update from the cops at the accident site to the west.
“We got us another October Surprise. It’s snowing like hell here, and Hibbing’s socked in,” came the reply. Hibbing was sixty miles south and west. “Two feet of snow predicted. Winds already gusting to forty mph. The state patrol is thinking about closing Highways Two and Seventy-one.”
“Sam, break out one medic and head back for Ely. We’re way understaffed here. There’s a critical stranded on Lake Fraser. I’m going in with the seaplane.”
“In this?”
“Affirmative. Call the hangar for details.” He keyed off the net and put his Ford Crown Vic in gear. Four minutes later he walked into the hangar at the seaplane base. Outside, a stubby red and white Dehaviland Beaver floatplane tossed on its pontoons at the dock. Inside, two pilots stood at the radio and the one with the mike in his hand said to Iker, “Where we’re at, Dave, is dispatch recommends no fly. I just talked to the state patrol. They’re not turning a prop in this. The Rescue Squad’s socked in and so is Life Flight out of St. Mary’s in Duluth. The National Weather Service just officially named it a blizzard and it’s going to clobber us in half an hour.”
“This isn’t a sprained ankle. We got a guy who’s going to die,” Iker said.
“That’s what I told them and it’s my call.” He depressed the send key on the mike. “I’m going up,” the pilot said to his dispatcher, clicked the mike twice, and turned to Iker. “Looks like just you and me. The paramedics are on that truck pileup.”
Iker nodded and said, “I got a cop and a medic on the way back in but we can’t wait.” They leaned over a map and Iker said, “One of the guys paddling out is a surgeon; we’ll zip him to the hospital just in case. I know the guide. He says the patient will be hard to find from the air with the snow. No tent. It’s not a normal campsite. They’re hunkered back in a rock hidey-hole on a low bluff. He says he can steer us in.”
“Where are they now?” the pilot asked. His eyes darted out the windows where the ground crew was readying the Beaver.
“Paddling in on Lake One. They should be at Billie Broker’s Lodge in about ten minutes.”
“Okay,” the pilot said. He was clear-eyed, clean-shaven, and neat in his Smokey Bear-green jacket, sweater, and trousers. He’d flown Black Hawk helicopters into Iraq and danced with blizzards working the Alaskan bush. He’d bailed out of flying commercial passenger flights because they were too boring.
“We got one shot,” he said. “We drop in on Lake One, pick your guy up, then fly to Fraser and find the stranded party.” He pulled on a jacket and moved through the hangar toward the pier. Outside, he shouted over the rising wind. “The tricky part is meeting this big bastard storm on the way back.”
The hangar chief signaled thumbs up, the preflight checks were complete. They threw a Stokes stretcher and a first-aid bag in the cramped cargo hold behind the cockpit and climbed in. The Beaver was built exceptionally tough to handle the rugged terrain of Northern Canada. With its fuselage slung and strutted under its long, square- tipped wing, it had all the charm of a back-country, three-quarter-ton mud hole truck.
The 450-horse Pratt and Whitney engine coughed a cloud of exhaust and the aluminum pontoons smacked forward over the chop. An orange windsock on a spit of land across from the dock blasted out at a three-o’clock right angle to its mast and pointed the way straight east.
Broker was paddling flat out, heading for the boat dock in front of Uncle Billie’s Lodge and the county patrol cruiser idling next to it. Then he heard the motor.
The engine growl came in low and fast, then strings of rivets caught the pewter light as the Beaver cleared the pines. Bottom heavy with big pontoon floats, it lunged down, practically set one wing tip in the lake, turned tightly, and splash-landed a hundred yards away.
Deputy Iker’s brown and tan uniform appeared in the open hatch. He commenced to yell and wave but Broker couldn’t hear over the roaring prop, so he sculled up to the pontoon.
“You the doctor?” Iker yelled. Allen nodded and Iker pointed to the shore and yelled again. “That cop will take you to the hospital.”
“I thought there’d be a helicopter?” Allen shouted.
“Take my word for it, you want this Beaver more than a helicopter.” Then Iker rolled his eyes at Broker. They’d had dinner five days ago and they went back a ways, working a county task force together when Broker was undercover with BCA.
“You,” Iker yelled at Broker, “are coming with me.”
He pulled Broker up on the pontoon, leaned out, waved to the cop in the dock, and pointed to Allen. The cop nodded. Allen pushed off and, facing about in the bow seat, began paddling for shore.
Broker and Iker tumbled into the cargo bay. Iker whirled his forefinger, the pilot leaned into the stick, the plane wheeled, the prop bit the wind, and they vibrated over the speed-bump waves.
“That was fast,” Broker yelled.
“Not fast enough. There’s a blizzard moving in.” Iker smiled thinly.
“But we’ll beat it back to Ely?” Broker asked.
Again the thin grin from the deputy as he banged Broker on the shoulder. “Hey, we eat this shit up, right?”
Broker blinked and shook his head. “We
“Yeah, well,” Iker tossed a thumb at the pilot, “he’s young. He definitely still eats this shit up.”
Chapter Seven
Allen rode a police cruiser into town from the east as the blizzard moved in from the west. The harried deputy dropped him off promptly and drove away. Chilled and cramped from the canoe, he stiffly dragged Broker’s waterproof duffel up the sidewalk as a thirty mph wind knocked him sideways. He made it through the shin-deep drifts and opened a door with a small orange neon emergency room sign. He dropped the bag in front of the dispatch desk where a woman stood up to confirm his identity. Deputy Iker, she explained, had radioed ahead and now she was monitoring the rescue party which was in flight to “pick up the patient.” She motioned down a corridor and a lean, dark-haired woman came forward in a blue cotton smock.
“Nancy, take Dr. Falken to Boris,” the dispatcher said.
The nurse regarded Allen with the tired slit eyes of someone who’d been up all night. Then she led him down the hall to a nurse’s station where a wiry man dressed in a white medical smock was talking to a woman wearing a sweater and jeans with fresh snow trapped in the cuffs. She held a clipboard in one hand and a telephone in the other.
“This is the doctor who paddled out of the canoe area,” said the dark-haired nurse.
Allen removed his gloves and extended a hand shriveled pinkish-white from cold water. “Allen Falken,” he offered.
“Hello, Boris Brecht, I’m glad to meet you. They said on the radio that you’re a belly guy.”
“That’s right,” Allen said. He blinked and almost lost his balance as the ward swam around him with bright lights and tile, like a large, very clean, very warm bathroom.
“Is your physician’s license current?”
“Yes, I. .”
“May I see it and a picture ID, and I need a contact number where you currently practice?”
Allen cocked his head. “Come again?”
“Dr. Falken-Allen-I’m a family-practice physician. I take out tonsils, maybe. I can’t operate on this man they’re bringing in.”
Allen was furious. “What are you talking about? He’s in bad shape, he could perforate. He needs a level-one trauma center. .” His shaky smile didn’t match his voice; his words and parts of his body were evidently thawing at different rates. “There’s supposed to be a helicopter to take him to Duluth.”
Brecht pointed his finger at the ceiling. “Hear that moan? That’s a blizzard. The roads are closed. There is no helicopter. We’re it. We have an anesthetist on call and we’re trying to reach her, but she could be stuck out there with the whole day shift.”
“Jesus.” Allen rallied, as he plucked the clipboard from the woman in the snow-cuffed jeans, took her pen,
