Arctic Drift dp-20

by Clive Cussler

  Summer retrieved a pair of night vision binoculars and scrutinized the shoreline as they cruised past at a benign distance.

  “All quiet on the Western Front,” she said. “I only got a quick glimpse under the big top but saw no signs of life around the dock or the ship.”

  “Security at this hour can’t be more than a couple of goons in a box staring at some video camera feeds.”

  “Let’s hope they’re watching a wrestling match on TV instead, so we can grab our water samples and get out.”

  Dirk held the boat at a steady pace until they had traveled two miles past the facility. Safely lost from view behind several bends in the channel, he spun the wheel to starboard and brought the boat up tight along the shoreline, then cut the running lights. The patchy starlight provided enough visibility to distinguish the tree-lined bank, but he still eased off the throttle while keeping one eye glued to the depth readings on an Odom fathometer. Summer stood alongside, scanning for obstructions with the night vision binoculars and whispering course changes to her brother.

  Moving barely over idle, they crept to within three-quarters of a mile of the Terra Green facility, staying out of direct view. A small cove provided the last point of concealment before the floodlights scorched the channel surface. Summer quietly released an anchor off the bow, then Dirk killed the engine. A slight whisper of wind through some nearby pines rattled an otherwise eerie nighttime silence. The wind shifted, bringing with it the whine of pumps and the humming of electrical generators from the nearby facility, the noise easily concealing their movements.

  Dirk glanced at his Doxa dive watch before joining Summer in slipping into a dark-colored dry suit.

  “We’re approaching slack tide,” he said quietly. “We’ll have a little head current going in, but that will give us a push at our backs on the return swim.”

  He had calculated as such earlier in the evening, knowing that they didn’t want to be fighting the current to return to the boat. Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered. Both Dirk and Summer were excellent swimmers, often engaging in marathon ocean swims whenever they were near warm water.

  Summer adjusted the straps on her BC, which held a single dive tank, then clipped on a small dive bag containing several empty vials. She waited until Dirk had his tank on before slipping on a pair of fins.

  “A midnight swim in the great Pacific Northwest,” she said, eyeing the stars overhead. “Almost sounds romantic.”

  “There is nothing romantic about a swim in forty-two-degree water,” Dirk replied, then clamped a snorkel between his teeth.

  With a quiet nod, they both slipped over the side and into the chilly black water. Adjusting their buoyancy, they took their bearings and began kicking their way out of the cove and toward the facility. They swam near the surface, their heads just breaking the water like a pair of a prowling alligators. Conserving their dive tanks, they used snorkels to breathe, sucking in the brisk night air through their silicone breathing tubes.

  The current was slightly stronger than Dirk had anticipated, led by the runoff from the Kitimat River at the head of the channel. They easily overpowered the headwaters, but the extra exertion built up body heat. Despite the frigid water, Dirk could feel himself sweating inside the thermal dry suit.

  A half mile from the plant, Dirk felt Summer tap his shoulder and turned to see her pointing toward the shore. In the shadows of a jagged ridge of pine trees, he could make out a boat moored close to land. It was darkened like their own vessel, and, in the dim night light, he was unable to ascertain its dimensions.

  Dirk nodded at Summer and swam deeper into the channel, putting a wide berth between them and the boat. They continued swimming at a measured pace until they closed within two hundred yards of the facility. Stopping to rest, Dirk tried to get a lay of the land beneath the blaring spotlights.

  A large L-shaped building stretched across the grounds, its base next to the covered dock. The whine of pumps and generators emanated from the structure, which processed the liquid carbon dioxide. A separate windowed building adjacent to a helicopter pad stood a few yards away and appeared to contain offices. Dirk guessed that the housing accommodations for the workers were located up the road, in the direction of Kitimat. Off to his right, a sturdy pier jutted into the channel, hosting a single boat. It was the same dark speedboat that had chased them away earlier in the day.

  Summer swam alongside, then reached down to her dive bag. Uncorking an empty vial, she collected a water sample while they drifted.

  “I gathered two additional samples on the way in,” she whispered. “If we can collect another one or two around the dock, then we should have the bases covered.”

  “Next stop,” he replied. “Let’s take it underwater from here.”

  Dirk took a bearing with a compass on his wrist, then slipped his regulator between his teeth and expelled a burst of air from his BC. Sinking a few feet below the surface, he gently began kicking toward the massive covered dock. The corrugated tin structure was relatively narrow, offering just a few feet of leeway for the ship occupying the lone berth. Yet the dock was well over a football field long, easily accommodating the ninety-meter tanker.

  The luminescent dial of the compass was barely visible in the inky water as Dirk followed his set bearing. The water grew lighter from the shoreside lights as he approached the dock entrance. He continued swimming until the dark shape of the tanker’s hull loomed before him. Slowly ascending, he broke the surface almost directly beneath the tanker’s stern rail. He quickly scanned the nearby dock, finding it deserted at the late hour. Pulling his hood away from one ear, he listened for voices, but the drone of the pump house would have made a shout difficult to detect. Gently kicking away from the side of the ship, he tried to get a better look at the vessel.

  Though a large ship from Dirk’s perspective, she was tiny as far as LNG carriers go. Designed with a streamlined deck, she could carry twenty-five hundred cubic meters of liquefied natural gas in two horizontal metallic tanks belowdecks. Built for coastal transport duty, she was dwarfed by the large oceangoing carriers that could hold more than fifty times the amount of liquefied natural gas.

  The ship was probably ten or twelve years old, Dirk gauged, showing wear at the seams but judiciously maintained. He didn’t know what modifications had been made for the ship to carry liquid CO2 but presumed they were minor. Though CO2 was somewhat denser than LNG, it required less temperature and pressure extremes to reach a liquid state. He peered up at the name Chichuyaa, beaded in gold lettering across the stern, noting the home registry of Panama City painted in white lettering below.

  A rise of bubbles rippled the water a few yards away, then Summer’s head popped through the surface. She glanced at the ship and dock, then nodded at her brother as she pulled out a vial and collected a water sample. When she finished, Dirk pointed toward the bow and dropped back beneath the surface. Summer followed suit, tracking her brother as he swam forward. Following the dark outline of the tanker’s hull, they swam down the length of the ship, quietly surfacing off the ship’s bow. Dirk eyed the tanker’s Plimsoll line a few feet overhead, noting that the vessel was just a foot or two shy of its fully loaded displacement.

  Summer turned her attention to a series of overhead feeder tubes that dangled like thick tentacles over the ship from an adjacent dockside pumping station. Called “Chiksan arms,” the large articulated pipes jimmied and swayed from the surge of the liquid CO2 flowing through inside. Small wisps of white smoke spewed from the pump building roof, condensation from the cooled and pressurized gas. Summer reached down and retrieved the last empty vial from her dive bag, wondering whether the water around her was contaminated with pollutants as she took the final sample. Zipping the full vial into her dive bag, she kicked toward her brother, who had drifted near the dock.

  As she approached, Dirk pointed toward the dock entrance and whispered, “Let’s go.”

  Summer nodded and started to turn, then suddenly hesita
ted in the water. Her eyes fixated on the Chiksan arms above Dirk’s head. With a quizzical look on her face, she raised a finger and pointed at the pipes far overhead. Dirk cocked his head and gazed up at the pipes for a minute but didn’t notice anything amiss.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “There’s something about the movement of the pipes,” she replied, staring at the arms. “I think the carbon dioxide is being pumped onto the ship.”

  Dirk stared up at the wiggling arms. There was a rhythmic movement through the pipes, but it was hardly sufficient to tell which way the liquefied gas was flowing. He looked at his sister and nodded. Her occasional hunches or intuitions were usually right. It was enough for him to want to check it out.

  “Do you think it means anything?” Summer asked, looking up at the ship’s bow.

  “Hard to say if it has any relevance,” Dirk replied quietly. “It doesn’t make any sense that they would be pumping CO2 onto the ship. Maybe there is an LNG pipeline from Athabasca running through here.”

  “Trevor said there was only a small oil pipeline and the CO2 line.”

  “Did you notice if the ship was sitting higher in the water this morning? ”

  “I couldn’t say,” Summer replied. “Though she ought to be a lot higher in the water now if she’s been off-loading gas for any amount of time.”

  Dirk looked up at the hulking vessel. “What I know about LNG ships, and it ain’t much, is that pumps on shore move the liquid onto the ships, and they have pumps on board to move it off at the destination. From the sound of it, the pump house on shore is clearly operating.”

  “That could be to pump the gas underground or into temporary storage tanks.”

  “True. But it is too noisy to tell if the shipboard pumps are running.” He kicked a few yards over to the dock, then poked his head up and looked around. The dock and visible portions of the ship were still deserted. Dirk slipped off his tank and weight belt and hung them from a nearby cleat.

  “You’re not going aboard?” Summer whispered as if her brother were insane.

  Dirk’s white teeth flashed in a grin. “How else will we solve the mystery, my dear Watson?”

  Summer knew that waiting in the water for her brother would be too nerve-racking, so she reluctantly hung her dive gear next to his and climbed onto the dock. Following him quietly toward the ship, she couldn’t help muttering, “Thanks, Sherlock,” under her breath.

  19

  The movement on the monitor was barely discernible. By all rights, the Aleut security guard should have missed it. A fortuitous glance at the bank of video monitors revealed a slight ripple in the water from one of the video feeds, aimed just astern of the tanker. The guard quickly hit a zoom button on the roof-mounted camera, catching sight of a dark object in the water seconds before it disappeared under the surface. Most likely a wayward harbor seal, the guard presumed, but it offered a good excuse to take a break from the dreary confines of the security station.

  He reached for a radio and called the watch aboard the Chichuyaa.

  “This is plant security. Video picked up an object in the water off your stern. I’m going to take the runabout alongside for a look.”

  “Roger, shore,” replied a sleepy voice. “We’ll keep the lights on for you.”

  The guard slipped on a jacket and grabbed a flashlight, then stopped in front of a gun cabinet. He eyed a black H&K assault rifle, then thought better of it, tucking a Glock automatic pistol into his holster instead.

  “Best not to be shooting seals this time of night,” he muttered to himself as he walked toward the pier.

  * * *

  The LNG carrier emitted a cacophony of mechanical sounds as the chilled gas flowed through the pipes stringing off its deck. Dirk knew there would be a few workers about monitoring the flow, but they were bound to be stationed in the bowels of the ship or at a control panel inside the pump house. Though the dockside area was dimly lit, the ship itself was brightly illuminated and rendered a high degree of exposure. Dirk figured they would need just a minute or two to slip on and determine if the ship’s pumps were operating.

  Slinking along the dock, they made their way to a main gangplank affixed amidships. Their sodden dry suits squished as they walked, but they made no effort to conceal the noise. The whir and throb of the nearby pump station was louder than ever and easily drowned out the sound of their movements. It also obscured the sound of an outboard motor chugging toward the covered dock.

  The security guard ran the small boat into the dock facility without lights. He loitered about the stern undetected for several minutes, then cruised down the outboard side of the tanker. Passing the prow of the ship, he started to circle back when he caught sight of the dive gear hanging on the wharf. He quickly killed the engine and drifted to the dock, tying the boat up and then examining the equipment.

  Summer saw him first, noticing a movement out of the corner of her eye as she turned to ascend the gangplank. Dirk had already taken a few steps up the ramp.

  “We have company,” she whispered, tilting her head in the guard’s direction.

  Dirk glanced quickly at the guard, who had his back turned to them. “Let’s get aboard. We can lose him on the ship if he spots us.”

  Ducking low, he raced up the gangway taking long strides. Summer matched his pace a few steps behind. They were clearly visible from the guard’s vantage, and they expected a shout from him to stop, but it never came. Instead, they zipped to the top of the ramp, escaping his scrutiny. But when Dirk was a step from the ship’s open side rail, a faint shadow appeared on deck, followed by a dark blur. Too late, Dirk realized, the blur was a swinging truncheon aimed for the side of his face. He tried to duck in midstep but was unable to dodge the blow. The wooden club caught him with a stinging blow across the crown of his skull. His dry suit hood softened what would have otherwise been a lethal blow. A kaleidoscope of stars crossed his eyes as his knees turned to jelly. Off balance when the blow struck, he reeled sideways, his hip crushing against the gangplank’s side rail. His momentum was all high, and his torso easily flipped over the side while his feet went skyward.

  He caught a brief glimpse of Summer reaching for him, but her frantic hands slipped away. Her mouth opened in a brief scream, though he failed to hear her voice. In an instant, she was gone, as he tumbled into space.

  The impact seemed to take forever in coming. When he finally collided with the water, it surprisingly induced no pain. There was just a cold smell of darkness before everything turned to black.

  20

  The shadow at the top of the ramp drifted into the light, revealing an ox of a man with a thick unkempt beard that brushed his chest. He stared at Summer through fiery eyes, his lips turning up in a slight grin as he waved the truncheon casually in her direction.

  Summer froze on the gangplank, then subconsciously back-pedaled as her eyes darted from the brute to the murky waters below. Dirk had struck the water hard, and he had yet to surface. She felt the ramp shake beneath her feet and turned to see the dock guard sprinting up behind her. The Aleut security guard was uniformed and clean-shaven, appearing to be a safer prospect than the heathen on the ship. Summer quickly took a step toward him.

  “My brother is in the water. He’s drowning,” she yelled, rushing to move past the guard. He quickly pulled the Glock automatic pistol from a side holster and leveled it at Summer’s thin midsection.

  “You have trespassed on private property,” he replied in a monotone voice that was short on mercy. “You shall be held in custody until company officials can be contacted in the morning.”

  “Let me take her into custody,” the shipboard brute barked. “I’ll show her some real trespassing.” He laughed with a bellow, spraying a shower of spittle across his beard.

  “This is a shore facility security matter, Johnson,” the guard said, eyeing the ship’s watchman with disdain.

  “The engine died on our boat. We just came looking for help,” Summer pleade
d. “My brother…”

  She looked over the side and cringed. The waters beneath the gangplank had turned flat, and there was no sign of Dirk.

  The guard motioned with his gun for Summer to march down the ramp. Following behind, he turned over his shoulder and growled at Johnson.

  “Fish that man out of the water, if you can find him. If he’s still alive, then bring him to the guard station.” He cut the man a sharp stare, then added, “For the sake of your own hide, you better hope he is still alive.”

  The ox grunted and begrudgingly strolled down the gangplank behind them. Marched along the dock, Summer tried in vain to spot Dirk in the water. Further pleas to the guard went unheeded. Walking beneath an overhead lamp, she saw a coldness in his eyes that gave her pause. While perhaps not a sadist like the ship’s watch, he appeared more than capable of pulling the trigger on an uncooperative captive. A blow of disheartenment seemed to strike Summer, and she plodded forward with her head low, awash in helplessness. She suspected that Dirk had probably been unconscious when he hit the water. Several minutes had since elapsed, and she now choked on the bitter reality. He was gone, and there was nothing she could do about it.

  * * *

  Johnson reached the base of the gangplank and peered into the water. There was no sign of Dirk’s body. The burly thug examined the edge of the dock but found no water marks indicating that he had pulled himself ashore. There was no way he could have swum the length of the ship without being seen. Somewhere under the surface, he knew, the man lay dead. The watch stared off the gangplank at the flat waters a last time, then ambled back onto the ship, cursing the shore guard.

  Ten feet under the surface, Dirk was unconscious but far from dead. After the fall, he had fought to regain his senses, but he was hopelessly ensnarled in the blackness. For brief moments, he was able to break through the veil and seize vague notions of feeling. He sensed his body moving through the water without effort. Then something was wedged between his lips, followed by the sensation of a flowing garden hose jammed into his mouth. Soon the curtain returned, and he again drifted away into a calm darkness.