Day Zero (9 page)

 

T
railing streams of frigid water, Quinn hauled himself up the ladder the moment the methodic flat cracks of Ukka’s Winchester began to moan across the surface of the river. Feet shuffled on the plywood floor above, tromping to the uphill side of the fish house as the men inside moved to see what was happening, surely hoping their cohort had bagged their intended target.

Quinn took a moment to flex his hands open and shut in an effort to make certain they still worked before he moved at a crouch across the back receiving deck. Unfortunately for him, one of the contractors, a young man with sharp features and beard as dark as Quinn’s, was savvy enough to periodically check over his shoulder during the sound of gunfire.

Quinn was far too cold to give up the ground he’d gained by jumping back into the water to escape. He was unlikely to survive it anyway. Instead, he raised his rifle and charged straight ahead, bent on attacking through the other man. The bearded contractor followed suit, firing his own weapon as he closed the distance.

Jericho’s first two rounds went low, jerked downward by his still shivering muscles, but the third round caught the startled contractor on the point of his knee, tearing through muscle and bone.

It was possible to fight past any number of horrible wounds during the intense heat of battle, even one that would eventually prove fatal, but a shattered kneecap was difficult to ignore. The contractor stumbled forward, flailing out with his gun hand in an attempt to catch himself. His leg hinged the wrong way, folding backwards as if he’d been felled by an axe.

Quinn was vaguely aware of April John lying in an unconscious heap in the far corner of the room beside a stack of rubber fish tubs. He couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead and, for the moment, it didn’t really matter. He put the wounded contractor out of his misery with two rounds to the face as he turned to acquire the second man.

Apparently intent on the shooting outside, this tall brute of a guy had taken a moment to register that they were being attacked from the river. He was completely bald with deep lines in his forehead that made him look like he had two snarling mouths, one below and one above his deep-set eyes.

The big man’s size belied his speed and agility. He bolted forward, drawing a pistol as he moved, intent on blowing Quinn’s head off.

Still fighting the effects of hypothermia, Quinn was a fraction of a second late bringing his own weapon around from finishing off the first contractor. Again, he pressed forward, closing the short distance between them to the bald guy with his shoulder, reaching him just in time to shove the pistol out of the way. A volley of shots hammered into the roof. The rattling clap of gunfire was deafening in the small enclosure, making Quinn, who still had what felt like half the Yukon River in his ears, feel like he had a barrel over his head. He could tell the big guy was yelling something as he fought, but couldn’t make out what it was.

He’d somehow managed to swat the pistol away, but the bald giant now had him trapped in a tight clinch. Struggling for breath, Quinn drove his knee repeatedly into the bald man’s groin. It appeared to do little damage, but at least kept him from snapping Quinn’s back.

The cold water had sapped Quinn of more of his strength than he’d realized. Reflexes and muscles that had served him so well in past conflicts refused to obey. The bald man’s hand snaked up, snatching the barrel of the MP7 and attempting to twist it sideways. He couldn’t quite bring it around to shoot Quinn, but drew the sling tight enough to restrict the blood flow in his neck.

Seeing stars, Quinn pummeled the man’s ribs—to no effect. He abandoned thoughts of using the rifle, his hand flailing instead for the Severance at his side. The blade slid from the Kydex sheath with a satisfying click. Quinn lashed out, left-handed, across the man’s thigh, slicing flesh, but missing anything that might have ended the fight.

The contractor howled in pain, shoving Quinn backwards as if he was on fire, but hanging on to the MP7’s sling. Quinn stumbled back and down, allowing the sling to slide over his head. Grimacing at his stupidity for giving up the weapon, he swung the Severance’s heavy blade in time to knock the rifle out of the big man’s hands. It skittered across the plywood floor.

Ignoring the flashing blade, the contractor rushed forward with a furious roar, driving Quinn backwards against the unforgiving edge of a stainless-steel cleaning table. Quinn pushed upward at the last moment, catching the hard edge against his buttocks instead of his kidneys. He rolled backwards, lying on the table to plant his bare feet in the belly of his attacker, shoving him. It bought him the split second he needed to regain his balance. Razor-sharp fillet knives, abandoned on the table by the fish processers, clattered to the floor.

The contractor was on him again in a flash, swatting away the Severance before Quinn could bring it to bear. Quinn rolled out of the way, ducking under the other man’s arm as it fell in a devastating blow that sent Quinn reeling backwards, past a wash rack and into a tub filled with a slurry of water, crushed ice, and gutted salmon. The snot-slick fish broke his fall but made it impossible to regain his feet with any speed. Swimming in dead fish, Quinn hooked a ten-pounder through the gills and flung it at the bald contractor.

The big man sneered, staring down at an apparently defeated target. His eyes darted around the room. The rifle was fifteen feet away in a grimy puddle. The pistol was lodged under the cleaning tables on the other side of his dead partner. Instead of going for either of the guns, the contractor scooped up one of the long fillet knives that cluttered the cleaning counters.

Chest heaving, sweat and fish slime dripping from his nose, the bald giant hovered over Quinn.

“Now I’m gonna hand you your ass,” he growled.

Never much of a talker when he fought, Quinn answered by giving the man a face full of frigid water from the wash hose that hung down beside his tub of fish.

Startled by the sudden shock, the contractor stepped back, raising his hand to ward off the new threat. Steel flashed as he struck blindly with the fillet knife, lashing out to protect himself while he got his bearings.

As its name implied, the Severance was at its best when used as a hacking instrument. Its finely ground tip was, however, needle sharp and pierced the flesh between the contractor’s wrist bones as surely as an axe through soft cheese.

With the thick spine of the blade facing backwards, toward the contractor’s hand, Quinn yanked the man toward him, in the direction of his attack. Screaming in pain, the contractor’s eyes flew open as he tumbled into the fish tub, while Quinn twisted the Severance’s handle like a lever between the bones of his forearm. Even with nearly a foot of steel sticking out of his arm, the bald man was nowhere near finished. He lashed out with heavy boots, wrenching the Severance from Quinn’s hand and sending him sliding backwards across the floor. Unfortunately for the contractor, Quinn stopped sliding beside the MP7.

A quick burp of six 4.6x30 rounds to his chest and the frown on the bald guy’s forehead went slack. He collapsed back into the tub of dead salmon with a groan.

Quinn held the MP7 at high ready, giving the room a full scan for the first time since he’d charged through the door ninety seconds earlier. April John was unconscious in the corner, facedown on the plywood in a pool of grimy water and salmon blood. She had a bloody lip, and her hands and feet were bound with gray duct tape, but she was breathing.

Quinn checked both contractors to make certain they wouldn’t cause any more problems, and then moved to cut April John’s restraints. She drew back when he touched her shoulder, drawing her body into a tight ball.

“Get off me!” Her terrified scream was muffled in Quinn’s ears.

“It’s me, Jericho,” Quinn said. He laid a hand gently against her elbow to show he meant no harm. “They’re dead.”

She turned her head to look up at him, blinking terrified eyes. Blood and slime from the floor dripped from her round cheek. “Jericho? They . . .” She tried to sit up, but swayed in place. Quinn could now see the knot on her forehead from where she’d been hit, hard. “What happened? Where are they?”

“It’s okay now,” he said, still panting from exertion. “I’m going to cut you loose.”

The door opened behind him and he looked up to see James Perry silhouetted against the gray fog. The big Eskimo took a quick look around the room, and then stepped up beside Quinn. His face was turned down in a somber frown.

“
Waqaa
, cousin.” He gave the traditional Yup’ik greeting, voice drawn with pent-up worry. “You good?”

“Hey,” Quinn nodded. “I’m fine. Looks like they knocked April around pretty good, though.”

Kneeling, Quinn used a fillet knife to finish cutting away the duct tape on the girl’s wrists and ankles. He helped her into a sitting position with her back against the tubs.

Swaying when he tried to stand, he reached out to Ukka for support. The adrenaline dump from his coldwater swim and subsequent fight behind him now, he began to shiver uncontrollably.

April John’s two younger sisters poured in through the open door, scooping her up amid a shower of grateful tears and hugs for both her and Quinn. They whisked her away with a nod, getting her out of the place that had only moments before had been her prison.

“We got some bad news,” Ukka said, as Lovita Aguth-luk, his twenty-two-year-old niece, stepped through the door behind him. Dressed in a pink fleece sweater that was three sizes too big, she was a breath over five feet tall with long peroxide orange hair and a row of piercings festooning the top of each tiny ear. Her grandmother was from Kotzebue and she honored the older woman with a traditional Inupiat facial tattoo—three simple parallel lines, green and pencil thin, that ran from her lower lip to the bottom of her deeply tanned chin. On some women, such a marking might be considered a job stopper, but Lovita had the cultural background to make it attractive. Her fleece was grimy at the cuffs from fishing and gathering wood for the stove in her small shack in Saint Mary’s. Any money she got was spent on airplane fuel and there were few clear days when she could not be seen drilling holes in the sky between Mountain Village and Saint Mary’s in her ratty old Super Cub. She hauled whatever anyone would pay her to haul to support her flying habit and build time behind the stick.

“What is it?” Quinn asked, steadying himself on the cleaning counter. He wasn’t sure he could handle much more at the moment.

Ukka looked at his niece. “Tell him what you saw.”

“A plane full of these guys landed in Saint Mary’s about half an hour ago,” she said in a husky voice that sounded like she’d smoked two packs a day for twice her lifetime—which wasn’t far from the truth. She was trying to quit and now had a wad of punk ash—leaf tobacco and a type of burned tree fungus—snuff beneath her lower lip. “They were going from house to house looking for you when I left, but I’m pretty sure they’re getting ready to come this way.”

She handed Quinn a tall plastic tumbler full of hot liquid, placing it carefully between his trembling hands to make sure he didn’t spill it.

“How many?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” she said. “As soon as I saw them, I jumped in the Cub and headed this way to warn you.”

Quinn nodded in thanks. He started to put the mug to his lips but raised a wary eye. He knew Lovita had a stomach of iron. She’d talked all spring about her favorite dish, called “stinkhead”—a concoction of fermented salmon heads that had been left in a grassy pit for a period of days. An ardent traditionalist, it was impossible to know what sort of ancient hunk of mystery meat she might throw into a soup or stew.

“It’s coffee,” she grunted. “We need to hurry.”

Quinn took a tentative sip, grimacing at the syrupy sweetness.

Lovita gave a half smile. She wasn’t much of a smiler, but when she did, it brightened the entire room. “I put lots of sugar in it to help your body warm itself.” She handed Quinn a roll of dry clothes. “We gotta go now.”

Nodding, Quinn handed the coffee to Ukka. Lovita turned her back while he slipped out of his sopping wet pants. She’d brought him a black wool sweater that zipped up the front and a fresh set of khakis.

“I didn’t want to go rootin’ around in your stuff for your tighty whities,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to go commando.”

Quinn shot a glance at Ukka, who shrugged.

“I don’t know where they learn that stuff all the way out here,” the Eskimo said.

“I got satellite,” Lovita said, her voice even more gravelly than before. “Anyway, hurry up. I’ll step outside while you change.”

“I think she has a little crush on you,” Ukka said.

Quinn steered the subject in a different direction. “If they’re leaving Saint Mary’s now,” he said, pulling the sweater over his head, “they’ll be here in—”

“Ten minutes,” Ukka cut him off. “We know. That’s why we need to haul ass.”

Once Quinn was decent, Ukka looked over his shoulder and flicked his hand to summon his daughter Chantelle, who stepped through the door carrying Quinn’s Lowa boots and a rolled pair of wool socks.

“Lovita said she couldn’t find his underwear,” she said. “I could have brought his underwear if I woulda known.”

“Will you girls forget about his underwear,” Ukka bellowed. He looked at his watch. “It’ll take us five minutes to get to the airport. That’s cutting it pretty close.”

Lovita poked her head in behind Ukka.

“I’m going,” she said. “It’ll take me a minute or two to get the plane ready.”

Quinn dropped the boots on the floor and sat on an overturned fish tub to pull on the socks. He looked at the young pilot with a wary eye.

“The weather isn’t too low to fly?”

“We got no choice.” She shrugged, her neck disappearing down the oversize fleece like a turtle’s.