by Alan Russell
“Maybe she’s seen your landings,” Grizzly said.
“Textbook landings are for pussies. What I do is crash with aplomb.”
The pilot wasn’t a large man, but he had big hands, a big voice, and a big head. He shook that head as he appraised the waiting bags. “Jesus Christ, Griz. You didn’t warn me that you were going to be bringing everything but the kitchen sink. How many pounds you packing?”
“Not much more than the usual. Six hundred pounds tops.”
“Shit.”
“You’ve hauled more than that.”
“Yeah, and I used to be able to screw all night. In my old age, I’m becoming more and more aware of the forces of gravity, especially on a day like today.”
“In your old age, it sounds like you’re becoming damn cranky. Let me guess: that slipped disk of yours is hurting like hell.”
“You got a future as a carnie, Adams, guessing people’s weight.”
“And here I was going to volunteer to stow the gear.”
Tomcat shrugged and pretended he didn’t care. “Let’s weigh it first,” he said, “and then you can knock yourself out.”
The pilot was glad to give his chronically bad back a break. He studied the scale’s readouts, writing down figures, while Grizzly did all the lifting. Every box and bag was weighed, and then Tomcat decided how the containers were to be stowed for ideal weight distribution. He supervised Grizzly’s tying down of the cargo. The last thing you wanted on a small plane was shifting cargo.
The high-winged plane was officially a six-seater, but the fifth and sixth seats had been removed. Two of the larger bags were strapped into the empty seats. A large duffel bag was stowed in the back. What concerned Tomcat most was the dry dog-food vault designed to hold a sixty-pound bag of kibble. Adams had filled the vault, resulting in what Tomcat called a ballbuster. Finally it got stowed to his satisfaction.
After everything was put away and Adams was strapped into the remaining seat, Tomcat sat at the controls and went through his checklist. The plane wasn’t at its weight limit, but he was hauling more than he would have liked, especially with the iffy weather. He took a deep breath and then blew it out. If he was going to do this, he had to get going. Daylight was burning.
He positioned the Cessna into the wind, then opened the throttle. In a pinch the plane could get airborne in 700 feet, but when it was weighed down, you wanted more room to maneuver than that. The Cessna gained speed as it moved down its water runway. More snow was falling now, and Tomcat alternately cursed and exhorted the machine as it rose into the air. Slowly, begrudgingly, it gained altitude.
“Come on,” he said over the noise of the straining engine. “Get up, you piece of shit.”
He slapped the instrument panel with his hand like a galley master beating a drum. Even as they gained more altitude, gusts of wind buffeted them from side to side. The wind he could deal with. What he didn’t like was the way the wet snow was already clinging to the craft.
“These are screwed conditions!” Tomcat shouted.
“You afraid of a little snow?”
“Afraid of this crate goddamn icing up? You got that right. There’s a saying, Griz: There are old pilots and there are bold pilots, but there ain’t no old, bold pilots.”
“What little girl made up that poem?”
He responded to the goad with a disgusted sound, but his attention was on flying. He shouldn’t let Grizzly Fucking Adams get under his skin, Tomcat thought. Like the real Grizzly Adams, this guy was a mountain man. They were a rare breed—which, he thought, was a good thing.
As the plane climbed, Tomcat craned his neck, trying to see through the snow to the ground below. Already the ground was a carpet of white. They were flying into winter, and it threatened to come sooner rather than later.
“When the firewood bloomed in the middle of July, it didn’t lie. Winter’s come early this year, and it’s going to be long and cold.”
The early blooming of the firewood plant was a portent for Alaskans, signaling an early and lengthy winter. Apparently that prospect didn’t bother Grizzly Adams. “Good,” he said.
“You’re the only goddamn person I know who looks forward to eight months of winter. You’re the last of the mountain men,” said Tomcat. “No one else is trapping or homesteading anymore, but here you are living in the middle of goddamn nowhere. Even the Natives don’t live out your way. How far is it to your nearest neighbor, fifty miles?”
“Not far enough.”
“So, being such a lover of humanity, what did you do during your big getaway?”
Grizzly shrugged.
“What are you, a goddamn Trappist monk?”
“No, I’m a goddamn trapper.”
“Yeah, you’re the last of the Mohicans. I’m surprised you’re still in business. These days it’s getting so that you can’t even take a piss out of doors without some Fed writing you up. You better hope those bureaucrats don’t start reaching their fingers up your way.”
“If they do, those fingers will get frostbit.”
“You’re right about that. They probably don’t want to have anything to do with someone crazy enough to live so far from civilization. How the hell do you keep from going nuts, Adams?”
Instead of answering, his passenger shut his eyes and turned away. His breathing grew heavy. Tomcat wasn’t sure if Adams was faking his snoring to avoid conversing or if he really had fallen asleep.
“Ask me,” said Tomcat under his breath, “you already are crazy.”
As with so many things, the tipping point seemed to have materialized suddenly, whereas in truth everything had been building up over time.
The Cessna shook violently. Tomcat cursed with equal violence. He looked straight ahead and then right and left. The windows might as well have been painted opaque white. He relied on his training to try to fight off the vertiginous sensation. There was no perspective, nothing by which to gauge the direction they were flying, or even which way was up. With bone-white knuckles, he gripped the throttle as if their lives depended on it. Maybe they did.
The sounds from the engine weren’t reassuring. It was straining and sputtering. Tomcat’s cursing finally roused his passenger, who stretched, took a few breaths and a look around, and then said, “We’re flying around in circles.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know, Einstein.”
“Why?”
“Because we got close to zero visibility, and I’m not real fond of flying in what looks like a bottle of milk. But that’s not the worst of it. We’ve been icing up. And by the sounds of it, the air inlets and induction filter are in danger of plugging up.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we’re up shit creek without a paddle. We got to get higher, or we might come to a very abrupt halt.”
“So, let’s get higher.”
“While you’ve been snoring, I’ve been doing everything but flapping my arms. The engine’s already giving its all. I push any harder and it’s likely to cut out on us.”
“Can we land?”
“Not without some window of visibility. And if we go looking for that visibility, we might find ourselves poleaxed by some rock or come face-to-face with a mountain. Going higher is our answer.”
Everything seemed to be conspiring against that. The wind kept slamming the plane, slapping it downward. A sudden wind shear cuffed the Cessna, and it dropped like a boxer with a glass jaw. The howl of the whipping air drowned out all noise, and both men strained to hear the sound of the engine. For a long moment, there was nothing, as if it was catching its breath, and then its labored roaring resumed.
Tomcat wiped away the sweat running down his face. Grizzly Adams didn’t even look concerned. Perhaps he didn’t realize the seriousness of their situation, or perhaps he didn’t care. His concern didn’t seem to be so much about getting down in one piece as it was in getting to his destination.
“How far are we from Last Lake?” he asked.
&nb
sp; “At least thirty miles out.”
“That’s not so far.”
“It’s far enough that we might never reach there. What we got to do is lighten our load. You need to start tossing everything out, and you need to do it now.”
“You serious?”
“I’m as serious as death. Do it!”
Adams unlocked his seat belt and took a few unsteady steps back to the hold.
The insistent sound of a screaming train whistle kept invading Nina’s thoughts. The noise was growing louder, if that was possible. As much as she wanted to ignore it and continue sleeping, she couldn’t.
It was dark outside. No, that wasn’t it. She moved her head around. Some kind of cover surrounded her. She tried to push the shroud away only to realize that both her hands and feet were tied. A scream rose up from her chest, but her cries were muted by the duct tape running across the center of her mouth.
Baer, she remembered, had trundled her up. He was the one who must have put her in this bag. What if he’d buried her alive? Nina suddenly couldn’t breathe. It felt as if a pressing weight was on her chest and everything was closing in on her. Her heart pounded, her pulse raced, and her stomach was doing flip-flops. She fought off nausea, afraid of being asphyxiated by her own vomit.
A sudden jostling threw Nina to one side, and then the other. Don’t panic, she told herself. Think. Baer had probably gotten his ransom money and was now making his getaway. He’d been afraid someone might recognize her, and because of that he’d hidden her away in some kind of bag. That had to be it. She was in the back of his moving van. By the feel of it, the vehicle was being driven hard.
She chewed on the duct tape but was unable to free up her mouth. Still, the chewing helped alleviate the pressure she was feeling in her ears. Maybe they were up on a mountain pass. That might explain the wind as well. A persistent frosty breeze penetrated the bag; at least she didn’t have to worry about fresh air. The whistling of the wind was louder now, sounding more like a buzz saw.
And then it felt as if a carpet was being pulled out from under her; a sense of vertigo overwhelmed her and Nina screamed, but she couldn’t even hear herself through the duct tape. For a long moment, gravity lost its hold on her, and she had the sensation of her stomach and throat being in free fall. She thought the van was falling off the side of the road until gravity reasserted itself.
She wasn’t sure which was churning more, her stomach or her mind. Everything felt in flux. She tried to focus, but her head was swimming in violent waters. She didn’t know what was happening, and that made everything worse. Thinking was an effort. Nina tried twisting her wrists and feet, but the duct tape stifled anything but minimal movement. There was no give there.
Then, without warning, she felt herself sliding backward. Nina kicked out with her legs. She had to get out. The bag brought her feet up short, but she kicked again and again.
On the plane’s rearmost seat, the duffel bag shifted and moved as though it were full of snakes. The dipping plane and the frigid air had awakened its occupant.
Baer braced for the onslaught as he opened the aft cargo door. It popped free, wind blasting into the cabin and sucking unsecured papers out of the opening. Nature, abhorring a vacuum, became a vacuum cleaner, putting its grip on everything inside.
He tossed the fifty-pound bags of beans and rice first. Seven-pound containers of tomato sauce went flying out, along with boxes of pasta. He freed the dog-food vault, and then dragged it over to the opening. It was a tight fit, but he was able to squeeze it through, and it dropped into the void.
“Get rid of goddamn everything except the yellow bag in the cargo hold!” yelled Tomcat. “That’s the survival kit.”
Baer continued tossing until only the survival bag and the duffel were left.
Huddled inside her bag, Nina willed her body to be heavy. The wind was grabbing at her, screaming for her to come along with it. Whatever was going on outside her shroud terrified her. The noise was overwhelming. It was in her head, had a grip on her mind, and threatened to overwhelm her. Senselessness would be a blessing. Nina wondered if she was going crazy.
Although she couldn’t see, she squeezed her eyes shut anyway. Nina was now sure she was no longer in the van but a plane. Baer had said something about a flight. That explained her stomach’s feeling like it was on an express elevator. But it didn’t explain the noise in the cabin. It sounded as if the Furies had been unleashed. Something was very wrong. Cold wind whipped at her through the cloth, clawing at her, pulling her into the air.
As the plane bounced, the duffel seemed to levitate for a moment. Baer snatched its grip.
The screaming wind whipped at his hair. He hoisted the duffel over to the aft cargo door. As he prepared to let it go, he noticed the plane’s nose was up. The Cessna was angling higher, gaining altitude.
Inside the craft, Tomcat began to raggedly cheer. Outside the craft, the wind seemed to shriek its disappointment.
“Close the goddamn cargo hold!” yelled Tomcat.
Baer did as the pilot asked and then secured the duffel on the floor behind the seats, where Tomcat would be unable to see it flopping like a fish on shore. It wouldn’t be long before the woman tired herself out. There were enough drugs in her system to put out an elephant.
Ten minutes later the white curtain seemed to lift long enough for Tomcat to get some idea of the surrounding expanse. He peered at the GPS readout. Below, Baer could see thickets of spruce, birch, larch, and aspen.
“You work this land?” Tomcat asked. “You know it at all?”
Baer shook his head. “I don’t run my traplines this way.”
They were still at least fifteen miles as the raven flew from what he and Tomcat called Last Lake. Tomcat took the plane lower. The polar winds still raged, but at least they weren’t flying blind. Snow was falling, but for the moment at least, the flakes were more nuisance than hazard. Below, a line of blue cut through the landscape. Tomcat shifted course to follow the river.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you think? I’m looking for a good spot to land.”
“Why put down here?”
“Why does a dog lick its balls? Because it can.”
Tomcat pointed to the dense layer of fog spreading out over the landscape. “I want to get down while we can still see. We got thickening pea soup below, seventy-mile gusts, and an Arctic storm chock-full of snow and blow. I’m ready to find any port in the storm.”
“We’re not that far from the lake. Why don’t we just keep flying?”
“Call me fucking foolish, but I feel like staying alive. We’re landing at the first fucking good spot we find.”
He took the Cessna still lower. They were far enough north that there were fewer big trees to worry about hitting, but there were plenty of hills. “Rock, snow, and ice,” Tomcat said, staring at the forbidding world beneath them. “Must feel like a real homecoming to you, Adams. Ask me, it feels like the end of the world.”
“I wouldn’t call it the end of the world,” said Baer, “but you can almost see it from here.”
They followed a stream that was beginning to ice up in spots. It opened up into a body of water. Tomcat dropped his plane lower, scanning what looked like a small lake for any stumps or boulders or snags waiting to snare him. Sometimes Alaskan lakes were illusory, more boreal puddles than not. This one appeared to be plenty long and deep.
“She’ll do,” he announced.
“Did you call a Mayday back there?” Baer asked.
“No.”
“So if we’d crashed, no one would have come to our rescue?”
“You crash, you die. Yelling ‘Mayday’ doesn’t change that. If we’d crashed, the emergency locator transmitter would have flipped on, but we wouldn’t have been in any condition to care.”
“You didn’t log a flight plan?”
Tomcat made a disdainful snort and then turned his head and looked curiously at Baer. “Is that worry I hear in your voice
, Adams? Is there actually blood in your veins instead of antifreeze?”
Baer didn’t answer.
“If we’d crashed,” Tomcat said, “they might not have found our bodies for years.”
He turned his attention back toward the lake, and the plane began its descent.
It was another crash with aplomb, but now they were safely down.
“There’s no such thing as a bad landing,” the pilot announced, the same thing he’d said that morning.
Tomcat cut off the engine, leaving a sudden silence in the cabin. That made the loud thumping coming from the back of the plane all the more apparent.
“What the hell is that?” he asked.
He removed his seat belt and swiveled his body back to get a better view. When he saw the moving duffel bag, his eyes widened.
“I got a bitch in the sack,” Baer said. “I’m going to add her to my sled team.”
“You stuffed a poor dog in a bag? What kind of sorry bastard are you?”
“She’s a mean one.”
“You should have gotten one of those kennels, then.”
“Didn’t have time.”
“Let her out.”
“I told you, she bites.”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Tomcat. “The poor thing is probably scared out of her mind.”
Baer nodded and then released his safety belt. In the same movement, he released the hasp to his leather sheath and silently pulled out his large hunting knife.
CHAPTER FOUR
When Baer finally unzipped the large duffel bag, the afternoon sun was almost played out. Despite that, Nina had to close her eyes and turn her head from what seemed like burning light. As disoriented as she was, it was still a relief to be able to see something other than the confines of a bag. She’d been afraid she would never be free of that body bag.
Baer took out his knife and began cutting away the duct tape binding her mouth, hands, and feet. He ripped off the tape covering her mouth, and some hair with it, and Nina cried out in pain.