Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,100

and bring him and the doc straight back. You can pick up Fisk and me on that trip.”

“Roger that,” Trooper Huston said. He nodded to the other troopers, who helped them push the Cessna out of the hangar into blowing snow. The runway was visible, so that was something. Doctor Dubois walked out after them, looking awfully small in her oversized parka and heavy Sorel winter boots.

Warr gave the pilot a thumbs-up. “They’ve got ATVs at the airport lighting the strip.”

“Roger that, L.T.,” Huston said. “I’ll call with a sit-rep as soon as we’re on the ground.”

Trooper Fisk moved his pack nearer the hangar door and set his rifle case beside it.

“You’re coming too, Lieutenant?” the young trooper asked. “Want me to help you grab your gear?”

“I got it,” Warr said. “You go ahead and shut the hangar door before we freeze some of Earl’s sensitive equipment.”

“Mind if I ask a stupid question, L.T.?” Fisk said, moving toward the black button that would close the east wall door.

“That’s how we learn,” Warr said.

Fisk paused at the door switch. It would be impossible to hear over the squealing gears once he hit the button and the door began to come down.

“If the marshals are going out after this woman to try and find the Meads, they must be taking the VPSO snow machines. I’m sure they have some extras in the village, but Robinson and Wal-lisch will be on those. What are we gonna use when we get there?”

“We’ll have to adapt,” Warr said. “That’s the AST way. Didn’t they teach you that at Sitka? And anyway, the marshals aren’t on snow machines. They’re using dogs.”

“Dogs?” Fisk scoffed. “Are you kidding?”

“Wish I was.”

“Do the marshals even know how to run dogs?” Fisk asked. “Because I don’t know how to run dogs.”

“Birdie Pingayak knows how,” Warr said. “And I got a feeling this Cutter character is a fast learner.”

CHAPTER 35

Less than half an hour from the time Donna Taylor shot Ned Jasper and fled north through the willows, Birdie had eleven yipping Alaska huskies ready to go. Each dog was hitched to a long cable gang-line via a tug-line that ran from the rearmost point of a webbed harness that went around the animal’s chest and front legs. Except for the leader, each dog was also secured to the gang-line by a shorter length of rope attached to its collar. This neckline kept the excited dogs pulling parallel to each gang-line, working together. Absent a sled, the tail-end of the cable was, for the time being, attached to a stake driven into the ground. The dogs reared up on their hind legs like excited horses, pawing at the air, straining against their harnesses, yelping and yipping, eager to run. Birdie explained to Cutter as she worked that she was using Digger and Hawke as wheel dogs, the two that would be hitched directly forward of the sled. Though known to be hardheaded as a box of rocks, these were two of Gordon’s toughest, strongest remaining dogs. As wheel dogs, they would bear the largest load during a turn.

She chose one of Gordon’s older dogs as the single leader—a rangy, amber-eyed male named Smudge. At just over fifty pounds, the dog’s brooding manner and agouti coloring gave him the look of a small wolf. Smudge was tried and true, Birdie said, but the main reason she’d picked him was because Donna Taylor had taken Smoke, Smudge’s litter mate. Gordon habitually ran the two dogs together as leaders, so it stood to reason that Smudge would be on a seek-and-find mission for his companion the moment they took to the trail.

Jolene arrived on her ATV before the last dog’s tug-line was hitched, pulling a ten-foot dogsled with a flat toboggan bottom and spots for two drivers to stand. The dogs went crazy at the sight of the sled, jumping in place, arching their backs into the harnesses.

The sled was called a double-trainer. It had an arched wood handlebar situated about a third of the way back, behind a short basket for gear or a tired dog. There was a second handlebar three feet farther to the rear on the runners for another musher. Birdie explained that her father had used this sled when he’d let her come along with him to train his team. The main musher, which would be Birdie on this trip, stood at the forward bar nearest the dogs. The driver and passenger positions each had spring-loaded brakes they could step