In the Barren Ground Read Online Free PDF Page B

O’Halloran, set it down on the hard-packed snow with the rest of her gear.
    “Markus is prepping to take you in,” Blundt said. “A terrible thing to have happened. Terrible. Markus has one quad all juiced up and safety checked already, busy on the other. He’s my security man, top guy, good, very good, ex-African mines, here, can I carry something for you?” Words shot out of Blundt’s mouth and tripped over each other at a machine-gun clip. Tana had read about his idiosyncratic, staccato-like speech, how he jumped from one topic to another as if his mouth couldn’t keep up with the speed of the ideas firing in his brain. It could drive a person nuts, she’d been told.
    She’d heard also about how ruthlessly Blundt drove his crews. He never tired himself, and he expected no less of others. He’d even worked his fourteen-year-old son to the breaking point. The resulting clash had been legendary. Harry Blundt was quite simply a Northwest Territories and Yukon diamond legend, not much different from the idiosyncratic characters of old.
    Tana hefted her pack onto her shoulders, and glanced up at O’Halloran. He still had another bag of hers to hand down.
    “Go ahead,” he said. “I’ll bring over the last of this stuff.”
    She hesitated, then said, “Thanks.”
    “The attack site is about three hours north of here on quad,” Blundt said as he led Tana in his crablike scuttle toward the waiting ATV and hangars. The woman stood smoking, watching them approach.
    “Northeast side of the lake is the only really navigable route up Headless Man Valley. Bit rocky, some swampy muskeg halfway in, where a river feeds into the lake. That part can be tricky, but it should be mostly frozen by now. Then it gets steep. Big boulders up to the esker ridge. Slick with snow and ice right now. Will have to trek the last section up to the cliff base where Heather found them. Terrible, terrible thing. My guys shot four of the wolves. Probably more scavengers there now.” Blundt’s gaze darted up to Tana, then went to her shotgun and rifle. “You came alone?”
    “I’m all there is.”
    “Terrible thing,” he said, again, and Tana wasn’t sure whether he meant the attack, or the fact she was solo.
    Hard snow squeaked under their boots. The air was sharp, a brisk breeze coming off the water, trailing wisps of mist in behind it.
    “Did you know the victims?” Tana said. “Anything you can tell me about them?”
    “Selena Apodaca and Raj Sanjit. Both early twenties. Working on the grizzly bear DNA study for EnviroTech, part of the environmental assessment study required of us before the territorial government will sanction construction of a full-scale mining operation here. Regs have gotten tighter since the big Ekati and Diavik finds. We’ll have to drain most of Ice Lake for the open pit, see? Best way to get at those kimberlite pipes. They’re wide pipes, open pit is the way to go with those. Could affect habitat, wildlife movement through the Headless Man corridor. Selena and Raj were flown out Friday morning by Heather—that’s her waiting just up there by the four-wheeler—with a K9 team doing a wolverine study. Elusive things those wolverine. Legendary creatures of the boreal forests. Like ghosts—you know they’re out there. You see evidence. Hardly ever see them, though. A vicious predator and scavenger belonging to the weasel family. Known for physical power and quick temper. This is the last place in North America you find them, up here. The Barrens. Extinguished everywhere else farther south. Incapable of adapting to habitat loss, see?”
    “You mean, these environmental teams could be finding evidence of rare wolverines, grizzly habitat, which would impact your application?”
    “Something like that. Everyone either wants their chunk of a new and potentially massive diamond op, or they want to stop it, so no one else can have anything. Bastard business this. Funny people, humans. Now it’s the