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?”
Carmelita looked up from her shoes.
Rosie grabbed her sister’s hand. “No,” she said breathily to the pilot.
From behind Carmelita and Rosie, Chuck directed a look of warning at the woman. Who did she think she was, playing the part of drama queen in front of the girls?
“You’ll be entirely safe today, of course,” she told them, hurrying on. “Our boats are specially designed to take on the roughest weather Yellowstone has to offer.” She licked her lips, avoiding Chuck’s gaze. “But that wasn’t always the case.”
“It wasn’t?” Rosie croaked.
“Anyone who tried to cross the lake before the invention of PFDs—personal flotation devices—took their lives into their hands,” the pilot said. “At 7,775 feet above sea level this far north of the equator, Yellowstone Lake is one of the coldest navigable bodies of water on Earth, if not the coldest. The lake is covered with ice most of the year, and for the few summer weeks when the ice melts, the water temperature is barely above freezing.” She lifted her eyebrows until they nearly reached the brim of her cap. “Yellowstone Lake is big, deep, and cold. In the old days, before PFDs, anyone who fell into the water was paralyzed within seconds and sank to the bottom of the lake like a stone, their bodies never to be recovered.” The pilot’s tone lightened. “But you can rest assured that Bessie here—” she tapped the rear deck of the boat with the toe of her black work boot “—couldn’t flip in the worst Yellowstone storm if she wanted to. Even so, PFDs are mandatory.”
She beckoned the scientists into the back of the boat.
Chuck rolled his shoulders, loosening the muscles at the back of his neck. It probably wasn’t such a bad idea for the pilot to emphasize the danger of the lake to the girls.
Inward-facing bench seats lined both sides of the long, narrow stern. The pilot lifted each of the hinged seats in turn, pulling PFDs from the storage compartments beneath and passing them out before donning one herself.
The researchers slung their PFDs loosely over their shoulders and took their seats on either side of the stern, facing one another, their backs to the gunwales.
The Canine Team researcher, Keith, climbed into the boat and lowered his dog, Chance, to the rear deck. The dog, a shepherd with brown and black fur and a long, black snout, stood thigh-high next to Keith as he accepted his PFD.
Chuck sifted among the PFDs until he found a pair small enough to fit the girls. He fastened his own life jacket tight around his chest, then strapped the smaller flotation devices snug around Carmelita and Rosie.
“The temperature of the lake reminds me of the water in the Colorado River