Arctic Fire (40 page)

The explosion shocked everyone as the chair Speed Trap was tied to tumbled backward with a loud crash. The gunshot had sounded
incredibly
loud inside the galley. Even Maddux had thrown himself to the floor out of instinct when the bullet blasted from the gun.

Maddux scrambled to where Speed Trap lay. He was still secured to the chair, which had crashed to the floor, and Maddux tried to find a pulse in the young man’s wrist and then in his neck. But there was none in either place. The single, well-aimed bullet had blown Speed Trap’s heart to bits, and he was dead.

Maddux glanced up at Grant, who was still aiming the smoking gun at his younger brother. “Good job, son,” he muttered
to Grant approvingly as he stood up and moved to where Sage was standing with his hands to his face. “Get this ship out on the Bering Sea right now, Sage. And I mean
right
now.” Maddux glanced down at Duke, who’d crawled over to Speed Trap and was sobbing pitifully as he rested his head on his dead son’s bloody chest. “I might need you out there.”

Maddux patted Grant on the shoulder as he went by. “Good job,” he repeated. “The United States thanks you.”

When Maddux emerged onto the deck of the
Arctic Fire
, he glanced up just as a seaplane roared overhead. He knew who was in that plane.

It occurred to him as he signaled to the three men who were waiting for him on the dock that the man who’d just flown overhead was risking everything to save his brother. And that the man below had just killed his brother in cold blood.

“
R
ED, RED
, red,
” Karen shouted excitedly as she pointed down at the ground through the late afternoon sunshine. She was sitting on the right side of the plane, directly behind Jack, who was in the front seat opposite Turner. “Red at two o’clock!”

“I see it, I see it,” Turner confirmed as he banked the seaplane a few degrees right so they were heading due east toward what Karen had spotted. The mass of material lay on the ground at the end of a brittle-looking wooden pier. The pier extended into the wide inlet behind the barrier island and the Bering Sea. “That’s what Bobby Mitchell told me to look for. He said red was the color of the rafts on the
Arctic Fire
. He said his Uncle Sage always had orange survival suits, yellow harnesses, and red rafts.”

“I don’t know if it’s a raft.” Jack stared down at the crumpled mass lying on the sand by the end of the dock. “But it sure is bright red.”

Everything seemed to be falling together, but he had to be ready for a dead end too. If he didn’t and Troy wasn’t in that lonely house a hundred yards inland from the pier, he’d be devastated. He’d always had the habit of preparing himself for disappointment, not anticipating success, because he never wanted to feel vulnerable. And he still couldn’t let go. He’d finally thought he could in that Montana bar the other night, when he and Karen seemed to be doing so well. But now she was being so distant. At least he knew why, though that didn’t help much.

“Great spot, Karen,” he called over his shoulder above the hum of the two propellers.

“Thanks.”

Other than her excited call about what was lying at the end of the pier a few moments ago, that was the first word she’d spoken in the plane.

After taking off from Dutch, Turner had pointed the nose of the seaplane east-northeast and then hugged the top of the Aleutian archipelago. They’d flown past Akutan and Mt. Gilbert, and then Turner had brought them down to three hundred feet as they reached the west end of Unimak Island. Since then they’d been skimming along the north side of the island looking for anything that might lead them to Troy.

Using the
Arctic’s Fire
’s approximate location as a starting point—which Speed Trap had given Turner at the bar in the Fish Head Pub—he’d done some rough calculations using winds and tides from that night. The calculations indicated that the best chance of spotting anything was on the north side of the island chain between the east end of Unimak Island and Nelson Lagoon on the Alaska Peninsula.

If this turned out to be a dead end, it would be too dark to spot anything else once they were up in the air again, Jack realized. They’d have to cover the rest of the search area tomorrow, if the weather cooperated—which it wasn’t supposed to.

Turner landed the plane on the calm waters of the inlet in front of the little two-story house, which was in desperate need of repair, Jack saw as he jumped from one of the plane’s pontoons down into the shallow water Turner had taxied to. His heart was starting to pound hard. Mostly because he was close enough now to the mass of red material Karen had spotted to see that it was indeed a deflated raft—but also because he’d never done anything like this in his life and he was loving it.

Now he understood why Troy was constantly challenging nature. It was crazy to be out here in the wilds of a remote place like this. Maybe it wasn’t as dangerous as climbing Mount Everest or as remote or exotic a destination as Nepal, but it was still exciting as hell. And it was a lot better than sitting at Tri-State Securities trading bonds. If there was one thing he’d figured out from all of this, he knew he never wanted to work another desk job again.

“Everybody got guns?” Turner asked as he came around the front of the plane and slogged out of the shallow water. He was holding an over-and-under shotgun.

And, Jack saw, Turner had a .44-caliber Magnum in his wide belt. The thick, black handle protruded ominously. “Yeah, I’ve got my nine millimeter,” Jack answered with an impressed grin. Ross Turner was one damned intimidating presence. And Jack was damned glad he was here with them.

Turner pointed at Karen. “You?”

She gestured at the small of her back. “I’ve got my thirty-eight.”

“OK, let’s go.”

Jack pointed at the small, weather-beaten house as they walked toward it. “Why do people live like this, Ross?”

“What do you mean?”

“There isn’t a town anywhere near here. Hell, there probably isn’t another
house
that near here. Who lives like this?”

Tucker shook his head grimly. “People who
really
don’t want you to ask them what their last name is.”

As they closed in on the house, the front door burst open and an older woman dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt rushed out onto the porch brandishing a shotgun. She looked pretty weather-beaten herself, Jack noticed, but she certainly wasn’t lacking in the guts department.

“What do you want?” she demanded angrily, aiming the weapon at Turner before he could raise his gun.

“Easy, ma’am,” Jack called out loudly, stopping quickly and holding both hands out with his palms facing the porch. “We sure don’t want any trouble.”

“What
do
you want?” she asked again.

“I’m looking for my brother, Troy.”

“Never heard of him and never seen him,” the woman answered. “Now get the hell out of here.”

“What about that raft?” Jack asked, motioning over his shoulder toward the pier. He didn’t want to let this go. It had felt like Troy was so close. “We think it’s the kind he would have been in.”

“That’s just an old raft from my husband’s fishing boat.”

“What boat? I didn’t see any—”

“He’s out on the ocean right now,” the older woman interrupted, stepping forward and swinging the shotgun in Jack’s direction. “So I’m alone, and I got a real itchy trigger finger when I’m alone.”

It felt to Jack as if his heart actually dropped out of his chest just then. He’d been so ready to see Troy, so certain that they were seconds from reuniting. And he realized that no amount of prepping himself for disappointment would have been enough to ease the sadness he was suddenly experiencing. Apparently, they were going to have to head back to Dutch Harbor and try looking farther east tomorrow.

But he’d come so far.

“Ma’am, I don’t mean to—”

“I told you,” the woman said, bringing the gun up and aiming it directly at Jack’s chest, “I don’t know who he is.”

“I believe that’s our cue to leave,” Turner said quietly, backing off two steps very slowly. “Let’s go, Jack.”

“OK, OK,” he murmured softly. “Well, I’m sorry we bothered—”

“Hello, brother.”

Jack’s gaze flashed to the left as a slim figure stepped out from behind the worn, gray shingles on that side of the house. “
Troy!
”

“Jackson!” It was the nickname Troy had used for Jack since their playground days.

They hustled toward each other and hugged hard, slapping each other on the back and shoulders over and over.

“Sorry for that cat-and-mouse crap,” Troy apologized, “but I had to make sure who it was.”

“No problem. God, you’re thin,” Jack said, still experiencing the overwhelming wave of emotion that had hit him as soon as Troy had stepped out from behind the house. He brushed tears from his eyes and cheeks as he finally pulled back from their embrace. “I knew you weren’t dead.
I knew it,
goddamn it!”

“What are you doing here?” Troy asked as he wiped away tears of his own.

“Saving your ass.”

“Yeah, yeah, but
why
?
Why
are you here?”

“We heard you were washed off the
Arctic Fire
by a rogue wave.” Jack shook his head. “I knew that wasn’t true when I found out that the other four guys aboard the
Fire
were OK. I was convinced you would have been the last to go off that ship, not the first. So I came here to find out what really happened.” He pointed at Turner. “This is an old friend of mine from Denison. His name’s Ross Turner.”

“Hey, Ross.” Troy waved at Turner. Then he smiled and nodded at Karen. “Hey, Karen.”

“Hello, Troy.” Her eyes were watery too. “I’m so glad you’re OK.”

“You’re not the only one,” Troy agreed with a roll of his eyes. “Beeeelieve me.”

Everyone laughed loudly, even the woman on the porch.

“I remember your name,” Troy said, pointing at Turner. “I remember my brother talking about you.”

“Ross lives here in Alaska,” Jack explained. “He’s been a big help getting me this far, let me tell you.”

“Thanks, Ross,” Troy called out. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it.”

“No worries, pal,” Turner called back. “Your brother’s a good man. I wanted to help him any way I could.”

Jack put a hand on Troy’s bony shoulder and smiled. “By the way, Troy, we really are brothers. Half brothers, anyway.”

Troy’s eyes opened wide. “
What?
”

Jack quickly explained what Bill had told him in his office on Wall Street. And then they hugged again…even harder this time.

“I can’t believe it,” Troy muttered, shaking his head. “This is
awesome
.”

“We got that box from the Bankses’ cabin in Minnesota,” Jack said. He gestured toward Karen. “She got your letter and told me about it. We stopped at the cabin on the way out here.”

“Any problems?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ll explain later.” Jack would tell him about the cop when they had more time.

“Did you read what I put in there?” Troy asked.

“Every word. It’s incredible.”

“Yeah, well, that guy Shane Maddux is crazy. I mean,
really
crazy. What about President Dorn?” he asked worriedly.

“He’s OK,” Jack answered, “as far as we know, anyway. There wasn’t anything on the news when we left Dutch. We haven’t heard about any kind of assassination attempt.”

“What about an LNG tanker blowing up in Boston Harbor?”

“No.”

Troy’s shoulders sagged. “Thank God.”

“Yeah, really.”

“Well, did you call someone after you read the stuff?”

“Who was I supposed to call, brother? And not get arrested or thrown into an insane asylum.
And
not get Shane Maddux and Roger Carlson very, very pissed off at Karen and me.”

“I didn’t think about that,” Troy admitted.

“Candidly,” Jack continued, “I wasn’t sure you really wanted her to contact anybody. I couldn’t figure out why you’d write it all down and then put it in a box. I couldn’t figure out why you wouldn’t report Maddux yourself.”

“I put all that in there in case I was killed. I had a feeling something was up, and I wanted Maddux to go down if he murdered me. I was going to take out Maddux before he could shoot President Dorn, but I never got the chance. He took me out first.”