“No,” Palmer said. “Stick with him until we hear back from Quinn. He’s yet to find Dr. Volodin, and the kid may know where he’s going. Quinn can tell us when we can close the book on this trail.”
“Roger that,” Thibodaux said.
“How’s Garcia holding up?” Palmer asked, sounding genuinely concerned.
Thibodaux grinned and gave a thumbs up for Ronnie’s benefit. “She’s good to go, Boss,” he said. “Doin’ great. Any word from our little buddy?” The Marine asked the question about Jericho that was ever on Garcia’s mind.
“Nothing since this morning,” Palmer said. “When last we spoke he was about to follow Volodin out to some remote fishing lodge with Special Agent Beaudine.”
“Oh ye yi!” Thibodaux gave an audible shiver. “I feel me some sorry for Chair Force if he’s gotta fly anywhere with my crazy cousin.”
“Are you saying she’s not capable?” Palmer said, his voice tight and annoyed.
“Oh, she’s plenty capable, sir,” Thibodaux said. “But that don’t mean I’d want to spend a day in the woods with her.”
Chapter 29
Quinn made it a practice to carry an extra set of wool long johns in a vacuum-sealed bag whenever he went into the woods. Inside the same bag he kept a box of windproof matches, a candle, and a baggie of cotton balls. Thankfully, his aunt Abbey had grown up in Alaska and shared the same sentiments. She had stuck a similar sealed packet of extra woolies in the duffle she’d thrown together for Beaudine.
The snow came down hard now, driven by a stiff north wind. What had been a barren gray gravel bar just minutes before was now covered in white. Beaudine, cloaked in the same blanket of snow, no longer stirred. Quinn wasn’t even sure she was still alive, but it would only waste valuable time if he stopped to check. Without a fire, there was nothing he could do for her anyway. He estimated the temperatures to be in the high twenties — not particularly cold for interior Alaska — but the wind chill on wet skin was sucking the life out of both of them. With most of his blood rushing to warm his core, Quinn’s hands were little better than useless claws by the time he’d dragged enough standing dead wood to start a fire beside a large boulder, away from the cold sink of the stream bed. He staggered up and down the bank, swinging his arms in an attempt to drive blood into his extremities while he searched for a dead black spruce that was small enough for him to push over in his weakened condition. He located one the diameter of his ankle and wiggled the spiky gray trunk back and forth. Thankfully, it was easy to tip out by the roots in the shallow topsoil. It was a poor excuse for a tree, but Quinn didn’t care that it had few limbs bigger than a pencil. He was looking for the nestlike crown of needles and twigs the sorry spruce wore like a ratty wig.
Dragging the tree to the flat spot beside the boulder, he dropped it next to the rest of the wood he’d already gathered. Exhausted, he sank to his knees in the snow. His hands shook so badly he thought he might drop the four cotton balls he’d taken from his survival pouch. Leaning over the spruce nest to shield it from falling snow, he stuffed the cotton at the base of the twigs that made up the crown of the little tree. The simple act of grasping a match between his fingers was a Herculean task and he wasted three matches, dropping them into the snow with his clumsy efforts. Delirious, he laughed out loud that his life could hang in the balance over whether or not he had enough dexterity to hold on to a two-inch sliver of wood. The fourth match ignited before he dropped it, landing in the spruce crown rather than the snow. In a state of near euphoria over the tiny flame, he slowly, carefully, began to nudge the match close enough to catch one of the cotton balls. Thick, gray smoke seared Quinn’s eyes and threatened to choke him, but he didn’t dare move for fear that blowing snow would put out the feeble beginnings of the fire. Damp twigs in the spruce crown sputtered at first, but in no time the entire sappy mass burned as if it had been doused with gasoline. The flames cast long shadows in the cold gray twilight, illuminating Lovita’s lifeless body. Quinn wiped a tear from his eye with a trembling hand and allowed himself a moment of melancholy, thinking of how Lovita often said, “turn on” instead of “light” the fire.
Quinn piled on pieces of kindling no bigger than his thumb at first, allowing the fire to dry and ignite them before adding several more the size of his wrist, eventually forming a knee-high teepee around the blazing spruce crown.
It was all Quinn could do to keep from squatting down and letting the warmth of the flames overwhelm him. Still, the notion that a fire was there warmed him mentally, allowing a small sliver of hope to creep back into his mind. Forcing himself to leave the warmth, he half dragged, half carried an unconscious Beaudine to the fire.
Less than ten minutes later he’d stretched a silicon treated nylon tube tent on a piece of parachute cord strung between two likely spruce trees near the fire. When weighted down at the corners with stones from the riverbank, the single tube of waterproof cloth formed a triangular shelter that was open at both ends. Roughly three feet high at the center and seven feet long, the open end nearest the fire caught the warmth of the blaze as it reflected off the split boulder some ten feet away.
Quinn stripped out of his wet clothes now that he had someplace that would offer a relatively dry shelter. Popcorn-size snowflakes gave wet kisses to his shivering body as he hurried to pull the fresh wool underwear over clammy skin. Like pulling a dry sock over a wet foot, convulsive shaking made it even more difficult. He was panting by the time he finished, but he could think, and his hands were working again.
Wearing nothing but the black long johns and his unlaced boots, he was still shaking as he pulled Beaudine’s jacket up over her head. Then he used his teeth to tear open the vacuum-sealed bag Aunt Abbey had sent along. If it made Beaudine angry for him to make suggestions about tactics, he could only imagine how she’d feel when she woke up in the tent and realized he’d changed her into dry underwear — assuming she ever woke up.
The job done, he shoved and prodded the still unconscious Beaudine into the tent, taking care not to rip the fabric. He was sure Lovita carried several sleeping bags in her plane, but he’d only been able to find one in the wreckage, sealed in a compression bag under the co-pilot’s seat. Rather than risk more time in the icy water, he’d decided to make do with the one sleeping bag and a large Mylar survival bivy sack. The outer layer of the bivy was bright orange to make it easier to spot and facilitate a rescue. The inside was lined with reflective foil and large enough for two people to share, maximizing body heat in an emergency.
Quinn knew the cold ground would suck away massive amounts of body heat so he spread their only sleeping bag as flat as he could get it to give them some measure of insulation and padding. He put the bivy on top, rolling Beaudine’s body into the foil envelope. Her skin was blue and cold. The periodic rise and fall of her chest was the only thing that told him she was still alive. The hollow hopelessness of complete exhaustion fogged Quinn’s brain. He collapsed against the relative softness of the sleeping bag, giving in to the painfully overwhelming urge to sleep. The tension in his muscles began to fade, but the moment he closed his eyes, the thought of a faceless Russian killer crept in through the fog. Groaning, he pulled the bivy over Beaudine, and rolled over once again to crawl back out of the tent and through the blowing snow to the pile of gear he’d left by the boulder. A howling wind turned the fire into a forge and Quinn piled larger pieces of wood onto the blaze, knowing it would burn down all too fast. He grabbed the small Tupperware bowl of Lovita’s rich akutaq from his pack and picked up the rifle, dragging it back to the tent. The last of the gray was fading from the sky by the time he once again wiggled and crawled his way into the bivy bag. Lying on his side, he popped the top off the plastic tub and sucked a big glob of akutaq off his fingers. He could feel the fatty stuff begin to warm him at once, maybe even enough to keep him and Beaudine alive through the long Alaska night — if Worst of the Moon didn’t kill them in their sleep.