HE WAS FORDING ONE-WAY Creek when the voice came from the trees.
“Hi, Nathan.”
Active froze and peered into the cottonwoods. “Alan? Are you all right?”
“Not really.”
“What? Are you hurt?” Active looked Long over as he approached. There was no sign of blood, or of an arm held stiffly, or of a limp.
Or of anyone else.
“Pingo. Where’s Pingo? He got away, is that it?”
Long averted his gaze and raised his eyebrows. “I was watching you take off your clothes and bring Dood in from the plane, and when I looked around, he was gone.”
“Gone? But he was shackled to the seat. Did he rip it loose somehow?”
“Not exactly, no.”
Active closed his eyes and waited for the urge to throttle Alan Long to subside. “What the hell happened, then?”
“He had to take a leak. When I put him back in the plane, I guess I forgot about shackling him to the seat again.”
“You forgot?”
Long lifted his eyebrows, his chipmunk cheeks drooping in dismay. “I tried to follow him, but it’s too foggy up there. I couldn’t see anything.”
“So he’s gone.”
Long raised his eyebrows
Long raised his eyebrows again. “But he is handcuffed, at least.”
“Well, he can’t travel very fast,” Active said. “Not on foot, and with his hands shackled. Soon as this weather lifts, we can go up in Cowboy’s—” He noticed the look on Long’s face. “Pingo is still shackled, right?”
“Pretty much.”
“Pretty much?”
“His hands are cuffed, but I don’t think they’re shackled to his waist any more.”
“You don’t think. You forgot that too?”
Long nodded his head with a miserable expression.
“Gee, Alan, a guy in handcuffs can move about as well as anybody else and do pretty much whatever he needs to, can’t he? That’s just. . . .” Active stopped as the thought entered his head that maybe Long’s letting Kivalina get away was no accident.
“At least he can’t move very fast on foot,” he said, studying Long’s face. “Plus it’ll be dark before too long, so he probably won’t get far tonight. If we can get in the air at first light, we should—”
Long had raised his head and was looking intently up the ridge, into the fog, toward where Cowboy’s Cessna was parked.
“What?” Active said. Then he heard it himself. Br-r-rr-p. Br-r-r-r-p. Br-r-r-r-p. Like someone pulling the starter cord on a snowmachine. Or a—
“I bet he’s taking Dood’s four-wheeler,” Long said.
“Come on,” Active shouted, and sprinted up the slope. But, even over the sound of his own feet scuffing over the tundra, he could hear the four-wheeler catch and settle down to a steady r-r-p, r-r-p, r-r-p, then rev up and gradually fade into the distance.
He stopped in the fog. Long bumped into him from behind.
“Damned fine job, Alan,” Active said, unable to check himself now. “Pingo could be a hundred miles away by the time this stuff clears.”
“I don’t know if a four-wheeler can hold that much gas.”
“You happen to notice what was in that trailer McAllister was towing?”
“I can’t remember. Oh, yeah, a bunch of gas jugs, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Arii.”
“Uh-huh.”
Active debated whether to continue on to Cowboy’s Cessna or get back to the fire and see to the perhaps-dying, perhaps-reviving, McAllister. Long was safe and Pingo apparently bent on clearing out of the country, so the situation probably no longer qualified as an emergency. Unless—
“Come on. We gotta get up there.”
Long looked into the fog shrouding the ridge. “What for? Pingo’s gone, like you said.”
“In case he did something to the plane. I’m not sure anybody knows we’re here. If we can’t fly out, it may be a while before anybody figures it out.” Active set off up the slope at a fast trot, leaving Long to follow. Or not.
“YOU SURE my plane’s okay?” Cowboy asked a half-hour later. “Maybe I oughta go have a look myself.”
“If you like,” Active said. “But I think Pingo just snuck up, started McAllister’s four-wheeler, and took off. There’s no sign the plane was touched. In fact, the keys were still in the ignition. I locked up and brought them back with me.”
He pulled the keys from his pocket and dropped them into Cowboy’s hand with a mildly accusing look.
“I always leave ’em in the switch,” Cowboy said, sounding defensive. “You take ’em with you and they fall out of your pocket on the tundra, then where are you?”
“Good point,” Active said. “Except this time.”
Cowboy grunted and swung his gaze to Alan Long. “And how exactly did Pingo get loose, Alan?”
Long hedged and stumbled his way through the story.
When it was over, Cowboy shook his head. “I never knew anything like that to happen with Chief Silver.”
Long said nothing. He turned and walked to the lakeshore.
Active studied McAllister’s figure in the Visqueen lean-to. The sides and rear were closed off, so the only opening was the front. It faced the fire, which Cowboy had extended with more fuel from the nearby spruces until it paralleled the makeshift shelter for most of its length. It looked to be about as warm an arrangement as could be devised with the resources at hand.
McAllister was still covered except for the nose and mouth poking out of Cowboy’s sleeping bag. The bag was vibrating visibly.
“McAllister’s shivering now?” Active said. “That’s good, right?”
“I think so,” Cowboy said. “Assuming we want to keep him alive.”
“Yes, Cowboy. We do.”
The pilot turned and pointed at a coffeepot nestled in the coals at one end of the fire. “Got some hot water here. Ready for an MRE?” He turned and looked toward the lake. “Alan? Want some chow?”
Cowboy dumped several of the brown pouches into the coffeepot and poked at them with a spruce branch to make sure they were immersed. “Couple minutes,” he said. He handed out what passed for treats in MRE-land, and Active munched on something called Fortified Snack Bread as the entrees heated.
“What ab-bout me-he-hee?” McAllister said from under the lean-to, his teeth chattering.
Active checked the impulse to jump in surprise. “You’re hungry? We’ve got—”
“I’m cuh-hold. I need something huh-hot.”
Cowboy pawed through the food bag and came up with envelopes of powdered hot chocolate and clam chowder. “These’ll be the fastest,” he said, eyeing Active.
Active nodded.
Cowboy emptied the envelopes into cups, added water, and stirred the chocolate. He glanced at McAllister. “Who’s going to do this?”
“I could,” Long said from behind them. Neither had noticed him come up from the lake.
“Take off your gun first,” Active said.
Long unbuckled his gunbelt and dropped it into the tent Cowboy had set up. Active unsnapped the flap of his holster and held the Smith and Wesson at his side.
Long crossed to the lean-to and slipped the sleeping bag off McAllister’s head, then got an arm under his shoulders, and raised the hot chocolate to his lips.
“I could d-do i-hit myse-helf,” McAllister grumbled, trying to shrug the sleeping bag off his shoulders. “Unloose my ha-ands.”
“Your hands stay where they are!” Active stepped forward a couple of paces and showed McAllister the gun, though he didn’t raise it.
McAllister relaxed, and Long fed him the hot chocolate. Then Cowboy fixed the clam chowder and Long fed that to McAllister too.
“Thanks,” he said. It sounded as if his teeth had stopped chattering. He glanced around the camp. “Did you say that kinnaq is here? I thought he burned up in that fire back in Chukchi.”
“He got out,” Active said, watching as McAllister digested the news.
“Where is he now?”
Cowboy cleared his throat.
“He got away,” Long said. “He took off on your four-wheeler.”
“Wonder where he went,” McAllister said with what sounded like a snicker.
“Don’t worry about it,” Active said.
Cowboy pulled the MREs out of the coffeepot and passed them around, with plastic spoons. They ripped open the pouches and dug in. Active found himself with one labeled Cajun Rice/Beef Sausage and another that identified itself as Western Beans. They tasted about the same—pretty much like he imagined boiled sawdust would taste. How did the military fight wars on the stuff?
Cowboy collected the empty pouches and dropped them into the fire. Then he passed out official MRE napkins. “Just wipe off your spoons and put ’em in your pocket for later.”
He looked across the lake at the falling snow and into the fog covering the ridge where his 185 was tied down. “I gotta go have a look,” he said. “You never know.”
“You never do.” Active shrugged. “I doubt Pingo’s anywhere within ten miles by now, but—”
“Yeah, yeah, I’ve got the .357.” Cowboy grabbed one of the MRE snacks from the food bag—some sort of chocolate bar—and, munching, headed down the shore to the crossing of One-Way Creek.
“I guess I could wash these,” Long said. He picked up the cups he had used to feed McAllister and walked to the lakeshore. Active heard him splashing water and was glad he had suppressed the impulse to say “Think you can handle it?”
McAllister shifted in the sleeping bag, trying to find a comfortable position for his legs. It was evidently difficult with his ankles tethered by the FlexCuffs and his hands shackled at his back. Eventually, he rolled onto his side, drew his knees up nearly to his chin, and studied Active. “You could take these things off my hands. They’re cutting off my blood.”
“They’re supposed to be tight. Just keep them under the bag. Alan can check them when he’s done with the dishes.”
McAllister only grunted, his leathery face masklike, the dark eyes warier than ever.
AFTER LONG returned from the lakeshore and stowed the two cups with Cowboy’s gear by the fire, Active pulled him a few feet into the spruces. “I’m going to see what I can get out of McAllister,” he said. “I need you there too, for a backup witness to anything he says.”
“Can I ask questions?” Long said.
Active eyed him. “You think of something you want to ask, let me know and we’ll step away and discuss it first, okay?”
Long looked unhappy but raised his eyebrows yes. They walked back into the firelight and Active prodded McAllister with the toe of a Sorel.
“You know why we’re here,” he said.
McAllister grunted.
Active recited the Miranda warning.
“Where am I going to get a lawyer?” McAllister said.
It wasn’t actually a request, Active decided. “We know you killed Jae Hyo Lee up here.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Then how did he end up here in One-Way Lake with his neck broken?”
McAllister’s shoulders jerked under the sleeping bag. “Maybe he fell in the lake while he was coming in to rob my camp.”
“How would he know where it was?”
McAllister shrugged again. “Maybe the kinnaq told him.”
“Why would he do that?”
McAllister shrugged again, but said nothing.
Active waited a while, but McAllister maintained his silence as the snowflakes fluttered down, leaving the taste of metal on Active’s tongue when he breathed in. He wiped his eyebrows and saw that snow had collected on McAllister’s eyebrows as well. Because he couldn’t wipe, it was melting and trickling into his eyes.
“It would have been self-defense to kill him,” Active said at length, watching for McAllister’s reaction. “Tom Gage and Pingo sent up him here to kill you. They paid him ten thousand dollars.”
The shadow of a grin flashed across McAllister’s face. “Nobody could kill me out here.”
“That’s how you got Jae’s wallet and the money you showed Tom and Pingo?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Did you throw him off the cliff, like you told Sergeant Cave you could have done with Budzie if you wanted to?”
McAllister’s shoulders twitched again.
“Was Budzie trying to kill you too?” Long said suddenly.
Active looked at Long, who flinched, presumably realizing he had violated protocol by asking the question without clearance. But Active decided it would have been his next question anyway.
“That was an accident,” McAllister said. “I loved Viola.”
“An accident?” Active said.
“That dog.”
“Dog? What—”
“She told me about Tom Gage, and we got into it, and I hit her one, all right, but not that hard, not even with my fist, just the back of my hand. She didn’t even fall down, just her lip was bleeding a little. But then Dad-Dad jumped me, and I shot it before I could think about it. She loved that goddam dog, and when I shot it and it ran off yelping, then Viola, she jumped me, screaming in my ear, and then when I shoved her off she went down and hit a rock. She couldn’t wake up, so I put her in the plane to take her back to Chukchi, and then we went in the Utukok. It was an accident.”
“If you’re telling us the truth, then why was your emergency gear stashed on the creek bank?”
McAllister flexed his shoulders. “I heard they call you naluaqmiiyaaq. I guess you don’t know anything.”
Active heard splashing from the lower end of the lake and surmised Cowboy was crossing One-Way Creek on his return from the ridge. He looked down the lakeshore, saw nothing but snow and the ghostly silhouettes of trees, and turned back to McAllister.
“We know Pingo put water in your gas.”
“Ah-hah. I knew it was him, that kinnaq.”
“If he’s such a kinnaq, how come a smart guy like you didn’t find the water?” Long said. “Whenever Cowboy does his preflight, he drains some gas out of his tanks to check for water.”
It was another protocol violation, but again the question made sense. Active waited for McAllister’s answer.
McAllister looked disgusted. “Yeah, I always check, all right. But it takes a while for water to work its way through the system. I think it kind of mixes with the gas at first. So I guess it hadn’t reached the drains yet when I was checking. I know that engine ran quite a while before it quit over the Flats.”
“And that’s why you burned up the Rec Center,” Active said. “To get back at Pingo and Tom?”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“Pingo saw you in there.”
“That kinnaq? He doesn’t know what he sees. From what I heard, he talks to Viola in his sleep.”
“The Troopers are searching your place in Chukchi for your safety-wire twister. I think our lab will match it to the wire you used on the door to the men’s locker room at the Rec Center.”
McAllister’s eyes got warier, and he was silent for a while. “You said I could have a lawyer, ah?”
“You can. But we’ll still have the wire twister. And Jae’s wallet that you left at Tom Gage’s place.”
“Is that what the kinnaq said? Too bad you don’t have him, ah?”
“We’ll find him.”
“Maybe you think so.”
“Think what?” Cowboy growled, emerging out of the mist like a ghost. He walked up to the fire and spread his hands over the flames. “Plane’s fine. Maybe you think what?”
“That we’ll find Pingo,” Active said.
“I dunno. Guy like that, he’s pretty good in the country.” Cowboy stuck a cigarette between his teeth and lit it. “Plus, he’s got the four-wheeler now.”
“He doesn’t have any gear,” Active said. “What’s he going to do?”
“Go steal some, probably. There’s lots of camps down there along the Isignaq, and he’s got McAllister’s four-wheeler.”
McAllister snickered. “Yeah, and he knows where my spike camp is back in them hills.”
Active shook his head. “How much stuff is left up there?”
McAllister snickered again. “Anything he needs.”
“Should we go up there?” Long said.
“How far is it?” Active asked.
“Few miles,” McAllister said. “Too far for a naluaqmiiyaaq. You couldn’t find it in this snow and fog, anyway.”
“He’s right,” Cowboy said. “It’s like swimming in soup up there, plus it’s nearly dark now. If the weather clears tomorrow, we can find it from the air. Piece of cake.”
“Ah, he’s probably already been there and gone, all right,” McAllister said. “You won’t see the kinnaq again.”
Active sighed. McAllister was right. There was no reason to think they’d find Pingo in the spike camp, though it would have to be searched eventually.
Active pulled Long into the spruces again. “Thoughts?”
“I guess I’ve come around,” Long said. “Seems like it had to be McAllister, all right.”
“We’re going to have to guard McAllister,” Active said. “Do I have to stay up all night and do it myself?”
“I can take a shift,” Long said. “What happened with Pingo . . . well, it won’t happen again.”
Active nodded and they returned to the camp. Cowboy and Long crawled into the tent, while Active took the first watch at the fire.
“Arii,” McAllister said. “I can’t sleep on my hands like this. Put ’em in front.”
Active stripped off his gun belt and left it on the far side of the fire, then walked over to the lean-to, unzipped the sleeping bag, and checked McAllister’s wrists. There was no damage that he could see. “You’ll just have to gut it out. If you’re good, we’ll put them in front while you’re eating breakfast tomorrow.”
McAllister grunted and rolled onto his side, facing the fire. He drew up his knees, wriggled for a couple of moments, then settled down. The position might not be comfortable, but it didn’t look agonizing either. Certainly nowhere near prisoner abuse.
Active buckled the gun belt back on and dropped onto a boulder near the fire. The wind was still building out on the lake, but the camp was relatively sheltered. It was comfortable, but not enough so to put him to sleep, he judged. He settled in to ride out the hours until it was time to wake Alan Long for a turn.
But should he let Long take a watch? Was there any way even Long could screw up guarding a prisoner who was bound hand and foot? As Active knew from having tried it in training, the best pace a man could make with his feet shackled was a maddeningly slow, noisy, exhausting shuffle. A few inches per step; that was it. Hopping was faster, but, as he had also discovered, you couldn’t hop and maintain your balance with your wrists cuffed behind your back.
A gymnast or a contortionist, maybe, could work his hands past his feet or over his head and so get them around in front to make slightly better time. But McAllister was built more like a scaled-down linebacker, and he was wearing a parka and snowpants inside the sleeping bag. No, there was no way McAllister could escape. The big risk would be if he talked Long into unshackling him to answer nature’s call. Well, Active would give emphatic directions to be awakened immediately if McAllister asked for anything whatsoever. For insurance, he would take Long’s handcuff key into custody before leaving him in charge of McAllister.
“That Viola had a sweet mouth,” McAllister said from the flickering shadows in the lean-to.
“What?”
“It was like kissing a Hershey bar, even if she just woke up.”