Firespill

by Ian Slater

  The Canadian and American police in northwest British Columbia, the Alaskan Panhandle, the Queen Charlotte Islands, and the Alexander Archipelago were working as fast as they could to initiate what the authorities had hoped would be an orderly evacuation but what in fact was beginning to resemble a rout from a war zone.

  East of Ketchikan at the Hyder-Stewart border crossing between Canada and Alaska, long lines of evacuees, panic-stricken by the news reports of the approaching fire, jammed the highway, their overloaded cars and trucks stretching back for miles. Children cried, grandparents tried to soothe, and impatient parents attempted, with varying success, to remain patient, their growing anxiety all the time threatening to push them into blind rage. The customs officials, who had as yet received no explicit instructions from above, continued to ask each immigrant, “Good evening. Where do you live? Where do you come from?” and “Are you importing anything into the country?” Finally the hereditary chief of a local Haida band had to be physically restrained from punching a police officer who, with clipboard dutifully by his side, had thrust his overworked face into the Indian’s crowded car and asked quite ingenuously, “Are you landed immigrants?”

  By now the President’s staff had had time to assemble oil experts both at the White House and by phone linkups across the country, and observers had been sent to the coastal areas.

  But as the minutes flew by, the President felt more and more like the coach of a losing team committed to a blocking action, and a futile blocking at that, as an apparently invincible opposition ate further and further into home territory. One of the telexes stuttered to life in the annex, and Henricks tore off the latest message. Sutherland turned anxiously away from the clocks. “Is it spreading?”

  “Afraid so, Mr. President. Satellite pictures show that we’ve reached flash point. There’s an immense pileup of smoke. They say that means a lot more of the crude is burning.”

  Sutherland thought of Elaine and at once regretted it. “Is it the wind?” he asked, as much to divert his thoughts away from her as to know the answer.

  Henricks called over one of the oilmen. It was the expert’s first time in the White House. He was a small, flabby man who walked comically but did everything else with the utmost seriousness as if to compensate. His voice began at a nervous pitch. “Ah—partly, Mr. President.” He cleared his throat. “Partly—I mean, part of the wind is made up of—well, the front coming down from the Arctic, and part is caused by the fire generating a wind system of its own. It’s, ah, fanning itself, you see.”

  “Hmm,” Sutherland murmured as he turned back to Henricks, leaving the oilman to back away. “The sub. How’s it doing?”

  “It’s on maximum speed—eighteen knots submerged—but it’s still about two hours from the Vice-President.” Henricks grimaced and went on. “That is, providing the fishing boat’s still afloat. The sub won’t have it on its sonar for a while yet.”

  “If they are holding out in that calm area, can the boat wait that long for the sub with this increase in wind?”

  Henricks exhaled wearily while he studied his note pad. “It’s got about two hours—maybe—”

  The President cut in. “About, about! All I’ve heard is ‘partly’ and ‘about’ and ‘maybe’! Can’t I have a definite time?”

  The oilman nearby flushed with embarrassment, but Henricks was unflappable. “Well, Mr. President, just about all—I mean all—the satellite pictures can show us is black smoke and what little visible spill there is. We’ve no satellite sighting of the Vice-President’s boat, and on board it they can’t see anything to get a fix on. They haven’t got Loran navigation equipment on a vessel that size.”

  “All right, Bob, I’m sorry. How long do you think they have?”

  “No more than two hours. They probably figure they have longer, because they won’t know yet about the wind from the north coming down on them. And it’s impossible for us to tell with all this new smoke just what the fire wind is doing to the clear area they’re in. Or were in. Not only that, the two wind systems could end up fighting one another, one pushing the fire towards them and the other pushing it away—or they could both drive the spill towards them.”

  “How about warning them that the wind’s rising? I mean the ordinary wind—Christ, now I don’t know what goddamn wind I’m talking about.” The President’s brow furrowed with anxiety. “Anyway, don’t you think we should get some word to them? Alert them?”

  Henricks admired the President’s impulse to keep the Vice-President and her companion informed, but Search and Rescue Command had cautioned against it. He looked around for more coffee. “I don’t think we should, Mr. President. There’s nothing they can do anyway. It won’t help them to be told that the situation could worsen.”

  The President agreed, but asked, “How about the sub? If the wind spreads the spill too far, they’re in real trouble. What can we tell them?”

  “Nothing at the moment. It’s too dark for satellite pictures. But now the Coast Guard’s sending out patrols to try to chart the edge of the fire. That way we might get some idea of how far the spill has come. We probably won’t know until after the Vice-President’s picked up, though. If she’s picked up.”

  “All right, Bob, I’ll leave it to you, but tell the Canadians as soon as you know. Those guys are pushing their luck as it is.”

  “Yes, Mr. President.”

  Feeling the strain of standing for so long before the map, Sutherland sat down. Facing him was a digital clock labeled Firespill Time. As the seconds flashed on and off, an old minute rolled over and disappeared from the electronic counting drum. Sutherland stared at the clock’s imperturbable face, imagining in his fatigue that it was mocking him. In that moment, another second had passed.

  As the estimated rescue time approached, inside the Swordfish Kyle had ordered the air-conditioning unit all but shut down to save power, and tempers were rising with the heat.

  An oiler, Leading Seaman Evers, had collapsed over the spinning propeller shaft and had been taken to sick bay suffering from severe friction bums. In the redded-out control room it was already 103 degrees Fahrenheit and climbing, and the dials showed that they were using up oxygen faster than anticipated. The air was filled with the stench of rotting vegetables. Had Kyle known two days ago, during a deliberately prolonged and exhausting antiescort exercise, that they would be forced down for so long, he would have followed the normal procedure and opened the carbon dioxide scrubbers to maintain the carbon dioxide level at the time of diving. Now all the scrubbers could do was keep the present low level of breathable air.

  Throughout the boat men began to shuffle rather than walk. The slightest aggravation could touch off a fury out of all proportion to its inconvenience. Those off duty lay or sat in a sweaty stupor. Conversation for its own sake had long since ceased.

  Lambrecker sat slumped indolently against the bulkhead in the tiny ship’s office, rolling a cigarette and sullenly observing his young and frightened guard. He had seen little of Nairn among the eighty-four-man crew since meeting him the first day out. O’Brien had moved Naim to another sleeping quarter, and being on different shifts the two men had rarely encountered each other.

  Lambrecker struck a match to light the cigarette, but the flame vanished almost immediately. Like an exhausted yet contemptuous hobo sitting in a gutter, he grunted up at the baby-faced seaman. “Hey, you.” Naim tried to look away, but there was no way his eyes could avoid Lambrecker’s stare. “Hey, you—Nairn, isn’t it?”

  Naim simply nodded, determined to say nothing. O’Brien had warned him not to talk to the prisoner. Lambrecker struck another match, sucking quickly and heavily on the cigarette, but even so only part of the tobacco caught light before the flame disappeared. He held up the blackened match to Nairn. “You see that?”

  Naim tried to look away.

  “Hey, I said did you see that?” asked Lambrecker, still holding up the match.

  Despite his earlier resolution, Nairn felt im
pelled to answer, if only to keep Lambrecker quiet. Besides, it seemed an innocent enough question. “Yes,” he said, “I see it,” adding with a surge of daring, “so what?”

  “So what?” replied Lambrecker. “So why does a match hardly bum? Where the hell did you go to school, Nairn? That means we’re pretty low on oxygen, dummy—that’s what! That’s why we’re all sitting here sweating like pigs.”

  Nairn pointed the butt of his rifle towards Lambrecker in a futile attempt at a threat. “You’d better shut up.”

  Lambrecker sneered, “Oh, Jesus.” After a few seconds he asked, “Ever screwed a woman, Nairn?”

  Naim blushed. “Look, you’d better shut—”

  “You ever screwed anything?”

  Naim didn’t answer.

  “Well, don’t worry,” sneered Lambrecker. “Because you’re never going to screw anything. Ever.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “I mean we’re gonna suffocate, that’s what, dummy.” Lambrecker drew heavily again on his cigarette. “You feel drowsy?”

  Naim shrugged. “A little, I guess.”

  “A little! Don’t bullshit me, sonny. Another hour and you won’t be able to stay on your feet. That’s the carbon dioxide in the air. That’s what’ll put you to sleep. Permanently. And you’ll lie there like a dummy and let that incompetent old bastard do it to you, won’t you? You’ll go without a whimper. Like a fucking sheep to the slaughter.”

  O’Brien, on his way back to the control room after checking out the engine room, could smell a cigarette, but he decided not to say anything about it. While it used up oxygen, the amount was not enough to make any difference, and even if it were, most captains, he’d found, preferred to tolerate the habit rather than risk the tensions that would be aroused by banning it. As he neared the ship’s office, he heard Lambrecker talking, against his orders. For a second neither Naim nor his prisoner recognized him, because he was wearing the red goggles issued to all officers for night duty so that they could quickly adjust to the redded-out control room. O’Brien pointed his finger at Lambrecker. When he had mustered sufficient breath, he said, “Shut up, Lambrecker. Save your energy.”

  “What for?” Lambrecker contemptuously flicked his extinguished cigarette at Naim’s feet. “There isn’t going to be any rescue, O’Brien, and you know it.”

  O’Brien glanced at Naim and said, “If he opens his trap again, hit it.” Then he moved on.

  Lambrecker watched him go. “Anything happens to me, O’Brien, and I’ll make sure they throw the book at you.”

  The first officer stopped, turned around, and winked at Naim. “How you going to do that if we’re all supposed to kick off, Lambrecker?” Lambrecker mumbled an obscenity and began rolling another cigarette, while Naim stood grinning down at him.

  Beads of perspiration were stinging O’Brien’s forehead and penetrating the rim of his goggles like persistent insects. He wanted to walk faster down the passageway, but his position, he saw, was analogous to that of the sub. The faster he went, the more energy he used. He would need all the strength he could muster when, or if, they found the fishing boat. But while they must conserve energy, he knew that Lambrecker might be right. If they didn’t get there in time, they wouldn’t save anyone—including themselves. Passing from the white light of the sub into its red heart, he pulled the goggles off with visible relief. He looked up at the clock and checked his watch. It was 1930. In just over one hour, at 2031, they would have to turn back, with or without the Vice-President.

  Deciding that there was nothing more he could do for Elaine or the old man until they heard from the sub, the President rang for Jean Roche, who arrived shortly with a special edition of the New York Times, together with a hurriedly gathered selection of papers from across the country and wire copy from the foreign press. He would have to prepare himself for the inevitable criticism and later press conferences. He waved Jean to a seat. She was obviously exhausted as she gratefully sat down and began quickly shuffling her notes into order. The President noticed that her face was drawn and that her hair, normally immaculate, was starting to show signs of strain. He smiled and patted her on the shoulder. “Take your time. Have you eaten?”

  “No, but it’s all right.”

  The President called out to a young press aide, “Get some food in here, will you?” He turned to Jean. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee, thank you. That’d be nice.”

  As the aide lifted the phone to order, the President asked, as jovially as he could under the circumstances, “Well, who’s howling the loudest? About the spill, first.”

  “The Organization of American States, the Common Market, the States for African Unity—in short, the whole UN General Assembly.”

  The President sat back in his chair. “Good! That means everybody’s feeling guilty for a change. Go on.”

  Jean gestured at the high pile of press clippings before her. “It’s hard to know where to begin. Raison of CBS got onto the story in Sitka. Unfortunately, he also recognized some of our agents.”

  The President started. “What agents? Jesus Christ, don’t tell me they’re trying to drag the CIA into this!”

  Jean Roche was quick to cut in. If the President got onto his pet peeve about people seeing CIA spooks under their beds, they would never get through the press reports before the emergency pollution meeting scheduled for later that night.

  “No, no, Mr. President, the Secret Service people who were supposed to be with the Vice-President.”

  The President was still angry. “Jesus! Now we really look dumb.” He got up from his chair quickly, pushing it back so hard that Henricks, on the telephone nearby, had to reach out and stop it from tipping over. The President pulled over a copy of the New York Times. “I don’t understand why Elaine went a hundred miles out to sea in a goddamn bathtub.”

  Jean thought it prudent not to mention that it was forty-odd miles out to sea, not a hundred. The President’s shoulders slumped a little. He paused, and then went on. “Well, I do know, I suppose. Poor girl—she’s hounded every other second of her life.” He glanced sympathetically at Jean. “Like you are,” he added. For some reason she did not understand, Jean blushed. Sutherland went on. “A person has to get right away from it sometimes—don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  The President sat down again. “What’s the Secret Service say?”

  “Chief Holborn is hopping mad, by all accounts. He’s blasting agents from here to Anchorage.”

  Sutherland nodded. “Sure. He’s right, of course.” Then he looked at Jean and asked, “Still, what would you have done if the Vice-President of the United States had left you ashore so she could have some privacy?”

  Without hesitation Jean replied, “I would have hired another boat and followed her, Mr. President.”

  Sutherland smiled. “Well said, Ms. Roche. They could use you over in the State Department.”

  Jean turned back to the press reports, commenting quietly, “I’d rather stay here.”

  Sutherland looked at her fondly. “Thank you, Jean.”

  “Mr. President,” Henricks called out, cupping a hand over the receiver and rapidly jotting on his note pad with the other. Then he was on the phone again. “Yes, Admiral. Where? Hmm. How far?”

  A middle-aged woman, a member of the kitchen staff, started to push in a squeaking trolley of fresh sandwiches and coffee. Henricks held up his hand at her. She stopped abruptly as the aide, his face taut, continued his conversation with the admiral. “I see—yes. What are they doing about it? … All right … Yes, I’ll tell him right away. Thank you, Admiral.”

  Before Henricks had put down the phone, the President asked, “More on fire?”

  “Admiral Klein has just received a report that the Japanese LNG—the liquid gas tanker out of Juneau—was caught by the fire near Chichagof Island. She turned about and tried to make a run for it, but the wind had blown a ring around her.”

  Henricks dropped his note pad dejec
tedly on the table. “She blew up eleven minutes ago. He said the gas tanks went off like missiles.” Henricks didn’t want to tell the President the rest, but he knew that he had no choice. “It’s estimated she’s added more than forty thousand tons of liquid methane gas to the fire, which means we’ve got a fire storm on top of everything else. Winds are reported to be a hundred and twenty miles per hour at the center. They’ll probably sink some of the crude by creating huge wave action near the LNG area, but they’ll still cause more than enough trouble by sucking up oil particles that will have to come down somewhere else.”

  Sutherland’s voice was strained. “How does it affect the Vice-President’s position?”

  Henricks walked over to the map and pointed at the intersection of the coordinates the admiral had given him—a spot about sixty miles northwest of Baranof Island and twenty miles from the southern tip of Chichagof Island. “It doesn’t affect them. It’s too far north.”

  The President’s eyes followed the long, curving arrows which indicated the counterclockwise sweep of the Alaska Current as it broke away northward from the Japan Current and the clockwise curve of the California Current turning away to the south. Then he turned to the diagram showing the joint effect of the clockwise movement of the Coriolis Force in the Northern Hemisphere and the strong alliance formed whenever the wind direction coincides with the direction of current. “But it will raise the crude in that area to its flash point and head it in for the Alaskan coast. Right?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Get Mr. Partly over here.”

  Henricks looked puzzled. “Sir?”

  The President motioned toward the telexes at the far end of the room. “The oilman—the fat one.”