The River of Bones v5 (2 page)

Now Mrs. Faircloth from Fort Worth, Texas, wanted to search for her family’s lost possessions—wedding rings, wallets, and backpacks.  She had flown to Anchorage after the funeral looking for help and said she didn’t care what it cost.  Right away, she had been told to hire Simon and him, since they were known around town as two men who were experienced bush pilots and veteran outdoorsmen.

“That grizzly can run as fast as a race horse, and he’ll be within a few feet by the time Simon and I see him in the brush.  I don’t want to lose any more lives, especially yours.”

“Then what can we do?  Please, I want to find my family’s things—”  Her eyes glistened in the sunshine.

Simon joined them, still glancing over his shoulder.  He was a quintessential Alaskan—tall, tanned, tousled brown hair, and a day-old beard shadowing his weather-beaten face, which was brightened by blue eyes that were normally unafraid . . . except when he faced grizzlies in willow brush.  Six or seven people were killed each year by bears in Alaska, sometimes even more. 

No one knew where Simon had come from, since he’d appeared like an apparition.  Most people in Anchorage thought he’d come from Fairbanks, and most people in Fairbanks thought he’d come from Anchorage.  Whenever anyone pointed out this inconsistency, then it was said that he must be from Kenny Lakes, an anonymous settlement in the shadows of the Wrangell Mountains that was believed to be full of people running from the law.  That usually shut everyone up and got them glancing around to see if anyone was listening.  He often made the    gossip even worse by showing up around the state dressed in a business suit one day, then a moose-hide medicine jacket the next, dressed like an Athabasca shaman from the Yukon River.  His mystery was complete.

“Simon will stay here with you,” Jake answered, “and I’ll walk back to the helicopter, start up, and buzz the bear until he runs off.  Afterward, we can search like I promised.”

The woman eyed Simon, then his rifle.  “Can this man shoot if you chase the bear in the wrong direction?” she asked.

Jake couldn’t help smiling a little.  “Yes, even better than me, and I’ve seen him hit pop cans at two hundred yards.”

He walked downstream to the helicopter, climbed in, and flipped on the battery switch.  Next, he punched the starter button, wound the turbine, and then heard it ignite.  The blades began buzzing and he pulled on his headset.  Time to lift off, he told himself. 

He hovered over the scattered thickets of dwarf willow, alder, and spruce that covered the uneven, rocky ground until he passed Simon and their client standing off to one side.  Then he started dancing above the surface, first left, then right.  Slowly, he swung back and forth, until at last he saw the grizzly stand and look at him.  Pushing the cyclic control forward, he charged the bear head-on, then quick-stopped in front of it, with the helicopter’s tail cone pitched down and five main rotor blades slapping the air with all their lifting force.  The bear streaked away at full speed and ran up Foggytop Mountain.

Good, he thought, this one didn’t stand there swinging his forepaws like an oversized prizefighter.  He had seen grizzlies behave like boxers during wildlife tagging operations, refusing to give ground.  A nine-foot bear, standing tall, snapping and snarling at a helicopter was a scary sight, and sometimes they were so fearless even hovering helicopters had to back off.  He loved and feared them simultaneously, since they were the world’s largest predators.  Satisfied the bear would head over the mountain, he turned and landed again, then began walking back.

Stopping at an icy spring, he knelt and drank from it.  His reflection shone on its glassy surface, mirroring his black hair, dark suntan, and coffee-brown eyes.  Although he was in his late thirties, his face looked a bit younger.  He felt strong and jogged every day, but lately an anonymous anxiety had haunted him, with tragic losses like Molly Faircloth’s upsetting him more than in the past.  He walked upstream again, remembering how great life had once been.

For some reason he’d hit a rough patch in life, a place where nothing seemed right.  The money had stopped coming in and he’d started questioning his way of life.  For so long, he’d been sure the right woman would come along and there would be someone to share things with, but that hadn’t happened.  The rough and tumble of his past didn’t seem like it had been so much fun now.  He’d had every success in life but felt like a failure, and he wondered if others had similar doubts about themselves.  It seemed as if something was missing. 

He still clung to many of his old ways, finding solace in good cigars and California wine, faded jeans and flight jackets, and now and then a high-stakes poker game.  A man shouldn’t live unless he could bet on it—his personal philosophy, as nonsensical as it seemed at times.  All he knew was that he had reached a point where he felt like an aberration.  There was something out there for him, but he just didn’t know what it was.

When he returned to the bushy bottom where Molly’s son and daughter-in-law had been killed and eaten, he saw her sitting on a flat boulder, crying, her face and golden-brown hair a big mess and a ripped and bloodstained backpack lying at her feet.  Farther off, Simon was walking back and forth with his head down, still searching for missing items.  He walked past her and stopped beside his friend.

“Have you figured out what happened?  I see you found a pack.”

His partner
had exceptional eyesight and was an old hand at picking up the pieces of disaster.  Working together, they’d recovered wrecked airplanes and helicopters, found lost hikers, and gathered the scattered bones of unlucky adventurers for years.  It had become a way of life for them, but at times not a very pleasant one.  Alaska was an unforgiving place.

“They made the usual mistake.  A couple weeks ago a grizzly killed a cow moose and her calf, then covered what it couldn’t eat at first.  A few days later the Faircloths came along, but instead of staying up high where they could see ahead, they walked right through this brush.  I found a police whistle they were using, but all that did was piss off the bear and let him get ready.  When in hell will people ever learn?”  Shaking his head, Simon continued drifting left and right, gazing steadily at the ground.

“Is there much left of the two moose?  Looks like more than one bear has been here.”

“No, just some bones and guts, which is why it still stinks so much around here.  The bear you chased off is only one of a half dozen that might have killed them.  There are at least—”

Suddenly, Simon stopped, picked up something bright still fastened to a little yellow bone, and let out a low whistle.  “God . . . what an awful sight, but amazing as well.  Look at the size of the diamond in this ring.”

“For crying out loud, clean it up and don’t tell Molly what it looked like if she asks.”  Jake stepped up to Simon’s side and watched him wiggle the bone and blackened bits of human flesh out of the band.  Finally, the wedding ring was clean.

“Keep looking,” he added, “and I’ll walk over and give this to her.  She looks so sad right now it breaks my heart, but we need to get this over with.  Follow me if you find anything else.”  Jake walked toward their client, who looked a little better now.  When he reached her side, he sat on the same boulder and gave her the ring.

“Simon found this . . . must have fallen out of a pocket.”

She clutched the wedding band in her hands and stared at Foggytop Mountain, tears running down her sunlit cheeks.  She moaned and bit her lip.  “Thank—thank you,” she said.  “I’ll give this to my grandson when he gets older.  It will mean a lot—”

“Is there something else you want us to find?  I’ll go back and help.”

“No, and please stay here because I want to keep my mind off how awful I feel.  My son’s backpack is the only thing missing now.  I hope Simon finds it.  He seems so strong in the worst of times.”

“He’s lived in Alaska a long time,” said Jake.  “I suspect he was in the Special Forces and flew secret missions by what he has told me, but he never says much about his past.  I think he was in Afghanistan after the Russians bailed out of there, but who knows. 

“There’s not many like him.  He’s the last true wanderer I know, and the only nonperson I know as well.  He doesn’t have a driver’s license or social security number that I know of, won’t work unless he’s paid in cash, and usually rides a racing bike around town.  He’s a great pilot and fully trustworthy whenever I need him, and I love him like a brother.”

“Where are you from?  You look younger than him, and have you lived in Alaska as long?”

“No, I came up from Minnesota after flying in the Iraq War.”  He remembered his own past and the horror of seeing friends shot down, some never coming back, or they were crippled for life if they had.  He had searched for a new home, and Alaska had seemed like heaven.

Molly’s voice stirred him from his bad memories.  “You’ve done well since moving here.  Your helicopter must be worth a half-million dollars.”

“It’s not mine, and I rented it from a friend so I could come up here.  Years ago I had a little money, but not now.  Simon and I struggle to make ends meet, and we haven’t had any money for a long time.  Alaskans have an old saying, ‘Please God, one more oil spill, and this time we won’t piss it away.’  I suppose the old shoe fits . . .”  Once more, he felt anxiety creeping around inside.  His luck hadn’t been good for a long time, despite his hard work, and maybe he should try flying for the airlines.

“Jake, I have more money than you can imagine, and what good has it done me?  All I have left in the world is my grandson.  My husband, bless him, died years ago because he wouldn’t stop working day and night.  Now I’ve lost my only child and his wife as well.  Give me back my family and I’ll give you everything I have.  Money means nothing without—”  She starting sobbing again.

He reached over and held her, rocking her like a child.  Suddenly, he felt the weight of her sorrow and the humiliation of wasting time feeling sorry for himself.  Simon and he had full lives and were living in the best place in the world.  They had great lives and good health, so what more could they want.

He gazed at the clear blue sky, snowcapped peaks, and red tundra, colored by the first frosts of fall.  His own eyes grew moist, mostly because of Molly’s deep sorrow, but also because the Brooks Range was almost too beautiful to believe.  Godlike beams brightened the mountaintops in every direction.

Finally, he felt her stop crying, and then he saw Simon walking toward them, carrying the last backpack.  It looked weather-beaten and bloodstained as well . . . and now he wished his friend wasn’t so good at finding things, but at least it was time to go.

They had almost gotten back to the helicopter when he heard a single-engine Cessna coming over the horizon from the south, the direction of the frontier village of Bettles.  He had worked around airplanes all his life—Beechcrafts, Cessnas, Pipers—and knew their noisy sounds by heart.  The National Park Service was looking for them, apparently because someone had complained about their mercy trip and turned them in.

“Molly, we need to run,” he said.  “We got to get out of here.”

Instantly, her face whitened.  “What’s wrong—is a bear coming back?”  She started running.

“No, but the Park Service will arrest us if they find us.  We weren’t supposed to come here and get back your things.  This is national park and private helicopters are illegal.”

“How was I to recover my family’s personal things, let alone see where they were killed?  Didn’t you ask permission?”

“I begged them, but it didn’t do any good.”

“What will they do if they catch us?  I can’t believe we’ve broken any laws.”

“They’ll confiscate my friend’s helicopter and keep it for themselves, then try bankrupting us with fines, court costs, and high-priced lawyers.  They’ve done that to lots of people before.”

He climbed into the pilot’s door the moment he reached the McDonnell Douglas, hit the battery and start switches, and watched Simon and Molly jump in as well.  The turbine engine and main rotor blades started spinning fast enough for takeoff.  He raised the collective and the helicopter lifted off.

Zoom!
  He felt the helicopter shudder as an airplane shot past a few feet away.  Christ, was the pilot trying to kill everybody?

He lowered the nose of the helicopter and watched it accelerate to top speed.  He glimpsed a red and white Cessna banking around to chase them.  He kept the 500E low, fast, and heading north in a narrow valley.  Although he knew the Cessna was fifteen knots faster in level flight, the McDonnell Douglas had an advantage of its own.  It could climb 2,000 feet a minute, twice as fast as any single-engine airplane.

He clicked the intercom bottom on the cyclic control.  “Molly, can you stand a little excitement?  I want to lose the pilot who’s chasing us.  You can’t see him but he’s right on our tail.”

“This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life.  Do whatever you want— ”  Her voice cut away.

He glanced at the copilot side and saw Simon grinning.  His friend knew what was coming after the mountains got higher and the valley narrowed even more.

After taking a deep breath, he thumbed the intercom again.  “Simon, dig out the FM scanner and listen to what they’re saying.  I bet they have the Fairbanks’ office all excited by now.”

He watched his friend sort through the knapsack they always carried and pull out a small black radio and a set of headphones.  They loved electronics . . . any new gadget that helped them get an edge.  Sometimes their very lives depended on those high-tech devices, like GPS, the global satellite system that had changed the world of flying.  Now a pilot always knew his exact position, speed, and distance.

At last Simon answered on the intercom, “They have our N-number and are checking with the FAA Registry in Oklahoma City.  There are two on board and they don’t understand why we’re heading north.”

Moments later, Jake saw the mountains get closer on each side of him and soar toward the sun.  The time had come!  He hit the intercom button again.  “Hang on and don’t panic, because I’m stopping this thing midair.  The Cessna pilot will turn left and climb when he goes by, trying to keep us in sight, but he’ll scare himself silly in these mountains.  By the time he gets leveled off and gets over nearly committing suicide, we’ll be long gone.”