Polar Bear Dawn

by Lyle Nicholson

  “So you think that RCMP lady detective has got a bead on McAllen?” Troy asked. He looked back in Braddock’s direction. Braddock was frowning, waiting to hear the news.

  “Yeah, I do. I’m convinced she’s on to something. And if not, what the hell, at least we checked it out. Look, without stirring up too much fuss, how about just checking if the intake pipes are large enough for someone to crawl into. You could check with the big-headed guy, the base manager —”

  “You mean Patrick Kearns. Hell yeah, I’ll go and see him right now.” Troy lowered his voice. “This shit will probably make that giant head explode.. .happy to do it.”

  “Sounds good, let me know what you find out. I told the RCMP detective I’d get back to her on this. Meanwhile, I’ll be here sitting on my ass in Anchorage watching the snow fall.”

  “Hey, Detective Mueller, you take care of that ass of yours down there—you know all the girls think you’re cute.” Troy laughed. He hung up the phone and turned to Chief Braddock. “Chief, looks like we got some shit to check out. Could be another set of devices in the water intake pipes.”

  Braddock headed for the door, opened it for Troy to walk through, and said, “You can brief me on the way to Kearns’s office.”

  Bernadette knew there was something that she had forgotten to ask Colonel Brigham. She needed to know if McAllen had any old war buddies he remained friends with. The firefight on Galiano Island was conducted with military precision, according to the reports she had read. The homicides in New York sounded professional as well. There was professional military written all over the case.

  “Colonel, sorry to bother you again, but there is something I forgot to ask you when we spoke earlier,” Bernadette said when the colonel picked up the phone.

  “Sure, fire away, glad to be of service.” The colonel was delighted to be back on the phone with Bernadette. He would repeat the story for days in his retirement community in Naples, Florida.

  “Do you happen to know if Alistair McAllen stayed in touch with anyone from his old platoon?”

  “Well, you know, let me think . . . he did send me a picture once . . . him and his buddies and some gal. Strange picture. They were all in Native getup, you know, war paint with some teepee in the back. I thought it was a gag, you know, him just having me on.”

  “Do you happen to have the picture?” Bernadette asked. She knew it was a stretch.

  “Sure do, right here by my desk. Put it in a frame to show some of my buddies when they come by. Picture’s kinda yellowed, but it’s right here.”

  “Could you scan the picture and send it to me if I give you an email address?”

  “Oh sure, I’ll have my grandson do it. He’s here this weekend. Smart boy. Knows all about that computer stuff. Helped me with this Facebook stuff. He’s got me downloading stuff and uploading stuff—”

  Bernadette cut in. “Ah . . . that’s great, Colonel. If you could send it to me at your earliest convenience that would be great.”

  “Oh sure,” the colonel chuckled. “Sorry to carry on. I realize you’ve got to be getting your man. How are those sleds dogs of yours, by the way?

  “Fine, just fine, Colonel. I had to scare the polar bears away.”

  “Polar bears? I didn’t know polar bears were that far south in Canada. You wouldn’t be having an old man on now, would you?” the colonel said, chuckling.

  “You’re right, Colonel, I’m pulling your leg. We have no polar bears where I am—my apologies for my misinformation. I shouldn’t have done that.” Bernadette was embarrassed. She hoped she hadn’t annoyed the colonel.

  “Ha, no harm done, Detective—if you can’t shit a neighbor, who can you shit?” The colonel broke into loud laughter. He would have fun reminiscing about this conversation and how he played with an RCMP detective for months.

  Bernadette put down the phone. She was blushing from being had by the colonel. He was a smart old man, having fun with her. She’d walked right into it.

  She decided to straighten up her desk and began by throwing out her stash of gummy bears and the other hidden snack demons that inhabited her desk. She filled half a trash can with junk and was about to leave the office when an email from the colonel with an attachment arrived.

  The attachment was the picture of McAllen and three other young men. They sat; legs crossed, in a semi-circle, no shirts. Despite the yellowness of the photo, Bernadette could see they were tanned. They wore war paint on their bodies and bandanas on their heads. A young Native girl stood over to the side. A teepee in the background swirled smoke from its top.

  The men were smiling, happy, in the bright West Coast Canadian sunshine—young men free from the terrors of war. On the bottom of the picture was a message: “Hello from West Coast Canada, our new paradise. Hello also from Theo Martin, Percy Stronach, and Sebastian Germaine. You would love our new friend, Grace Fairchild. We call her Saving Grace. ”

  Bernadette entered all the names into the central computer to search for previous convictions. None of the names had hits. They were all clean. Then she ran their names through the central database. The four men had landed immigrant status but still retained their American citizenship. Grace Fairchild had reservation status with a First Nations tribe on Vancouver Island.

  The first name she researched was Theo Martin. He had been born in Winter Harbor, Maine, had gone to college, and then enlisted in the army and rose to corporal in the Army Special Forces—called the Green Berets in Vietnam. Theo was a martial arts and weapons expert and was listed in the who’s who of Vancouver Island business. A business article claimed he had just sold his large oyster farm to an American firm. Theo was listed as living in the town of Duncan, Vancouver Island.

  She checked Percy Stronach next. Born in Sarasota, Florida, no college—right out of high school into the army, where he rose to the rank of specialist, and his specialty was demolition. Hmm, making things go boom, Bernadette thought, just like the night on Galiano Island. Percy received an honorable discharge, and was listed as a retired boat builder. His present address was Nanaimo, on Vancouver Island.

  The last name was Sebastian Germaine. Born in Seattle, Washington; Sebastian was a college dropout who had gotten caught up in the draft to Vietnam and had become a master sergeant in McAllen’s platoon. He had won sniper competitions at his army base before going to Vietnam. His occupation after leaving the military was sound mixer, with his own company. Pictures of Sebastian and Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, along with other long-dead musicians, were in his web photos. His website listed Victoria, British Columbia, as his address.

  Bernadette sat back at her desk. All three men lived within a short distance of McAllen. Their weapons specialties from the military were the same ones used to fight off the people who attacked them on Galiano Island. She was certain that if she began checking their whereabouts, none of them would be home.

  A check of Grace Fairchild turned up an environmental activist with no arrest records and no fixed address. She had had many close encounters with RCMP on Vancouver Island—protests over old growth logging, protests over Native rights, but she would never push it far enough to be put in jail. One very smart Native girl, Bernadette mused.

  The people in the old photo with McAllen looked like a fraternity. She wondered if they had become a fraternity of terrorists. It was something she would have to pass on to the CSIS. She had gone as far as she could in her search, being off the case. She dropped the files into an Outlook folder and emailed them to Anton. He would want to see this.

  She grabbed her jacket and took a pair of gloves out of her coat. She would flash them at Tammy at reception on the way out the door to prove she had come to get her gloves. Bernadette’s conscience was starting to nag her somewhat for the many half-truths, somewhat-truths, and little cover-ups she been telling to keep involved with the Clearwater murders and McAllen. In time it would come back on her—when was the only question.

  Sebastian arrived in Seattle late Friday night from New
York. He took a cab from the SeaTac Airport and checked into a small boutique hotel in the historic district of Seattle. The hotel was chosen by McAllen for its proximity to the Fisherman’s Terminal.

  On Saturday morning, Sebastian made his transformation from business suit to jeans, denim shirt, fleece jacket, and an all-weather raincoat. He still wore his Ivy hat, which kept his long braids hidden. He made his way to the Fisherman’s Terminal, and amongst the large fleet of fishing schooners, he found his way to the Alaskan Seeker, a forty-five- foot halibut boat that was some fifty years old and in good condition.

  A young relative of Grace’s welcomed him aboard and directed him below. In the small galley cabin he met McAllen and Grace. They hugged each other and sat down with mugs of coffee. The aroma of multigrain muffins filled the air. Sebastian knew Grace had been busy.

  “Any problems?” McAllen asked.

  “No, not really. We exterminated a couple of vermin and filled our pockets with cash; I would say it was a successful mission.”

  “Great job,” McAllen said. He slapped Sebastian on the back. The engines of the fishing boat began to rumble, and they felt it slip its moorings as they headed out of the harbor.

  The trip from Seattle to Vancouver Island was two-and-a-half hours on the passenger ferry. They would take a little longer. Grace had used her connections in what she termed the “Moccasin Highway” to get them back to Canada. No passports, no questions. In America, the three of them had used fake identification for flights.

  Sebastian wanted some sea air and started to climb topside. At that moment, a door opened from the sleeping quarters, Margaret Ashley came out and smiled at him. Sebastian shot a questioning glance at McAllen.

  McAllen only smiled. “Grace’s project,” he said.

  34

  The Information About A new threat to the oil fields scared the hell out of Patrick Kearns. He called each field’s chief of operations, telling each of them to place men—tall and thin men—into the water intake pipes to check for any devices containing polywater.

  The military wished they could act as quickly as oil men when executing orders. The difference was simple. Military were either offensive or defensive, and governments moved them. Oil men were about making money—money moved them.

  Troy stood with Braddock on his left and Kearns on his right. Numerous engineers and plant operators stood in the back, staring at a large pipe. A tall, skinny man, dressed in a white polyester coverall zipped up to his neck with a hood that encased half his face, stood before the pipe. He put on a face mask with a breathing apparatus with a long line that attached to an air cylinder.

  He wore a safety harness with a long line attached, which was held by another man behind him. The harness was standard practice in confined spaces in the oil industry. If Kearns’s had had his way, one man would have held the skinny man’s feet while he crawled into the pipe. The safety manager for Arctic Oil would never even consider that.

  The skinny man crawled into the pipe with a large flashlight, and Troy watched as he disappeared. The room went quiet. They could hear the rustle of his polyester suit against the pipe as he wiggled his way down.

  Troy hated confined spaces. His skin crawled to think of the closeness, of the smell of the oil and water in the pipe. After a few minutes, the line jerked in the handler’s hand at the head of the pipe. He pulled slowly, hand over hand, and the man emerged from the pipe. He was covered in a thin film of oil and grime. The pipe was an intake for both oil and water. The water was separated and returned back to the field.

  The skinny man held a fishing line in his hand. Standing in front of the pipe, he started to pull it slowly. He was delicate, like someone pulling a small fish to shore. At the end of the line, a six-inch condom appeared, full of an opaque liquid. He held it up high, like someone catching a a prize at a fishing derby.

  Some men in the room whistled, some laughed, and a few asked, “What the hell is that?”

  Kearns asked, “Is that it?”

  “Yeah,” the man replied, his eyes still blinking as he adjusted from the darkness of the pipe. “There was only one line anchored by a washer secured by crazy glue and the line stretched down the pipe.”

  Troy called all the other teams at the other water intake plants to tell them what to look for. One team replied back, “Yeah, we found the fishing line, but the condom thing at the end was broken. Looks like it shot its load.”

  Kearns heard the report and grabbed the radio mic out of Troy’s hand. “Any drop in flow pressure yet?” Kearns yelled into the mic. It rang in Troy’s ears.

  “Yeah,” the voice on the radio said. “The plant operator has noticed a drop in pressure since yesterday. There seems to be nothing coming from the drill sites back to the manifold building. The guys out at the drill site say they should be wide open but nothing is coming through.”

  Troy watched Kearns’s large head turn several shades of purple. He wondered if he was breathing at all. Troy knew that the news from the other site meant that the polywater had expanded into the oil field site.

  His knowledge of polywater was rudimentary, but he understood that if it turned water into a polyester-like substance and expanded, it had probably encased the oil down below, trapping it in a gelatinous mass and stopping the oil from coming to the surface.

  The only good thing about the report was that the field the polywater had hit was the smallest. A mere five thousand barrels a day came from that field. Troy did the quick calculation. Five thousand barrels a day equaled one hundred and eighty million dollars a year. There might not be bonuses this year from Arctic Oil.

  There was nothing more that Troy could do. His two-week shift was over, and he was due to head back to Anchorage on the afternoon flight. Braddock would handle the reports. Troy walked out the door of the water treatment building and headed for his truck. It was 10:00 a.m. on Sunday. A gray, feeble light was showing on the horizon. Light snow fell. The snow crunched under his feet as he walked to his truck.

  One hundred yards away, a white shape moved. White on white. A large polar bear stood, staring Troy down. They regarded each other, man and bear, and the bear moved on.

  Troy sat in his truck and watched the bear disappear. Then he took out his cell phone and sent a text to Detective Mueller. He would call him when he got to the airport and give him a full report—he owed him that, both Mueller and the Canadian RCMP detective. They had saved a major part of the Alaska oil field.

  Troy thought he might do something for Mueller when he returned to Anchorage. He couldn’t buy him a beer. Mueller was in rehab. Maybe a home-cooked meal with his wife and kids. Mueller looked like he could use a friend.

  On Sunday morning, Bernadette returned to her apartment after Sunday Mass. She was a semi-devout Catholic. Her Catholicism was half belief, half guilt. Her mother, who had passed away when Bernadette a teenager, had made sure she was confirmed as a child, as she was convinced Bernadette needed God’s intervention to save her from eternal damnation due to her hell-raising tendencies.

  Bernadette still attended Mass and went to confession—as often as she could. Confession was to get clean of the venial sins, usually described as fault finding, impatience, or small lies. In Latin, venialis means “easily pardonable.” Bernadette could rack venial sins up by the dozens in a day, and she still felt that the small or venial sins might build up into one big mortal sin.

  Her brothers back on the reservation had put the notion into her head. They had said it was like Monopoly, where four houses turned into one hotel on the board. For years, Bernadette had believed them, until a kind priest set her straight. She got even with her brothers for their lies—and then went to confession for it.

  She felt refreshed. She had confessed her little lies to her superiors—she felt better. The apartment was clean after a late-night frenzy of cleaning, laundry, dishes. She had also taken a trip to the market to fill up the refrigerator. The food in the fridge now was even wholesome: vegetables and meats that
needed cooking, not thawing and microwaving.

  Her thoughts were still on the polywater case, on whether her intuition was correct about McAllen and his second set of devices. Bernadette turned on her laptop and found a message from Detective Mueller in Anchorage. His email claimed that nine devices had been found intact—one had burst. Mueller went on to explain how McAllen had used condoms to deliver the polywater. Bernadette had to hand it to McAllen; the man had ingenuity.

  Her cell phone rang—it was Pierre. “Pierre, how’s everything? Did you find any devices? I just got an email from Alaska. They found nine devices, one broken, and get this, they used a condom.” Bernadette was breathless.

  “Bernadette, thanks for the update. Yes, we did find devices, and my god, yes, they were condoms. Two were broken. Those two plants have been experiencing problems with their steam-assisted gravity drainage system for the past few days.”

  “Their what?”

  “I take it you don’t know about the assisted gravity drainage, or SAGD.”

  “Well, I’m not a mechanical girl, so perhaps you can fill me in.” Bernadette had been in Fort McMurray for several years but was more concerned with crime than oil.

  “Well, simply put, the water is heated into steam, which makes the heavy oil into a slurry that moves up a column to the surface.”

  “So how much has the polywater affected these two plants?”

  “Not as much as you might think. The polywater substance ruined one chamber in each plant, so the plants have to move their operations to a new area. It may take a few months, but they’ll be back in operation.

  “Back to making oil.”

  “Yes, back to making oil. Now, if McAllen’s strange devices had hit all the plants at once, he would have had a major affect on North American oil. However, since we were able to confine it to two plants and keep the other ones operating—well, what can I say, you were right again.”