The Bookworm by Mitch Silver

Author:Mitch Silver [Silver, Mitch]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-02-15T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 35

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Lev picked up his phone to call Lara in Moscow. No bars. He must be out of cell phone range. Looking out the windows on both sides of the bus, there were no cell towers to be seen. Strange … communications were the first priority at any new drilling site.

Lev had the pack of Winstons out and the lighter ready even before signaling the driver he’d be getting off at the first “1002 Area” gate. From what he understood, the tourists, naturalists and photographers usually stayed on the bus till it came to the second gate, the one closer to the uplands where the wildlife stayed when they weren’t migrating. The drilling company people, the early risers from the first trip, would use this one.

Standing by the side of the road, he drew the smoke down into his lungs as the bus started up again. When it pulled away, he shoved the cigarettes into his pocket, reaching down for a handful of dirt to rub on the hard, shiny leather of the new camera case. Then he stood there and smoked the entire cigarette before crossing the road and going up to the small “Information” kiosk just ahead.

The information obtained at the wooden shed ran in only one direction: from the visitors to the sentry. Lev knew the state worker was stationed there to ID people entering the Refuge; if any caribou were killed and their antlers taken, they’d know whom to blame.

The guy behind the counter was flipping through an old People magazine. Only when he handed the clerk his Len Klimt driver’s license did the man finally look up from his reading. He said, smiling, “Do Not Enter means do not enter. Okay?”

Sure enough, there was a picket line of DO NOT ENTER/ACTIVE DRILLING AREA signs that ringed a rise in the ground three hundred yards ahead; they ran toward the nearby coastline. The land open to the public lay due south, across the flat grasses of the Marsh Creek anticline that lay on this side of the Sadlerochit Mountains, twenty miles away.

Lev nodded to the man that he understood, picked up his license and now-dusty camera case and started off in that direction.

Over his shoulder the man called, “Hey, what magazine you with?”

Lev looked back and said the first thing that came to mind. “People.”

The guy seemed surprised. “Really? That’s funny.”

Lev was on his guard. “How so?”

“People’s the one thing we got hardly any of.”

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