Arctic Drift

Giordino stretched his arms and yawned. “Personally, I’m tired of sitting in this tin can. Let’s go stretch our legs and see what’s in the neighborhood.”

“Agreed,” Pitt nodded.

Giordino made one last attempt to contact the Narwhal, then shut down the radio equipment. The two men climbed out of the top hatch and were promptly greeted by an eight-degree chill. The bow had wedged tightly into the thick sea ice, and they were easily able to step off the submersible and onto the frozen surface. A stiffening breeze began to scatter the low-hanging mist. Nothing but ice lay in front of them, so they started trudging across the pack, the dry snow crunching under their feet.

The sea ice was mostly flat, sprinkled by small hummocks that rose in tiny uplifts at scattered points. They had hiked only a short distance when Giordino noticed something off to his left. It appeared to be a small snow cave, crudely carved into a ridge of high ice.

“It looks man-made,” Giordino said. “Maybe somebody left us a pair of earmuffs inside.”

Giordino walked over to the cave’s entrance, then hunched down on one knee and stuck his head in. Pitt approached, then stopped to study an imprint in the snow nearby. He stiffened when he recognized the shape.

“Al,” he whispered in a cautionary tone.

Giordino had already hesitated. A few feet up the darkened passageway, he saw the cave expanded into a large den. Inside the darkened interior, he barely distinguished a large tuft of white fur rising and falling with heavy breaths. The polar bear was past hibernating but revisiting its winter haunt for a spring nap. Known for its unpredictability, a hungry polar bear could easily make a meal out of both men.

Immediately recognizing the danger, Giordino silently backed out of the cave. Mouthing the word “bear” to Pitt, they hurriedly moved away from the cave, stepping lightly on the ice. When they were well out of earshot, Giordino slowed his gait while the color returned to his pale face.

“I only hope the seals are slow and plentiful in these parts,” he said, shaking his head at the discovery.

“Yes, I’d hate to see you end up as a throw rug inside that bear’s den,” Pitt replied, suppressing a laugh.

The danger was all too real, they knew, and they kept a sharp lookout behind them as they moved farther from the sea.

As the bear cave vanished in the fog behind them, a dark rocky ribbon of land appeared through the mist ahead. Patches of brown and gray rose off the near horizon in a wavy pattern of ridges and ravines. They had come aground on the northern coast of the Royal Geographical Society Islands, as Pitt had predicted, landing on West Island. Heavy ice, built up from the winter floes that churned down Victoria Strait, clogged the shoreline in a wide band that stretched a half mile wide in some areas. Approached from the frozen sea, the barren island landscape nearly shrieked of cold desolation.

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.