“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.
69
PITT AND GIORDINO HAD BEEN HOVERING OVER the ship’s bell when they received a brief transmission from Dahlgren that the Narwhal was moving off-site. Preoccupied with uncovering the bell’s inscription, they had not followed up the call.
The discovery that the shipwreck was the Terror proved to be a small relief for Pitt. With no indication that there was any ruthenium aboard, there was still room for hope. The Inuit must have obtained the ore from the Erebus, and perhaps she alone held the secret to the coveted mineral. The question lingered as to where had the Erebus ended up. The two ships were known to have been abandoned together, so presumably they would have sunk close to each other. Pitt felt confident that expanding the AUV’s search area would turn up the second ship.
“Bloodhound to Narwhal, we’re beginning our ascent,” Giordino radioed. “What’s your status?”
“We’re on the move at the moment. I’m trying to get an update from the bridge. Will let you know when I do. Over.”
It was the last they were to hear from Dahlgren. But having extended their bottom time, they were more concerned about reaching the surface with auxiliary power to spare. Pitt shut off the external lights and sensing equipment to save power, while Giordino did the same with the nonessential interior computers. As the submersible fell dark and they began gliding upward, Giordino sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes.
“Wake me when it’s time to let in some fresh ten-below air,” he muttered.
“I’ll make sure that Jack has your slippers and newspaper waiting.”
Pitt again reviewed the electrical power readings with a wary eye. There was plenty of reserve power for the life-support systems and the ballast-control pumps, but little else. He reluctantly shut down the submersible’s propulsion system, knowing they would be subject to the strong currents during their ascent. Plugging the Narwhal’s moon pool would be out, as they would likely end up a mile or two down current when they broke the surface. And that’s only if the Narwhal was back on-site.
Pitt shut down a few more electrical controls, then stared out at the black abyss beyond the view port. Suddenly, an urgent cry rang out on the radio.
“Bloodhound, we’ve been . . .”
The transmission was cut midsentence and was followed by complete silence. Giordino popped forward in his chair and was returning the call even before he had his eyes open. Despite repeated attempts, his transmissions to the Narwhal went unanswered.
“We might have lost their signal in a thermocline,” Giordino offered.
“Or the transponder link was broken when they began running at speed,” Pitt countered.
They were manufactured excuses to reason away the truth neither man wanted to accept, that the Narwhal was in real trouble. Giordino continued making radio calls every few minutes, but there was no response. And there was nothing either man could do about it.
Pitt looked at the submersible’s depth gauge and wondered if they were tied to the bottom. Since receiving the interrupted call, their ascent rate had slowed to a crawl, or so it seemed to Pitt. He tried to keep his eyes away from the gauge, knowing the more he watched it, the slower it moved. Sitting back, he closed his eyes for a time, imagining the troubles the Narwhal might be facing, while Giordino diligently kept up his radio vigil.
He finally opened his eyes to see they were just over a hundred feet deep. A few minutes later, they
rocked to the surface amid a rush of bubbles and foam. Pitt kicked on the external lights, which simply reflected back a surrounding billow of fog. The radio remained silent as they rocked back and forth in the heaving waters.
Alone in a cold and empty sea, Pitt and Giordino both knew that the worst had happened. The Narwhal was no more.
70
WHAT DO YOU MEAN THE RESCUE TEAM DISAPPEARED? ”
The President’s angry voice echoed off the walls of the White House Situation Room on the lower level of the West Wing. An Army colonel, brought in by the Pentagon generals to serve as a sacrificial lamb, responded in a quiet monotone.
“Sir, the team failed to appear at the extraction site at the appointed time. The airfield support squad was not advised of any problems from the strike team and were themselves evacuated on schedule.”
“I was promised a low-risk mission with a ninety percent probability of success,” the President said, glaring at the Secretary of Defense.
The room fell silent, no one wishing to antagonize the man further.
Seated two seats down from the President, Vice President Sandecker found a touch of amusement to the inquisition. When called to an emergency meeting by the National Security Advisor, he was surprised to find no less than five generals seated around the Secretary of Defense in the conference room. It was not an omen of good things to come, he knew. Sandecker was no fan of the secretary, a man he found to be narrow-minded and trigger-happy. Yet he quickly put his personal feelings aside for the crisis at hand.
“Colonel, why don’t you tell us exactly what you know,” Sandecker said, deflecting the President’s anger.
The colonel described the planned mission in detail and the intelligence that supported the rescue strike. “The befuddling aspect is that there are indications that the team was successful in freeing the captives. Radio intercepts from Canadian forces in Tuktoyaktuk report an assault on the holding complex and the subsequent escape of the Polar Dawn’s crew. We’ve detected no indications that they were recaptured.”
“What if the Special Forces team was simply delayed?” Sandecker asked. “The nights are short up there right now. Perhaps they were forced into hiding somewhere for a period before making it back to the airfield.”
The colonel shook his head. “We sent an aircraft back to the extraction site under darkness just hours ago. They touched down briefly, but no one was there, and additional radio calls went unanswered.”
“They couldn’t have just vanished,” the President grumbled.
“We’ve analyzed satellite reconnaissance, radio traffic, and local contacts on the ground. They’ve all come up empty,” stated Julie Moss, the President’s National Security Advisor. “The only conclusion that can be made is that they were quietly recaptured and relocated to a new location. They might be back on the Polar Dawn or possibly flown out of the area.”
“What has been the official Canadian response to our request for release of the ship and crew?” Sandecker asked.
“There has been no response,” Moss said. “We’ve been curtly ignored through diplomatic channels, while the Prime Minister and Parliament continue to make outlandish claims of American imperialism that are straight out of a banana republic.”
“They have not limited themselves to words,” the Secretary of Defense interjected. “They have placed their military forces on alert status, in addition to their recent port closures.”
“That’s true,” Moss echoed. “The Canadian Coast Guard has started turning away all American-flagged ships approaching Vancouver and Quebec, as well as Toronto-bound barge traffic. It’s expected that their border crossings will be temporarily closed in a day or two.”
“This is getting quite out of hand,” the President said.
“It is even worse. We’ve received word that our pending natural gas imports from Melville Sound have been suspended. We have reason to believe the gas has been diverted to the Chinese, although we don’t know if this was directed by the government or the gas field operator.”
The President slunk into his chair with a dazed look on his face. “That threatens our entire future,” he said quietly.
“Sir,” the Secretary of Defense declared, “with all due regard, the Canadian government has wrongfully blamed us for the loss of their Arctic ice lab and damage to one of their patrol craft. They have illegally captured a U.S. Coast Guard vessel in international waters and are treating the crew as prisoners of war. They have done the same to our Delta Forces team, or perhaps killed them and the ship’s crew as well, for all we know. On top of that, they are threatening our entire nation with energy blackmail. Diplomacy has failed, sir. It is time for another option.”
“We’ve hardly met the threshold for a military escalation,” Sandecker said bitterly.
“You may be right, Jim, but those men’s lives are at stake,” the President said. “I want a formal demand presented to the Prime Minister for the release of the crew and rescue team within twenty-four hours. Do it privately, so that the media-happy PM can save face. We can negotiate for the ship later, but I want those men freed now. And I want a reversal on those natural gas shipments.”
“What’s our response if they don’t comply?” Moss asked.
The Secretary of Defense piped up. “Mr. President, we’ve drawn up several options for a limited first-strike engagement.”
“A ‘limited engagement’ . . . What is that supposed to mean?” the President asked.
The conference room door opened and a White House aide silently entered and handed a note to Sandecker.
“A limited engagement,” the Secretary of Defense continued, “would be deployment of the minimum resources required to incapacitate a high percentage of Canada’s air and naval forces through surgical strikes.”
The President’s face turned red. “I’m not talking about a full-blown war. Just something to get their attention.”
The Secretary of Defense quickly backed down. “We have options for single-target missions as well,” he said quietly.
“What do you think, Jim?” the President asked, turning to Sandecker.
A grim look spread across the Vice President’s face as he finished reading the note and held it up before him.
“I’ve just been informed by Rudi Gunn at NUMA that their research vessel Narwhal has gone missing in the Northwest Passage, off Victoria Island. The ship is presumed captured or sunk with all hands, including the Director of NUMA, Dirk Pitt.”
The Secretary of Defense broke into a wolfish grin as he gazed across the table at Sandecker.
“It would seem,” he said pointedly, “that we have suddenly found your threshold.”
71
THE UNITED STATES HAS LAUNCHED ARMED IN-CURSIONS into Canada on at least a half dozen occasions. The bloodiest invasion occurred during the Revolutionary War, when General Richard Montgomery marched north from Fort Ticonderoga and captured Montreal, then moved on Quebec City. He was joined by a secondary force that had entered Canada via Maine, led by Benedict Arnold. Attacking Quebec City on December 31, 1775, the Americans briefly captured the city before being beaten back in a fierce battle with the British. A shortage of supplies and reinforcements, as well as the loss of Montgomery during the fight, meant that the Americans had little choice but to break off the foray into Canada.
When hostilities heated up again during the War of 1812, the Americans launched repeated strikes into Canada to fight the British. Most ended in failure. The most notable success occurred in 1813, when Toronto (then York) was sacked and its parliamentary buildings burned to the ground. The victory would prove to haunt the U.S. a year later when the British marched on Washington. Angered by the earlier destructive act, the British returned the favor by taking a torch to the public buildings of the American capital.
With colonial independence achieved in 1783, Canada and the United States quickly grew to be amicable neighbors and allies. Yet the seeds of distrust have never completely vanished. In the 1920s, the U.
S. War Department developed strategic plans to invade Canada as part of a hypothetical war with the United Kingdom. “War Plan Red,” as it was named, called for land invasions targeting Winnipeg and Quebec, along with a naval assault on Halifax. Not to be outdone, the Canadians developed “Defence Scheme No. 1,” for a counterinvasion of the United States. Albany, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Great Falls, Montana, were targeted for surprise attacks, in hopes that the Canadians could buy time until British reinforcements arrived.
Time and technology had changed the world considerably since the 1920s. Great Britain no longer stood in Canada’s defense, and America’s military might made for a dominating power imbalance. Though the disappearance of the Narwhal angered the President, it hardly justified an invasion. At least not yet. It would take weeks to organize a ground offensive anyway, should things degrade that far, and he wanted a quick and forceful response in forty-eight hours.
The strike plan agreed to, barring the release of the captives, was simple yet pain-inducing. U.S. Navy warships would be sent in to blockade Vancouver in the west and the Saint Lawrence River in the east, effectively blocking Canada’s foreign trade. Stealth bombers would strike first, targeting Canadian fighter air bases at Cold Lake, Alberta, and Bagotville, Quebec. Special Forces teams would also be on standby to secure Canada’s major hydroelectric plants, in case of an attempted disruption in exported electric power. A later strike would be used to seize the Melville gas field.
There was little the Canadians could do in response, the Secretary of Defense and his generals had argued. Under threat of continued air strikes, they would have to release the captives and agree to open terms on the Northwest Passage. All were in agreement, though, that it would never come to that. The Canadians would be warned of the circumstances if they didn’t comply with the twenty-four-hour deadline. They would have no choice but to acquiesce.
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