Survival Run (3 page)

***

Two dirt bikes and several mini-malls later, the motor home lumbered out of Fairbanks north on the Steese Highway. Joe was driving, Frank was navigating from the passenger seat, and Gina was resting in back.

"We turn off here to get to Big Bear," Frank said, his eyes moving from a road sign to the map in his lap and back again. "We go north on the Elliot Highway."

"Some highway," Joe grumbled when the pavement gave way to gravel a few miles up the road.

"Get used to it," Frank told him. "Half the roads in Alaska aren't paved, and they're all called highways. Even if the road isn't the greatest, the view sure is."

For the first fifty miles or so, huge southbound semitrailers roared by every few minutes, kicking up clouds of dust, but closer to Big Bear most of the traffic disappeared.

Frank studied the map again as they rolled to a stop at an intersection with another gravel road. There was a gas station on one corner, a cafe on another, a general store on the third, and a For Sale sign on the fourth.

"We should be close to Big Bear," he said.

"I think this is Big Bear," Gina replied from the couch, pointing out the window at a weathered wooden sign above the general store.

Joe grinned when he saw the sign. "Somebody around here has a great sense of humor."

"Big Bear Mini-Mall," Frank read out loud. "Let's see if anybody in the mall can tell us how to find Dr. Stavrogin's cabin."

The only person in the old wood frame building was a gray-haired woman who came out from behind the counter to greet them. "Howdy," she said cheerfully. "I'm Beth Truman. Welcome to Big Bear. What can I sell you folks today?"

"Actually," Joe said, "we don't want to buy anything. We're looking for somebody."

Beth's bright smile remained, but her eyes narrowed as they focused on Joe. "Who might that be?"

"Dr. Nikolai Stavrogin," Joe answered. "He's supposed to have a cabin near here."

"And who wants to know?" Beth responded, dropping the smile completely.

"You'll have to excuse my friend," Gina said quickly. "We've been on the road a long time, and he's a little tired." She shot a look at Joe that told him to shut up. "Dr. Stavrogin is my - uncle. Maybe he's mentioned me when he's been in the store. My name is Gina. We're very close. I think I recall your name from one of his letters."

The smile slowly returned to the gray-haired woman's face. "You're related to that old Russian bear? You should have said so in the first place. When he gets bored, he comes down here and we play chess." Her smile faded again. "Why did you come here looking for him? Is something wrong?"

"I hope nothing's wrong," Gina responded. "His assistant at the university called me because he hadn't checked in since he left Washington. That's not like him."

"Now that you mention it," Beth said, "I haven't seen him since he opened his cabin for the summer. He got some supplies and a new fishing rod because his old fly rod got lost on the way up here. He didn't buy enough food to last more than a week, and that was almost two weeks ago. I hope he's okay."

"It's probably nothing," Gina assured her. "But I'd like to go out to the cabin and make sure he's all right."

"Sounds like a good idea," Beth said. "This can be pretty wild country." She wrote the directions to the cabin on a piece of paper and handed it to Gina. "I hope nothing has happened to Nikolai. I'm fond of him."

Gina smiled. "I know."

Joe kept his mouth shut until they were back on the road. "That was pretty slick," he said to Gina. "How did you know that she and Stavrogin were friends?"

Gina shrugged. "Call it woman's intuition. Something in her eyes and her tone of voice. I don't know. It seemed pretty obvious to me."

The map that Beth Truman had drawn led them to a dirt road that meandered up and down hills for a few miles and eventually to a gurgling stream with a rickety plank bridge. Frank, who had taken over the driving, stopped the motor home, got out, and inspected the structure.

"I don't think that bridge and this vehicle were meant for each other," he announced and climbed back into the driver's seat. He pulled the motor home off on the shoulder, parked, and hopped out again.

"Where are you going?" Joe asked.

Frank pointed to a log cabin on a small rise on the far side of the stream. "If the map is right, that's Stavrogin's cabin."

Joe and Gina climbed out and followed Frank across the bridge. "It looks as if somebody's home," Joe noted as they got closer. "There's a car."

Frank didn't wait for the others to catch up. As soon as he reached the cabin, he climbed the steps to the porch and knocked on the front door. "Hello?" he called out. "Dr. Stavrogin? Hello?"

He stopped knocking when Joe and Gina joined him. "I don't think anybody's inside," he said.

"Either that or he's very antisocial," Joe offered.

"There's only one way to find out," Frank replied, grabbing the doorknob. It turned and the door swung open. Frank poked his head inside. "Hello?" he shouted one more time.

Nobody answered.

Joe edged past his brother and went inside. "I don't think the professor ever took a housekeeping course," he observed as he moved around the single room. Books and clothes were strewn everywhere. A half-eaten sandwich poked out of a pile of papers littering the cabin's only table. A long, thin line of ants marched up and down a table leg, carting off tiny prizes from the forgotten meal.

Frank walked over to the table, brushed away some of the scurrying ants, and touched the bread. It was rock hard. "This is beyond stale," he said. "This is fossilized. Nobody's been here for days, maybe even a week or more."

"If that's Stavrogin's car outside," Joe responded, "where did he go?"

"If the Assassins nabbed him, they wouldn't need his car," Frank noted.

"What would the Assassins want from Dr. Stavrogin?" Gina asked.

"That's what we came to Alaska to find out," Frank answered. He glanced at his watch. "It's getting late. Let's go back to the motor home, get some sleep, and start again in the morning.

Joe squinted at the sunlight streaming in the window. "What are you talking about? It's not even dark yet."

Frank chuckled. "It's the middle of summer, and we're almost standing on the Arctic Circle."

Joe frowned. "So what?"

"So the sun is up for over twenty hours a day," Frank explained. "And I know from a lifetime of experience that you don't function well on four hours of sleep."

***

At midnight Joe was seated on one of the parked dirt bikes, watching the sun set while Frank and Gina were sound asleep in the motor home. They had agreed to take turns keeping an eye on the cabin in case somebody showed up. Since the night was more like twilight, Joe didn't have any trouble observing the cabin from across the stream. He did, however, have a lot of trouble staying awake.

Joe had started to nod off for the third or fourth time when he thought he caught a flicker of movement outside the cabin. His head snapped up, and his eyes popped open. He watched and waited. The cabin was dark and silent. Nothing moved anywhere near it, but Joe decided to check it out since he didn't have anything better to do.

He slithered across the bridge on his belly and then hugged the trees that lined the shoulder on the far side. If anybody was in the cabin, Joe wanted to check out the person before he or she spotted him.

About fifty feet from the cabin, Joe saw something that made him stop and flatten himself behind the nearest tree. The front door was wide open. He was sure he had shut it tight when they left. Maybe the wind blew it open, he told himself.

Joe crept closer. He heard a faint rustling sound from inside the cabin, and then saw a man slipping silently out the door. There was enough light for Joe to get a fairly good look at his face - and although Joe had never seen Dr. Stavrogin, he knew this guy wasn't the professor.

Joe was staring at the curly-haired cab driver he'd had to rescue!

The man headed into the woods behind the cabin, and Joe followed. As he moved he heard a twig snap behind him and froze in his tracks, listening. All he could hear now was his own heart pounding. Part of him hoped he'd just imagined the noise. Another part realized he had just walked into a trap.

Joe knew he couldn't just stay there like a sitting duck. As he whirled around to confront whoever was behind him, a sharp pain exploded at the base of his neck. His vision blurred and dimmed. Joe Hardy slumped to his knees and fell facedown on the ground.