The morning darkness lay solid on the snow-blanketed arctic landscape. The earth glowed pale and cold under a three-quarter moon as it finished its sideways arc across the far north sky just above the horizon to the northeast. Dawn would not break the tree line for two more hours, the full sun not rising until after ten.
Marcus had gone the previous night to his friend and gunsmith Al Philbert’s cabin/business. He had left his grandfather’s old Springfield 1903 .30–06 rifle with Al for a general maintenance once-over. The weapon was in immaculate condition, but was also nearly a hundred years old. The last thing Marcus desired was to have it explode in his face while out in the field. As it turned out, there was nothing to worry about. Grandpa Johnson’s old rifle was a prime example of one of the most tried and true firearms ever produced in America
While there, Al offered Marcus a sample of his latest homebrewed smoked porter ale. Marcus, who had developed an affinity for the rich, dark stout beers while serving several tours with the British SAS and the Royal Marines, accepted the offer.
As it turned out, “Al’s Black Ops,” as the brew master had titled the concoction, was much stronger than either of them had expected, topping out at somewhere between ten and twelve percent alcohol. Marcus was religious about never driving under the influence. He made a point that even if he only had one drink, he would wait at least an hour before getting behind the wheel. Therefore, after two pints with Al in the period of an hour, Marcus told his friend that he would be sacking out on his couch for a couple of hours before heading home. Al, of course, had no problem with that, and for that matter, offered more to Marcus since he was staying. Marcus declined, not desiring a hangover to take with him on the trap line when he left in the early morning hours.
At five in the morning, Marcus woke and let himself out of Al’s cabin. He had one hundred and twenty miles of trap line to run in the next two days, and didn’t want to get a late start. He drove the twenty-five miles back to his own cabin. A note was tacked to the bulletin board that hung on his door.
Marcus had no phone or other way of answering the request, and couldn’t wait until Linus’s store opened to call the troopers. He left the note where it was and entered the cabin to get ready for his trip.
The cops can talk to Linus or Bannock — they know everything I know.
The trap line he was about to run was actually owned by another friend of his from the base. Air Force Major Steven Krisler, commander of the Arctic Survival School, had run a long string of snares to capture furs for his side business. Krisler was retiring from the Air Force soon and trying to get himself established as a taxidermist. He had been running the trap line across the back of the base for a couple of years now, and had taken Marcus out earlier in the season as a riding buddy.
The previous week, Krisler had gotten a hold of the retired Marine to ask him to run the line for him, as he had just received emergency orders to report to Afghanistan for a one-month temporary duty assignment. Marcus willingly agreed. He was looking forward to the time in the brush.
His own cabin was, by any average North American’s perspective, extremely remote already. But the prospect of taking a ride into the unpaved, off-the-grid backcountry always made him happy. There would be nobody for a hundred miles in any direction — just him and his snowmobile.
Marcus piled all his gear in the long cargo sled attached behind the snowmobile. He had loaded a sufficient quantity of food, extra clothes, camp supplies, fuel, and water, as well as a few spare parts for his snowmobile. He pushed his grandfather’s rifle into an insulated, hard black nylon scabbard that ran along the right side of the machine. In his backpack, Marcus also had a small .22 caliber Henry Survival rifle, disassembled and stowed neatly in its own stock. This he would use if the chance arose to take a rabbit or grouse along the trail.
He tucked his sidearm, a custom-made MEU-SOC Colt 1911A1 .45 caliber pistol, into a shoulder holster in his jacket. Marcus mounted his snowmobile, a long track Arctic Cat M series that had been specially modified to reduce the rumble of the engine to a level so low that from more than ten feet away, it was almost totally silent. Engineering students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks had designed several similar machines for a contest the previous year. Marcus managed to buy one through an ad in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner when one of the students became desperate for funds early in the current semester and offered his award-winning machine for a bargain price.
Marcus pulled out of his yard onto the trail beside Johnson Road, this time turning north toward the open country. He followed the trail past the TVEC substation and the pipeline pump station guardhouse. Twenty minutes later, he came to a chain-linked gate held open by a four-foot-high wall of plowed snow that concealed the lower part of the fence. A metal sign hung on the fence to the side of the gate.
US Government Property
Eielson Air Force Base
Authorized Access Only
He drove through the opening and followed the road another ten miles. In the early morning twilight, the headlamp of his snowmobile shone on a bright yellow reflective ribbon fluttering from the leafless branch of a tall paper birch tree that jutted at an angle from the surrounding cluster of twisted gray alder branches. The ribbon marked the entry to the trail along which Major Krisler had set up his trap line.
In order to have a trap line on military property, the interested party required special permission from the base commander. Once permission was obtained, the process took a whole slew of passes and paperwork that usually required months or years to get approved. Most people, soldier and civilian alike, are blatantly denied the opportunity to use the government property for personal gain. Krisler had not only received a permit to run the trap line in no time flat, but he was also given a trapping area twice the normal size. He revealed to Marcus that this was due to the fact that he had been at a taxidermist convention in Montana while on leave a couple years ago and literally bumped into the base commander at the hotel.
The commander, Colonel Robert Sloan, was laughing loudly as he came out of the hotel swimming pool with a very attractive young woman in her early twenties, whose bikini top was barely able to contain her jiggling shape. Krisler had been headed to a seminar in a conference room down the hall as he rounded a corner and nearly knocked over the towel-draped Colonel and his buxom companion. Krisler’s papers went flying onto the carpeted floor.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, moron!” the commander bellowed.
“I’m so sorry,” Krisler replied, apologizing profusely as he bent over to pick up the papers.
“Yeah, well, you should be,” Sloan said.
As Krisler stood, he looked up and the two men recognized each other immediately. The major’s eyes slid over to the stunning young woman in the very small bikini, who quite obviously was not the forty-something Mrs. Louise Sloan he had seen at the Eielson Air Force Base commissary only two days earlier and who had mentioned that her husband was going on a trip for some high-level meetings at Malstrom AFB in Montana.
A growing look of horror, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, spread across Sloan’s face as his brain processed who it was standing before him.
“Colonel Sloan. How are you, sir?” Krisler asked. He made a visible show of scanning the scantily clad couple and noticed that the commander wasn’t wearing his wedding band. A sly smile slowly grew on his face. He made deliberate eye contact with the colonel.
“Uh, good evening, Major Krisler,” Colonel Sloan stammered nervously. “What are you doing here?”