White Plague

by James Abel

  Now, going home—I raced along Stevens Boulevard, beneath a lone hooting owl, and to the sound of a distant loon, and past evergreens draped with moss that shimmered beneath streetlights. A certain degree of cynicism is healthy in a longtime servant of the Republic. I’d achieved the level commensurate with a man who’d been seconded to an obscure biohazard unit comprised of two-officer teams of doctors with intense combat experience.

  I was ranking officer on my team.

  I admired the director but was also wary of someone who always believed he knew the best course for the rest of the world.

  The director liked to quote Benjamin Franklin. But I think he was talking about himself.

  “Patriotism is relentless.”

  Franklin was not a soldier, but he signed the Declaration of Independence. Had America lost its revolution, he would have been hung. He understood choice, and that is my measure of a man, the ability to make decisions.

  I arrived at my small cedar-sided home in twenty minutes. A black Ford pulled into my driveway sixty seconds after that.

  By 2:30 A.M., I was in an Air Force Falcon clawing through a late-summer thunderstorm as it flew toward Fairbanks, and I read a series of encrypted “eyes only” reports on the submarine Montana, my heart pounding.

  I kept thinking about 107 surviving men and women on the ice, far north of me. It seemed like a big number. It would be small compared to the danger I headed toward in the end.

  TWO

  From the air, Barrow looked more like the last place on Earth than the place where our world could end, which, I’d learn soon, was the case. The big Globemaster transport made a wide turn over the frigid ocean and angled back toward the airport’s lone runway, its four mighty engines spewing air. The roar was tremendous. We were at the top of North America. The town of 4,500—mostly Iñupiat Eskimos—hugged the junction of the Chukchi and the Beaufort Seas, waters frozen for centuries until recently, now passable to ships in summers. The water looked black as anthracite. I didn’t see any ice out there. The big stuff, the pack, I knew, would come farther north.

  Alaska is so big that if you superimposed it over the continental United States, one end would cover North Carolina and the other would touch California. We’d roared over the Brooks Range, the peaks seeming to reach up and try to knock the plane from the sky. Dall sheep stared back from snowy crests. Then the mountains had dropped away and the land had become brown tundra, rolling grass-covered hummocks and thousands of elliptical freshwater lakes. Shaped like sunglass lenses, they threw back golden glare through rainbows of vapor: mist tendrils, fog, drizzle. The sense—gazing out—was of flying through gigantic lungs.

  I’d slept for an hour, files on my lap, and had the dream about a girl from Smith Falls, more memory than imagination: a time-lapse vision of a slim twenty-year-old with long chestnut hair, fawn-colored eyes, and an Irish freckled face, a stunner, a beauty, naked, her legs folded, sitting on an old yard-sale carpet in my old college dorm; a beam of morning sun slanting in to highlight the curve of hip, smooth inner thigh, triangular three-freckle pattern on a small foot, above clenched toes. A girl doing something mundane, speaking to her mother on a telephone, on the first night we’d slept together. Yes, Mom, I’m fine. No, Mom, we didn’t drink wine. A girl who, at that moment, had seemed the most breathtakingly beautiful image I’d ever seen. I’d married that girl, but the early vision we’d shared of each other had not lasted.

  Still, it had not occurred to me then that years later, after many stunning views— elephants grazing at dusk in Angola, glaciers two hundred feet high calving in Antarctica, the moon on jungle canopy in Nicaragua—the simple image of a girl in a dorm room would stand out.

  Some people think nightmares are the worst dreams from which to awaken. But it’s beauty that gets you. Not ugliness; glory that ambushes you with the bittersweet touch of remorse, slipping through the unconscious to a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor who traded family for duty; the barest whiff of regret that comes when you open your eyes in the morning, before the tasks of daily living wipe it away, that glimpse of solitude that, I’d realized, in rare moments, comes with membership in the unit, although no one tells you that when you join.

  I’d chosen to confess to my wife what I’d done, and watched her close up to me forever.

  The last image, before I shot awake, was a coiled, black, old-fashioned rubber telephone cord pressed against a white breast, leaving a pink mark. Can you beat it? Just a plain phone line, and I’d woken with a hole in my gut, the copilot’s hand on my shoulder, and with the sour knowledge that the man who shared Nina’s bed now was behind me in the plane.

  “Sir, we’ve raised the ship.”

  I tried to wipe the dream from my mind as I made my way to the cockpit. I saw, at sea, a red shape on the horizon. Up until now we’d been unable to reach the icebreaker, and I’d cursed the poor state of U.S. military technology in the Arctic. The mightiest military power on Earth is more than ten years behind the other polar nations, having spent all our monies on wars in the Mideast.

  The copilot gestured me to the jump seat and I pulled a headset from the cockpit wall. The coming conversation would be delicate. All Captain Maurice DeBlieu—his file said—knew so far was that his normal scientific mission had been canceled, he’d been ordered to send all research staff ashore, he was about to undertake an unknown mission, and that the Secretary of Homeland Security herself (Homeland Security, not the Pentagon, runs the Coast Guard) had hopefully told him to give a Marine lieutenant colonel named Joseph Rush platinum-quality treatment on his ship.

  The voice that came over the line was clear, professional, vaguely Southern, Virginia or northern North Carolina, I guessed. The file on my laptop held a photo of a black man with a thin, neat mustache, thick black framed glasses, and dark brown eyes that looked directly into the lens, as if challenging the photographer to finish up so Captain Maurice DeBlieu could get back to work. He had nine years in the Arctic, six as top man on the ship.

  “DeBlieu,” he said.

  He hadn’t been appointed guardian of the nation’s lone functioning icebreaker by being a laggard. The Coast Guard was used to hosting guests in the Arctic, but not having guests tell them what to do. This next part could be awkward, especially as I’d requested that he not be informed yet as to the exact nature of the mission.

  So when I asked him to meet me ashore, instead of on his ship, he requested that I hand the headphones to the pilot, and a moment later, the pilot politely but firmly requested identification. When he read the laminated card to DeBlieu, the captain still insisted that during personnel changeovers he preferred to monitor things from his ship, and not go ashore.

  “Safety reasons,” he said. “If something happens to us out there, there’s no one to help. We’re it. So I like to watch everything up close.”

  “I understand, sir. Security situation.”

  He paused, curiosity in his voice. “Look, Colonel. I’m sure my people and yours can deal with loading issues. My understanding is that wherever we’re going, we have to hurry. So why not talk on the ship while boarding proceeds.”

  This was precisely what I needed to avoid, and I said, “I’ll explain onshore. Also, I’m afraid I have to ask you to cut off all communication from the ship now. No e-mails, no cell phones. Cut all satellite access.”

  No response.

  I said, “Captain, if you’ll take the first chopper over, I’ll meet you in the terminal and explain fully.”

  “Explain? I’ve got thirty pissed-off scientists here, and one furious Assistant Deputy Secretary, State Department, demanding explanations for kicking them off the ship. No one told us why. These scientists get a seven-week research cruise each summer. If they miss the window, once the big ice comes back, they lose the year.”

  “They’re not my concern,” I said.

  I hung up, knowing that resentment was buildin
g two miles away. I’d not been told that a State Department official was aboard, and hoped the director had dealt with that. The last thing I needed was a high-end squabble.

  At least the captain didn’t call back. He would fly ashore.

  The runway came up quickly, abutted by high grass, tundra. I saw a two-story Easter egg–blue corrugated metal terminal and a warehouse-style hangar beside it, inside of which I glimpsed, through open sliding doors, a couple of small jets and two copters. Men in yellow foul weather gear wheeled an old Bell 412—North Slope Borough Rescue Squad—out, into light rain. It would—along with a parked Coastie copter, ferry Marines and supplies out to the ship, and displaced scientists back.

  Good. Three copters means faster loading.

  My two dozen Marines—sitting in bolted-down airline-style seats, or affixed to net webbing on the sides of the fuselage—were dressed like science research and support staff, our cover story for locals. Anyone watching us, especially tourists with cameras, would see “civilians” who lay whale acoustic buoys or fix machinery; they wore thick jeans, Northern Outfitter boots, hooded parkas, and wool caps, enough of a disguise to fool casual observers in an airport, as we didn’t want some Eskimo kid or tourist or scientist tweeting or sending Facebook messages about Marines boarding ships in Barrow. The clothing was perfect, but considering the jarhead haircuts and the way the guys stuck together, and the efficient way they took orders, they wouldn’t fool a professional observer for fifty seconds.

  Arctic tech crews are usually big, jovial, loose-moving bearded boys and high-spirited women from Minnesota and Wyoming, or ropy types, motorcycle racers and boat bums from Cape Cod. My guys were clean shaven, serious, quiet.

  Also back there were crates we’d taken on in Fairbanks, from the Arctic combat school, an impressively named, but undermanned, basement warren at the air base, for which the generals were perpetually trying to get more funds.

  The crates were stenciled: WHALE ACOUSTICS BUOYS; BOWHEAD STUDY, WOODS HOLE OCEANOGRAPHIC INSTITUTE AND LAMONT-DOHERTY EARTH OBSERVATORY.

  In reality the boxes contained M4 carbines, M16s equipped with 40 mm M203 grenade launchers, Kevlar vests, eight kinds of antibiotics and burn medicines—including Cipro, zanamivir, ribavirin, and xapaxin—chemical decontaminants, snow goggles, portable propane generators, incendiary explosives, snow camouflage uniforms, microscopes, oxygen canisters, surgical masks, terrestrial satellite-jamming equipment, oil drums of bleach, encrypted sat phones, snowshoes and cross-country skis, three-finger mittens and boot liners, all the gear the modern Arctic warrior needs to do his job on a rescue mission while knowing there may be combat involved.

  Another coffin-shaped crate, labeled TOOLS, carried Bibles, small wooden crosses, four small Jewish stars, and 154 folded-up plastic zip-up body shrouds.

  Farther in back of the fuselage were two tied down big Arktos amphibious carriers, superb hybrid vehicles built in Canada, tank-like cabs with thick glass windows and steel tank treads, that could bull over ice but float on water. Propulsion in the water came from high-thrust, low-speed jets.

  Each Arktos could hold fifty people, more on top. They were ungainly, a pumpkin color, built for visibility, not stealth, good for rescue, but not a fight. We could carry extra sleds and skis for Marines on top. The crafts would be driven on their own power to the Wilmington, and loaded by crane.

  I tried not to think about the men and women trapped on the ice, five hundred miles north of Barrow . . . winds rising, snow blowing, medicine and food running out, their medical officer burned to death, possibly no one alive by the time we got there at all.

  The director had told me an hour ago, “No change, except that the storm is getting worse. Gusts at fifty-three now.”

  We halted and a trio of forklifts growled toward the plane. With a mechanical groan, the back of the Globemaster shoveled open to form a ramp. Cold wind and rain blew in. The Marines unlashed themselves from side netting, and got to work unloading. Two squads, twelve men each. One major, two gunnery sergeants, and the rest enlisted men, none of whom I’d ever met. They moved efficiently, but there was also something in the faces of those men, the young ones and veterans alike, something hard and unpleasant when they glanced my way. A guess as to the source would be Major Donald Pettit, who lived with my ex-wife, and commanded the rapid response squads that had been put under my control.

  I’d first learned of Pettit’s existence on the day that Nina moved in with him. She’d phoned me to make sure I heard the news from her, not from anyone else. She’d assured me that she’d met the guy eight months after our separation, and had not dated him until three months after that. I believed her. Nina doesn’t lie. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel like taking a swipe at Pettit’s jaw when I met the big man on the tarmac in Fairbanks. I suppose he felt something of the same, and his guys sensed the extra testosterone saturating the air.

  Marine males locking horns.

  Pettit seemed to avoid looking my way.

  I suppose we’d have to deal with this eventually, but at the moment, with things to do, the clarification session would come later. I saw a copter landing. It would carry the captain. And I needed to talk to that man now.

  Get yourself under control.

  Look, I respect the Coast Guard. I’ve always admired the altruism involved in joining up, the choice to serve the country by providing humanitarian aid, helping victims of hurricanes, fires, ship sinkings. But combat-wise, even on a normal cutter you find, at most, a handful of crew allowed to carry weapons, there to arrest drug runners or smugglers. The Wilmington was built for science. It was a floating lab. Its crew consisted of a few veteran chiefs and otherwise mostly kids, eighteen- and twenty-year-olds whose expectations of emergencies ran to fires or sinkings, not battle, terrorism, or disease.

  The good part was, they had extensive training in first aid and rescue. I’d need both. But if fighting broke out, they couldn’t help me. I’d asked the captain ashore because, until precautions were in place, I couldn’t discuss that on the ship.

  “I shut down communications as you requested,” Captain DeBlieu said with a slight standoffishness marking his professional courtesy, “but I’ll need a reason why if you want me to keep that order in place.”

  We occupied cushioned swivel chairs in the Borough Rescue Squad office, taking the measure of each other, alone, as the pilots had given us privacy. The room was divided into comfortable cubicles with land-line phones, computers, Atlanta Braves coffee mugs, and logbooks on desks. We could have been in any town in Idaho or Arizona.

  I glimpsed boarding proceeding out a window—ship scientists to shore, crates to the Wilmington. Beyond the airport were some of the town’s one- and two-story wooden homes, perched on concrete pilings to keep them from melting into permafrost when they heated. I saw gravel roads. Traffic. A three-story office building. Eskimo kids on bicycles, wearing Windbreakers, even at thirty-six degrees. Satellite farms sat out on the tundra, huge dishes and golf-ball-shaped geodesic domes to protect sensitive equipment. Barrow’s radar, the old DEW line warning system, had been set up during the Cold War to warn of incoming Russian attacks. Local equipment still served as America’s Arctic front line. But it had been designed for threats from the past.

  “Colonel Rush, my crew has been at sea for three months straight without a break. They’re tired. They miss home. They want to talk to their families. I’d like a good reason why I’m telling them they can’t.”

  He was a short man, with excellent posture, an ex-academy shortstop with top grades, I’d read, Ohio born, both parents engineers. Over the years I’ve learned that small men in positions of influence tend to be more efficient, contrary to the usual view. They’ve had to prove themselves, especially the top athletes, all their lives.

  When I told him about the submarine burning, his horror was genuine. When I explained that we could not tell the crew or call out for assis
tance, his eyes narrowed, and I watched him process the logic. He didn’t need a map to understand why we had to move fast and secure the sub.

  “But why shut off my crew’s communication?”

  “I don’t want anyone else knowing our route. I don’t want anyone getting a fix on a phone and monitoring us.”

  I also told him with some delicacy that the reason I’d asked him ashore was that I intended for the Marines to sweep his cabin, the wardroom, and also my quarters—former chief scientist’s room—for listening devices before we could have serious talks on the ship.

  He bridled. “That’s a bit paranoid, Colonel. We’re a science ship. In all my years on the Wilmington, the State Department never asked for this.”

  “Then they should have. The Marines will also activate jammers, in case someone on board,” I said, meaning a spy, “has access to a foreign satellite, or a corporate one. Once the ship is secure, you’ll announce we’re on an emergency drill, simulated rescue of a tourist ship taken by terrorists. Further north, we’ll tell them the truth.”

  He saw holes in the story. “We’ve done other rescue drills, and Marines weren’t part of them.”

  “Neither were terrorists. You need Marines.”

  “We need satellite information for navigation.”

  “My understanding,” I said, having spoken to the director about this, “is that your officers are quite competent with charts, in case sat access goes down.”

  His silence acknowledged this. “It’s happened in bad weather.”

  “Your crew will do what they’re told,” I said. “Also, if we need sat access, we can open it up every once in a while, stagger it, in ten-minute increments, but only we know when. Now! My understanding is that we can reach the sub in two days. Is that correct? What’s your top speed?”