Arctic Drift

by Clive Cussler

  But there was one problem that the Pentagon hawks had failed to consider. The Canadian government had no idea what had become of the Polar Dawn’s crew.

  72

  TRAPPED IN THEIR SINKING IRON COFFIN, THE Polar Dawn’s crew would have begged for another twenty-four hours. But their prospect for survival was down to minutes.

  Murdock’s prediction had so far held true. The barge’s number 4 hold had steadily filled with water until spilling over into the number 3 compartment. As the stern sank lower under the weight, the water poured in at a faster rate. In the small forward storage compartment, the deck listed ominously beneath the men’s feet as the sound of rushing water drew nearer.

  A man appeared at the aft hatch, one of Roman’s commandos, breathing heavily from scaling the hold’s ladder.

  “Captain,” he gasped, waving a penlight around the bay until spotting his commander, “the water is now spilling into the number 2 hold.”

  “Thank you, Corporal,” Roman replied. “Why don’t you sit down and take a rest. There’s no need for further recon.”

  Roman sought out Murdock and pulled him aside. “When the barge starts to go under,” he whispered, “will the hatch covers pop off the holds?”

  Murdock shook his head, then gave a hesitant look.

  “She’ll surely go under before the number 1 hold is flooded. That means there will be an air pocket underneath, which will build in pressure as the barge sinks. There’s probably a good chance it will blow the hatch cover, but we might be five hundred feet deep before that happens.”

  “It’s still a chance,” Roman said quietly.

  “Then what?” Murdock replied. “A man won’t last ten minutes in these waters.” He shook his head with irritation, then said, “Fine. Go ahead and give the men some hope. I’ll let you know when I think this tub is about to go down, and you can assemble the men on the ladder. At least they’ll have something to hang on to for the ride to perdition.”

  At the entry hatch, Bojorquez had listened to the exchange, then resumed his hammering on the locked latch. By now, he knew it was a futile gesture. The tiny hammer was proving worthless against the hardened steel. Hours of pounding had gouged only a small notch in the lock spindle. He was many hours, if not days, away from wearing into the lock mechanism.

  Between whacks, he looked over at his fellow captives. Cold, hungry, and downcast, they stood assembled, many staring at him with hopeful desperation. Surprisingly, there was little trace of panic in the air. Their emotions frozen like the cold steel of the barge, the captive men calmly accepted their pending fate.

  73

  THE NARWHAL’S TENDER WAS PERILOUSLY OVERLOADED. Designed to hold twelve men, the boat easily accommodated the fourteen crewmen who had evacuated the ship. But the extra weight was just enough to alter her sailing characteristics in a rough sea. With choppy waves slapping at her sides, it was only a short time before a layer of icy water began sloshing around the footwells.

  Stenseth had taken hold of the tiller after a laborious effort to start the frozen motor. With a pair of ten-gallon cans of gasoline, they had just enough fuel to reach King William Island. But Stenseth already had an uneasy feeling, realizing that they would have to march in the footsteps of Franklin’s doomed crew if they were to reach safety at Gjoa Haven.

  Leery of swamping the boat, the captain motored slowly through the whitecapped seas. Fog still hung heavy over the water, but he could detect a faint lightening of the billows as the brief Arctic night showed signs of passing. He refrained from turning directly east toward King William Island, holding to his word to make a brief search for Pitt and Giordino. With next to no visibility, he knew the odds of locating the submersible were long. To make matters worse, there was no GPS unit in the tender. Relying on a compass distorted by their nearness to the magnetic north pole, Stenseth dead reckoned their way back to the site of the shipwreck.

  The helmsman estimated that they had collided with the icebreaker some six miles northwest of the wreck site. Guessing at the current and their own speed, Stenseth piloted the boat southeast for twenty minutes, then cut the motor. Dahlgren and the others shouted out Pitt’s name through the fog, but the only sound they heard in reply was the slap of the waves against the tender’s hull.

  Stenseth restarted the motor and cruised to the southeast for ten minutes, then cut the motor again. Repeated shouts through the fog went unanswered. Stenseth motored on, repeating the process once more. When the last round of shouts fell empty, he addressed the crew.

  “We can’t afford to run out of fuel. Our best bet is to run east to King William Island and try and locate some help. Once the weather clears, the submersible can be found easily. And I can tell you that Pitt and Giordino are probably a lot more comfortable in that sub than we are.”

  The crew nodded in agreement. Respect ran high for Pitt and Giordino, but their own situation was far from harmless. Getting under way once more, they ran due east until the outboard motor sputtered to a halt, having sucked dry the first can of gas. Stenseth switched fuel lines to the second can and was about to restart the motor when the helmsman suddenly cried out.

  “Wait! ”

  Stenseth turned to the man seated nearby. “I think I heard something,” he said to the captain, this time in a whisper.

  The entire boat fell deathly quiet, each man afraid to breathe, as all ears were trained to the night air. Several seconds passed before they heard it as one. A faint tinging sound in the distance, almost like the chime of a bell.

  “That’s Pitt and Giordino,” Dahlgren shouted. “Has to be. They’re tapping out an SOS on the Bloodhound ’s hull.”

  Stenseth looked at him with skepticism. Dahlgren had to be wrong. They had moved too far from the submersible’s last-known position. But what else could be signaling through the bleak Arctic night?

  Stenseth engaged the outboard motor and sailed the tender in an ever-widening series of circles, cutting the throttle at periodic intervals to try to detect which direction the sound was coming from. He finally noted a rising pitch emanating from the east and turned in that direction. The captain motored slowly but anxiously, fearful that the tapping might cease before he had determined a true bearing. The fog blew in thick wisps while the morning dawn still struggled to appear. As close as they might be, he knew it would be all too easy to lose the submersible if it fell silent.

  Fortunately, the clanging went on. The rapping only grew louder, audible even over the rumble of the outboard. Changing course with slight shifts to the tiller, Stenseth zeroed in on the sound until it echoed in his ears. Cruising blindly through a dark bank of fog, he suddenly cut the throttle as a huge black shape rose up in front of them.

  The barge seemed to have lost its mammoth scale since Stenseth had last seen it, being towed by the icebreaker. Then he saw why. The barge was sinking by the stern, with nearly half of its length already submerged. The bow rose at a rakish angle, reminiscent of the last minutes of the Narwhal. Having just witnessed his own ship’s demise, he knew the barge was down to its last minutes, if not seconds.

  Stenseth and the crew reacted with disappointment at their discovery. Their hopes had been pinned on finding Pitt and Giordino. But their disillusionment quickly turned to horror when they realized that the barge was about to go under.

  And that the tapping sound came from someone locked aboard.

  74

  DAHLGREN PLAYED A FLASHLIGHT BEAM ACROSS the exposed deck of the barge, searching for an entry point, but found only fixed bulkheads ahead of the forward hold.

  “Take us around to the starboard side, Captain,” he requested.

  Stenseth motored the tender around the towering bow of the barge, slowing as he approached the forward hold. The rhythmic metallic rapping suddenly became noticeably louder.

  “There,” Dahlgren exclaimed, finding the side-compartment hatch with his light. A chain was visible, wrapped around the hatch door lever and secured to a rail stanchion.

 
Without a word, Stenseth ran the tender alongside the barge until it bumped into a metal railing that angled out of the water. Dahlgren was already on his feet and leaped onto the barge’s deck, landing aside the partially flooded number 3 hold hatch cover.

  “Be quick, Jack,” Stenseth yelled. “She’s not long above water.”

  He immediately backed the tender away from the barge, not wanting to get caught in its suction should it suddenly plunge to the bottom.

  Dahlgren had already sprinted across the angled deck and up a short flight of steps to the locked storage compartment. Banging a gloved hand on the hatch, he shouted, “Anybody home?”

  The startled voice of Sergeant Bojorquez replied instantly.

  “Yes. Can you let us out?”

  “Will do,” Dahlgren replied.

  He quickly studied the securing length of chain, which had been crudely knotted around both the hatch lever and the deck stanchion. There had been little slack to begin with, but the twisting girders of the sinking ship had pulled the chain drum tight. Checking each end under the beam of his flashlight, he quickly realized that the stanchion knot was more accessible, and he focused his efforts there.

  Yanking his gloves off, he grabbed hold of the knot’s outer links and pulled with all his might. The frozen steel links dug into his flesh but refused to budge. Gathering his breath, he tugged again, putting the full power of his legs into the effort while nearly ripping his fingers from their sockets. But the chain wouldn’t move.

  The deck beneath his feet took a sudden lurch, and he felt the ship twist slightly from the uneven pull of the rapidly flooding holds. Releasing his mangled and frozen fingers from the links, he looked at the chain and tried another tack. Leaning over the landing in order to attack from a right angle, he began kicking at the knot with his boots. Inside the storage compartment, he could hear panicked shouts from several voices urging him to hurry. From the water nearby, a few of the Narwhal’s crew yelled over, echoing the sentiment. As if to add its own pressure, the barge let out a deep metallic groan from somewhere far beneath the surface.

  With his heart pounding, Dahlgren kicked at the chain with his toe. Then he stomped with his heel. He kicked harder and harder, with a growing sense of anger. Furiously he kicked, as if his own life depended on it. He kept on kicking until a single link of chain finally slipped over the tightly wound coil.

  It created just enough slack to allow the next link to slip through with a subsequent kick, and then one more. Dahlgren dropped to his knees, jerking the free end of the chain through the loosened knot with his numb fingers. He quickly uncoiled the chain from the stanchion, allowing the hatch lever to move free. Rising to his feet, he yanked up on the lever, then pulled the hatch open.

  Dahlgren didn’t know what to expect and fumbled with his flashlight as a number of shapes moved toward the hatch. Turning the light inside, he was shocked to find forty-six gaunt, frozen men staring back at him like a savior. Bojorquez was closest to the hatch, still clutching his small hammer.

  “I don’t know who you are, but I’m sure glad to see you,” the sergeant said with a toothy smile.

  “Jack Dahlgren, of the NUMA research ship Narwhal. Why don’t you boys come on out of there?”

  The captives rushed through the hatchway, staggering out onto the listing deck. Dahlgren was surprised to see several of the men dressed in military garb, small U.S. flags on their shoulders. Roman and Murdock were the last to exit and approached Dahlgren with a relieved look on their faces.

  “I’m Murdock of the Polar Dawn. This is Captain Roman, who tried to rescue us in Kugluktuk. Is your vessel standing by?”

  Dahlgren’s astonishment at the realization he had found the captured Americans was tempered by the news he had to bear.

  “Our ship was rammed and sunk by your tow vessel,” he said quietly.

  “Then how did you get here?” Roman asked.

  Dahlgren pointed to the tender just visible a few yards off the sinking barge.

  “We barely escaped ourselves. Heard your rapping on the hatch and thought it was a submersible of ours.”

  He looked around at the beaten men standing around him, quietly trying to fathom their ordeal. Their escape from death was temporary, and now he felt like their executioner. Turning to Roman and Murdock, he spoke a grim apology.

  “I’m sorry to have to tell you, but we don’t have room to take on a single man.”

  75

  STENSETH WATCHED THE WAVES LAP OVER THE barge’s number 2 hold, leaving just the number 1 hold and bow section still above water. Why the barge hadn’t yet headed for the bottom, he couldn’t say, but he knew her time was short.

  He turned his gaze to the haggard men lining the rail with looks of pleading desperation in their eyes. Like Dahlgren, he was shocked to count so many men step out of the storage hold. The blatant attempt at mass murder by the crew of the icebreaker astounded him. What sort of animal was commanding the tow ship?

  His fears turned toward the safety of his own men. When the barge went under, he knew it would turn into an ugly free-for-all as the castaway men tried to climb aboard the tender. He couldn’t risk swamping the already overloaded boat and sending his own men to their grave. He kept the tender at a safe distance from the barge, wondering how he could get Dahlgren off without the rest of the men trying to climb aboard with him.

  He spotted Dahlgren talking to two men, one of whom pointed toward the flooded stern of the barge. Dahlgren then stepped to the rail and shouted for Stenseth to approach. The captain eased the tender up the barge just beneath Dahlgren, keeping a wary eye on the other men. But none of them rushed the boat as Dahlgren climbed aboard.

  “Captain, please head to the stern of the barge, about two hundred feet back. Quickly,” Dahlgren urged.

  Stenseth turned the tender around and cruised past its sinking hulk toward the hidden stern. He didn’t notice Dahlgren pull off his boots and strip down to his underwear before pulling his parka back on.

  “They had two Zodiacs stowed aft,” he shouted by way of explanation.

  Little good they would do now, Stenseth thought. They’ve either drifted off or are tied to the deck forty feet underwater. He noticed Dahlgren standing in the bow pointing his flashlight toward something bobbing in the water.

  “Over there,” he urged.

  Stenseth guided the tender toward a number of dark objects floating on the surface. They were two pairs of conical-shaped protrusions that bobbed in unison several feet apart. Drawing closer, Stenseth recognized them as the tapered pontoon ends of a pair of Zodiac boats. The two inflatable boats were standing on end under the water, their bows affixed by a common line to the barge below.

  “Anybody have a knife?” Dahlgren asked.

  “Jack, you can’t go in the water,” Stenseth exhorted, realizing that Dahlgren had stripped off his clothes. “You’ll die of exposure.”

  “I ain’t planning a long bath,” he grinned in reply.

  The chief engineer had a folding knife and pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to Dahlgren.

  “A little closer, please, Captain,” Dahlgren asked, slipping out of his parka.

  Stenseth inched the tender to within a few feet of the Zodiacs, then cut the throttle. Dahlgren stood in the bow, flipped open the knife, then without hesitation took a deep breath and dove over the side.

  An expert diver, Dahlgren had dived in cold seas all over the world, but nothing had prepared him for the shock of immersion into twenty-eight-degree water. A thousand nerve endings instantly convulsed in pain. His muscles tensed and an involuntary gasp of air burst from his lungs. His entire body froze rigid from the shock, ignoring the commands from his brain to move. A panic sensation then took hold, urging him to immediately head for the surface. Dahlgren had to fight the instinct while forcing his dead limbs to move. Slowly he overcame the shock, mentally forcing his body to swim.

  He had no flashlight, but he didn’t need one in the black water. Brushing a hand agai
nst one of the Zodiac’s hulls gave him all the guidance he needed. Kicking forcefully, he descended several feet along the hull before feeling it angle inward toward the prow. Using his fingers to see, he reached beyond the bow until grazing the threads of the taut bow line. Grasping it with his free hand, he pulled and kicked his way down the line, searching for the mooring point to both Zodiacs.

  The exposure to the frigid water quickly began to slow down his motor skills and he had to will himself to keep descending. Twenty feet below the Zodiac, he reached the barge, his hand sliding against a large cleat that was securing the lines to both boats. He immediately attacked the first line with the knife, sawing furiously to break it. The blade was not sharp, however, and it took him several seconds before he cut the line free and it jerked toward the surface. Reaching for the second line, his lungs began to ache from holding his breath while the rest of his body turned numb. His body signaled him to let go of the line and kick to the surface, but his inner determination refused to listen. Shoving the knife forward until it met the line, he sawed the blade back and forth with all his remaining energy.

  The line broke with a twang that was audible underwater. Mimicking the other inflatable, the second Zodiac shot to the surface like a rocket, arching completely out of the water before splashing down onto its hull. Dahlgren missed most of the ride, being jerked only a foot or two toward the surface before losing his grip on the line. The momentum propelled his ascent, though, and he broke the surface gasping for air as he flailed to stay afloat with his frozen limbs.

  The tender was on him instantly as three sets of arms reached over and plucked him from the water. He was briskly rubbed dry with an old blanket, then dressed in multiple layers of shirts and long underwear contributed by his fellow crew members. Lastly wedged into his parka and boots, he stared wide-eyed at Stenseth while shivering incessantly.