“Lester!” she shouted. Her voice echoed in her ears. Then she lifted the face shield and called again. “Lester.”
Meghan searched for the flashlight in her coat pockets. It was missing, lost either in the crash, buried in the snow, or along the way to the crash. Some five feet below where she stood beside the upended Yamaha, Lester ignited his flashlight.
The snowmobile nosed into a gully, falling off a cornice. The ground disappeared under the drifting snow, and beyond the break in the earth, the front end of the snowmobile crushed in the frozen mud.
Lester managed to stand, using the snowmobile to climb back up. His boots sunk into the mud; the quagmire sucked at his legs when he climbed off. Meghan helped him back to solid ground. He showed the light beyond the wreckage and the gully. Matthew and Norman cleared the area. Their tracks continued along the way, well further than the flashlight beam reached.
“Are you okay?” Meghan asked. She saw the tear in his snow pants. His leg exposed to the elements had a red line that started at the knee and ran into his boot. It wasn’t deep or wide, but he’d lost the protective material.
“Yeah,” he said. It came out like a cough, as if Lester played well, but had hurt himself in the fall. “We can get around over there.”
Lester got on Eric’s snowmobile. It took three times to start the machine. After the second try, Lester hesitated. Meghan saw him take a deep breath and hold it. Then it fired up. Once idling, he managed to unstick the skis. Then Lester put his right knee on the saddle as he rode the machine in a slow arch away from the hole.
Turned away from the deep hole, Lester filled the gas tank using the gas cans from the Yamaha. He left the cans and his machine in the hole. Then he throttled it and left the wreck in the dark.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It was slower, closer riding together on Eric’s machine. Meghan wasn’t afraid of holding onto Lester. It was the only way to keep from flying off the back of the snowmobile as it jostled through the dips, lumps, and jumps. He remained at an even speed, slower than they traveled before when they used two machines. Meghan gripped Lester with fistfuls of the winter coat in her grasps. On a few occasions, when long steep climbs turned into sharp graded descents, Meghan felt her stomach flop.
She had to trust Lester. Her eyes closed, breath caught in her throat, she had to allow the man to control the machine, guide it along the fresh-cut trail, following the pitch and weave of the tundra, while chasing two young men who fled blindly into the unknown.
Their helmets clanged together, a jarring sensation that made Meghan’s head ring like a bell. Her back ached, her neck and shoulder burned from the wreck. Eric’s snowmobile had a congested throttling that she didn’t want to think about calamity. They were miles from any sign of civilization. Only the expanse of wilderness, black mountain ranges, and long stretches of flat runs that Meghan suspected were frozen lakes and streams.
Meghan’s sense of duty was contagious. She didn’t know if faced with the same situation without her present if Lester would leap so blindly into action. His oath and dedication to the position were second to his commitment to the safety of the community. What happened in Noorvik to Hilma Fisher could easily happen in Kinguyakkii to anyone he knew better than the village elder.
The barren white landscape that stretched for miles in the dark made Meghan feel more homesick than she’d felt before. At no other point in her life or career did she feel so isolated. This feeling came with the comparison of facing inevitable drowning in the Bering Sea. If something happened to them, there was no guarantee someone could find them. If the wind brushed out the signs of life, cruelly filling in the sled trails, they were at the mercy of the elements. At least, Meghan thought briefly, as instantaneous as a lightning strike she wouldn’t die completely alone.
“There!” Lester shouted. With both helmet shields down his voice sounded miles away.
Meghan craned her neck to look over his shoulder, pressing into his back. She saw it. The flickering light, a solitary beacon that swished around in organic movements, it was a flashlight in someone’s hand.
Lester eased up on the throttle. He didn’t race too close to the white circle in the middle of the vast field. If it was an ambush, they were perfect targets. They were attached to one bright headlight to aim for with two objectives to hit. It was impossible to see what happened exactly. The black rectangular object lay distant and cold. Lester slowed to a stop about one hundred meters from the flashlight. The machine idled.
Straight away, Meghan understood Lester’s apprehension. Where was the other snowmobile?
He killed the engine, switched off the light. Meghan stepped off the snowmobile. Her boots sunk up to her knees in snow and whatever lay concealed under the frosty surface. She crouched beside the sled panting because it took a lot to hold on, and more to feel like the earth under her feet was temporary.
“I don’t want to get too close unless we know for sure that he’s alone,” Lester said.
“I know. Do you know who it is?”
Lester lay across the gas tank, keeping his body close to the metal in case someone started shooting. Meghan had better coverage of the machine.
“Help me,” a voice called. It sounded small and weak.
The flashlight waved in the air, tiny and shuttering like a candle flame flickering in the freezing wind. Given the distance, the fact they had the headlight on during their approach. The male calling for help saw the snowmobile; stealth wasn’t
