Prey

HUNTED…
Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sunday September 12th

The Kenai Peninsula, a huge expanse of wilderness extending out from the south-central edge of Alaska, is a land of extremes. High mountain ranges, huge pondering glaciers, hundreds of lakes, and an unimaginable diversity of plants and animals make the Kenai a place where legends are born. It is a place where sun-drenched summers and crisp autumn winds can suddenly give way to a winter storm of incredible proportions; where ice and soil fight an age-old battle measured in inches, while the land itself is described in millions of acres.

But more important, it is a place where predator and prey meet, where the strong and aggressive triumph, and the weak perish.

It has always been that way, even on the two-million-acre Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, a huge area of wilderness set aside as a sanctuary from man-the most prolific and dangerous predator the earth has ever known.

It was approaching mid-September, still early in terms of the winter calendar, but the mother Kodiak bear could sense the changes in the valley formed by the joining of Benjamin Creek and the Killey River. Changes that would spell certain doom for her two late-born cubs if she didn't act soon.

She hadn't always lived here in this secure and hidden wilderness. There were vague memories. The thunderous crash of the rifle. Her mother's sudden death. The hunger that had grown worse and worse until she was found by a park ranger, who had stuffed her into his jacket and taken her back to his plane. Ultimately she had been introduced to a new life on the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge, where she had never again encountered a human being.

She was the only true Kodiak living among hundreds of "lesser" brown bears, but it did not matter. She had found a mate, a huge brown male nearly equal to her in size and ferocity; and their union-a rare and unlikely event-had produced a pair of late-born cubs that were now, according to her deep-seated instincts, the primary reason for her existence.

The other things that she understood were equally instinctive: her cubs were still small compared to the others, the weather was turning cold, the salmon run was almost finished, and the competition for the remaining fish was becoming increasingly fierce.

That, and the knowledge that a hungry brown bear- especially the males, and even her mate-would eat anything available during those last desperate days before hibernation.

Standing just over nine feet in height and weighing nearly seventeen hundred pounds, the mother Kodiak knew that she could take on and defeat any one of the males face-to-face. But she also sensed that a battle might leave her cubs undefended for a few precious moments, and she could not accept that kind of risk. She would have to move her cubs away from the Killey River spawning beds.

Thus, intent on finding the food, shelter, and isolation they would need in the coming months, she led them north along Benjamin Creek, slowly working toward the rocky southern shore of Skilak Lake, where her fate, and the fate of Operation Counter Wrench, would be irrevocably entwined.