Apex Predator       

PROLOGUE

        Charlie Kadusnéek pushed his one-man bidarka into the cool summer waters of the lake and smiled. No matter how he squinted, he couldn’t see one soul on the vastness of Lake Iliamna – no fishing boats, no pleasure boats, none of those idiotic jet-skis. This would be a good day.
        Feeling the motion of the lake through every quiver of his hide-covered vessel, Charlie steadied himself in the seathole of his craft and picked up his double-ended aluminum paddle. He didn’t give a damn for the white man’s soulless machine-made boats, but the gasht'ana made great paddles.
        Charlie’s was probably the last traditional aspen-and-sealskin bidarka on the lake, and that was the way he liked it. Few of his own people, the Dena’ina, had abandoned the sheltered bays of Iliamna’s eastern end to live on the main body of the lake. That, too, was fine with Charlie. He was alone on a living, rippling kingdom of water which extended for seventy miles and filled a rent in the earth the white surveyors said was a thousand feet deep and fifteen thousand years old. Charlie could not imagine feeling at home anywhere else, and he’d ever really tried.
        A distant, harsh flutter, unlike any sound in nature, drew Charlie’s attention to the north. The helicopter was so far away he could barely see it, but he cursed it nonetheless for the racket it made and for supporting the gold mining operation that would sooner or later destroy his lake. Iliamna’s remoteness had protected it from “progress” for a very long time, but the era of peace was coming to an end. Charlie could only hope that end would not come in his lifetime.
        The old man shook free of such thoughts for now and shaded his deeply lined face to examine a disturbance about two boat lengths ahead. He knew instantly what it was – liq’a, the salmon, leaping to escape what was most likely a seal chasing its breakfast.
        He let the bidarka coast closer, holding his paddle in one hand while freeing his dip net from the rope securing it to the deck. Charlie thanked the unseen predator for bringing up the salmon and leaned over to snatch the fish from the lake.
        An explosive shock from below snapped the bidarka’s upcurved bow halfway to vertical. The force stove in the bow, then dropped the boat down hard as Charlie grabbed the edges of the seathole, his net and paddle forgotten, his eyes fixed on the water. A fragment of an old tale flashed through his mind, but his lips never formed the word kesugi. The lake surface ripped open, the boat was flung violently to port, and Charlie’s right hand made a last desperate grab at the sky.
        The paddle floated alone on the water, like a fallen leaf.