Fire and ice (25 page)

"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.

"Nope," she said.

"Then why work for him?"

"Because he's high boat," she said, in a tone that made him feel a fool for asking. "I'd work for the devil himself if he'd been high boat for herring for four years running."

"Fourteen hundred dollars a ton," Liam said.

"We can only hope," Wy said.

They found two other schools--Wy called them skeins--both too small to bother with. One already had a couple of boats sitting on it, waiting for the go-ahead to drop their nets. The second was being scouted by another plane, a Cessna 172 on floats. Liam knew that because they got close enough for him to read the manufacturer's lettering along the side.

"Knock that crap off, Miller," Wy ordered, and it took Liam a moment to realize she was talking to the pilot of the other plane. The 172 waggled its wings and banked hard left rudder. It was a little above and a little ahead of the Cub, and Liam had an excellent view of the bottom of its floats through the skylight in the roof of the Cub as it roared overhead. "Sweet Jesus," he muttered, forgetting his mike was hot.

"Get used to it," Wy said. "And don't forget, when you see a plane out of the pattern, don't be shy about pointing it out. Yell; slap me if that's what it takes to get my attention. Got it?"

"Got it," Liam said, clenching his teeth as the Cub pulled what felt like ten g's as Wy circled to head back down the coast.

"Good."

"Tell me again about the pattern."

"There's really only two rules. One is, always circle to your left. Two is, always keep the beach on our left."

"Explain it to me again."

With saintlike patience, Wy explained it to him again. "If we're all circling left, we're all circling left. Minimizes the chance of collision with somebody circling right. As we circle, we come up on and cross the shoreline. As we cross the shoreline, if we keep the beach on our left, it keeps us in the circle and going the same direction."

Liam realized and appreciated her patience, but he needed the repetition. The rules were safety rules. The safer Liam felt, the less distracted he would be, and the less distracted, the more observant. Observant in particular of planes that didn't circle to the left and didn't keep the beach always on their left.

At ten the radio crackled into life, and the same lifeless voice heard the night before came on. "This is the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. There will be an announcement concerning a herring opener in the Nushagak District for both drift and seine at twelve noon, May 2, on this frequency. I repeat, this is the Alaska Department of--"

"The Alaska Department of Hurry Up and Wait," Wy finished for him. "Okay, that's it, the point of no return. Time to head back to the beach and gas up." She stood the Cub on one wing, Liam grabbed for his stomach, and they headed back the way they had come. Below passed boats too numerous to count, two and three and four and five at a time, each group guided by its own spotter. Wy shook her head and said disapprovingly, "Five boats is too many for one plane to spot for. So is four. Three is about right. Two would be better."

"Why?"

"Because you've already got too much to do. You've got to fly the plane, look out for other planes, spot the herring, track the herring, and advise your boats. Advising three boats where to put their nets is plenty. Advising five, something else suffers."

They set down on the beach without incident, although the tide was considerably higher, and the available landing strip, to Liam's terrified eye, considerably narrower as a result. Someone had been at their fuel dump while they were gone; the first barrel was empty. The other two hadn't been tapped, and Wy took the discovery philosophically. "Probably whoever took it will let me know and reimburse me."

"How do you know?" Liam looked up and down the beach again. "It doesn't look like any of the dumps are marked. How does anyone know which gas is his? If you're taking somebody else's gas, or he's taking some of yours, how do you know?"

She shrugged, getting the stepladder out again. "Happens every year. The dumps aren't well marked; we're all using the same gas; everybody's in a hurry. After the season closes, the pilot will put the word out that he took some gas he thought was his and turned out not to be, and who can he pay back?"

Liam thought about it, working the pump arm, listening to gas slosh through the hose. "I'm not going to get this, am I," he said finally.

She tossed him a cheerful grin. "Nope. But don't worry about it, I've never been shot at for thieving." The grin flashed again. "Not yet, anyway." She topped off the wing tank and closed it up. She paused, up on the ladder. "What's that?"

"What's what?" He looked up from closing the drum and saw her pointing at the edge of the beach where it began to slope down. There was a thick stand of tall ryegrass bending gently in the breeze.

She scampered down the ladder and hared up the beach. "Wow, look at that!"

He came panting up behind to find her burrowing into the soil with both hands. "Wy, what is it?"

"Help me dig!"

He saw a round shape emerging, and fell back with an explosive sigh. "Jesus, I thought it was a dead body at least."

"Come on, help me dig!"

He resigned himself, and helped her dig.

It was a glass float, one of thousands and over the years probably millions that had broken loose from Japanese fishing nets and floated across the Pacific Ocean to wash ashore on Alaska's coast. The usual find was four inches in diameter. This one, a clear green unbroken sphere with tiny bubbles of air caught inside the shell, was over eighteen inches across.

"Score!" Wy said, sitting back on her heels and beaming.

Liam remembered the glass floats from the Cub's inventory. He sat back and brushed the dirt from his hands. "Beachcombing's part of herring spotting, I take it."

"Beachcombing is a part of everything," Wy said severely, getting to her feet. "You never know what you're going to find--a glass float, a walrus tusk, an eagle feather. A case of Spam."

"A case of Spam?"

She nodded. "I found one last year, washed up on shore south of here. The box was falling apart but the cans were okay. We're still eating them." She held the float up by its netting, admiring it. "I bet I could get a hundred bucks for this."

"You sell them?"

"Five bucks for the little ones, seven-fifty if they've still got their nets. And on up, depending on what kind of shape they're in and if they've still got their netting on." She grinned. "I get a lot of tourists my way, Liam. They don't call themselves that, of course, they are fishermen and hunters and hikers and like that, but they're tourists all the same, from Outside and overseas and all over the world. Most of them have never seen something like this. I've got a basketful of them in my shack at the airport."

"The door of which you oh so casually leave open while you're loading the plane."

"Every little bit helps," she said cheerfully. She placed the float in back of Liam's seat, wrapping it in her sleeping bag. "A good omen," she said, regarding it with satisfaction. "It's going to be a good day for us."

Liam thought of what was in store for him and shuddered, but maintained a diplomatic silence. Wy knew he didn't like flying, but pride had kept him from showing her how much, and he was damned if he was going to confess now. Instead he said, "You have dimples."

She blinked up at him. "I beg your pardon?"

"You have dimples," he said. He framed her face with his dirty hands. "One here"--he kissed it--"and one here." He kissed it, too, and drew back to smile at her. "Never saw them before."

He watched with a secret smile as it took her two tries to fumble out the Ziploc bags full of sliced dry salami and Tillamook extra sharp cheese. They ate a quick lunch, washing it down with bottled water and following it with another Hershey bar. Ten minutes later they were back in the air. By this time Liam was inured to it, or so he told himself. Maybe he was going to get over his fear of flying after all. Maybe, just maybe he was going to learn how to climb on board a plane without breaking into a sweat of fear.

They cruised down the coast for forty-five minutes, seeing various groups of boats staking out various likely-looking balls of herring. The radio crackled into life. "Wy, you up there?"

"I'm up here, Cecil."

"You seeing anything?"

"Nothing worth mentioning."

"Get the goddamn lead out," Wolfe ordered. "We're an hour away from the announcement."

"Where are you?"

"You can spot me easy--I've got an orange buoy in the crow's nest."

Wy muttered something.

"What was that?"

"Could you be a little more specific, Cecil? Like what landmass is off your bow?"

There was a silence ripe with things unspoken. Liam imagined Cecil rending the air blue with imprecations about uppity bitches who had no business mouthing off to their employers. Either that or Wolfe didn't know where he was.