Snowblind (2 page)

They fear me. I have torn them in my wrath.

They have no hunger these men who hunt with dogs.  They tear me from my mother's womb and drag me through the snow. They gape at me with their mouths. They strike me with their fists. They mass themselves against me. They seize me by the neck and dash me to pieces. They cast me into the mire, and I become like dust and ashes. My skin turns black and falls from me, and my bones burn with heat.

Let them hope for light but have none. They'll never see the eye of day, the eye of day is shut. I know there is no light. I know freedom comes with blood. I know the wolf. The wolf will not betray me.

I slash open their kidneys and show no mercy. I pour out their gall on the ground. I burst them again and again. I sew sackcloth upon my skin. I eat flesh like a wolf. My strength is in the ice. My strength is in my loins. My strength is in the muscles of my belly. I make my tail stiff like cedar; the sinews of my thighs are knit together. My bones are tubes of bronze, my limbs like bars of iron.

I am the firstborn of Death.

These men are full of fear. They will know my power. They will die, just like the rest.

All of those who fear the wolf will perish by my hands.

I will eat them. All of them.

*  *  *

In the clear, cold, aurorean night, across the frozen tundra, three Inuit dog sleds glided over the snow. The stampeding teams of Alaskan huskies pumped clouds of steam into the brisk night air, while two Inuit mushers ran, rode, and pushed the sleds behind them.

In the first sled, Shakshi, a large Yakuutek hunter with high Mongolian cheekbones, leathery, wind-burned skin, and an icy black moustache, locked his dark eyes on his wheel dog, Tiuna, whose silver tail hung low. Roluk, the huge Siberian lead dog at the head of the team, threw a glance back at the freeloader, yapping in complaint. Shakshi shouted a command, yanking his tugline. The dogs came to a halt.

The second and third sleds drew to a stop behind him. The musher of the second, Anokuk, a broad-faced Yakuutek with a rifle over his shoulder, turned his slitted eyes behind him. The third sled, with its full gangline of panting dogs, was riderless.

Lashed to the sled was a giant cage.

Shakshi dismounted. He walked up the line of his dogs, slowly, menacingly. When he came to Roluk he paused; like a priest giving benediction, he touched the lead dog's head with the back of his hand. The dog barked sharply, once. The musher continued slowly down the other side, past the swing dogs, the team dogs, the heavy pullers in the middle of the line. He paused at last beside Tiuna, staring down at her. The wheel dog whimpered, sullenly. She knew she had offended. Shakshi leaned over and smacked her — a wallop on her rump. Tiuna snapped back to life.

Shakshi returned to his sled, eyeing his comrade. Anokuk nodded back toward the third sled. A guttural groan like the sound of an animal emanated from the giant cage.

The two hunters approached warily, Anokuk un-slinging his rifle.

The cage, tightly lashed to the sled, was made of thick, interwoven saplings. Inside, barely visible in the feeble light of the moon, a massive form lay bound in hides and chains.

The creature stirred.

Shakshi nodded to Anokuk. The narrow-eyed hunter raised his rifle barrel, aimed through the bars, and fired.

The shot rang out across the tundra. The dogs grew silent. Shakshi and Anokuk glanced at one another — the groans had stopped.

The hunters drew close to the bars, peered into the darkness of the cage. A blood red tranquilizer dart had stuck through the pile of hides. The mammoth body lay still as a corpse.

Shakshi nodded to his comrade, and the two men returned to their sleds. The dogs jumped to their feet, barking with freshened vigor. Tiuna, of all of them, looked most ready to go. As he mounted the whalebone runners and reached for his tugline, Shakshi noticed something on his sled. A hide had blown loose. Beneath it, the lifeless eyes of a Yakuutek stared out at him. A chunk of the dead musher's cheek was missing, gouged from his face. Shakshi touched the wound with his gloved hand. Teeth marks scarred the torn flesh.

Shakshi covered the head, lashing the hide securely to the sled. Then he gave the command to his dogs and they bolted into the night.

Fairbanks International Airport had just come into view when the air traffic controller's voice came over the headset. "Charlie Five-five, this is Fairbanks Tower, do you read me, over?"

Josh Marino recognized Dean Stanton's voice, gravelly and low like the grumbling of a lion. "Roger, Fairbanks," Josh replied, "this is Charlie Five-five, requesting landing, over." He pictured the cotton-haired old man sitting in the tower, his crumpled brown-bag face and heavy-rimmed glasses, a cigarette dangling from his lips as he growled into the mike.

"Charlie Five-five, drop to twelve hundred and turn right zero-three-zero. You have Runway Three."

"Roger, Fairbanks," Josh answered. "When are you gonna quit smoking?" he wanted to add, but didn't. The old man will probably die with a cig in his mouth. "Descending to one thousand two hundred feet," Josh repeated. "Turning right zero-three-zero for the straight-in to Number Three, over."

The twenty-four-year-old pilot flew his company's single-engine Cessna back and forth from Anchorage to Fairbanks so often that hearing Dean Stanton's voice was like hearing the subway driver call out your stop. "Charlie Five-five, you're cleared for landing." Josh wore a khaki jacket, high leather boots, and a belt-sheathed jackknife. His tousled black hair stuck out in feral profusion from his red headband and his over-size earphones. He worked for a small electronics company down in Anchorage, but still kept his one-room apartment in Fairbanks, still considered the central Alaskan city his home. He was working toward his Masters in electrical engineering, and flew back to take classes at the University of Fairbanks on Saturday mornings twice a month. And he taught some classes at a local school, too, though that was more a labor of love than anything else.

Josh adjusted the flaps, grabbed the control yoke in his left hand and eased the throttles back with his right. The plane banked and angled down toward the broad stretch of runway ahead. The snow had been cleared and the black asphalt glistened. I could land this baby with my eyes closed, he thought, and for a moment, he actually tried it. One second the runway was fast approaching, the next second everything went dark. A shiver of fear shot through the pilot; his eyes popped open despite himself.

Must be how my students feel, he thought, and wondered if he could teach them how to land a light plane. This would be quite a feat even with their eyes wide open — considering the fact that his students were blind.

*  *  *

Dean Stanton watched the Cessna 207 Skywagon roll to a stop on Runway Three, then removed his glasses, rubbed his eyes, and crushed his cigarette out on the linoleum floor. Behind him stood David Adashek, the Fairbanks Chief of Police, a large, rock-chested man, bursting from his jacket and tie. Adashek was scratching his gray-haired head, staring down with a grimace at the collection of smashed butts scattered around Stanton's feet.

Stanton noticed him looking. "Cleaning crew'll get 'em. Albert and Ace — Spic'n'Span. They get 'em every night."

"Why don't you just find yourself an ashtray, Dean?"

Stanton lifted the headset off his ears, laid it around his neck. "FAA won't allow ashtrays." He pointed to a sign next to the door.
NO SMOKING.

Adashek's eyebrows went up. He scanned the rest of the room. Three other controllers were at work in the tower; all of them were smoking. The place had a heavier haze in the air than the strip bar on Wolf Run Road. "I thought you boys had to follow the letter of the law in here."

Stanton lit up another one and blew out a lungful of smoke. "How long you been in Alaska, Chief?"

Adashek nodded wearily. The ‘80’s seemed like a lifetime ago. "Long enough to know I shouldn’t ask," he said.

He stepped up to the broad window, his eyes squinting into the arctic light. Josh Marino's tiny white Cessna was taxiing off the field. Beyond him, far off on the horizon, silver clouds were forming above the snowy peaks. Adashek stared at the mountains, and for a long moment, didn't speak.

"It's been two hours since they touched down," he said at last. "What do you suppose is going on out there?"

Stanton leaned back in his swivel chair, folded his hands behind his head. "Knowing Jake, he's probably trying to make a deal on some furs."

"Knowing the Yakuutek," said the Chief, "he better not be looking for any bargains."

The Yakuutek hunter pointed his rifle at Jake O'Donnell's head. Jake's eyeballs were wrenched to his temple, locked on the tip of the barrel. Not much more than a four-inch gap between the cold steel and the red-haired pilot's brains. This made using the brains an even more difficult task than usual.

"Say something, Donny! He's gonna kill me, for Chrissake!"

"Say what?" asked his copilot. Donny was facing the other Yakuutek, who was holding a gun to Donny's chest. "I
been
talkin'. Nobody's listenin'!"

"Tell 'em I ain't lyin' goddammit!

"He 'ain't lyin'! Goddammit."

The hunter pressed the barrel of his gun into Jake's ear. Jake shuddered. Then, slowly, he turned his head, looked up the barrel into the Inuit's eyes.

"I... I told you. I 'ain't got the goddamn money!"

The hunter didn't speak. He wiped his brown hand down his shaggy black moustache. Was this fella angry or just trying to make up his mind?

"Believe me, amigo. It's the truth, so help me God."

The barrel didn't move. The Inuit's eyes stared deeply into Jake's. Jake struggled to take in a breath. If the gun hadn't unnerved him, the man's stare certainly did.

Jake glanced at the big cage lying on the snow under the right wing of the Goony Bird, his aging twin-engine DC-3. Inside the cage, the mountain of a creature lay barely visible, asleep under its cocoon of chains and hides.

"Look," Jake said in a calmer voice, "you can keep the son-of-a-bitch. We'll send somebody back with the money."

"Yeah, that's right!" chimed in Donny. "Keep the fucker. We'll let the Sheriff collect him himself."

The two big hunters held steady.

Jake shot a nervous glance at Donny. "I don't think they want to keep him."

Donny looked at the cage. "Can't say I can blame 'em. Fucker don't look too friendly."

A voice crackled from the empty cockpit.

"Hey," Jake said, suddenly lighting up. "I bet that's the Chief now!"

Dean Stanton's voice continued sputtering from the radio. The hunters looked mildly curious... or suspicious — it was hard for Jake to tell.

"That's him, ain't it, Donny?"

"Yeah, that's Adashek all right. I can tell by the voice."

"He's the badge with your money," Jake said. "We can talk to him, he'll tell you all about it." Jake began slowly backing toward the door to the plane. The hunter followed him with the barrel of his gun.

"Come on," he said, leading him slowly back. "Right up here, we'll talk to the man himself, I swear to God."

Donny started moving with Jake, then stopped abruptly. His hunter had poked the barrel of his gun into Donny's considerable belly. Donny raised his hands in surrender. "Okay, okay... you're right, you're right. It's only the Chief of Police, no big deal, just a whole big pile of money waiting for you, waiting back there with your name on it and all you gotta do — " he suddenly gasped as the man again jabbed his gut with the rifle. Donny coughed, put his hand on the barrel, eased it gently back. "Okay, I'll shut up."

Jake was backing up through the doorway into the plane, the hunter following him with his gun. Stanton's voice was still crackling through static on the cockpit radio. "Whiskey Four-O — ... do you... over."

The hunter followed Jake through the cockpit door into the nose of the DC-3, his gun held to him like metal to a magnet.

"Nice and easy," Jake said, reaching for the radio mike. He slowly unhooked it and adjusted the frequency. Then he thumbed the button and spoke to Dean Stanton.

"Fairbanks Tower this is Whiskey Four-O-Three, over."

Jake watched the hunter's black eyes as the air traffic controller's voice came through in reply. "Whiskey Four-O-Three this is Fairbanks Tower. We read you loud and clear."

*  *  *

Dean Stanton handed his microphone to Chief Adashek.

"Are you all right, Jake? Did you find—"

Jake's static-broken voice interrupted him. "Just fine, Chief, except for the .22 your friend here's been pointing in my face for the past half hour. Apparently you and your Eskimo friends had a little miscommunication."

"I don't understand," the Chief said.

"Well neither do I!" Jake shouted. "Mr. Yackety-Yack here thought he was supposed to collect his reward money upon delivery of the prisoner."

The Chief glanced uncomfortably at Stanton. "It's not money he's looking for, Jake."

"What?!"

"There's a Yakuutek man in jail here for manslaughter. If we get the prisoner back here alive, their man will go free. That's the arrangement we made with the tribe."

"Manslaughter, huh. Gee, that's great, that's really great. Tell me, Chief, who'd the guy kill — a pilot?"

"If you just explain to him—"

"Goddammit,
you
explain it to him! He sure as hell ain't listening to me!"

Adashek glanced at Stanton, who shrugged his shoulders.  The Chief raised the mike to his lips. "Shakshi, are you there? Can you hear me?"

Adashek waited, but heard no reply. "Is he there, Jake?"

"Yeah, he's here. He just don't talk much."

"Then listen to me, Shakshi, please. It's very important that you do not cause any further delay. We will release your friend when the prisoner arrives here alive. That was the deal. I urge you, he is extremely dangerous and must—"

A howl came over the radio, followed by a blast and a burst of static.

"Jake? Do you copy?"

There was no reply, just the steady crackle of static. The Chief looked frightened. "Whiskey Four-O-Three, do you copy, over."

Stanton took the mike back from him, played with the frequency. "Whiskey Four-O-Three this is Fairbanks Tower, do you read me, over."

Nothing.

Adashek and Stanton looked at one another.