“I could be wrong, Liam, but I think this is a piece off an old C-47.” “What’s a C-47?” “It’s the cargo equivalent of a DC-3.” When he continued to look blank, she said, “Liam, I can’t believe how little you know about flying and still manage to live in Alaska. The DC-3 was the first economically…
Read more “All I care about is that they stay up in the air long enough to get me where I’m going.”
Someone besides Moses had gotten to the jukebox and Santana was telling everyone within hearing to make it real or else forget about it. On the tiny excuse for a dance floor, Mark Walker was showing Cindi Guttierez how to do a natural underarm turn, only he missed her hand. She, an enthusiastic if uncoordinated partner, spun…
“So, there I was, arms full of four bags full of groceries, and coming out of the store I see this guy breaking into my car.” “And that was when you hit him with the jar of tomatoes,” Alaska State Trooper Sergeant Liam Campbell said, his gaze rapt. “Sun-dried tomatoes,” the woman sitting next to…
Peter Obadiah Cole was widely believed to be on the run from the law, and that was true. He was also on the run from Congress, the courts and the White House; in fact, from all branches of government. He was on the run from traffic, in the air, on the ground or out at sea. He…
Read more Peter Obadiah Cole was widely believed to be on the run from the law, and that was true.
On either side Newenham airport fell rapidly away from them and Liam’s stomach gave its usual takeoff flip-flop. “She’s going to kill me,” he muttered through clenched teeth. He hadn’t meant to be heard but the headset was a good one and Prince turned her head to stare. “Why would she be mad at you?” The…
Read more “It doesn’t matter if it’s my fault or not. It will be by the time I get there.”
And now here Rebecca was, five months later, waking up in a one-room shack deep in a canyon somewhere between the Wood River Mountains, which together formed part of the southwestern curve of the Alaska Range. The mine sat on a creek in a deep, narrow crevice formed between three mountains four, five and six thousand…
Neither one of them was a pilot, so they chartered Wy Chouinard to fly them into their preferred hunting area, the long, level plateau between the broad plain that sloped down into the Nushagak River on the east and the Wood River Mountains on the west, where a small but fecund herd of caribou fattened…
“Anything else?” “Yeah, the phone was ringing when I walked in the door. Some guy, name of Montgomery, looking for–” “Lyle Montgomery, looking for his daughter,” Liam said with a sigh, and glanced at the calendar. First of September, first of the month. Montgomery was right on schedule. “You know him?” “He’s got a daughter missing. Name of Cheryl.” Liam…
Next up was a zig to Akamanuk, perching precariously on the edge of the Nushagak River two big bends above Newenham. She buzzed the homestead, two buildings, a short airstrip crowded with trees and a tilled rectangle of earth with what looked like a very healthy crop of potatoes. Ted came out and peered skyward. She turned, banked,…
Liam rifled through the various statements he’d taken at the airport the day before. Nobody saw nobody doing nothing, he reflected sadly. At a conservative estimate, culled from Gruber’s statement, at the time of Bill DeCreft’s death there had been at least ten small planes in the act of landing or taking off, one…