Ice Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

station that consisted of the bridge speaker box, a video monitor, and a single telephone.
    He reached and picked up the phone’s receiver, spoke rapidly, then listened as his call was routed, coded, and rerouted again. He waited. Then a familiar voice came on the line, frosted with static. “Leopard, here.”
    “Status?”
    “The target is down.”
    “Confirmation?”
    “Under way.”
    “You know your orders.”
    A pause. “No survivors.”
    This last needed no validation. Admiral Petkov ended the call, settling the receiver down into its cradle. Now it started.
    5:16 P.M.
BROOKS RANGE, ALASKA
     
    Matt urged his horse up the ridgeline. It had been a hard climb. The neighboring valley was a thousand feet higher in elevation. Up here, snow still lay on the ground, thicker in the shadow of the trees. His four dogs were already loping ahead, sniffing, nosing, ears perked. He whistled to keep them from getting too far ahead.
    From the ridgeline, Matt surveyed the next valley. A spiral of smoke, thinning now, marked the crash site, but the forest of spruce and alder blocked the view of the crumpled plane. He listened. No voices were heard. A bad sign. Frowning, he tapped his heels on his mare’s flanks. “Off we go, Mariah.”
    He walked his horse down, mindful of the ice and snow. He followed a seep creek trickling through the forest. A mist hung over the thread of water. The quiet grew unnerving. Mosquitoes buzzed him, setting his teeth on edge. The only other noise was his horse’s steps: a crunching sound as each hoof broke through the crust of ice over the snow.
    Even his dogs had grown less ebullient, drawing closer, stopping frequently to lift noses to the air.
    Bane kept a guard on point, sticking fifty paces ahead of him. The dark-furred wolf mix kept to the shadows, almost lost in the dappling. As the companion of a Fish and Game warden, Bane had gone through a canine search-and-rescue program. The dog had a keen nose and seemed to sense where Matt was headed.
    Once they reached the valley floor, their pace increased. Matt could now smell burning oil. They headed toward it as directly as the terrain would allow, but it still took them another twenty minutes to reach the crash site.
    The forest opened into a meadow. The pilot must have been aiming for it, hoping to land his craft in the break in the forest. He had almost made it, too. A long gouge crossed the meadow of yellow milk vetch, directly across the center of the clearing. But the landing field had been too short.
    Off to the left, a Cessna 185 Skywagon lay smashed into the forest of green spruce. It had jammed nose first into the trees, wings crumpled and torn away, tilted tail end up. Smoke billowed from the crushed engine compartment, and the stench of fuel filled the valley. The risk of fire was great.
    Walking his way across the meadow, Matt noted the clouds, heavy and low, that hung overhead. For once, rain would be welcome up here. Even more encouraging would have been any sign of movement.
    Once within a few yards, Matt yanked the reins and climbed off his horse. He stood another long moment staring at the wreckage. He had seen dead bodies before, plenty of them. He had served six years in the Green Berets, spending time in Somalia and the Middle East before opting out to complete college through the GI Bill. So it was not squeamishness that kept him back. Still, death had touched him too deeply, too personally, to make it an easy task of stepping amid the wreckage.
    But if there were any survivors…
    Matt proceeded toward the ruined Cessna. “Hello!” he yelled, feeling foolish.
    No answer. No surprise there.
    He crept under a bent wing and crunched through broken safety glass. The windows had shattered out as the fuselage crumpled. From the engine compartment ahead, smoke continued to billow, choking him, stinging his eyes. A stream of gasoline flowed underfoot.
    Matt held his arm over his mouth and nose. He tried the door. It was jammed