Big Miracle

by Tom Rose

  That such an unmentionable observation was just now being examined proved that the rescuers had as much to learn as the whales. Of course, the whales’ chief obstacle was themselves. If the cetacean trio had properly interpreted the changing climatic conditions, they, like their fellow creatures, would be well on their way south, leaving the media to search for other spectacles.

  The time of the morning meeting was moved back to 8:30 to allow the participants more time to prepare their presentations and make early-morning phone calls. Some of the rescuers reported early at the Search and Rescue hangar for the morning briefing. When they arrived, they were met by several cameramen and their reporters desperate for a morsel of substantiation to confirm rumors of imminent Soviet involvement.

  They gathered at the conference table in the hangar’s L-shaped office area. Not unlike the colonel’s command table at Prudhoe, it was strewn with stained plastic coffee mugs and tinfoil ash trays exuding the noxious smell of vaporized carcinogens. Cindy Lowry, Tom Carroll, Randy Crosby, and Arnold Brower Jr. were determined to propel their unprepared leader toward decisive action. The coordinator, who had proven an adept media manipulator, had yet to offer tangible amelioration of the whales’ condition. After a week of public relations, substance was long overdue.

  Plus, without Morris’s attention to media management there may well not have been a coordinated rescue at all. Massaging the press was critical to the rescue’s chain of command. Ideas that would have been unthinkable just a week before were now well within the realm of possibility: invoking the mayor’s jobs programs, employing hundreds of Eskimos to cut open holes in the ice, the five-ton concrete bullet, and now, perhaps, Soviet icebreakers. They were all made possible by the masterful wooing of the press. But this Friday morning saw an abrupt end to the atmosphere of good feeling.

  Morris trudged irascibly up the thick rubber-tipped steps of the SAR hangar and entered the presence of his minions in a foul mood. The initiative and comity Morris brought to Barrow had regressed into bitter recriminations of almost everyone involved in the rescue. They were all exhausted, especially Morris who hadn’t slept more than few hours at a time in nearly a week.

  If Morris sought to hide his frustration with Arnold Brower Jr. and his Eskimos, he didn’t do a good job that morning. The meeting proceeded with an icy chill. Morris reiterated his insistence that he alone deal with the media. His once reassuring control now fell on hostile ears. Cindy Lowry tried to convince others to give the beleaguered man the benefit of the doubt. He had an impossible task. There was no way everyone was going to agree with him. He was the only one empowered to make tough decisions that would inevitably upset those he overruled. Like him or not, Cindy said, Ron Morris kept the operation together and alive through some very trying times. The whales were about to be saved, she pleaded with her colleagues. Couldn’t people try to keep their antipathies toward him in check for just a few more days?

  After convincing her skeptical colleagues to give Ron Morris another chance, she spoke by phone with a reinvigorated Bill Allen. Allen and VECO still wanted to be part of the rescue. With delight, Cindy accepted help from anyone kind enough to offer it. Like Colonel Carroll, Allen resolved to attempt less herculean methods to free the three trapped whales. Thursday night, the official abandonment of the hoverbarge all but complete, Allen lowered his sights but kept the freeing of the whales firmly in them. In many ways, the voluntary acceptance of the humanitarian mantle was the biggest single boost to company morale that Billy Bob Allen could remember. The unexpected strength of his employees’ will to help creatures in trouble filled him with pride. The rescue transcended industry, culture, and language. His VECO laborers worked as hard to free the whales as anyone. They were trained in oil exploration and extraction, not wildlife management; nevertheless, they displayed a remarkable commitment to freeing distressed animals. The stranded whales changed not only Billy Bob Allen but also the empire he created.

  Allen ordered his men to use more tested, less-sophisticated equipment. Over a conference call, the North Slope operations manager, Marvin King, told Allen that another VECO device had been tested during the day and seemed up to the task. It was a custom-made amphibious vehicle built to tow the hoverbarge to and from offshore oil platforms.

  To the delight of the humor-starved press in Barrow, VECO was serious when they named their machine the Archimedean Screw Tractor. Smaller than the hoverbarge, it was still too large to transport in one piece, even in the largest cargo aircraft. The tractor cut a fifteen-foot-wide swath of ice, slicing through it with the propellant force of its two long screw-shaped pontoons. Like the hoverbarge, it sat idle since the 1984 failure of the Mukluk Island oil well.

  “Hell,” Billy Bob exclaimed. “Let’s get that son of a bitch on up there.” When the euphoria subsided, Allen weighed the screw-tractor option with tempered expectations. Allen was well aware that at best, his device would augment the rescue, not direct it.

  Early Friday morning, Bill Allen told Colonel Carroll about the screw tractor. Pete Leathard couldn’t get through on Cindy’s interminably busy phone line. He left a message with the receptionist at the Top of the World Hotel, asking Cindy to call him or Billy Bob as soon as she had a spare minute. They wanted to talk about the screw tractor. It was one of several calls Cindy would be unable to return.

  The meeting on Friday morning, October 21, became a crucible for Operation Breakout. It was the first session without a master plan. The rescuers were on their own. All that carried the rescue forward was the momentum of Arnold Brower Jr., the Minnesota deicers, and rumors of the Russians. Just when the whales’ condition appeared stable, the rescue’s seemed terminal.

  The rumor of Soviet involvement was not the only one bantered about in Barrow. So was word of the collapse of the rescue; at least in its formal manner. If the Russians failed to come, Ron Morris would have little choice but to exercise his recognized authority, quietly put down the whales, and go home. After mobilizing hundreds of people and millions of dollars, the U.S. government would not have any way to save three whales from the Arctic elements.

  Unsubstantiated rumors of Soviet involvement abounded. They sent Ron Morris over the edge. If the rumors were true, why hadn’t he, as project coordinator, been consulted? He confronted Cindy Lowry, demanding to know whether she knew anything. Since Soviet participation was first discussed, Campbell Plowden had insisted on secrecy. Only if diplomatic channels failed to produce the desired results would going public become an option. At Plowden’s insistence, Cindy kept her tongue.

  Morris insisted on an answer from his one remaining friend. His mind raced through the possibilities. He couldn’t avoid the conclusion that if indeed the Soviets came, he would be swept away in the Arctic wind. But it wasn’t as though he truly expected the adrenaline of the past week to continue unabated. In his heart he knew that one way or another the operation would end. The whales would either die or be freed. His fear that Friday morning was perhaps a sharp and welcome reminder that there was only so much any one man could be expected to do.

  As Morris’s flare-up came to an end, the room filled with silence. He leaned forward and slowly pushed back his chair. He wiped the beads of sweat from his face and uttered a slight harumph, as if to offer an apology. His colleagues were all too glad to accept. It was time to return to the matter at hand. In the first brainstorming session of the operation, Morris encouraged everyone in the room to offer what they thought were feasible recommendations on how to free the whales. After each person listed his or her options, the group evaluated them.

  Morris eagerly swept around the conference table collecting the papers. Options ranged from the concrete bullet Colonel Carroll was scheduled to test on the ice later that day, to the Archimedean Screw Tractor. Not surprisingly, the options most mentioned were the only ones that already worked: the Eskimos and the deicers. The rescuers agreed to continue cutting holes toward the pressure ridge in the hope that the whales would use them.

/>   In the week since Operation Breakout began, the average temperature out on the ice had already dropped to twenty-five degrees below zero. The Arctic ice pack moved south nearly twenty miles and the shore ice grew farther out each day. The once fourteen-mile-wide lead had shrunk to barely a mile across at its narrowest point. If the whales could not be freed before the lead closed, no one could save them, not the Eskimo chain-saw gangs, not the National Guard, not the president of the United States, not even the mighty icebreakers from the Soviet Union.

  If the Soviets did not offer their assistance, the rescue command would have to think of other alternatives or call it quits and leave the whales to their fate. Suggestions once laughed at were now considered. Colonel Carroll offered to study the effects of detonating bombs of various destructive forces to blast a path through the ridge. Knowing Cindy might object, he promised to clear his plans with her before trying anything on his own. Even if explosives could break the ridge, they might not justify the risks to other Arctic life.

  Chastened by their weeklong wait for others, the rescue command went one step further, and began planning beyond the explosives. Assuming that they could never be used, Morris asked Cindy and others for other ideas on getting the whales past the forty-foot wall of ice.

  “What about flying them over the ridge in nets?” she asked. Killer whales, though smaller than the grays, had been moved this way before, but the procedure was dangerous. Luring a gray whale safely into a net under thick ice was one thing, lifting it safely out was quite another. Even the Skycrane, the world’s most powerful transport helicopter, might not have the power to pull the 50,000-pound whales out of the water and fly them the mile or so to open water. The whales would have to be tranquilized. Since a dose small enough for a man could kill a whale, administering drugs would prove tricky. Then there was the unknown effect of gravity. Would it split their huge girths wide open, splattering their entrails onto the ice below? That would surely make for morbidly fascinating video.

  Dr. Tom Albert from the North Slope Borough contacted a friend in Norway who was an expert in drugging whales. He began preparing the serum. Sea World in San Diego, which had successfully airlifted killer whales, began knitting a huge mesh net big enough for the much larger grays. It was an audacious scheme with little chance of success. But if all else failed, they would be ready to try. With great efficiency, Operation Breakout took on a mission all its own. While the upper echelons plotted to assault the pressure ridge, the Eskimos continued with their meticulous ice cutting. Arnold Brower and his crews had opened fifty-five new holes since they started cutting them earlier in the week.

  As soon as the deicers arrived two nights earlier, the three whales started using the new holes. But then, they stopped. Geoff, Craig and the National Marine Mammal Laboratory biologists couldn’t figure out why. Maybe they were resting. After two grueling weeks, the whales were finally breathing normally again. They actually seemed to enjoy their bubbly new surroundings. That same Friday morning, Craig George suddenly changed his mind. Standing quietly with Cindy, he noticed Bone, the baby whale, still lagged behind Poutu and Siku, the larger, more robust whales.

  “Damn it,” Craig blurted out in sudden realization. “They aren’t moving because of the baby.”

  Only when they were absolutely threatened by Wednesday night’s freezing holes did the whales move. When they reached the relative security of the new holes, they stopped. It had to be for Bone. Craig’s logic held up to Geoff’s preliminary analysis. In a remarkable display of bonding, neither of the two adolescent whales would abandon their helpless dependent. The only thing that could compel them to take such a radical step was a clear and present danger to their own well-being. The deicers eliminated that threat.

  By noon, the ice surrounding the whales had resumed an eerie silence. As rumors of the Soviet icebreakers spread, most reporters fled back to town to tap their sources on the Outside. They finally had some legitimate reporting to do: real leads to follow, real people to talk to, real news. Best of all, they didn’t have to stand outside in the minus-thirty-degree temperatures to do it. Cindy wanted to make her own phone calls. When she last heard from Campbell Plowden, a Soviet decision, contingent upon U.S. approval, seemed imminent. The hundred-man round-the-clock rescue operation never really required Cindy’s constant presence on the ice. Still, she felt the whales were her domain. She had to be with them. But like everyone else, she was hungry, cold, and wanted to go back to town.

  Cindy ran to the SAR helicopter, gave Randy Crosby a warm pat on the helmet, and climbed aboard. As Crosby gently lifted his aircraft and its human cargo off the surface of the ice, the chain of holes faded from view. The loud hum of the helicopter proved a welcome relief for Cindy. But the peace of the buzzing engines was short-lived. A second string of reporters waited for Cindy and Ron to confirm the reports now being widely reported in the Lower 48: the Soviets had offered an icebreaker and a support ship to help free the whales. The Russians were on the way. Not knowing what to say, Cindy elbowed nervously past the crowd to get to the nearest phone. She professed her ignorance several times before the reporters began to believe her. Later, when Cindy tried to tell the truth, she and Greenpeace would both appear a bit foolish.

  When she walked into the lobby of the Top of the World, the press assumed a very different role. It was as though the lobby were a sanctuary where all who entered were “off the record.” Once she went inside, the reporters no longer asked her any questions or stuck any microphones or cameras in her face. It was then Cindy realized that reporters not only expected their subjects to act for them, they were actors themselves.

  20

  The Russians Are Coming

  Campbell Plowden, Cindy Lowry’s comrade in Washington, plodded nervously ahead. While waiting to hear from the State Department, he followed up on his two whale crises unfolding 15,000 miles apart. Even for a man whose job description included organizing boycotts and managing chaos, these were hectic times.

  Lunch was long past when he received a call from Tucker Scully, Assistant Secretary John Negroponte’s top deputy at the State Department. Plowden had waited for Scully’s call all morning; his frenzied pace had prevented him from taking even three minutes to wolf down the avocado-and-sprout sandwich he had made for himself that morning. Scully told Plowden that before the State could officially authorize the Soviet vessels to enter U.S. waters, he would need answers to several technical questions. Scully wanted more information about the Soviet ships, such as their specifications and capabilities. He told Plowden it was standard State Department liability procedure. If the ships ran aground or a Soviet crewman was injured in U.S. waters, the Americans didn’t want to be responsible. Scully didn’t know how long it would take for him to get back to Plowden. Counseling patience, he promised to call back as soon as he could, but advised Plowden not to get his hopes up.

  Until then, he told Plowden, “Keep a lid on it. We don’t want word of this leaking out before its time,” he said. When the time was right, the State Department wanted to break the story themselves. Plowden wondered why people at State spent more time worrying about protocol than about policy. Why were they so insistent about “handling” the announcement? It could only make Plowden wonder. Did they want to steal all the credit? Or did they want to create the proper conditions to spurn the Russians’ help?

  “How can you possibly read something sinister into this?” Plowden asked the bewildered foreign service officer. “The whole world wants action and all you can do is stall!” Plowden had exhausted his patience. “What is it with you people?” he asked, not expecting an answer. During those fateful October days, Plowden was hardly alone in his demand for immediate action. After almost a week of gripping but frustrating drama, the world’s passion for the whales’ safety was reaching a climax. Everyone longed for a resolution, and Soviet participation seemed certain to lead to one. The sooner their ships were permitted to enter U.S. waters, the sooner the world would know whether the
whales could be saved. Unless the icebreakers could crush the pressure ridge, hope was lost.

  Plowden called Cindy. Stymied by the State Department’s terminal caution, he had nothing new to report. Instead he listened to his near-exhausted colleague. For the past week Cindy had slept only a few hours a day. Between boisterous reporters making noise at all hours and neverending calls from quote-hungry journalists on the Outside, it was all she could manage. All the private-room lines were jammed, so she took Plowden’s call on the phone in the lobby. A long line proceeded to form behind her. Cindy was lucky to find the phone free; most reporters had to wait over an hour that confusing Friday for a chance to be filled in on the story’s rapidly unfolding developments taking place a world away.

  “Is there anyone there who can help us?” Plowden pleaded. “What about the guy the president called, the colonel? Maybe he has some connections.”

  Cindy didn’t know how to react to her desperate coworker. For reasons she was never able to acknowledge, she didn’t want to ask Colonel Carroll. She had only met him a few times, and was in no position to complain about his treatment of her. Every time they spoke, he was perfectly pleasant. She just didn’t like the idea of getting him involved. Plowden instantly detected her reluctance, but he insisted she approach the colonel anyway.

  “You’re the one who claims we don’t have any time,” he reminded her. “Just ask him to help us.”

  Plowden, Cindy Lowry, and everyone else for that matter, knew that Tom Carroll must have impressive connections. After all, the president had called him, not Ron Morris. For the first time, Cindy let her preconceptions interfere with the rescue. Her reluctance was overcome by her concern for the whales. Besides, she had worked with Bill Allen, Ben Odom, and the other oil people, and the National Guard never drilled oil wells or polluted the oceans. Dismissing her wayward thoughts, she raced to locate the colonel. She found him reviewing flight logs in the Search and Rescue hangar, impervious to the pandemonium all around him. She was taken aback by the warmth of his greeting. Subconsciously she hoped he would show some visible sign of resentment to justify her negative feelings. Without knowing it, the amiable colonel stirred her guilt.