The four-wheeler passed beneath them, the driver a transitory impression of black hair and faded blue plaid, hunched over the handlebars, driving desperately toward an escape that just wasn't in the cards.
“Two!”
Liam looked over his shoulder and wished he hadn't. They were skimming maybe twenty feet above the surface now. A clump of white spruce jumped out in front of them and Wy swore, and the Cub hopped up and over like a startled rabbit. Even at their reduced pace their airspeed felt entirely too fast for comfort, and like warp nine for someone about to jump.
“One!”
Liam summoned up every ounce of courage he had and tightened muscles he didn't even know existed. A flash of silver glinted ahead.
“MARK!”
He closed his eyes and pushed, the hand with the gun in it knocking awkwardly against the side of the plane. The Cub fell away from him as if slapped aside by his thrust alone, and he had just enough time to hear the roar of the engine as Wy shoved the throttle all the way in.
She'd brought the Cub so low he didn't have time to curl into a protective ball, and his back hit the water with a loudsmack!He froze, more at the shock of impact than at the temperature of the water, which seemed almost lukewarm compared to his imagining. The reason became clear when he brought his legs down and touched bottom almost immediately. Shallow waters, even shallow waters in Alaska, had warmed up by the third week of July.
He stood up and his head broke water. The lake came to his chest. An explosion of sound he momentarily mistook for the Cub crashing came from the opposite end of the lake, and he turned to see a terror-stricken moose crash through the brush and vanish into the undergrowth.
His hearing was a little watery. He slapped the sides of his head to clear his ears, and was rewarded by the irritated buzzing of the Cub. He looked around and found it making a tight circle in the air just over a knoll to his right. He waved reassurance, and the Cub waggled its wings and pulled out of the circle to head back in the direction from which they had come, an arrow pointing his way.
Liam took a step forward and found the bottom of the little lake, barely a hundred feet across, rich with mud and rotting vegetation that clung lovingly to his feet. He slogged out eventually. The edge of the lake was not an improvement, a soggy marsh interspersed with pools of water and grassy hillocks.
He plodded grimly on until he reached the top of the knoll Wy had buzzed, where the ground was comparatively drier. The sound of the plane was nearer now, as was the sound of the fourwheeler, and his head cleared the top of the fifty-foot summit to see the Cub make a very low pass over the four-wheeler, only missing the driver's head with the gear by inches. The fourwheeler swerved and almost overturned and then straightened at the last possible moment.
The Cub came back for another pass, and this time, by god, she clipped him, the gear catching one of the handlebars with a thump. This time it was the Cub that wobbled off.
“Wy!” Liam roared, angry and terrified. “Goddamn it, be careful!”
Wy steadied the Cub, banked right and came back for a third pass. The driver of the four-wheeler pressed his chest to the gas tank and opened the throttle up as far as it would go. It hurtled up the slope of the knoll Liam was standing on and directly at him.
“Christ!” Liam yelped, and leapt to one side.
The man at the controls opened his eyes, saw Liam, let out a terrified yell and tried to swerve, but it was too late. Man and machine missed Liam with a foot to spare, and flew over the top of the knoll. They parted company about halfway down and crashed separately into the other side. Liam regained his feet and took the hill back down in giant steps, reaching the man as he got to all fours, shaking his head.
“Halt!” Liam said, and pointed his nine-millimeter.
The pistol was still in its Ziploc bag, still duct-taped to his hand. The man, revealed to be young and Yupik, looked at the gun, looked at Liam and got to his feet to run.
Liam had had just about enough of jumping out of planes and out of the way of oncoming four-wheelers, and he wasn't about to go haring after someone through the Alaskan Bush, especially in July. The mosquitoes had already formed a fierce cloud around his head. He felt for the trigger and fired a round skyward through the plastic. The resulting boom echoed for miles. “You run, by god, I'll shoot your ass off,” he said, and he meant it.
The young man surrendered.
It was a full fifty-two minutes before the four-wheeler rumbled up the slope and onto the surface of the Tulukaruk bluff. Liam was driving. The previous driver was sitting behind, cuffed to the freight rack over the rear wheels. He was a chunky man who looked like he was in his early thirties, with golden skin scarred with acne, shoulder-length black hair that would have been beautiful if it had been washed anytime in the past month, and black button eyes that seemed unable to focus properly. He had a wispy mustache that made him look like a youthful, Yupik version of Wyatt Earp.
Liam was carrying a rifle in the crook of one arm, steering with the other. His brand-new uniform was damp and mud-streaked, there were strands of goose grass adorning his person and he had at least a dozen welts on his face and neck from mosquito bites, but he was at peace with his world.
That lasted as long as it took for him to pull the four-wheeler to a halt in front of the service tent. He dismounted, and Wy took three steps forward, made a fist and hit him in the gut with all the not inconsiderable force in her five-foot-eight-inch, 135-pound frame.
“Oof!” With a look of astonishment, Liam backed up a step and sat down hard on the four-wheeler seat he had just vacated.
“Hey,” Prince said, eyes blinking open. She was sitting on a deck chair retrieved from inside the tent, one hand holding her head up. McLynn, his arm bound, appeared to be dozing in his chair.
“You suicidal son of a bitch!” Wy said, eyes blazing. “That is the last time you go up in a plane with me, I don't care how much the frigging state is paying! You could have been hurt! You could have beenkilled!” She wound up and hit him again, this time her clenched fist hitting him flush on the nose, and he was so befuddled he went backward ass over teakettle to fall heavily on the opposite side of the four-wheeler.
“Hey,” the man cuffed to the back of the four-wheeler said, “fight!” He peered around himself with shortsighted eyes.
Prince rose to her feet, shaky but determined. “All right, that's enough.” She managed to grab hold of one of Wy's arms.
Wy, unheeding, continued to shout, the volume steadily increasing. “You've got a death wish, fine, throw yourself off the deck of that derelict you're sleeping on! Jump in front of a truck! Get yourself shot by some drunk in a bar, I don't care!”
Liam raised himself to his knees. He gulped in a welcome breath of air and felt his belly. It was sore but it was still there. He tried hard to keep the grin from spreading across his face, and failed. “And to think I wasn't sure you cared.”
It only fanned the flames. “You miserable prick!” She actually came around the four-wheeler and pulled back her foot to kick him, and was thwarted only when Prince caught both her arms this time.
“All right,” Prince said, probably as sternly as she could with her head beating like a tomtom. “That's enough.”
Wy wrestled free and would have clocked her, too, if Liam hadn't managed to get up and catch her fist in one hand. She tried to kick him in the shins then, which he thwarted by catching her foot and holding it in the air. He shook his head at Prince when she made as if to grab Wy from behind. “Stop it, Wy,” he said, his firm tone belied by the grin, which had managed to spread all over his face and whose beam could probably be seen from orbit. “You hit her and you're assaulting a police officer.” The grin widened impossibly further. “Hit me again, and it's a lover's quarrel.”