“Dear God,” whispered the first mate.
Holy fucking… said one of the men from Fort Riley.
Thorvald staring, his mouth gaping, his belly churning, his face white with a different, and almost indescribable, terror. It could not be. It was absolutely impossible. He’d heard of these things, but had not truly understood. And now it seemed they had not escaped the fundamental problem, not by a long shot, no, he thought, knowing he’d never get home now. Never see his wife and children. Not at all.
FIVE
The helicopter — a Dolphin — swung wildly in a crosswind. Watching from the aft deck, ninety feet below, I felt my intestines clench and feared, looking up, that it would crash, killing my best friend. A twenty-five-mile-an-hour gust slammed the needle-nosed craft, knocking it sideways like a gigantic hand as I held my breath. The pilot — I could see him through glass — fought to steady the bird.
Beneath my feet the Wilmington pushed north toward our rendezvous, through whitecaps. The orange copter shuddered, veered away and safely up as if it were a conscious being, reconsidering the wisdom of being here, then suddenly and swiftly it set down in the center of the white circle on deck, and began powering down.
The Wilmington’s flight crew ran forward and lashed down the Dolphin, placing chocks against the wheels. The door slid open and two figures climbed out, wearing Mustang suits, zip-up orange float apparatus that would have kept them alive, kept them from freezing to death, for about three minutes in the icy Arctic water had the copter plunged into the sea.
From the V-shaped build of the taller figure, I saw it was Eddie, and as he leaned back into the copter and spoke with the pilot, the second passenger exited and pulled a small attaché case from inside. The person — it had to be my sub expert — was small as a boy, a moon-suited figure the size of a thirteen-year-old forced into big brother’s Day-Glo-colored hand-me-downs. Then the helmet came off and long silver hair spilled out, falling past the shoulders.
The woman’s hair seemed to catch light, hold and improve it. It wasn’t gray, wasn’t dry and aged, no, it was too filled with vibrancy, as if a teenager had dyed her hair silver for a party. The small elfin white face scanned the deck and then with clear purpose she strode toward me, as if she knew who I was, as if they’d shown her a photo.
“You’re Colonel Rush.” It sounded more like an accusation than a fact.
She had a low, direct voice, and judging from the movements beneath the bulky suit, I guessed she had the build of a teenager. Her face, close-up, put her somewhere in her early thirties; Icelandic clear, perfect skin, burned pink from wind, eyes the color of ice in a crevasse, voice a surprising Ozark lilt as she extended a slim, ungloved hand, and gave a shake that seemed firmer than the small, slender fingers would have implied.
“Dr. Karen Vleska. Electric Boat,” she said, naming her company.
She’d just flown four thousand miles after being roused from bed at 2 A.M., tossed about like a bug in wind, ordered onto an alien ship in the Arctic, and although the urgency of the job came through, she seemed no more surprised or ill at ease than if she’d walked into a diner on Broadway and West Ninetieth Street in New York. She seemed a pro.
“Glad you’re here,” I told our sub expert.
We had to shout over the gusting wind. The eyes looking up — probing me — were keen and direct, and even though there was anger there, I experienced a shiver of the sort I’d not experienced in a long time, a sensation which I’d thought I would not feel again.
The landing pad smelled of diesel fuel. Communications antennas rose up forward of where I stood. Fire-fighting equipment was stored around me, reachable fast. Safety nets had been extended off the pad on all sides, to catch any hapless traveler or crew member who fell off. And I could see the top of the ship’s big A-frame winch below and behind the pad. The rear deck usually functioned as a research platform for scientists — doing dredging for samples, or buoy work, measuring currents, listening to whales — so down there were also rolls of thick cables necessary for hauling coring pipes or sample nets from the bottom of Arctic seas.
Man and woman meet amid the technical equipment of an icebreaker. A musky whiff of perfume came to me over the odors of sea and fuel.
“Crew error,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“Just wait. That’s what it’ll turn out to be, not toxic release from any material we put on that sub,” she said. “If they’re sick, it’s not because of us, let’s get that straight. We run tests, Colonel, hundreds of tests, on every piece of fabric, rubber, composite, electronics, anything you can think of. We burn them and freeze them. We mix the chemicals. If a fire started, if they’re sick from it, it’ll turn out to be crew error. That’s what causes most accidents.”
“You seem pretty sure,” I said, taken aback, and off balance because of my fierce reaction to her.
“The Miami caught fire in ’88,” she said, naming a U.S. sub accident in Kittery, Maine. “An angry yard worker did it, set the blaze on a bunk. He was working too hard, he said. He wanted a break. Four hundred million dollars in damage and at first they blamed equipment. The Russian Kursk, ’03, a hundred and eighteen dead, caused by a misfiring during practice with a torpedo, probably started from propellant believed to be new liquid fuel. We don’t use that stuff. Want more examples?”
I realized I was still holding her hand. I let go.
“Dr. Vleska,” I asked with some irritation, “are you the company lawyer? Because I thought they sent me an engineer, to figure things out, not to fight.”
She looked about to snap back, then stopped, seemed to reconsider the surroundings, and her frown turned into something more self-aware and clearly embarrassed.
I couldn’t help thinking, She’s lovely.
I said, “Why don’t we save the blame and concentrate on trying to get those people safe.”
She took a deep breath. Her whole body seemed to ease up. “Of course,” she said wryly. “Look, they woke me up. Said get on a plane. They wouldn’t tell me why at first. Everything’s a secret, even when they need you. Then some of your guys said some pretty angry things, before we even got the story. Accusations. I guess that made me hot.”
“Apology accepted,” I said.
She smiled. “I didn’t say it was an apology. I said I didn’t want to take it out on you.” She laughed. “Oh, God. I hate planes. Truth is, I’m scared of them. I don’t mind going down four miles in a mini-sub, enclosed space, dark, cold, I love it, but put me up in the air in a Boeing 737 and I need Valium. It got to me. I could use sleep.”
I liked the shoulders, the loose easy movements and the smell, and the feminine way her hands wove exclamation marks. She said, “Sub accidents are so horrible. Then everyone points fingers. Now I just did it. I promise to start over and be more coherent after I close my eyes for a bit.”
I told her, “No need to start over. We’re good.”
She turned away and swayed through the steel roll-up door into the copter hangar, where a crewman met and escorted her away to her cabin. The wind flipped her long hair. Jesus, I thought.
I pushed it away. Now my partner and best friend, Major Eddie Nakamura, stood before me, a welcome sight: jet-black hair from his Japanese dad, with one white streak, greenish eyes from his Irish mom, a surfer’s weathered skin, lightness in his movements from three types of hand-to-hand combat training, grinning the idiotic way only a best friend would after watching my exchange with Dr. Vleska.