Free 65 Below by Basil Sands

new ones. He claimed those boots had become more a part of his feet than his own toenails.
    Another set of prints had the distinctive markings of Corcoran military issue jump boots. Those, Lonnie thought, must be Officer Bannock’s. One set of prints belonged to a pair of large, military surplus white bunny boots commonly worn by many Alaskans this time of year. Another that looked like sneakers of some sort. Each of these pairs of prints went into the building and around the various structures of the substation, where the technicians had been trying to diagnose the outage.
    Standing out from the assortment of shoe prints at the door were two matching sets of patterns that bore the company logo of Sorel Mukluks impressed in the snow. The edges were sharp and crisp, indicating the boots were fairly new, or at least seldom worn. As she ran her light along the ground at the side of the hut, the imprints of those two sets of boot prints continued on toward the left of the tiny building. Lonnie pulled out her digital camera and snapped a couple of quick pictures. The flash exploding in the night briefly put a dancing array of spots before her eyes.
    After taking the pictures, she followed the footprints around the building to the large steel electrical structures behind the hut. The footprints stopped in the snow about five yards behind the hut. The snow was packed in front of a large, squat, cubicle transformer. The prints didn’t go any further, but followed the same way back out from the deep snow. The wearers of the Sorels had only been interested in the one piece of equipment that hummed in front of her now.
    Her senses leaped to full alert. Lonnie froze in her tracks. She had the uncanny feeling that eyes were staring at her. Her hand slid to the pistol at her side. Her own eyes widened reflexively as they tried to take in all the available light, to find the source of her sudden wariness before it found her.
    To her right, a flash of movement exploded from near the transformer box.
    She whipped the 9mm Glock service automatic from the leather holster on her hip, and in one smooth motion, raised, aimed, and clicked off the safety. The Maglight’s beam illuminated figures moving fast across the substation grounds.
    “Freeze!”
    Two tall, thin snowshoe hares stopped in their tracks. White fur bristled all over their bodies, and their long ears poked straight up into the cold night air.
    Lonnie felt heat flush over her face, and she was very happy that Bannock had not decided to accompany her to the substation. She shook her head at her own jittery behavior.
    “Okay, Bugs Bunny and friend…carry on.”
    The two hares watched her for a moment longer, then ducked under the fence and disappeared into the woods.
    She ran the beam of the flashlight up the side of the structure where the footprints stopped. An area of frost had been disturbed on the steel casing inside, which buzzed a massive magnet wrapped in high-voltage copper coils. A twelve-by-twelve-inch square about five feet above the ground was discolored, slightly but noticeably in the beam of the Maglite. It looked like something hot had been pressed onto the metal, causing it to bake.
    Toward the bottom of the transformer, the square edge of something metallic stuck up through the snow. She reached down and picked up a hollow metal box, about two inches thick and one square foot in size, with a sign plate on one side identifying the company that had manufactured the transformers. It fit the singed square spot on the side of the transformer. There were no screw holes or weld marks on either the box or the transformer. The panel seemed to have been attached by some sort of adhesive. The box Lonnie held in her hand was not discolored, as the transformer was.
    She put the box back on the ground where it had been, then snapped several pictures of it, the transformer, and the square burned area. She made her way back to the cruiser outside the fence. Exhaust billowed from