"Sally and Jennifer?" Marie Pascalaura asked, curious.
"Sally's our lead secretary," Woeshack explained. "She's the only one around here who knows how to find anybody in the field any time of the day or night. McNulty says that makes her indispensable."
"And Jennifer?"
"One of the wildlife inspectors. She's very nice, and very pretty," Woeshack added helpfully.
"I'd like to meet them," Marie Pascalaura said cheerfully.
"That might not be such a good idea," Lightstone suggested.
"Oh, really?" Marie said, raising her eyebrows questioningly. "Don't you want me to be able to find you when you're 'out in the field'?"
"Of course," Lightstone said solemnly. "I want you to know exactly who I'm with and what I'm doing at all times. Especially when you're cuddled up in front of a fire in a nice warm blanket while Woeshack and I are freezing our asses off in ten feet of snow trying to arrest some guy for shooting a frozen duck out of season."
"Ah."
"And besides," Lightstone added, ignoring the strange look that he was getting from Woeshack, "wives and girlfriends are always getting jealous. To tell you the truth, it can get kind of embarrassing."
"God, you men are hopeless," Marie Pascalaura said as she got out of the Suburban and followed Thomas Woeshack to the side door of the building.
Fifteen minutes later, Marie Pascalaura, Jennifer Alik, and Sally Napaskiak-who, in spite of being in her mid- sixties and decidedly overweight, happened to be a very attractive woman of Canadian and Native Aleut Eskimo extraction-were chattering away happily in the office of Special Agent in Charge Paul McNulty.
"Uh, I really hate to break this up," Lightstone said, "but if we're going to get out to the lake before it gets dark…"
"Oh, all right," Marie Pascalaura said with a sigh as she got up out of the chair. "But I still have a lot of questions for Sally and Jennifer."
"I'll have you all over for dinner," Sally Napaskiak said as she walked Marie to the door. "I'll be happy to tell you everything I know about Anchorage."
"Uh, Sally," Thomas Woeshack broke in, "I wonder if you could drop them by their hotel to check in and then take them over to the base? I need to go ahead and get things ready."
"Yes, of course. Go on, go on." Sally Napaskiak waved impatiently and then chuckled as the young special agent disappeared down the hallway.
"He is always so on the go," she said, smiling.
"Have you known him for long?" Marie asked as she and Henry followed the older woman back out into the main office.
"Oh, for all his life," Napaskiak laughed. "His mother and I were children together," she explained as she picked up a set of keys from her desk drawer, grabbed her coat, and then motioned for Henry and Marie to follow her down the hallway to the back parking lot. "Loo-chook, my friend, is a full-blooded Athabaskan, but she thought that my hair was so pretty because my mother was Caucasian, and she was always saying that she wanted a daughter just like me.
"So," Sally Napaskiak smiled as she unlocked the doors to the dirt-covered Ford Bronco, "being the very stubborn person that she is, Loo-chook disobeyed her mother and father, went out and found herself a handsome young Swedish gold miner to marry, and then had five boys. Thomas is the youngest, and my favorite," Sally confided in a lowered voice. "Loo-chook says he has hair just like mine."
They continued to talk as they drove, and Lightstone, sitting in the backseat of the Bronco, his head back and eyes closed, found himself so caught up in the front-seat conversation that he didn't realize where they were when the Bronco came to a slow, sliding stop.
Until, that is, he looked to his right and saw the row of planes.
"What…?"
And then looked to his left: and saw Special Agent Thomas Woeshack loading bags of gear into the back storage compartment of a float- mounted, orange, single- engine Skywagon II Cessna. The plane was tied down in one of the three ten-by-twelve slips that had been cut into the rocky shoreline and lined with thick boards to prevent water erosion.
"Oh, my God!" he whispered.
"Marie, this will be your first true adventure in Alaska," Sally Napaskiak predicted. "And all because you have found yourself a very brave fellow for a husband." She reached back and patted Henry Lightstone's leg.
Marie and Sally opened the doors of the Bronco, leaving a numbed Henry Lightstone to pull himself out of the backseat.
"I usually prefer bigger planes," Lightstone said mostly to himself as the women started walking toward the floatplane. He grabbed the duffel bags.
"Big plane, small plane, it is all the same thing. Sally Napaskiak waved her hand in a dismissive manner. "You take off, you fly, you land. What else is there?" she asked, bringing her large hands out in a broad shrug as they stopped about fifteen feet from the plane.
"Yeah, but the guys who fly the big planes…" Lightstone said. "I mean, who…?"
Then the light suddenly dawned. "You mean he's a pilot?" Henry Lightstone rasped in a horrified voice, pointing an unsteady finger at the youthful-looking special agent who, to Lightstone's disbelieving eyes, suddenly looked even younger.
"Who, Thomas?" Sally Napaskiak laughed. "Yes, of course he's a pilot. Didn't you know? Everyone was so proud of him when he finally got his license, too. You should have seen the family gathering," she said to Marie. "We had so much food-"
"When?" Lightstone asked in a dulled voice.
"When what?" Sally Napaskiak asked, a puzzled look on her face.
"When did he get his license?" Lightstone said slowly.
"Oh, not so very long ago," Sally Napaskiak beamed. "It was such a party. And we were all so proud of Thomas because he had worked so hard. I mean, you could not believe how hard he had worked. Hours and hours he had to practice because they are so picky, those licensing people, about how they want you to land these little toy planes. Can you believe it? I mean, really, these planes are so simple that even a child could-But you're not afraid to fly, are you?" Sally Napaskiak suddenly asked Marie.
"Who, me? God, no, I love to fly," Marie Pascalaura laughed. "I can't wait."
Lightstone walked slowly to the plane. Woeshack quickly took his bags and stuffed them into the back storage compartment.
"Going to be a little tight in there, but Marie looks pretty small, so we should be okay on weight," Woeshack said as he finished stuffing in the last bag and then stood up, a pair of long broom handles in his hand.
Lightstone started to say something, but his attention was caught by a reflection off the overhead wing.
"You've got ice on the fucking wings?"
"Oh, yeah, sure. We got a lot of that up here." Woeshack shrugged as he handed Lightstone one of the broom handles. "Believe me, it's no big deal. All we've got to do is get it off." He grabbed the edge of the wing with his left hand for balance, brought the broomstick up over his shoulder with his right, and then slammed the stick down hard on the wing surface, sending small chunks of ice flying in all directions.
Henry turned and walked back to Marie and Sally Napaskiak.
"You know we're going to crash," he said in a strangled voice. "Either we're going to be too heavy to take off, or we're going to ice up, or the fucking wings are going to fall off because our pilot has been pounding on them with a goddamn broom handle."
"Oh, don't you pay any attention to him," Sally Napaskiak advised Marie, shaking her head. "You two are going to be just fine. Thomas has been a federal government pilot for three whole weeks now, and he hasn't killed anyone yet. So why should you two happy people be the first?"
Chapter Thirty-One
Tuesday September 14th
To virtually any other resident of the southern shoreline of Skilak Lake, the sudden cracking of a dried branch would have been immediate cause for alarm. But in this remote and isolated area of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, the fiercely protective Kodiak had no natural enemies. With her cubs close by, she was completely engrossed in the alluring clumps of lush, ripe, raspberry-like salmonberries and low- bush cranberries. She had every intention of seeing her small cubs develop the fatty tissue necessary to carry them through the cold Kenai winters.