When I came out from under the wing, Daniels and Rankin were standing together by the tail of the plane. The rain was more like a mist. Rankin had his notebook out and was reading his notes out loud while Daniels listened and took out his flashlight. It was a long, heavy duty model that looked like a night stick. When he pointed it at his own face and flicked it on, his features lit up like a demonic Halloween mask. He looked at me with a steely glare, his rigid flattop forming a sharp vee at the top of his face. Shadows carved his hatchet face like a gargoyle, ancient and fierce as death itself.
I stopped in my tracks, but then he snapped off the beam and his face went dark, almost invisible in the dim light. I shuddered and reminded myself that he was on my side. At least I hoped he was. I dug in my pockets for something to do, found a pack of gum and took my time removing a piece from the aluminum foil.
Ignoring me, Daniels slid the flashlight back into his belt. Then he pulled out his handgun. It was black too, and as the light continued to fade around us, he pointed the weapon at the ground, hauled back on the slide and chambered a round. He flipped on the safety and put it back in its holster and looked over at his partner.
Rankin’s blond head and fair complexion gleamed in the night. He put away the notebook, and together they pulled on black baseball caps. Rankin’s glow disappeared. He went almost as dark as Daniels if not just as deadly, their eyes lost in the shadows. I stepped toward them determined to look casual.
Sure, this is business as usual. Just dropping off a couple of special ops assassins on a mission of murder and mayhem. Hiya fellas. How’s tricks?
“Expecting trouble?” I asked.
“No, we always check our gear. It’s standard procedure for DV cases," Rankin answered.
“DV?”
“Domestic violence,” he explained. “The call we got sounded like a family quarrel, but the phone went dead before the dispatcher could get much information.”
That reminded me that I needed to give Willie a call. I turned toward the baggage compartment and the satellite phone. I opened the small door in the side of the plane, reached in and popped open the catches on the orange plastic container.
Rankin moved up beside me. “We gonna have enough light to take off when we get back?”
I looked out into the distance and over to where we’d landed. I could see across the water for miles under the layer of cloud. To the west I could even see a gleam of moonlight on the side of a mountain in the distance.
“Shouldn’t be a problem as long as the weather holds like this. It’s going to be a lot darker in another hour but as long as I can see the ground and those trees down there we’ll be okay.”
Rankin looked down the airstrip in both directions as if trying to imagine the takeoff. Daniels had moved away from the plane and was standing motionless looking down the road toward the lodge. His back was to us. I could barely see him, black on black.
“Flying in the dark is no problem,” I went on. “As long as there’s no fog. How long do you think you’ll be?”
Rankin looked at his watch. “Shouldn’t take long. We’re going to walk into the lodge. It’s about a mile away. If we need to bring the guy with us, we’ll be back in an hour or so.”
“Okay,” I answered. “I’ll be ready.”
Rankin turned toward the rear of the plane again, but then I stopped him. Turning my back away from Daniels, I asked in a low voice. “Uh, everything okay with your partner there? He seems a little edgy.”
Rankin hesitated for a moment but then he leaned toward me and with a tight smile said, “Ah, he’s okay. Just a nervous flier, I think. Don’t worry about it.”
I studied his face. He looked apologetic. “And he doesn’t like DV cases either. Well, none of us do, but, hey, you know.”
He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I knew. People are strange, and they get stranger with booze. Not to mention that remote Alaska attracts a special breed of individual. Some that aren’t that tightly wired. Then with time and isolation, they sometimes unravel.
“Okay, good luck,” I said, instantly regretting it. Rankin turned stiffly and walked off to join Daniels. I didn’t know if cops shared the same superstitions with pilots, but a lot of us avoid using that phrase ‘good luck’ before a flight. Like we don’t want any reminders that a lot of what we do depends on it.
We try to think that’s it’s all science. And good planning, good maintenance and smart decision making. We try to pretend that misfortune is completely preventable. We read the accident reports and the NTSB analyses, and we tell ourselves we wouldn’t make the same mistakes. It’s said that more than ninety percent of all airplane accidents are pilot error. The rest are mechanical. Supposedly. But we all know that some are unexplainable. Somebody’s luck just ran out. That’s why a good luck wish can feel like more of a curse.
I waited for a minute watching the troopers move down the road together. Then all I could see was the white luminous strips of tape on the back of their caps. Bobbing ghostlike in the gloom, the tape lurched and swayed with the movement of their bodies. But disconnected somehow, floating like drunken fireflies, dimming and dull.
Within a few moments the darkness swallowed them completely. All I could hear was the sound of their heavy shoes scuffling over the gravel surface. Another minute went by and even that sound was gone.
That’s when it hit me. Luminous tape. Long forgotten memories from my Ranger School days crawled back into my mind. It had been a long time ago, but military training in the dead of night never really leaves you. I’d spent too much time following two strips of white tape in the dark to ever forget it. It was a world where everything was black. Grease paint on our faces, electrical tape on our dogtags. White nametags and t-shirts were removed or covered. Chest deep in a Florida swamp, the luminous tape on the back of the guy’s hat in front of you was the only thing you could see. It was the only thing keeping you from getting separated from the others and lost.
I was twenty one years old. I’d never experienced such darkness. Or terror. The swamps were filled with alligators and snakes. I remember being wet and cold and scared for hours and hours. Carrying heavy packs and weapons. Constantly moving, too exhausted to think straight, but never too tired to escape the fear. Or that surreal line of ghostly white strips dancing in the dark. Knowing that if I lost track of them, I was dead.
I jerked myself back from the memories and looked around. I got a sinking helpless sensation. The kind you get when you don't know what's going on. When you just have to wait to see what happens next. All sight and sound of the troopers was gone. I strained my ears trying to pick up any sound of them.
That’s the first thing that always hit me in the wilderness. The quiet. No engine noise, no highway traffic in the distance, no human sounds of any kind. Leaning against the airplane, I let the quiet wash over me and tried to imagine what it would be like to live out there every day. Free of people and all their maddening racket. So peaceful and still. Then comes the second thing that always hits in the wilderness. The noise. All the other sounds began to rise to the surface. It really wasn’t quiet at all.
There was a burble of water somewhere close. The flow of a small stream trickled from the hillside above me on its way to the bay. An owl called out from the darkness of the trees above the runway, and I heard an answer from its mate in the distance. Insects buzzed nearby, and an occasional mosquito brushed against my face, its high pitched scream just audible before I waved it away. I couldn’t hear waves from the shoreline but I could imagine the water lapping against the rocks not far from where I stood. The tick of cooling engine metal was the only reminder of humanity.
Before long there was sound everywhere. Soft, subtle and steady, the rhythm of nightlife in Prince William Sound. The low tone of a foghorn in the distance floated through the evening calm and echoed against the hillsides. When it stopped the sounds all around me continued. Bugs, and birds and water. Suddenly I felt acutely alone standing there in th
e middle of nowhere. I could have been the last man alive in the universe.
I shook myself out of the reverie and turned to the baggage compartment again. I took the satellite phone out of its orange plastic container and flipped open the cover. It took me a moment to remember how to use the thing. Then I pressed the power button and waited while the screen lit up and went through its start up sequence. When it was finished I dialed Willie’s number. I didn’t bother calling Moose Pass. I knew I’d just get the answering machine again. I’d fill them in tomorrow.
After four rings, Willie’s slurry voice came on. “Y -ello?”
“Hey, man, we made it.”
“Who’s this?”
“Come on, Willie. Wake up. It’s Johnny. I’m out here on Taroka Island. We should be heading back in another hour or so.”
“Johnny who?”
“Very funny, butthole.”
“Hey, Johnny. Okay, yeah, I'm drunk as a motherfucker, seeya.” The line went dead.
I stared down at the phone in my hand. So much for reaching out and touching someone. Goddamn guy. Just when I could have used a little connection with a human being. Even one like Willie.
I snapped the phone shut and packed it back in its box. I left it on the front seat to remind myself to call him again before we took off. Then I walked around the plane and looked her over for something to do. And to make sure no important parts had fallen off or a tire had gone flat. I glanced at my watch. It was after nine.
I walked toward the water line leaving the plane behind. With nothing to do but kill time I thought I’d look the place over and inspect the runway a little closer. I wanted to know it well when I took off in the dark. And it was getting steadily darker. The clouds seemed thicker and their lumpy gray bulk loomed motionless above me like dirty soap suds clogging a drain. I hadn’t seen any rain drops since the landing, but I could feel water in the sky all around me, ready to release at any moment.
The surface of the airstrip looked okay, a mixture of tiny gravel, bare dirt and small rocks scattered randomly along its length. The middle lane of the strip held fewer rocks than the edges, but it didn’t have the well traveled appearance of other gravel strips I’d used. I figured this one didn’t get many airplanes. It was one way and short and a long way from help, not exactly welcoming features.
I found the place where I’d touched down. Fresh scuff spots marked the gravel about ten feet past the grassy edge of the embankment above the water. Nailed it.
Down at the edge of the water white foamy waves murmured quietly against the shore. Their ebb and flow was muffled and soft, moving restlessly back and forth against the jagged rocks scattered here and there. I spotted one solitary light in the distance. It was probably the big dock on Evans Island a few miles away across the passage. And off to the right, way in the distance I could see what must have been a ship of some kind. Lights clustered in a tight knot moved along the horizon. Could have been a cruise ship but probably wasn’t. Not enough lights. More likely a tanker or an ocean going barge piled high with containers and pulled by a tug. It was too far away be sure.
With the officers gone, I was alone. More alone than I'd been in a long time. Alone and in the dark. In more ways than one. A wave of emptiness rippled deep in my gut.
I thought about Seward then. And my home at the airport. I craved the image of my camper and the cozy warm smell of last night’s leftovers. The softness of the air mattress bed beckoned from above the driver’s compartment. I was tired and wanted nothing more than to kick off my shoes, pull off my clothes and climb into that softness under the down sleeping bag. And, of course, I imagined another warm presence there too. Smiling up at me from the dark pillow, her open arms welcoming me home.
But that was just a dream and miles away. Nevertheless, home pulled at me the way it always did. Like a long rubber band tied around one ankle. The further from the safe and familiar, the stronger the pull.
I turned away from the waterline and walked back up the left side of the airstrip scanning the surface for any problems. Something scurried through the brush to my left. I looked that way but saw nothing. A bear? The trees on that side of the runway were thick and blocked any view to the north. Dense brush formed a thick dark wall filled with small skittering sounds muffled by the heavy foliage. I glanced over to where the airplane sat and wondered if I could get there before a bear chased me down.
Relax, dummy, it was probably a squirrel. The voice in my head tried to settle me down with little success. I wished I’d had more of Willie’s paranoia. Having a shotgun slung over my shoulder would have felt a lot better. My timing sucked. He worried about this kind of stuff all the time, and I usually didn’t worry about it until it was in my face. And too late.
"You don't worry enough," he'd said. He was probably right. I liked to think of myself as cool, calm and collected. Worrying didn't fit the picture. He'd probably say I was going to be the coolest guy that ever died from a dumb mistake.
I clapped my hands together a few times to make sure the local wildlife knew I was there. Counting on that old theory that they were more afraid of me than I was of them. As if a theory would protect my butt when my lack of firearms wouldn’t. I took a deep breath and moved on.
Halfway up the strip I stopped and turned around for the view I’d have on takeoff. That was the way home. I was uphill then with good visibility over the water below. Moonlight from the west was starting to flood dimly under the clouds lighting up the channel, but I didn’t like what I saw.
CHAPTER FOUR