Arctic Drift

Stenseth’s action gave the ship precious seconds to build more speed while the crew was alerted and ordered topside. But it wasn’t long before the icebreaker was closing in on their stern once again.

“Hard to port this time,” Stenseth ordered, when the Otok crossed the hundred-yard mark once again.

The icebreaker anticipated the move this time but guessed wrong and veered to starboard. She quickly took up the chase again as Stenseth attempted to angle closer to King William Island. The faster ship quickly moved in and the Narwhal was forced to juke again, Stenseth opting to turn hard to port once more. But this time, Zak guessed correctly.

Like a hungry shark striking from the depths of a murky sea, the icebreaker suddenly burst through the fog, its lethal prow slashing into the flank of the Narwhal. The shattering blow struck just aft of the moon pool, the icebreaker’s bow slicing fifteen feet in from the rail. The Narwhal nearly keeled over from the impact, shuddering sideways into the waves. A massive spray of freezing water poured over the deck as the ship struggled to regain its center of gravity.

The collision brought with it a thousand cries of mechanical agony — steel grating on steel, hydraulic lines bursting, hull plates splintering, power plants imploding. As the destruction reached its climax, there was an odd moment of silence, then the wails of violence turned to the gurgling moans of mortality.

The icebreaker slowly slid free of the gaping wound, breaking off a section of the Narwhal’s stern as it backed away. The vessel’s sharp bow had been bludgeoned flat, but the ship was otherwise fully intact, its double hull not even compromised. The Otok lingered on the scene a few moments, as Zak and the crew admired their destructive handiwork. Then like a deadly wraith, the murderous ship disappeared into the night.

The Narwhal, meanwhile, was on its way to a quick death. The ship’s engine room flooded almost instantly, tugging the stern down in an immediate list. Two of the bulkheads fronting the moon pool were crushed, sending additional floodwaters to the lower decks. Though built to plow through ice up to six feet thick, the Narwhal was never designed to withstand a crushing blow to its beam. Within minutes, the ship was half underwater.

On the bridge, Stenseth picked himself up off the deck to find the bridge a darkened cave. They had lost all operating power, and the emergency generator located amidships had also been disabled in the collision. The entire ship was now as black as the foggy night.

The helmsman beat Stenseth to an emergency locker at the rear of the bridge and quickly produced a flashlight.

“Captain, are you all right?” he asked, sweeping the beam across the bridge until it caught Stenseth’s towering figure.

“Better than my ship,” he replied, rubbing a sore arm. “Let’s account for the crew. I’m afraid we’re going to have to abandon ship in short order.”

The two men threw on their parkas and made their way down to the main deck, which was already listing heavily toward the stern. They entered the ship’s galley, finding it illuminated by a pair of battery-operated lanterns. Most of the ship’s skeleton crew was already assembled with their cold-weather gear, a look of fear etched in their eyes. A short man with a bulldog-like face approached the two men.

“Captain, the engine room is completely flooded and a section of the stern has been torn away,” said the man, the Narwhal ’s chief engineer. “Water has reportedly breached the forward hold. There’s no stopping it.”

Stenseth nodded. “Any injuries?”

The engineer pointed to the side of the galley, where a grimacing man was having his left arm wrapped in a makeshift sling.

“The cook broke his arm in a fall when she hit. Everyone else came through clean.”

“Who are we missing?” Stenseth asked, quickly counting heads and coming up two short.

“Dahlgren, and Rogers, the ship’s electrician. They’re trying to get the tender launched.”

Stenseth turned and faced the room. “I’m afraid we must abandon ship. Every man onto the deck — now. If we can’t board the tender, then we’ll use one of the port-side emergency rafts. Let’s make it quick.”

Stenseth led the men out the galley, stopping briefly to note that the water had already crept to the base of the superstructure. Quickening his pace, he moved onto the frozen expanse of the forward deck, fighting to keep his balance against the increasing slope underfoot. Across the deck, he saw a beam of light flash between two men cranking on a manual winch. A twelve-foot wooden skiff dangled in the air above them, but the rakish angle of the deck prevented the skiff’s stern from clearing the side railing. The sound of obscenities embroidered in a Texas accent rattled through the cold night air from one of the men.

Stenseth rushed over and, with the help of several more crewmen, heaved the stern up and over the railing. Dahlgren reversed the lever on the winch and quickly lowered the skiff into the water. Grabbing its bow line, Stenseth walked the boat aft twenty feet until the water on the deck reached his boots. The crew then quickly climbed aboard by simply stepping off the Narwhal ’s side rail.

Stenseth counted off a dozen-plus heads, then followed the injured chef as the last man aboard, stepping into the cramped wooden tender and taking a seat near the stern. A light breeze had picked up again, blowing scattered holes in the fog while casting an added chop to the seas. The tender quickly drifted a few yards away from the dying ship, staying in sight of her final moments.

They were barely away when the bow of the turquoise ship rose high into the night air, struggling against the forces of gravity. Then releasing a deep moan, the Narwhal plunged into the black water with a hiss of bubbles, disappearing to the depths below.

A burning anger welled within Stenseth, then he gazed upon his crew and felt relief. It was a minor miracle that no one had died in the collision and everyone had made it safely off the ship. The captain shuddered to think of the death toll had Pitt not put most of the crew and scientists ashore in Tuktoyaktuk.

“I forgot the dang rocks.”

Stenseth turned to the man next to him, realizing in the dark that it was Dahlgren sitting at the tiller.

“From the thermal vent,” he continued. “Rudi left them on the bridge.”

“Consider yourself lucky that you escaped with your skin,” Stenseth replied. “Good work in getting the tender away.”

“I didn’t really want to bob around the Arctic in a rubber boat,” he replied. Lowering his voice, he added, “Those guys play for keeps, don’t they?”

“Fatally serious about the ruthenium, I’m afraid.” He held his head to the air, trying to detect the presence of the icebreaker. A faint rumbling in the distance told him the ship wasn’t lingering in the area.

“Sir, there’s a small settlement called Gjoa Haven on the extreme southeast tip of King William Island,” the helmsman piped in from a row up. “A little over a hundred miles from here. Nearest civilization on the charts, I’m afraid.”

“We should have enough fuel to make King William Island. Then it will have to be on foot from there,” Stenseth replied. Turning back to Dahlgren, he asked, “Did you get a message off to Pitt?”

“I told them we were vacating the wreck site, but we lost power before I could warn them we wouldn’t be coming back.” He tried to make out the dial on his watch. “They should be surfacing shortly.”

“We can only guess as to where. Finding them in this fog would be a near impossibility, I’m afraid. We’ll try a pass through the area, then we’ll have to break for the coastline and seek help. We can’t risk being offshore if the winds should stiffen.”

Dahlgren nodded with a grim look on his face. Pitt and Giordino were no worse off than they were, he thought. Coaxing the tender’s motor to life, he turned the boat south and disappeared into a dark bank of fog.