Season of Death (33 page)

The dock swayed radically as Ray stepped onto it, rotten wood groaning, threatening to give. The plane had to be anchored to something else, Ray thought. Depending on the old dock to keep it from drifting downstream would be foolhardy. He examined two ropes that lashed the closest pontoon to a bleached piling before noticing a third line. This one ran away on the farside of the dock, connecting the plane to a stake that had been pounded into the tundra. He returned to the shore, arms waving to maintain his balance as the clunky dock jiggled beneath him. After slipping off his pack, he knelt and gave the stake a tug. It didn’t budge. One inch, steel, it was probably a foot long, embedded firmly in the earth. The Otter wasn’t going anywhere.

Weaving his way back across the dock, he hopped onto a float and inspected the craft. It was in good shape: relatively new, with a glossy coat of forest green paint. He reached to open the engine hood. The cavity was clean, well maintained. Slamming it, he felt the plane wobble and turned his head to see Keera climb inside the cabin.

“What are you doing?’’

“Helping you look.”

“For what? You don’t know what to look for.”

“Neither do you,” she shot back.

Ray sidestepped his way down the float and joined her in the cabin. It contained four narrow seats, two in front, two directly behind, and a cargo area. No bodies, alive, dead, or otherwise. No notes that Ray could see. Keera hopped into the pilot’s seat and took the stick, pretending to fly. Ray squeezed his way into the front passenger seat. He glanced at the instruments. The needle on the gas gauge was pointing to the E. Probably because the plane’s battery wasn’t on. He reached up and pressed the ignition button. Nothing. It probably required a key.

Opening the miniature glove compartment located at his knees, Ray rifled through a collection of flight maps. Keera was fiddling with the radio, calling the Anchorage tower.

“Doesn’t work,” she complained, replacing the mike.

“The battery’s not on,” Ray told her, shutting the compartment. He reached under the seat and withdrew an empty candy-bar wrapper and a blank legal pad. Replacing them, he motioned. “Anything under that seat?”

Keera bent to check. “A flashlight … a hat …” she reported, presenting a University of Washington baseball cap like the one Janice Farrell had worn. “And a book.” She handed Ray a thick text:
Paleo-lndians and the Rise of Thule Culture.

Ray fanned through it, gave the inside cover a cursory glance and handed it back. “What about in there?” He pointed to a pocket to Keera’s left.

She fished a hand though it. “Breath mints … Granóla bar … No-Doz?” She offered the small container for Ray’s inspection. “What are they for?”

“They help you stay awake. Sort of like coffee, except stronger. Anything else?”

Keera produced a penlight, then a book of matches. “That’s it.”

Nodding, Ray sighed. It shouldn’t have surprised him. What had he expected to find in a parked float plane? Illegal drugs? Guns? He pressed himself through the seats and checked the back. There wasn’t much to check: two uncomfortably narrow plastic chairs with shoulder harnesses. He ran a hand under each seat. Dust. A stray bolt. A luggage ID tag with a blank window. Another candy-bar wrapper. Twisting in the chair, he popped open one of the rear cargo bays. The narrow compartment contained a set of flares. He tried to imagine stuffing a backpack into the space, much less a summer’s worth of gear. There had to be a larger bay somewhere. He tried the other cargo hold and discovered a discarded duffel bag and a wadded up Gor-tex windbreaker. In one of the pockets of the jacket he found a bandanna. In the other, a Baggie of prehistoric gorp.

Closing the bay, Ray scooted out the door, onto the pontoon. The Otter bucked with the shifting weight but quickly stabilized. Running his hand along the body of the fiiselage, he felt a depression. Then his fingers recognized a handle. He jerked on it. When nothing happened, he twisted. The handle did a 180 and a four-by-four section of the fuselage swung open with a creak. Peering in, Ray judged the compartment to be about five feet wide, almost ten feet long. The entire tail was hollow. Unfortunately, nothing noteworthy had been stored there: a topless wooden crate, a stained nylon stuff sack that had probably once held a sleeping bag, an old, deformed Frisbee, and, in the recesses of the hold, a red, metal gas can that was lashed to the side by a web of straps. Pulling himself up into the hold, Ray glanced into the crate. Empty. He picked up the stuff sack, tossed it aside. Out of curiosity, he nudged the fuel can. It sloshed, then clunked. The latter was an odd sound, as if a coconut had been dropped into the can.

He was reaching to twist the cap when he noticed the wires—red, black, yellow, running from the can, through a tiny hole in the fuselage. He tried to think of a practical reason that a gas can would be wired to the plane but couldn’t. Maybe it was some sort of auxiliary, emergency fuel tank, in case the main tank was low on fuel. But that would require hoses. He looked, but there weren’t any.

Removing the cap, he craned his neck to peer inside. The smell of gasoline rose to meet him. The can was almost half-full, the trio of wires disappearing beneath the surface of the murky liquid. He tugged gently on the wires. There was a clunk as a hard object rocked against the side of the can. The wires were attached to something heavy. He pulled on them again and slowly reeled in what felt like a baseball-sized rock.

As it emerged from the gas, Ray’s first thought was that the block of orange was small for its weight: three pounds packed into a three-by-five-inch rectangle. His second thought was that it contained drugs. Wrapped tightly in cellophane, it resembled a small brick of dope. As it neared the circular opening of the can, he began to wonder if it was clay. He could see the texture through the plastic wrap: solid, smooth, supple …

His next thought robbed him of breath. Still holding a fistful of yellow, red, and black wires, the brick of
clay
suspended a few inches below the rim of the hole, he froze.

It was at that moment that his overwrought brain chose to submit the obvious: in all of his life, he had never been this close to a bomb.

THIRTY-FIVE

P-L-AS-T-I-Q-U-E

Ray squinted at the tiny black letters and the dime-sized skull and crossbones below them as the orange brick dangled from his trembling hand. The word rang in his head as the pendulum accelerated, the block of explosive swinging perilously close to the sides of the fuel can.

What now? Let the bomb back down into the gas? Hope the buoyancy of the fuel would keep it from banging against the bottom. Or try to withdraw it without whacking it against the mouth of die can.

What if he simply released his grip and made a leap for the door? No. He wouldn’t beat the explosion. And what about Keera? If she was still in the cockpit, she would be engulfed by the flames. Ray, who was no expert on plastic explosives, guessed that there was probably enough there to reduce the Otter to dust.

“Keera!” he called. “Keera! Get out of the plane!”

Nothing. She probably couldn’t hear him from the cockpit. In the absence of a reply, he studied the bomb. The three wires ran to a black square of hard plastic attached to the bottom of the block of explosive. A detonating device, he supposed. Or a timer? There was no digital readout, like bombs always had in the movies, no red glowing numbers ticking a countdown. This was a simple weapon. Simple and deadly.

“Keera?”

“What?” Her head shot up into the cargo bay, and Ray nearly had a coronary. He flinched and the bomb clanked against the can, once, twice, three times …

“Get off the plane!”

“Why?” she whined.

“I found a bomb, okay. Get off. Go back to the Community Center.”

“Maybe I can help.”

“Get off.” His arm was shaking now, not from fear so much as fatigue.

Closing her eyes, Keera took a deep breath. “We need Raven help.”

He watched her for ten seconds. “Keera, get off. Please …”

“The Voice says to … to unhook the ignition wires.”

“The Voice?” His biceps was burning, the bomb dipping toward the fuel.

She disappeared through the door and the plane began to rock.

“Get off the plane!” Ray called after her. His shirt was heavy with sweat, his arm wavering as if he had palsy. He would have to do something soon. Better to die trying than die crouched next to the can.

He eyed the webbing that held the can to the side of the bay. If he could work the can free … No. The wires were connected to something beyond the wall. If he yanked them out, the thing might go off. Besides, how could he lift the can out of its canopy while trying to keep the bomb from colliding with the side again?

The futility of the situation was weighing upon him, thoughts of death, of leaving Margaret a widow, his unborn child fatherless adding to the sense of desperation when the plane bounced gently again and Keera reappeared.

“Got it.”

“Got what? I told you to …”

“I got the wires unhooked from the ignition.”

Ray started to ask how she accomplished that, how she even knew what an ignition was, but decided to leave that for later.

“Go ahead, try to pull them through,” she suggested.

He glared at her, then at the spot where the wires left the bay. “Pull them through?”

“Yeah. Try it.”

The word
try
made him nervous. If you tried but failed to do something while suspending a brick of explosive inches above several gallons of gasoline, you wouldn’t get another chance. There was no such thing as the old college try when it came to plastique.

He took a long, slow breath. Tugging on the wires, he felt them grow taut. “You unhooked them?”

Keera nod. “Pull.”

Somehow Ray wasn’t comfortable with the idea of blindly yanking on the wires. He tugged again and felt them catch, then give. Slack! A wave of relief swept over him as he reeled the wires in through the hole. It was tempered by the understanding that even when he had the entire string inside the bay with him, he would still be holding a bomb.

A minute later, he was gripping a nest of tangled wire with one hand, still grasping the business end with the other. The bomb was now free. Encased in a fuel can, lashed into the cargo bay, but electrically speaking, free.

“How did you know it wouldn’t detonate when you unhooked the wires?”

She shrugged. “The Voice said it wouldn’t.”

“Does the Voice have any other sage advice?”

Keera closed her eyes. Thirty seconds later, “Nope. Nothing.”

“Nothing …” Ray muttered. He glanced at the wires, at the gas can, at the bomb. “Okay. Here’s the play. You get off, then I climb out and try not to set this baby off.”

“Okay. And I’ll ask for Raven help.”

“You do that.” He waited as she mumbled a prayer and slid out of the bay and off the plane, then waited for the rocking to stop. When it did, he gave himself another minute to size up the situation and try to come up with a less dangerous solution to the problem. Having done that and come to the conclusion that no, there was no other way out, and yes, he was in fact screwed, he acted decisively. Dropping the ball of wire, he used his free hand to work the can out of the web holster. The orange block clanged against the can.

He pulled the can free of the webbing and held it with his knees. Now he was not just hunched over a bomb, he was clutching one between his legs. With slow, deliberate movements, he backed out of the bay, the metal ringing as the plastique banged against it.

Reaching with a foot, Ray half stepped, half fell to the pontoon. The can came with him. As he tumbled backwards, his hiking boot missed the float. He instinctively released the can and fought to grip the strut of the wing. The can dropped, careened off the float, and bounced onto the dock, performing two full somersaults in the process. It thudded to a halt five yards away, spilling gas on the rotting wood. Ray braced himself for the explosion. It was only when it failed to come, when his body wasn’t torn to shreds by the blast, that he realized he still had the bomb. The plastique was right there, hanging from a tangle of wires like a prize salmon. He stared at it, wide-eyed.