“Well, for Christ’s sake,” I snapped, momentarily at a loss. “You mean we’ll just sit here?”
Karen Vleska spoke up from beside me, calm and rational and peering beyond the slashing wipers into the melee outside. “Clinton? You or me?”
“Me,” he replied. “I’m better at it. Open the door,” he told the driver. “I’ll go out and lead.”
“How?”
“Sastrugi,” said Clinton, as if it was an explanation.
Eddie said, “Anyone speak plain English here?”
Clinton was zipping up his parka. “It is English,” he said. “Keep me in the headlights, Jarhead. Sastrugi are lines in the snow, from wind. The wind’s from the northwest, so sastrugi will face southeast. We use the snow lines as pointers. Works every time.”
“Sorry,” said Eddie.
“Buy a dictionary,” Clinton said.
“Why not just stay inside and point from here?” I said.
Clinton gestured at the window, the rime on the panes, the snow and darkness. The storm threw the powerful headlight beams back in our faces. We couldn’t make out wind lines on the ground.
“Oh.”
Moments later we were following the big man, who shooshed ahead on skis. His back was a Day-Glo orange mass between wiper blade passes, his M4 a whitish slanting line like a Sam Browne belt across his back. He was moving at least, and the speedometer said we chugged north at a blizzard-respectable but frustrating four miles an hour.
For half a mile.
Then the figure held up a mittened hand to stop us. The radio — hooked to his mouth mike — emitted screechy static. I heard Clinton battering on the door.
Eddie the joker called out, “Who is it?”
“Open it,” I said.
Clinton’s head stuck in, along with swirling snow. “Weak ice ahead. I’ll climb up on top now. When you hear me pound, start moving again.”
I looked into a gray mass that seemed no different than the landscape we’d moved through for the last half hour. We waited while Clinton climbed up and then we lurched forward, and suddenly experienced a deep rumbling below. We were tilting forward, sliding faster. I felt buoyancy take over and knew that we’d crashed through ice, plunged into a lead. Water swirled outside the window, at neck level.
The pilot switched to jet propulsion power and we wallowed through a field of floating boulders. Ice clunked against Kevlar as we threaded a minefield of sharp-edged blocks. The tread spun, trying to get a grip on solid pieces, but pushing them below. Our bottom half was underwater. We struck something and the Arktos tilted upward and climbed from the sea to resume crunching forward, left edge up, now the right, on a field of ice rubble.
Clinton banged on the hatch, we stopped, he got off and began leading us by foot again, sometimes leaning down to check the direction of sastrugi, pointing when he wanted a course change, or merely slogging off to the left or right.
Andrew Sachs had been quiet the whole time, and when he spoke, his voice seemed higher. His normally white face seemed paler. “Maybe the ship has broken free,” he said. “Maybe we can go back.”
Del Grazo shook his head, “It hasn’t broken free, sir.”
I failed at first to hear the engine noise changing, the mechanical sputter starting, as I was giving orders.
“Major Pettit, when we get there, I’ll want surviving crew back on the Wilmington fast as possible.”
“Yes, sir.”
“We don’t know what made them sick, so wear masks.”
“You men hear that?” Pettit announced to nods.
Now I grew aware of a metallic coughing coming from inside the vehicle. If we were in a car, I would have said the muffler was broken, or a tailpipe. We continued our progress, but now the grinding grew louder, coming from below.
“If the Wilmington can break free, we’ll try to tow the Montana out.”
The Arktos was shaking now, from something internal, not the ice outside.
“But we also need to be prepared to scuttle her if the reactor is leaking or if the Chinese—”
We’d stopped, yet nothing blocked our progress. Ahead, Clinton continued forward, unaware that we were not following, but now I saw him coming back.
The driver frowned at his controls, reached like the suburban driver of a stalled Volkswagen to turn a key, press an accelerator, try to restart the engine, peer at a red warning light where no light had been on before.
Electricity still on, wipers streaking, air blowing…
With the engine off, the storm noise intensified. We’d halted between two jagged pillars of ice, lumped shapes, an ice Stonehenge. The wind here shook us side to side.
“Colonel, the tank reads full.”
“Check it manually,” I said. “I’ll go, too.” After all, we carried extra fuel. Perhaps some stupid error — or faulty meter — had misled us into thinking we had a full tank when we needed to put more in.
Or did someone tamper with the Arktos?
Eddie and I exchanged frowns as I zipped up my parka, uncoiled myself from the seat, hunched past the expressionless Marines, and ducked out into the storm.
First the Chinese turn toward the sub, then the Arktos stops.
Wind blasted into my face. There was a burning sensation in my throat, and I felt it closing. I could not breathe directly into the wind. The storm made me see everything as if in a white tunnel, the sides a kaleidoscope of movement. The driver and I made our way to the rear. Ice had frozen shut the panel protecting the gas cap, so we had to retrieve a Ka-Bar from the cab, and chip ice to open her up. The driver pulled out the fuel cap dipstick — a modified Arktos feature. Newer Arktos crafts featured fuel-tank entry from inside the vehicle. We rode in an earlier model.
“Almost full, sir.” Then he peered closer. “Shit, sir, what’s this blue coating? It’s not fuel.”
I peered at the stick, then, with a sickening feeling, looked more closely at the cap door itself. I saw pry marks along the chassis where the cap opened, damage streaks resembling the scrapes you see on an automobile door, when a thief has tried to jimmy the lock.
Someone tampered with the fuel.
Or was it, I asked myself, hoping against logic, that the striations had been caused by steel cables during loading, by an impact going in or out.
Get a better look at the dipstick.
I climbed back into the relative warmth of the cab. My eyes hit Eddie’s. I nodded slightly. His mouth was set in a solid, angry line.
I unrolled my mittens from around the dipstick, and held it up.
“What’s this blue stuff? Anybody know?”
Del Grazo’s breathing quickened and his eyes narrowed and he reached for it, held the stick to his nose and sniffed and grunted unhappily.
“It’s… it’s fire retardant, Colonel.”
I cursed. He said, “It’s what we carry in the canisters. My job used to be to check them, when I first joined up. We were in the Pacific. I’ll never forget the goddamn smell. But how did fire retardant get into the… wait… during a drill!”
I had a vision, a memory of the emergency drills that had marked normal life on the Wilmington. A bell goes off. Minutes later the ship fills with groups of white-suited emergency crews. Men and women with their faces covered. People carrying axes and tools that could have opened a fuel cap. People scurrying around while the Marine guard who was supposed to be in the hangar allegedly watched.
“You’d only need thirty seconds to pry open the tank, stick the hose in, spray, screw up the fuel line,” I said.
Eddie added, “While twenty other people in suits just like yours distract the guard, simply doing their jobs.”