"Yum," Liam said.
"Hey," she said, draining the last of the aviation gas out of the hose before closing the tank back up, "we don't have to eat 'em." She gave the cap a last twist, and grinned down at him. "We just have to help catch 'em and sell 'em."
He couldn't help grinning back. She stood at the top of the ladder, her face and form outlined against the blue sky, wisps escaping her braid to curl around her face, all the hidden lights in her dark blond hair glinting in the sun, her brown eyes alive with mischief. She looked so desirable to him that he knew a sudden wish to pull her off that ladder and tumble her onto the beach. His flesh rose at the very thought. Down, boy, he said to himself, and made a production out of removing the gas pump and closing up the drum. "So most of the herring goes to Japan?"
"Pretty much all of it." He heard her folding up the stepladder and replacing it in the back of the plane. "The Japanese like their seafood, bless them, and they consider herring roe to be a special delicacy."
"Hence the fourteen hundred dollars a ton."
"This year anyway," she said. "Last year it was only a thousand."
"Only," Liam muttered.
"Hey!"
They both turned to see a large man with a red face plowing toward them through the gravel. "What the hell do you think you're doing!"
"Gassing up our plane," Wy said mildly. "What's it to you?"
"That's my gas you're using!"
Wy looked from him to the fuel dump to the dozen other identical fuel dumps within eyesight along the beach. "How can you tell?"
"I told my guys to drop three barrels right about here, and a gas pump and a ladder with them!" The man seemed incapable of lowering his voice. The guy towered over her-towered over Liam, for that matter-and outweighed the two of them combined by at least fifty pounds. He had fists the size of rump roasts and shoulders like cinder blocks. He looked like the Incredible Hulk, and Liam didn't want to make him mad.
Neither did Wy. "Sorry," she said with an ingratiating smile, "we thought this was our dump. We told our guy to put ours here, too. And I brought our ladder with me." She pointed. "There's another three barrels right up the beach, with a ladder lying next to them."
The big man turned to look. "Shit, that must be another half a mile up!" He turned and glared at her. "This would be a hell of a business if it weren't for the goddamn fishermen, wouldn't it?"
"A hell of a business," Wy agreed, and he plowed off to yet another Super Cub that looked far too small to hold him, climbed in, and sprayed gravel all over them as he taxied down the beach.
"He's going to dig himself in if he's not careful," Wy said, observing the maneuver dispassionately. "Yup. Come on."
The big man was out of the little plane and cursing it with all his might when they arrived. Wy went to one strut, nodded Liam to the tail, and waited politely for the other pilot to finish relieving his feelings and take the other strut. He did, eventually, and they bulled the little craft up the beach to the next fuel dump. It was only a few hundred feet farther, but the sand and gravel were loose and when they were done Liam wanted a real shower and wanted it now.
He had to settle for a couple of sticks of beef jerky and a Hershey bar. "First class all the way," he said wryly. He washed down the jerky with bottled water. "So, is this pretty much the way the day went with Bob DeCreft?"
Her head snapped around and she gave him a sharp look. "Pretty much," she said cautiously. "The first warning announcement by Fish and Game came at ten a.m., the second at noon, the third at two. By then, the fuel dump was dry and Bob and I flew straight back to Newenham."
"Uh-huh. And Bob did pretty much what I'm doing, sat in the backseat watching for planes?"
"Pretty much."
"How long were you up?"
"Including stops to refuel? Maybe eight, ten hours."
"So, no herring caught that day. That's why they're opening today?"
"Why they're maybe opening today," she corrected him. "We did get a short opener three days ago in Togiak. April twentyninth, the earliest herring season has ever been. Didn't come anywhere near the quota, though, which is why we get another shot at it."
"When is herring season usually?"
"Another two weeks or so. Middle of May, sometimes later."
"Why is it so early this year?"
"They're saying El Nino-you know, that warm current of water in the equatorial Pacific that sometimes moves too far north and west and throws everybody's weather out of kilter?"
"No snow in Anchorage? Floods in North Dakota?"
She nodded. "That's it. It's affecting more than just the weather. They caught a marlin in Puget Sound, tuna off Kodiak Island."
"Herring in Bristol Bay two weeks before time."
She smiled, clearly pleased with her exceptional pupil.
"You know, last night when I was looking out your window I saw a king jump in the river. It occurs to me it's early for king salmon, too."
"Way too early."
"Wy, did Bob say or do anything out of the ordinary that day? Did he have a fight with anyone on the ground?" Liam hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the big man refueling his Cub. "Duke it out with a pilot over a misplaced fuel dump, maybe?" She shook her head. "Okay, did he get into an argument with anyone on the radio?"
"No. Remember, the spotter can't talk to the boats, only to the pilot."
"So did he get into a fight with you?"
Her hesitation was infinitesimal, and he would have missed it if he hadn't been watching her so closely. "No."
He gave a long stretch. She watched him like a mouse waiting for the cat to pounce. "So it was just a normal day in the air?"
"As normal as it gets during herring spotting. Speaking of spotting." She checked her watch, and this time there was no mistaking the relief in her words. "Two hours to the announcement, or so we hope. We'd better get back in the air."
"Why do we have to go up so soon?"
"We need to do some scouting," she said, and waved him forward. "Find out where those little silver bastards hang when they're making babies. Come on, come on, let's move like we got a purpose."
ELEVEN
So they moved like they had a purpose. The Cub raised up off the beach smoothly and without incident, Liam helping in his usual fashion by clutching the edge of his seat. They headed south down the coast for about thirty minutes before making a one-eighty and retracing their steps. Fifteen minutes later she pointed out the left side. "Look," she said. Even over the headphones her voice sounded tense with excitement.
"For what?" he said, forcing himself to look out.
"Herring."
"What do they look like?"
"Big dark patches in the water. If you see some, poke and point."
"Okay."
All Liam saw was an endless expanse of green with a shoreline that looked too far away, a couple of boats cruising through, their wakes zigzagging with apparent aimlessness, and three other small planes at one, three, and eight o'clock, flyspecks on a light blue horizon. Then there was a glint of something in the distance, at about ten o'clock. He focused on that spot, and saw it again. "Hey?"
"Poke and point," she said, and he poked her in the shoulder and pointed past her left eye.
"Attaboy," she said. "Let's take a look." She made a slow left bank that from a distance would have looked as aimless as the course of the boats below. Ten minutes later they were drawing a perfect circle in the sky, as if they hadn't a care in the world. It was herring, all right, a dark patch with occasional flashes of silver as the fish hit the surface.
"Too small to bother Wolfe with," Wy said. "He's high boat; he's not interested in less than the offspring of an entire species."
"You don't like him," Liam said, looking at the back of her head, which didn't reveal much.