Eventually she relaxed and dropped back against him, her back wriggling against his chest. She turned her face toward the pillow and just breathed, breathed in the same rhythm as his own breath. She took his hand in both of hers and used it for a pillow and in a moment he realized she was falling asleep, spent and in perfect comfort with him there, still inside of her.
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 15, T+80:49
Chapel woke later to find the cabin lights slowly coming back on. He blinked his eyes and gently stirred Julia. “I think it’s time to get up,” he said.
CPO Andrews’s voice over the intercom was soft and pleasant. “Good morning. We’ll be landing soon. I have a simple breakfast of leftover chicken and vegetables, and a little bread. I’ll come into the cabin in a few minutes to serve it.”
Julia looked up groggily. She smiled when she saw Chapel’s face and leaned in to peck him on the lips. Then she squirmed around to pull her pants back up and zip them. Chapel did the same.
When CPO Andrews entered the cabin, she carried their breakfast on a tray, which she set down on the table between the seats. “It’s a little before eleven in Fairbanks,” she said. “The current temperature is hovering around thirty-six degrees and it’s snowing, but just a little. It won’t interfere with our landing. I’m going to the galley to prepare for landing, so you won’t see me again until we touch down,” she said.
“Uh, thanks,” Chapel told her, reaching for a glass of juice.
This time, Andrews definitely winked before she headed aft.
Julia dropped her fork. “She — she must have heard us,” she said.
Chapel watched her face. She was blushing, and with her fair skin her whole face turned red, as well as her ears.
“It’s a small plane,” Chapel said, apologetically.
“But I was trying to be quiet!” Julia put a hand over her mouth. “Oh God. I am so embarrassed.”
Chapel bent over his breakfast and ate heartily. He had no comment to make.
IN TRANSIT: APRIL 15, T+81:21
Fairbanks International Airport might have been huge and cosmopolitan or it could have been a tiny airstrip. There was no way to tell. The snow had picked up while they taxied across the runway, and now the whole sky had turned featureless white. Fat, wet flakes landed on Julia’s blue-gray parka and collected in her unbrushed hair. Chapel squinted through the snow and tried to make out the terminal.
CPO Andrews hugged herself in the cold. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“No,” Chapel told her. “I need you here, ready to take off again as soon as we get Taggart.”
Andrews shook her head. “Listen, at least — Julia, you take this.” She reached inside her jacket and drew her sidearm. It was a snub-nosed revolver. She handed it over to Julia, who held it as if it were a poisonous snake.
Then Andrews wished them luck and closed the door behind them.
They walked across to the main terminal building. At the ground transportation desk, Chapel learned it was easier to rent a snowmachine than it was to rent a car.
“The roads here are treacherous all winter,” the clerk explained, showing them to their vehicle. “Snowmachines are the best way to get around. Now which of you is driving—” He stopped suddenly and stared at the way Chapel’s left sleeve hung loose from his shoulder. “Here you go,” he said, handing Julia the keys.
Chapel looked at the snowmachine. It was bigger than he’d expected, a long, sleek model with skids in front and big, powerful-looking tracks in back. It had room for two, a high windshield, and a spare gas can mounted behind the rear seat. It was no racing model — this was a utility vehicle, meant for getting around over rough, snowy terrain. A workingman’s snowmachine.
Steering it, however, meant holding on to a pair of handlebars. That was beyond him now that he’d lost his artificial arm.
“You ever drive one of these before?” he asked Julia as she climbed into the front position. He remembered she was from New York City. “You ever drive a car?”
“Back in the Catskills, sure,” she said. “Admittedly, that was fifteen years ago.” She shrugged and reached up to touch the new hands-free unit in her ear. Angel had made sure they each had one so she could talk to them both. “I have someone to walk me through it,” she said. She gunned the throttle, and the machine roared underneath her. “Ooh,” she said. “I might like this.”
Chapel climbed on behind her and wrapped his arm around her waist. They leaned forward together, and she steered the machine out onto the open snow, and they were off.
DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, ALASKA: APRIL 15, T+81:45
The first mile on the snowmachine made Chapel consider seriously just jumping off and walking to their destination. Julia kept goosing the throttle when she thought she was going too slow and stamping on the brake every time the machine fishtailed on a patch of ice, and it was all Chapel could do to hang on. But he should have known by then that she was a fast learner, and she rarely made the same mistake twice. After a while she was driving like a pro, keeping her speed steady and her treads well in contact with the ground. He had to admit he was impressed. He wondered if he could have taught himself to drive the machine as quickly.
The snow made no sound as it fell, and the afternoon sun melted it nearly as fast as it accumulated, but it never stopped. Julia stayed close to the roads where she could, but they were already slick with ice and she had an easier time cutting across open fields. They headed south of the city, across the Tanana Flats, a vast frozen plain that ran unbroken as far as Mount McKinley and the Alaska Mountains.
Chapel thought that William Taggart could have chosen a more hospitable location for his lab. Ahead of them, at the far edge of the Flats, lay a maze of twisting canyons carved by glaciers, a landscape of nothing but snow and dark rock. It would be way too easy to get lost back in those canyons if you didn’t have Angel whispering in your ear. Visitors weren’t even allowed into the more mountainous parts of the park except on special buses. It was rugged terrain even in summer, and now, with winter only slowly loosening its grip on Alaska, it seemed like a great place to get yourself killed.
They started to see signs warning them that the park was off-limits to snowmachines, but Angel told them to turn off and head west anyway. They entered a narrow canyon between two high ridges and headed south again, skirting the highway as it bent around to follow the river that formed the northern border of the park. Down here in the shelter of the mountains more trees grew, and the only path they had to follow was the road, which they had to cross every once in a while to avoid obstacles.
“You’re close, now,” Angel said, and Chapel was glad for it. It felt colder and darker by the river, and the snow was falling heavier. They headed away from the road, north along an old logging trail. The ground was broken by permafrost and general disuse, and the snowmachine bounced and shook even when Julia slowed them down to a crawl. “We never would have made it this far in a car,” she shouted back over her shoulder. “What the hell does my dad do out here?”
“I thought you might have some clue,” Chapel shouted back.
“What?” she asked.
Angel repeated his words, but Julia just shrugged. “I haven’t spoken to him in years. I knew he was in Alaska, but I didn’t even know which city.”
An even rougher path split off from the logging trail. It wound through a stand of pine trees that looked like new growth — few of them were more than ten feet tall. The darkness of the place grew, even though somewhere overhead, through the cloud cover, the sun was shining.