The nearest armed backup were the Alaska State Troopers stationed in Saint Mary’s, nearly an hour away by truck over a bumpy, pothole-filled road. It was more swamp than road this time of year. Even if they knew what was going on, the troopers would never get there in time to help. In some ways, the absence of law enforcement made Quinn’s next moves that much less difficult.
“Okay,” Quinn said a moment later, mulling through the specifics of his plan. “You know that cute Samoan girl from Mountain View you used to horse around with back in high school?”
Ukka looked at Quinn as if he’d lost his mind. “Yeah, but I don’t see—”
“Remember how you had to sneak out of her bedroom window and tiptoe out the back alley to get past her father and two humongous brothers to keep them from killing you?”
Ukka groaned. “I sure do.”
“Think you can pull off that same level of stealth and work your way over to Myrna’s house? I need you to take care of the number three guy.”
Ukka nodded. “I can shoot his nose hairs off if you want me to,” he said.
“Outstanding.” Quinn had seen the big Eskimo in enough sticky situations to know he could stalk up to a dozing grizzly if the situation warranted.
Quinn flicked open his ZT folding knife and reached for a length of water hose coiled around an old truck wheel that was bolted to the rear of the fuel shed. He cut a piece about a foot long, then returned the ZT to his pocket before blowing into the tube to make certain it was free of obstructions.
“What the hell kind of plan are you pondering here?” Ukka’s cockeyed grimace was clear evidence of his doubts. “Looks like you’ve decided to attack them with a blowgun.”
Quinn tucked the length of hose in his waistband behind his back. He tapped the magazines in his pocket, then the Severance in the sheath at his hip before taking up the MP7 again. “It’s okay if you make a little noise when you take out the pilot,” Quinn said. “In fact, I need those other two to be looking in that direction in five minutes. Can you do that?”
“Five minutes?” Ukka said, still shaking his head slowly. He peered down at Quinn through narrowed eyes.
Quinn pointed a knife hand toward a ratty copse of willows fifty meters upriver from the fish house. “River’s moving fast,” he said. “I should be able to drift down there in much less time than that, but you better give me five minutes to make sure I’m up on the back dock and ready to go.”
Ukka’s mouth hung open. “You’re going to swim down the Yukon River breathing through a piece of garden hose?”
“Float would be more correct,” Quinn said. “You don’t swim in the Yukon.”
“No shit.” Ukka rolled his eyes.
“I’m open to better ideas,” Quinn said, not relishing the thought of the frigid water.
Ukka sat completely still, just looking at him. Over the last five months in the village, Quinn had learned that Eskimos did a lot of talking using nothing but their eyes — and Ukka’s eyes said Quinn had gone completely insane. Finally, the big man spoke.
“I’m getting cold standing out here in the rain,” he said, “and I’m a damn Eskimo. You know that water was ice a couple of weeks ago, right?”
“I know,” Quinn said.
“You’ll be lucky if your muscles aren’t too cramped to hold a gun after you been in the river two minutes — let alone fight those other guys. And that’s if the current doesn’t carry you all the way down to Alakanuk.”
Quinn shrugged. “Like I said, I’m open to another suggestion. But it better be quick because these guys seem to be pretty rough on their hostages.”
“Just go then,” Ukka snapped.
“Outstanding.” Quinn put a hand on his shoulder. “Start shooting in five minutes. I’ll see you inside the Kwikpac in six.”
Waves of heavy fog drifted in from the north, providing intermittent concealment as Quinn worked his way along the muddy road behind a row of gray wooden shacks, broken snow machines, and four-wheelers. Everyone had sought shelter inside when they’d realized what the government contractors were up to. Faces pressed against foggy glass windows, wide brown eyes flicking messages from stoic faces as they wished him luck. Village dogs, chained to plastic barrels or old vehicles, barked from the stress in the air, but stopped when they recognized Quinn as a regular.
Cresting a small hill on the road that led out to the airport, Quinn figured he’d made it far enough past Myrna Tomaganuk’s house that the pilot hiding beneath it wouldn’t be able to see him. Stooped at the waist, he moved quickly in a diagonal line down the gravel bank toward the churning water of the Yukon. The area on the upriver side of the willows was steep and he slid the last ten feet as if standing on ball bearings, landing with a splash in the sloppy gravel soup where current ate away at the bank. June in western Alaska was equivalent to spring in the lower forty-eight. A stiff breeze that had felt bracing while they’d been out fishing, now whipped the surface of the river into a frothy chocolate chop. Just three weeks before the area had been a sheet of solid ice. Shattered logs, some as long as a tractor-trailer, littered the river’s edge. Great portions of land from upriver, complete with Medusa-like root-balls and moss-covered bank had been scoured away by slabs of ice during the recent breakup and bobbed in the eddies like small islands.
Quinn kicked off the rubber boots and stashed them in the willows, hoping he’d be alive to come back and get them later. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t worried about the Xtra Tuffs dragging him to the bottom. In calm water, they would have merely filled and become neutrally buoyant. But the Yukon was anything but calm, so the boots would yank him around as they worked with the current like small parachutes around his feet — likely pulling him to the middle of the river and a watery grave.
The lower Yukon had seen three drowning deaths since breakup in this season alone. Two were men out getting logs and one was a little girl from Emmonak, another Eskimo village downriver. Like many of the children in bush Alaska, she’d lived all of her nine years surrounded by lakes and streams and one of the largest rivers in the world, but had never learned how to swim. The bodies of all three had been carried off by the current to be found hung up on some snag, miles away from where they’d drowned. It was foolish, he knew, but though Quinn didn’t fear death, it filled him with a certain cold dread that his bloated corpse would be tossed around by a river, then impaled on a bunch of deadfall for days while the ravens pecked away. He shook off the thought. Picturing his own death was a bad start to any operation.
He wished he’d had on his hiking boots. The Lowas might have slowed down his kicking ability underwater, but he’d spent many hours swimming in boots during training and as a combat rescue officer, or CRO, in an earlier Air Force life. And when he reached the fish house, a fight in boots would certainly be more pleasant than one in bare feet — but it couldn’t be helped.
His teeth already chattered from the effects of near constant adrenaline coupled with the chill of a nonstop drizzle. Barefoot and dressed only in his long merino wool sweater and khaki pants, he waded quickly into the water with the length of hose clutched in his hand. Employing the MP7 while navigating the Yukon’s persistent current would be foolhardy, so he left it slung over his back to keep the sling from becoming tangled with any submerged deadfall and debris.