Season of Death (18 page)

The expression on the kid’s face, a mixture of anger and embarrassment, gave Ray a perverse sense of pleasure. Before he could savor the victory, his conscience reminded him that he had just engaged a college kid in a childish round of one-upmanship. Not exactly something to get excited about.

“You know your anthropology,” Janice noted, clearly impressed.

Ray shrugged. “I took a few courses in college: basic anthro, basic archaeology.”

“College? But you’re a …” the nerd began.

A glare from Ray was all that kept the word “Native” from falling out of the kid’s less-than-diplomatic mouth. Nodding, he specified, “Inupiat.”

“Where did you go to school?” Farrell asked. Her focus had reoriented itself on Ray, and she was staring intently at him, making him rather uncomfortable.

“U. of A., Anchorage.”

The kid sighed at this, as if the University of Alaska was truly a second-rate institution, a glorified junior college. “The main campus is in Fairbanks.”

“Do you have a radio?” Ray pleaded. One more insult, and he might have to hurt the kid.

“A radio?” Farrell asked. She crinkled her nose at him, puzzled. The expression on her face caused Ray to wonder if she knew what a radio was. Five long seconds later, she replied, “Of course.”

“May I use it, please?”

“Certainly.” Turning on her heels, she set off for the tents. Ray was about to follow her when the kid mumbled something, something about Eskimos that elicited a stifled chuckle from one of his fellow students. If Ray hadn’t been exhausted, he would have gone right back and demonstrated the famous Eskimo high kick for Mr. Smarty Pants. Instead, he ignored the remark.

Above, the dark indigo sky was dotted with winking pinpricks of light. The dig area was fading away like a mirage. Ray could hear the men in the pit swinging their shovels, but could no longer see them.

As they reached the first tent, Farrell barked, “Lights, Craig.” Seconds later a generator hummed to life and an array of halogens on tall poles flickered on, bathing the excavation site in a glare of white.

“The season’s almost over,” Farrell explained, still walking. “We’re doing everything we can to finish up before the weather changes.”

She entered a large dome tent, ushered Ray inside, and zipped the bug screen shut. After activating a battery-powered lantern hanging at the center of the tent, she led him through a collection of shallow crates, each bearing various artifacts and bones, to a card table that was wedged into the curve of the dome. It held a PC, several notepads, burgeoning file folders, a cellular phone, and a shortwave radio. Lines from the computer and shortwave ran along the floor, snaked by the crates and exited through an insulated hole near the door. They eventually found their way to the generator, Ray guessed.

“Phone’s dead,” Farrell announced, glaring at it. “The battery croaked. But the radio works. Most of the time. Mark manages to call out when he needs to.”

“Mark?”

“My husband.”

Ray instinctively glanced at Farrell’s left hand, his eyes searching for a ring.

Farrell caught him. “I don’t wear my ring in the field,” she explained.

“Oh.” It was all Ray could think to say. For some reason, he was vaguely disappointed to learn that she was married. Why, he wasn’t sure. Her personal life was no business of his. “Is your husband an archaeologist too?”

“Anthropologist. We both teach at the U.W.” She pronounced the initials as they were written on her shirt: U-Dub. “We’re co-leading this dig.”

Ray nodded, feigning interest. He was ready to try the radio. Flicking the power switch, he froze. “Oh … I’ve got two friends out there,” he told her.

“Friends?”

“Yeah. They got hurt in a …” He paused, trying to decide how much he should disclose. “In a river accident.”

“Where are they?” she asked calmly. “I’ll have the enforcers go get them.”

“You mean those two horses?”

Farrell nodded and stepped out to page them: “Chang! Chung!”

Ray wasn’t sure this was a wise course of action. Chang and Chung, the Asian bookends, didn’t strike him as the search-and-rescue type. More like search and destroy.

The two men came jogging up, muscles rippling, heads poking into the tent.

“Where are they?” Farrell asked Ray.

“Back at the river. About fifty yards south of your Zodiacs. Beyond that ravine.”

“Ray has two friends fifty yards south of our boats,” she repeated slowly, as if the men required a special translation. “They’re hurt.” She turned to Ray. “How badly?”

“One can walk. The other needs help.”

“No problem,” Stubby grunted. They hurried away, discussing the mission in hushed tones.

Ray’s face screwed into an expression of concern.

“Don’t worry,” Farrell assured. “They’re the best.”

“At security,” Ray agreed. “But will they bring my buddies back in one piece?”

“I’m telling you, they’re good. They’re the reason we’re still here.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that we would have given up and gone home if Hunan hadn’t sent us Chang and Chung.”

“Hunan?”

“That’s who our grant’s from: Hunan Enterprises. It’s a Chinese conglomerate.”

“I thought this was a
U-Dub
thing.”

“It is,” Farrell said. “But Hunan is footing 95 percent of the bill. Anyway, when they found out we were having trouble, they sent the enforcers.”

“What sort of trouble were you having?” Ray wondered. Aside from an occasional bear, there was little out here to cause trouble. Then it dawned on him. “Headcase? The wacko downstream who grows marijuana?”

“Oh, you mean ZZ?” Farrell paused to laugh. It was lyrical, soothing: water falling from a high precipice into a placid pool. “He doesn’t bother us if we don’t bother him. You just have to keep your distance and steer clear of his little dope ranch.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Ray deadpanned.

“No, our problems have been coming from Red Wolf.”

“The mine Chang and Chung thought I worked for?”

She nodded, grimacing. Even with her features contorted, Farrell’s beauty seemed pure and undefiled. “They were giving us a hard time. Messing with the site. Stealing artifacts. They sabotaged our generator one night. They even took a few potshots at Mark when he was on his way to the village to meet the supply plane.”

“What does Red Wolf have against archaeology?”

“Nothing, per se. But this particular dig is a threat to their operation.”

“They’re mining zinc, right?” Ray asked.

She nodded. “Supposedly the biggest thing since Red Dog.”

Ray knew a little about the Red Dog. It was reported to be the largest zinc mine in the Western world. Still holding the radio mike, he tried to imagine a feud between a zinc producer and a university-sponsored excavation. “I don’t understand,” he finally admitted.

“Last year, Mark and I came up here by ourselves between quarters to scout possible dig sites for our summer fieldwork program,” Farrell began, straddling a folding chair. She wrapped her feet around the legs and leaned forward, face and chest uplifted. The shirt seemed ready to burst. Ray was suddenly overly warm.

“We found a few tools just north of Anaktuvuk Pass, pretty much by accident—which is the way science tends to work. ASTT stuff: part of a bone handle, a stone knife … So we decided to come back here in June with a crew for a four-week dig. The kids turned up a couple of other tools. Nothing earth-shattering. We were getting ready to pack up and head home, when one of the grad students literally stumbled onto a prehistoric caribou corral. She was heading out with a roll of TP to find a tree to squat behind and tripped on something. It turned out to be a boulder. She uncovered another, and another, until a V-pattern took shape. Apparently it was a trap that ancient hunters herded caribou into for slaughter. We dug up several carcasses at the point of the V.”

“Inukhuit
,” Ray muttered. Literally translated it meant
likenesses of men.
The idea was to use rocks as scarecrows in a V formation. When the caribou showed up, women and children herded them into the V where the men waited in pits with weapons.

“That was just upstream from here. About a week later, I found this site. Same way. I was out hiking, and I stepped into a hole. Something cracked. In an hour, I was able to expose a bone pile. That was two months ago.” She paused to stretch her back, pushing her chest at Ray. “The going theory is that it was a hunting camp.”

“But you said the bones in this pit were human,” Ray objected. “If it was a hunting camp, wouldn’t you find caribou bones where the animals were dressed out for portage?”

“We did find some of those. But the human bones are what make this dig so important. If they do prove to be Thule, they represent the most extensive site on record. And the disposition of the bones …” Here she studied the lantern, blue eyes glowing. “Something happened here. Something dramatic. We’re guessing the camp dates back eleven to twelve thousand years. According to our scenario, the hunters were waiting on the caribou, or maybe they had just harvested them. Either way, they were still here when disaster struck. Attack by a rival tribe, possibly. More likely an earthquake or flood from the looks of it. Something caught them off guard. The destruction was swift and complete.

“We think it may be the same story north of here, up at Red Wolf. Mark was coming back to camp one day from Kanayut and saw something jutting up from the tundra heath. He dug it up and exposed part of a structure—a wall—that he believes may be part of a Thule village. The position of it suggests disruption. He also found bones, tools, and shards of pottery. The latter was extraordinary because to date no one has discovered evidence of ceramic work in Paleo-Indian or early Eskaleut sites.”

Sighing she added, “We haven’t had time to investigate any further and probably won’t until next season. But the bottom line is that this canyon is archaeologically rich. The turmoil we’ve seen in the geological column combined with the position of the bones has led us to postulate that this may have been a Thule residence, either a seasonal camp or a more permanent home, and that it was struck by some sort of cataclysm that killed the inhabitants en masse. Which is why we’re filing to have the entire valley, from the Anaktuvuk River to Anaktuvuk Pass, declared an NHL.”

“National Hockey League?”

“National Historical Landmark. That would give it a special protected status.”

“And that would put Red Wolf out of business,” Ray surmised.

“Exactly. At least, for a while. That’s where Mark is right now, in Juneau talking with the State Historic Preservation Officer and filing with the Department of the Interior.”

Ray nodded again, his curiosity sapped. Twisting the dial, he found the frequency and thumbed the mike. “Barrow PD. Come in. This is Officer Attla. Do you read me?”

Farrell’s eyebrows rose, and she sat up at rigid attention.
“Officer
Attla?”

NINETEEN

“Y
OU’RE A COP?!
”

Ray nodded. He wasn’t sure he liked her tone.

Into the mike, he repeated, “Barrow PD. This is Officer Ray Attla. Over?”

A tinny mouse squeaked through the modulation and static. “Ray?”

“Betty?”

“You’re breaking up. Try channel 19.”

“You didn’t tell me you were a cop,” Farrell said, her eyebrows still elevated.

Ray shrugged at her apologetically. Adjusting the radio, he tried again. “Betty?”

“There you go,” she said warmly. The timbre of her voice was full and round, like Betty herself. “Where you calling from, Ray?”

“We’re still in the Bush,” he explained. “Between Shainin and Kanayut.”

“How’s the hunt going?”

“Uh …” Ray tried to think of a suitable answer. Good was not an option. Horribly? Nightmarishly? Like a guided tour of hell? Finally he settled on, “Not so hot.”

“No kills yet, uh?”

“A few close calls,” he reported. “But nothing lethal.”

Always clever and usually quick-witted, Betty caught the double meaning and cackled her appreciation. “With Lewis in the lead, you’re lucky to be alive.” More laughter, then, “How can I help you, Ray?”

He sighed and looked at Farrell, unsure where to start. “Send a plane for us.”