Arctic Drift

losing the cover of darkness.

So far, the mission had gone flawlessly. With a six-man team, he had set off in the Zodiacs just before midnight, right after the sun had finally made its brief retreat beneath the horizon. Powered by electric motors, the inflatable boats had silently crossed the gulf into the mouth of the Coppermine River and quietly tied up at the Athabasca Shipping Company’s marine dock. The satellite photos Roman carried with him had showed that the dock was empty seventy-two hours earlier. A large tug cabled to an even-larger barge now occupied the waterfront, but both vessels appeared empty and the dock deserted. Farther down the quay, he could see the Polar Dawn, brightly illuminated by the dock lights. Even at the late hour, he could see guards pacing her deck, moving ceaselessly in an effort to keep warm.

Roman turned his attention to a faded white building barely thirty yards in front of him. Intelligence reports had indicated it was the holding cell for the Coast Guard ship’s crew. Judging by the lone Mountie standing in the doorway, the prospects still looked good. Roman had assumed that the men would be lightly guarded and he was right. The harsh surrounding environment was enough of a deterrent for escape, let alone the six-hundred-and- fifty-mile distance to the Alaskan border.

A low voice suddenly whispered through his communications headset.

“Guppies are in the pond. I repeat, guppies are in the pond.”

It was Bojorquez, confirming that he had viewed the captives through a small window at the side of the dilapidated building.

“Teams in position?” Roman whispered into his mouthpiece.

“Mutt is in position,” replied Bojorquez.

“Jeff is in position,” came a second voice.

Roman glanced at his watch again. The rescue planes would touch down on the ice runway in ninety minutes. It was plenty of time to get the Polar Dawn’s crew across the bay and up to the airfield. Maybe even too much time.

He took a final look up and down the dock, finding no signs of life in either direction. Taking a deep breath, he radioed his orders.

“Commence go in ninety seconds.”

Then he sat back and prayed that their luck would hold.

* * *

Captain Murdock was sitting on a concrete block smoking a cigarette when he heard a loud thump at the rear of the building. Most of his crewmen were asleep in their cots, taking advantage of the few hours of darkness. A handful of men, also finding sleep difficult, were crowded into a corner watching a movie on a small television set. One of the men, a Canadian Mountie who oversaw the captives inside the building armed with nothing but a radio, stood up and walked over to the captain.

“You hear something?” he asked.

Murdock nodded. “Sounded to me like a chunk of ice falling off the roof.”

The Mountie turned to walk toward a storeroom at the back of the building when two men stepped quietly out of the shadows. The two Delta Force commandos had traded their Arctic white apparel for black jacket, fatigues, and armored vests. They each wore a Kevlar helmet with a drop-down display over one eye and a foldaway communications headset. One of the men carried an M4 carbine, which he pointed at Murdock and the Mountie, while the second man fielded a boxy-looking pistol.

The Mountie immediately reached for his radio, but before he could bring it to his lips the man with the pistol fired his weapon. Murdock noted that the gun didn’t fire with a bang but emitted just a quiet pop. Instead of firing a bullet, the electroshock stun gun fired a pair of small barbs, each tailed by a thin wire. As the barbs struck the Mountie, the weapon delivered a fifty-thousand-volt charge to the man, instantly incapacitating his muscular control.

The Mountie stiffened, then fell to the ground, dropping his radio as the surge of electricity jolted through his body. He had barely hit the floor when the firing soldier was at his side, locking his wrists and ankles in plastic cuffs and slapping a piece of tape over his mouth.

“Nice shot, Mike,” the other commando said, stepping forward while his eyes searched the room. “You Murdock?” he asked, turning back toward the captain.

“Yes,” Murdock stammered, still shocked by the sudden intrusion.

“I’m Sergeant Bojorquez. We’re going to take you and your crew on a little boat ride. Please wake your men and get them dressed quickly and quietly.”

“Yes, certainly. Thank you, Sergeant.”

Murdock found his executive officer, and together they quietly roused the other men. The front door of the building suddenly burst open, and two more Delta Force soldiers burst in, dragging the limp body of another Mountie guard. Stun gun barbs protruded from his legs, where the soldiers had been forced to aim in order to bypass the man’s heavy parka. Like his partner, the Mountie was quickly gagged and handcuffed.

It took less than five minutes for Murdock to wake and assemble his startled crew. A few men joked about trading Moose-head for Budweiser and the Red Green Show for American Idol, but most remained quiet, sensing the danger of trying to escape without incident.

Outside the building, Roman held his observation post, eyeing the dock for a possible Canadian reaction. But the stealth assault had succeeded without alarm, and the Canadian militia aboard the Polar Dawn remained unaware of the pending escape.

Once he received a ready signal from Bojorquez, Roman wasted no time in getting the men moving. Slipping out the back of the building in groups of three and four, they were led through the shadows to the front of the dock and the moored Zodiacs. The two boats filled quickly, but Roman remained on edge as Bojorquez radioed that he was escorting the final group.

Roman waited until he spotted Bojorquez making his way across the Athabasca Shipping property before taking a final look down the dock. The waterfront was still deserted on the bitter-cold night, the only sound that of some distant pumps and generators. Roman rose and shuffled quietly toward the boats, feeling confident that the mission would succeed. Extracting the Polar Dawn’s crew without alerting the Canadian forces was the touchy part of the operation, and they had apparently pulled it off. Now it was a simple matter of making their way back to the airfield and waiting for the rescue planes to arrive.

He moved past the dark barge to find Bojorquez climbing into one of the boats with the last of the Coast Guard crewmen. There were thirty-six men serving aboard the Polar Dawn, and they had all been accounted for. As the Zodiacs were untied, Roman quickly scampered off the dock and into one of the boats.

“Get us out of here,” he whispered to a soldier manning the electric motor.

“I’d suggest staying right where you are,” thundered a loud voice from up high.

As the words echoed across the water, a bank of halogen lights suddenly flashed on overhead. The intense lights temporarily blinded Roman as he realized that the beams originated from the stern of the barge. He instinctively raised his weapon to shoot but refrained when he heard Bojorquez suddenly barking, “Don’t fire, don’t fire.”

His eyes adjusting to the bright lights, Roman looked up and counted no fewer than six men leaning over the rail of the barge with automatic weapons leveled at the two boats. With his own men following suit, Roman reluctantly lowered his rifle. He peered up at a large man who smiled at him from the barge.

“That’s the smart move,” Clay Zak said. “Now, why don’t you men step back onto the dock and we’ll get acquainted?”

Roman looked from Zak to the automatic weapons pointed at his men and nodded. The surprise ambush just as they were about to escape made Roman as mad as a pit bull. Rising to climb off the boat, he gazed angrily at his captors, then dejectedly spit into the wind.

54

Gunnery Sergeant Mike Tipton stared intently through the night vision binoculars, scanning the jagged ice