Stoney Compton: Alaska Republik

“Aha!” He pulled a handle and the canopy popped back a few inches.

Colonel Buhrman tried to climb up on the wing stump and the fuselage rolled toward him, pushed by the wind. He scrambled to keep on his feet.

“Well, damn!”

“Pull the canopy back,” Smolst yelled over the cutting wind.

Buhrman grabbed the canopy and jerked it aft. The wind caught it and ripped it free of the fuselage and whirled into the air over their heads. It disappeared in the blowing snow.

Jerry sat hunched over in the cockpit, completely covered by the wolf pelt parka.

Magda scrambled up to him and pulled the hood back.

“Jerry! Jerry, are you all right?”

He stirred as if deep in sleep. One eye cracked open.

“M-Magda? Is that really you?” He sounded weak and disoriented.

She felt tears well up. “Of course it is, you silly man!”

A long gust of wind blew a shower of snow crystals over them and Magda tried to cover his face.

Buhrman, Smolst, Georgi, and the two dog mushers all helped pull him free of the wrecked plane and carried him to the helicopter. Without stopping, they slid him into an insulated sleeping bag brought for that purpose.

“Can we go now?” Magda asked. “I want to marry this guy before he gets away from me again.”

“I feel warmer already,” Jerry mumbled deep in the sleeping bag.

Klahotsa on the Yukon

“So the whole idea is to shoot as many elected officials as possible when they are presented to the public?” Riordan asked.

“Exactly. Think about it. It would devastate everyone there. Chaos would reign. All it would take is a voice of authority to bring them into line.”

“And that would be you, right?”

“Who else, Mr. Riordan?”

“That’s Major Riordan, thank you.”

“Of course.”

“Even if they have no idea in hell as to who you are?”

“Won’t matter. Pass me the bottle, please.”

Riordan regarded the whisky bottle as if it were a relic.

“I think it may be empty,” he announced, and threw the bottle over his shoulder with force.

It smashed against something.

“Hell, I can fix that,” Bachmann said. He pulled himself out of his chair and staggered behind the bar. “Let’s have the good stuff. Nobody ever buys it anyway.”

“When do I get paid?” Riordan asked.

“For what?”

“For being the officer in charge of your troopers. Whattya think?”

Silence reigned and Riordan twisted around to peer at Bachmann on the other side of the store.

“But you got them all killed. Why should I pay you anything?”

Riordan suppressed the instant flash of rage. He willed it to evaporate like dew on a sunny morning. This was important.

“ Who was in charge of this entire plan?” Riordan asked as nonchalantly as possible.

“Well, I was.”

“So whose orders did I follow to the letter, like it or not?”

“Mine?”

“Exactly. It was your plan that got them all killed, not mine.”

“But you led them—”

“Following your orders, doing exactly what you ordered and exactly when you ordered it!”

Silence drifted through the store.

“What did we agree on?”

“Two hundred fifty in gold,” Riordan said.

“Stay where you are. I’ll be right back.”

“Sure.”

As soon as he heard the office door close, Riordan leapt to his feet and hurried to the back of the store. He eased the door open and through the crack saw Bachmann opening a door built into the wall of the building.

I would have never found that.

He pulled out his pistol, opened the door, and stepped into the office.

Bachmann whirled about and yelled, “I told you to wait!”

“Too late,” Riordan said, and shot him through the head.

Over the Yukon River

“Colonel Buhrman,” Ivan said from the pilot’s seat, “there is a radio message for you.” He handed him the headset.

“Buhrman here, go ahead.”

They all could hear the crackle of the voice in the earphones but none of the words were intelligible.

“Does that tally with our body count? Okay. I’m sure Captain Fedorov told you we found Jerry. He’s cold but he’s alive. Thanks, Buhrman out.”

He handed the headset back and turned to the others.

“Our people have accounted for every one of the attackers except for Riordan and his buddy, N’go. The store at Klahotsa was empty except for the body of Bachmann. Someone shot him in the head at close range.”

“When thieves fall out…” Smolst muttered.

“But where the hell are they going to find shelter in this weather?” Buhrman asked.

Klahotsa

“I have heard nothing for hours, Tim,” N’go said.

“Me neither. But it could be a trap.”

“Let me go look. This tiny room is crushing my soul.”

Riordan pushed the safety off his weapon and slowly turned the latch on the door. He eased it open and only darkness greeted them. The door made no sound; Bachmann had kept the hinges of his secret vault well oiled.

Riordan pulled out the tiny torch he always carried and aimed it at the floor before he switched it on. They had moved Bachmann’s body, but his blood lay frozen in a small pond where he had died.

“Don’t slip,” he murmured to N’go.

The large man flashed a smile and nodded before he moved out into the office. He inched the office door open and waited. Silence reigned.

Abruptly N’go slipped through the door and into the general store. Riordan hurried to the door and waited a long moment before sliding through the narrow opening. His heart thudded in his chest while he waited for a shot or a command to surrender.

“There is nobody here, Tim.” N’go’s voice was as soft as a lover’s whisper.

“We need to check outside.”

Riordan went out the side door and nearly fell over something in the path. After a full minute of frantically searching the area without moving anything other than his head, he knelt and moved the blanket away from Bachmann’s frozen face. The man still looked angry.

N’go eased around the front corner of the building.

“They all left in the lorry that brought them.” He nodded at the covered form. “That be Bachmann?”

“Yeah. Probably put him out here to keep him cold.”

“I would wager they will not return until warmer weather.”

“Good,” Riordan said through his sudden grin. “That gives us somewhere to live for a couple of months.”

Tanana, Provisional Capital of the Alaska Republik

“Where did you get flowers in the middle of winter?” Bodecia asked.

“Colonel Shipley brought them from California on the transport,” Magda said as she peered into the mirror and edged the garland of woven flowers slightly to the right. “Is that straight now?”

“It’s fine, now leave it alone. That transport was jammed with boxes and people. It was nice of the RCAF to stop and pick us up; don’t know how we would have made it otherwise.”

Bodecia admired their similar dresses in the mirror. Both were made of split moosehide so thin it could have passed for silk. The hide had been worked until attaining a pearl sheen. The beadwork on both enhanced their individual forms. A band of beads began at the neck, ran down the slope of the shoulders and dropped to the end of the short sleeves and then continued from the armpit to the hem on both of them.

Bodecia’s dress featured intricate florets across her bosom that seemed to twist and drop to the midriff. Magda’s dress featured a jagged, lightninglike design that shot out from the band beneath the armpits and curved down and across her midriff as if to hold up her bosom. Both dresses were stunning in their simplicity and rich from the beadwork.