Yeah, and the second your guys are here, they’ll begin taking things apart, snapping photos, grabbing parts, making diagrams, no way, Captain.
“Colonel, neither of us wants to see a leaking reactor go down,” Zhou added reasonably, both of us probably knowing — I would bet — that the reactor was not leaking.
I hoped that Chief Apparecio, his headlamp glowing in the dark below, was making progress turning on the auxiliary power. I couldn’t remember how far the auxiliary power area was from the torpedo room. But I saw no lights coming on below, felt no vibration, just the dead stillness of a sub at total rest. I had to delay and figure out how to keep Zhou off.
If I tell the chief to scuttle her, he’ll open the sea cocks if he can, and she’ll go down fast. If the Chinese hear that happening, hear the rush of water, will they fire? Will they try to board and stop it? Why would they fire? It would serve no purpose. It wouldn’t get them the sub.
I had another, more chilling thought.
But what will I do if Zhou threatens to fire at the survivors on the ice?
“Chief? Can you hear me?”
“Almost there, Colonel. Power should have come on by now. But this… this stuck panel here…”
“How much time to scuttle her?”
“Don’t know, sir. The ballast controls are jammed. If I can get to the sea cocks and open ’em, ten minutes to do that, maybe another fifteen to sink. But moving around, sir, some places are blocked, and the heat fused some controls.”
That captain knows we can’t talk to Washington. What he’s doing is blatant and brilliant and no one will see what happens here. All I can do is play for time and hope something changes and that he won’t use force.
It was, I thought, a perfect ambush.
Onshore, some of the Marines who had tended the sick had turned over loading to healthier crew from the Montana. Moving with exaggerated slowness, they drifted toward me on the ice.
I told Zhou, “We expect to fix these problems shortly. I’ll decline the tow. The Montana is not abandoned. As you see, we are aboard.”
I heard a snatch of rapid, agitated Chinese and then the unit went off.
Sachs said, “Someone was arguing with him. Telling him to go ahead… to do something… but I couldn’t hear…”
The green light came on again, and this time there was strain in the British-accented voice, which was clearly losing patience. “Colonel, the Montana is in immediate peril of being crushed. You’ve lost power, steering, and diving. You’ve got a nuclear reactor on board — possibly leaking. I must insist on assessing damage. I expect the arrival of our icebreaker Snow Dragon imminently. I’m sure that our governments will work out any details. That part is for diplomats. Meanwhile, we must prevent an environmental catastrophe, I know you will agree.”
I saw more activity on the other deck now. A hatch open. Figures climbing out. My stall time was over.
I said, “That won’t be possible.”
“Colonel, if you act aggressively, I will be forced to defend myself and I fear that many sick and injured men may be harmed. I am trying to be reasonable.”
This was followed a moment later by a gasp on my headpiece, and Pettit’s startled, “Shit, Colonel! They’re on the pressure ridge! They circled behind us!”
Zhou Dongfeng gave me a few moments to appreciate the situation. A line of Chinese troops had showed themselves a hundred yards from the survivors, at the ridge, and then sank back in place. Our entire party was now caught in a potential cross fire; the Montana — and the little collection of life rafts, tents, and sleds — sat dead in the sights of their torpedoes. The Marines were in plain view of Zhou’s soldiers on the ridge. Almost everyone in my care would be decimated in seconds if the Chinese opened fire.
Chief, get that electricity working!
I said, “I hardly find your actions friendly.”
“Please, Colonel. Pure precaution. After all, your twenty-five Marines,” he said, naming the exact number of troops here, “could misunderstand our purpose.”
“I think I understand that purpose quite well.”
Captain Zhou said, “I’ll send some helpers over. You will, of course, allow them aboard.”
The ice was groaning out there, straining, and the tearing noises came again, echoing in the wind. It sounded like laughter. Someone was pulling at my sleeve. It was Clinton. He pointed at the Chinese radio. He wanted me to turn it off. He seemed to have something important to say. So far he’d come through each time he’d suggested solutions, so I shoved the Chinese unit into my parka, in case the thing still relayed talk, even when its light was red. As in, they’d given me a trick unit.
Clinton whispered, “Ten minutes!”
“Meaning?”
“Hold them off for ten minutes. It will change then.”
“How?”
Clinton swore, in Iñupiat. He gripped my sleeve and looked out over the landscape. He hissed at me, as the Chinese boarders climbed into three Zodiacs, “You all keep forgetting that ice is not land! It’s moving. All the time! It’s not land so it won’t stay where it is!”
I looked out and took in the scene: the oxbow-shaped “river,” which was actually a lead between floes, the “shore,” which was actually two fields of ice, neither one land, and the Chinese sub facing us.
He was right. In my mind, those boundaries had seemed as fixed as if we were facing off in the Hudson River.
But it was not a river.
“The ice will help us,” Clinton said.
I still did not understand.
“Look at the damn currents, Colonel.”
“They’re going in all directions.”
“That’s the point.” Now he looked angry. “I was in the goddamn Army, Colonel. I’m a veteran. Those assholes are not getting this submarine,” he said. “When the ice speaks… do what you have to do!”
Captain Zhou was back. “I must insist, Captain, that your Marines stop moving, and stay in one place.”
I pretended the radio was broken again.
He said, “If you can hear me, Colonel, I will count to ten, then my men will assume hostile intent and be forced to fire defensively if the Marines keep moving. One… two…”
I told the Marines to stop moving. They halted, spread out, about forty feet from the sub, in easy range of the Chinese on the ridge, and close enough to the ice edge to be killed by a torpedo.
I asked Karen over our Motorola, “If the chief gets power, can you help in any way in arming torpedoes, in launching them?”
“I’m familiar with the system.”
“And?”
“We’ll do our best. But if you launch this close—”
“Just do it,” I said.
Zhou said, “By the way, Colonel, we have excellent hearing over here, and should any machinery switch on in your vessel — hydraulics, doors — I will be forced to assume hostile intent.”
He was no fool. There was only one possible way to stop or slow him for Clinton’s ten minutes, and I went for it.
I told Zhou part of the truth. “Captain, we have a highly contagious and unidentified disease on board. We will be able to solve the problem, I’m sure, in a short while, but for the moment, as you can see, we’re in hazmat gear. It is not safe below, for you or for us.”