Arctic Drift

by Clive Cussler

  “That’s one cold pond,” he muttered. “Don’t care to try that again.”

  Stenseth wasted no time, whipping the tender alongside the Zodiacs until their bow lines could be grabbed, then he gunned the motor. With the Zodiacs bounding in tow, the tender shot across the open expanse of water toward the rapidly diminishing bow structure. The water level had crept partway across the number 1 hold hatch cover, yet the big vessel still refused to let go.

  The captives were huddled forward of the hold, certain that the tender had left them to die. When the outboard motor suddenly grew louder, they peered into the darkness with anxious hope. Seconds later, the tender appeared out of the gloom with the two empty Zodiacs in tow. A few of the men began to cheer, and then more joined in, until the barge erupted in an emotionally charged howl of gratitude.

  Stenseth drove the tender right up the face of the number 1 hold, skidding to a halt as the two Zodiacs rushed alongside. As the haggard men quickly climbed in, Murdock stepped over to the tender.

  “God bless you,” he said, addressing the entire crew.

  “You can thank that frozen Texan up front as soon as he stops shivering,” Stenseth said. “In the meantime, I suggest we both get away from this behemoth before she sucks us all under.”

  Murdock nodded and stepped over to one of the Zodiacs. The inflatable boats were filled in no time and quickly pushed away from the barge. With flooded motors and no paddles, they were at the mercy of the tender for propulsion. One of the Narwhal ’s crew tossed a towline to one of the Zodiacs while the other inflatable tied on in tandem.

  The three boats drifted off the sinking barge before Stenseth took up the slack and engaged the outboard motor. There was no lingering or emotional farewell to the dying barge, which had represented only misery to its men held captive. The three small boats plowed east, quickly leaving the stricken vessel behind in the fog. With nary a gurgle, the black leviathan, its holds nearly filled to the top, silently slipped under the waves a moment later.

  76

  IT’S AS BLACK UP HERE AS THE BOTTOM IS AT A THOUSAND feet.”

  There was little exaggeration in Giordino’s assessment of the scene out of the submersible’s view port. Just moments before, the Bloodhound had punched through the surface amid a boil of foam and bubbles. The two occupants still had hopes of finding the lights of the Narwhal twinkling nearby but instead found a cold, dark sea enshrouded in a heavy mist.

  “Better try the radio again before we’re completely out of juice,” Pitt said.

  The submersible’s battery reserves were nearly extinguished, and Pitt wanted to conserve the remaining power for the radio. He reached down and pulled a lever that sealed the ballast tanks closed, then shut down the interior air-filtration system, which was barely functioning on low voltage. They would have to crack the top hatch for fresh but bitterly cold air.

  They called on the surface, but their radio calls continued to go unanswered. Their faint signals were picked up only by the Otok and blithely ignored at the order of Zak. The Narwhal, they were now convinced, had vanished from the scene.

  “Still, not a word,” Giordino said dejectedly. Contemplating the radio silence, he asked, “How friendly would your pal on the icebreaker be if he had a run-in with the Narwhal ?”

  “Not very,” Pitt replied. “He has a penchant for blowing things up with little regard for the consequences. He’s after the ruthenium at all costs. If he’s aboard the icebreaker, then he’ll be after us as well.”

  “My money says that Stenseth and Dahlgren will be a handful.”

  It was little consolation to Pitt. He was the one who had brought the ship here and it was he who had placed the crew in danger. Not knowing what had happened to the ship, he assumed the worst and blamed himself. Giordino sensed the guilt in Pitt’s eyes and tried to change his focus.

  “Are we dead on propulsion?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Yes,” Pitt replied. “We’re at the mercy of the wind and current now.”

  Giordino gazed out the view port. “Wonder where the next stop will be?”

  “With any luck, we’ll get pushed to one of the Royal Geographical Society Islands. But if the current throws us around them, then we could be adrift for a while.”

  “If I had known we were going to take a cruise, I would have brought a good book . . . and my long underwear.”

  Both men wore only light sweaters, not anticipating the need for anything warmer. With the submersible’s electronic equipment shut down, the interior quickly turned chilly.

  “I’d settle for a roast beef sandwich and a tequila myself,” Pitt said.

  “Don’t even start with the food,” Giordino lamented. He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms, trying to maintain warmth. “You know,” he said, “there are days when that cushy leather chair back in the headquarters office doesn’t sound so bad.”

  Pitt looked at him with a raised brow. “Had your fill of days in the field?”

  Giordino grunted, then shook his head. “No. I know the reality is, the second I set foot in that office, I want back on the water. What about you?”

  Pitt had contemplated the question before. He’d paid a heavy price, both physically and mentally, for his adventurous scrapes over the years. But he knew he’d never have it any other way.

  “Life’s a quest, but I’ve always made the quest my life.” He turned to Giordino and grinned. “I guess they’ll have to pry us both off the controls.”

  “It’s in our blood, I’m afraid.”

  Helpless to control their fate, Pitt sat back in his chair and closed his eyes. Thoughts of the Narwhal and her crew scrolled through his mind, followed by visions of Loren back in Washington. But mostly his mind kept returning to a lone portrait of a broad-shouldered man with a menacing face. It was the image of Clay Zak.

  77

  THE SUBMERSIBLE PITCHED AND ROLLED THROUGH the choppy seas while driven south at nearly three knots. The Arctic dawn gradually emerged, lightening the thick gray fog hanging low over the water. With little to do but monitor the radio, the two men tried to rest, but the plunging interior temperature soon rendered it too uncomfortable for sleep.

  Pitt was adjusting the overhead hatch when a scraping sound filled the interior and the submersible jarred to a halt.

  “Land ho,” Giordino mumbled, popping open his sleepy eyes.

  “Almost,” Pitt replied, peering out the view port. A light breeze blew a small opening in the fog, revealing a white plateau of ice in front of them. The unbroken expanse disappeared into a billow of mist a hundred feet away.

  “A good bet there is land on the opposite side of this ice field,” Pitt speculated.

  “And that’s where we’ll find a hot-coffee stand?” Giordino asked, rubbing his hands together to keep warm.

  “Yes . . . roughly two thousand miles south of here.” He looked at Giordino. “We have two options. Stay here in the cozy confines of our titanium turret or take a crack at finding relief. The Inuit still hunt in the region, so there could be a settlement nearby. If the weather clears, there’s always a sporting chance of flagging down a passing ship.” He looked down at his clothes. “Unfortunately, we’re not exactly dressed for a cross-country excursion.”

  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 ros
e 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.

  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

  CLAY ZAK COULD NOT BELIEVE HIS EYES.

  After disposing of the NUMA ship, he’d turned the icebreaker back toward the Royal Geographical Society Islands, then retired to his cabin. He’d tried to sleep but only rested fitfully, his mind too focused on locating the ruthenium. Returning to the bridge after just a few hours, he ordered the ship to West Island. The vessel plowed through the bordering sea ice, advancing to his revised location of the ruthenium mine.