The River of Bones v5 (6 page)

The dog teams beat their mushers to death as they raced up and down mountains, around tree-lined corners, over drop-offs, and into overhanging obstacles.  Bruises, broken bones, full-blown frostbite, and delirium were commonplace.  A person could only be hit on the head so many times.

The main reason the Iditarod ran so successfully was its unpaid air force, an odd gathering of derelict airplanes and helicopters that would scare the pants off the Federal Aviation Administration in the “Lower 48.”  Across the mountains and over the passes the aircraft flew, piloted by men and women dressed in “bunny boots” and goose-down parkas two inches thick, carrying the people and supplies for the long race, betting their lives against the weather and lack of airports.  The frozen lakes, rivers, and tundra were their runways.  Every airplane was equipped with skis and every helicopter with “snowpaws,” letting each land on soft snow with some measure of safety, though there were always an unfortunate number of wrecks.  Bush pilots would be bush pilots and there were no roads, and the Far North was never meant for the fainthearted anyway.  The sky was a beehive with small aircraft zooming around . . . perfect cover for anyone who wanted to get lost in a crowd.

Simon and he had hung out with the different pilots who were going back and forth between downtown Anchorage and the airport and given them rides.  They had stood on the frozen seaplane lake and watched the first skiplanes leave, one after another, following the dogs.  Finally the time had come to leave for Siberia.

He watched the ground pass beneath his wings and saw several wolves sneaking across the highlands, hunting moose in the deep snow.  Life goes on, however heartless it seemed, he told himself.  Alaska was still a wilderness—untouched, raw, and fatal if you were foolish or unlucky.  Sixty or more people were killed every year in small airplanes, victims of bad piloting and bad luck.  Would Siberia be as unforgiving?

Then he heard Simon on the radio.  “Snowbird, look at the mountain.”

Alaskans usually called Denali “The Mountain.”
 
And when one gazed at its summit, he or she quickly realized it made sense.  No other name worked because its sheer size simply blew your mind.  The peak soared more than 20,000 feet in 25 miles when you looked up.  No other summit in the world rose from sea level to its top in so little distance, and few individuals could pass Denali and stay untouched by its magnificence.

He gazed at the great mountain standing against the blue sky.  Awesome, stupendous . . . no word seemed quite right.  Finally, he gave up and decided to give his friend a hard time.  Lifting his microphone, he said sternly, “Iceworm, maintain radio silence.”  The buzz of the engine settled around his ears, and now Simon would wonder . . .

“Balshoye spasiba.”

He laughed . . . leave it to Simon to get even when he had least expected it.  He knew enough Russian to guess the words were something sarcastic.  Laughing harder, he pictured the others who might have overheard the radio message.  They would be scratching their heads.

After an hour, Simon and he landed at Finger Lake and joined all the spectators, everyone stomping their feet and swinging their arms to fend off the cold.  Two cabins, several tents, and a roaring campfire waited nearby.  One by one, the dog teams trotted in, stopping, registering, then starting the steep climb over the Alaska Range to the Rohn Roadhouse checkpoint on the other side, 80 miles away.

Dangerous sledding lay ahead with Dalzell Gorge being the worst of it.  Several mushers would wipe out before they steered through the sled-smashing descent into the icy ravine.  They would face “The Burn” later, an endless nightmare of fire-killed forest that ran on and on, upsetting even the dogs with its ghostly sights and sounds.

Simon and he flew off once more, winding their way between the walls of Rainy Pass, and then they dropped into the long valley that ran toward McGrath, a frontier settlement beside an old military airport, two hundred miles west.  Now they would stay with old friends, gold miners who worked small placer mines, sluicing for nuggets each summer.  Life was hard for people who lived in the bush, and very different from Anchorage and Fairbanks.  Moose meat, canned vegetables, homemade bread, and wild blueberries would be their meals from now on.  Until they reached Nome, there would be nothing but the ghost towns of Ophir and Cripple, then the native villages of Ruby, Unalakleet, Koyuk, and Safety.  Sometimes they would camp overnight, sleeping in their airplanes, and sometimes they would stay with friends in log cabins.  Bush life was the norm when you flew the Iditarod.

On the seventh day, Jake saw the icepack of Norton Sound ahead, seemingly reaching to the moon.  Only the Inuit people understood the anonymity of the ice, ocean currents, winds, and sub-zero temperatures of the Bering Sea.  They still lived with the ever-present dangers of the pack ice and their make-believe foggymen and shape-shifters and zephyrs that forever haunted them.

Simon’s voice broke over the speaker.  “Looks really scary, doesn’t it, Snowbird?”

“Roger that.  Okay, punch in Nome on the GPS and fly direct, then hit the deck.  We need the practice.”

He heard a couple clicks—the age-old radio signal the message had been understood—and then he saw Simon diving toward the pack ice.  Pushing the stick forward, he dove as well to within a few feet of the surface and shot over the ice at one hundred miles an hour, buzzing across the open leads and pressure ridges crisscrossing his flight path.

White, white, everywhere.  Watch the horizon—watch the GPS.  Speed, time and distance—fly the fundamentals when you want to find your way.  Compass heading—hold that compass heading.  Remember, you’re the one who’s moving, not your destination, and discipline will always get you there.

He let his mind check off their planning so far.   Molly had left for Moscow, and Sasha had e-mailed the map coordinates of a secluded dacha on Lake Baikal.  Simon and he had stuffed Uzis and ammunition, cash, food, camp stoves, and winter gear into both airplanes, until each was completely full.  They had tied snowshoes on the left wing struts and rifle scabbards on the right struts, ready with scoped Winchesters.  Fuel and oil consumption had been measured along the way and they knew precisely how much each airplane used at normal cruise.  Tools and screws, duct tape and safety wire, paint and glue, replacement fabric for the wings, they had brought along everything.  Both airplanes had sat straddle-legged they were so heavily loaded, though that was commonplace for Alaskan planes.  Bush pilots often joked about the loads of sled dogs, people, and fuel they had hauled in a Cub.  A thousand pounds wasn’t unusual, and even a ton had been bragged about.

Molly’s diamond appraisal had shown Sasha’s four diamonds were worth a small fortune, and Simon and she had pulled off their money laundering in Las Vegas without a hitch.  Sometimes he wondered if his friend hadn’t enjoyed the rendezvous in Nevada too much.  Simon never called her Mrs. Faircloth anymore, only Molly . . . and often he just smiled.

Simon’s radio transmission broke his thoughts.  “Nome’s at twelve o’clock.”

Staring ahead, he finally saw the black outline of town far across the sea ice.  Damn, his friend had good eyes.

“Roger.  Follow me and I’ll see if we can park near the airplanes we’re hoping to find.”

He heard three long clicks—Simon’s secret way of answering yes.  Climbing to traffic pattern altitude, he called the FAA Flight Service Station.  “Nome, Super Cub four-zero-five-seven Yankee, flight of two, six miles east, landing downtown.”

He listened to the FSS briefer rattle off the altimeter setting, wind, and location of the other aircraft flying nearby.  Turning left, he lined up on the pack ice alongside town.  The airplanes and helicopters following the Iditarod usually landed on the ice beside Nome, then everyone simply walked to their hotel.  At times life was easy for bush pilots, albeit always unconventional.

After landing, he taxied off the runway and shut down.  Simon taxied alongside, stopped, and jumped out of his Cub, pointing.

“Guess whose airplanes I see parked over there, all with their orange stripes and tracking antennas.”

“Hopefully, they will stay put for a few days.  Let’s unload, walk downtown, and lock up our stuff.”

Both looked forward to staying.  Nome celebrated the Iditarod by holding basketball games, art and craft shows, award banquets, and dart throwing contests.  The potluck dinners and partying would go on for days, and the town’s frontier saloons would feature music and dancing until dawn.  Fun would be had by all . . . even if they both would stay sober for what lay ahead.

They wanted to see the finish of the Iditarod race as well.  A half million dollars would be passed out to the top dog teams, with fifty thousand going to the first musher to pass under the wooden arch over Front Street.  The famous arch also had a hanging red lantern, waiting for the slowest musher in the race, the last to make it all the way.  That musher’s reward was the sad duty of blowing out the flame, thus ending the race.

A few days passed, and they hung around with friends who had also come to see the end of the race.  Finally, the best teams crossed the finish line and the partying began in earnest.  Almost 3,500 people lived year-round in the Golden City, so-named for its history as the Old West’s very last boomtown.  Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Calamity Jane, and many other famous frontiersmen had ended their careers in Nome in 1901.  The residents believed they had a rich heritage to uphold, and the winter had been too long and lonely, besides.  The sounds of the wild frontier would ring once again before the night was over.  Gunfire, screaming, fighting . . . the whole night would rock and roll.

Jake eyed the raucous crowd in the restaurant where Simon and he had stopped for dinner.  There was little chance anyone would overhear him with all the noise.

“Tonight we’ll switch the satellite beepers back to the feds, then tomorrow we’ll take off before there’s any light.  I doubt anyone will hear us the way everyone is drinking.”  He cut off a piece of steak and forked it into his mouth.  Enjoy, he thought, because this might be the last of it.

“Do you realize we will miss tomorrow?”  Simon smiled wryly.  “It will be Sunday here, but Monday there when we cross the International Date Line, half way across the Bering Straits.”

Jake remembered the jump in time, though it really meant nothing.  There would be the same challenges.  After pausing, he asked, “You still want to go?  We can back out and Molly and Sasha won’t blame us.”

“I’m in this all the way, and we’re just two losers if we stay home.”

He stared at Simon, who always cut to the heart of things.  Why rot away waiting for nothing?  They would have to find their destiny elsewhere.

“We’ll get our money out of the hotel safe after we get done eating, and you carry everything up to our room and wait for me,” he said.  “I’ll switch the beepers, then we will be all set for the morning.”

Simon smiled excitedly this time.  Their fate was sealed.

An hour later, he stepped into the nighttime shadows behind the buildings on Front Street and snuck down to the airplanes parked on the sea ice beside town.  Seeing the town cast very little light over the parking area, he walked straight to the first Super Cub belonging to Simon and him, opened the fasteners on its battery cover, lifted it off, and searched for the hidden beeper.  Finally, he found a tiny transmitter stuck to a metal tube of the airframe and he pulled it free.  One more to go . . .

He found another on the second Cub, walked to the Fish and Wildlife planes they had spotted earlier, and slipped the minuscule beepers inside two separate tail assemblies.  No one would find them, not unless they searched with a flashlight and signal interceptor.  He snuck back the same way he’d come, staying in the darkness.

Simon was waiting for him when he returned to their room.  “Any trouble?” he asked.  “Anybody see you?”

“There wasn’t a soul within blocks, and no one will see my tracks because the snow is so packed down by everyone tromping back and forth to their planes.

“Both transmitters were the same kind they use on collars fastened to caribou and wolves, though these had magnets on them.  There’s a computer in Fairbanks interfaced with GPS satellites, and it follows the movements each one makes.  Not long ago a public television program explained how everything works.”

“Damn, can you imagine the look on their faces if they had seen us flying over to Siberia,” answered Simon.  “They might have called Moscow and told Vladimir Putin to shoot us down.”

He glanced at Simon and wondered.  Sadly, that might have come true, and suddenly he felt thankful for his suspicions back in Anchorage.  Otherwise, they might have gotten a nasty surprise once they had reached the other side of the Bering Sea.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he said.  “Come morning, we’re out of here.”

Later, he lay awake thinking about everything.  Would they ever see Alaska again?. . .

The last sounds he heard were Simon mumbling in his sleep and some distant gunfire.  Which one was the bad omen, or did both mean the same?

CHAPTER SIX

THE FAR EAST

In the
darkness before daybreak they warmed both airplane engines with propane heaters and pulled off the frost covers protecting the wings and tails.  They worked thirty minutes checking the flight controls and spinning the propellers to loosen the frozen motor oil.  Finally, their planes were ready and they stood silently.  Stillness hung all around them . . . but the stars seemed to be hissing in the inky sky overhead.

“It will get warmer later on today, because I hear ice crystals freezing at altitude.  Must be moist air coming in.”  Simon stood a few feet away but was barely visible.  Years ago, both had learned the Yupik people of the High Arctic called the odd weather phenomena whispers of the stars.

“Let’s wear our night goggles and get out of here before there’s any daylight,” said Jake.  “Stay ten or twenty feet off the ice and steer two-seven-zero with your GPS.  That will take us between the villages of Gambell on St. Lawrence Island and Provideniya on the Siberian side.  Three hours after takeoff we should see a high cape called Nawarin.  We’ll land twenty miles offshore and wait.  The Russian military will fly out to identify us if their radar has seen us.”