“Touchdown! Too bad the other Arktos never got aboard. You’ll be pulling a lot of sleds with this thing, bringing everyone back, Colonel.”
I gasped with astonishment. It was genesis reversed, as if we’d reached some gyroscopic center of planetary energy. Because how can you be stuck in place if everything around you is moving? What natural law demanded that the Wilmington keel over, slanting five degrees, while all we saw around us swept past? I saw ice boulders, football-sized fields, pillars. It was vast, beautiful, and terrifying. It was birth and death on a planetary scale. I’d been briefed about this but seeing it was different. A century ago the view would have been solid ice, so thick that a hundred-mile-an-hour wind couldn’t move it; ice that had been present when Rome was sacked, when Vikings found America.
But recently the heated-up ocean had welled up, and like ice cubes left out in a martini, the ice had begun to ooze. Thousand-year melt speed had accelerated to five. Warmed below by current, and above by sun, the ice cap had weakened and everything out there swirled in different directions — ice fields the size of Belgium crashing into each other, ice Alps, ice mountains, ice plateaus coalescing into a white hell, vortex of storm-topped earth.
“We’re pinned, Colonel,” said Executive Officer Gordon Longstreet, pushing into the cab from outside. “We’ve got a block of ice the size of a Chevy wedged against a rudder. I don’t know how it got inside the ice horn,” he said, referring to the massive steel boxes encasing the rudders. “But it’s lodged. That wind is pushing us sideways, with ice piling up on starboard.”
“Back and ram it,” DeBlieu said. “Back and ram.”
I asked, “How long before we break free?”
The captain’s face was a study in tension; the cords on his jaw stood out. “Could be thirty minutes. Could be three days, or,” he said, voice dropping, “weeks.”
I found Major Pettit in the copter hangar, where the Marines were checking weapons. “Suit up to leave.”
A voice in my earpiece said, “ We’re lashing on skis and sleds. Passengers ready, sir.”
As we headed for the deck, Peter Del Grazo’s voice started up excitedly in my radio. “I picked up the Montana! Talked to someone! They’re alive, at least eighty of them. Then I lost transmission again.”
“How far away are they?”
“Seven miles, sir.”
“Are the Chinese there yet?”
“We’re the first to arrive so far.”
The so far told the rest of the story. Seven miles, I thought bitterly. Only seven miles separated us from the survivors, maybe less if wind kept pushing them toward us, although the same gusts would be in our faces.
I could run seven miles in under an hour. I could walk it at home in two hours.
Del Grazo was coming with us, I decided, as most qualified to run communication. The Marines clomping into the outer deck wore Day-Glo vests to see each other in the storm, over snow camouflage shells, over their extreme cold weather gear: windproof heavy-duty parka and snow pants and three-fingered mittens — enabling them to shoot — with inner woolen linings. Their eyes looked robotic inside slits in their balaclavas. Their M4s were slung over their backs. Two men carried M16s equipped with M203 40 mm detachable grenade launchers.
Karen and Clinton met us on the ramp — or brow — lowered from the 01 deck to the ice. Marietta Cristobel — ice expert — would stay on board. She’d told me. “I know ice from a lab. I couldn’t help you find a ten-story-high rum factory out there. Use the extra space for the sick. You’ll need it with the second Arktos stuck back in Barrow.”
That Arktos can carry fifty-two people, sitting upright, like crew on those old Civil War — era confederate submarines.
Andrew Sachs appeared on deck, dressed like everyone else, but somehow he looked different, as if the gear was so alien to his body that it imprisoned him inside. He moved stiffly. I was glad we’d go in a vehicle, and not depend on him on the ice. There was no question he’d slow progress down if we had to walk.
Clinton Toovik was a solid presence at the top of the brow. He pressed his head against mine to be heard against the wind, and even then he had to shout.
“In the Arktos, better keep the temperature low so we don’t sweat. You don’t want to sweat if we have to go out.”
“Right.”
“Also, I want a rifle,” Clinton said.
“The weapons are for the Marines,” I explained.
His breath smelled of minty mouthwash. “There are bears. And there might be Chinese, you said. Always travel armed here. I was in the Army. I know how to use an M4.”
“Clinton, the Marines will protect us.”
He snorted. “I was an Army Ranger. And I’m a hunter.”
I soothed him, curbing my impatience to get going. “Yes, of course, but these guys have combat training in the Arctic.”
Clinton’s laugh was carried off by wind, so he seemed, in the shrieking maelstrom, to be miming good humor. He said, “Where? In Norway? Norway’s a hundred degrees warmer some days. Seventy below in Barrow. Thirty above in Norway. Norway gets the Gulf Stream. Those waters warm it. You want me to come with you? I want a rifle, Colonel.”
I said, growing testy, “They’re not for civilians. Now let’s get going, okay?”
“Civilians? Then I guess the civilians will stay on board, Colonel.”
I sighed. “Get him an M4,” I told Major Pettit.
Andrew Sachs was there suddenly, chiming in, and also demanding a rifle. He surprised me. He could move quietly.
He was saying something about belonging to a shooting club.
“Sorry, Mr. Secretary. But feel free to threaten not to come, too,” I said, hoping he’d accept.
We ducked one by one into the Arktos. The Marines took seats along the walls, backs straight, balaclavas off, jackets unzipped as the heating system began oozing fifty-five-degree air into the cab. I sat beside the lance corporal driver, following news from the ship. At least ground radio worked this close to the Wilmington, but the worried voices I heard from the bridge did not build confidence.
“Both engines stop! They’re burning out!”
The icebreaker, trapped, couldn’t even back and ram anymore. Ice held a rudder fast.
Karen Vleska squeezed into a seat beside me. I smelled, over the diesel odor, her coconut-scented shampoo. Our headlights switched on. Time was topsy-turvy. At 11:30 P.M. it should be dark, but the sun was up. If the sun was up, it should be light but the storm darkened visibility. I recalled lithographs showing ships trapped in ice a hundred years ago, the ice actually reaching high enough to breach railings, creep across decks, spread into living quarters, crush whole vessels.
Eddie, a bulky presence behind me, demanded of the driver, “Why aren’t we moving?”
“Um, which way, sir? The GPS isn’t working.”
Shit. “Can we get a fix on the sub’s radio beam?”
“It disappeared again.”
I turned to Del Grazo. “Then use the goddamn compass.”
The normally jovial Brooklyn-accented voice sounded distressed.
“Sir, this far north compass needles get screwed up. Magnetic north and regular north are different. Rely on a compass, we’re likely to get thrown off.”