Killer View

“Should I contact the Butte County sheriff and let him know you’re coming?”

“No. Call over to Sun Valley Aviation and see if you can get me a time for a tow.”

Nancy looked up at him quizzically. “The glider?”

Walt smiled for the first time all day.

WALT AND THE PILOT of the towplane coordinated the release of the glider. As the Cessna banked slowly to the right, diving below and away, Walt piloted the glider higher and slightly left.

“It’s noisier than I’d imagined,” Fiona said from behind him.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “I told you: I have no problem with small planes.” Walt had flown gliders since his early twenties, his interest born out of an envy of eagles and hawks and a budget that couldn’t afford renting single-engine airtime.

The glider suddenly caught an updraft off the base of the hills and gained a hundred feet in a matter of seconds, leaving both their stomachs somewhere up on the Plexiglas cockpit cover.

“Still okay?” Walt asked.

“I’m getting used to it.”

He saw the towplane now. It had come fully around, on a line with the Arco airstrip about twenty miles ahead. As arranged, rather than returning to Hailey, it would wait in Arco for them.

“Are we high enough?” Fiona shouted, to be heard over the roar created by wind over the wings. There was no motor, just the rush of the glider slicing through the sky.

“I’m working on it.”

Walt worked the glider into a wide spiral, climbing into an azure sky, carried aloft by thermals generated by the mountain landmass below. Killer view, Walt thought. To their right, the vast central plain of Idaho stretched out like a lake of desert sand, interrupted occasionally by volcanic cones dormant some ten thousand years. So random were these buttes, they appeared artificially placed. They saw bunkerlike buildings surrounded by tangles of pipes and aprons of parking lot. So secret was the work done here, so important to national security, that the entire area was grayed out on Internet-accessed satellite maps. Not even the topography was properly mapped-and it was the terrain and topography that most interested Walt.

Rivers and streams flowed out of the mountains roughly west to east. For Walt’s theory of contamination to hold up, there had to be underground water flowing northwest from the INL. He’d made a quick study of the massive northern Rocky Mountain aquifer that stretched from Canada all the way to Mexico, but it too flowed predominantly south and slightly east. He wanted a bird’s-eye view, to validate or invalidate his theory, but the INL airspace was restricted and those restrictions strenuously enforced.

His decision was to stray over the airspace, what he would call “a regrettable but unavoidable piloting error.” He counted on the evening thermals to hold the glider aloft long enough for him to maneuver into position. Pursuing more altitude, he continued the elegant, half-mile-wide spiral ascent. At eleven thousand feet above sea level-six thousand aboveground-Walt kept the glider shy of an altitude requiring supplemental oxygen.

“Everything ready?

“Yes. Good to go.”

“I have no idea what they’ll do when we enter their airspace, but I don’t see them shooting us down or anything.”

“Well, that’s reassuring.”

“Get everything you can, everything we discussed.”

“Will do.”

“And if we are forced down, whatever you do don’t surrender your equipment. Under no circumstances will you take that camera off your neck. They will claim all sorts of rights, but I think they’ll stop short of actually physically removing the camera.”

“And if they think otherwise?”

“We’ll move it up a level to the attorneys.”

“And if the attorneys fail?”

Walt said nothing.

“Walt?” she said, trying for an answer. Then it hit her. “Oh! Goddamn you! You wouldn’t stoop to something… You wouldn’t use me like that.”

“Like what?”

“You were the one who told me Roger’s company, Semper Group, is under contract with the government to manage nukes, among other things. The INL is a Semper contract, isn’t it?”

“It is, but-”

“Did you honestly think I’d call Roger for you if you get busted in here? Is that why you asked me along? I’m your safety valve? How self-serving is that?”

“It never occurred to me. I just need photographs.”

“But you didn’t need me to take them.”

“Of course I did.”

“You’re banking on my relationship with Roger to get you out of trouble. It’s despicable.”

“You’re overreacting.” He directed the glider toward the alluvial plain, the sun bloodred as it edged ever closer to the western horizon. “I thought you’d like it up here.”

A difficult silence followed. It was too loud for him to hear her preparing her equipment. She said, “It just so happens that I do.”

Walt smiled to himself, eased the joystick forward, and the glider quickly picked up speed as it dove, racing now into the restricted airspace.

43

ROY COATS BROUGHT THE MAUL DOWN ONE-HANDED, SPLITTING the log in a single stroke and sending a shudder of pain through his wounds. Standing a few feet off to the side, Gearbox eyed the sharpened edge of the maul, as it caught the mottled sunlight.

“I have to meet with her.” Coats spoke cautiously through a clenched jaw. Any movement of his facial muscles sent white pain down his neck and into the scissor wound in his armpit. His unmoving lips resulted in a menacing tone. “She makes the drop, and we don’t give a shit about this guy. Let him freeze out there. But I can’t count on her making the drop. So I’m not leaving here until I know we have a backup in place. That means you’ve got to find him.” Coats wound up the maul and split another log, again in a single stroke.

“As if we haven’t been trying.”

“Find him,” Coats repeated. He took off his glove and gingerly touched where the stove had branded his cheek. There was yellow pus on the tip of his finger. He wiped it off on his jeans. The burn needed medical attention, a primary reason he wanted the vet recaptured. “He’s on foot in a fresh snowfall. We’re on snowmobiles. Are you fucking kidding me?”

“But, with the dogs…” Gearbox said.

“We don’t slow down, waiting for them.”

“But Bill said-”

“Fuck Billy! If the dogs get here, they get here. But every minute he’s out there, he’s farther away. And you know what’s worse? It’s worse if he dies out there. Until I say otherwise, we need him.”

“I’m open to suggestions,” Gearbox said.

He cowered as Coats turned slowly. The maul swung like a pendulum at his side.

“We’ve been up and down that track a dozen times,” Gearbox complained. “The game trails too. Without the dogs, we got nothing.”

“Fuck the dogs!” An idea hit him. “Okay,” Coats said, his anger briefly subsiding. “You remember that time we lost the cat over in eastern Oregon?”

“Sure,” Gearbox said, nodding.

“We’re going to do it like that: a pattern search. All we’ve gotta do is cross his tracks at some point. He can’t be far.”

“Okay,” Gearbox said. He didn’t sound convinced.

“I’ve got to keep that meeting with her. Are you listening? If she delivers that drum like I asked, within a week there’s not one person on this planet won’t have heard of the Samaki

He couldn’t stop the grin from finding its way onto his face, but, this time, the accompanying agony was well worth it.