“You’re American?” Rudy gasped, breathless from the pace, as he looked up at Cal. Way up, because Rudy was maybe five-five. Beneath a red knit cap with a tassel at the crown, Rudy had scared-looking hazel eyes framed by wire-rimmed glasses, a big nose, a small mouth, and a round, pale face. Besides the cap, he was wearing a black fleece jacket zipped up to the neck, jeans, and sneakers. No backpack, no gear.
“You got proof of what you say happened to that plane? Because I want to see it,” was Cal’s reply. Cal had been offered a nice bonus on top of his fee if he made sure Rudy brought the promised “proof” with him. Of course, if Rudy couldn’t produce the proof, he’d still take Rudy back with him to the States. Rudy just might not like his reception at the other end.
“Yeah, sure. See?” Digging in his jeans pocket, Rudy came up with a small object that Cal had to squint at for a second before he recognized it: a flash drive.
Cal grunted and took the flash drive from Rudy, who looked like he wanted to protest but didn’t quite dare. Then they were at the plane steps. Shooing Rudy up the stairs, Cal glanced back at the trucks. They were still there at the end of the runway, still politely lighting up the pavement, waiting for their guests to leave.
“Easy enough,” Ezra said, coming up behind him.
“Seems like it,” Cal replied, and followed Rudy into the plane.
A few minutes later, they lifted off into what looked to be the start of a beautiful day.
Until it wasn’t.
Chapter Two
Freedom is a wonderful thing, Dr. Gina Sullivan thought as she watched the pair of rare white-tailed eagles disappear into the gathering storm clouds. The female of the pair had been trapped in an oil slick for nearly twenty-four hours. Cleaned up, tagged, and released, the eagle had been joined by her mate and the two were winging away toward the mountains to the north. Scudding along in a bright orange motorized rubber boat in the choppy gray waters off Attu Island’s Chirikof Point, Gina, an ornithologist, had been following as best she could in hopes of discovering the approximate location of their nest for later observation. But the oncoming storm meant that she was going to have to turn back, and so she’d stopped, shifting the Zodiac into neutral as she made one last observation. Lowering her binoculars with regret, she recorded in her small notebook the time—3:02 p.m.; the birds’ direction—northwest; and the birds’ speed—approximately twenty knots, then shoved the notebook into the pocket of her steel-blue, fur-lined parka for safekeeping.
For a moment she sat there as the little boat rode the swells, breathing deeply of the cold sea air, taking in the majesty of the rugged island with its beautiful snow-covered mountains, the wintry sea, the turbulent sky that threatened more snow. Kittiwakes, petrels, pelicans, and gulls screeched and circled above her. She watched a trio of brown pelicans gliding high above the water suddenly tuck their wings and dive toward the surface like kamikaze pilots, fishing for a meal, and felt a warm glow of contentment.
It’s good to be out in the field again.
It had been a long time—too long.
That thought she’d had about freedom? She realized that it applied to herself as much as the eagles. Only her prison was grief. And guilt. For five years now she had been mired in both as helplessly as the eagle had been mired in oil.
This trip, the first research project she had undertaken in the field since she’d lost her family, was an attempt to jump-start her life.
Baby steps.
Thunder crashed loudly in the distance, echoing off the mountains and startling the wheeling birds into silence. The clouds piling up on the horizon were noticeably darker than before.
Time to go.
Reluctantly coming about, Gina juiced the throttle and raced for camp, meaning to follow the coastline around the point until she reached Massacre Bay. The small plane burst through the heavy cloud cover approximately five minutes later.
Gina had been eyeing the amassing clouds with misgiving in the wake of another earsplitting clap of thunder. Thunder snow was never a good sign, and she’d just seen an ominous flicker of lightning behind the threatening wall of weather that was now chasing her across the sea. When the plane torpedoed out of those self-same clouds, she sat up straight in surprise on the fiberglass bench seat that ran across the bow. Muffled to the eyes by a snow mask and huddled into her waterproof parka with her hood secured tightly around a face that was all blue eyes, wide mouth, high cheekbones, and pointed chin, she gripped the wheel tighter and watched in astonishment as the plane streaked across the leaden sky toward her.
It’s way too low, was her first thought, even as she registered that it wasn’t a seaplane like the orange and white Reever that had delivered four of her fellow scientists to this remote atoll in the Pacific; it was, rather, a sleek silver jet. That realization was followed by an alarmed There’s something wrong as the plane continued to descend, blasting through the snow flurries on a trajectory that would bring it down way before it reached the island’s runway, which was the only one within hundreds of miles.