Читать книгу Yellowstone Standoff - Scott Graham - Страница 16

8

They ate their sack lunches at a picnic table on the north shore of Yellowstone Lake, down the hill from the porticoed front entrance to historic Lake Yellowstone Hotel with its vibrant, yellow-and-white paint scheme. Afterward, they drove on around the lake’s western shoreline to Bridge Bay Marina.

Yellowstone Lake stretched fourteen miles from the mouth of Bridge Bay to the foot of the Absaroka Mountains, the swath of forests, tundra, talus fields, and barren peaks that continued eastward out of the park to form one of the largest roadless areas in North America. Beyond the mouth of the bay, a cold, hard breeze piled waves into whitecaps. The wind rushed across the harbor, up the concrete boat ramp, and through the marina’s gravel lot, lifting dust in tight, spiraling dervishes.

Chuck put a protective hand to his nose and mouth as he crossed the lot while Janelle and the girls waited in the truck. A wooden dock, gray and weathered, extended a hundred feet into the water next to the ramp. Halfway down the dock, the two boats that made up the park’s cross-lake transportation fleet bobbed in the water, snugged by their boxy sterns to the dock’s rubber bumpers. The diesel-powered launches, thirty feet long by fifteen feet wide, squatted in the bay like miniature tugboats, their bows upswept to break the lake’s notorious swells, their open sterns low in the water. Three-sided wheelhouses, each big enough to accommodate a single, standing pilot, stood near the bows of the matching boats’ otherwise open decks.

A handful of scientists unloaded blue plastic storage containers in the shape of beer kegs, hinged plastic boxes the size of suitcases, and rubber-coated duffle bags from a pair of white cargo vans parked at the head of the ramp. The researchers carried the gear to a growing pile on the dock next to the secured boats. A woman stood beside the stack of gear, a clipboard in her hand and a nylon satchel draped from her shoulder.

“And you are...?” she asked Chuck upon his approach.

“Chuck Bender. You’re Martha?”

She nodded, a crisp tic of her chin.

Yellowstone National Park Research Logistical Coordinator Martha Augustine was as legendary for her drill-sergeant-like officiousness as for the power she was said to wield over scientific work in the park. According to widely accepted rumor, proposed research projects in Yellowstone gained approval only with Martha’s assent. It was whispered she could sabotage a project or researcher she didn’t like—and was regularly accused of having done so—with a mere stroke of her pen.

Martha’s fine silver hair poked from beneath her Smokey Bear hat. Wrinkles fanned out from her thin lips like the spokes of a wheel. A translucent plastic cover known among park personnel as a hat condom protected the hat’s porous straw material from spray coming off the lake. Crisp creases ran the length of her forest green, park-service-issue slacks. The badge on the breast of her gray jacket gleamed. Above the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose, her brown eyes glinted with sharp intelligence.

“You’re the Archaeology Team, correct?”

“I am. With one other.”

“More than one, as I recall.”

Chuck risked a smile. “I do have three members of my fan club with me.”

Martha’s face turned to marble. “Five total,” she said. “You, team lead. Clarence Ortega, assistant. Janelle Ortega—” she paused before biting off the word “—wife. Carmelita and Rosalita Ortega, daughters.”

She glowered at him over her glasses, her eyes flinty.

“Lex approved it,” Chuck said.

“His decision, not mine.” She checked her watch. “I’ve got you for 2:00. Place your things here with the rest and be ready to board at 1:30. That’s thirty minutes from now.”

“Got it.”

“Two boats every ninety minutes. One for gear, the other for passengers. The Wolf Initiative made their two runs first thing this morning. Lex and Jorge, the cook, went in with the first boat. The Grizzly Initiative made their runs next. The 2:00 is for the rest of you—Meteorology, Geology, Drone, Canine.”

“We get the afternoon wind and swell,” Chuck noted.

“From what I understand, you brought your family along for the experience.” She jabbed her pen at the white-capping waves beyond the narrow neck of the bay. “There’s part of your experience right there.”

She tucked her pen in her clipboard, reached into the satchel hanging at her side, and extracted a handful of plastic items. The bright red objects, three inches long by an inch wide, looked like fishing bobbers. Each one tapered to a recessed button and tiny LED light at one end and a metal clip at the other.

“Personal locator beacons to be attached to your packs,” she explained as she counted five beacons into Chuck’s cupped hands. “One for each member of your group. Required equipment as of this year, along with the camp satellite phone.” Each beacon had a small sticker naming a member of Chuck’s group. “Attach the beacon corresponding with the correct recipient to each of your packs—” she flattened her lips “—fan club members included. The beacons are to remain with you at all times. When the button is pressed and held for three seconds in the event of an emergency, a distress signal and locational coordinates will be sent via GPS, the Global Positioning System.” She slitted her eyes at Chuck. “You’ll make certain your daughters understand what ‘in the event of an emergency’ means, do I make myself clear?”

“Crystal.”

Back at the truck, Chuck clipped the appropriate beacons to zipper pulls on his, Janelle’s, and the girls’ daypacks. He wrestled Rosie into her rain jacket, and they all walked across the parking lot to the dock, where they left their duffles with the growing gear pile. They returned to the emptied truck for their daypacks just as Clarence sped into the parking lot. He slid his dented hatchback to a stop, raising a cloud of dust, and hopped out.

“Can I help unload?” he asked.

“Just finished,” Chuck told him.

“Yessss.” He struck a pose, thumbs raised at his sides, pelvis pumping. Chuck handed him a beacon.

The five of them headed to the boats, their hiking boots echoing on the dock’s thick planks. Clarence added his own armful of duffles from his hatchback to the stack on the dock. A pair of park staffers loaded the gear into the nearer of the two boats. The staffers lined the stern of the craft with the plastic storage containers, piled the duffles on top, and strapped the mound into place.

Kaifong, from the Drone Team, wandered up to Clarence. They struck up a conversation, her smooth face breaking open in a wide grin at his banter within seconds. She belly-laughed along with him a moment later.

Chuck rolled his eyes at Janelle. “Your brother,” he said to her out the side of his mouth.

“You’re the one who hired him. And let’s remember: he’s the reason you and I met.”

“That’s one thing in his favor. In fact, that may be the only thing.”

The park staffer who’d loaded the boat took up his position in the windowed wheelhouse. The man turned a key in the ignition, and the boat’s inboard engine coughed to life, then purred with a guttural murmur.

Martha unhooked the heavy ropes that secured the stern of the vessel to the dock and tossed them into the back of the boat. The pilot shifted the engine into gear. Diesel exhaust drifted across the water, acrid and pungent, as the boat chuffed toward the open water beyond the harbor mouth.

“Greetings,” the other staffer said to those waiting on the dock.

The scientists turned their attention to the staffer, a woman in her mid-forties with collar-length brown hair, her bangs pressed to her forehead by a dark green baseball cap emblazoned with the arrowhead-shaped National Park Service logo.

The woman stood below the dock in the open stern of the second boat. “I’ll be master and commander of your cruise to the southeast arm trailhead,” she told them. “I understand this will be the first time most of you have crossed Yellowstone Lake.” Her sparkling green eyes found Carmelita and Rosie. “Certainly for the two of you, am I right?”

Carmelita studied the laces of her hiking boots while Rosie clapped her hands and crowed to the woman, “I’m going on a boat ride!”

The pilot beamed. “That’s right.” Her brows drew together. “Most people think the biggest danger in Yellowstone National Park is the wildlife. But did you know Yellowstone Lake actually is the single most dangerous place in the whole park?”