“I’m on leave. Here for a taxidermist convention.”
“Taxidermist convention?”
“Yes sir, taxidermy. You know, skinning dead animals, like weasels and such, to turn them into fur coats and statues for profit,” Krisler responded with a sardonic grin. “It’s what I am going to do after I retire.”
“Oh. Well, uh, carry on, then,” said the colonel, trying to get out of the awkward situation.
The major wouldn’t let him off so easily. “So, who is your companion, sir?” he asked, prying.
Sloan hesitated, and then introduced the voluptuous young woman “This is Connie, a friend of mine from, uh, from the university.”
Steven Krisler held out his hand and she took it, smiling back at him in a pleasant greeting. She was probably just a college student he picked up in a local bar.
“Hello. You two must work together in Alaska?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we do,” replied the grinning Krisler, “And I must say, we work very well together, don’t we, Colonel?”
Sloan’s face drained of color. “Yes. Yes, we certainly do. Connie, this is Steven Krisler.” He looked back to Krisler, his eyes reduced to pleading slits. “One of my most trusted confidantes. Steven is a man I would trust with my life.”
“Wow,” said the girl, “imagine two friends so close, meeting each other so far away and not even knowing the other was going to be there.”
“Yeah,” said Krisler. “Go figure.” A mischievous smile spread across his face as he calculated how far he could go with the colonel.
The two men glared into each other’s eyes.
Krisler spoke. “Well, sir, I’ve got to be getting back to my seminar. Paid a lot of money to get here, you know, and they’re talking about a new technique for skinning and stuffing those little weasel-like creatures today.” He winked devilishly at the girl and added as he walked away, “Tell Louise I said hello. We’ll have to get together at your convenience once we get back.”
As he stepped down the hallway, he heard Connie speak to Sloan. “Who is Louise?”
“She’s my secretary. Let’s go get a drink.”
So Krisler had no problem getting, among other things, the most prime trap line in the interior of the state authorized for the rest of his final tour in the Air Force.
Marcus entered the snow-covered forest trail via an open space about six feet wide that was packed by regular snowmobile use. The trail snaked through the spruce, birch, alder, and willow in a meandering fashion. About a mile down the trail from Johnson Road, the first of the bright yellow ribbon trap markers hung loosely on a snow-laden branch of a low-slung spruce tree. Marcus halted his snowmobile and raised the bright beam of a large halogen spotlight to the base of the tree from which the ribbon drooped.
A roundish, medium-brown furry shape lay motionless in the snow beneath the canopy of branches. Marcus dismounted the idling vehicle and waded through a powdery sea of thigh-deep snow over to the creature.
It was a marmot, a species of large groundhog that normally hibernates through the winter. The animal had probably been fooled into waking up by the recent warmer temperatures, and it had gone out for a stretch. The dead creature’s mouth hung open, exposing yellow buckteeth and its tongue, which glittered with ice crystals. The body was frozen solid as stone.
“Well, my little friend,” muttered Marcus through the white neoprene Gator face-covering he wore to keep the chill air from freezing his lungs, “looks like you should’ve stayed in bed.”
Marcus tossed the stiff, frozen carcass into the back of the long sled, then took off for the next trap about a quarter of a mile down the trail. He arrived to find that it was empty. He remounted the snowmobile and kept going. The next several snares had various creatures in them, followed by a number of empty traps. The pattern continued throughout the morning as he moved along the trail collecting a variety of animals. The prizes consisted mainly of fox and rabbit, with the singular addition of the first marmot. There was also one fair-sized lynx that, unlike the relatively cheap fox and rabbit pelts, would make some good money for his friend Krisler.
Dawn rose gracefully over the arctic landscape. The snow-covered spruce trees pointed skyward, their branches laden with impossibly heavy looking mounds of drooping snow, like white icing on a thickly frosted cake. The scene looked like a surreal painting on a picture postcard. If seen in an image online or in a magazine, people outside Alaska would find it hard to believe that this was an actual place.
As Marcus moved along the trail, he passed a series of unnatural-looking mounds. The hexagonally shaped hills were a group of abandoned military ruins that had at one time been nuclear missile bunkers. The area was studded with the former secret installations of Cold War-era Nike missiles that had been pointed over the pole toward the Soviet Union from the fifties until the fall of the “Evil Empire” in the late eighties.
Now, long abandoned in lieu of changing threat scenarios and newer technology, the bunkers that had housed masses of cylindrical devices that could have wiped earth of humanity a thousand times over were covered in leafless, frozen vegetation consisting mostly of spreading willow and tangled alder. In spite of the snow and vegetation, the bunker’s general shape was still visible beneath the snow, like an ancient monument to war hidden in the forest.
Chapter 9
At noon, Marcus stopped for a break to eat some lunch. After satisfying the hunger pangs in his stomach with a hot MRE meal pack, he lay back on the long seat of the snowmobile, set his feet on the pile of gear in the sled, and closed his eyes for a short nap.
Deep sleep fell on him within minutes. Random dream images passed through his mind. Lonnie appeared before him, pleading for forgiveness and then weeping as she looked at his tombstone. He saw the faces of his mates from the Royal Marines and other friends with whom he had served over the years. He heard the voice of Captain Mike Farris, a Recon Marine who went on to become a pastor. Mojo, you’ve got to let it go…let it go …let it go…
Lonnie weeping. Marcus's mother in a hospital bed. His father lying face down in the snow.
Suddenly Marcus lurched back to the conscious world with a jolt. The dream evaporated as his right hand instantly yanked the Springfield from its scabbard next to his head. The rifle slid quickly out of the padded tube as he rolled off the machine and assumed a defensive posture behind the cover of the seat pad. Twenty years of fighting and killing had honed his reflexes to the point that such maneuvers required no thought — they just happened, sometimes subconsciously.
What had caused him to leap into action?
He thought for a moment, listening in silence.
There had been a sound of some kind — a sharp, metallic sound. He had only briefly caught it in that moment between sleep and consciousness, but it had been there.
Metal, like a shovel or a pick.
He listened more, but heard nothing.
Hmmm. Must be a maintenance crew from base doing some work. Man, am I jumpy.
Just as he was about to dismiss it, the sound came back. It was a short burst of clinking and scraping. It reverberated through the empty wilderness in the distance.
Then he heard voices. Several men’s voices spoke briskly from far away. The snow muted their words beyond understanding. Marcus decided he would take a look to see who they were and what they were doing.
He strapped on snowshoes over his bulbous white military surplus bunny boots and went to the sled, to his backpack. He took the Zeiss high-powered binoculars out of his pack and stuffed them into the chest pocket of his parka. He reached into his bag and grabbed a large, white linen hooded over-coat, which he pulled on around his parka.