“How about you patch the boat while I take a look?” Beaudine said. She took off her parka shell and spread it over a stump before setting the AR-10 on top to keep it out of the snow. “I’m not tryin’ to take over again. It’s just that the only good times I ever had with my daddy were when we were working on small engines. Sometimes, for a minute or two, I could even pretend he wasn’t a murderous bastard.”
Brian looked down at his feet, good manners overshadowing his youthful curiosity.
Quinn took the wax ring. “Be my guest,” he said.
Beaudine knelt in the snow beside the motor, using her multi-tool to remove the pin and nut that held the battered propeller in place. “Shear pin’s toast all right.”
“Told you.” Brian shrugged.
“But I can fix it,” Beaudine said, leaning over to grab her rifle. “Just so happens the brass end of a rifle cleaning rod makes a perfect shear pin if I use my Leatherman to cut it down to size.”
“And my aunt keeps a small cleaning kit in the butt of her rifle.” Quinn gave a nod of genuine admiration. He hoped he would have come up with such a fix.
Chapter 39
Quinn and Brian Ticket dragged the aluminum skiff down to the riverbank before attaching the hundred-pound motor. Beaudine provided over-watch with the AR-10. There was little in the way of gear so it didn’t take them long to load the boat. Brian disappeared into the shack for a moment, then came slipping down the muddy bank wearing his pack. His rubber boots made perfect tracks in the snow as he approached the skiff.
“Needle’s only four miles up river,” the boy said. “But it still takes us about twenty minutes to get there.”
Quinn attached the fuel line that connected the six-gallon plastic tank to the motor. “You’re not coming,” he said. “It’s safer for you here.”
“Screw that news.” Brian set his jaw in fierce defiance but softened immediately when he met Quinn’s gaze. “You don’t understand about Worst of the Moon. He’s a giant. There’s only fourteen families in Needle, and most of the men are out hunting. I gotta go back and help you.” Brian stared across the Kobuk, his eyes unfocused. “A lot of people go missing out here. Could be the land that takes ’em, or maybe it’s Worst of the Moon. Some elders say he’s the spirit of a dead hunter, come back to punish our people for abandoning the old ways.”
Quinn shoved the stern of the boat into deeper water so he didn’t break another shear pin on the gravel. He banged on the aluminum gunnel with the flat of his hand. “Get in the boat, Khaki.”
Beaudine threw a leg over the side, still looking at Brian with a narrow eye. “Punish you how?”
“He hunts us,” Brian said. “Like wolves. The elders say Worst of the Moon hunts on the ice or open tundra the best. You never see him coming until he’s shot you in the head.”
“How do they know he likes the tundra the best?” Beaudine asked.
Brian shrugged. “That’s where the people go missing, I guess.”
“Hang on,” Beaudine said. “If all the victims are still missing, or never hear the bullet that kills them, how do you know he’s a giant?”
Quinn pumped the rubber bulb on the line to deliver fuel to the motor. He could feel Volodin pulling farther away with every moment they weren’t on the river.
“Homer John from down at Noorvik seen him once.” Brian squatted on the sandy bank and used his finger to draw a map of the area in the dirt, like some Native women using a bone knife to illustrate stories in the sand. “Noorvik’s clear down here, closer to Kotzebue. Homer was out on his snow machine last year lookin’ for musk ox when he rode up on this big guy camping in the middle of nowhere. There was another man with him, but Homer said it was clear the giant guy was the boss. Homer said he had gray eyes — colder than he’d ever seen — and a tiny nose that made his face look flat. He just sat by his stove with a giant rifle in his lap and watched Homer John ride by.”
“This Homer John guy,” Quinn said. “He’s pretty sure it was Worst of the Moon?”
Brian shook his head at Quinn. “You tell me. How’d a guy like that get out there? Where’d he come from? He didn’t come through none of the villages. Like my dad says, strangers just don’t show up in the middle of the tundra. They got to travel through somewhere.”
“True,” Quinn said.
“Anyhow,” Brian said. “He let Homer John live for some reason, but two more hunters went missin’ fifteen miles from that spot the very next day.”
“Did anyone report it?” Beaudine asked.
“My dad says there ain’t enough troopers in Alaska to take care of an area this big,” Brian said, looking like he might cry. “Now come on and let me in. It’s my boat, ya know.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, giving the starter rope a yank. Smoke poured from the motor as it coughed once, then died. He pulled the rope again and it roared to life. He flipped the lever in reverse and backed out, letting the current of the Kobuk pull the boat downriver, stern first. He shouted so the bewildered Brian could hear him above the burbling chop of the engine. “We’ll look in on your family.” Throwing the transmission forward, he moved into deeper water before twisting the throttle to coax the little boat upriver toward Needle.
Beaudine clutched the gunnel with one hand while, leaning back to look at Quinn. “You promised to look after his family?”
“We’ll kill the people that pose the danger,” Quinn said, watching water seep in around the wax. “It’s the same thing. But first we have to make it there.”
Four miles was a long way to go for a boat patched with a toilet ring.
Chapter 40
The paunchy Inupiaq man clutched a cigarette between his teeth and threw Kaija’s plastic case on a metal rack at the rear of a green four-wheeler. He stacked the duffle bags on top before working to untangle a set of bright orange ratchet straps. Slightly shorter than Volodin, the man had a barrel chest and powerful hands. He wore a pair of nylon chest waders and a wool shirt. Shaggy black hair stuck out from beneath a yellow Caterpillar hat cocked back on his head as he worked. His name was Ray Stubbins, and Volodin estimated him to be in his late thirties.
The chemist folded bony arms across his chest and stomped his feet back and forth, trying to keep from shivering in the bright morning chill. Needle was set up in a long handled T, with the Stubbins’ house located at the terminus of the northernmost short end. The sun was up high enough to begin to melt last night’s snow from the hulks of three old snow machines rusting in front of the wind-beaten wooden home. Two little kids giggled and squealed a few feet away. Dressed in rubber boots, fleece jackets, and wool hats, they used a broken four-wheeler with no tires as a jungle gym. Neither looked old enough to attend the school at the other end of the T. Steam rose from the vent pipes of similar houses nearby, disappearing into the crisp morning air.
“We’ll take you as far as Ambler on the Hondas,” he said.
One of the few adult males left in the village, Stubbins had been carrying gear up from his boat when Volodin and Kaija had arrived. Kaija had wisely pointed out that they were sitting ducks when confined to the river. An overland route would make them less likely to be found — if they could find someone to sell them a four-wheeler. Stubbins was in no mood to sell his only mode of land transportation right in the middle of hunting season, but he and his brother had agreed to shuttle them for the sum of three hundred American dollars. It was a quarter of the cash Volodin had on hand, but all the money in the world would do them no good if Rustov’s men caught them. Like most people in rural Alaska, Stubbins called all ATVs Hondas no matter the brand. This one happened to be a Polaris. “It’s about a five-hour ride. Pretty bumpy, too.”