Dana Stabenow - Fire And Ice

At ten the radio crackled into life, and the same lifeless voice heard the night before came on. "This is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. There will be an announcement concerning a herring opener in the Nushagak District for both drift and seine at twelve noon, May 2, on this frequency. I repeat, this is the Alaska Department of-"

"The Alaska Department of Hurry Up and Wait," Wy finished for him. "Okay, that's it, the point of no return. Time to head back to the beach and gas up." She stood the Cub on one wing, Liam grabbed for his stomach, and they headed back the way they had come. Below passed boats too numerous to count, two and three and four and five at a time, each group guided by its own spotter. Wy shook her head and said disapprovingly, "Five boats is too many for one plane to spot for. So is four. Three is about right. Two would be better."

"Why?"

"Because you've already got too much to do. You've got to fly the plane, look out for other planes, spot the herring, track the herring, and advise your boats. Advising three boats where to put their nets is plenty. Advising five, something else suffers."

They set down on the beach without incident, although the tide was considerably higher, and the available landing strip, to Liam's terrified eye, considerably narrower as a result. Someone had been at their fuel dump while they were gone; the first barrel was empty. The other two hadn't been tapped, and Wy took the discovery philosophically. "Probably whoever took it will let me know and reimburse me."

"How do you know?" Liam looked up and down the beach again. "It doesn't look like any of the dumps are marked. How does anyone know which gas is his? If you're taking somebody else's gas, or he's taking some of yours, how do you know?"

She shrugged, getting the stepladder out again. "Happens every year. The dumps aren't well marked; we're all using the same gas; everybody's in a hurry. After the season closes, the pilot will put the word out that he took some gas he thought was his and turned out not to be, and who can he pay back?"

Liam thought about it, working the pump arm, listening to gas slosh through the hose. "I'm not going to get this, am I," he said finally.

She tossed him a cheerful grin. "Nope. But don't worry about it, I've never been shot at for thieving." The grin flashed again. "Not yet, anyway." She topped off the wing tank and closed it up. She paused, up on the ladder. "What's that?"

"What's what?" He looked up from closing the drum and saw her pointing at the edge of the beach where it began to slope down. There was a thick stand of tall ryegrass bending gently in the breeze.

She scampered down the ladder and hared up the beach. "Wow, look at that!"

He came panting up behind to find her burrowing into the soil with both hands. "Wy, what is it?"

"Help me dig!"

He saw a round shape emerging, and fell back with an explosive sigh. "Jesus, I thought it was a dead body at least."

"Come on, help me dig!"

He resigned himself, and helped her dig.

It was a glass float, one of thousands and over the years probably millions that had broken loose from Japanese fishing nets and floated across the Pacific Ocean to wash ashore on Alaska's coast. The usual find was four inches in diameter. This one, a clear green unbroken sphere with tiny bubbles of air caught inside the shell, was over eighteen inches across.

"Score!" Wy said, sitting back on her heels and beaming.

Liam remembered the glass floats from the Cub's inventory. He sat back and brushed the dirt from his hands. "Beachcombing's part of herring spotting, I take it."

"Beachcombing is a part of everything," Wy said severely, getting to her feet. "You never know what you're going to find-a glass float, a walrus tusk, an eagle feather. A case of Spam."

"A case of Spam?"

She nodded. "I found one last year, washed up on shore south of here. The box was falling apart but the cans were okay. We're still eating them." She held the float up by its netting, admiring it. "I bet I could get a hundred bucks for this."

"You sell them?"

"Five bucks for the little ones, seven-fifty if they've still got their nets. And on up, depending on what kind of shape they're in and if they've still got their netting on." She grinned. "I get a lot of tourists my way, Liam. They don't call themselves that, of course, they are fishermen and hunters and hikers and like that, but they're tourists all the same, from Outside and overseas and all over the world. Most of them have never seen something like this. I've got a basketful of them in my shack at the airport."

"The door of which you oh so casually leave open while you're loading the plane."

"Every little bit helps," she said cheerfully. She placed the float in back of Liam's seat, wrapping it in her sleeping bag. "A good omen," she said, regarding it with satisfaction. "It's going to be a good day for us."

Liam thought of what was in store for him and shuddered, but maintained a diplomatic silence. Wy knew he didn't like flying, but pride had kept him from showing her how much, and he was damned if he was going to confess now. Instead he said, "You have dimples."

She blinked up at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"You have dimples," he said. He framed her face with his dirty hands. "One here"-he kissed it-"and one here." He kissed it, too, and drew back to smile at her. "Never saw them before."

He watched with a secret smile as it took her two tries to fumble out the Ziploc bags full of sliced dry salami and Tillamook extra sharp cheese. They ate a quick lunch, washing it down with bottled water and following it with another Hershey bar. Ten minutes later they were back in the air. By this time Liam was inured to it, or so he told himself. Maybe he was going to get over his fear of flying after all. Maybe, just maybe he was going to learn how to climb on board a plane without breaking into a sweat of fear.

They cruised down the coast for forty-five minutes, seeing various groups of boats staking out various likely-looking balls of herring. The radio crackled into life. "Wy, you up there?"

"I'm up here, Cecil."

"You seeing anything?"

"Nothing worth mentioning."

"Get the goddamn lead out," Wolfe ordered. "We're an hour away from the announcement."

"Where are you?"

"You can spot me easy-I've got an orange buoy in the crow's nest."

Wy muttered something.

"What was that?"

"Could you be a little more specific, Cecil? Like what landmass is off your bow?"

There was a silence ripe with things unspoken. Liam imagined Cecil rending the air blue with imprecations about uppity bitches who had no business mouthing off to their employers. Either that or Wolfe didn't know where he was.

"Dutch Girl Island," Wolfe said finally. "About ten miles north."

"Roger that," Wy said. She goosed the Cub and fifteen minutes later they were circling three boats off a round island that rose straight up out of the sea to a flattish, rounded peak. Two rocky ridges jutted out of the sea to the east and west, forming a vague similarity to a Dutch girl's winged cap, at low tide and from a distance. Life clutched tenaciously to the steep sides in the form of thick grass and brush and a swarm of slender black seabirds. "What are they?" Liam said.

Wy looked through her binoculars. "Murres, I think." She let the lenses wander. "Well, well," she said with an undertone of excitement that made Liam sit up. "What have we here?"

She put the Cub in a slow, wide circle, and Liam looked out the window through his binoculars.

About five miles off the southwest side of the island he saw a silver-gray layer just beneath the green surface that seemed to go on forever, in every direction.

"Is that them?" Liam said in disbelief. He'd never seen so many fish in one place in his life.