The Great Alone (101 page)

“Why did we ever come here? I knew it was a mistake.” Her mother panicked. “Jan, what are we going to do?”

“We are going to do what the man said—go home and wait.”

“Lisa.” Steve Bogardus gripped her hand. “I’d better go to the office. There might be bulldozers or other equipment the Army will need. Will you be all right?”

“Yes.” At the moment, she was numb with shock.

They abandoned the car and set out on foot, Steve to his office and the Blomquists to their home. The shriek of sirens added to the atmosphere of confusion and panic as transport trucks charged through town picking up soldiers. Military trucks and armed vehicles of every description rumbled through the streets, and bombers and pursuit planes thundered through the air over the city, heading out on patrol.

All day Lisa stayed close to the shortwave radio, as did everyone else. By the door sat the knapsacks, packed with the recommended two-week supply of food and survival gear for a flight into the mountains. Propped beside them were her father’s and brothers’ hunting rifles in case they had to provide civilian resistance. Heavy curtains and blankets were already in place to observe the strict blackout orders.

When the Alaska radio stations went off the air on orders from General Buckner to facilitate military communications, the Blomquists tried tuning their radio to a Canadian station. Instead they picked up Radio Tokyo. When its announcer reported that Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians and Kodiak had been bombed to rubble, Lisa started to cry. Wylie was supposed to be based at Kodiak. Then Radio Tokyo claimed Fairbanks had been attacked by air and that Sitka and Anchorage were in Japanese hands. Lisa knew she was in Anchorage and so far the Japanese weren’t, which allowed her to doubt the accuracy of the previous report on the destruction of Kodiak.

In that first harried week after Pearl Harbor, the Army’s air force in Alaska—which consisted of six obsolete bombers and twelve obsolete pursuit planes—was in the air patrolling eighteen hours a day. On Tuesday, three fighters shot down a U.S. weather balloon. Navy planes out of Sitka bombed a “submarine” they sighted—and sank a whale. After that, Alaskans seemed to recover both their equilibrium and their sense of humor.

The Japanese threat was real. They had only to look at the Philippines, where the Japanese forces had landed after Pearl Harbor and had MacArthur’s troops in retreat, to know that. Alaska was too strategically located for the Japanese to ignore for long. They had to be prepared for an invasion. All military dependents were evacuated from the entire territory of Alaska, which had been declared a military area.

The flurry of construction projects that had begun in the fall turned into a full-scale storm that winter, as the threat of invasion lent a new urgency to the need for defensive installations. The increased workload affected everyone from contractors like Steve Bogardus and construction workers like Jan Blomquist to bush pilots like Ace Cole, who was flying men and supplies to remote sites. Despite persistent rumors that Alaska would be abandoned by the War Department and not receive the additional troops, planes, and naval vessels needed to improve its meager defenses, as had happened in the Philippines, all work was speeded up. Lisa left the payroll department and went to work filing and filling out the numerous forms, putting in long hours in an effort to keep up with all the paperwork created by additional contracts and new deadlines for completion.

It was late afternoon on the first Saturday in March when Steve Bogardus brought Lisa home after working in the office all day. Lisa was too tired to care when her mother invited him to stay for dinner that night, or when she refused Lisa’s help in the kitchen and shooed her into the living room with her boss. She turned on the radio to catch the latest war news, then sank onto the couch, wishing fervently that she could slip off her shoes.

“We really should be celebrating tonight.” Steve Bogardus sat slumped against the back couch cushions, his boyish features with their dusting of freckles looking worn and haggard. “That contract the government awarded our company for work on the Alaska-Canada Military Highway is going to amount to a lot of dollars.”

A road running through Canada and linking the United States to its Alaska Territory had been talked about for so long that Lisa had never believed it would actually be built in her lifetime. But the war with Japan and the knowledge that its superior naval power was capable of closing the sea lanes to Alaska had changed all that. Construction of the fifteen-hundred-mile-long military road had been authorized and given the highest priority. The massive undertaking was to be a joint effort of civilian contractors and workers and the Army Corps of Engineers and its regiments.

“I’m sure you’re right.” Lisa sighed. “But I keep thinking about the amount of paperwork there will be.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll be hiring more help in the office.”

“That’s the best news I’ve heard yet, Mr. Bogardus.”

“When are you going to start calling me Steve?”

She became conscious of his arm draped along the back of the couch and the closeness of his hand to her shoulder. “It isn’t really proper to call your employer by his first name.”

“I thought we were friends, too.”

She felt his fingertips brush the ends of her hair and quickly stood up to elude them. “I never said we weren’t, Mr. Bogardus.” In an attempt to cover her agitation, she walked over to the radio.

“You know I should be taking you out to dinner. It’s time I started paying back all your generous hospitality.” He pushed himself off the couch and wandered over to the radio.

“My mother would like that.”

“Lisa, you know I meant you—not your family.”

“Yes.” She turned and faced the small snapshot that she’d stuck in the corner of the framed photograph of Wylie. The larger picture showed Wylie in his Army uniform, and the smaller one was more recent, taken after he’d joined the Scouts.

“Is this your soldier boy?” He removed the snapshot from the corner of the frame for a closer look.

“Yes, that’s Wylie.”

“His name’s Wylie?”

“Yes. Wylie Cole. He’s with the Alaska Scouts.” She had never told Steve anything except that she was dating someone in the service.

“One of Castner’s Cutthroats,” he murmured.

“I beg your pardon?” Lisa frowned.

“That’s the nickname they’ve given Colonel Castner’s hand-picked platoon of commandos. They’re supposed to be a rough bunch of men from all parts of Alaska—miners, trappers, hunters, natives, all crack shots able to live off the land. And very deadly, too, from what I’ve been told. Some claim they’re a group of misfits who found Army discipline not to their liking.” He eyed her thoughtfully. “You didn’t know that, did you?”

“Wylie’s not like that.” She took the photograph and tucked it back in the frame, angered by his attempt to make Wylie sound dangerous.

“It’s probably Army propaganda to create the image of a tough commando unit.” His comment seemed an attempt to satisfy her more than anything else. “Does he really expect you to sit home every night and never go out and have any fun?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why do you turn me down every time I ask you out?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Steve, please,” she protested.

“At last you’ve said my name.”

Rattled by the slip, she blurted, “It just came out. I wasn’t thinking.”

“What you mean is that you
said
what you were thinking. It’s encouraging to know that you do think of me as Steve and not that cold Mr. Bogardus.”

It was true. She did think of him as Steve. She had for some time now. “It doesn’t mean anything,” she insisted.

“It means we can drop this Mr. Bogardus nonsense.”

She heard the tramp of booted feet on the front porch and turned gratefully toward the sound. “That must be Dad.”

But when the front door opened, a tall, rough-looking man with a heavy black beard stepped inside. Dumbstruck, Lisa stared at the stranger. There was a flash of white in the middle of the dark beard growth as the man smiled.

“Mom said I should call, but I thought I’d surprise you. It took some doing, but I managed to wangle a weekend pass out of the sarge.”

“Wylie.” She recognized his voice, stunned to discover that not even the snapshot had prepared her for the shocking change in his appearance.

He scratched at his beard. “It’s me underneath all this thick fuzz.” He shrugged out of the parka and draped it on the hall tree.

The action seemed to break the spell that had held her motionless. She quickly crossed the room to his side, but when he started to put his arm around her, Lisa drew back. Up close, he looked leaner and tougher than she remembered. She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, trying to blame her reluctance on his presence.

“Wylie, I’d like you to meet my boss, Steve Bogardus.” She led him over to meet Steve.

“I’ve heard a lot about you, Private Cole.” Smiling warmly, Steve shook hands with him, but Lisa was conscious of the way Wylie coolly studied him.

“I’m afraid I can’t say the same, Steve. Lisa hasn’t mentioned you at all.”

Lisa flushed guiltily; even though she hadn’t actually gone out on a date with Steve, she enjoyed his company. “Mother invited Mr. Bogardus to dinner tonight, Wylie,” she said.

“I wasn’t about to turn down the chance to enjoy a home-cooked meal,” Steve added.

Lisa could have hugged him for the way he backed her up and made it sound very innocent—which it was, she reminded herself. “You haven’t eaten, have you, Wylie? Mama always cooks enough food to feed an army. I know there’ll be plenty to eat if you want to join us.”

“Like Steve, I’m not about to turn down a home-cooked meal.”

With seven for dinner, the Blomquists’ table was crowded. Wylie found the seating arrangement to his satisfaction, since it put Lisa on his left and her boss, Steve Bogardus, across the table from him, allowing him to observe both of them.

He’d always known Lisa might start seeing someone else. With so many men concentrated in Anchorage and so few women, it was a foregone conclusion that she’d have ample opportunity to date. He’d almost managed to convince himself that it wouldn’t be fair to expect her to sit home alone and wait for him, that it would be all right if she dated a few guys. After all, there was a war on, and who knew what might happen to him? When he came back, that was the time to settle things between them.

But every time he saw Bogardus glance at Lisa—even though he believed they weren’t actually dating yet—he wanted to reach across that table and mash his face to a bloody pulp. And Lisa’s mother didn’t help the situation by making her preference for Bogardus very clear by the way she manipulated the conversation to show him in a favorable light. Wylie had always known that she had never really liked him. Now with the pressure she was putting on Lisa and the natural temptation of someone like Bogardus, he knew it was only a matter of time before Lisa gave in.

And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. He’d virtually given her permission to see other men while he was away, so how could he object now?

Hell, he wasn’t blind. He could see what Bogardus had going for him—he was here, on the spot, in contact with Lisa every day. And the man was probably getting rich off these government contracts. It was obvious he had her whole family wrapped around his finger by the way they all laughed at his jokes. Wylie supposed Bogardus was good-looking if a person liked the Van Johnson type. Although Lisa tried to hide it, he could tell by the way she kept looking at Bogardus then looking self-consciously away that she was attracted to him. And Wylie’s frustration mounted because he didn’t have a single damned right to condemn her for it.

Lisa’s father and brothers practically deluged Wylie with questions about what was going on, but to most of them he had to plead ignorance even when he knew the answers. Attached, as his Scout group was, to Army Intelligence, there were a lot of things he knew—some by rumor, some from reliable sources, and some personally.

But he couldn’t talk about the sightings of Japanese ships in Aleutian waters or that their presence and activity indicated they were seeking out landing sites. Nor could he mention that strategists in Washington wanted to launch an invasion against Japan from Nome, Siberia, and Kamchatka, an impossibility without Russian cooperation, and Russia had yet to declare war on Japan. He couldn’t discuss the secret bases that had been built at Dutch Harbor and Cold Bay on Unalaska and Umnak Islands under the guise of a fish cannery—bases General Buckner had ordered built without authorization, since they commanded the strait that provided shipping access to Siberia, Nome, the whole Upper Alaskan Peninsula, and the eastern half of the Aleutian Islands.

Earlier that afternoon, he’d aroused his grandmother’s curiosity with his questions about their family history, especially about their ancestor Tasha, who had lived not only on Kodiak, but on Unalaska, Adak, and Attu. She’d become suspicious when he’d asked too many specific questions about the islands themselves in an effort to obtain whatever sketchy information she could give him about the terrain, natural harbors, caves, landmarks—anything that might be of use.

Everything seemed to indicate there would soon be action somewhere in the Aleutian chain. He’d talked to a couple of the Aleuts in his outfit who had trapped on some of the islands and learned quite a bit from them. But on the whole, very little was known about the islands. No detailed mapping had ever been done. The pilots were using Rand McNally road maps, and the Navy had charts that were based on a Russian survey done back in
1864.