There was no sleep for the team for two days before the start. Sam seemed to be surviving solely on caffeine and power bars, while Natasha spent her time prowling Anchorage and examining the competition from a distance. She refused to call it spying, even though that's what it was: sizing up the other competitors and marking down those who seemed likely to pose the biggest challenges.
For his part, Steve was working day and night to get everything in order, from the dogs to the provisions, clothing and sled. By the morning of March 7, 2015, he was both sleep deprived and stiff from carrying massive bags of frozen beef and dog food from the provisioning store to the trailer all day, and was more than ready to sleep for a month. Unfortunately, though, that was not an option, as the race was set to begin in only a few hours and he still had to get his team to the chutes.
The dogs were tireless in their excitement, barking and howling as he led them one by one to the towline and hooked their harnesses to the center rope. Desna snapped playfully at his hand as he led her to the front of the team, placing her in front of Kuni and Miki. Lifting her lips, she made a low sound in her throat, the fur along her spine rippling. "Hush, Des," he patted her head and she slicked back her ears, bumping his knee with her muzzle. "Be nice to the new girls, okay?" She thumped her wolf-like tail, tipping her head.
Natasha and Sam were waiting for him at the chutes, each nursing a cup of piping hot coffee. Without a word, Natasha handed him a drink of his own, then turned and walked away toward a small, empty tent on the side of the road. "Come on, Rogers," she called over her shoulder.
Steve glanced at Sam, who offered him a confused shrug. "Maybe she wants to give you a goodbye kiss?"
Steve laughed, shaking his head. "I'll be right back." Cradling the coffee carefully between his thickly gloved hands, he started after the red-haired Russian.
"Listen, Steve, and listen carefully." Natasha ducked under the tent into a narrow alleyway between two cafés, leaning against the graffiti-covered wall with her arms crossed over her chest. "We don't have time for the long explanation, so I'm going to give you the short version."
After a quick glance back at Sam, who gave him a thumbs-up, he slipped into the alley after her. "Is this about the competitors?"
She lifted one eyebrow and tilted her head slightly, her tongue flickering across her bottom lip. He'd never seen this expression on her before, a kind of nervous desperation hidden behind a cultivated calm. When she spoke again, her voice was low and intense. "One of the competitors, number thirteen. I know him. I trained with him a couple years back, back in Russia. And if he's here, something's wrong."
"Number thirteen?" Steve thought back to all the racers he'd spoken with in the past three days, but he couldn't recall even seeing number thirteen. "I don't think I…"
"You wouldn't have," she cut in, "he's a ghost, Steve. You see him once at the start and once at the finish, and then he's gone until the next race. No one knows his real name. I don't even know if he has one."
"What do you mean?" Steve felt a cold pit open in his chest, the excitement and anticipation he'd felt moments before freezing solid. "Who is he?"
"The media has a name for him," Natasha bit her lip, glancing over her shoulder toward the crowded street beyond the alley; "they call him the Winter Soldier. He's never lost a race, and he's run more than twenty-five 200-or-more-mile routes all across the north. Trust me, Steve. I know what he's capable of. Whatever he's doing here, it's not about the race."
"What do you mean?" Steve reached out instinctively to grip her shoulder, fingers tightening around polyester and feather down. "He's a racer, isn't he? How can it not be about the race?"
"It's all a cover," her voice sank even lower, until he had to bend his head to pick up her words. "Listen, Steve. There're things you don't know about me. About what I've done. But I need you to trust me."
Taking a deep breath, Steve closed his eyes. Very slowly, he nodded, and when he finally looked down at her again, he saw blatant relief in her icy eyes. "What's going on, Tasha?"
"The Winter Soldier isn't here to race. He's on a mission, and that means we've got to stop him before he reaches Nome. I'd go after him, but I'm not signed up and I can't get a team together fast enough anyway."
Steve let his hand fall from her shoulder, clenching into a fist by his side. "Any chance you know what this mission might be?"
She shook her head, a far-away look in her eyes. "No, it's been too long since I knew any of their secrets. But if they've brought him out here, it's something big. Something deadly." Shaking her head to bring herself back to the present, she turned and started back toward the chutes at a brisk jog. "It's time, Captain. Ten minutes to start."
"Hold on," Steve took off after her as she made her way to the staging area on Fourth Street, where the ceremonial start would take place. "You said 'they.' 'They' brought him here. Who's they, Natasha?"
She ignored him, grabbing Sam's hand and pulling him away from the chutes and into the crowd of spectators lining the streets. Snowmakers and flatbed trucks sat silent and empty behind the chutes, their loads of imported snow strewn across the naturally barren path of Fourth Street. The dogs in the chutes were slamming against their harnesses, throwing their heads back and screaming their impatience to get out on the trail and run. The sound of sled runners scraping the asphalt just under the thin snow joined the cacophony of cheers and catcalls from the crowd, a confusing mess of sound that made Steve's head spin.
"Number Seventeen," a short, heavily bundled man greeted Steve as he approached his sled, handing him a white patch with his number on it to attach to the front and back of his marine-blue coat. "Good luck, kid." The man grinned and winked, stepping down to hand out the rest of the patches.
Pulling off one layer of gloves, Steve pinned his number to his chest and back, nervously smoothing out the wrinkles as he stepped onto his sled's runners and braced himself for what was sure to be a wild first few miles. Even though he knew that this was a false start—that the real race would begin later in the afternoon at Settler's Bay, and that the ceremonial start in Anchorage was all done for television publicity—he couldn't help but feel a jolt of elation and disbelief. For one moment he forgot all about Natasha's words in the alley, forgot everything but the race. The Race. This was it, what he'd spent so many years training for. To run. To win.
The first team to be let out of the chutes was met by a frenzy of cheering from the spectators, the sled flying out and away down Fourth Street as if the dogs had wings on their paws. Steve could see Number One holding on for dear life, the runners of his sled slicing through the false snow cover to the bare asphalt below. For one moment the racer lost control, his team tangling and falling over one another in their excitement, but then he managed to get back on the runners and out of sight.
Eleven more teams followed the first, and by the time they reached the end of Fourth Street one man had a broken collarbone and another's sled had fallen apart due to a nasty roll. Steve watched as they were forced to scratch before they'd even begun, feeling his heart rise into his throat at the looks of disappointment and resignation on their faces. I'll make it, he assures himself, I'm ready for this. I can finish.
When Number Thirteen's turn came to leave the chute, Steve was instantly on the alert. He watched as the thirteenth racer and his team blew out of the chutes and onto the street, flawlessly maneuvering down four blocks and around the corner without a hitch. Despite Steve's best efforts to catch a glimpse of the racer's face, he saw only a flash of polarized goggles and a black mask covering the bottom half of the racer's face. Strangely, the Winter Soldier wasn't wearing a hood, and his long brunette hair fell in dark strands against the back of his neck. Unlike most of the racers, who were wearing thick down coats in all manners of colors from pink to yellow and white, Number Thirteen was dressed all in black, from his boots to the collar of his form-fitting jacket. With a jolt of anxiety, Steve noted that he looked more like an assassin than a racer. The feeling turned to dread at the realization that it was entirely possible that he was.
When Steve's turn finally came, his team had worked themselves into such a frenzy that they seemed shocked when the chute finally opened and they were finally free to run. But once they gathered their senses enough to move forward, they were off in a blur of speed and determination, paws scrabbling on churned snow as they carried the sled past the screaming crowd toward the end of Fourth Street. Cameras flashed and boom microphones hovered over the team as they raced down the first four blocks, reporters and cameramen all vying for position at the front of the gathering.
"Good luck!" Sam's voice somehow rose above the chaos, and Steve turned to wave at his friend. Sam and Natasha had somehow fought their way to the edge of the street and were watching him go with completely conflicting expressions on their faces. Sam was waving enthusiastically, a huge grin splitting his face in half, while Natasha stood stiffly beside him with her hands at her sides and her lips pressed into a thin line. Steve only got a brief glimpse of them as he passed, before he found himself and the sled flying around the corner at the end of Fourth and leaving Anchorage and the madness of the ceremonial false-start behind him.
A few miles out, in the suburbs of Eagle River, the teams were forced to stop by the freeway leading into Anchorage. All the dogs were gathered up and put into trucks, as were the sleds and racers, and driven to Settler's Bay where the whole insane start had to be done over. But at least the second time there were no cameras or screaming crowds, and the dogs were minimally less crazy because of it. They still howled and slammed against their harnesses as they were placed in a second chute, ears pressed back and tails curled over their bristling backs. The teams went out one by one, racing straight into the wilderness as the sun's light faded in the west and night crept in on silent paws.
After the second start the dogs were so insane to run that they refused to stop for the night, even when Steve was so tired that he could barely stay upright on the back of the sled and his vision was blurred with exhaustion. They ran all afternoon and into the night, not stopping for almost ten straight hours of madness and speed. When the sun finally rose over the mountains to the east, they still hadn't tired, but they were more than willing to stop for a short rest and snack. Steve lit his small gas stove—a provision requirement for all racers—and heated up hunks of raw frozen beef and canned dog food. The dogs devoured the snack in quick gulps, and within fifteen minutes they were off again.
Although many teams had pulled ahead during the first night of madness, Steve—or more realistically, Steve's dogs—had managed to hold their own during the initial dash. When they reached the first of twenty-one checkpoints only nineteen teams were ahead and over forty behind, while two teams arrived at Yentna mere minutes before them. Number Fourteen and Forty-Five, Steve noted, both looking weary but elated as they set up their stoves and set about melting snow for coffee.
The checkpoint was alive with spectators and reporters, their shouting and the flash of cameras accompanied by the constant rumble and roar of small airplanes landing and taking off on the ice fields. The commotion and constant noise made sure that no one got any real rest, and Steve spent most of his hour-long break untangling harnesses, stopping fights, applying salves and booties to injured paws, and melting water for his thirsty team. By the time everything was taken care of, he was too exhausted to start again, so he got out his thickest sleeping pad and bag and crawled underneath it for a short power nap.
He'd survived the first day, but he knew that it was only the beginning. The Winter Soldier was still out there somewhere, and beside that, there was a race to be won. Now was not the time for weakness. Now was the time for action, for perseverance in the face of impossible odds. Because that was what this race was about. Survival. Endurance. Strength.
But that could wait a few minutes, right? As his eyes drifted shut, Steve turned over and burrowed his face into his coat, the sounds of barking dogs and plane engines fading with his consciousness.