Arctic Drift

The two men were nearly to the shoreline when Pitt stopped in his tracks. Giordino turned and saw the look on Pitt’s face, then cocked an ear to the wind. A faint crackling sound echoed in the distance, accompanied by a dull rumble. The noise continued unabated, growing louder as the source drew near.

“Definitely a ship,” Giordino muttered.

“An icebreaker,” Pitt said.

“The icebreaker?”

Giordino’s question was answered a few minutes later when the hulking prow of the Otok emerged from the mist a hundred yards offshore. Its high bow cut through the foot- thick ice like it was pudding, spraying chunks of frozen detritus in all directions. As if detecting Pitt and Giordino’s presence, the icebreaker’s rumbling engines slowly quieted to a low idle, and the vessel ground to a halt against the buckling ice.

Pitt stared at the vessel, a sick feeling gripping his frozen insides. He had immediately observed that the ship’s bow was mashed blunt, the obvious result of a hard collision. It was a recent blow, as evidenced by several of the steel plates being stripped of paint by the impact and yet to show any signs of oxidation. More telling were the flecks of turquoise paint, which overlaid portions of the scraped and mangled bow.

“She rammed the Narwhal,” Pitt stated without speculation.

Giordino nodded, having come to the same conclusion. The sight numbed both men, since they knew that their worst fears had been realized. The Narwhal was surely at the bottom of Victoria Strait, along with her crew. Then Giordino noticed something nearly as disturbing.

“The Narwhal isn’t the only thing that she has rammed,” he said. “Look at her hull plates around the hawsehole.”

Pitt studied the hull, noticing a light gouge mark incurred during the collision. The icebreaker’s red hull paint had been scraped away, revealing a gray undercoating. A rectangular patch of white surfaced at the tailing edge of the gouge.

“A gray warship in a former life?” he ventured.

“How about FFG-54, to be exact. A Navy frigate of ours known as the Ford. We passed her in the Beaufort Sea a few weeks back. The survivors of the Canadian ice camp offered a similar description. That sure as beans looks like a number 5 painted underneath in white.”

“A quick repaint in U.S. Navy gray and, next thing you know, you have an international incident.”

“Zapping through the ice camp in the middle of a blizzard with the Stars and Stripes flying, it’s not hard to see how the ice lab scientists could have been fooled. The question is, why go to the trouble?”

“Between the ruthenium and the oil and gas resources around here, I’d say Mitchell Goyette wants to play Arctic ice baron,” Pitt said. “It’s a lot easier game for him to win if the U.S. presence is cleared from the region.”

“Which, at the moment, is pretty much down to you and me.”

As he spoke, three men bundled in black parkas appeared on the icebreaker’s deck and approached the rail. Without hesitation, they each raised a Steyr light machine gun, trained their sights on Pitt and Giordino, and opened fire.

78

Miles to the northeast, a loud sputtering and coughing sound resonated over the waves. Gasping for fuel, the tender’s outboard motor wheezed through its last few drops of gasoline, then gurgled to a stop. The men aboard remained silent as they looked at one another nervously. Finally, the Narwhal ’s helmsman raised an empty ten-gallon gas can into the air.

“She’s bone-dry, sir,” he said to Stenseth.

The Narwhal ’s captain knew it was coming. They would have made it to shore had they sailed solo. But the two fully laden Zodiacs tailing behind had acted like a sea anchor, sapping their forward progress. Fighting choppy seas and a strong southerly current had not helped matters. But there was never a thought of abandoning the men in the other boats.

“Break out the oars, a man to a side,” Stenseth ordered. “Let’s try and hold our heading.”

Leaning over toward the helmsman, who was an expert navigator, he quietly asked, “How far to King William Island, would you estimate?”

The helmsman’s face twisted.

“Difficult to gauge our progress under these conditions,” he replied in a low tone. “It seems to me that we ought to be within five miles or so of the island.” He shrugged his shoulders slightly, indicating his uncertainty.

“My thoughts as well,” Stenseth replied, “though I hope we’re a far sight closer.”

The prospect of not reaching land began to gnaw at his fears. The seas had not turned, but he was certain that the breeze had stiffened slightly. Decades at sea had honed his senses to the weather. He could feel in his bones that the waters were going to roughen a bit more. In their precarious state of navigation, it would probably be enough to do them all in.

He gazed back at the black inflatable boats trailing behind in the mist. Under the faintly brightening dawn, he could begin to make out the faces of the rescued men. A number of them were in poor shape, he could tell, suffering the ill effects of prolonged exposure. But as a group, they were a model of quiet bravery, not a one lamenting their condition.

Murdock caught Stenseth’s gaze and shouted out to him.

“Sir, can you tell us where we are?”

“Victoria Strait. Just west of King William Island. Wish I could say that a passing cruise liner is on its way, but I have to tell you that we’re on our own.”

“We’re grateful for the rescue and for keeping us afloat. Do you have an extra set of oars?”

“No, I’m afraid you are still at our mercy for propulsion. We should reach landfall before long,” he called out in a falsely optimistic tone.

The Narwhal ’s crew took turns pulling at the oars, with even Stenseth working a shift. It was a laborious effort to make headway, made frustrating by the inability to gauge their progress in the misty gloom. Stenseth occasionally strained his ears to detect the sound of waves rolling against a shoreline, but all he could hear was the sound of swells slapping against the three boats.

True to his forecast, the seas began to gradually rise with the stiffening breeze. More and more waves started splashing over the sides of the tender, and several men were soon assigned bailing detail to stem the flooding. Stenseth noted that the Zodiacs were suffering the same fate, taking on water repeatedly over the stern. The situation was rapidly becoming dire, and there was still no indication that they were anywhere near land.

It was when a change of oarsmen took place that a crewman seated in the bow suddenly yelled out.

“Sir, there’s something in the water.”

Stenseth and the others immediately gazed forward, spotting a dark object at the edge of the fog. Whatever it was, Stenseth thought, he knew it wasn’t land.

“It’s a whale,” somebody shouted.

“No,” Stenseth muttered quietly, noting that the object sitting low in the water was colored black and unnaturally smooth. He looked on suspiciously, observing that it didn’t move or make a sound.

Then a loud voice, electronically amplified to thundering proportions, burst through the fog. Every man jumped, losing a beat of the heart at the sudden divulgence. Yet the words came forth with a puzzling sentiment, incongruous with the harsh surrounding environment.

“Ahoy,” called the invisible voice. “This is the USS Santa Fe. There is a hot toddy and a warm bunk awaiting any among you that can whistle ‘Dixie.’ ”

79