TOOTH AND CLAW

Sheriff Walt Longmire looks back on an episode from his early years—a life-or-death fight on Alaska’s North Slope.

Returning from Vietnam in 1970, Walt finds that he's not ready to go home to Wyoming, so he takes a job as security chief on an Alaskan oil rig. His old friend Henry, known as the Cheyenne Nation, is visiting for a few days, and the two of them decide to work security for a team from the U.S. Geological Survey that's heading out to search for ice worms. When their plane lands, the group puts up a 20-foot metal tower from which one man will watch for polar bears looking for their next meal. While heading to their research site, Walt, Henry, and the scientists see an enormous polar bear in the distance, and then come across a den where a female bear and one of her cubs have been killed, though Henry rescues the other cub. Heading back to the plane, they find one of the USGS scientists, nearly hysterical, who tells them that the huge bear they'd first seen has killed his colleague. As a storm approaches, the survivors must spend the night in the plane, but while they're checking the ice screws that anchor it to the ground, the bear snatches another crew member. Then, despite the screws, the plane rips loose, turns over, and skids out onto the unstable icepack. Their only hope may be a ghost ship, the abandoned SS Baychimo, which has been floating around the Arctic since 1931. It's been sighted only occasionally, but when they find it, it turns out to be far safer than a sinking plane. As the men use the ship’s coal supply, they try to jury rig the telegraph to contact the outside world. But the ship is home to the giant bear they've tangled with before, who plays cat to their mice.

A chilling novel with all the ingredients needed to keep readers turning pages.