Project Hannibal Page 15

  For a split second, Sera held on, bracing against the pull of Estelle’s weight. Then, with a shout, Sera fell sprawling and Estelle was skidding away. Sera and Annie slid down the hill after her, their screams piercing the air.

  The slope steepened as Estelle clawed and scrambled for purchase on the wet, glassy surface. She tumbled down a frozen waterfall, icy meltwater spilling over her. Her hands, knees, and chin scraped over ice chunks.

  Estelle hit gravel and came to rest, washed up on a shoal like a beached whale, twenty feet below where she’d started. Sera whooshed past before Estelle could turn.

  Bam! The suitcase-toboggan slammed into her. Estelle flung out her arms to grasp Annie before she could tumble farther down the slope. The suitcases slipped past, the box overturning and spewing out protein bars and bottles of water.

  Annie whimpered in Estelle’s arms.

  Or did she? Estelle eyed her suspiciously. “Are you laughing?”

  “I feel so silly. I hope you’re not hurt, dear.”

  Estelle steadied the two of them on the gravel shoal. “Sera?”

  “I’m all right,” she called from a dozen yards below. “Wet, though.”

  They all were wet, soaked in the frigid meltwater. That was bad, very bad.

  At least they were closer to the grassy field.

  “Sera, we need the clothes and supplies.”

  “I’ll take care of that,” Sera said. “You take care of Annie. And remind me never to go on a waterslide again.”

  Annie clung to Estelle. “I’m sorry I’m so helpless, dear.”

  “You’re not helpless,” Estelle said. “Neither am I. But we’re not going to try to walk on this popsicle. We’re going to scoot.”

  They scooted on their backsides a few feet, then crawled, then rolled a bit. It took time, but eventually they came to the moraine, a ten-foot-high bank of dirt and gravel left by the glacier’s retreat at the end of the last ice age.

  Annie panted, gazing at the rise. “Perhaps I’d better stay here.”

  “Nonsense. I’ll think of something.” But they were both shivering, and Estelle’s mind was a blank.

  “Steps,” Estelle said. “If I dig some steps, we can go up little by little.” But with every scoop that Estelle clawed out of the bank, the dirt and gravel filled right back in.

  Sera appeared on the slope above them. “Hang on, I have an idea.”

  She unzipped her roller bag and dumped out the contents. “Sit in this like a chair. We’ll attach the ropes and pull you up.”

  Annie raised a gray eyebrow. “Worth a try.”

  With Estelle’s help, Annie nestled her butt in the suitcase. Estelle slung the rope around the bottom of the bag and tied half hitches around the extended handle shafts. Then she scrambled to the top of the slope to grab one end of the rope.

  “Ready? Pull!”

  Estelle and Sera walked backward, dragging the suitcase throne up the bank. Annie pushed with her feet to keep from tipping over.

  At the top, Annie lay on her back like an overturned turtle.

  “We did it!” Sera grinned.

  “Praise Jesus,” Annie said faintly, teeth chattering.

  Estelle crossed herself and added an amen, but she wasn’t ready to sing praises yet. Her goal had been to keep warm. Instead, they were all soaked in ice melt and shaking with cold. The breeze had coated them with sticky ash, and there was no glimpse of a warming sun behind the gray cloud cover.

  “Everyone into dry clothes,” she said. “Whatever we have.”

  God, send help soon. Wasn’t it Saint Agatha who stopped a volcano’s eruption? Estelle promised her a dozen candles if she’d intercede and help them get off this mountain.

  Luis glanced at the tablet again. Ruby had set a good pace—by ten in the morning, after four hours of walking, they’d traveled eight miles into trackless wilderness. He’d left Opal unharnessed in light of her advanced state of pregnancy, and Pearl in light of Diamond’s continuing urge to mount her. The boys, Diamond and Turq, were traveling parallel—he’d glimpsed them through the trees.

  Luis was desperate to get clear of the ash field so the mammoths could eat, drink, and rest, but now Opal was lagging behind.

  The next stream they came to, Ruby made the decision for him. The water was cloudy with ash, but she must have thought it drinkable because she stopped in midstream and filled her trunk. Luis slid off her back, sloshing knee-deep in the stream, and got out of the way—the whole herd was about to have bath time.

  “Dismount,” he called to Kanut. “We’re taking a break.”

  “How?” The idiot looked around as if expecting steps to magically appear.

  “Better move fast,” Luis called.

  Too late. Topaz used her first trunkful of water to drench her back—and the trooper and his gear.

  Kanut dismounted by falling off. He landed on his backside in the stream, right in the middle of the milling herd of mammoths, startling Ruby’s youngster into a shrieking cry.

  Luis hauled the sputtering trooper to his feet and onto the bank before he could get trampled by protective females. “You need to dismount pretty quick when they stop,” he said. “Sometimes they like to roll in the dirt.”

  “Thanks for that little tip.” Kanut took off his jacket and body armor to shake off the water.

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  Kanut shot him a dirty look but kept his mouth shut, not even asking how far they’d come or how long the break would last. In fact, the whole morning, he hadn’t complained or asked for any concession to his inexperience.

  A proud man, Luis thought. One who tried to keep his word to be helpful. One worth showing a little mercy.

  “We’ll stay here for three hours,” Luis said. “We can heat up some water for a hot meal and nap if you want to.”

  “Don’t stop on my account,” Kanut said, teeth chattering.

  “I’m not. The herd needs to rest and refuel.”

  Luis retrieved two filter bottles from Emerald’s burden and walked upstream to fill them. When he got back, the trooper had stripped off his shirt and pants and was wringing them out. A little stocky, Luis thought. Muscles going downhill, but not bad for a middle-aged copper.

  Suddenly embarrassed to have been noticing a nearly naked man, Luis turned away, wading in among the mammoths.

  Little Jet was gleefully playing in the water, rolling and splashing. The troika had climbed the bank to munch on the aspens. Ruby was in midstream, napping on her feet, Opal beside her, fur dripping, sides heaving.

  “What’s wrong, Opal?” Luis murmured. “That baby weighing you down?”

  He ran his hands over her torso, grimacing at the gritty lumps of ash hardened into her fur. Somewhere deep within that giant belly, held in place by layers of muscle, a baby mammoth weighing at least a hundred pounds was growing bigger every day.

  Had the baby’s bulk shifted position since Opal entered the transport back at Anjou’s mammoth farm? It seemed farther back than he remembered, but he saw no sign the baby had entered the mother’s long birth passage. Not a month, then, but not today either. He’d have to keep an eye on Opal, make sure he wasn’t pushing the pace too much.

  Kanut was dressed by then and was wiping down his rifle with an oiled rag. Luis put him to work with the tiny camp stove, boiling water to prepare a freeze-dried meal from one of the saddlebags of food. Meanwhile, he checked the rest of the mammoths, pulling off clumps of congealed ash where he could, and moved the solar cell to an open spot for recharging the tablet. Gray clouds still roiled in the sky, but maybe enough photons were leaking through to keep the tablet powered a few more hours. When they stopped for the night, he’d set up the wind-powered generator for a more reliable power source.

  The reconstituted chili tasted like a feast.

  By the time Luis had washed out the empty packets and stowed the trash, Kanut was snoring, his rifle at his side. For a first-time mammoth rider, he’s done well.

  Luis�
��s stomach was full, the sun was warm, and the mammoths were resting and browsing on nearby vegetation. Why not? With his backpack for a pillow, Luis lay down for a nap.

  This is the life. No desk, no traffic, no time clocks. The only sounds were the screeches of magpies in the trees and the comfortable grumblings of the mammoths. Brandon might yearn for a bungalow and a baby, but the wilderness was bliss for Luis.

  Somebody kicked at his boot. “Wake up!”

  Damn it, that trooper’s a pain in the butt.

  But Kanut was still sitting on the ground, with a face like thunder.

  The man kicking at Luis’s foot was someone he’d never seen before . . . and the man was holding Kanut’s rifle.

  CHAPTER 27

  Stupid heroics

  Kanut felt like an idiot, sitting on the ground while some low-life son of a moose pointed his own rifle at him. My Browning! He felt as violated as if some drunken barfly had kissed his wife.

  Caught asleep, for God’s sake, with his weapon lying right out in the open where any asshole could take it. A greenhorn rookie would be sacked for making such a blunder. And Kanut didn’t even have his body armor on—he’d hung it up to dry. There it was, hanging useless on a bush, leaving him feeling naked as a baby.

  Saints above, if the squad room heard about this, he’d never live it down.

  “Stay down.” The stranger facing Kanut was a tall man, flannel shirt, jeans, and hiking boots like most of the population of rural Alaska. Behind him was another man, similarly dressed. Both were dirtied with ash.

  Nobody touches my Browning. “I’m a state trooper,” Kanut growled. “Put down that weapon, son, or you’ll find yourself in a world of trouble.” I’m too old for this. His back ached, abused by sleeping on the ground and hours of mammoth riding.

  “Shut up,” the man said. “You must have a truck or something somewhere. Hand over the keys.”

  The background man whined, “I dunno, Vernon.” Kamut mentally classed him as a downtrodden little brother. He already had one of Cortez’s saddlebags over his shoulder, the one with food in it.

  “Shut up.” That seemed to be Vernon’s favorite phrase. “Come on, hand over the keys. Your packs, too, and that tablet and solar charger.”

  Cortez had been napping, too, curled up on the ground like a cat. Now he sat, one knee up, remarkably unflustered. “We can’t,” he said. “We need our kit. We’re on a rescue mission.”

  “We’re kind of on a rescue mission ourselves,” Low-vocabulary Vernon said. “Rescuing ourselves.”

  Little Brother added, “That effing volcano fouled our plane’s engine. It spoiled the water and ruined our crop.”

  “Shut up!” The man with the gun was not the patient sort.

  Wide-eyed and pleasantly helpful, Cortez said, “Just draw the water and let it settle. It may have a taste, but the ash won’t hurt it. And vegetables will wash off.”

  What’s he doing? Cortez was handing out advice like a state agriculture agent to a weekend gardener. Was he brave or just crazy?

  “I don’t think their crop is vegetables,” Kanut said. “Now, son, I’m not interested in your pot plants. Be sensible and put the rifle down.”

  “You think I’m joking, Smokey?” The rifle barrel wavered.

  That’s right, boy. The Browning gets heavy, doesn’t it?

  “All we want is a way out of this volcano shit,” the pot grower said. “Just give up the keys to your truck and nobody gets hurt.”

  Cortez shook his head. “We don’t have a truck. You can walk out, northwest. You’ll hit the Dirty Dog River in about ten miles, you can follow it to Mankeeta. Take the rifle, if it’s any use to you, but leave us the rest of our gear.”

  Kanut’s teeth ground at Cortez, so ready to give away Kanut’s rifle. Twenty-two years he’d had that gun, and he wasn’t about to see it walk away in the hands of a weed farmer.

  Vernon shook his head. “Quit stalling. The packs and the tablet, hand them over, along with the truck keys.”

  Cortez sighed. “All right, if you insist.” He punched a code into the tablet and laid it on the ground.

  The tablet emitted a terrible cry: eeeAAAAhhhaaa! Half siren, half scream, and half yodel.

  The nervous brother jumped. “What the hell?”

  Cortez stood.

  Kanut tensed. Didn’t Cortez realize he was making himself a target? That little bit of noise wouldn’t be enough of a distraction to tackle a man with a gun.

  Kanut hated stupid heroics.

  The tablet sounded that weird cry again. Vernon raised the rifle to his shoulder, pointing it at Cortez.

  Oh, hell. Kanut got his feet under him, preparing to launch himself at Vernon to save the dumb-ass civilian. And me with no damn body armor. Maybe they’ll give me a medal posthumously.

  From the forest came echoing cries. The ground shook with the pounding of stampeding feet.

  Now that was a distraction. Gun-toting Vernon spun right, trying to focus on what was coming.

  Kanut stood stiffly, preparing to leap on the pot grower.

  Cortez grabbed his arm to hold him back.

  Out of the bush burst a mammoth—a huge monster, a head taller than the one Kanut had ridden. High shoulders, fur streaked and stained with gray ash, its long tusks curved like overgrown devil horns. It looked like a demon from hell.

  The monster splashed across the creek and up the bank, screaming like a banshee—and headed straight for the man with the rifle.

  The little brother broke and skedaddled. Kanut scrambled backward toward the nearest tree, but Cortez just stood, unmoving. Courage? Or crazy?

  Vernon swung the rifle toward the charging mammoth and pulled the trigger.

  It clicked on an empty chamber.

  The pot grower threw down the rifle and ran for his life, a raging mammoth on his trail.

  “No, don’t!” Kanut cried.

  Too late. The mammoth’s fat foot came down on the rifle with a terrible crunch.

  “My Browning!” The steel barrel, irretrievably dented. The beautifully polished wood stock, cracked.

  Kanut turned to Cortez, mouth scrunched in anger. “My father gave me that rifle!”

  Cortez shrugged. “I warned you. Diamond hates guns.”

  Shivering in the breeze, the three women stripped out of their wet clothes and searched the suitcases for anything dry and warm.

  It was stupid to leave the plane. True, at their new campsite the air temperature was far warmer than it had been on the glacier, but now they’d all been thoroughly chilled. It would take hours to recover: hours that translated into lost calories as the body tried to warm itself. And they had very limited ability to replace those calories—the power bars in the emergency box were now down to four, the rest having been lost in the slide down the glacier. And they’d lost the firestarter kit as well.

  Stop fretting over what’s done. Concentrate on what to do now.

  Ash still sporadically sifted down. They needed shelter. While Sera wrung out wet jackets, pants, and sweaters and spread them over the ash-dusted grass to dry, Estelle used a scalpel to cut open and flatten the emergency supplies carton for a ground cover. Then she and Sera cobbled together a tent of sorts with the suitcases and tarp.

  There Annie huddled, wrapped in a reflective blanket over a flannel nightgown, topped off with the fluffy robe and fuzzy slippers.

  “Maybe we should build a fire?” Sera asked.

  “With what?” Estelle looked around. “No trees in sight and grass doesn’t give off much heat.”

  The temp wasn’t bad—mid-fifties—and Annie had lived a lifetime above the Arctic Circle. She didn’t complain. Neither did Sera, but her life had been spent in balmy New Orleans, where fifty degrees counted as the depth of winter.

  Estelle stepped away to call Alaska Eagle Med Central again. “Look, our situation is pretty dire. We had to abandon the plane, so we don’t have shelter. We’re cold and short of food.”

  “I’ve got good
news!” Robin said. “The state troopers have someone on his way to you now. But he’s traveling overland somehow. He should be there by tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Estelle’s heart sank at the prospect of spending all day and night in the open. “Does he have an ATV or something? We’ll need to carry Annie to the nearest road to meet an ambulance.”

  “Just hang on for another day. The volcano is still spilling out smoke and ash, or I’d come get you myself.”

  Hang on. Easy for him to say, with dry clothes and a nice warm office. And coffee.

  She pasted on a smile and hoped it looked genuine as she ducked under the tarp shelter to join the others. “Central says the state troopers will be here tomorrow.”

  Annie’s lips moved in prayer.

  Estelle tried to stay cheerful. “How about some breakfast?” She broke a protein bar into bits to share between them. They were stale, dry, and crumbly and did little to fill their bellies. Annie said she was full, and Sera said they tasted good. Liars, both of them.

  Estelle would have been happy just to rest quietly, but Sera chivvied them into games of I spy and twenty questions. She’s still trying to fix things, Estelle thought. Is that how Sera had spent her life, trying to cheer up her chronically depressed mother? What a burden for a child to take on.

  When the games palled, Sera filled in the gap in conversation with a long ramble about last February’s Mardi Gras celebrations, describing all the masks, costumes, parades, and parties that had brightened the end of winter.

  “My dance team marched in six parades this year,” she said. “Two were in the rain, and one was even colder than this.”

  “I’d like to have seen it,” Annie said wistfully.

  Sera jumped up. “Why not?”

  While Estelle clapped rhythm, Sera performed her dance routine. Strut, strut, sashay left, sashay right. Sling the hair, fling the arms, prance and point, turn and bend. She ended with a whoop, to Estelle and Annie’s applause.