James Rollins - Ice Hunt

As he stood, old memories superimposed over the present. He had spent many a happy time here…and one awful winter.

“Maybe we could discuss this inside,” he said. “There are two other bodies out in the woods.”

Concern crinkled her forehead, but she nodded.

His words, though, did little to soften her father’s expression. “I’ll see to the horse and dogs,” John Aratuk said, stalking forward and taking Mariah’s lead. He had calmed enough to rub a palm down the mare’s nose, but the old man refused to make eye contact with Matt. He did, however, nod perfunctorily to Craig as they passed each other. He plainly bore the stranger no ill will, only begrudged him the company he kept.

Jenny shoved the cabin door open and set the bolt-action Winchester rifle just inside the doorway. “Come in.”

Matt waved Craig ahead of him. The reporter passed inside, but Matt paused on the threshold. It’s been three years since I last stepped inside here . He girded himself, licked his dry lips, and ducked through. A part of him expected to see Tyler’s tiny body still sprawled on the pine table, bony arms crossed over his chest. At that time, Matt had stumbled inside on limbs leaden with grief, half frozen, frost bitten, his heart an icy stone in his chest.

But the cabin was not cold now. It was warm, scented with old smoke and a deep woody musk. Across the room, Jenny bent over a small cast-iron stove. She opened the door and used a poker to stoke the firebox and stir up the coals. A pot of coffee rested atop a griddle, steaming gently.

“There are mugs in the cupboard,” Jenny said. “You know where they are.”

Matt crossed to the sideboard and removed three earthenware cups. He straightened and stared around the great room, raftered with logs overhead. Nothing much had changed. The main room of the cabin was lit with three traditional qulliq oil lamps, half-moons of hollow soapstone. The cabin had electricity, but that required running the generator. A river-stone fireplace stood in one corner. The chairs and sofa were made by a native craftsman from caribou hide and fire-aged spruce. Pictures hung on the wall, taken by Jenny herself. She was a superb photographer. Around the room, bits of native artwork and artifacts finished the decorations: small totems, a carved figure of the Inuit sea god, Sedna, and a painted shaman mask used in healing ceremonies.

Each item had history. It was hard standing here. Tragedy seemed to follow him. During his first year at the University of Tennessee, his parents had both been killed in a home-invasion robbery. Left without resources, he was forced to join the Army. There, he channeled his anger and pain into his career, eventually joining Special Forces and becoming a Green Beret. But after Somalia, he could no longer stomach bloodshed and death. So he quit the service and returned to school, earning his degree in environmental sciences. After graduation, he came to Alaska because of its wide-open spaces and vast tracts of parklands.

He came here to be alone.

But that changed when he met Jenny…

With mugs in hand, Matt stood transfixed between the past and the present. Off the main room were two bedchambers. He turned away, not ready to brush against those more intimate memories. Still, some reached out and touched him.

In one room…reading Winnie-the-Pooh to Tyler by lamplight, the entire family nestled in thick woolen pajamas…

In the other…curled under heavy goose-down quilts with Jenny, her naked body an ember against his own skin…

“Coffee’s ready,” Jenny said, drawing him back. With a worn oven mitt, she lifted the hot pot and waved the two men to the sofa.

Matt set the mugs on the knotty-pine table.

She filled them. “Tell me what happened.” Her voice was emotionless, professional, a sheriff’s voice.

Craig began, telling his side of the story. He related all that had transpired since he left his Seattle newspaper office. He finished with the harrowing plunge in the plane.

“Sabotage?” Jenny asked. She knew Brent as well as Matt did. If there was a problem with the plane, there had to be another reason besides neglect or simple equipment failure…not in Brent Cumming’s plane.

Matt nodded. “I suspected as much. Then this second plane appeared.” He gave her the call signs painted on the plane, but he wagered either the aircraft would be discovered stolen or the call signs were bogus. He told her as much. “As it circled, two commandos dove from the plane with ice choppers and rifles. They clearly didn’t want to leave anyone behind to tell tales.”

Jenny’s brows knit together. Her eyes flicked to Craig, but the reporter was carefully inspecting his coffee as he swirled in some sugar. “What happened then?”

Matt detailed the fate of the two assassins as plainly as possible. She unfolded a topographic map of the area, and he marked down the plane crash site and roughly where the bodies of the two men could be found.

“I’ll need to call into Fairbanks for this,” she said as he finished.

“And I need to contact my newspaper,” Craig added, perking up with a jolt of Jenny’s strong coffee. “They must be wondering what happened. I was supposed to update them when I reached Prudhoe Bay.”

Jenny stood up, flipping closed her notepad. “The satellite phone is over there.” She pointed her pad to a desk. “Make it quick, then I’ll need to reach my office.”

Craig took his mug of coffee with him. “How do I use it?”

“Just dial like you would any other phone. You might get a bit more static due to the recent solar storms. They’ve been fritzing everything lately.”

Craig nodded and sat at the desk. He picked up the receiver.

Jenny stepped to the fireplace. “What do you make of all this?” she asked Matt.

He joined her, leaning a hand on the hearth’s mantel. “Clearly someone wants to keep the newspapers away from the drift station.”

“A cover-up?”

“I don’t know.”

In the background, Craig spoke into the phone. “Sandra, this is Teague. Connect me to the big guy.” A pause. “I don’t care if he’s in a meeting. I’ve got news that can’t wait.”

Matt imagined the reporter already had more story than he’d expected when he left Seattle.

Jenny turned her back a bit on Craig and lowered her voice. “Does this guy know more than he’s telling us?”

Matt eyed Craig. “I doubt it. I think he just ended up here because he pulled the short straw.”

“And these commandos…you’re sure they were military?”

“Military background, at least.” Matt recognized the tension building in Jenny as she stood by the fireplace. She kept her eyes averted from him, her words terse. She had a job to do here, but his presence kept her on guard.

He couldn’t blame her. He didn’t deserve any better. Still, he wanted to find some way past this unnaturally forced discourse. He wanted to tell her that he hadn’t touched a drink in over two years, but would she even care? Did it even matter any longer? The damage had been done.

He studied a single framed picture of Tyler on the mantel: smiling, towheaded, a pup in his arms, Bane, then eight weeks old. Matt’s heart clenched with joy and grief. He allowed himself to feel the emotion. He had long given up trying to drown it away. It still hurt…and in many ways, that was a good thing.

Jenny spoke. “Any other impressions?”

He took a deep breath to keep the pain out of his voice and stepped away from the fireplace. “I don’t know.” He rubbed his brow with a knuckle. “They might have been foreign nationals.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They never spoke a word within earshot. In retrospect, it was like they were purposefully keeping silent, hiding their origin. Like they had done with their weapons.”