Arctic Thunder Read Online Free PDF

“Big boy. He’s going to be a hot ticket for hockey here.”
    â€œI play lacrosse,” Mike blurted.
    Fitz looked blankly at Mike. “Well, Mike, I don’t know about that. I guess you might have to play hockey here.”
    â€œHow’s the snowmobiling been?” Ben cut in.
    â€œJust incredible,” Fitz said. “Believe it or not, we usually don’t get a lot of snow here in the winter. It drops to about minus twenty and stays there pretty much all season long. Of course, we get plenty of snow to skidoo, but not buckets like most people from the south think. It pretty much stays too cold for a lot of snow. We get spells where it’s minus thirty and colder, but in the last week we’ve been getting what you see outside.” He waved at the terminal window. “The weather warms up, we get a storm with a dump of snow, and then it cools off again. With the daylight coming back so quickly now, it’s just fantastic. Lots of snow, about ten hours of daylight and getting brighter, and for the most part around minus fifteen to minus twenty. You’ll find quite a few people going out to camps and getting caribou right now with the warmer weather. Most people will stay in town today, but when things clear up tomorrow or the next day the town will be a bit deserted.”
    â€œThat sounds fantastic,” Jeannie said, placing her arm around Mike’s shoulder and squeezing.
    It did sound great to Mike, and he momentarily forgot what Fitz might have meant with his comments about hockey.
    â€œHere come the bags, guys.” Fitz motioned toward the carousel behind them. “What are we looking for?” They all headed over and pointed out the suitcases as they came through an opening in the side of the building. The Watsons had six altogether. It would be a week before the moving truck arrived in Inuvik, so they had taken as much with them as possible.
    Once everything was located, it was back into the cold. They hurriedly tossed the luggage into the rear of the RCMP Explorer and clambered inside, shutting out the wind and blowing snow. Mike sat in back with his mother, while Ben took a seat up front with Fitz. Drawing back his hood, Mike shivered as the hot air in the idling vehicle closed around him. When he pushed his hands against his thighs, he swore he could feel the cold rising out of the skin.
    Fitz nosed the Explorer out of its parking spot and headed away from the airport. “If we turned right, the road would take us to the Mackenzie River ferry crossing. You can take the ferry over to Tsiigehtchic, or to the main landing where the highway goes to Fort McPherson and then through the mountains to the Yukon. Beautiful drive, but it can beat the heck out of your vehicle.”
    â€œHow far is it into town?” Jeannie asked.
    â€œAbout fourteen kilometres,” Fitz said, looking at her in the rearview mirror. “Over to the left is a pretty nice campground in the summer. There’s a tower that gives a great view of the delta. The weather looks pretty harsh out there right now, but it’s a beautiful place. I don’t know what it is, but people seem to either love it or hate it. You hear stories all the time about folks who plan to work up here for a couple of years and spend twenty. Then there’s the other side of things where people head here with a northern dream and leave after a couple of months because they hate it.”
    Mike glanced at Fitz’s face in the mirror. Their eyes briefly met, and the corporal’s smile took on an unsettling menace, bathed in green from the glow of the dashboard. Mike quickly shifted his concentration back to the road. He wondered which kind of people they would be. Would they love Inuvik or hate it? He shivered again as another ripple of cold seemed to flow out of his body. Right now he had to admit his vote would be pretty strong on the hate side of things. Narrowing his eyes, he stared at the