The Siberian Incident 2 Read online

  “Good landing on ice,” Scott said.

  “Done some flight training?”

  “I flew with Colin a few times, he told me that, but I think he might have just landed his plane too hard.”

  “Ha, does he fly anymore?”

  “Not sure, he has a pilot, so not sure if he crawls up there with that guy and takes over once in a while or just stays in the back and drinks Cristal during the flights.”

  “I’d drink the Cristal. I had a couple of lessons, but I was a lot better at jumping out of planes than flying them.”

  Scott laughed as he gathered his bags and opened the side door after the pilot had shut down the engines and given him the okay to depart. They were greeted on the tarmac by a native man wearing a North Face parka. His face wore the lines of a man who, despite the frozen climate, had been in the sun most of his life. He was Torngarsuk, their Inuit guide.

  “Welcome to Pokok,” Torngarsuk greeted them as they came off the plane.

  “Torn, good to actually meet you. Torn, this is Maddock, I told you about my great-uncle before?”

  “Yes, welcome Maddock, is that what I call you? You can call me Torn because Torngarsuk is a lot to say.”

  “I just go by Maddock,” Maddock said. He was often asked that question, and there was no great way to shorten his name, some of his friends in the service had called him “Mad Dog,” but to ask others to call you that seemed ostentatious.

  Torngarsuk and another Inuit man named Amaruq took several containers and bags from the plane and loaded them onto snowmobiles. Four snowmobiles sat idling together, and Torn directed Scott and Maddock to two that sat on the far right.

  “Those snow machines are for you, we’ll just ride them over there to our village,” Torn said, pointing to a row of shacks perhaps 300 yards away, “You have ridden before?” Torngarsuk asked.

  Scott and Maddock nodded their heads, it had been a while since Maddock had last ridden, but he could handle the 300 yard trip to the village.

  “Good, because tomorrow you ride 35 miles out to the hunting ground,” Torn explained.

  The temperature was far below zero, and a wind blew out of the north that whipped snow up into small cyclones. Maddock looked at the machines and then looked at Scott.

  “It’s got to be twenty below, and tomorrow it is predicted to get colder. We’re going to trust our lives with Arctic Cats? If we get stranded 35 miles out, we’re dead.”

  “It will be fine, all four of them can’t break down,” Scott said quietly.

  About seven years prior, dismayed at the end of motorcycling season in Michigan, Maddock had purchased an Arctic Cat with 400 miles on it from the dealer in Kalamazoo. One of his friends from the army owned a cabin in Northern Michigan near the city of Bessemer, and he was wintering in Arizona. Maddock had stayed the entire winter near the Upper Michigan town known for snow sports. The winter of 2013 had been epic. 223 inches of snow had dumped on the Upper Peninsula, and Maddock got out almost every day for a ride on the well-groomed trails near Lake Superior.

  Everything was perfect until the sled started bogging down. It was only a little at first, but then it got worse. A trip to the dealer landed Maddock a $300 bill, but the sled continued bogging and getting worse. In the entire month of March, the snowmobile was in the dealer’s shop. Maddock busied himself cross country skiing and snowshoeing, hearing the buzz of sleds that worked, out on the trails. His Arctic Cat stayed there until almost the beginning of the next winter.

  Maddock had made the same arrangement with his friend to stay at his cabin the following winter, hoping he would have better luck with his sled. The entire season of 2014, although 192 inches of snow dumped on the Ironwood, Bessemer, Wakefield area, he rode twice, and both times the sled was still plagued by the issue. Maddock even called Arctic Cat in Theif River Falls, MN, thinking they might do something since their dealer couldn’t fix their sled. They didn’t want to talk to him because he’d bought a “used” snowmobile from their dealer.

  The entire saga was a joke in the family. His family members who swore by Polaris or Ski-Doo gave Maddock extra ribbing every time they mentioned how great a time they’d had on the trails while Maddock was cross country skiing. This had obviously soured him to the brand and here sat four of the dreaded Arctic Cat sleds to which he was supposed to entrust his life.

  He swung his leg over the snowmobile and followed Torn off to the cabin they would stay in until leaving tomorrow morning for the hunting grounds.

  Maddock hit the kill switch as he parked the sled in front of the cabin to which Torn had directed them. It was a plywood structure that sat on top of the ice. Several similar buildings made up the village.

  “You put your things in here and then join us for dinner,” Torn said, pointing to his house.

  “Always surprised when an Arctic Cat actually gets me to where I want to go,” Maddock said under his breath to Scott.

  “Hey,” Scott said disapprovingly as the two men offloaded their belongings from Torn and Amaruq’s sleds.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Dinner with Torngarsuk

  TORNGARSUK’S TABLE WAS covered in a vinyl tablecloth. He ladled up a bowl of meaty stew for both Maddock and Scott.

  “It’s caribou, you just missed the season by a month,” Torngarsuk said as he put the bowls in front of the men.

  The smell of the stew nearly made Maddock drool as he realized that it had been quite a few hours since he’d last eaten. The caribou meat was cooked with a thick broth containing carrots, potatoes, and peas. The delicious flavor of the caribou filled his mouth, and he wanted to eat the entire bowl in one swallow, but he wasn’t sure if there would be seconds from the rather small pot. After this meal, he wasn’t eager to eat the Clif bars and beef jerky he’d packed in his rucksack.

  “Tomorrow, we ride out to the hunting grounds, and then we look for herds. We’ll get you close to the herds, and then you can usually stalk up to them and get a good shot. You are both using a bow?” Tongarsuk asked after he swallowed his first bites of stew.

  “Well, we had planned on that, but we can use either a bow or a rifle correct?” Scott asked.

  “Yes,” Torngarsuk answered.

  “Well, I’ll be shooting bow tomorrow, but you might want to use a gun Maddock,” Scott said.

  Maddock was slightly offended by the insinuation that he would need to use a gun. He looked at Torngarsuk who had a bit of a smile on his face, was he mocking him?

  “No, I’ll use my bow, I didn’t even bring a rifle,” Maddock protested.

  “Well, there’s a special gun I brought. It’s up to you, but I have a particular hunting rifle here that you might want to see,” Scott said, lifting a long hardcase up onto the table.

  Scott opened the case, and Maddock looked inside at what appeared to be a very nice hunting rifle with a Swarovski scope attached. Upon closer inspection, he realized it was a Savage 99.

  “Wow, my grandpa had a gun like this, your Great-Grandpa Charles.”

  “No,” Scott said, also smiling, “He didn’t have a gun like this, he had this gun.”

  “What? That’s impossible. It was sold back in the 1970s.”

  “Right, I have to give Colin some props, he tracked this thing down and had it restored. He actually gave it to my Grandpa Mason, it was the one thing he got out of the hunting trip to Russia.”

  Scott picked the gun out of the case and handed it to Maddock, who held the gun in his hands, not sure if he could believe the story.

  “He got a bear too,” was all that Maddock could manage to say as he turned the gun over in his hands, still in a state of shock.

  “Well, not really, but that’s a story for another day. Mason had said that it was a special gun for you. I think you should have it, I wanted to give it to you here for this hunt. What do you think, gun hunt for you, Maddock?” Scott asked, now smiling at Maddock’s reaction to holding the gun he hadn’t seen in over forty years.

  Maddock appeared t
o be close to choking up. His eyes seemed to glisten as he looked down at the gun in his hands, “I always loved this gun, I carved this M into it while I was deer hunting when I was 13. I was going to carve my full name, but I figured Grandpa Charles would tan my hide, so I stopped after the first letter. He never noticed that, or he never realized I’d done it. I suppose Colin left it during the restoration, thinking it was for Mason. It was the first real gun I shot after my BB gun and a .22 that my Grandpa owned. I wanted this thing so badly, I actually own a Savage 99 back home, but it isn’t this one. This is something very special.”

  Maddock looked down, now avoiding eye contact with Torngarsuk and Scott.

  “So…” Scott said, almost laughing now.

  “Yes, of course, I want to use it.”

  “Ok, we have that settled,” Torngarsuk continued, “Now, we’ll get Scott closer since he’s using the bow. With you, Maddock, you can get as close as you need to for taking a good shot. We’ll let you sight in your gun and bow after dinner.”

  Maddock now had almost forgotten the elation of eating the stew as he anticipated shooting the Savage 99 once again, a rifle he had not seen in 40 years. He had joined the military, graduating from high school just as the Vietnam war ended. This was not Charles’ plan for him. Mason and Maddock’s father was busy with his job as an electrician. He was of the opinion that the boys should do what they wanted after high school. Maddock didn’t have any arguments with his parents about his post-high school plans.

  Charles had been yanked out of law school in 1925 after his father’s death. He had to come back and run the family farm in Otsego, and he never got the chance to complete college. After the Great Depression, he could not afford to send his son David to school. He watched him go through his service in Post World War II Japan only to eschew college when he left for a job as an electrician in the booming era of the 1950s. Although David became successful, Charles wanted his grandsons to go to college.

  Mason had did everything that Charles wanted and attended WMU in Kalamazoo starting in 1967. Charles had told Mason that if he took the entrance exams and applied to college, he would pay for half of it. During college he joined ROTC and became a lieutenant in the army. He got married to Diane and had Holly right after he graduated in 1972. He avoided Vietnam because of Holly and Diane’s reliance on him and then rode out the terms of his service in Germany starting in 1973.

  Charles had told Maddock the he would pay for half of his college, just like he’d done for Mason. But Maddock was tired of school, and the military offered him a way out of Kalamazoo, which he was also tired of. He didn’t relish the idea of paying for half of the tuition at a college he didn’t want to go to. Half-priced school was still money coming out of his pocket, and the recruiter made the Army seem like a better choice anyway. He’d reported to basic training on June 6th, 1975, about one month after the Vietnam war had ended. Charles was angry, and they had one final shouting match before Maddock headed off to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for Basic Training.

  Maddock was home on leave to deer hunt in the fall of 1976 when he was devastated to learn that Charles had sold the Savage 99 to help pay for Mason’s first house. Maddock used his father’s 30-06 during deer season that year, and it was the last time he hunted with Charles, who died in 1980 of a heart attack.

  Mason was already working for Fleischer Group and was able to attend the funeral. Maddock, on the other hand, was unable to attend the funeral as it occurred on April 24, 1980. That was the day he was involved in Operation Eagle Claw, one of his first missions as a Delta Force operative. The mission was a historically colossal failure. Missing his grandfather’s funeral as well as the devastation of losing his friends and the mocking of the Iranian leadership had nearly caused him to quit the military. He saw this as one of the lowest points in his life, but that was about to end as Ronald Reagan came into office, and the Delta Force took on new significance. During the Regan era of the 1980s, they were sent on missions that were resounding successes, and there was even a movie starring Chuck Norris that glorified Delta.

  Maddock’s thoughts came back to the dinner table in Alaska now as Torn finished explaining how the hunt would go. Maddock hadn’t really heard much of the conversation as many memories came flooding back to him as he looked down, disbelievingly at the rifle in his hands. He knew that tomorrow he’d ride 35 miles toward the Beaufort Sea to hunt Muskox, sounded simple enough. Maddock fell asleep that night, still thinking about the 1980s and his brother Mason, his father, and his grandfather. All of them were no longer here. He wondered why he was still alive while they were not. So many times, luck and circumstance had kept him from being the first to the grave, and now he was the only one left. He drifted off, remembering them and thinking about his memories with them, not about tomorrow’s hunt nor the mysterious mission which followed.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  To the Hunting Grounds

  THE FOUR SNOWMOBILES idled in the darkness. Their headlights pulsed with the cycling of the engines. The beams cut through the cloud of smoke that their two-stroke engines spewed into the arctic air.

  It was -25 degrees Fahrenheit judging by the thermometer on the garage, and they had a 35-mile journey in front of them. Maddock was not excited about trusting his life to an Arctic Cat. However, he’d trusted his life with equipment made by the lowest bidder on a government contract before, so how much worse could this be?

  “Your snow machine,” Torngarsuk yelled, pointing to the Arctic Cat Bearcat snowmobile on the far right. The Bearcat looked to be about 7 or 8 years old. He knew the sled had a 570 engine, the same as his ill-fated sled. This did not give him more confidence. Neither did riding without a helmet, something he’d never done. He, too, put his goggles down and pulled the balaclava up over his mouth. He sat down, the case of the Savage 99 was strapped to the side of the sled and prevented him from moving his leg back to the position he was most comfortable with.

  Torngarsuk said something to Scott, who then mounted his sled. Scott’s bow case was mounted crosswise on the back of his Bearcat, along with other supplies for the trip.

  Maddock chuckled to himself, thinking of Torngarsuk calling the snowmobiles, “snow machines,” that’s what they called them here in Alaska. Throughout the Midwest, they were called snowmobiles, and a snow machine was a device used by ski resorts to make more snow. He remembered speaking to a guy from Alaska in the service, and he’d told him that Alaskans didn’t like the term snowmobile because it sounded “pussyish.”

  Maddock was the final sled in the line that moved out toward the hunting ground. It was now 10:00 am, and it was still pitch black. The stars overhead were brilliant, and Maddock could see the Milky Way even through the fog of the snowmobiles in front of him.

  He thought it was regrettable that he couldn’t see much of the scenery around him as the sleds cut through the darkness. He was sure it was breathtaking.

  About a half-hour into the journey, Maddock’s hands began to sweat from the heat of the snowmobile’s hand and thumb warmers. He was concerned about having wet hands later in the day, so he switched the hand warmers from high to low, and suddenly his sled began to bog down. He pushed the throttle in fully and got nothing but a slow, guttural belch from the engine. Even the light seemed to dim now. He flashed the high beams and saw Scott’s brake light come on, he was thankful because the group was moving quickly away from him.

  The four sleds came to a stop, and Maddock’s machine idled poorly then shut off.

  A cold wind whipped across the flat plain on which they had been riding. Maddock saw Torngarsuk and Scott dismount their sleds and begin walking back to him. Maddock sat in darkness and silence, listening to the crunching of their boots on the icy snow.

  Unbelievable, he was glad he was not wearing a helmet because he would have taken it off and thrown it at his machine.

  “Snow machine stop?” Torngarsuk inquired.

  “I flipped the hand warmers from high to low, and it began
bogging down,” Maddock answered.

  “Ok, let me see,” Torngarsuk said as he approached the sled.

  Maddock dismounted and watched as Torngarsuk opened the choke, fired the electric start, and checked the kill switch.

  “Maybe you were right about Arctic Cat,” Scott said as they both stood impotently watching the Inuit man trying to do something with the sled.

  “The sled is dead, this is the same thing that happened to mine,” Maddock said, anger now making him almost sweat in the frozen arctic air.

  As Maddock listened to the sound of the engine turning over, then the battery weakening followed by Torngarsuk attempting to pull start the sled. He knew that he would not be riding it anymore that day. He looked out onto the horizon, snowy hills were all around them, the sky still black, and the stars brilliantly gleaming as bright as he’d ever seen them.

  Then something caught his eye, in the distance, staring at them was a gigantic man. He tried to focus on the man. Scanning again where he’d seen him but the man had disappeared.

  “Load your gear up onto Scott’s sled, Amaruq, and I will come to get this one later,” Torngarsuk said.

  Scott acknowledged him, but Maddock stood still staring off into the distance.

  “Hey!” Torngarsuk yelled, attempting to attract Maddock’s attention.

  Maddock was shaken out of his focus on finding the man. He nodded and quietly approached the Bearcat. Scott had already taken the Savage 99 and strapped it to his sled. Maddock looking back at the spot he’d seen the man blindly fumbled with the bungee cords that held on a container of rations.

  “Maddock,” Scott said sharply, “You ok?”

  “I saw a man,” Maddock said.

  “What?” Scott asked.

  “Nothing, I just…I’ll get this on your sled.”

  “You’re lucky, I got the two-up seat with hand warmers on my sled,” Scott remarked.

  “Great, that’s good,” Maddock said, still clearly not focused.

  “Sure, you’re going to be alright?” Scott asked.