The bullet slammed into Whynot’s chest with force enough to knock over a man ten times his size. He went over the side, into the freezing water. The crew thought the shooter was going to fire again. Aqpayuk ducked. Walter ran for the steering console. Edward grabbed the gaff, already looking over the side to where Whynot floated facedown in the sea, a spreading mass of red around him.
The boat, released from human control, began swinging in a wild arc, bounced off a piece of ice just as Walter got it under control, and powered down, gliding toward his captain.
Aqpayuk stood up, holding up his hands, like a bank robber caught by police.
Walter, calling Whynot’s name, brought the boat beside Whynot’s body.
Edward roared at the chopper, “You shot him!”
The chopper hovering. The body starting to sink until Edward gaffed it, like a dead whale.
The sniper in shock up there.
The word — a shooting death — to spread in town when the boat returned.
They killed Whynot Francis! They shot him down like a dog! They’re going to kill all of us! They said vaccine would come and they lied!
SEVENTEEN
It got worse in town after that, fast. Deep winter arrived early that night. A November-type freeze slammed the coast in mid-October, as news of the accidental shooting death spread. A cloak of ice descended upon the tundra, wire, soldiers stamping to keep warm out there.
Before Whynot’s death, some residents had brought food out to the wire for soldiers. That stopped. Some citizens, a few, veterans mostly, had acknowledged passing patrols with waves of the hand. That stopped, too. A sullen rage gripped the city, a sense of building fury.
General Homza considered sending Rangers house to house, to seize firearms. Merlin and the mayor talked him out of it. Shooting will start if you do.
Previously I’d thought of Arctic seasons in terms of color, white winters, floral summers. Winter was feel. At twelve below zero skin became paper. At thirty below, outerwear did, too. Oxygen was fragile. Breath solidified inside your nose. Teeth hurt. Light had substance. Earth was Pluto, so far from sun that heat was misnomer, legend, memory, grail.
“Hold still, Chase. This will hurt.”
The nine-year-old boy looked scared, watching the hypodermic. His mother carried a sleeping infant on a sling, on her back. The boy made no sound as the rabies vaccination went in, from a supply — two hundred fresh doses — that arrived that morning. I’d been assigned to the airport, where twenty children stood fretfully in line, in the terminal. The room was unnaturally quiet. Most adults present glared at me. I felt them blaming me, the Army, the general, Washington, D.C., for the outbreak.
Making everything even harder was the fact that a preventative rabies regimen, for those who may have been exposed, was four vaccinations over a two-week period.
Eddie was at the hospital, examining anyone coming in with fevers, aches, possible early signs of rabies. We took blood. We were off the criminal investigation, separated so that Amanda Ng and Raymond Hess could question us one at a time, which they did at least once a day. Back in D.C., Ng had told me, our old boss, Admiral Galli, was being grilled to see if he was hiding anything about the origin of the disease.
“The White House needs to be on top of this,” Ng said.
“Brave boy. Bring him back in three days, for the next shot,” I advised the boy’s mother, who looked about twenty-five.
She regarded me disdainfully, zipping up her son’s parka. “You are not going to vaccinate all of us, are you?”
“Ma’am, that just isn’t true. The supply comes in slowly. Ma’am, you were Clay Qaqulik’s next-door neighbor, I see. Did he ever talk to you about the Harmons?”
“You,” she said, and I understood the word to include the soldiers, Homza, Eddie, “you killed Whynot.”
She led the boy out the heavy swinging door. Outside the terminal, vehicles idled; cars, snowmobiles, a four-wheel ATV. Some families arrived with the kids in sleds pulled by snowmobile, breath frosting, in the cold.
I asked the next family in line about Clay. I asked everyone. It was useless. Whynot’s death had thrown up a wall. The father growled at me, over his shoulder, as he left, “You people always ask, you never answer,” and opened the door, to let in a blast of Arctic air. I felt the eyes of the others in line. The silence grew deeper than the resentments. Rangers stood in the corners, in case force might be needed to control civilians. But this morning, at least, it was not.
On my way home in the Ford I spotted two Iñupiat men with ice probes, long, thin iron poles, standing beyond the beach, on newly formed sea ice. They were probing thickness. Only later would the reason become clear.
I checked in with the general via encrypted cell, and urged once again that we explain the truth about the vaccine shortage to the community.
“Open your mouth, and the cell door in Leavenworth will close it,” Homza said.
The North Slope borough rescue squad hangar had been designated one of three food distribution points. The squad’s Lear jet and copters had been moved to a different hangar, to provide more space. Each morning two big Hercules arrived from Fairbanks, carrying supplies, which were then forklifted into the hangar. Portable heaters hissed as soldiers took old ration coupons from people in line, and handed out new ones, freshly printed, good for three days.
I filled my knapsack with Ronzoni spaghetti, Folgers coffee, white rice, and cans of Green Giant peas. I took a package of frozen hamburger stamped UNITED STATES ARMY. There were canned pears and Devil Dogs and Coca-Cola and cartons of Marlboros on another table. There was Heinz ketchup. There was Bumble Bee tuna. There was A&P brand white bread. People in line brought their own bags, cardboard boxes, or knapsacks to load.
Someone behind me bumped me roughly. I turned and looked into the florid face of a man I recognized as one of the baggage handlers at the airport, that is, when the airport worked. He was a big white guy with long greasy hair jutting from his soiled stocking cap, bad teeth, bad breath, and bad posture. Stuffing spilled from a rip in his oil-stained parka, poked out from peeling duct tape he’d applied to cover the rip.
He stared back at me, wanting to fight. He sneered. He said, smiling in challenge, “Must have tripped. Sorry.”
I turned back and heard him snicker.
You’re a lucky guy, I thought, considering what I could have done to him, what I wanted to do, but I recognized my own misplaced anger. I needed my anger for someone else.
Don’t waste it on him.
The reporter/photographer pool arrived by Hercules transport. Pressure was growing in the rest of the country for the White House to prove that the city was getting humanitarian aid. The reporters stayed outside the wire. They milled about on the tundra in a group, like a herd of musk ox, staying close to one another. Fish do that to hide from predators. Reporters did it as if that might shield them from germs.
They snapped photos from a distance. They interviewed soldiers two hundred yards off, where the disease was allegedly held at bay by thin wire. I took a break from vaccinating and watched them through a window, and saw the way their breath seemed to be absorbed into one mass of rising fog, mist the color of gauze-protective masks.
What’s it like to be working the wire, soldier?