“I grew up in North Dakota, sir, and can move fast on cross-country skis…”
“I have a sister in subs, sir. I know she’d want me to go with you.”
I was humbled by their drive, and realized that — as DeBlieu had assured me — his men and women constituted a greater asset than I’d given them credit for. I’d been the too-proud Marine.
Still, it was a race, against time, against death, against the worldly powers opposing us. The ice thickened outside. We had to stop, back and ram, then race through a lead, then hit another floe, then back and ram again. We made teeth-jarring progress. The first iceberg went past, jagged and tall and like a mini-mountain easing by fifty feet to starboard. I saw ice pillars. I saw a floating ice half moon. The bergs came and went like frozen monuments just beyond any clear field of vision.
Meanwhile the wardroom — a large, lit, comfortable lounge down the passageway from the captain’s cabin — became our headquarters. It had a long conference table, thick carpet, comfortable chairs, and was stocked with coffee machines and snacks.
A Marine guard stood outside while Karen Vleska, Eddie, and I went down a list of materials used in Virginia-class subs: rubber compounds, wiring, computer chips, plastics, and parts of strategic metals, anything new, anything that might — if subjected to extreme heat — produce toxic gas. Eddie tried to match the results with charts of toxic chemicals, trying to identify the possible source of the illness aboard the Montana.
Neither Karen nor I made any mention of our previous conversation on the deck.
Eleven miles… but we’d slowed to four knots.
Had the Chinese icebreaker gotten there yet?
The beacon failed and lit and failed and came on, and DeBlieu said we’d sailed to the east, or maybe the current had moved the submarine west… so we had to change direction.
Eddie and I pored over encrypted files that had blasted through from the director during the brief period when the sat line had been open. Eddie was in his bunk, me in mine.
“Listen to this, Number One,” Eddie said:
The U.S. has become more militaristic since they abandoned a draft Army for a volunteer force. Their Congress, having fewer veterans in it, is more inclined to fight. Democrats wish to prove that they are tough. Republicans see enemies everywhere. The result is a crippled giant seeking to bolster popular support at home — and gain advantages abroad — through military adventurism.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“It’s a paper that was published by Admiral Xu Lingwei Ha in 2014, identifying the U.S. as the most likely enemy China will face in a future naval war, and urging speedy preparations for a, quote, ‘wide-ranging confrontation that will occur in numerous locations across the Pacific and High North latitudes.’”
Eddie kept reading, “The U.S. sees China as its principal adversary in the Pacific, and the Arctic is a source of wealth and power in the next century. The Russians see the Arctic as their private lake. As tensions heat up and the region becomes more critical to world economies and security, it is likely that both countries will turn to military aggression to defend their spurious claims. Chinese Arctic policy — since we do not border the ocean — must be to obtain every possible advantage now in this opening region before the inevitable clashes occur.”
“Peaceful guy,” I said.
“Yeah, blame every possible problem on old Uncle Sam. Got a toothache? Americans did it. Your Beijing-made car stops suddenly on the Lhasa highway? Evil satellite technology from Silicon Valley, most assuredly! And by the way, as I am an expert at smoothly switching subjects, Number One, I saw you outside with Dr. Karen before.”
“Consulting,” I said.
Eddie grinned. “Hey, if you’re lying about talking to her, I sense the earth moving beneath your feet.”
“That’s ice, and it’s always moving.”
“Did I tell you that she’s a surfer?”
What I heard in my mind was her asking, Why do they call you “Killer Joe”?
“A surfer? A surfer, Eddie? That’s particularly relevant at the moment. Let’s get something to eat. In another few hours we’ll need the energy.”
Nine hours to go, the instruments said.
I’ve always been amazed at the normalcy that constitutes impending violence. The banana cream cake you fork in as you wait to pick up an M4 and go out into a blizzard looks exactly like the slice you ate at 3 A.M., in a bathrobe, in your home kitchen. The coffee that steams before you emits the same rich aroma that a mug of Folgers did when you read the Sunday sports section in Cleveland, parked on a couch one Sunday, as your wife and kids scowled at you, preparing to go to church.
The cooks broke out the good stuff in expectation of impending danger. The chow line snaked back from the galley, into the main passageway, and the crew heaped their trays with thick steaks and mashed potatoes, and there were four kinds of soft drinks and the fruit bins bulged with Washington State apples, Oregon pears, red bright cherries.
We ate and watched big-screen Armed Forces Network shows: CSI, Yankees baseball, Jurassic Park 2, antisuicide and don’t-drive-drunk commercials. A soldier, weaving out of a bar at 3 A.M., started his car and —
Boom.
The mess deck canted sideways, slowly, and all conversation stopped. “No promotion, for me, honey, all because I had a couple of drinks,” the red-faced corporal on screen was saying. Food hung on forks, midway between plates and mouths. The big hangings on the wall; photos of hard-hatted seismologists working the pipes and winches on the fantail; photos of crew playing touch football on the ice, shirtless; a photo of the launching of the Wilmington, in far-off Louisiana… all seemed to be slightly off-kilter.
A creaking and groaning reverberated through the hull. The XO was already heading briskly from the mess. Eyes swung upward. I smelled steamed string beans and potatoes, tuna salad and chocolate sundaes. A wedge of banana cake that had teetered on a table crashed to the deck.
Eddie said what everyone was thinking, “What did we hit?”
DeBlieu stood up, still holding his favorite dessert, bacon coated with milk chocolate and sprinkles, on a stick.
“All we do is hit things,” he said. As he spoke, I realized that the heavy shudders that had been jolting us every few moments had ceased.
“The good news is, if we were holed, alarms would be ringing.” DeBlieu said, although he hardly looked happy.
“Then what’s the bad news?”
“Can’t you feel it? We’ve stopped,” he said as he headed for the bridge, and I rose to follow. “We’re stuck.”
TEN
The Arktos hung in space, swaying like some prehistoric animal in a cradle, a 16,000-pound terrified creature hanging above Earth. The amphibious vehicle was being lowered — one of its two units at a time — by the starboard side crane. Assembled, it would look like two tanks connected by a mechanical arm. The cables looked frail as thread. The ship canted sideways in a seventy-five-mile-an-hour gust. Unloading proceeded on the lee side, providing at least some wind protection. I watched the orange craft dangle at the halfway point between deck and ice.
“Slowly, slow-ly,” Captain DeBlieu ordered, his hand on the shoulder of a lieutenant named Matheson, at the crane controls. We’d squeezed into a glass-sided compartment. The storm’s residue was shoved away every two seconds by fast-moving two-foot-long wiper blades. The contrast between the warmth inside, and cyclonic violence inches away, made the scene unreal, a sense magnified when, momentarily, I got a glimpse of the world beyond.