Darkness(42)

She would make his call for him, and then she would settle back into the stable routine of the life she had made for herself. Danger and excitement were not, and never again would be, her thing.

“Gina,” he called after her.

Lips compressing, she glanced back. Fingers of fog curled around the outcropping, making the landscape look like something out of Kafka. Shrouded in the deep gray of the sleeping bag, he looked as massive as one of the towering rocks behind him.

“Thank you,” he said. “Again. For saving my life.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied, and meant it.

She walked away without looking back a second time.



IT TOOK her almost five hours to travel the eight-plus miles back to camp. Although the storm had passed on during the wee hours of the morning, the storm surge she had feared had, in fact, occurred all over this eastern part of the island, cutting off many of the routes she might have taken. Most of the lowlying areas near the coast had flooded, with water in some places lying in depths of one to two feet. The deceptive film of ice that covered everything made it tricky to judge what was water and what was dry land. In addition, there were drifts of snow in unlikely places, so Gina abandoned the easier route that hugged the coastline in favor of keeping to higher, rockier ground. Footing was treacherous so she had to go slowly. By the time she got close enough to actually see her destination, from about halfway up Frazier Mountain to the east of the camp, she was cold and hungry and thirsty and so tired she had to work to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

So cold and hungry and tired, in fact, that her fear of running into one of the “strangers” he’d warned her about had receded into the category of things-to-worry-about-after-I-don’t-fall-and-break-a-leg-or-collapse-from-exhaustion.

After hours of walking she hadn’t seen a single, solitary soul, which reinforced her conviction that Arvid and Ray or whoever had volunteered for the search party must be out looking for her in the boat. Once she got back to camp, it would be an easy matter to contact them via the radio and tell them to come back in. Merely thinking about how much worry she was causing them, to say nothing of the time spent searching for her that was being taken away from their projects, made her feel guilty. Visiting Attu required reams of paperwork and countless official permissions. It was expensive and difficult to arrange. They all had research to carry out, both on their own and to fulfill the terms of the grant, and only a limited amount of time on the island. The likelihood was that none of them would be back.

The quicker she got down there and let everyone know she was safe, the quicker everyone could get back to work and life could proceed as usual.

Trudging along the steep, rocky path, Gina thought longingly of food, warmth, and a shower, all of which were, she estimated, less than fifteen minutes away. All she had to do was make it the rest of the way down the mountain. With an elevation of twenty-three hundred feet, Frazier Mountain was one of maybe half a dozen low mountains that formed a semicircle around the former Coast Guard station. There were no trees to speak of on Attu, and the mountains curved behind the flat meadow just off the cove where the LORAN station lay. On a clear day she would have been able to see it below her, but there weren’t many clear days on Attu and today was no exception. Fog lay over everything in a thick, gauzy blanket. But she knew where the buildings were, and she looked toward them. Solid concrete painted white, with thick walls and reinforced, black-framed windows, they were grouped closely together. The main building was two stories tall, and she could just see its rusting metal roof through the fog. The island’s only runway, which was, in fact, its only paved surface, ran alongside the buildings. It ended some distance from them at a corrugated metal hangar with a red and white sign bearing the tongue-in-cheek message WELCOME TO ATTU INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT.

Peering down through the fog, Gina was able to see that lights were on in the main building, which told her that somebody was home: electricity was precious, the product of a single large generator that had to be sparingly fed fuel from the cylindrical, aboveground storage tanks that were topped off maybe once a year by a visiting freighter. Energy conservation was taken seriously on Attu, and lights were turned off when not in use. She looked toward the bay and the dock where the Zodiacs were kept tied up, but was able to see nothing through the fog.

The satellite phone was kept in the main building, which also housed the dormitory-style rooms where they all slept, women in one and men in the other. The kitchen was in there, too, along with a large common area where they ate and hung out. Just thinking about the kitchen made her stomach growl. She hadn’t eaten that morning: knowing that there would be food waiting for her at camp, and not anticipating such an arduous trek, she’d left the remaining two protein bars for Cal. She’d already made up her mind about the best, most unobtrusive way to make his telephone call: if anyone was around when she picked up the phone, she would simply tell them she had a private call to make and then go outside and key in the numbers he’d given her. Then she would call her mother as cover.

Hiding in plain sight, as it were.

The more she thought about it, the more not reporting the deaths or the plane crash bothered her. She hadn’t entirely made up her mind yet, but she was considering doing so once she was safely back in California. Cal would be off the island by then, too, and if he had kept his word he would have already reported the crash and the deaths, so she would be doing the right thing without endangering anybody.