Expect the Sunrise (11 page)
Mac let that idea roll through him. Phillips, with his linebacker build, probably could survive the hike over the peaks to civilization. Except two scenarios played in Mac’s mind. First, Phillips trying to overpower him or, worse, succeeding, then returning to the plane to finish off the others and completing his mission to sabotage the pipeline. Second, Emma or Nina or even Ishbane out of his sight, seizing the opportunity and making a run for the pipeline—or at least to the rendezvous with his or her accomplices.
Mac pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, feeling his brain thump against his skull.
Please, please let me not be overreacting.
Please, please don’t let me be wrong and Emma’s friend die on my watch.
Please, please let me think through the folds of suspicion and possibility to uncover the real saboteur and thwart his or her scheme before millions of dollars of oil can be emptied across the Alaskan soil.
He refused to be wrong. He couldn’t be. Not with so many lives hanging in the balance of his decision.
He thought of the radio tucked covertly into his jacket. He could hike out of the bowl and radio for help. But what if he alerted the terrorists to their position? They could have a small army descending on them by morning.
No, better to stay in hiding, to ferret out the truth from a place of quiet. As long as the terrorist among them thought he or she remained unknown, the terrorist would stay his or her hand. Panic might set the terrorist off, maybe cause innocents to get hurt, lives lost.
Still, a little fear might rattle a terrorist who’d just survived a plane crash. Make that person show his or her hand. Mac would have to play a careful game. “We all go together tomorrow at first light,” he said.
“Who abdicated and made you the king?” Ishbane snapped.
“The U.S. government,” Mac said. “I’m FBI. And for our safety, we’re sticking together.”
He heard at least two people respond to his words with a huff of surprise.
“Well, well,” Emma said. “I should have guessed. And here I thought it was just the Scot in you suddenly turning this into an absolute monarchy. Turns out you’re a Fed. Not sure which is worse.”
What did he ever do to her? She peered at him through the semidarkness, and he had the feeling that if they’d been alone she might have slapped him. That felt weird. He’d had no problems attracting ladies during his stint with the bureau. Not that he particularly wielded his badge as a pick-up line—he had his own arsenal, one laden with charm and humor inherent in his family genes. But despite his ability to find a date for the occasional FBI event, he’d seen the wreckage of lives wrought by the career he shared with his fellow agents, and he had no desire to let someone into his life only to bring her pain. Case in point, his brother, Brody. No, after the agony of losing his brother, Mac knew he couldn’t be both a husband and an FBI agent charged with saving lives.
Only he hadn’t really saved anyone.
He stared back at Emma, trying not to rise to her words. He wasn’t sure he wanted to be that FBI guy anymore, and for a split second the temptation called to him to take back his words. To just be a tired, hurt, and vulnerable victim of a plane crash.
If anything, he owed Brody more than that. He owed him a job well done. And if Mac wanted to get these passengers to listen and obey, he had to follow his instincts one last time.
He turned away from Emma, hardening his emotions to her indictment. “Sorry you don’t like that, lassie, but that’s the truth. I’m in charge here as of right now.”
Her face registered his words, and her eyes narrowed slightly. Then she said, “Would you like some soup, Mac?”
She handed him a Sierra cup of watery chicken noodle soup. He took it, thankful for the heat that burned his hands, noticing the wary look she gave him.
She handed out the portions to the others. “It’s not gourmet, but hopefully it will warm us.”
Mac held his cup close, letting the aroma feed him as much as the temperature. The wind howled outside the shelter, and he sat on his end of the tarp to keep the air trapped inside. When Emma turned off the stove, darkness seeped into the crannies of their fears and the unknown hours ahead. He heard the other passengers hunker down in the cold, slurping their soup. Flint had a sleeping bag in his pack and extended it to Nina, while Ishbane wrapped himself in his space blanket. Phillips had a blanket around him, which left two for Mac and Emma. She looked frozen, huddled at the entrance only a few feet from him.
Phillips’s soft, reflective voice came out of the darkness. “When the apostles Paul and Timothy were suffering in Asia, they thought they were going to die. The Bible says that they were under great pressure, far beyond their ability to endure. But they knew that God had put them there so He could reveal Himself as their Savior. They prayed for deliverance.” He paused. “I think we should pray.”
Mac felt an odd peace when no one objected and Phillips prayed for their safety and for Sarah. He felt like it might have been a couple millennia since he’d prayed—at least since the day he’d stood at Brody’s grave. But he’d been raised in a Christian home, and the fact that he hadn’t thought to pray sooner told him that perhaps Brody’s death had sliced deeper than he’d thought. For a moment, he longed to have a relationship with God like the one the apostle Paul had. Trusting Him for every sunrise, despite the darkness.
“Amen,” Emma said. Mac heard her move, assumed that she checked Sarah’s breathing again.
“You should move away from the door,” Mac told her. “Let Phillips sit there.”
He heard her exhale deeply. Then, “I’m fine. I need to be here with Sarah.”
He sighed. If Sarah and Emma truly had a friendship, then he didn’t blame her for not wanting to leave her side. If Mac had been able to stay with Brody instead of trying to locate help, he would have chosen those moments in a heartbeat. Instead, he’d been on the radio begging some air jockey to land and save Brody’s life.
He felt the familiar ache—now more than three months old—reach in under his rib cage and twist. He’d find Andy MacLeod, and when he did … well, he wasn’t sure what he’d do. But the feelings that pooled at the end of that sentence felt dark and too enticing to be anything but wrong. He hadn’t begun to offer forgiveness. Didn’t want to. Probably that had something to do with why he couldn’t pray.
Someone started to hum. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he recognized Emma’s voice. The song wheedled through his memories and found that place in childhood where he’d sat in his mother’s lap, leaning into her embrace. He remembered the words:
“Jesus Loves me! this I know,
For the Bible tells me so;
Little ones to Him belong,
They are weak but He is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me! …”
A child’s song for a child’s faith. But he needed more than the Bible’s word that God loved the world. Especially when the reality of terrorism and death argued against it. The place God had once inhabited in Mac’s heart suddenly felt as cold and raw as the wind.
Mac’s cynicism tasted bitter in his throat as he heard Emma’s ragged breathing. She might be crying. Again he thought of the radio but pushed the thought away. He refused to care. His hunches about the pipeline and a saboteur among the passengers had to be correct. The country couldn’t afford for him to be wrong.
Outside, the wind buffeted the shelter, blowing through the cracks. He shivered in his coat.
But beyond the shiver, Mac felt nearly on fire, knowing that God had given him a second chance to save the pipeline.
To be the hero he should have been.
ANDEE WRAPPED HER arms around herself, shivering in the predawn darkness. She closed her eyes, willing herself out of the cold’s embrace. Sleep came too easily perhaps. Sleep and summer and the hum of a Continental engine.
Periwinkle clouds hung over the snow-dusted peaks of the six-hundred-mile Brooks Range. Andee smiled into the memory of holding the yoke of the Cessna 185 amphibious float plane, her father’s proud gaze on her, his brogue in her ears. She felt weightless.
“Watch your trim,” he’d said, speaking quietly through the headset.
Below, she saw a herd of caribou so tightly packed that they resembled one long, brown-and-white carpet against the shades of green taiga. Cotton grass with its white tufted heads spotted the surface in patches and warned of soggy, wet tundra, unsuitable for landing. Arctic poppies, yellow bursts of color, and purple moss campion reminded her that summer stretched before her. A season of fishing on Disaster Creek outside their home, of berry gathering—blueberries and currants she and her mother, Mary, would can for winter and store in the shed off their two-room cabin.
The Cessna hummed so loudly that usually her thoughts and the rhythm of her body merged into the music of flight. But today as she helmed their trip to Anaktuvuk Pass, her nerves rippled with anticipation. She knew the wind gusts that raked the village nestled into the pass were unpredictable and potentially dangerous and could toss their plane the way she wrestled with Pakak, her malamute. She gripped the yoke through her gloves, switching her attention from the instrument panel to the scenery and back. Someday she’d be rated to fly with only the instruments, but right now she could only thank God for clear weather.
Wouldn’t Mary be surprised to see Andee at the helm, landing like a puffin on the newly built runway?
She stole a glance at her father. His long brown hair was pulled back and tied with a lanyard. He’d turned up the collar of his flight jacket from Vietnam, and the headphones crushed the top of his favorite Yankees cap. His eyes twinkled. She recognized mischief—the kind that hinted at adventure ahead.
“After this peak, you need to descend to three thousand feet. The runway is at 2,200,” her father said.
The snow became diamonds sparkling in her eyes, even though she wore sunglasses. Here in the high Brooks Range snow stayed nearly year-round, the earth thawing for only brief snatches of time. Even around her cabin, winter fought against the invasion of summer. Vanquished for only a month or two at best, winter lurked like a grizzly, waiting to close in and regain its ground.
Andee levered the flaps down and descended into the long valley toward Anaktuvuk Pass. She loved the trips to her mother’s old village. The daughter of a French gold miner and a Nunamiut Indian, Mary MacLeod had met Gerard while working as a nurse in Fairbanks, when he’d been brought in for a broken leg. Gerard claimed she’d mended more than his leg, that something in his soul had been broken before Mary soothed it with her smile. Fresh from Vietnam and his job as a UH-1 Huey pilot, he’d escaped to Alaska in hopes of also escaping his demons. Looking at him, Andee wondered if flying also gave him escape.
Up here, above the jagged peaks with only the sky pinning her down, something inside her also felt free. She reveled in the glory of floating like an eagle.
A downdraft caught the plane, and it shook as Andee struggled to right it.
She noticed her father didn’t even lift his hands from his lap. “Calm down, Emma. Don’t listen to your heartbeat.”
Andee swallowed back the rush of panic and kept the yoke firm while descending. The sky fell away, the ground rising to meet her. In the distance a dirt runway had been cut out of the tundra in a strip of brown.
Another sweep of wind took the plane, jerked it, and dropped it hard. Andee’s stomach leaped to her throat. Splotches of black oil littered the front windshield as she fought the plane. The crankcase vent tube must have frozen, blowing the crankshaft seal.
Her father still didn’t move. “Steady, keep her steady, Emma.”
The plane shimmied and jolted. Why didn’t her father take the yoke, guide them to safety?
She checked the instrument panel. The oil-pressure gauge had started to slide toward zero. “Gerard! The oil pressure.” Even she knew that without oil pressure the engine would seize and they’d be a tin can in the air, plummeting to earth.
“Pull the plane up, Emma, and cut your airspeed.”
Andee urged the nose up, climbing, bleeding off airspeed until she nearly reached a stall. Adrenaline ran through her veins, shaking out her limbs.
“Now put the prop in coarse pitch, cut your mixture back, then switch your mags off.”
Andee’s hand shook as she obeyed.
But without the mags
—Her father wouldn’t let her crash the plane, would he? She glanced at him, and he gave her a slight nod.
The sudden silence as the prop sputtered and stopped, as the wind began hissing across the cockpit, turned Andee cold.
The airplane nosed down and began to plunge to earth.
Andee broke free of the dream and sat straight up, breathing hard. Dawn—or what masqueraded as the sunrise this far north—dented the misty gray of the shelter. Every muscle ached, and her head felt cottony and full. Where was she?
With the emergency blanket pulled up to her nose and the body heat of the other passengers, she’d lived through the night.
Oh yeah, plane crash. Sarah.
Andee leaned over her friend, checking her pulse, her breathing.
“She was moaning in the night,” a thin man said. He touched a cut across his nose, then moved his hand back under his blanket. Ishbane.
