Arctic Fire by Stephen Frey Page A

few hours to unload a second excellent haul of kings—not quite as big as the first, but enough to make him another fifty grand. And he was using these last few minutes of downtime to put some much-needed energy into his system. He’d eaten nothing for thirty-six hours because they’d been hauling traps back on board almost nonstop, so rightnow any food at all looked good to him. Even things he wouldn’t touch on land with someone else’s ten-foot pole.
    “Hey, little brother.”
    Speed Trap glanced up as he stuck the last bite of the first delicious mustard-covered hot dog into his mouth. “Hey, Grant,” he said through the mouthful. His older brother was so tall he had to stoop constantly when he wasn’t outside. “What’s up? Other than your head on the ceiling.”
    “Funny, you little hemorrhoid.”
    “Shut up.”
    Grant took off his jacket and hung it over the back of the chair opposite Speed Trap’s. On the back of the jacket was a large, multicolored image of the
Arctic Fire
cresting a wave and the name of the ship written in script beneath the image. Last Christmas, Captain Sage’s wife had made the jackets for all four of the ship’s regular crew members.
    “I should take you up on deck and hang you over the side, you little shit.”
    “Try it,” Speed Trap shot back. “See what happens.”
    Speed Trap had never gotten into a fight with Grant, and the truth was, he never wanted to. Grant was huge and mean. As far as Speed Trap knew, he’d never lost a fight. And when he got drunk, he looked for them. That was when Grant caused riots because people started stampeding out of his way.
    “I’m serious.”
    “Shut up, little brother. You know I’d kick your ass.”
    After grabbing the biggest bowl he could find from the dishwasher, which hadn’t been run in a week, Grant moved to the stove and ladled a healthy portion of beans into the dirty dish. After that, he grabbed some saltine crackers from the cupboard and sat down at the table in the chair opposite Speed Trap’s without bothering to nuke his helping. He’d always had an iron stomach, and the fact that the beans had been around for a while didn’tbother him at all. He didn’t care that they were cold either, Speed Trap knew. Grant’s priority when it came to eating was simply getting the food into his mouth and then his stomach as quickly as possible.
    “Hey,” Grant said as he shoved the first spoonful of beans past his teeth, “you just beat your DUI and your resisting charge over in Seward. How ’bout that?”
    Speed Trap had been about to start in on the second hot dog, but when he heard Grant’s headline the bun’s forward progress came to an abrupt halt an inch from his mouth. “What?” He put the bun slowly back down on his plate and broke into a broad smile. “Really?” But his smile faded quickly. Grant was always teasing him or lying to him about something, and Speed Trap was worried that he was being stupid and gullible and just taking the bait one more time. He figured Grant was going to bust out laughing at him at any second. “Damn it, are you bullshitting me?”
    “Nope. This is straight dope, dude. I was up on the bridge, and I overheard Uncle Sage talking to somebody on the phone about it. The shit’s been taken care of. All your charges were dropped. You don’t even have to go to court. They even gave you your license back. It’s nuts.”
    Speed Trap gazed at Grant for a few moments, then finally decided he wasn’t being set up for that sucker punch after all. “Why? I mean they had me dead to rights. When I went to first appearance the morning after I was arrested, the judge laughed at me. He told me with my record I’d get at least six months in the slammer, probably a year.”
    Grant shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you, pal.” He gulped down several heaping spoonfuls of cold beans and then stuffed a couple of saltines in behind them. His eyes rolled back in their sockets, like a