Village of the Ghost Bears

by Stan Jones

  “All right, let’s take him,” Active said.

  Cave sighed, picked up his phone, and soon was instructing the jailers to bring Kivalina to the airport.

  “All right, yeah, we’ll meet you there,” he concluded. He stood up, pulled on the parka that had been draped over the back of his chair, and led them out to a Ford Explorer.

  Forty-five minutes later, Cowboy’s Cessna lifted off into the blue predawn haze, a few last stars still glinting overhead. They speared through the clear morning air toward the crests of the Brooks Range serrating the southern horizon. The sun flared in the southeast, then climbed into view, shooting long, deep shadows across the tundra beneath them.

  Cowboy clicked on the intercom in a spray of static. “You know, there’s one thing I feel bad about.”

  “Other than Delilah tipping off McAllister that we’re coming, you mean?”

  The pilot grunted in acknowledgment. They were climbing steadily to clear the peaks ahead. Cowboy thumbed a little wheel mounted between the seats, and the nose of the plane lifted slightly. “I knew about Dood’s crash at Driftwood. I just wish I would have told you.”

  Active looked at the pilot. Cowboy kept his eyes on the horizon. “Me, too,” Active said.

  “You never asked.”

  Another if-only. Active sighed and turned his gaze to the terrain ahead. They were still over the Arctic coastal plain, with its stippling of pothole lakes and the weird permafrost pimples for which Pingo Kivalina was named. They looked like volcanoes just emerging from the earth, but they had hearts of ice, not fire.

  “You know McAllister very well?” Active asked.

  Cowboy was silent for a few moments before answering. “He’s a hell of a pilot. He flew helicopters and Twin Otters for the Air Guard here before he went into guiding full-time. I always wondered how he let it get away from him like that at Driftwood.”

  “How about as a man?”

  Again, Cowboy thought it over before speaking. “Lot of rage there. I never knew why.”

  Active glanced into the rear of the plane to make sure Kivalina wasn’t plugged in to the intercom system. He was without a headset and peering out a side window, shackled to the seat, seemingly oblivious to what went on inside the Cessna.

  Active turned to the pilot. “That’s how Pingo described him. He called McAllister a man in rage.”

  “Fits.”

  “He says his sister liked that in a man,” Active said. “She called it ‘the great weather.’ You understand that about women?”

  “Not really,” Cowboy said. “I’ve seen it, but I don’t understand it. Maybe only a woman would.”

  “Or Pingo, maybe,” Active said. “Even crazy and hung over, he figured out that Driftwood thing while Cave was getting nowhere. I’m starting to think quite a few of his brain cells still work.”

  Alan Long spoke up from the back seat. “Unless Cave was right. Maybe Pingo did burn down the Rec Center. He does admit being there at the time. And hiring Jae Hyo Lee to kill McAllister. And watering McAllister’s gas.”

  “Nah,” Active said. “I don’t buy it. I can imagine Pingo burning McAllister’s house down, but not the Rec Center. He wouldn’t have had any reason to think McAllister was there. Plus, he wouldn’t set the Rec Center on fire with all those other people in it.”

  “Yeah,” Cowboy said. “Especially Tom Gage.”

  “Unless his sister told him to,” Long said.

  Active was silent for a time, chewing this point over. With Pingo, questions of good, evil, and motive were sideshows. All that mattered was the disordered world inside his head and the phantasm of Viola Kivalina who visited his sleep.

  Finally, Active grunted. “In any case, we have to talk to McAllister. Cowboy, you think he could do all this?” He considered enumerating McAllister’s presumptive body count, but couldn’t bring himself to wade through it again.

  “I don’t know how anybody could,” Cowboy said. “But somebody did. So, yeah, of the people I know, if somebody could, I guess it could be Dood.”

  In another hour, they began to see over the peaks of the Keating Mountains into the Katonak Valley. Cowboy bent over the chart on his knee, then hunched forward and peered past Active at the white folds off the right wing. “Driftwood’s over that way,” he said. “Thirty, thirty-five miles maybe.”

  They crossed the crest and Cowboy dropped the Cessna’s nose slightly, angling right to follow the black braids of a river down a white-floored valley running southwest. He checked his chart again and pointed at a barren, snow-plastered crag looming above them as they followed the river downstream. “Mount Bastille,” he said. “How do you reckon they came up with that?”

  Active shrugged, and they continued along the river, the valley opening out as they passed the snowline and the country faded from white to brown. Cowboy rolled left to point the Cessna’s nose at the tip of a long, rumpled ridge descending from the mountains like a crocodile’s tail, then jabbed at the chart on his knee.

  “Here’s McAllister’s camp on the near side of that ridge up ahead. We’ve gotta come around back of it, drop over the crest, and dive down through this canyon here.” Cowboy’s finger traced it out on the chart. “When we pop out, we’ll be about a quarter-mile from the camp and doing around one-sixty, one-seventy, so we’ll be overhead in about five seconds. That’s how long we’ve got to look things over, maybe five seconds, because once we’re past, we sure ain’t coming back.”

  Active nodded. “Okay.”

  “We don’t want to fly right over it,” Cowboy continued, “because we won’t be able to see anything directly under us. So I’ll angle to the left a little bit, and the camp will be off our right wing when we go past. That way I can concentrate on not hitting a mountain while you look it over. Sound right?”

  Active nodded again. “Sounds right.”

  Cowboy grinned. “Fun, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Active said after some thought. “It is, actually.”

  Cowboy worked his way toward the foot of the ridge behind McAllister’s camp, staying low and using the terrain for cover. Finally he made a turn and started along the back side of the snow-draped ridge. In another seven minutes, Cowboy pointed the Cessna up a draw toward the crest. As they sailed over the top, Active caught a momentary glimpse of a little cluster of buildings three miles or so ahead on the valley floor. Then McAllister’s camp vanished behind a rock wall as Cowboy dropped the Cessna into the canyon and began his downhill run.

  Behind him, Pingo screamed “Arii! That’s Qavvik’s mountain! We can’t go here.” Active’s seatback jerked. Pingo must have been kicking it. Active turned and lunged for Pingo’s throat over the backrest. Pingo threw himself as far back as his restraints would allow and kicked Active’s seat again.

  “You gotta get him under control,” Cowboy shouted over the intercom. “We’re committed here.”

  Active was unbuckling himself when he saw Pingo jerk, then slump into his seat. “You’re carrying a Taser, Alan?”

  “Roger that,” Long said. “Good thing, ah?”

  Active settled back into his seat and returned his attention to their descent through the canyon. The needle on the airspeed indicator swept through one-fifty, one-sixty, one-seventy, and finally came to a quivering stop between one-eighty and one-eighty-five, the wind screaming through the wing struts as they plunged toward the valley floor.

  The ridge to their left dropped away, and suddenly they were out of the canyon, G-forces jamming Active into his seat as Cowboy jerked the Cessna out of its dive and rocked into a hard left turn.

  He leveled the wings just above the willows and they barreled down the little creek that trickled out of the canyon. Ahead on the right, McAllister’s camp was a big two-story lodge and a cluster of smaller outbuildings. Active registered impressions more than information: nobody on top of the lodge or the other buildings; on the tundra in front of the lodge, a man pausing, knife in hand, over what might be the rib cage of a caribou, his fac
e turning up, flashing white and surprised as they roared by; another man, in the act of opening the outhouse door, letting it swing shut as he looked up to watch them.

  Then they were past the camp and roaring toward McAllister’s landing strip on a patch of slightly elevated ground along the creek bank. A landing strip that was devoid of anything resembling an airplane.

  Active felt the tension drain out of him as he nudged Cowboy and pointed at the strip. “I don’t think he’s here.”

  Cowboy eased the Cessna’s nose up and made an arc to the right as they gained altitude. “Guess not,” the pilot said, peering under the right wing at the empty strip. “But where the hell is he? Delilah said he headed up here last night. Maybe we oughta land and search around the camp.”

  “I saw a couple of guys in the yard as we went over,” Active said. “How about we try the radio?”

  Cowboy looked like he wanted to say “Duh!” but he just switched on his radios and tuned one to a new frequency. “McAllister’s Camp, this is the Cessna that was just overhead, over.”

  A minute or two passed as Cowboy repeated the call once, then twice. Then the headset sprayed static, and a woman’s voice said, “This is McAllister’s. Who’s that?”

  “Probably his cook,” Cowboy said over the intercom. He tapped the little boom microphone on Active’s head set. “You want to talk to her?”

  Active nodded and identified himself to the woman. “We’re attempting to contact Dood McAllister. Can you tell us his whereabouts?”

  “What you want him for?”

  “I’m sorry, that’s confidential. Can you tell us his whereabouts?”

  “He take off maybe couple hours ago, say he’s going to pull out his spike camp over there at One-Way Lake.”

  Active gave the cook a roger and looked at Cowboy.

  “You want to go in?” the pilot asked.

  “We’ve got our search warrant,” Long said from behind them.

  After a moment’s thought, Active shook his head, then realized nobody had seen him do it. “No, let’s go after McAllister,” he said over the intercom. “If he’s running, this may be our last good shot at him.”

  “All right,” Cowboy said. “But I gotta have a pit stop.”

  Ten minutes later, the Cessna was bounding to a halt on a rolling ridge a few miles from McAllister’s camp. Cowboy and Active jumped down, stepped away from the plane, and relieved themselves on the tundra. Long hauled a still stunned-looking Pingo out and allowed him the same relief.

  “Why would Dood go to One-Way Lake?” Cowboy asked after Pingo had been reattached to a rear seat—ankles, too, this time. “If he knows you guys have him figured out, why doesn’t he just run for cover somewhere? Or go hire a lawyer?”

  “Maybe there’s evidence over there,” Active said. “Maybe he took something off Jae Hyo Lee. Maybe he lied to the cook and he’s not even there. All I know is, we have to stay on him.”

  “I don’t know,” Long said. “Go after him at One-Way Lake without backup? Serving a search warrant on his camp would be one thing, but—”

  “If he’s running, I don’t see where we have any choice.”

  “But he’ll hear us coming and—” Long stopped as he caught the look on Active’s face. “Yeah, yeah. Think long, think wrong.”

  Active gave a slight nod of approval, wondering about Long’s reluctance to confront McAllister. He filed it away and turned to the pilot. “How far is it?”

  Cowboy leaned into the Cessna and retrieved his chart. He spread it on the plane’s tail, holding it down with a forearm so the wind wouldn’t take it, and calipered the distance to One-Way Lake with a thumb and forefinger. He eyed the span for a moment. “Seventy miles, plus or minus. Half an hour, maybe.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Long said in that same reluctant tone.

  “Fly in there, look it over, figure something out,” Active said.

  “And if McAllister’s waiting?”

  “Figure something out. Okay, Alan?”

  Long said nothing. Cowboy grunted and bent over the Cessna’s tail again. Active and Long leaned in to follow his finger across the map.

  “This one may be a little dodgier. If he’s at One-Way, his Cessna’s going to be parked on the ridge above the lake.” Decker tapped the spot on the map. “Here. And there’s no way to come at it without being seen ourselves.”

  Active studied the chart. One-Way Lake was in the foothills on the south side of the Laird Mountains above the valley of the Isignaq River. One of the canyons radiating from the mountains appeared to open onto the top of the cliff above the lake. He drew a forefinger along its route. “How about we come down through here and pop out over the ridge, like we did just now?”

  Cowboy shook his head. “We got two strikes against us. Number one, McAllister’s spike camp is probably right up that same canyon. That’s why he uses that ridge to get to it. So we come down through there, he’s gonna see us. And number two, you see what’s moving in over there?”

  Cowboy turned away from the map pointed at the Laird Mountains on the far side of the Katonak River. The peaks were topped with shreds of cloud and the dangling veils of gray that meant falling snow.

  “In order to get over the Lairds and into that canyon above One-Way, we’d have to go right through that stuff. And even I don’t fly around in the clouds if I know there’s rocks in ’em.”

  Active studied the clouds, which appeared to be moving toward the Katonak a little as he watched. “So how do we get over there?”

  “We might be able to sneak through Igichuk Pass to the Isignaq side, all right. But seriously, what do we do when we get to One-Way?”

  “You got binoculars?”

  Cowboy nodded.

  “Let’s stand off at a safe distance and glass the situation, then decide.”

  Cowboy nodded again. “About all we can do, I guess.” He glanced at Active with the bush-pilot grin he got at moments like this. “Let’s jet. We’re burning daylight.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THEY CLIMBED INTO THE Cessna and cranked up. The engine still had some heat left, and Active opened his parka gratefully as warm air filled the cockpit. Cowboy taxied uphill a few yards, then locked the left wheel, goosed the throttle, and rotated the plane into takeoff position. Soon they were bounding along the whitish mat of reindeer moss and chert that covered the crest.

  A gust caught them, and the plane soared off the ridge, the right wing lifting in a way that made Active think of McAllister’s account of the crash that had killed Budzie Kivalina at Driftwood. Cowboy corrected the roll and climbed southward toward the Katonak River. The climb continued until the plane was level with the bottoms of the clouds draping the slopes of the Laird Mountains on the far side of the Katonak. Cowboy hunched forward to peer at the approaching peaks. Active had learned that this hunch was a bad sign in a bush pilot.

  “Trouble?”

  Cowboy gave one of his rumbling grunts and looked at the chart on his knee. “Fifty-fifty on Igichuk Pass,” he said. “If it’s closed, we gotta go way around like this to get over there.” He traced a long arc on the map, running along the north slope of the Lairds to where the mountains sank into the Katonak Flats less than fifty miles from Chukchi. From the Flats, Cowboy’s finger indicated, they would have to double back and fly up the Isignaq along the south slope of the Lairds to reach One-Way Lake. The pilot tapped one of his gas gauges. “But if we have to do that, we’ll have to run in to Chukchi and refuel first.”

  “It’s your call,” Active said.

  “Can’t hurt to take a look.” Cowboy continued his scrutiny of the Lairds as they reached the Katonak, followed it upstream to the mouth of the Igichuk River, and headed into the mountains. Now they were skimming the bellies of the clouds spreading north from the Lairds. Snow streaked past the windows. Active peered ahead but could not spot the pass, or guess the chances of it still being open.

  Active studied Cowboy, trying to decide how serious the situa
tion was. The pilot seemed to have relaxed a little. He was farther back in his seat and even looking out his side window at the valley below. He dipped a wing as they passed a spot where a creek fed into the Igichuk near a long, silky gravel bar. “There’s a nice little hot spring down there,” he said. “Good place for a getaway with someone sweet when the weather’s nicer. I could drop you guys in there.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind,” Active said.

  They continued up the Igichuk until a hard left turn around the end of a rocky granite ridge put them in a mountain bowl of gray talus slopes whitening with snow. Clouds capped the bowl like a lid on a pot.

  Active looked for a way out and finally spotted a saddle up ahead that looked as if it might lead through to the south slopes of the range. It was at the same altitude as the Cessna and pretty much socked in, so it was hard to see over. “That the pass?” He pointed.

  Cowboy nodded.

  “The clouds are right down on it. Maybe it’s time for a one-eighty.”

  “Ah,” Cowboy growled. “We came this far.”

  Cowboy rolled the plane into a turn and followed the curving wall of the bowl. Active wondered about this indirect approach for a moment, then realized they would have no escape route if they flew straight at the pass and found it closed. This way, if it was closed, they could complete the circle inside the bowl and backtrack down the Igichuk.

  Active watched as the pass crawled closer on Cowboy’s side of the plane. Through the mist and snow, he thought he glimpsed a rock-walled valley on the south side, with a thread of water in its center diving toward the Isignaq River far below. Cowboy yelled “Here we go!” over the intercom, and the world rotated ninety degrees as he snapped the plane into a punishing left turn. He leveled the wings just in time to skim across the saddle so low that Active thought for a moment he had decided to land and taxi to the far edge.

  Then the terrain fell away, Cowboy dropped the nose, and they were under the clouds and in relatively clear air, hurrying down the rocky valley Active had glimpsed moments earlier. He let out a long breath and looked at the pilot, who was lounging back in his seat and scratching his nose with a thumbnail.