Arctic Drift (A Dirk Pitt Novel, #20)

by Cussler, Clive

  “You seem awful merry,” Pitt remarked.

  “You heard what the man said,” Giordino replied. “We’re going to Anchorage. Anchorage, Alaska,” he repeated lovingly. “South of the Arctic Circle. Did ever a place sound so warm and inviting?” he asked with a contented grin.

  88

  THE B-2 SPIRIT HAD BEEN AIRBORNE FOR OVER five hours. Taking off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, the wedge-shaped stealth bomber had flown west on what appeared to be a normal training flight. But five hundred miles out over the Pacific, the black-and-gray aircraft, which resembled a giant manta ray in flight, turned northeast, flying toward the coast of Washington State.

  “AC-016 bearing zero-seven-eight degrees,” the mission commander said in a soft Carolina accent. “She’s right on time.”

  “I’ve got her,” replied the pilot.

  Tweaking the throttles on the four turbofan jet engines, he banked the plane by thrust until matching the flight bearing, then closed in on a small white target visible out the cockpit window. Satisfied with his position, the pilot backed off on the throttles to match the speed of the leading aircraft.

  Less than a quarter mile ahead and a thousand feet below was an Air Canada Boeing 777, bound for Toronto from Hong Kong. The pilots aboard the commercial airliner would have choked had they known that a billion-dollar bomber was tailing them into Canadian airspace.

  With a nearly invisible radar signature, the crew of the B-2 need not have worried about hiding in the 777’s shadow to complete their mission. But with heightened military alerts on both sides of the border, they were taking no chances. The bomber tailed the jetliner over Vancouver and across British Columbia into Alberta. Approximately fifty miles west of Calgary, the Canadian airliner made a slight course adjustment to the southeast. The B-2 held its position, then veered sharply to the northeast.

  Its target was the Canadian Forces Base at Cold Lake, Alberta, one of two Canadian air bases that housed F-18 fighter jets. A “quarter stick” of seven five-hundred-pound laser-guided bombs was to be dropped on the airfield, with the intent to damage or destroy as many fighter jets as possible while minimizing loss of life. With no response from the Canadian government after his twenty-four-hour admonition, the President had elected to halve the first-strike recommendation from the Pentagon and proceed with an attack on a single military installation.

  “Eight minutes to target,” the mission commander announced. “Performing final weapons arming now.”

  As he cycled through a computerized weapons-control sequence, an urgent radio call suddenly transmitted over their headsets.

  “Death-52, Death-52, this is Command,” came the unexpected call from Whiteman. “You are ordered to abort mission. I repeat, we have a mission abort. Please stand down and acknowledge, over.”

  The mission commander acknowledged receipt of the last-minute command, then immediately cycled down the bomber’s armaments. The pilot slowly reversed course, flying back toward the Pacific before setting a course to their home air base.

  “The boss man cut it a little close there,” the pilot said a short while later.

  “You’re telling me,” the mission commander replied, a deep sense of relief in his voice. “That’s one mission I’m glad was scrubbed.”

  Gazing out at the Canadian Rockies passing beneath their wings, he added, “I just hope nobody else finds out how close we really came.”

  89

  BILL STENSETH LISTENED TO THE DEEP RUMBLE of the icebreaker’s powerful gas turbine engines, then nodded at the Narwhal ’s helmsman beside him to get the big vessel under way. As the ship slowly began to bull its way through the ice, Stenseth stepped out onto the frozen bridge wing and gave a friendly salute to the Santa Fe, still positioned in the ice a short distance away. Standing atop the sail, Commander Campbell returned the gesture, then prepared his own vessel to return to the depths.

  The Otok turned and forged its way through the ice toward the NUMA submersible, easing to a halt just alongside. A pair of crewmen were let down onto the ice, where they attached a lifting cable to the Bloodhound. A large swing crane then lifted the submersible aboard the icebreaker, depositing it in a tight corner on the stern deck. In an adjacent unheated storage shed, the bodies of Clay Zak and his dead security team mercenaries were laid out, wrapped in makeshift canvas body bags.

  A short distance across the ice, a polar bear stuck his head over a ridge and observed the operations. The same bear that Giordino had nearly awakened, it stood and stared at the icebreaker with annoyed disturbance, then turned and padded across the ice in search of a meal.

  Once the Bloodhound was secured, the icebreaker moved on again, breaking into open water much to Stenseth’s relief. The ship steamed west, on a tack through Queen Maud Gulf and on toward the Beaufort Sea. The Santa Fe had by now slipped under the ice and trailed the icebreaker a mile or two behind. Stenseth would have been surprised to learn that by the time they’d leave Canadian waters, there would be no fewer than three American submarines sailing a silent escort, while a bevy of long-range patrol aircraft monitored their progress high overhead.

  Along with Murdock, Stenseth enjoyed the opportunity to command a new vessel. With his own crew from the Narwhal and most of the Polar Dawn’s crew aboard, he was surrounded by able assistants. The icebreaker’s former crew was safely under guard belowdecks, watched closely by the Santa Fe’s SEAL contingent and Rick Roman’s commando team. Almost every man had wanted to sail home on the icebreaker, as a show of retribution for the ordeal suffered at the hands of her crew.

  Once the ship was free of the sea ice, Stenseth turned toward a noisy congregation behind him. Crowded around the chart table with his bandaged leg propped up on a folding chair, Pitt sat sipping a hot coffee. Giordino and Dahlgren were wedged alongside, wagering over the contents of the thick leather logbook that sat at the table’s center.

  “Are you going to find out what’s in the Erebus log or continue to torture me with suspense?” Stenseth asked the trio.

  “The captain is right,” said Giordino, who, like Pitt, had an assorted array of bandages taped to his face. He gingerly shoved the logbook over to Pitt.

  “I believe you have the honors,” he said.

  Pitt looked down with expectation. The Erebus logbook was bound in hand-tooled leather, with an etching of a globe on the front cover. The book had received little damage from the black powder explosion, showing only a few small burn marks on the binding. Zak had held the logbook opposite the powder cask when it exploded, unwittingly protecting it with his body. Pitt had found the book wedged in a step beside his mangled corpse.

  Pitt slowly opened the cover and turned to the first formal entry.

  “Going to build the suspense, eh?” Stenseth asked.

  “Cut to the chase, boss,” Dahlgren implored.

  “I knew I should have kept this in my cabin,” Pitt replied.

  With prying eyes and endless questions, he gave up thoughts of digesting the journal chronologically and skipped to the last entry.

  “ ‘April 21, 1848,’ ” he read, silencing the crowd. “ ‘It is with regret that I must abandon the Erebus today. A portion of the crew remains in a maniacal state, imposing danger to the officers and other crewmen alike. It is the hard silver, I suspect, although I know not why. With eleven good men, I shall embark for the Terror, and therewith await the spring thaw. May the Almighty have mercy on us, and on the ill men who stay behind. Captain James Fitzjames.’ ”

  “The hard silver,” said Giordino. “That must be the ruthenium.”

  “Why would it cause the men to go crazy?” Dahlgren asked.

  “There’s no reason that it should,” Pitt said, “though an old prospector told me a similar tale of lunacy that was blamed on ruthenium. The crew of the Erebus faced lead poisoning and botulism from their canned foods, on top of scurvy, frostbite, and the hardship of three winters bound on the ice. It might have just been an accumulation of factors.”

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p; “He seems to have made an unfortunate choice to leave the ship,” Giordino noted.

  “Yes,” Pitt agreed. “The Terror was crushed in the ice, and they probably figured the Erebus would be as well, so it is easy to see their rationale for going ashore. But the Erebus somehow remained locked in the ice and was apparently driven ashore sometime later.”

  Pitt moved backward through the logbook, reading aloud the entries from the prior weeks and months. The journal told a disturbing tale that quickly silenced the anxious bridge crowd. In tragic detail, Fitzjames wrote of Franklin’s ill-fated attempt to dash down Victoria Strait in the waning summer days of 1846. The weather turned rapidly, and both ships became trapped in the unprotected sea ice far from land. Their second Arctic winter set in, during which Franklin became ill and died. It was during this time that signs of madness began to afflict some of the crew members. Curiously, it was recorded that such behavior was notably absent aboard the sister ship, Terror. The Erebus’s crew’s lunacy and violent behavior continued to proliferate until Fitzjames was forced to take his remaining men and withdraw to the Terror.

  The earlier logbook entries turned routine, and Pitt began skipping pages until finding a lengthy entry that referenced the hard silver.

  “I think this is it,” he said in a low tone, as every man on the bridge crowded in close and stared at him silently.

  “ ‘August 27, 1845. Position 74.36.212 North, 92.17.432 West. Off Devon Island. Seas slight, some pancake ice, winds westerly at five knots. Crossing Lancaster Sound ahead of Terror when lookout spots sail at 0900. At 1100, approached by whaler Governess Sarah, Capetown, South Africa, Captain Emlyn Brown commanding. Brown reports vessel was damaged by ice and forced into Sound for several weeks, but is now repaired. Crew is very low on provisions. We provide them one barrel of flour, fifty pounds of salt pork, a small quantity of tinned meats, and ¼ cask rum. It is observed that many among G.S.’s crew exhibit odd behavior and uncouth mannerisms. In gratitude for provisions, Captain Brown provides ten bags of ‘hard silver.’ An unusual ore mined in South Africa, Brown claims it has excellent heat retention properties. Ship’s crew has started heating buckets of ore on galley stove and placing under bunks at night, with effective results.

  “ ‘We make for Barrow Strait tomorrow.’ ”

  Pitt let the words settle, then slowly raised his head. A look of disappointment hung on the faces of the men around him. Giordino was the first to speak.

  “South Africa,” he repeated slowly. “The burlap bag we found in the hold. It was marked Bushveld, South Africa. Regrettably, it supports the account.”

  “Maybe they’re still mining the stuff in Africa?” Dahlgren posed.

  Pitt shook his head. “I should have remembered the name. That was one of the mines that Yaeger checked out. It essentially played out some forty years ago.”

  “So there’s no ruthenium left in the Arctic,” Stenseth said soberly.

  “Nope,” Pitt replied, closing the logbook with a look of defeat. “Like Franklin, we’ve pursued a cold and deadly passage to nowhere.”

  EPILOGUE

  THE ROCK

  90

  THOUGH FAR FROM A CREATURE OF HABIT, MITCHELL Goyette did have one conspicuous ritual. While in Vancouver, he lunched every Friday afternoon at the Victoria Club. A posh private golf club in the hills north of town, the secluded enclave offered a stunning view of Vancouver Harbor from its ornate clubhouse near the eighteenth green. As a young man, Goyette had his membership application unconditionally rejected by the haughty high-society icons that controlled the club. But he had exacted revenge years later when he acquired the golf course and club in a major land deal. Promptly tossing out all of the old members, he’d repopulated the private club with bankers, politicians, and other power brokers whom he could exploit to augment his fortune. When not pressing the flesh to close a business deal, Goyette would relax over a three-martini lunch with one of his girlfriends in a corner booth overlooking the harbor.

  At exactly five minutes to noon, Goyette’s chauffeur-driven Maybach pulled up to the front guard gate and was promptly waved through to the clubhouse entrance. Two blocks down the road, a man in a white panel van watched the Maybach enter the grounds, then started his own car. With a magnetic sign affixed to the side reading COLUMBIA JANITORIAL SUPPLY, the van pulled up to the guard gate. The driver, wearing a work hat and sunglasses, rolled down the window and stuck out a clipboard that had a printed work order attached.

  “Delivery for the Victoria Club,” the driver said in a bored voice.

  The guard glanced at the clipboard, then passed it back without reading it.

  “Go on in,” he replied. “Service entrance is to your right.”

  Trevor Miller smiled faintly as he tossed the clipboard with the phony work order onto the passenger seat.

  “Have a good one,” he told the guard, then sped on down the lane.

  Trevor had never imagined that the day would come when he would be compelled to take the life of another. But the death of his brother and countless others in the wake of Goyette’s industrial greed was tantamount to murder. And the murders would continue, he knew, accompanied by continued environmental devastation. There might be public retribution against Goyette’s entities, but the man himself would always be protected by a veneer of corrupt politicians and high-priced attorneys. There was only one way to put an end to it and that was to put an end to Goyette. He knew the system was incapable of doing the job, so he rationalized that it was up to him. And who better to carry out the act than a nondescript state employee who aroused little suspicion and had little to lose?

  Trevor pulled the van around to the back of the clubhouse kitchen, parking next to a produce truck that was delivering fresh organic vegetables. Opening the back door, he removed a dolly, then loaded four heavy boxes onto the hand truck. Wheeling it through the back door, he was apprehended by the club’s head chef, a plump man with a lazy right eye.

  “Restroom and cleaning supplies,” Trevor stated as the chef blocked his path.

  “I thought we just had a delivery last week,” the chef replied with a puzzled look. Then he waved Trevor toward a set of swinging doors at the side of the kitchen.

  “Restrooms are out the doors and to the left. The storage closet is right alongside,” he said. “The general manager should be working the reservations desk. You can get him to sign for it.”

  Trevor nodded and proceeded out the kitchen and down a short hall, which ended at the men’s and ladies’ restrooms. He poked his head inside the windowless men’s room, then stepped back out and waited until a club member in a gold polo shirt exited. He wheeled the dolly in and stacked the boxes onto the toilet seat in the last stall, then closed the door. He returned to the van and quietly wheeled in four more loads, stacking the additional boxes against the back wall. He opened one of the boxes and removed a portable space heater, which he plugged in beneath a sink but left turned off. He then slid one of the boxes across the floor to the center of the room. Using it as a step stool, he reached up with a wad of paper towels and unscrewed half of the overhead lightbulbs, casting the bathroom in a dim glow. Locating the room’s single air-conditioning vent, he closed the levers, then sealed the vent with duct tape.

  Satisfied with his initial work, he stepped into a stall and took off his hat and unzipped his workman’s jumpsuit. Underneath, he was dressed in a silk shirt and dark slacks. Reaching into the opened box, he pulled out a blue blazer and dress shoes, which he quickly slipped on. Checking himself in a mirror, he figured he would easily pass muster as a member or guest. He had shaved his thin beard and cut his hair short, greasing it back with a temporary dye that gave it a raven sheen. He slipped on a pair of stylish-looking eyeglasses, then proceeded to the clubhouse bar.

  The bar and adjacent restaurant were lightly crowded with businessmen and overdressed golfers taking a noontime lunch. Catching sight of Goyette in his corner booth, Trevor took a seat at the bar that offered an unimped
ed view of the tycoon.

  “What can I get you?” asked the bartender, an attractive woman with short black hair.

  “A Molson, please. And I wonder if you can send one over to Mr. Goyette as well,” he said, pointing to the corner.

  “Certainly. Whom may I say it is from?” she asked.

  “Just tell him the Royal Bank of Canada appreciates his business.”

  Trevor watched as the beer was delivered and was thankful when Goyette made no acknowledgment or even bothered looking toward the bar. Goyette was already on his second martini and downed the beer as his lunch was served. Trevor waited until Goyette and his girlfriend started their meal, then he returned to the restroom.

  Trevor held the door open as an old man exited, grumbling about the poor lighting, then he placed a cardboard sign on the outside that read CLOSED FOR REPAIRS—PLEASE USE CLUBHOUSE RESTROOM. Returning inside, he placed a strip of yellow caution tape across the urinals, then slipped on a pair of gloves. With a utility knife in hand, he went from box to box, slicing open the seams and dumping the contents upside down. Out of each box tumbled four eleven-pound blocks of commercial-grade dry ice, frozen carbon dioxide, that was wrapped in plastic. Flattening the cardboard boxes and stashing them in the end stall, he stacked the dry ice around the back of the bathroom, then methodically shredded open their plastic wrappings. Gaseous vapor began to rise immediately, but Trevor covered the blocks with the flattened boxes to limit their melting. Under the dim lighting, he was relieved to see that the vapor was barely noticeable.

  Checking his watch, he hurriedly placed a small toolbox and his hat and jumpsuit near the door. With a penlight and screwdriver, he unscrewed the interior door handle until it hung just barely attached. Throwing the tools in the box, he carefully opened the door and returned to the bar.

  Goyette was nearly done with his meal, but Trevor sat and casually ordered another beer, keeping a sharp eye on his intended victim. Guffawing loudly, Goyette was everything that Trevor expected the tycoon to be. Vulgar, selfish, and savagely arrogant, he was a walking psychiatric ward of deep-seated insecurities. Trevor looked at the man and fought the temptation to walk over and stick a butter knife in his ear.