White Plague

by James Abel

  Eddie said what everyone was thinking, “What did we hit?”

  DeBlieu stood up, still holding his favorite dessert, bacon coated with milk chocolate and sprinkles, on a stick.

  “All we do is hit things,” he said. As he spoke, I realized that the heavy shudders that had been jolting us every few moments had ceased.

  “The good news is, if we were holed, alarms would be ringing.” DeBlieu said, although he hardly looked happy.

  “Then what’s the bad news?”

  “Can’t you feel it? We’ve stopped,” he said as he headed for the bridge, and I rose to follow. “We’re stuck.”

  TEN

  The Arktos hung in space, swaying like some prehistoric animal in a cradle, a 16,000-pound terrified creature hanging above Earth. The amphibious vehicle was being lowered—one of its two units at a time—by the starboard side crane. Assembled, it would look like two tanks connected by a mechanical arm. The cables looked frail as thread. The ship canted sideways in a seventy-five-mile-an-hour gust. Unloading proceeded on the lee side, providing at least some wind protection. I watched the orange craft dangle at the halfway point between deck and ice.

  “Slowly, slow-ly,” Captain DeBlieu ordered, his hand on the shoulder of a lieutenant named Matheson, at the crane controls. We’d squeezed into a glass-sided compartment. The storm’s residue was shoved away every two seconds by fast-moving two-foot-long wiper blades. The contrast between the warmth inside, and cyclonic violence inches away, made the scene unreal, a sense magnified when, momentarily, I got a glimpse of the world beyond.

  “Touchdown! Too bad the other Arktos never got aboard. You’ll be pulling a lot of sleds with this thing, bringing everyone back, Colonel.”

  I gasped with astonishment. It was genesis reversed, as if we’d reached some gyroscopic center of planetary energy. Because how can you be stuck in place if everything around you is moving? What natural law demanded that the Wilmington keel over, slanting five degrees, while all we saw around us swept past? I saw ice boulders, football-sized fields, pillars. It was vast, beautiful, and terrifying. It was birth and death on a planetary scale. I’d been briefed about this but seeing it was different. A century ago the view would have been solid ice, so thick that a hundred-mile-an-hour wind couldn’t move it; ice that had been present when Rome was sacked, when Vikings found America.

  But recently the heated-up ocean had welled up, and like ice cubes left out in a martini, the ice had begun to ooze. Thousand-year melt speed had accelerated to five. Warmed below by current, and above by sun, the ice cap had weakened and everything out there swirled in different directions—ice fields the size of Belgium crashing into each other, ice Alps, ice mountains, ice plateaus coalescing into a white hell, vortex of storm-topped earth.

  “We’re pinned, Colonel,” said Executive Officer Gordon Longstreet, pushing into the cab from outside. “We’ve got a block of ice the size of a Chevy wedged against a rudder. I don’t know how it got inside the ice horn,” he said, referring to the massive steel boxes encasing the rudders. “But it’s lodged. That wind is pushing us sideways, with ice piling up on starboard.”

  “Back and ram it,” DeBlieu said. “Back and ram.”

  I asked, “How long before we break free?”

  The captain’s face was a study in tension; the cords on his jaw stood out. “Could be thirty minutes. Could be three days, or,” he said, voice dropping, “weeks.”

  I found Major Pettit in the copter hangar, where the Marines were checking weapons. “Suit up to leave.”

  A voice in my earpiece said, “ We’re lashing on skis and sleds. Passengers ready, sir.”

  As we headed for the deck, Peter Del Grazo’s voice started up excitedly in my radio. “I picked up the Montana! Talked to someone! They’re alive, at least eighty of them. Then I lost transmission again.”

  “How far away are they?”

  “Seven miles, sir.”

  “Are the Chinese there yet?”

  “We’re the first to arrive so far.”

  The so far told the rest of the story. Seven miles, I thought bitterly. Only seven miles separated us from the survivors, maybe less if wind kept pushing them toward us, although the same gusts would be in our faces.

  I could run seven miles in under an hour. I could walk it at home in two hours.

  Del Grazo was coming with us, I decided, as most qualified to run communication. The Marines clomping into the outer deck wore Day-Glo vests to see each other in the storm, over snow camouflage shells, over their extreme cold weather gear: windproof heavy-duty parka and snow pants and three-fingered mittens—enabling them to shoot—with inner woolen linings. Their eyes looked robotic inside slits in their balaclavas. Their M4s were slung over their backs. Two men carried M16s equipped with M203 40 mm detachable grenade launchers.

  Karen and Clinton met us on the ramp—or brow—lowered from the 01 deck to the ice. Marietta Cristobel—ice expert—would stay on board. She’d told me. “I know ice from a lab. I couldn’t help you find a ten-story-high rum factory out there. Use the extra space for the sick. You’ll need it with the second Arktos stuck back in Barrow.”

  That Arktos can carry fifty-two people, sitting upright, like crew on those old Civil War–era confederate submarines.

  Andrew Sachs appeared on deck, dressed like everyone else, but somehow he looked different, as if the gear was so alien to his body that it imprisoned him inside. He moved stiffly. I was glad we’d go in a vehicle, and not depend on him on the ice. There was no question he’d slow progress down if we had to walk.

  Clinton Toovik was a solid presence at the top of the brow. He pressed his head against mine to be heard against the wind, and even then he had to shout.

  “In the Arktos, better keep the temperature low so we don’t sweat. You don’t want to sweat if we have to go out.”

  “Right.”

  “Also, I want a rifle,” Clinton said.

  “The weapons are for the Marines,” I explained.

  His breath smelled of minty mouthwash. “There are bears. And there might be Chinese, you said. Always travel armed here. I was in the Army. I know how to use an M4.”

  “Clinton, the Marines will protect us.”

  He snorted. “I was an Army Ranger. And I’m a hunter.”

  I soothed him, curbing my impatience to get going. “Yes, of course, but these guys have combat training in the Arctic.”

  Clinton’s laugh was carried off by wind, so he seemed, in the shrieking maelstrom, to be miming good humor. He said, “Where? In Norway? Norway’s a hundred degrees warmer some days. Seventy below in Barrow. Thirty above in Norway. Norway gets the Gulf Stream. Those waters warm it. You want me to come with you? I want a rifle, Colonel.”

  I said, growing testy, “They’re not for civilians. Now let’s get going, okay?”

  “Civilians? Then I guess the civilians will stay on board, Colonel.”

  I sighed. “Get him an M4,” I told Major Pettit.

  Andrew Sachs was there suddenly, chiming in, and also demanding a rifle. He surprised me. He could move quietly.

  He was saying something about belonging to a shooting club.

  “Sorry, Mr. Secretary. But feel free to threaten not to come, too,” I said, hoping he’d accept.

  We ducked one by one into the Arktos. The Marines took seats along the walls, backs straight, balaclavas off, jackets unzipped as the heating system began oozing fifty-five-degree air into the cab. I sat beside the lance corporal driver, following news from the ship. At least ground radio worked this close to the Wilmington, but the worried voices I heard from the bridge did not build confidence.

  “Both engines stop! They’re burning out!”

  The icebreaker, trapped, couldn’t even back and ram anymore. Ice held a rudder fast.

  Karen Vleska squeezed into a seat beside me. I smelled,
over the diesel odor, her coconut-scented shampoo. Our headlights switched on. Time was topsy-turvy. At 11:30 P.M. it should be dark, but the sun was up. If the sun was up, it should be light but the storm darkened visibility. I recalled lithographs showing ships trapped in ice a hundred years ago, the ice actually reaching high enough to breach railings, creep across decks, spread into living quarters, crush whole vessels.

  Eddie, a bulky presence behind me, demanded of the driver, “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “Um, which way, sir? The GPS isn’t working.”

  Shit. “Can we get a fix on the sub’s radio beam?”

  “It disappeared again.”

  I turned to Del Grazo. “Then use the goddamn compass.”

  The normally jovial Brooklyn-accented voice sounded distressed.

  “Sir, this far north compass needles get screwed up. Magnetic north and regular north are different. Rely on a compass, we’re likely to get thrown off.”

  “Well, for Christ’s sake,” I snapped, momentarily at a loss. “You mean we’ll just sit here?”

  Karen Vleska spoke up from beside me, calm and rational and peering beyond the slashing wipers into the melee outside. “Clinton? You or me?”

  “Me,” he replied. “I’m better at it. Open the door,” he told the driver. “I’ll go out and lead.”

  “How?”

  “Sastrugi,” said Clinton, as if it was an explanation.

  Eddie said, “Anyone speak plain English here?”

  Clinton was zipping up his parka. “It is English,” he said. “Keep me in the headlights, Jarhead. Sastrugi are lines in the snow, from wind. The wind’s from the northwest, so sastrugi will face southeast. We use the snow lines as pointers. Works every time.”

  “Sorry,” said Eddie.

  “Buy a dictionary,” Clinton said.

  “Why not just stay inside and point from here?” I said.

  Clinton gestured at the window, the rime on the panes, the snow and darkness. The storm threw the powerful headlight beams back in our faces. We couldn’t make out wind lines on the ground.

  “Oh.”

  Moments later we were following the big man, who shooshed ahead on skis. His back was a Day-Glo orange mass between wiper blade passes, his M4 a whitish slanting line like a Sam Browne belt across his back. He was moving at least, and the speedometer said we chugged north at a blizzard-respectable but frustrating four miles an hour.

  For half a mile.

  Then the figure held up a mittened hand to stop us. The radio—hooked to his mouth mike—emitted screechy static. I heard Clinton battering on the door.

  Eddie the joker called out, “Who is it?”

  “Open it,” I said.

  Clinton’s head stuck in, along with swirling snow. “Weak ice ahead. I’ll climb up on top now. When you hear me pound, start moving again.”

  I looked into a gray mass that seemed no different than the landscape we’d moved through for the last half hour. We waited while Clinton climbed up and then we lurched forward, and suddenly experienced a deep rumbling below. We were tilting forward, sliding faster. I felt buoyancy take over and knew that we’d crashed through ice, plunged into a lead. Water swirled outside the window, at neck level.

  The pilot switched to jet propulsion power and we wallowed through a field of floating boulders. Ice clunked against Kevlar as we threaded a minefield of sharp-edged blocks. The tread spun, trying to get a grip on solid pieces, but pushing them below. Our bottom half was underwater. We struck something and the Arktos tilted upward and climbed from the sea to resume crunching forward, left edge up, now the right, on a field of ice rubble.

  Clinton banged on the hatch, we stopped, he got off and began leading us by foot again, sometimes leaning down to check the direction of sastrugi, pointing when he wanted a course change, or merely slogging off to the left or right.

  Andrew Sachs had been quiet the whole time, and when he spoke, his voice seemed higher. His normally white face seemed paler. “Maybe the ship has broken free,” he said. “Maybe we can go back.”

  Del Grazo shook his head, “It hasn’t broken free, sir.”

  I failed at first to hear the engine noise changing, the mechanical sputter starting, as I was giving orders.

  “Major Pettit, when we get there, I’ll want surviving crew back on the Wilmington fast as possible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We don’t know what made them sick, so wear masks.”

  “You men hear that?” Pettit announced to nods.

  Now I grew aware of a metallic coughing coming from inside the vehicle. If we were in a car, I would have said the muffler was broken, or a tailpipe. We continued our progress, but now the grinding grew louder, coming from below.

  “If the Wilmington can break free, we’ll try to tow the Montana out.”

  The Arktos was shaking now, from something internal, not the ice outside.

  “But we also need to be prepared to scuttle her if the reactor is leaking or if the Chinese—”

  We’d stopped, yet nothing blocked our progress. Ahead, Clinton continued forward, unaware that we were not following, but now I saw him coming back.

  The driver frowned at his controls, reached like the suburban driver of a stalled Volkswagen to turn a key, press an accelerator, try to restart the engine, peer at a red warning light where no light had been on before.

  Electricity still on, wipers streaking, air blowing . . .

  With the engine off, the storm noise intensified. We’d halted between two jagged pillars of ice, lumped shapes, an ice Stonehenge. The wind here shook us side to side.

  “Colonel, the tank reads full.”

  “Check it manually,” I said. “I’ll go, too.” After all, we carried extra fuel. Perhaps some stupid error—or faulty meter—had misled us into thinking we had a full tank when we needed to put more in.

  Or did someone tamper with the Arktos?

  Eddie and I exchanged frowns as I zipped up my parka, uncoiled myself from the seat, hunched past the expressionless Marines, and ducked out into the storm.

  First the Chinese turn toward the sub, then the Arktos stops.

  Wind blasted into my face. There was a burning sensation in my throat, and I felt it closing. I could not breathe directly into the wind. The storm made me see everything as if in a white tunnel, the sides a kaleidoscope of movement. The driver and I made our way to the rear. Ice had frozen shut the panel protecting the gas cap, so we had to retrieve a Ka-Bar from the cab, and chip ice to open her up. The driver pulled out the fuel cap dipstick—a modified Arktos feature. Newer Arktos crafts featured fuel-tank entry from inside the vehicle. We rode in an earlier model.

  “Almost full, sir.” Then he peered closer. “Shit, sir, what’s this blue coating? It’s not fuel.”

  I peered at the stick, then, with a sickening feeling, looked more closely at the cap door itself. I saw pry marks along the chassis where the cap opened, damage streaks resembling the scrapes you see on an automobile door, when a thief has tried to jimmy the lock.

  Someone tampered with the fuel.

  Or was it, I asked myself, hoping against logic, that the striations had been caused by steel cables during loading, by an impact going in or out.

  Get a better look at the dipstick.

  I climbed back into the relative warmth of the cab. My eyes hit Eddie’s. I nodded slightly. His mouth was set in a solid, angry line.

  I unrolled my mittens from around the dipstick, and held it up.

  “What’s this blue stuff? Anybody know?”

  Del Grazo’s breathing quickened and his eyes narrowed and he reached for it, held the stick to his nose and sniffed and grunted unhappily.

  “It’s . . . it’s fire retardant, Colonel.”

  I cursed. He said, “It’s what we carry in the canisters. My job used
to be to check them, when I first joined up. We were in the Pacific. I’ll never forget the goddamn smell. But how did fire retardant get into the . . . wait . . . during a drill!”

  I had a vision, a memory of the emergency drills that had marked normal life on the Wilmington. A bell goes off. Minutes later the ship fills with groups of white-suited emergency crews. Men and women with their faces covered. People carrying axes and tools that could have opened a fuel cap. People scurrying around while the Marine guard who was supposed to be in the hangar allegedly watched.

  “You’d only need thirty seconds to pry open the tank, stick the hose in, spray, screw up the fuel line,” I said.

  Eddie added, “While twenty other people in suits just like yours distract the guard, simply doing their jobs.”

  I said, “Major Pettit?”

  “I had a guy there all the time.”

  “One guard?” I accused, which was unfair, because one should be enough. But I wasn’t going to apologize, especially not to the man sleeping with my ex-wife.

  “Yes, sir. One.”

  Del Grazo’s mouth was a tight line of fury. “We’ll ask the captain to question everyone who worked in the hangar.”

  Eddie shook his head. “Anyone could put on a suit and look like he belonged to that crew.”

  “Or she belonged,” added Dr. Vleska.

  Major Pettit looked around at the faces around us: Karen’s stiff, Sachs’s tense, the driver’s fearful, me trying to stay bland, as if I maintained hearty confidence. Eddie just voiced what we were all probably thinking.

  “Is the person who did it on the ship? Or with us now?”

  “Get ready to walk,” I said.

  Lieutenant Del Grazo radioed back, asking Captain DeBlieu to order a review of all security tapes made over the past few days of the helicopter hangar.

  “Maybe we’ll see something.”

  Eddie said morosely, “Yeah, twenty people dressed exactly the same, with no faces, and who is to say it even happened then? Maybe it happened in Fairbanks. Or Barrow.”