Chapter 17

Life in Alaska is one of those things that fits in the category of “well kept secrets.” A good example are the stories told by military personnel who get stationed at one of the numerous Department of Defense bases in the state. Horror stories abound. There are days where the sun is only up for an hour or two, and cold so bitter that if one’s tongue comes in contact with anything metal, it freezes to it instantly. There are bears, who are not afraid of humans, and that are big enough that it takes serious firepower to knock one down. In this case, a .357 magnum, normally considered to be a powerful gun, might as well be a wrist rocket. Snowfall isn’t measured in inches in Alaska. It’s measured in feet. And unless you’re in a major city, you’d better be able to feed yourself, because there’s no store to go to.

The reality is, these stories are told in an attempt to ensure other military personnel don’t want to go to Alaska. That way the slots there will be available for the person telling the stories to go back to.

Alaskans like to tell stories like that. That way people will stay away ... and Alaskans won’t have to share what they are keeping secret up there.

What’s that? Well, in the summer it can get into the eighties. There are rain forests in southern Alaska. There is peace and quiet in Alaska, and one can make one’s fortune there. There are good jobs and good people up there. And the stores have everything anybody in the lower 48 states has access to.

Yes, the cost of living is higher, but wages are too. And yes there are bears, but if you learn about them and know how to behave around them, they’re less dangerous than crossing a busy street in a big city. You can pan for gold in various places. You can eat moose meat every day and sea food fresh off the boat all year long. You can ski, and fish, and hunt, and if those things aren’t your style, you can play golf. They have strip clubs and fine dining. And if you want to, you can live your life for a year at a time and not see another human being. The trick to living well in Alaska is learning to work with nature, instead of fighting against it.

There is much more, but this isn’t a travelogue for Alaska tourism. Rather, it is a lead-in to how things went when the light plane that left Merrill Field, in Anchorage, Alaska, touched down on a quarter mile strip of combined dirt, rock, and grass, and rolled to a stop. The strip was located roughly 200 miles southwest of Anchorage, forty miles north of a village named Koliganek, and was the very definition of “remote.”

Jody strode to a roughhewn shed and unlocked the double doors of it, swinging them wide to reveal an assortment of vehicles inside. She pushed a four wheeled ATV out of the shed and started going over it. Bernard Watkins joined her.

“What do you do about batteries going dead way out here?” he asked.

“We don’t use ‘em,” she replied. “Everything here is magneto equipped, with a pull starter. Check the tires on that trailer over there. There’s a hand pump hanging on the wall if you need it,” she said.

In short order the clothing and gear they’d brought, both of which were minimal, were loaded on the trailer. The bulk of the cargo space had been used for food. There would be a plane scheduled every two weeks to deliver supplies for the duration of their stay.

The ATV seat was intended primarily for only one person and the trailer was full, so everyone other than Jody had to walk. A quarter mile trip down a surprisingly smooth access trail ended where the forest opened up and the “cabin” appeared. Jody had spent about 1.2 million dollars on the structure, which was a well-insulated log building comprised of two stories, with a roof that looked like it was made of solar collectors. Everything that could be made to work on renewable energy inside had been configured that way. For example, lamps were equipped with cranks that generated electricity to charge a battery inside the base of the lamp. Thirty cranks would give one fifteen minutes of light before the bulb began to dim and the crank needed to be employed again. Everything electrical in the house was low voltage. What the sun couldn’t do was handled by a backup diesel generator. The fuel tank usually lasted her a year and a half.

Life in the lodge was challenging, but only from the perspective that the traditional things we Westerners spend so much of our time doing were not available there. Charging your cell phone or laptop, for example. The charging station consisted of a table to set things on, and a stationary recumbent bicycle that provided the power. That bike was also the power source for the television. Jody had a satellite dish, but if you wanted to watch something, you pedaled for as long as that program was. If not ... you did something else.

That usually involved reading, or hiking, or fishing, or hunting, or star gazing in an environment with absolutely no man-made lights around to pollute the skies.

Or making love. There was ample time to spend in bed, luxuriating in a slow build up to multiple orgasms.

Within a week Lacey was well on her way to being an expert shot with a rifle. The standard armament the marshals had brought along were LR-10 “black rifles.” Commonly (and erroneously) called an “assault weapon”, this rifle fired a .308 caliber bullet that was roughly the equivalent of what the AK family of rifles fires. That decision was intentional, since if anyone did try to attack Lacey in this remote location, it was assumed an AK type rifle would be involved, and the marshals didn’t want to be outgunned. The 150 grain .308 bullet was heavy enough to penetrate foliage, whereas the more common 55 grain 5.56 mm. bullet used by most law enforcement agencies is easily deflected by branches and leaves. They were not the fully automatic versions of this rifle (which would have made them actual assault rifles). They couldn’t bring enough ammunition along to waste it “spraying and praying” if the shit hit the fan.

That said, the rifle was also an excellent choice to hunt with, and Lacey wanted to learn to both shoot a rifle and hunt something with one while she was in a place where that was easy.

She found out shooting it wasn’t anything like she expected. When she saw others shoot, the noise caused her to assume the recoil would be fierce. It wasn’t. It let you know it was there, but her shoulder didn’t hurt at all after firing it. After her first five shots, she looked over her shoulder at Bob and said, “This is fun! I want one of these!”

He didn’t tell her she’d probably need to find a job in another state if she wanted to own guns that were fun to shoot.

Ironically, the primary thing Alaska did for Lacey Cragg was give her some idea of what having a normal life could be like again. In this place, it wasn’t necessary for a marshal to be within twenty feet of her at all times. As long as her protection detail knew roughly where she would be if they needed to find her, they didn’t hang around her like poor relatives of a woman who had won the lottery.

Generally, of course, that excepted Bob. In another bit of irony this protection plan gave her what amounted to a honeymoon.

They went on hikes together. Bob showed her some of the woodcraft he’d learned in escape and evasion school. On one day they climbed a tree and sat together in the crotch of a large branch, just waiting to see what might come into view on the ground below. There was some minor kissing and petting going on, but for the most part they simply enjoyed being together.

A grouse startled them both when it wandered along on the ground and was then frightened by something and took flight with a rush of beating wings that sounded much larger than the turkey-sized bird they only got a glimpse of. What had concerned the grouse turned out to be a coyote, still clothed in its gray summer coat, that trotted into view below them. Its keen nose then turned it into a startled animal as it looked up and then darted away.

They spent a lot of time in the lodge, of course. Meals were taken there. Everyone on the detail took turns preparing meals, including Bob and Lacey. The lower floor of the building consisted of a living room in the center with a sixteen foot ceiling. Surrounding that were the dining room, sauna, kitchen, bathroom, pantry, and mud room. The dining room looked like it might have been styled on a medieval inn, with rough-hewn tables and chairs made from native wood. The kitchen, by contrast, was all gleaming stainless steel, and long enough for three or four cooks to work without rubbing elbows.

The upper floor was where the bedrooms were, configured in a U shape with a balcony giving access all around. One could look over the balcony from any point and see the living room, below. There was a communal bathroom upstairs, directly over the bathroom below.

There was no “master” bedroom. All bedrooms were identical, the intent being to make everyone who stayed there feel like they were on an equal footing with the others. Jody’s use of this place as a haven, in which low intensity negotiations could take place, easily made it worth the expense of building and maintaining it. She had sealed deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars there, in no small part because the negotiating parties were “confined” and had to live their normal lives together when they weren’t sparring about business.

The sauna was a big player in all this, particularly if the lodge was in use in the winter months. Large enough for eight or nine to sit comfortably, it also served as a hardened safe haven, should there be danger. Such danger was not expected to be of human origin. There were bears big enough and strong enough to break through the exterior entrances. One of the first things Jody had to do each time she came was ensure no wildlife had taken up residence since her last visit. Bears were usually only hungry or curious, but they made openings that anything else could use. And then there was fire, which could appear without notice and approach faster than one could run if the winds were behind it.

When Jody showed that room to them, and explained its operation and use, she commented, “Of course I forgot about this when I made up the packing list. I usually tell people coming here to bring something suitable to wear in the sauna, but I didn’t think about it for you guys.” She gazed at all of them in turn and said, with a sly smile, “Of course you can use it naked. That’s up to you.” Her casual attitude suggested that using the sauna naked wasn’t an unusual situation.

Nobody had brought a swim suit to Alaska. Who would? Especially since it was late September, and they had been told to prepare for weather that would go from balmy to very cold within weeks. Additionally, each person could only bring one suitcase, so choices of what to put in it had to be carefully made. One comment on Jody’s packing list to the team had been, “Plan to wear things two or three days before you wash them.” She didn’t mention that the washing machine in the mud room was also bicycle powered. It was an old fashioned wringer washer from which the electric motor had been removed and a belt connected to a pully on the bicycle. The belt could be removed when the washer wasn’t being used. There was no dryer. The hand-cranked roller above the washer squeezed most of the water out of clothes, which were then hung on a clothesline to finish drying.

As the first week progressed, and it turned out that the evenings could be very cool, everybody wanted to enjoy the sauna. But nobody had anything other than underwear to wear in it. This was discussed around the table one night, five days after they’d gotten there. Jody had flown out, and now it was just the seven of them. The only “stranger” was deputy Veronica Rothschild, or Ronnie, as she liked to be called.

Dick Hooker was the deputy in charge. Dick was divorced. Len Thomas had a girlfriend, but it wasn’t serious. Jessica Snow was married. Bernard Watkins and Ronnie were single. Bob was the “old man” in the group, but he only had a few years on Dick.

Jessica and Len tended to hang together, in part because each of them had gone through the same things in terms of telling a significant other, “Honey, I’m off to someplace I can’t tell you about, to live in primitive conditions with the woman I’m helping to protect. Yes, she’s the one who four marshals died trying to protect already, but I’ll be fine. I promise. No, I don’t know how long I’ll be gone, or how often I’ll be able to contact you.” The other reasons they were close were complicated, and centered around the fact that they had worked together for quite a while.

Bernard and Ronnie also tended to be in the same general location. Both were in their mid-twenties. Both were single. Both were pleasing to the eye. And they were the “rookies” when it came to being on Lacey’s detail. That there was some “interest” displayed toward each other was obvious, even though both of them thought they were concealing that.

Law enforcement is one of the professions that generates more divorces than most others. Some of that is because the spouse gets tired of wondering if her husband - or wife - will live through the shift and come home at night. Some is because of extended missions. And then there’s the phenomenon resulting from people living and working together closely and putting their lives in each other’s hands. When you know your partner is literally willing to take a bullet to protect you, relationships can become close. Very close. Extremely close. Sometimes even closer than the relationship you have with your spouse or significant other.

Of course those close relationships are very different from spousal relationships. You don’t go to bed with your partner, for example. You don’t use each other’s toothbrush. You don’t take showers together. The words, “I love you,” aren’t exchanged.

And yet there can most assuredly be “love” of a sort between some of these people. It can be the same in the fire service and military. It has been argued there is no bond stronger, no love more true, than that shared between people who go into harm’s way together.

A spouse would have to be blind, deaf, and stupid not to become aware of this kind of love, and some spouses can’t take the “competition.”

That’s too bad, because there really isn’t any “competition” in the romantic sense of the word. Not usually. There can be, but it’s rare. Even when partners married to others become so close that they do go to bed together, that doesn’t mean the same thing to them that it means when they go back home to the wife or hubby.

It’s just different. If you’ve ever been “on the job,” then you understand that. The problem is, if you’ve never been in that life, you can’t understand it. Spouses don’t understand why you’d take a bullet for that person. Telling her you’d also take a bullet for her doesn’t mean anything, because she can’t believe anybody would ever want to hurt her in the first place. Spouses don’t understand why, during an undercover operation in which you pretended to be married, you acted married in bed - that you had to go to bed with your partner, because that was the only way to convince the bad guy that she really was your girlfriend, and that you weren’t an undercover cop. Spouses don’t understand how you can love somebody other than them, and still love them at the same time. Most people in a marriage want to believe you can only love one person in your whole life - them. That’s patently ridiculous, and yet that’s what they are firmly convinced of.

Spouses can’t believe that “stuff” can happen and you still love them just as much as you did when you got married.

So lots of spouses file for divorce.

The saddest cases of this are when the person being divorced did nothing more than just do his or her job, didn’t stray, didn’t drink, wasn’t violent at home. The phrase you hear most commonly from divorced spouses of law enforcement officers is, “He loved that fucking job more than he loved me.”

It was the kind of people that phrase is used to refer to, who gathered for supper that night. Dick had just put away the satellite phone, which was used to make the every-eight-hour status reports that told people back in Washington that the palpable prosecutor was still alive.

“So what do we do about the sauna?” he asked as bowls of food were passed around the table.

“What do you mean?” asked Lacey.

“I didn’t bring a swim suit,” he said, shrugging. “Did anybody else? I’d go in there in my underwear, but once things get steamy that isn’t going to hide anything. Besides, traditionally, you sit in a sauna naked,” he finished.

Bernard and Ronnie glanced at each other. It was one of those things they thought nobody would notice, but almost everyone did.

“So you want to sit in the sauna naked?” asked Jessica.

“Naked,” said Lacey, softly. She swallowed and darted a glance at Bob.

“I’m not suggesting we all have to be in there at the same time,” said Dick. “I’m just trying to establish the official dress code for going in there.”

“We could go in separately,” said Len. “Or the women could use it together and then the guys could.”