This is the story that began it all: the first novel that is mostly biographical. A Rogue, a descendant from the Southcoast Natives that taught then Lieutenant Phil Sheridan how ruthless he must be to fight Indians if he wanted to win, Jay Shoulders again disappears after befriending a petty drug dealer. A former Vietnam sniper, Shoulders is finally located-and CCCP Special Squads discover what Sheridan learned: a Rogue is best left alone, when he has returned to being a part of the natural world. http://homerkizer.org/rogue.html Dutch Harbor, 1979 . . . Yarder whistles, squeals of rusty sheaves, chainsaws echoing--he shuts his eyes and hears treetops snap, then crash beside him. He hears slack lines tightening, logs lifting, flying to landings, sticks of old-growth he fell. And he stops his ears with his thumbs when he hears the thuds of bullets striking soft flesh. He shudders, shakes, lies to himself, telling himself nothing matters, especially not the march of death rattles that disturbs the drama of distance. When he opens his eyes, he hasn't gone anywhere. http://homerkizer.org/rogue1.pdf "Do you know the ancestry of your name?" She pauses as she notices his red beard, or what there is of it, a little moustache and a few long whiskers around the side of his mouth and on his chin. The color is disgusting. It hadn't looked that color in the restaurant or she wouldn't have talked to him, because that color is like an old fox skin and is really disgusting. He is, she imagines, maybe thirty-five, six feet and a little more. A broken nose, probably several times. A jagged scar above his eyebrow. Short dark brown, almost black hair and that ugly, ugly beard. She can't believe he wouldn't shave, considering his beard is such an ugly color and with no more of it than he can grow. "I thought you were Native American? Didn't you tell me you were?" http://homerkizer.org/rogue2.pdf Between seasons, he really hasn't much to do, but he can't see himself as an observer on a foreign boat. Besides, the Feds would run a background check on him. What if they found he doesn't exist, then what? He would have invited a lot of trouble onto himself for what, to prove the obvious, that given the opportunity foreign boats cheat on quotas. He suspects he would, too. His Rogue ancestry owes the government that much at the very least, owes them Phil Sheridan's scalp on a carved platter. Maybe the Lakota people would then give him some kind of an honor. A wife guaranteed not to die would be acceptable. http://homerkizer.org/rogue3.pdf The wind pushes a short sea hard against the bow as it buffets the wheelhouse when, late afternoon, Jay rises from the lipped chart table, his memories safely tucked away in dark crevices of his mind. He isn't sure whether the storm has picked up: he hasn't been paying attention, and Muskushin Bay funnels wind over the low pass separating the bays, making the head of Captain's Bay a virtual test tunnel. So when he steps onto the hatch to relieve himself into the bay, Mount Mushushin rising high to block the low sun, he lets the wind whip his T-shirt as he stands, a man in the shadow of the mountain, grasping the wind, clutching it, capturing its strength in his hands, that strength flowing through him and passing on, bending grass stalks on the nearest of the Rat Islands, pushing a chop across the bay, smacking dock pilings of Pacific Pearl's Captains Bay plant, then rolling on towards the new bridge and Pan Alaska, Summers Bay, Priest Rock and Akutan, connecting him to things and spirits and natural forces. On the beach under a willow sits a fox, watching him. He sees the fox; their eyes meet. And for a moment, he is that fox. Then spreading his arms, extending them, his hands full of wind, he begins to shiver. Goosebumps form as the storm chill settles deep within him, freezing emotions, reason, pain. http://homerkizer.org/rogue4.pdf Although aware that the outside world has been notified of the shootings, Chief Closa of Unalaska's police department feels no undue pressure as he goes about his job, questioning everyone in the Inn, learning how the Alden woman, who only arrived this afternoon, was beaten, gagged and probably raped. He saw her himself. She should have known better than to wear a sexy dress here, where plenty of laws are broken everyday so fellows can get between the legs of biological females, often the kindest possible description of the island's cannery rats. But he finds it curious that Shoulders fled with the Alden woman-he wouldn't have minded fleeing with her himself, that is if Minnie would've let him, the possibility of which being a little less than zero. That Alden woman was quite the looker, but why Shoulders is involved is a little puzzling, especially so considering he was waiting for her down in the restaurant. He had a drink with her. And it appears Shoulders expected trouble, came prepared, took care of the state's business without the expense of a trial and years of prison-time. So his interest in the case wanes: if Jay had to accidently shoot a couple of armed intruders trying to rape her, then that's the way it goes. He needs, of course, to talk to the Alden woman. Oh, there'll be a thorough investigation and appropriate conclusions drawn, but what happened seems obvious. Would-be rapists got what was coming to them. Justice has been served. He can't, though, allow people to go around shooting others. He'll have to say something to Jay, might even have to find some minor offense with which to charge him. But Jay really doesn't have much to be concerned about; he's been one of the good guys. And while it'll be tough explaining how that thug managed to fire a shot through the wall from the wrong side, he'll have an explanation by morning; so he calls off the search. Jay will be in soon enough. http://homerkizer.org/rogue5.pdf Surge crashing against rocks as gulls hover, stationary as kites on strings, their cries sharp as the wind-chill, the wind still strong as the mast creaks under the strain of the poles with their fish in the water, dampening pitches and easing rolls, while a single twenty-five watt bulb above the table casts dim yellow light across the wheelhouse-Jay holds Catherine as he lies beside her while diesel burning in the oil stove roars quietly, the wheelhouse warm. He feels exposed although he doubts any plane will fly today. They should run with the weather, try to catch the Northfjord, which he knows the Coyote doesn't have enough speed to do, displacement hull speed being a function of the square root of the waterline. Unless the crabber puts in at King Cove or Sand Point for a day or two, a possibility, slim but there, he is destined to be two, probably three days behind it into Kodiak. He can save half a day by sailing directly for Blue Fox Bay, and after the shooting, he really can't put in at Kodiak itself so his choices are limited. http://homerkizer.org/rogue6.pdf Eric Pettersen pops little blue pills as he stares gloomily at the typed message received an hour ago. Something big is going down, and now he doesn't have any way of finding out what without going there himself. A visit to the end of the world. And he rolls the message as he rereads it for the twelfth time. He sent two agents to Unalaska, one a former pusher they turned around a year ago, the other a burned-out city cop from Bellingham. Both men knew their business; both were instrumental in cracking the Cuban-Columbian connection that has been funneling cocaine into the fishing fleet through a network of small-time dealers in the Puget Sound area. But this morning, they both have been murdered, shot in the head, execution style, one in back of his head, the other between his eyes. And he intends that someone pay for their murders, that someone being the fisherman and criminal Henry Jay Shoulders, an alias if he ever encountered one-he has already run the name through NCIC computers and came up with nothing when, according to the information the Unalaska Police Department supplied him, Shoulders is a Vietnam veteran. That doesn't square, not in his office. All veterans are in the data base; so if Shoulders isn't, then Shoulders isn't a veteran. More likely, Shoulders is a draft-dodging, pinko war protestor, who has only recently returned to the United States from Canada, where he fled when his lottery number came up. http://homerkizer.org/rogue7.pdf Knowing he needs to check the wheel, check what lies in their path, check the radar for other vessels, that he can't stand and talk, not here with the wheel unattended, but also knowing that he will have few opportunities to touch the woman concealed within her shell of experience, he scares himself a little by saying, "Yes." And looking into her eyes, he sees that the softness and the seriousness of his answer momentarily surprises her. "I've taken a lot of life, most of it justified, but the blood doesn't wash away, not from inside." http://homerkizer.org/rogue8.pdf He won't be able to stay awake much longer. So thinking the anchor is holding, hoping it is, he lies on his bunk behind the galley, and he stares at the overhead bunk, seeing in his mind a white pickup with Oregon State Police stenciled to its door parked in front of the wood gate leading to nowhere. He lies there, his eyes open, staring, and he wonders if he really isn't Rogue, still at war in a war he cannot possibly win. He feels a connection, like a strand of monofilament line, pulling him towards a destiny he didn't choose, nor one he would have chosen. The edge of this two-sided world is thin-he feels like he has fallen off. http://homerkizer.org/rogue9.pdf Although drugs aren't of particular interest to either himself or GRU Command, walrus tusks are. Ivory, especially surreptitiously obtained ivory, provides needed hard currency. Their svois serve as two-way middlemen between the Columbians and Alaskan dealers, and between those dealers and Hong Kong ivory carvers. Catherine Alden represents the Columbians, but a DGI swallow reported last week that she was on her way out. So for Catherine to have made a deal with a meddling fisherman, well, that wasn't wise. She has no market for nine thousand kilos of tusks. All she has accomplished is to hasten the inevitable while creating a new problem for him. A perverse problem if their ugly sister gets rumor of the active measure as it stands now. He can't say he's sorry to have Catherine out of the way. http://homerkizer.org/rogue10.pdf If Viktor had a male operative, he would use him. But there is no one available, not for another few days. So softening, he adds, "The Revolution needs soldiers, not martyrs. You have accomplished much. Perhaps you should become part of the island's background until we locate this Coyote. Our satellites will find it if it floats." The eyes of the Revolution rather than her instincts are what he trusts-her instincts are not quantifiable. Photographs can be reduced to digits transmitted in a binary code, but instincts are feelings, suspicions, hunches, none able to be turned on, then off in streams of seven or eight or ten. http://homerkizer.org/rogue11.pdf Hearing the circling Cub, Jay bails out of his bunk and bounds onto the stern deck, searching for the plane. Not finding it immediately, he stands there in the chill predawn breeze, somewhat paralyzed by memories of those first years he trapped foxes here along the bay, memories of continual fear of detection, fear of being trapped on the island and hunted down as if he were a fox, fear of being spotted, the same fear he felt those weeks in Laos as he killed every living being that might turn him in, soldiers, women, children, dogs, geese, living off what he killed, his stomach revolting against the raw meat as he hid from even his spirit. http://homerkizer.org/rogue12.pdf Cold, stiff, dead. Lying in a satin-lined casket fifty, a hundred, a thousand years. She shudders. Doesn't think she'd like that. Not much to do. She's slept between satin sheets with men, who, after thirty seconds, might as well have been dead. Thought a couple might have been. She swallows hard. Wouldn't like hell, she knows that, but the damned, that's her-maybe she had better learn to like it. http://homerkizer.org/rogue13.pdf Tanya notices the sidelong glances he casts at her, glances that suggest he would like to play rough with her. Despising him all the more, she makes a calculated decision after weighing the possibilities, the decadence of the West is well known. Before coming to New York, she was compelled to watch so-called adult movies and filmed sex shows. Upon arriving, she was taken to a nightclub where sexually exploited women groveled before leering men. She saw how animalistic this bourgeois culture has become, its moral rot a stench on the planet, too foul for even Fundamentalists to purify. She'll make the pilot rue the day he was born, and his mother, the day of his conception. http://homerkizer.org/rogue14.pdf Stuart is alone and likes it that way. He checked this morning: the Anchorage attorney who can-fly-with-ease began work on the survivalist cells that have been arming throughout rural Alaska. The attorney's assignment to investigating Patriots In Action clears the field of all known players, leaving Alden, the meddling fisherman and this little druggy to himself. The Columbians will remain on the sidelines until Alden surfaces; so his lone concern is what will those who fly the green hammer and sickle do. He suspects nothing, their influence weak on this side of the Bering. http://homerkizer.org/rogue15.pdf Her heart still races when she reaches the end of the road. A mailbox with Reibeck's name. Good. She parks across the front of the lane nearest the mailbox. After she questions McPhearson, she will kill her. But she doesn't intend to take chances. Not after Anchorage. And she checks the chamber of her PPK, a habit she has no intention of breaking. She saw a KGB officer have his unloaded pistol kicked into a storm drain by an old woman. The officer had to wrestle the woman to the ground, and had been lucky. Without his gun and with no one coming to his aid, he might have been killed raping the woman if her husband would have come by while the officer had his pants down. No, she has no love for their ugly sister. And if she is to be burned, there really is nothing she can do. http://homerkizer.org/rogue16.pdf Hunkering down behind the cab of the pickup to get out of the wind and rain-an older fellow and his Rotweiler sit in the cab-Jay pulls Catherine close while Billy sits on the fender well. Outwardly, he ribs Billy about the ride, but his sense of doom remains. The image that keeps reoccurring is that of him lifting a rotting gunnysack off the ground and picking up the worms underneath, then using those worms to fish for steelhead. When he lived along the Siletz, he caught a few steelhead on nightcrawlers, but he doesn't understand the connections between those fish he caught and his present apprehensions. And not understanding worries him. http://homerkizer.org/rogue17.pdf In a Land Rover a block away, Stuart Bartholomew watches the bank manager emerge from a side entrance with Alden and Shoulders. How, he wonders, are they traveling so far so fast? This he doesn't understand. He just arrived on a direct flight. And he wouldn't have known to come here if the agency hadn't solved the mystery of the mismarked plane, an Arctic Tern manufactured in Anchorage. There are so few of them in existence that locating its owner wasn't difficult. A tap had already been placed on her phone line. A little promised laughter was all it took for him to receive tapes of her tapped calls-that Anchorage attorney wants to be a player so damn badly. This case has become a true obsession for the attorney, so much so that this meddling fisherman might have to be given to him as a person might give a round steak bone to a dog, the bone swallowed whole and eventually lodging in the intestine where it will kill the dog. http://homerkizer.org/rogue18.pdf But her immediate problem is this demand she has received, a demand for an accounting of her failure to locate the ivory, a demand that must be answered without delay, a demand from, probably, a fuzzy-faced lieutenant. Does some GRU strategist hidden beneath a mountain think she located the Family's errant dealer by checking ID cards at a local train station? In two weeks, she has traveled thousands of kilometres, eliminated McPhearson, taken care of that other matter, and bivouacked two squads that she doesn't need, nor does she want. Now, she has located Shoulders' boat, and probably Alden. How can anyone say she hasn't done anything? And she wads the message and hurls it into the corner. http://homerkizer.org/rogue19.pdf She feels the bullet strike the rotor shaft. The machine shudders like a dog shaking water. Spins wildly. Rolls. Pitches. Nearly flips over. One rotor blade has feathered. Treetops come up to meet them. Broken branches fly in all directions. Plexiglass shatters! explodes in her face. Crumpled sheet metal twists about her. Then- http://homerkizer.org/rogue20.pdf