Cold Snap: An Action Packed Novel of Suspense by Marc Cameron

Author:Marc Cameron [Cameron, Marc]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense
ISBN: 9781496732095
Google: pj9LEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: B09BK9SMKS
Goodreads: 58669689
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2022-04-26T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 29

Rollup had been early, leaving the prisoners sullen and quiet. Gene Richards began to sob when he learned he was being transported to Anchorage, away from the influence of a friendlier judge.

The thermometer outside read a balmy twelve below zero, leaving Cutter and everyone else in the van hunched down in their parkas like fluffed birds during a storm. Jan Hough was behind the wheel. Cutter sat behind her, yielding the front passenger seat to Bill Young. Regretting the decision before they’d gone a block, Cutter turned his face sideways, burying his nose in the thick wolverine parka ruff. The faint Windex smell of the tanned fur allowed him a measure of escape from Bill Young’s Axe cologne and the prisoners’ flatulence. Hough had brought the prisoners to-go boxes of chipped beef on toast—the ubiquitous SOS that could serve as breakfast, dinner, or wallpaper paste in a pinch. The disgusting odor in the back of the van said it was disagreeing with someone in a bad way.

Cutter should have been used to the smell. Human stink. His first three wives had called it some version of that. He’d come home with it on his suits a lot in the early days of his career, when he was a young POD—plain old deputy—working the cellblock in Miami or hooking and hauling vanloads of prisoners for cross-country trips. The odor of confinement was the closest thing Cutter had experienced to life in a third world country—spit baths, hand-rolled cigarettes, and the lingering essence of human excrement. There had been many times he would have burned his clothes if he hadn’t been too poor to afford new ones.

Fortunately, the drive from the North Slope Borough offices to the airport was a short one.

Hough got on her phone a quarter mile out, timing it so the hangar staff had the massive door open just wide enough for them to squeeze the van through as they arrived. It began to rumble closed the moment they were inside.

The stadium lights inside the expansive hangar proved blinding after the leaden ice fog of outside. The van’s tires squeaked and chirped on the freshly waxed concrete as Hough rolled to a stop at the tail of the only aircraft in the building, a waiting Cessna 208. The high-wing Caravan was a workhorse of the Arctic, as ubiquitous as pickups in Texas. With beefy wheel skis that could land on a regular runway or snow strip, this one was white with a midnight-blue underbelly.

Cutter left Bill Young standing next to the van to watch the prisoners, and got out to meet the man in the open cargo door. He was busy stowing what looked like a ukulele shrouded in bubble wrap behind a cargo net at the tail of the aircraft.

Hough had identified him as the pilot, Mutt Larsen, when they pulled up.

Squatting in the relatively cramped interior of the Caravan, the man stowed a cardboard box beside the ukulele, continuing to work on the cargo as Cutter approached.

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