Zack lowered his gun. “Damn!” he spat, fierce in some way he didn’t understand; more than being shot at, it was fury at the type of person who made these mistakes. Not like Steve.
“I’m truly sorry, man,” Steve was saying. “I’m gonna regret this all my life.”
Zack nodded, not mollified. There was no way to explain or forget.
“Really sorry, man.” Steve repeated. “Really sorry.” He jacked the empty cartridge out of his gun and put his thumb over the breech to keep another from entering from the magazine. He took a bullet from his pocket and shoved it down into the breech.
“Forget it.” Zack said. For some reason he didn’t want to mention the bear and the plane but did anyway.
“A crashed plane?” Steve stared uphill. “Why didn’t you say?”
“With two coffins in the back.” Zack glanced at the aspen trunk smashed by Steve’s bullet. “Let’s get to camp and tell Curt. That’s where I was headed.”
A hesitant smile crossed Steve’s rangy, lean face. “You call 911?”
“Uphill’s like here, no coverage.”
“Weird there’s no bodies. Coffins? Spooky.” Steve slung his rifle. “Can you show me?”
Zack leaned against the aspen. “What for?”
“Hell of a pilot, to survive a crash landing up here.”
“We need to tell Curt.”
“It’s what, half mile away?”
“A mile. At least.”
Steve brushed new snow from his shoulders. “Let’s do it. Or I have to follow your footprints all the way down the valley where you tracked that pilot, then up again to wherever the plane is. And by then it’ll be all covered with snow.”
As they climbed the ridge in last light toward the plane, Zack could not stop thinking how close it had been, that bullet hitting the aspen.
I could be dead now.
NEW SNOW half-covered the plane, giving it a sepulchral air in the deepening darkness.
“Holy shit!” Steve circled it, wiped aside snow to peer in the windows, leaned his rifle against the smashed tail and climbed the fuselage.
He tugged open the starboard door till it pointed straight up like a broken cross. “How the pilot got out.” He dropped feet-first into the cabin, checked the instruments and squirmed over the seats toward the coffins.
“Don’t worry,” Zack called. “They’re already dead.”
Steve reached the broken coffin with the snow atop it. But where had that come from, Zack wondered: there was no break in the fuselage where it could have drifted in.
Steve licked a finger, touched the snow and tasted it. “Snow!” he called. “The real stuff.”
“Snow?” Zack still could not figure how it had landed on the coffin.
“Whooeee! We just found ourselves a plane full of cocaine!”
LADY COKE
“THIRTY GRAND A kilo!” Steve tugged a plastic bag of powder from the broken coffin and jumped down from the plane. “What this,” he held it up. “is worth on the street! And there’s a ton of kilos in these coffins!”
“So what?”
“It’s a fortune!” Steve stared out at the fading landscape, the white snow almost dark now, the black trees and dark night. “Imagine, if we could sell this …”
Zack laughed. “You nuts? It’s not even ours.”
“So do we care?” Steve nodded at the plane. “These guys are drug dealers. Crooks.”
“What would we be, if we took it?”
Steve grinned. “Could make us rich.”
“We’re already rich.” A black scorpion logo, Zack saw, was printed on the bag: A warning. The bag was torn on one end and the powder trickling out made him want to cup it in his hands. He glanced up at the glacial peaks, the lofty darkening trees, the hills of deep silent snow, the horizon empty of humans. “What would we do with it?”
“Sell it!” Steve tipped powder onto the blade of his Buck knife. “Oh Jesus this is good.” He sniffed again, head back, inhaled. “Absolutely pure.”
“If we take it, then these guys,” Zack nodded at the plane, “they come after us.”
“You’re telling me you are afraid of some scumbag coke dealers?”
“It’s an added hassle, that’s all.”
Steve smiled at him with affection. “You know, in all my life, all the shit I’ve done, all that’s happened, Lady Coke’s done me more good than bad.”
“I don’t care. Let’s get back to camp.”
Steve tipped more powder on his knife and held it blade-first to Zack. “Try it.”
“Giving it a break for a while. You know that.”
“Because Monica told you to?”
“You know she wouldn’t.”
Steve withdrew the blade. “Never have you had coke like this. We’re on vacation … don’t tell me you don’t do it when you’re going live.”
“Not anymore.”
“You, the great white linebacker, and now the handsome TV guy with all the answers – and you’re afraid of a little snow?” Steve took another hit. “Is that why you’re losing your edge? Why they’re not offering you another season?”
“I didn’t say they weren’t. I said it was possible. I’ve got a meeting next week, after we get back …”
“Are you’re losing your edge? You’re in a wicked business, every instant have to have the right words, the fast talk … Be looking good …”
Zack laughed. “I can retire now. I told you.”
“You don’t want to. Not when the market’s this hot.” Steve snorted some coke, tipped more on the blade. “Just try it. We do this right, we can make so much money you won’t need to sell our portfolio.”
“It’s not our portfolio. It’s mine. Money I made breaking bones and pissing blood.”
Steve gave him a curious look. “So what’s the difference between doing that and selling
