“Yes, Captain.”
“This is a photo of a friend of China who is with them, but works for us. If at any point this person seeks asylum, provide it.”
The captain jabbed the shots on screen, grainy from falling snow — but the layout of the American position was clear.
In the photos, the Montana lay crippled in a lead, a gap between ice floes. It seemed to be tied by hawsers to stanchions hammered into the ice. The lead was so wide that the sub almost seemed docked along a meandering oxbow river. The “shores” of the river stretched, at the moment, at least almost half a mile apart, enabling Zhou’s 094 to maneuver. But, of course, the ice was constantly moving, and leads could widen or close at any time.
At the moment, the sub was backing off to remain out of view when they surfaced.
But the insulated tents and life rafts housing the American survivors of the Montana disaster were in plain view on screen, clustered thirty feet from open water, about a hundred feet from their crippled sub.
Captain Zhou Dongfeng told Major Li Youyoung that the U.S. Marines had probably entered the sub by now, but he knew their numbers and so knew that they had left no guards in the rear. Nobody was looking for a Chinese submarine surfacing a third of a mile away, around a bend, in a blizzard. No one was guarding the backs of the Americans.
The major inclined his head in understanding.
Captain Dongfeng liked this major. “Prepare your men!”
The major saluted, turned on his heel, and hurried off.
At the periscope again, the captain saw that he’d successfully moved his craft out of view of the Americans.
It was therefore safe to surface now.
His mouth tasted of copper, and bile.
“Prepare to unload troops!”
THIRTEEN
It was a coffin made of steel, a coffin made of ice. I followed Dr. Vleska through the $2.4 billion wreck. Our headlamps cut the dark as we maneuvered through blackened passageways, stirring up a film of particles underfoot, even the unburned areas coated with soot. Our bulky toxic suits were made for cold weather and worn over Coast Guard parkas.
Somewhere in here a poison had come to life.
Outside, in the tents and life rafts, Eddie Nakamura and half the Marine contingent were preparing the ninety-six survivors for evacuation. Eleven more of the submarine crew had died of illness or burns since my departure from Anchorage. Speed was essential. But so was care.
The ice continually groaned out there, threatening to break up.
Our guides were a Montana chief of the boat, Sam Apparecio, and a SEAL commando, Lieutenant Mark Speck; both of whom had fallen ill, but survived. Apparecio had trained to work in a hazmat suit, but not Speck. We kept bumping into things, the suits restricting movement. We had to move sideways through the narrowest passageways, twenty-one inches wide.
Both guys survived. Why?
We breathed air from canisters and I felt like a mine inspector after a cave-in. The Montana echoed in places from wind swirling in up top, and we left hatches open as we passed through, to allow water flow in case I had to scuttle the sub.
It seemed inhuman to expect the two sailors — after what they’d been through — to function. Apparecio was a kind-faced Minnesotan of about thirty-two years old. He had a blackened hand, from the fire, bandaged, and he coughed dryly like a coal miner. Smoke damage, I thought, not a wet hack like the crew in the tents. Speck was a pockmarked, hook-nosed, big but surprisingly light-footed man, with an arm in a sling. He’d broken a wrist during the evacuation.
But they responded magnificently to my questions with a forced cheerfulness that made me want to weep with pride, as we tried to bottom-line the status of what had been — only days earlier — the pride of America.
“Can the Montana dive?”
“No way, sir. No controls.”
“The reactor?”
“No telling if it was damaged. The skipper was quite clear on that. Can’t turn it on.”
“What about electrical power?”
“Well, sir! Electricity might be different! Let’s just pry this here console loose. Might be possible, sir. Could happen,” mused Apparecio, peering out at the guts of the console, through his faceplate, like a car mechanic examining a Honda’s undercarriage. “Bit o’ this, sir, bit o’ that. Might be able to get auxiliary power. Shall I try?”
“Why not?”
“We probably still won’t be able to move, sir.”
I said, “But if you have electricity, you can fire torpedoes.”
Three pairs of curious eyes flickered at me in the headlamps.
“Just in case,” I said.
The faceplate nodded. “Well, we usually keep fish in tubes one and two. Let me check, see what I can do.”
We left him behind, a man in a cave. As we continued aft, Dr. Vleska paused to examine Medusa-like clusters of burned wiring, and smashed computer screens. Plastics had melted, and without heat, ice stalactites hung above us, and we avoided sharp edges — protecting our suits — as I scraped samples; pink residue from a vent, burnt skin off a corpse in a passageway, mouth scraping from a man — dead of smoke inhalation — sprawled in a head.
Some compartments had been devastated by fire. Others were just smoky.
The passageway between engine room and crew quarters swirled with particles, fire-blackened curtains that had shielded bunks. The portable chem-alarm, wielded by Speck, remained silent. If it detected toxic chemicals, its tinny beeper was supposed to go off.
But chemical alarms don’t work as well in temperatures below freezing. They are not made for this climate.
Somewhere in here sickness had erupted and killed sailors, and was still killing them outside, inside their makeshift shelters.
Before descending into the sub, I’d seen those rafts and tents and knew the scenes inside would always haunt me: the mix of horribly burned men and women and hideously sick ones, wrapped in salvaged blankets, or sleeping bags, or lying on salvaged mattresses; suffering 103-degree fevers, wracking coughs, blotched chests and faces… the cramped spaces dripping with condensation if heaters worked, weighed down with crystallized breath on domed canopies if the heaters had run dry; temperature outside now at two below zero, twenty below in wind.
Originally the sub crew had been triaged into four covered rafts for the badly sick and the worst burn cases; three for lesser sick and milder burns; tents for the healthy.
But over the last two days, the sickness had spread; triage lines had collapsed. Now all the shelters hosted a mix; the sickest people, clearly dying, coughing up frothy blood, which froze on their cheeks, ran down their throats. I’d tended crewmen and women with their skin peeling, with hands that smelled of rot, faces needing grafts, the odor of burned flesh and hair everywhere.
Everyone on the evacuation detail wore gauze masks, but precautions that worked in temperate climates failed in subzero wind. Breath solidified and ice coated fabric, and then you couldn’t breathe anymore.
Two Marines had discarded their masks, and Major Pettit had let them. If they couldn’t breathe, they couldn’t work.
Eddie and I had administered morphine to those in extremis. We’d tried to clear air passages by scooping out the masses of phlegm, blood, and mucus with gloved fingers.