His own cabin was, by any average North American’s perspective, extremely remote already. But the prospect of taking a ride into the unpaved, off-the-grid backcountry always made him happy. There would be nobody for a hundred miles in any direction—just him and his snowmobile.
Marcus piled all his gear in the long cargo sled attached behind the snowmobile. He had loaded a sufficient quantity of food, extra clothes, camp supplies, fuel, and water, as well as a few spare parts for his snowmobile. He pushed his grandfather’s rifle into an insulated, hard black nylon scabbard that ran along the right side of the machine. In his backpack, Marcus also had a small .22 caliber Henry Survival rifle, disassembled and stowed neatly in its own stock. This he would use if the chance arose to take a rabbit or grouse along the trail.
He tucked his sidearm, a custom-made MEU-SOC Colt 1911A1 .45 caliber pistol, into a shoulder holster in his jacket. Marcus mounted his snowmobile, a long track Arctic Cat M series that had been specially modified to reduce the rumble of the engine to a level so low that from more than ten feet away, it was almost totally silent. Engineering students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks had designed several similar machines for a contest the previous year. Marcus managed to buy one through an ad in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner when one of the students became desperate for funds early in the current semester and offered his award-winning machine for a bargain price.
Marcus pulled out of his yard onto the trail beside Johnson Road, this time turning north toward the open country. He followed the trail past the TVEC substation and the pipeline pump station guardhouse. Twenty minutes later, he came to a chain-linked gate held open by a four-foot-high wall of plowed snow that concealed the lower part of the fence. A metal sign hung on the fence to the side of the gate.
US Government Property
Eielson Air Force Base
Authorized Access Only
He drove through the opening and followed the road another ten miles. In the early morning twilight, the headlamp of his snowmobile shone on a bright yellow reflective ribbon fluttering from the leafless branch of a tall paper birch tree that jutted at an angle from the surrounding cluster of twisted gray alder branches. The ribbon marked the entry to the trail along which Major Krisler had set up his trap line.
In order to have a trap line on military property, the interested party required special permission from the base commander. Once permission was obtained, the process took a whole slew of passes and paperwork that usually required months or years to get approved. Most people, soldier and civilian alike, are blatantly denied the opportunity to use the government property for personal gain. Krisler had not only received a permit to run the trap line in no time flat, but he was also given a trapping area twice the normal size. He revealed to Marcus that this was due to the fact that he had been at a taxidermist convention in Montana while on leave a couple years ago and literally bumped into the base commander at the hotel.
The commander, Colonel Robert Sloan, was laughing loudly as he came out of the hotel swimming pool with a very attractive young woman in her early twenties, whose bikini top was barely able to contain her jiggling shape. Krisler had been headed to a seminar in a conference room down the hall as he rounded a corner and nearly knocked over the towel-draped Colonel and his buxom companion. Krisler’s papers went flying onto the carpeted floor.
“Hey! Watch where you’re going, moron!” the commander bellowed.
“I’m so sorry,” Krisler replied, apologizing profusely as he bent over to pick up the papers.
“Yeah, well, you should be,” Sloan said.
As Krisler stood, he looked up and the two men recognized each other immediately. The major’s eyes slid over to the stunning young woman in the very small bikini, who quite obviously was not the forty-something Mrs. Louise Sloan he had seen at the Eielson Air Force Base commissary only two days earlier and who had mentioned that her husband was going on a trip for some high-level meetings at Malstrom AFB in Montana.
A growing look of horror, like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar, spread across Sloan’s face as his brain processed who it was standing before him.
“Colonel Sloan. How are you, sir?” Krisler asked. He made a visible show of scanning the scantily clad couple and noticed that the commander wasn’t wearing his wedding band. A sly smile slowly grew on his face. He made deliberate eye contact with the colonel.
“Uh, good evening, Major Krisler,” Colonel Sloan stammered nervously. “What are you doing here?”
“I’m on leave. Here for a taxidermist convention.”
“Taxidermist convention?”
“Yes sir, taxidermy. You know, skinning dead animals, like weasels and such, to turn them into fur coats and statues for profit,” Krisler responded with a sardonic grin. “It’s what I am going to do after I retire.”
“Oh. Well, uh, carry on, then,” said the colonel, trying to get out of the awkward situation.
The major wouldn’t let him off so easily. “So, who is your companion, sir?” he asked, prying.
Sloan hesitated, and then introduced the voluptuous young woman “This is Connie, a friend of mine from, uh, from the university.”
Steven Krisler held out his hand and she took it, smiling back at him in a pleasant greeting. She was probably just a college student he picked up in a local bar.
“Hello. You two must work together in Alaska?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, we do,” replied the grinning Krisler, “And I must say, we work very well together, don’t we, Colonel?”
Sloan’s face drained of color. “Yes.
