worst of the Moon. Some elders say he’s the spirit of a dead hunter, come back to punish our people for abandoning the old ways.”

  Quinn shoved the stern of the boat into deeper water so he didn’t break another shear pin on the gravel. He banged on the aluminum gunnel with the flat of his hand. “Get in the boat, Khaki.”

  Beaudine threw a leg over the side, still looking at Brian with a narrow eye. “Punish you how?”

  “He hunts us,” Brian said. “Like wolves. The elders say Worst of the Moon hunts on the ice or open tundra the best. You never see him coming until he’s shot you in the head.”

  “How do they know he likes the tundra the best?” Beaudine asked.

  Brian shrugged. “That’s where the people go missing, I guess.”

  “Hang on,” Beaudine said. “If all the victims are still missing, or never hear the bullet that kills them, how do you know he’s a giant?”

  Quinn pumped the rubber bulb on the line to deliver fuel to the motor. He could feel Volodin pulling farther away with every moment they weren’t on the river.

  “Homer John from down at Noorvik seen him once.” Brian squatted on the sandy bank and used his finger to draw a map of the area in the dirt, like some Native women using a bone knife to illustrate stories in the sand. “Noorvik’s clear down here, closer to Kotzebue. Homer was out on his snow machine last year lookin’ for musk ox when he rode up on this big guy camping in the middle of nowhere. There was another man with him, but Homer said it was clear the giant guy was the boss. Homer said he had gray eyes—colder than he’d ever seen—and a tiny nose that made his face look flat. He just sat by his stove with a giant rifle in his lap and watched Homer John ride by.”

  “This Homer John guy,” Quinn said. “He’s pretty sure it was Worst of the Moon?”

  Brian shook his head at Quinn. “You tell me. How’d a guy like that get out there? Where’d he come from? He didn’t come through none of the villages. Like my dad says, strangers just don’t show up in the middle of the tundra. They got to travel through somewhere.”

  “True,” Quinn said.

  “Anyhow,” Brian said. “He let Homer John live for some reason, but two more hunters went missin’ fifteen miles from that spot the very next day.”

  “Did anyone report it?” Beaudine asked.

  “My dad says there ain’t enough troopers in Alaska to take care of an area this big,” Brian said, looking like he might cry. “Now come on and let me in. It’s my boat, ya know.”

  “I’m sorry,” Quinn said, giving the starter rope a yank. Smoke poured from the motor as it coughed once, then died. He pulled the rope again and it roared to life. He flipped the lever in reverse and backed out, letting the current of the Kobuk pull the boat downriver, stern first. He shouted so the bewildered Brian could hear him above the burbling chop of the engine. “We’ll look in on your family.” Throwing the transmission forward, he moved into deeper water before twisting the throttle to coax the little boat upriver toward Needle.

  Beaudine clutched the gunnel with one hand while, leaning back to look at Quinn. “You promised to look after his family?”

  “We’ll kill the people that pose the danger,” Quinn said, watching water seep in around the wax. “It’s the same thing. But first we have to make it there.”

  Four miles was a long way to go for a boat patched with a toilet ring.

  Chapter 40

  Mitkun, Needle, Alaska

  The paunchy Inupiaq man clutched a cigarette between his teeth and threw Kaija’s plastic case on a metal rack at the rear of a green four-wheeler. He stacked the duffle bags on top before working to untangle a set of bright orange ratchet straps. Slightly shorter than Volodin, the man had a barrel chest and powerful hands. He wore a pair of nylon chest waders and a wool shirt. Shaggy black hair stuck out from beneath a yellow Caterpillar hat cocked back on his head as he worked. His name was Ray Stubbins, and Volodin estimated him to be in his late thirties.

  The chemist folded bony arms across his chest and stomped his feet back and forth, trying to keep from shivering in the bright morning chill. Needle was set up in a long handled T, with the Stubbins’ house located at the terminus of the northernmost short end. The sun was up high enough to begin to melt last night’s snow from the hulks of three old snow machines rusting in front of the wind-beaten wooden home. Two little kids giggled and squealed a few feet away. Dressed in rubber boots, fleece jackets, and wool hats, they us
ed a broken four-wheeler with no tires as a jungle gym. Neither looked old enough to attend the school at the other end of the T. Steam rose from the vent pipes of similar houses nearby, disappearing into the crisp morning air.

  “We’ll take you as far as Ambler on the Hondas,” he said.

  One of the few adult males left in the village, Stubbins had been carrying gear up from his boat when Volodin and Kaija had arrived. Kaija had wisely pointed out that they were sitting ducks when confined to the river. An overland route would make them less likely to be found—if they could find someone to sell them a four-wheeler. Stubbins was in no mood to sell his only mode of land transportation right in the middle of hunting season, but he and his brother had agreed to shuttle them for the sum of three hundred American dollars. It was a quarter of the cash Volodin had on hand, but all the money in the world would do them no good if Rustov’s men caught them. Like most people in rural Alaska, Stubbins called all ATVs Hondas no matter the brand. This one happened to be a Polaris. “It’s about a five-hour ride. Pretty bumpy, too.”

  Ray’s brother, Frank, nodded at that, but said nothing, preferring to smoke his hand-rolled cigarette while he secured the load on the back of his four-wheeler. He wore a pair of gray sweats tucked into black high-topped rubber boots. An unzipped fleece revealed a red T-shirt stretched tight over a belly even larger than his brother’s.

  “And we only have to pay you for the one way?” Volodin said. He was becoming more unsettled by the moment, as if he might fly away in a gust of wind.

  “The price covers gas but you’re just payin’ for one way. We’ll hunt our way home.” He slid a lever-action rifle into the fleece-lined plastic boot bolted vertically to the front of the ATV.