“Man, I love those big old Hercs,” Joe said. “Been flying for fifty years. No place they can’t get into or out of. Ever cop a ride in one?”
Kyle nodded. “I got to go out to Savoonga with the Alaska Air National Guard. A fun trip. Noisy, though.”
“Yeah, I pack earplugs.”
“I’ll remember that for next time. So,” Kyle said, turning to Greg, “you only get one ship in at a time?”
“Oh, no!” Wladislaw said, clearly appalled at the suggestion. He hustled Kyle and Joe to the outer office to where an aerial photograph the size of a tablecloth dominated one wall. It showed the port of Anchorage on a sunny summer day and every inch of the dock of the port used up by four ships moored bow to stern along it. “Two containerships and two petroleum tankers, all on the same day,” Wladislaw said proudly.
“Must have been a busy day.”
Wladislaw nodded vigorously. “You bet. You should come down on a ship day, Special Agent Chase. It’s a real zoo. An organized zoo,” he hastened to add.
“It’s Kyle, Greg, and I’ll take you up on that. Next week, maybe.”
Wladislaw beamed. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“What kinds of goods move through here?”
Wladislaw spread his hands expansively. “What kinds don’t would be an easier question to answer.” He smiled widely at Kyle, and Kyle had to resist the temptation to scratch Wladislaw behind the ears. “The port of Anchorage supplies ninety percent of the population of Alaska. What do you drive?”
Startled to be asked a question instead of being answered, Kyle had to think. “Ah, Subaru Legacy.”
Wladislaw nodded approvingly. “Family man, am I right? But with style.”
Behind Wladislaw, Joe rolled his eyes. It wasn’t the first time.
“Well, that Subaru came in on one of those ships. So did the gas to power it. So did the parts and oil your dealer uses to service it. Got snow tires?”
“Yup,” Kyle said. Wladislaw was so delighted with his game that Kyle didn’t have the heart to shut him down. “All came through this port, did it?”
Wladislaw beamed at him the way a teacher smiled at a promising pupil. “Yes, it did. The raisins in your oatmeal, the oatmeal, the bowl you eat it out of, and the spoon you eat it with.” Wladislaw patted the aerial photograph proudly. “All through the port of Anchorage. Apples to zinc, straight from the port to your pantry shelves.”
Kyle looked toward the windows, at the ice choking the narrow neck of Knik Arm between Anchorage and Point MacKenzie. “Has the port ever been shut down?”
Wladislaw was affronted at the very idea. “The port of Anchorage has never been closed to cargo. Ever.”
“However-” Joe said.
Wladislaw seemed to wilt a little, and cast Joe a look that could only be described as reproachful. “Well, yes, now and then when the ice is thick, it has been closed, but only to single-hulled petroleum vessels.”
“We issue ice rules of the road every year,” Joe told Kyle.
Kyle nodded thoughtfully. “Lot of silt washes down the Arm from the Knik Glacier annually.”
Eager to redeem himself in the FBI’s eyes, Wladislaw said promptly, “We dredge a million cubic yards per year out of the Knik. We maintain a depth of minus thirty-five feet at mean low tide.”
“The dredge only works in the summertime, of course,” Joe said.
“May to October,” Wladislaw said.
Kyle nodded again. “Any other traffic?”
“Bulk cement ships, from China or Korea, also May through October. And, of course, a lot of ships make their maiden voyages to Anchorage, to see how the new ship handles in our weather and tides. We had two big cruise ships last summer, and a fresh-off-the-ways petroleum tanker. Double-hulled, too!”
“Quite the operation,” Kyle said, congratulatory. “Thanks, Greg. You’ve been a lot of help.”
Back in the car, Kyle said, “What’s the port got in the way of security, Joe?”
Joe started the car and let it idle, turning up the heater. “Right now, nothing. Next April, the new MSST will be in place and operational.”
Kyle thought back. “The Marine Safety and Security Team.”
“Got it in one. A one-hundred man unit trained and equipped to handle everything from explosives to drug and migrant interdiction. It’ll have dive teams, K-9 teams, and six boats.”
Kyle nodded. “This is the team you told us about at the last JTTF meeting.”
“Yeah ”Joe said.
“But not deployed until April.”
“Okay, Kyle, what’s going on? You knew most of this stuff before.”
“A refresher course never hurts.”
Joe raised a skeptical eyebrow.
“I got a heads-up about possible terrorist activity, maybe involving marine shipping,” Kyle said.
“And you think Anchorage might be a target?”
The disbelief in his voice was plain to read. “You never have?”
Joe shrugged. “I heard what your buddy Hugh said last October, same as everyone else, Kyle, but come on. Anchorage?”
“You got family in Alaska, Joe?”
“No,” Joe said. “I’m divorced, no kids, parents live in Michigan along with about a billion other relatives. All of whom are among the reasons why I moved to Alaska.”
“I do have family here,” Kyle said. “And in Seldovia, and a lot of friends in Anchorage.”
“I get that, Kyle, but it’s not like we wouldn’t notice if someone sailed a destroyer up the inlet and parked it at the dock.”
“It doesn’t have to be a warship; all it has to be is a cargo ship with the wrong cargo on board. Bombs aren’t as big as they used to be. Have you watched the news from Iraq lately?”
Joe wasn’t convinced. “Still,” he said.
Many Alaskans shared this odd sense of invulnerability. Partly it was an inferiority complex, in that most Americans, informed by weather maps on the television news, thought Alaska was a small island off the coast of southern California. Partly it was location, twenty-seven hundred miles northwest of and an hour behind Seattle, a place where the polls were still open when the loser in a presidential election was giving his concession speech. Ninety percent of it was owned by the federal government in the form of national forests and parks and wildlife refuges. It was also a bank of raw materials, timber, fish, and minerals upon which the nation could draw when needed and when such a draw was justified by the current price of the commodity. There were only six hundred thousand people in the state and it returned only three electoral votes. As a result Alaskans were defensive and pugnacious in their attitude toward the rest of the nation. “We don’t give a damn how they do it Outside,” a local bumper sticker said.
But they did. They were acutely aware of their unimportance in the national scheme of things, and Joe was no different than any other Alaskan. It made it difficult for Kyle to mount a convincing argument that a terrorist could consider Alaska a target worthy of his attentions.
Joe looked at his watch. “If that’s all, I’ve got to be somewhere.”
And Joe, evidently, remained unconvinced. Kyle, carrying the image of Lilah and the kids headed down the Seward Highway at the back of his mind, yielded to Joe’s skepticism, at least for the moment. “Blonde, brunette, or redhead?”
Joe grinned. “Want me to ask her if she’s got a friend?”
“I’ll have you know I’m a happily married man.”
Joe held his hands up, palms out. “Just asking. You never felt the urge?
Kyle thought of Eve and said virtuously, “Never.”
“Yeah,” Joe said, “right.”
JANUARY
HUGH HELD ON TO the back of the pilot’s seat, peering through the port-side window at lower Kachemak Bay passing beneath their left wing. “I was born in Seldovia,” he said, raising his voice to be heard over the droning of the engines.
“That a fact,” the pilot said incuriously.