A Cold War

by Alan Russell

  “What—what do you mean?”

  “I had to get dry ice and then package up your nicely manicured finger just so. It cost a fortune for one-night shipping, but if everything goes right, one of those fancy plastic surgeons will be able to reattach it in a few days. All you’ll need is another fat engagement ring to cover up the scar.”

  “Thank God.” Nina’s sense of relief was overwhelming.

  “The clock’s ticking on that hand of yours, though. If the surgery’s going to be successful, they’ll need to operate soon. So if you want to get reacquainted with your finger, you’ll have to do exactly as I say. If you follow my instructions, tomorrow night your boyfriend will be tucking you into your silk sheets. But if you don’t do as I say, I’ll kill you.”

  Nina’s breath caught. In her entire life, no one had ever raised a hand to her or voiced such savage threats. She had no doubt but that he would kill her. She did her best to keep her terror in check, but she suspected he knew just how scared she was.

  “I’ll do as you say,” Nina said.

  He nodded, as if expecting no other answer, and then leaned over the fire and stoked it. Nina looked around and shivered. There was no indication of where they might be. In the darkness she could see little else besides the shrubbery that surrounded them. There was no road, or at least none she could make out.

  “Where are we?”

  “We’re in a spot in the great state of Alaska that probably doesn’t even have a name.”

  “Will the ransom be delivered here?”

  “No. We’ll pick it up at another site.”

  The sound of his voice was deep, without any detectable accent. He was looking at her again, and Nina was glad of the darkness, imagining it as a barrier between the two of them.

  She tried to speak in a professional and impersonal tone. “Is there any way I can make a call? I want to reassure my family, and my fiancé, that I’m all right.”

  “No calls.”

  Okay, then. She considered her situation. She was weak and needed her strength. “Perhaps I could have that cup of broth now?”

  He said nothing, merely reached for the cup and placed it in her right hand. His hands were callused and rough, and she involuntarily pulled away from his touch, spilling some of the broth. He seemed to find that amusing.

  From its smell alone, Nina knew she was holding chicken broth. Normally she would have refused it, but she needed her strength. She took a sip. The liquid was warm and welcome, especially on such a cool night. She kept sipping and quickly finished the cup.

  “I’d like more,” Nina said.

  She thought of Dana and her Oliver Twist impression. Dana would have reported her missing by now. The police would be looking for her.

  “Later,” he said. “First, we’ll see if it keeps in your stomach.”

  If she was that hungry, how long had she been held captive? It might be helpful to know that. She’d been taken in the late afternoon.

  “What time is it?”

  “It’s late. If you hope to sleep, you better take a pain pill.”

  He stretched out his dirty hand, and she took the pill and put it in her mouth. Escape was out of the question, she supposed. She had no idea where she was. Out in this wilderness, it would be easy to get lost. She had to think positively: the ransom would be paid soon, and her finger would be reattached. Others would help her.

  Nina swallowed the pill. She wanted the pain to go away. She wanted relief from this terrible experience.

  “Sweet dreams,” he said.

  His amusement made bile rise in her throat. She turned her back and stretched out atop the blankets. Even in the best of conditions, she didn’t enjoy camping. It had only taken one back-to-nature outing with a former boyfriend to convince her that she enjoyed room service more than tenting it. This, though—this was much worse than having to deal with an uncomfortable bedroll and the cold.

  Imagining her freedom helped distract her from the pain, as did thinking about how her abductor would pay for what he’d done. The medication made her sleepy, but one troubling thought kept surfacing: He never tried to hide his face. If he wanted to avoid being identified by her, why hadn’t he disguised himself?

  Maybe he planned to escape to some foreign country after getting the money. Or it was possible he was just careless. Most criminals weren’t very smart, right?

  Anyway, it didn’t matter. Once the ransom was paid, this nightmare would be over. If all went well, she would soon have her finger reattached. A missing digit wouldn’t be in keeping with the Donnelly look.

  Things will be better in the morning. Clinging to that thought, Nina finally managed to sleep.

  Nina liked to waken to classical music to start the day. It set the right tone for the morning. But it wasn’t classical music that woke her.

  “Move!”

  His voice screamed into her ear. That would have been bad enough, but when he yanked her arm, the stab of pain from her mutilated hand almost made her physically sick.

  “Now!” he screamed. Nina struggled to her feet. It was still dark outside. Their camp was already broken down, nothing left to show they had stayed there for a night.

  “Back of the van,” he commanded. “Move it.”

  A pressing need made Nina speak. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Honey pot’s in the back,” he said.

  She hurried over to the rear of the open van and found a small space that had been cleared for her. The back of the van was filled with large sacks of food, including rice, beans, and flour. She didn’t know what a honey pot was, but she looked around for what she assumed was a portable toilet. The van doors closed behind her. Nina heard the click of a padlock.

  To her dismay, the honey pot wasn’t more than an oversize pan. As the bearded man sat down in the driver’s seat, Nina said, “Please let me out. I’ll be just a minute.”

  He started the engine. “We have an appointment to make.”

  “I promise I’ll be quick . . .”

  He answered by hitting the accelerator. With her good hand, Nina grabbed hold of the seat in front of her. The road was rough, each jolting movement pressing into her bladder. The van’s poor suspension added to Nina’s agony. After a few miles of torture, the ride improved somewhat and their speed increased, but Nina was still painfully aware of every pothole and dip they encountered. Each minute became more uncomfortable than the last. Nina eyed the so-called honey pot, and then she raised her eyes and found her captor looking at her in the rearview mirror.

  “I need you to pull over,” she said.

  He shook his head. “You can piss in the pot or piss in your pants. It’s your choice.”

  Nina trembled, but not from the cold. She had never felt rage like this, but she wasn’t going to give him the enjoyment of watching her yield to the chamber pot. She wasn’t going to be a spectacle for his viewing entertainment. Tears started falling. There seemed to be no end of them, and Nina didn’t try to stop their flow. She told herself they were relieving the pressure on her bladder, although that was hard to believe. She clenched her hands, wondering at this monster’s cruelty. In her entire life, she had never hated anyone, but in the depths of her stomach, she was beginning to know what hate felt like. She wanted to hurt this man, to return his violence and cruelty.

  For what seemed like an eternity but was probably less than an hour, the van rattled and rocked before finally coming to a stop.

  “Let me out,” she said. She felt like a young schoolgirl again, beholden to a sadistic teacher for a potty pass. The plea, the begging, came out in a beseeching whine: “Please.”

  He didn’t answer, didn’t even acknowledge her having spoken. Rifle in hand, he got out of the van, and she heard his footsteps walking around the area. After what seemed like an eternity, he removed the padlock and opened the back door of the van. Crablike, Nina crawled over the supplies, moving toward the opening. She tried to ignore the stabbing pain from where he’d cut off her r
ing finger.

  At the door he stopped her with a rough hand. “You’ll stay within my sight,” he said.

  Nina nodded. He held on to her for a moment longer than necessary, then let her go. She ran toward a stand of trees. Any illusions she’d had about maintaining her dignity vanished. At the first tree, she dropped her pants and lowered herself down. When she finished she was weak with relief.

  At least it was still dark; the sun was just beginning to show itself. Something rustled in the brush next to her. Wild images flashed through her mind. She tried to hop away to safety, but she fell. Her injured hand struck the ground, and she cried out in pain.

  “What happened?” the man yelled.

  “Something moved,” she said weakly. “I think it was a snake.”

  “There are no snakes in Alaska, cheechako.”

  She got to her feet. With her right hand, she tried to pull up her garments. Her left hand throbbed. She brushed dirt from the bandage, hoping none had found its way under the dressing. As she did so, she looked around.

  They were on a river, or maybe it was a lake. A cold wind was blowing; the air was heavy with moisture, and the ground was wet. A sulfurous smell came from decomposing plant vegetation at the shore of the lake. The body of water appeared to be sizable, but there was no one else in the area to be seen. No telephone wires or power poles or asphalt roads. She wasn’t used to seeing a lake without homes lining its shoreline.

  It wouldn’t even do any good to yell, she realized. No one was around to hear her.

  She slowly made her way back. He had put a tarp and blanket on the ground. “Get comfortable,” he said. “Last night I fried up some bacon. That will be breakfast.”

  Nina shook her head while settling atop the blanket. “I don’t eat meat.”

  “Is that a fact?” He sounded amused. “I’ll make you some orange juice then, unless you don’t drink juice neither.”

  She didn’t answer. He went to the van and mixed up some water and orange powder. A few moments later, he handed her a cup and said, “Tang. My old man used to say it was the drink of astronauts.”

  Nina took it and drank. He’d used too much powder, making its sweetness cloying, but she was thirsty.

  “Is this where the ransom payment’s going to be delivered?” she asked.

  He nodded.

  As Nina finished her drink, she began to feel better. Everything would turn out all right. Once the ransom was paid, she would be set free.

  “How will I get back to civilization?”

  “You won’t. I’ll tell the authorities where you are.”

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re a hell of a long way from New York City, cheechako.”

  “What does that word mean? And how do you know I’m from New York City?”

  “A cheechako is a tenderfoot, an outsider who doesn’t know the first thing about the great land. That’s the Aleut translation of Alaska: great land.”

  He made it sound as if being a tenderfoot was a crime.

  “As for your living in New York City,” he said, “when you demand ransom for someone, you better know where they live.”

  Nina suddenly felt light-headed and realized she hadn’t eaten in some time. “Do you have some bread or crackers or chips? I think I’ve got low blood sugar from not having eaten.”

  “Low blood sugar?” he said. “We can’t have that.”

  While he rustled around in the back of the van, Nina began to hum, then to whistle. She never knew whistling could be so much fun. It wasn’t something she ever did, but now she couldn’t understand why that was. She was still whistling when he came back with a bag of Doritos. Nina grabbed a handful of chips and started chewing. That made it impossible to whistle, so between mouthfuls she began talking. It occurred to her that she was speaking with her mouth open, but for some reason she wasn’t bothered by that.

  “You never introduced yourself. What am I supposed to call you?”

  “Call me Baer, spelled B-A-E-R.”

  The name seemed appropriate. The man reminded her of a bear. He was hairy, and dark, and large, and wild. For whatever reason he seemed to be in a good mood now. Nina wasn’t feeling bad herself. Her left hand wasn’t bothering her as much. She raised it up and stared at the bandaging. There was a space where her ring finger used to be.

  “I hope your money arrives soon,” she said. “My finger’s waiting for me.”

  That idea struck her as being funny. She knew it shouldn’t, but it did. The thought of her disembodied finger tapping impatiently made her laugh.

  She kept laughing. There was no reason for her to worry. “I’m going to get some pain au chocolat from Claude’s when I get home. No one makes pastries like Claude. He learned his skills in France, where he was a pastry chef for a two-star restaurant. We’re talking Michelin.”

  “Better drink some more juice,” Baer said, handing her another cup.

  “Tang,” she corrected. “Do the astronauts really drink it?”

  She drank up again. The drink was still too sweet. The sugar wasn’t even completely dissolved. The wind was still blowing hard, but she didn’t feel cold anymore. She puckered her lips and began to whistle, trying to be a part of the wind’s chorus.

  “Hot, isn’t it?” she said, abandoning her whistling.

  Baer said nothing, but Nina didn’t notice. She was in her own world now, floating from thought to thought. Her head drooped. A nap, she thought, would be nice. She drifted away, but didn’t quite sleep. She almost felt as if she were sailing. When she opened her eyes, Baer was standing over her.

  “Time to get ready for your flight,” he said.

  His words sounded as if they were being shouted from a distance. He reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled out a roll of duct tape. Nina watched as if she were standing outside her body, a casual observer. A large, very sharp-looking knife suddenly appeared in his hands. She wondered idly whether this was the blade he’d used to take off her finger. He stretched out a length of tape and sliced through it.

  Baer reached for her wrists, circling both of them in the hold of his large hand. “Time to buckle up,” he said, wrapping her hands together with the tape.

  Nina tried to speak, but all she could manage was a gurgle.

  CHAPTER THREE

  As Tomcat Carter made his pass over Fish Lake, he saw Adams and all his gear waiting for him on the bank.

  The two men had met at a bar in Anchorage four years ago. At the time, Tomcat had been running charters and flightseeing excursions in and around Denali National Park. When this man Adams learned that Tomcat was dropping off his charters in the small town of Talkeetna, the two of them had made their own flight arrangements. Adams had put down a sizable deposit, and he and Tomcat had agreed to meet-up at Fish Lake, a spot five miles outside Talkeetna. Their destination, Adams said, would be a lake in the interior that wasn’t far from his hunting cabin.

  That was enough of a destination for Tomcat’s purposes. Alaskan bush pilots were notoriously independent and not keen on Big Brother knowing any more than was necessary. Many of his clients were just as secretive, not wanting others to discover their favorite hunting and fishing spots. Besides, cash talked.

  Four years ago, Adams’s ultimate destination had proved to be a lake that, like so many others in Alaska, was anonymous. They had set down well east of Manley Hot Springs. It was one of those places in the interior unnamed on any map; its remoteness and the hilly, harsh terrain had discouraged even the native people from settling anywhere nearby.

  Although he’d flown Adams to the same destination several times since, Tomcat still knew virtually nothing about the man other than that he was a trapper who lived in the interior. Tomcat had given him the nickname “Grizzly.” Grizzly believed it was the “end days,” but he wasn’t religious about it, not one of those people who thought Jesus was coming back. He thought civilization was on the brink of extinction, and that wars and plague and the like were imminent. The man was
probably crazy, but so were lots of his clients. Grizzly paid cash, which was good enough for Tomcat.

  The pilot banked his Cessna 185 and came in for his final approach. Flying was about the only viable option for traveling within the state. Tomcat always explained to outsiders that if you put an overlay of Alaska atop a map of the continental United States, it extended from Georgia to California. Despite its size, Alaska had few roads outside of its major cities, and even by the most charitable estimates, there were fewer than twenty highways in the state. Roughly one in sixty Alaskans had a pilot’s license. It was because the state had so few major roads that Tomcat had job security for as long as he lived.

  The weather had worsened over the course of that morning, growing colder and windier, and the single-engine plane wasn’t having an easy time of it. Flying conditions in Alaska were among the most difficult in the world. Staying alive was the challenge every bush pilot faced.

  Tomcat kept adjusting his plane during the descent, with the Cessna’s wings tilting one way and then the other. The wind buffeted the plane’s floats, and Tomcat tried to keep her steady. By next week he’d have to switch out the floats for tundra tires or even skis.

  The plane hit the water too hard, bounced up, and then came down again. After settling down for good, Tomcat taxied over to where Grizzly and his provisions were waiting, angled the craft so that it was facing into the wind, and then turned off the engine.

  As he hopped out of his plane, Tomcat shouted, “I give myself a ten for the artistic part of the program. Of course, I always say if you can walk away from the plane, there’s no such thing as a bad landing.”

  Grizzly pulled on the plane’s line, bringing its aft up on the shore. “It’s about time you showed up.”

  “Well, good morning to you, too, Mr. Adams. In case you hadn’t noticed, this isn’t exactly a perfect flying day, and you didn’t make things any easier by having me pick you up here instead of just flying you out of Anchorage. Airports from Juneau to Fairbanks got their favorite Jew holiday going on today: Passover. Just about everybody’s closed up shop on account of fog and generally shitty conditions. I probably should have stayed in bed, and that’s not just my opinion. The woman I was sharing my bed with had some convincing arguments for me to stay put.”