2028, p.4
2028, page 4
“Rafe is a journalism grad student,” Piet said.
“Yeah...and with no means left to express the truth, anymore.” He gazed down at the floor as though in shame. “When I first came to Yale, there was a Washington Post, New York Times, L.A. Times, and a CNN. Where are they now, while we journalists are being executed for holding onto the truth?”
“Guns are a necessary evil for all of us, now,” Paula said. “Our little guns against their huge ones.”
“Well, I’m now thoroughly depressed,” Bill quipped.
Piet relaxed in his stance as he folded his arm across his chest. “Only now?” he chided.
“Congress should have never softened their stance against impeaching the bastard back in twenty-nineteen,” Paula said, as she drew another reefer to her lips. “That was our last chance.” She lit up.
“Yeah,” Rafe laughed sadly. “Now look. No more Congress.”
“It all happened too quickly after that for anyone to stop him,“ I said.
“You voted for him in Twenty-twenty,“ Piet reminded me.
“Admittedly an act of blind acceptance,” I said. “After that, everything was just too late to change.”
“It’s never too late, Mr. Bryant,“ Piet told him. “Maybe now you can make up for it. Actually, the fact that you voting for him twice, and your war record may work to our advantage. You have their faith in your pocket.”
“Meaning?”
“When William brought you into the Kenton Tower hotel a few days ago, did you have any trouble registering?”
I listened to the thrumming of the furnace kicking on, as the trembling of the floor sent up a warm shiver through my body. “Uh, no,” I finally said. “Should there have been? Except maybe that I’m an ex-con.”
“Expunged, Bob. Totally expunged,” Bill reminded me.
“No problem, then,“ I said. “They just wanted my money for a room. A signature, a few hundred dollars, and that was it.”
Piet tightened in lips into a semblance of a smile. “Actually, it was William’s money, but there was no problem. Why? Because they have you on record for supporting Kenton. You passed the test.”
I looked over at Bill with suspicion. “Is that why you checked me into that place, you freaking scoundrel? As a test to see that I wasn’t arrested again?”
“Absolutely not, Bob.” He glanced at Piet. “Isn’t that right, Piet?”
“Tell me something, Mr. Bryant,” Piet said as he locked me down with his gaze. “You want to get your family back.”
“More than anything, but I don’t know how I—”
“And you are willing to work for it?”
“Yes of course.”
“Okay, then. You’ve answered several questions for me and thank you.” He finally extended his hand. His smile broadened into a genuine one as he shook my hand. His grasp was fulsome and firm for such a slight man. “Welcome to the New Haven chapter of Neo-Publica, Robert.”
“Really? Then thank you, uh, Piet.” I realized I now had a purpose, and a means to get my family back. “Let me know how I can help.”
“Well, thank Zeus!” Bill gasped enthusiastically. “I was about to think you were never gonna tell him.”
“Yeah, welcome to the shit, man,” Rafe said tiredly.
Paula held out her joint. “Here, old man. You want a celebratory toke?”
“Uh, no thanks,” I told her. “I don’t smoke. Besides, it might lead me to stronger stuff—like Marlboro’s and Winston’s.”
She scoffed out a laugh. “Yeah, right. If you can afford the eighteen dollars a pack.”
Bill lit up a cigarette for himself. Lawyers could afford to smoke. “So, Piet,” he asked, “have you heard anything about Sylvia, yet?”
Piet glanced at me. “Sylvia Morales was a philosophy professor at Yale until a few years ago. Big in the movement—a legend, in fact. She helped to found this chapter back in twenty-four. Then she was dragged away in a midnight PRICE raid on campus three years ago.” He scissored his fingers for a drag off Bill’s cigarette. He took in a languorous inhale. “All we know is that she’s up in that Unqutuck gulag. We’re still working on it.”
Piet’s comment seemed dismissive. I sensed he knew more than what he was willing to tell us.
“Well, my job’s done here, and I’ve got some cases on deadline,” Bill said. “So, I should get going.” He shook my hand. “Again, welcome to Neo-Publica, Bob. Really, I was hoping you’d come around.”
4
The Tundra
January 20, 2028
D
evon Jackson stood in front of the half-track Snow-Cat and shivered beneath the puffed-up bulk of layers of outerwear. He blew into his thickly-mittened hands, as though that would have done any good. The bracing rigidity of the cold hauled in by the hard blasts from Chloya Lake bit in like the teeth of a pit-bull, even through the layers of fur and down lining his parka. Why anyone would ever choose to go this far north in Alaska was beyond his ken. But then this setting was a perfectly desolate hell to put the Unqutuk Gulag, housing ex-journalists, philosophers, and other dissentients.
It was also the perfect place to put them to work deep below-ground in the dark, damp chill to chip away at the shale used for extraction of fuel for the Real-American military. Nothing was richer than Alaskan shale, and the deeper it was mined, the more precious it was. And who better to do this than these inmates who’d questioned and rebelled against all the good the Kenton Administration had done for Real-America?
Daylight was finally breaking through a sliver of orange beneath a heavy depth of grey clouds out toward Dawson City. Down further south—much further down—the sun would be full up by now. Devon would be comfortably drinking his 9:30 a.m. coffee behind his timeworn oak desk at Ryan Airfield ten miles southwest of Tucson. There, he’d be beginning a day of training suburbanites how to operate one of the flight school’s Pipers. The open Alaskan tundra was as far a cry from the southern Arizona desert as it was from the craggy, inhospitable northern Afghan terrain where he’d flown surveillance during the endless war back when he was twenty. Had it been only twelve years since those treacherously high-adrenaline, low-level recon psy-op missions over the Hindu Kush in his re-vamped Cessna?
Before he’d layered up against the sub-zero cold back at camp two hours ago, he’d noticed some wiry clusters of grey in his sideburns—made more apparent against his mahogany-brown skin. Only thirty-two years old; and already going grey. He feared that soon he’d be too aged and demented to fly. Misjudging distance. Losing reaction time. Confusing a two-minute turn with a sixty-degree, Dutch-spiral-inducing bank. Mixing up the altimeter with the airspeed indicator. It could happen. Devon’s dad had started to lose it in his late thirties through an early onset of Alzheimer’s—a Jackson family trait.
The operator of the Perry Mining snowcat that had brought him here slid effortlessly from the cab. “Be careful where you set foot, there, Jackson,” he said over the deep gurgling of the cat’s engine. “They say the crust here has been thinned by all the mining’s been goin’ on below. We wouldn’t want you falling down a two-mile-deep shaft, now, would we?” All Devon could see from far within the fur of the operator’s parka hood was the glint of his sun-goggles, the reddened bulb of his nose, and the gleam of his white-white teeth as he grinned. The timbre his voice was as grating as a rusty chain saw.
“No shit?”
“Well, partly no shit. We have been known to lose a man or two. Usually ‘cause they get drunk enough to wander from the path. So, mind where the pine boughs are lined and stay between ‘em as you walk out to your airplane yonder.” He unzipped the layers of flys in trousers as he went off to take a leak.
“I don’t see any pine boughs. I can’t see crap in this darkness.”
“Yeah,” the operator scoffed over his shoulder as he pissed in the snow. “The Real-American Yukon. She’s a bitch, ain’t she?”
“Aren’t you afraid you’re gonna freeze your pizzle off, peeing away like that in all this fucking cold?”
He curtly zipped up. Wouldn’t be the first time. I ‘member one, two months back ago, ol’ Dumb Arnie back in the camp got hisself a case of frostbite on his pecker. He ain’t been the same since.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Yessir,” the operator said through a chortle. ”His voice’s a coupla tones higher now.” He expertly hopped back in though the open cab door of the cat and onto his seat. He tapped his boot on the accelerator and the cat’s engine trembled the ground as it grated harshly. “Good luck to ya, Jackson, then!” he shouted over the noise. “If you squint really hard through alla snow, you can spot your plane over there! Parked next to that old mine entrance I tolt you ‘bout! Now, again: mind where ya step!” The cab door groaned from the cold like a donkey’s bray as he closed it.
“Mind where I step,” Devon muttered after the cat had left. The snow had started falling with the consistency of Times Square New Year’s confetti. He swept the beam of his hooded-lens flashlight for the pine boughs marking his path. By now, most of them were merely discernible beneath snow-covered mounds. He carefully trudged the five hundred feet toward the dim glint of lamplight marking the little ski-plane he was supposed to fly out of here.
Or to fly her out of here. His purpose on this trip was to collect Sylvia Morales and fly her to an outpost near Fort Yukon, then to Fairbanks, and finally with her to Boston where she’d be met by some other Neo-Publicas who would drive her back to New Haven.
This was all assuming she’d been successfully sprung from the gulag and was now waiting behind the forgotten old entrance to the mine. By design, Devon had no knowledge as to whether she had been freed, or why her extraction was so important. He was just the pilot, and, as back in Afghanistan, the less he knew about his mission, the better. But he was certainly no rookie, and, to his mind, Sylvia’s escape had been too hastily and carelessly arranged. Adding to it all, the snow had now started to fall in a full thickness—maybe pretty for a New England Christmas card, but hell for low-level flying. Such a snowfall wasn’t so common this far north in the tundra, as the frigid air kept heavy storms at bay in favor of constant, lighter accumulations. So far, the prediction of a storm had held true, and the earlier lighter precipitation now had developed into a curtain of snow.
————————————————————————
Brad Schneider had been waiting by the light plane for forty-five minutes until he noticed the pilot coalescing through the thick haze of falling snow. Brad opened the plane’s cowling and lifted out the carburetor heater. He held the little device near to the hood of his parka like a lantern to feel its warmth upon his exposed cheeks, even at the risk of frostbite. He knew how to treat frostbite, usually through a stiff, medicinal bolt of Jack Daniel’s Black.
“You’re the pilot?” he called out as he lowered the heater on the ground.
“I hope so,” Devon said breathlessly as approached. “Devon Jackson. I’d shake your hand, but I think my arm’s frozen to my side.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Brad scoffed. “I’m Brad Schneider.”
Devon brushed a blast of snow away like it was a swarm of mosquitoes. He then awkwardly adjusted his snow goggles closer to his face and took a hard look at the ski-plane. “It’s a Maule-Seven,” he said sounding disappointed. He squinted back over his shoulder out through the falling snow and saw only more falling snow.
“You ever flown one of these?” He heard Brad ask.
“Only the MX-Seven. How much clearance you giving me?”
Brad looked out where Devon had trained his gaze. “About five-hundred feet. That should do it. Even in this muck. Maybe.”
“Maybe, you say?”
“You’ll be carrying a little more weight than you mighta thought.”
“Shit. How much more?”
“Two more passengers. About two-fifty—three hundred pounds. Plus a hundred in baggage.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. We’re already at about two-seventy. Now another four hundred? The max load in a plane like this is only eight-fifty, with fuel. No way I’ll get her off the ground with that much weight.”
“You should be okay. I drained your tanks down to a quarter full. Besides, it’s only, like, forty kliks to Fort Yukon.”
Devon looked back at the plane. “I’ll be flying low and slow, Brad. At full rich, I’m gonna need more fuel than that.”
Brad clamped closed the cowling and stroked it like a pet. “Believe me. This baby will fly on fumes alone.”
Devon looked more closely at the landing gear—two skis placed on either side of two wheels with tundra tires, plus a swivel tail wheel for turning; also equipped its own little ski. He regarded the snow’s consistency. It was corn snow, pretty to look at, but this wet, gloppy stuff could only produce more drag for the skis and for the tires to get any traction. It was enough to add almost thirty percent more to the runway he needed. The plane being a taildragger could add more to the equation. “With all that drag from the skis? Can you at least give me more runway?”
“I could—a little—but you’d never clear them two-hundred-foot-tall trees at the end. What I’ve given you is the safest.”
Devon opened the cockpit door and sighed as he brushed his mittened hand along the old, coffee—or possibly worse—stained sheepskin cover. He groaned as he climbed in. The seat complained in a creak as he lowered himself into it. All the bunting of his clothing restricted his movement, and he yearned for those warmer days in Afghanistan, when he dressed light in jeans and t-shirts. He lifted his goggles and strained to look at the frosted-over instruments, then shook his head. He slipped off his mittens and thumped the gauges with a forefinger. “You got a topo-map? I wanna see this runway you made for me.”
Brad reached into a pocket deep in his parka and drew out a crumpled note of instructions and a laminated map. Devon opened the map and flattened it in front of him and against the control yoke. He noticed the Maule’s position marked with a grease pencil. The plane was facing north toward a narrow but clear apron, marked at its end with a grouping of short pines. Too fucking short. He noticed a longer, seven-hundred-foot path fifteen degrees to the left, which ended in a denser clump of trees. “See?” Brad said, his voice tightened by the cockpit enclosure as he poked his head in. “Not much choice.”
Devon ran his finger up the longer path. “This longer run. That’s the one with the tall trees?”
“You mean the ones you’d end up crashing into?”
“Yeah. Those.” He folded the map and slid it between to seats. He abruptly flicked on the master and battery switches, and then the magneto. He flicked on the pitot heat, nudged up the throttle lever a little, and the mixture lever all the way to full. He gripped the ignition key between a thumb and forefinger. “Stand clear, my man, unless you want a mouthful of prop. I’m gonna aim this baby fifteen degrees left toward those trees you think I’ll fly into.”
Brad stepped away and glanced out to his left. “Yeah, right. Them trees I can’t see for shit in this snow.”
Devon turned the ignition key and the engine coughed to life. “Yeah! Neither can I! You let me worry about it that!” He shouted over the high reverberation of the engine. He unset the parking brake, depressed the left rudder pedal, and the Maule swiveled slowly toward the west. He felt the clattering shudder from the skis dragging against the crystallized snow. The brakes squeaked when he stopped the plane, now aimed where he wanted.
“Ther’re instructions about where to land. They cleared a strip about twelve kliks east of Fort Yukon,” Brad called at him. “They’ll flick on a torch when they hear you coming. A cat will meet you to take you and your cargo to the airport. Oh yeah. I don’t care how much it’s soup out there, keep your lights off. As soon as they hear you take off, then find those three missing, and if the weather clears a little, they’ll be sending sensor chase drones out after you. So fly low of any radar!”
“Right!”
“Okay! I’ll go fetch your cargo, now. And don’t forget. No lights here on the ground or in the air! You’ll be flying dead-stick blind.”
“Right!” Devon flicked him a thumbs-up and shut the cockpit hatch as he tweaked a smile. He ran his fingers over the roughened plastic grip of the yoke and let the trembling reverb of the Maule’s engine warm his body. For a moment, he imagined himself back in Kush flying by the seat of his pants. Those were the days.
Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed them.
5
Sylvia Six Flags
January 20
P
rotected by only a fleece-lined windbreaker over the loose clothing of her work-camp uniform, Sylvia Morales shivered away the frigid darkness behind the abandoned entrance to the shale mine. Huddled next to her were three men in their mid-forties; two of them suffered from late-stage two and three cancers brought on by the carcinogens of all the shale they’d all been mining for over three years.
Behind, them one of the shift managers aimed the dim beam of his flashlight along the rugged, sharp-stone floor of the mine. The feeble light set the four of them off from the mire of darkness. By now, the 10 a.m. shift was underway, and they heard the thin echoing of feeble scrapings of shale being mined in distant shafts by other inmates working otherwise in silence. Noises carried. Voices carried. Their two-hour wait had been accentuated by their occasional hushed whispers and the restrained, dry coughs and light groans of pain from the two men suffering from cancer.
So far, they’d heard none of the shrill whistle alarms signifying a break, so they were safe. But it was only a short matter of time before their absences would show up through the worker’s roll call.
One of the two sick men was Hugh Blanc, Sylvia’s former associate and adjunct professor back in the philosophy department at Yale. The other one, Mitch Krane, had been an investigative journalist for the Washington Post until the Kenton Regime shut it down back in 2022. Having been in the Unqutuck Gulag for four years, Mitch was one of its veteran inmates, and after mining all those years, his cancer had advanced the farthest. His cloth mittens were stained and clotted hard with two months of the blood he had coughed up through his fetid, toothless mouth.
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“Yeah...and with no means left to express the truth, anymore.” He gazed down at the floor as though in shame. “When I first came to Yale, there was a Washington Post, New York Times, L.A. Times, and a CNN. Where are they now, while we journalists are being executed for holding onto the truth?”
“Guns are a necessary evil for all of us, now,” Paula said. “Our little guns against their huge ones.”
“Well, I’m now thoroughly depressed,” Bill quipped.
Piet relaxed in his stance as he folded his arm across his chest. “Only now?” he chided.
“Congress should have never softened their stance against impeaching the bastard back in twenty-nineteen,” Paula said, as she drew another reefer to her lips. “That was our last chance.” She lit up.
“Yeah,” Rafe laughed sadly. “Now look. No more Congress.”
“It all happened too quickly after that for anyone to stop him,“ I said.
“You voted for him in Twenty-twenty,“ Piet reminded me.
“Admittedly an act of blind acceptance,” I said. “After that, everything was just too late to change.”
“It’s never too late, Mr. Bryant,“ Piet told him. “Maybe now you can make up for it. Actually, the fact that you voting for him twice, and your war record may work to our advantage. You have their faith in your pocket.”
“Meaning?”
“When William brought you into the Kenton Tower hotel a few days ago, did you have any trouble registering?”
I listened to the thrumming of the furnace kicking on, as the trembling of the floor sent up a warm shiver through my body. “Uh, no,” I finally said. “Should there have been? Except maybe that I’m an ex-con.”
“Expunged, Bob. Totally expunged,” Bill reminded me.
“No problem, then,“ I said. “They just wanted my money for a room. A signature, a few hundred dollars, and that was it.”
Piet tightened in lips into a semblance of a smile. “Actually, it was William’s money, but there was no problem. Why? Because they have you on record for supporting Kenton. You passed the test.”
I looked over at Bill with suspicion. “Is that why you checked me into that place, you freaking scoundrel? As a test to see that I wasn’t arrested again?”
“Absolutely not, Bob.” He glanced at Piet. “Isn’t that right, Piet?”
“Tell me something, Mr. Bryant,” Piet said as he locked me down with his gaze. “You want to get your family back.”
“More than anything, but I don’t know how I—”
“And you are willing to work for it?”
“Yes of course.”
“Okay, then. You’ve answered several questions for me and thank you.” He finally extended his hand. His smile broadened into a genuine one as he shook my hand. His grasp was fulsome and firm for such a slight man. “Welcome to the New Haven chapter of Neo-Publica, Robert.”
“Really? Then thank you, uh, Piet.” I realized I now had a purpose, and a means to get my family back. “Let me know how I can help.”
“Well, thank Zeus!” Bill gasped enthusiastically. “I was about to think you were never gonna tell him.”
“Yeah, welcome to the shit, man,” Rafe said tiredly.
Paula held out her joint. “Here, old man. You want a celebratory toke?”
“Uh, no thanks,” I told her. “I don’t smoke. Besides, it might lead me to stronger stuff—like Marlboro’s and Winston’s.”
She scoffed out a laugh. “Yeah, right. If you can afford the eighteen dollars a pack.”
Bill lit up a cigarette for himself. Lawyers could afford to smoke. “So, Piet,” he asked, “have you heard anything about Sylvia, yet?”
Piet glanced at me. “Sylvia Morales was a philosophy professor at Yale until a few years ago. Big in the movement—a legend, in fact. She helped to found this chapter back in twenty-four. Then she was dragged away in a midnight PRICE raid on campus three years ago.” He scissored his fingers for a drag off Bill’s cigarette. He took in a languorous inhale. “All we know is that she’s up in that Unqutuck gulag. We’re still working on it.”
Piet’s comment seemed dismissive. I sensed he knew more than what he was willing to tell us.
“Well, my job’s done here, and I’ve got some cases on deadline,” Bill said. “So, I should get going.” He shook my hand. “Again, welcome to Neo-Publica, Bob. Really, I was hoping you’d come around.”
4
The Tundra
January 20, 2028
D
evon Jackson stood in front of the half-track Snow-Cat and shivered beneath the puffed-up bulk of layers of outerwear. He blew into his thickly-mittened hands, as though that would have done any good. The bracing rigidity of the cold hauled in by the hard blasts from Chloya Lake bit in like the teeth of a pit-bull, even through the layers of fur and down lining his parka. Why anyone would ever choose to go this far north in Alaska was beyond his ken. But then this setting was a perfectly desolate hell to put the Unqutuk Gulag, housing ex-journalists, philosophers, and other dissentients.
It was also the perfect place to put them to work deep below-ground in the dark, damp chill to chip away at the shale used for extraction of fuel for the Real-American military. Nothing was richer than Alaskan shale, and the deeper it was mined, the more precious it was. And who better to do this than these inmates who’d questioned and rebelled against all the good the Kenton Administration had done for Real-America?
Daylight was finally breaking through a sliver of orange beneath a heavy depth of grey clouds out toward Dawson City. Down further south—much further down—the sun would be full up by now. Devon would be comfortably drinking his 9:30 a.m. coffee behind his timeworn oak desk at Ryan Airfield ten miles southwest of Tucson. There, he’d be beginning a day of training suburbanites how to operate one of the flight school’s Pipers. The open Alaskan tundra was as far a cry from the southern Arizona desert as it was from the craggy, inhospitable northern Afghan terrain where he’d flown surveillance during the endless war back when he was twenty. Had it been only twelve years since those treacherously high-adrenaline, low-level recon psy-op missions over the Hindu Kush in his re-vamped Cessna?
Before he’d layered up against the sub-zero cold back at camp two hours ago, he’d noticed some wiry clusters of grey in his sideburns—made more apparent against his mahogany-brown skin. Only thirty-two years old; and already going grey. He feared that soon he’d be too aged and demented to fly. Misjudging distance. Losing reaction time. Confusing a two-minute turn with a sixty-degree, Dutch-spiral-inducing bank. Mixing up the altimeter with the airspeed indicator. It could happen. Devon’s dad had started to lose it in his late thirties through an early onset of Alzheimer’s—a Jackson family trait.
The operator of the Perry Mining snowcat that had brought him here slid effortlessly from the cab. “Be careful where you set foot, there, Jackson,” he said over the deep gurgling of the cat’s engine. “They say the crust here has been thinned by all the mining’s been goin’ on below. We wouldn’t want you falling down a two-mile-deep shaft, now, would we?” All Devon could see from far within the fur of the operator’s parka hood was the glint of his sun-goggles, the reddened bulb of his nose, and the gleam of his white-white teeth as he grinned. The timbre his voice was as grating as a rusty chain saw.
“No shit?”
“Well, partly no shit. We have been known to lose a man or two. Usually ‘cause they get drunk enough to wander from the path. So, mind where the pine boughs are lined and stay between ‘em as you walk out to your airplane yonder.” He unzipped the layers of flys in trousers as he went off to take a leak.
“I don’t see any pine boughs. I can’t see crap in this darkness.”
“Yeah,” the operator scoffed over his shoulder as he pissed in the snow. “The Real-American Yukon. She’s a bitch, ain’t she?”
“Aren’t you afraid you’re gonna freeze your pizzle off, peeing away like that in all this fucking cold?”
He curtly zipped up. Wouldn’t be the first time. I ‘member one, two months back ago, ol’ Dumb Arnie back in the camp got hisself a case of frostbite on his pecker. He ain’t been the same since.”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“Yessir,” the operator said through a chortle. ”His voice’s a coupla tones higher now.” He expertly hopped back in though the open cab door of the cat and onto his seat. He tapped his boot on the accelerator and the cat’s engine trembled the ground as it grated harshly. “Good luck to ya, Jackson, then!” he shouted over the noise. “If you squint really hard through alla snow, you can spot your plane over there! Parked next to that old mine entrance I tolt you ‘bout! Now, again: mind where ya step!” The cab door groaned from the cold like a donkey’s bray as he closed it.
“Mind where I step,” Devon muttered after the cat had left. The snow had started falling with the consistency of Times Square New Year’s confetti. He swept the beam of his hooded-lens flashlight for the pine boughs marking his path. By now, most of them were merely discernible beneath snow-covered mounds. He carefully trudged the five hundred feet toward the dim glint of lamplight marking the little ski-plane he was supposed to fly out of here.
Or to fly her out of here. His purpose on this trip was to collect Sylvia Morales and fly her to an outpost near Fort Yukon, then to Fairbanks, and finally with her to Boston where she’d be met by some other Neo-Publicas who would drive her back to New Haven.
This was all assuming she’d been successfully sprung from the gulag and was now waiting behind the forgotten old entrance to the mine. By design, Devon had no knowledge as to whether she had been freed, or why her extraction was so important. He was just the pilot, and, as back in Afghanistan, the less he knew about his mission, the better. But he was certainly no rookie, and, to his mind, Sylvia’s escape had been too hastily and carelessly arranged. Adding to it all, the snow had now started to fall in a full thickness—maybe pretty for a New England Christmas card, but hell for low-level flying. Such a snowfall wasn’t so common this far north in the tundra, as the frigid air kept heavy storms at bay in favor of constant, lighter accumulations. So far, the prediction of a storm had held true, and the earlier lighter precipitation now had developed into a curtain of snow.
————————————————————————
Brad Schneider had been waiting by the light plane for forty-five minutes until he noticed the pilot coalescing through the thick haze of falling snow. Brad opened the plane’s cowling and lifted out the carburetor heater. He held the little device near to the hood of his parka like a lantern to feel its warmth upon his exposed cheeks, even at the risk of frostbite. He knew how to treat frostbite, usually through a stiff, medicinal bolt of Jack Daniel’s Black.
“You’re the pilot?” he called out as he lowered the heater on the ground.
“I hope so,” Devon said breathlessly as approached. “Devon Jackson. I’d shake your hand, but I think my arm’s frozen to my side.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Brad scoffed. “I’m Brad Schneider.”
Devon brushed a blast of snow away like it was a swarm of mosquitoes. He then awkwardly adjusted his snow goggles closer to his face and took a hard look at the ski-plane. “It’s a Maule-Seven,” he said sounding disappointed. He squinted back over his shoulder out through the falling snow and saw only more falling snow.
“You ever flown one of these?” He heard Brad ask.
“Only the MX-Seven. How much clearance you giving me?”
Brad looked out where Devon had trained his gaze. “About five-hundred feet. That should do it. Even in this muck. Maybe.”
“Maybe, you say?”
“You’ll be carrying a little more weight than you mighta thought.”
“Shit. How much more?”
“Two more passengers. About two-fifty—three hundred pounds. Plus a hundred in baggage.”
“Oh for Christ’s sake. We’re already at about two-seventy. Now another four hundred? The max load in a plane like this is only eight-fifty, with fuel. No way I’ll get her off the ground with that much weight.”
“You should be okay. I drained your tanks down to a quarter full. Besides, it’s only, like, forty kliks to Fort Yukon.”
Devon looked back at the plane. “I’ll be flying low and slow, Brad. At full rich, I’m gonna need more fuel than that.”
Brad clamped closed the cowling and stroked it like a pet. “Believe me. This baby will fly on fumes alone.”
Devon looked more closely at the landing gear—two skis placed on either side of two wheels with tundra tires, plus a swivel tail wheel for turning; also equipped its own little ski. He regarded the snow’s consistency. It was corn snow, pretty to look at, but this wet, gloppy stuff could only produce more drag for the skis and for the tires to get any traction. It was enough to add almost thirty percent more to the runway he needed. The plane being a taildragger could add more to the equation. “With all that drag from the skis? Can you at least give me more runway?”
“I could—a little—but you’d never clear them two-hundred-foot-tall trees at the end. What I’ve given you is the safest.”
Devon opened the cockpit door and sighed as he brushed his mittened hand along the old, coffee—or possibly worse—stained sheepskin cover. He groaned as he climbed in. The seat complained in a creak as he lowered himself into it. All the bunting of his clothing restricted his movement, and he yearned for those warmer days in Afghanistan, when he dressed light in jeans and t-shirts. He lifted his goggles and strained to look at the frosted-over instruments, then shook his head. He slipped off his mittens and thumped the gauges with a forefinger. “You got a topo-map? I wanna see this runway you made for me.”
Brad reached into a pocket deep in his parka and drew out a crumpled note of instructions and a laminated map. Devon opened the map and flattened it in front of him and against the control yoke. He noticed the Maule’s position marked with a grease pencil. The plane was facing north toward a narrow but clear apron, marked at its end with a grouping of short pines. Too fucking short. He noticed a longer, seven-hundred-foot path fifteen degrees to the left, which ended in a denser clump of trees. “See?” Brad said, his voice tightened by the cockpit enclosure as he poked his head in. “Not much choice.”
Devon ran his finger up the longer path. “This longer run. That’s the one with the tall trees?”
“You mean the ones you’d end up crashing into?”
“Yeah. Those.” He folded the map and slid it between to seats. He abruptly flicked on the master and battery switches, and then the magneto. He flicked on the pitot heat, nudged up the throttle lever a little, and the mixture lever all the way to full. He gripped the ignition key between a thumb and forefinger. “Stand clear, my man, unless you want a mouthful of prop. I’m gonna aim this baby fifteen degrees left toward those trees you think I’ll fly into.”
Brad stepped away and glanced out to his left. “Yeah, right. Them trees I can’t see for shit in this snow.”
Devon turned the ignition key and the engine coughed to life. “Yeah! Neither can I! You let me worry about it that!” He shouted over the high reverberation of the engine. He unset the parking brake, depressed the left rudder pedal, and the Maule swiveled slowly toward the west. He felt the clattering shudder from the skis dragging against the crystallized snow. The brakes squeaked when he stopped the plane, now aimed where he wanted.
“Ther’re instructions about where to land. They cleared a strip about twelve kliks east of Fort Yukon,” Brad called at him. “They’ll flick on a torch when they hear you coming. A cat will meet you to take you and your cargo to the airport. Oh yeah. I don’t care how much it’s soup out there, keep your lights off. As soon as they hear you take off, then find those three missing, and if the weather clears a little, they’ll be sending sensor chase drones out after you. So fly low of any radar!”
“Right!”
“Okay! I’ll go fetch your cargo, now. And don’t forget. No lights here on the ground or in the air! You’ll be flying dead-stick blind.”
“Right!” Devon flicked him a thumbs-up and shut the cockpit hatch as he tweaked a smile. He ran his fingers over the roughened plastic grip of the yoke and let the trembling reverb of the Maule’s engine warm his body. For a moment, he imagined himself back in Kush flying by the seat of his pants. Those were the days.
Until now, he hadn’t realized how much he’d missed them.
5
Sylvia Six Flags
January 20
P
rotected by only a fleece-lined windbreaker over the loose clothing of her work-camp uniform, Sylvia Morales shivered away the frigid darkness behind the abandoned entrance to the shale mine. Huddled next to her were three men in their mid-forties; two of them suffered from late-stage two and three cancers brought on by the carcinogens of all the shale they’d all been mining for over three years.
Behind, them one of the shift managers aimed the dim beam of his flashlight along the rugged, sharp-stone floor of the mine. The feeble light set the four of them off from the mire of darkness. By now, the 10 a.m. shift was underway, and they heard the thin echoing of feeble scrapings of shale being mined in distant shafts by other inmates working otherwise in silence. Noises carried. Voices carried. Their two-hour wait had been accentuated by their occasional hushed whispers and the restrained, dry coughs and light groans of pain from the two men suffering from cancer.
So far, they’d heard none of the shrill whistle alarms signifying a break, so they were safe. But it was only a short matter of time before their absences would show up through the worker’s roll call.
One of the two sick men was Hugh Blanc, Sylvia’s former associate and adjunct professor back in the philosophy department at Yale. The other one, Mitch Krane, had been an investigative journalist for the Washington Post until the Kenton Regime shut it down back in 2022. Having been in the Unqutuck Gulag for four years, Mitch was one of its veteran inmates, and after mining all those years, his cancer had advanced the farthest. His cloth mittens were stained and clotted hard with two months of the blood he had coughed up through his fetid, toothless mouth.
