Flash In The Hand
Wayne Long
Published by Wayne Long at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Wayne Long
Cover Image Photo (c) Fantasista – Fotolia.com
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For George in Alaska
Kenai Peninsula County Sheriff Kenneth McCarthy blinked in disbelief at what he saw in the searchlights of the hovering helicopter. Below them in the lagoon, and next to the face of Northwestern Glacier, orcas gently circled and humpback whales dove and resurfaced as if on guard duty, while skittering Dall porpoises raced around in similar concentric circles.
The pilot nudged his Bell Ranger deeper into the fjord as the chopper’s dashboard camera recorded even more stunning detail against the blackness. On the periphery of the milky turquoise Northwestern Lagoon were mated pairs of seals, Steller sea lions and backstroking sea otters bearing babies upon their upright bellies.
On the towering cliffs beside the nearly mile-high glacial waterfall, kittiwakes whirled and dove like feathered clouds as cormorants and chubby puffins puttered in the glassy chop far below.
And then McCarthy saw it.
The stolen Zodiac, bobbing up and down, reported missing by its owner at the Seward Small Boat Harbor.
“Seward Coast Guard, we have located the Zodiac in Northwestern Lagoon. No signs of our kidnapper!”
“Roger, Sheriff!” squawked the VHF radio.
“Mustang, can you go in for a closer look?” radioed Sheriff McCarthy to the approaching red white and blue-striped multi-mission patrol vessel.
“Copy that, Sheriff One! Hey, what’s with all the marine life circling our approach?” crackled the marine radio in the Bell Ranger hovering above, its whirring blades throwing up spindrift against the deep blue face of the massive tidewater glacier.
“Ah, Mustang, uh, what’s that about twenty meters above the high tide line, on the ice face?” stuttered the disbelieving law enforcement officer, as his binoculars continued to pan the minutiae of the enormous granite and ice cathedral dead ahead.
“Sheriff One, Sheriff One, we see climbing ropes screwed into the ice face, running from the Zodiac straight up!”
“Copy that!! What the hell …?” went the truncated words of the sky-bound observer.
“Mustang, shine your big light up to where that ice fall meets that granite outcropping at your 1 o’clock! There’s something unbelievable up there!”
The crew of USCG cutter Mustang carefully dialed in on the position relayed by Sheriff McCarthy. They, too, couldn’t believe their eyes.
“Sheriff One, this is Mustang. Is that a … nah, it couldn’t be … a … beer cooler?” said the Coast Guardsman sheepishly into his marine microphone.
“Oh my God, it is a cooler!” shot back McCarthy.
But before the idling vessel could lower its rescue team into the watery menagerie below, out of the blackness swooped in two bald eagles which proceeded to take up nervous watch on either side of the now visible familiar shape; a blue and white 25-gallon hard-side Igloo picnic cooler.
The distracted officers in the still-hovering chopper seemed oblivious to the sonic damage that their craft’s blades were impacting upon the yawning fissures of the towering ice wall.
Without warning, and with a horrific low-frequency BOOM, a gigantic chunk of the hanging wall of Northwestern Glacier calved away in a stupendous roar, sending a 40-foot tsunami over the deck of Mustang.
For a few frozen seconds, the crews of the Christmas night search-and-rescue mission stared helplessly into the void that once held a ten-story-high mass of deadly blue ice.
“Mustang, Mustang, do you read me?” screamed the sheriff into his transceiver.
Silence.
“Mustang?” squelched the transmission from the helicopter.
Nothing.
The pilot swung his searchlight around. It came to rest on the battered hulk of what once was the cutter, as it slowly slipped beneath the surface of the lagoon, dragging its sailors to the depths of the fjord.
“Dispatch, this is Sheriff One! We have an emergency out here!”
“Go ahead, Sheriff One!” squawked Seward Dispatch.
“We ….”
“Say again, Sheriff One!”
“Oh my God!”
“Sheriff One, Sheriff One, say again, you’re breaking up!”
Sheriff Kenneth McCarthy clawed at his eyes, fighting for his night vision. What he had just seen left him speechless.
In the teeming ice-bound lagoon beneath the lone chopper, the marine creatures began to form a procession, outbound for deeper channels of the moonlit Pacific Ocean. Above the point of the living flotilla were two bald eagles, bearing in their talons a mountaineer’s rope encircling the blue and white beer cooler.
If McCarthy and his pilot had been able to hear above the numbing whump-whump-whump of their rotating blades, they might have been able to make out the faint sound of Brahms’ Lullaby coming from a battery-powered CD player wedged inside of the hastily-vented container.
And the plaintive cries of a newborn baby.
Two wheels blasting down I-90, attempting to outrun my pain!
Carol, Bobby, at it again.
I held that a promise was … forever.
Not Carol, from her shock and awe glance.
And Bobby, all chiseled back and buttocks, riding off her sensual cliff, rocked on.
A rutting twelve-pointer during bow season.
Suicide by vehicle, the police report might scream.
Who’d even care if I splattered an eighteen-wheeler’s undercarriage,
Tammy Wynette, reprising D-I-V-O-R-C-E on the CD player in some Freightliner’s cab?
Nah … too chickenshit. Not my style!
Tattooed knuckles fumble my leathers.
A .45 slug swabs the earwax.
Gone ….
“Citation zero-niner-alpha, you are cleared for takeoff!” squawked the tower in my headset.
“Roger that, tower. Zero-niner-alpha, rolling!”
Twin turbines ramp up to a deafening scream as the business jet and its precious cargo ascend from the tarmac in a shimmering backwash of superheated G-forces. We are bound for home. Bank left, trim, wheels up. It has been quite a day.
Extractions always come hard. Have to be stealthy. Under the cover of darkness is best, so as not to attract attention.
Sleep, world. Sleep on!
Go about your business as if nothing ever happened. Don’t hear, speak, or even see evil!
But I saw it coming, long before any of you did. And so did Sonny.
Ferrying the dead is one of those missions I do not much care to wear on my sleeve. The clip-boarded manifest reads:
Human decedent, male.
A golden casket sits lashed with snow-white binders to its cargo pallet in the otherwise empty fuselage.
Necessary, sure.
But when you are carrying your own son back home after such a betrayal, such absolute abandonment, you must … maintain! Don’t show your emotions. No tears. Don’t raise an eyebrow, for fear of tipping off the enemy. They need to learn a lesson, even if Sonny has to go down for it! Some sacrifices are just worth it. This one surely is.