Is anybody alive, p.1
Is Anybody Alive?, page 1
Is Anybody Alive?
By L.J. Breedlove
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Published by L.J. Breedlove
Copyright 2023 L.J. Breedlove
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Disclaimer
This is a work of fiction. While place descriptions and news events may coincide
with the real world, all characters and the plot are fictional.
Contact Information
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Email address is lois@ljbreedlove.com.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Is Anybody Alive? (Talkeetna, #5)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
Further Reading: Somebody New
Also By L.J. Breedlove
About the Author
Is Anybody Alive?
Book 5 in the series Talkeetna, Alaska
Mayday! Mayday!
When the call came over the radio at Purdue Flight Service, Candace Marshall started making the calls — first to her boss, Lanky Purdue, and to her fiancé, police Lt. Paul Kitka. And then she had a whole list of other people to notify.
They had a plane down. A pilot in trouble. Passengers in jeopardy.
And then she got another message from the pilot just for her: Dace. Someone shot at us. Tell Paul.
Chapter 1
8:30 a.m., Monday, May 15, Talkeetna
Candace Marshall wasn’t sure whether she hated or loved May in Talkeetna, Alaska. An argument could be made for either, she thought, as she glared at the phone on her desk in the Purdue Flight Service office. It was one of those iconic black phones, somewhat square, with a rotary dial and the receiver perched on top. People thought it unusually trendy and retro for Lanky Purdue to have one. Dace never bothered to explain that it was 40 years old and had been the phone that came with the office building when Lanky bought it to start Purdue Flight Service.
She thought they should be able to figure that out if just they looked around. The office was in a metal building with serious Quonset-hut vibes. The coffee pot was a Mr. Coffee bought when that was a new-fangled thing, and her desk was gunmetal-gray surplus.
Retro? Lanky Purdue? Give her a break.
Actually the office was a lot like her boss. Both the office and her boss had been around so long they’d become cool again. Or retro. Or hip. Or whatever the word was for it these days.
Candace sighed and grabbed the phone to answer it instead of just glaring at it. It was May; the phone rang non-stop from when she came in at 6 a.m. until she left at 5 p.m. And she had a voicemail full of messages when she came in the next morning. She was working six days a week. Because it was May. And June would be worse.
It was climbing season on Mount Denali.
For her part, the work load had been building since March — the calls, messages, the reservations, the frantic changes to reservations. And even leaving things to March was way too late, Candace thought sourly. Things were booked out a year in advance.
“Hello, Purdue Flight Service,” she said as pleasantly as she could. Lanky Purdue had a reputation as a curmudgeon, but that didn’t mean she could be one too. She was a 28-year-old office manager. He was a 68-year-old bush pilot who came to Alaska with the Air Force and stayed. He was revered for his rescue missions, his emergency supply runs to remote villages, his trips to take medical personnel out to vaccinate against measles and the other contagious diseases that could decimate the Native Alaskan villages.
Truly he was an Alaska icon. And if an additional story got added to the list last fall when a woman stole his plane and then dumped him north of the Arctic Circle? In November? Well, it turned into a romantic rescue by long-haul trucker Mickey MacIntosh. He lived happily ever after — another Lanky success story. Just thinking about it put Dace in a better mood.
“Sprechen ze Deutsch?” a male voice asked hopefully.
“Nein,” Dace said regretfully. “Was brauchen Sie?”
There was a pause as the caller tried to reconcile the No and a question back in German. “Ein Team... Sieben... Sechzehn Juni....” There were more words than that, but Dace ignored them. A team of seven, June 16. She was grateful so many key words she needed sounded the same in German and English.
She flipped through the pages of her calendar. “Ja,” she said. “Geben Sie email.”
He slowly spelled out his email for her. He had other questions. “En Sie Email,” she said, and repeated it patiently until he stopped asking question. Then the phone beeped. Another call coming in. “Mus gehen. Guten tag.”
She didn’t wait and answered the next caller. An English speaker, thank God. She jotted notes on the pad of paper about the previous call and reservation he’d made. The problem with English speakers is that she was expected to answer all of the questions, and to engage in conversation. At least the German speakers realized they needed to keep it short and simple.
She could now take reservations in German, Russian, and Japanese in addition to English. Although as she glanced at the email address from the previous caller, she realized he was actually from Poland, and had just hoped she might speak German.
More than a thousand people would attempt to climb Denali in the next eight weeks, and 40 percent of them were international climbers. For some reason, Poland ranked second in sending climbers, right after Canada. Japan and Russia were always well represented — hence her new knowledge of about six phrases in each of those languages.
The climbers ranged in age from a record-setting 13-year-old boy to a recent 75-year-old woman — pretty impressive, because only about 20 percent of the climbers were women. Dace thought it might be because women had more sense.
Denali was the tallest mountain in North America. It was actually taller than Everest. Colder too. It was one of the Seven Summits — the tallest peak on each continent, and obsessed climbers challenged themselves to do all seven. The average Denali climber was a 38-year-old man, with money — or sponsors — because a climb would probably cost $12,000 and take 18 days. That was a commitment your average guy couldn’t make. They were driven, focused, and they drank a lot. During the season, Talkeetna, the most common jumping-off point, turned into a two-month fraternity party of sorts.
She had to laugh, because actually it was kind of fun. At least it was when she was with her fiancé, Lieutenant Paul Kitka of the Alaska State Patrol. They’d wander the streets, get a beer at a bar, listen to music in the park. Sunset was after 10 p.m. and it got light around 4 a.m. Not that it mattered — the climbers seemed to think partying 24/7 was just fine. Lord love the Aussie climbers! Then their time slot would come up, and they’d get serious and focused on their climb. Probably still sobering up at the base camp, she suspected.
Climbing season brought in money, a lot of money, not just to Purdue Flight Service but to the entire town. The mountain guides were in high demand. The bars were full, the restaurants were packed. Every hotel room, every bunk in the Roadhouse, every Airbnb, they were all booked.
A lot of Purdue’s customers just set up their tents outside the Purdue Flight Service hangars and waited for their turn to head up the mountain. Since the tents were colorful combinations of blue and yellow, orange and green, and red and white, it turned the place almost pretty — the gray metal buildings might be functional, but no one ever called them attractive.
It made her nervous to have so many strange men wandering around. They were friendly, running high on adrenaline and excitement. There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself every time she had to leave the safety of her office. Here she reigned. Out there? Out there, there be dragons.
She knew it wasn’t a rational fear. She knew that. It didn’t make a bit of difference. Two summers ago, she’d fled her abusive husband, and ended up in Talkeetna. Best decision of her life, even if she did end up accused of his murder.
Then last summer, she’d been kidnapped by a sexual predator who intended to keep her in a cage along with 10 other women. The women were free, the predator was dead. But she still quaked when she had to run out to the hangars to talk to the pilots. She still had nightmares. So did the other women she’d freed from those cages.
Paul had nightmares too. The role the police and military had played enabling and protecting the sexual predator had been a bitter pill for him to swallow.
Paul’s nightmares had gotten worse of late, and Dace fretted about it. The investigation into how the Anchorage police had managed to miss the
She asked Lanky about it, but he just shook his head. Either he didn’t know anything — highly unlikely — or he didn’t like what he’d heard.
Dace realized she’d allowed her shoulders to hunch, and her breaths were coming quick and shallow. She consciously relaxed her shoulders, rotating her neck carefully to relieve the tension, and took longer, slower, deeper breaths.
The phone rang, but as she grabbed it the radio crackled too: “Mayday, mayday!”
Dace told the caller on the line to call back later and hung up without paying attention to what the caller was saying. She looked at the radio.
She’d been up in a plane screaming ‘mayday’ more than once — and didn’t that sum up her life in Alaska? Alaska was not for the faint of heart, she’d found.
But she realized now that sitting here listening to someone else yell for help might be worse.
Dace grabbed the microphone. “This is base,” she said. “Go ahead, pilot.”
The radio wasn’t easy to decipher. She knew the pilot was male, young, and panicked. But that described them all but Lanky. She tried to think of who was in the air right now, but she thought they all might be.
“I’m going down,” the voice said. She placed it now. It was Rafe Martinez, and her heart sank. He was 26, and he’d been one of the pilots who had taught her to fly the winter before last. He teased her, joked with the other pilots, and was gentle with the women of Alqaq House — the survivors of the predator from last summer. He might be her favorite of the pilots, not that she’d ever admit to it.
Now that he knew someone was listening, his voice steadied. He gave her his coordinates. “I’m going to glide it in,” he said. “I think I can make the landing. But we’re a hell of a long ways from anywhere.”
“On it,” she promised him.
“Dace?” he said, and his voice was cracking up. “Tell Paul. Someone shot at us.”
And then there was nothing more.
Candace fought back tears. She looked up the schedule for the day and found Rafe’s flight. She frowned. It wasn’t a load of climbers like she thought it would be. It was a family of sightseers he was taking to Anchorage. Oh, God, she thought, there’s children on his plane.
Rafe was giving them a tour, including the mountain, and was then supposed to deliver them to the Anchorage airport. She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She couldn’t think about those poor people. Children, she thought again. She shook her head, and then she pulled out a laminated list of instructions and started making the calls that needed to be made.
She started with Lanky and told him what little she knew. “On my way back,” he said. He had taken a team of climbers into base camp first thing this morning and was scheduled for a second flight up the mountain after lunch. “Everyone booked?”
“Yes, sir,” she said. The formality steadied her.
“Give me the coordinates,” he instructed, and she read them out to him.
“Lanky?” she said. “Rafe said someone shot at them.”
“Understood,” Lanky said after a pause. “Dace? Paul....”
“Next call on my list,” she promised.
“No, wait,” Lanky said. “I need to tell you this — Paul is on that flight.”
“What? No, he’s not — he can’t be. Rafe said for me to tell him he was shot at!” Dace felt her panic escalate.
“He was catching a ride to Anchorage this morning,” Lanky said. “Sounds like maybe he didn’t — call the station. Then call me back.”
Dace was barely listening to him. She scrambled for her cellphone. “Calling Paul now,” she said frantically.
“Dace?” Paul’s warm voice answered. She closed her eyes in relief.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“At the station,” Paul said. “Why what’s up?”
“Hold on a minute,” she told him, and then turned back to the radio and clicked on the microphone.
“Paul’s at the station,” she said, still hyperventilating.
“Ask him to meet me at the hangar,” Lanky said. “Don’t mention the shot to anyone else but him.”
“All right,” she said slowly, wondering what was going on, what hadn’t she been told. She returned to her call with Paul and told him what little she knew.
“A shot?” Paul repeated. “At Rafe’s flight to Anchorage?”
“Yes,” she said. “Paul? What’s going on?”
“I can’t tell you over the phone,” he said. Dace frowned. Cell phones, she realized. They could be eavesdropped on. But cops were the ones who did the listening, weren’t they?
“I have to call a bunch of people,” she said reluctantly. She was alone here in the office. No one was up at the hangars either. And she didn’t want to hang up. But she needed to make the calls.
“Call me back if you learn anything,” Paul said.
“Lanky asked that you meet him at the hangar,” she said. “He’s probably 30 minutes out. He was going to do a flyover of Rafe’s last known coordinates.” Please God, let them survive the crash, she thought fervently.
Reluctantly she let him go and sat there for a moment in the office. She thought about losing Paul and her eyes burned with tears. She couldn’t cry! Not here. But she couldn’t get control of her panic either.
She could have lost him.
She hyperventilated, and her vision narrowed to black. She was going to black out, she thought with alarm. She couldn’t do that. She had work to do — Rafe was counting on her. Rafe and that family. Children, she reminded herself.
She put her head between her knees — that was supposed to work, right? — and focused on slower, shallower breaths. Paul is OK, she told herself. He’s on his way here. He is not on that plane.
She hadn’t even known he was going to Anchorage today. How come Lanky knew, and she didn’t? She frowned. Damn those men, not telling her things. She would have words with them both about this.
And that familiar irritation calmed her. She sat up, rolled her shoulders to release some of the stress.
Paul is fine, she reminded herself. It was a fear she lived with — he was a cop after all. She hadn’t told anyone how terrified she was that something would happen to him. She wasn’t going to either.
“He’s OK,” she said out loud in the empty office. “Today, Paul Kitka is safe and OK.”
And then she started down the call list on the laminated piece of paper in her desk drawer. A list she had never thought she’d ever use: FAA, NTSB, Search and Rescue, the Air Force base.
“Who was on the flight?” the person in the base commander’s office asked.
“We aren’t releasing names, pending an OK from the State Patrol,” she said formally. It sounded good, but truth was after the military’s role in what happened a year ago, she wasn’t going to give them shit for information unless she had to. She blinked. She didn’t usually use such words, not even in the privacy of her own brain. She really was off-kilter.
“We need to know,” the man insisted.
“Then you should contact the State Patrol and ask them,” Dace countered. She heard a plane taxi up to the hangars outside. “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
He was still spluttering when she hung up the phone. Grabbed her jacket and cell phone, then headed out to see who had come in. It was Lanky. She closed her eyes briefly in relief. She could count on Lanky to know what to do to rescue Rafe.
A couple of the men who were camping by the hangar called out a friendly greeting, and she attempted a smile in their direction. She kept moving toward the hangars and Lanky.
He taxied up to the hangar, and she went inside to open the doors so he could bring the plane inside. The doors rolled down behind the small Cessna.
Lanky shut it down and hopped out of the plane. He was a tall, thin man — hence the name — with thinning, gray hair under a gimme cap. This one was blue and advertised Alaska Airlines. His flight jacket was brown leather, and underneath it he had on a dark navy blue shirt and heavy cotton trousers in some color between brown and gray. Lace-up brown boots.
