He was a short man, with excellent posture, an ex-academy shortstop with top grades, I’d read, Ohio born, both parents engineers. Over the years I’ve learned that small men in positions of influence tend to be more efficient, contrary to the usual view. They’ve had to prove themselves, especially the top athletes, all their lives.
When I told him about the submarine burning, his horror was genuine. When I explained that we could not tell the crew or call out for assistance, his eyes narrowed, and I watched him process the logic. He didn’t need a map to understand why we had to move fast and secure the sub.
“But why shut off my crew’s communication?”
“I don’t want anyone else knowing our route. I don’t want anyone getting a fix on a phone and monitoring us.”
I also told him with some delicacy that the reason I’d asked him ashore was that I intended for the Marines to sweep his cabin, the wardroom, and also my quarters — former chief scientist’s room — for listening devices before we could have serious talks on the ship.
He bridled. “That’s a bit paranoid, Colonel. We’re a science ship. In all my years on the Wilmington, the State Department never asked for this.”
“Then they should have. The Marines will also activate jammers, in case someone on board,” I said, meaning a spy, “has access to a foreign satellite, or a corporate one. Once the ship is secure, you’ll announce we’re on an emergency drill, simulated rescue of a tourist ship taken by terrorists. Further north, we’ll tell them the truth.”
He saw holes in the story. “We’ve done other rescue drills, and Marines weren’t part of them.”
“Neither were terrorists. You need Marines.”
“We need satellite information for navigation.”
“My understanding,” I said, having spoken to the director about this, “is that your officers are quite competent with charts, in case sat access goes down.”
His silence acknowledged this. “It’s happened in bad weather.”
“Your crew will do what they’re told,” I said. “Also, if we need sat access, we can open it up every once in a while, stagger it, in ten-minute increments, but only we know when. Now! My understanding is that we can reach the sub in two days. Is that correct? What’s your top speed?”
“Seventeen knots, at first,” he said, “but once we get into ice, we slow down. In heavy ice we back and ram. We can push through four-foot masses at a couple miles an hour. That pack may not be ten feet thick like it used to be, but it’s still heavy in places. Hit it the wrong way, it can crack us open. Plus we’ve got that storm up there.”
“Two days,” I said.
“Two to five, depending on conditions. I determine speed,” he said. “Unless you want another hundred and fifty people in need of a rescue.”
I blew out air. He made sense and even four days would get us there before the nearest U.S. sub could reach the victims. But would anyone still be alive? Would anyone else get there first?
DeBlieu’s mind was on other matters and he asked, with some tightness, “Colonel, do you have any evidence to support this idea of yours that I may have a spy on board?”
“Evidence, no. But it’s a logical possibility.”
The brown eyes veered between irritation, doubt, and amusement over my cautious behavior. He’d come up through the ranks as an engineer, his file said. He had no combat experience. “Why logical?”
“Because trillions of dollars are at stake up here; because the Russians have declared the Arctic to be the probable site of the next big war, over mineral rights or trade routes. The Chinese want the minerals and routes, too. We spy on them. They spy on us.”
“The Cold War is over,” he said.
“The cold peace never is. It’s perfectly logical for them to try to keep track of the research, screw it up or try to slow you down. They’ve made the Arctic a priority, even if we haven’t.”
I preferred to make this man an ally, not an enemy, so I explained further, in a softer voice.
“Saudi Arabia was wasteland two hundred years ago, and the countries who got control of that oil and those Mideast trade routes ruled the world. You ever read Rudyard Kipling, Captain? It’s the great game, jockeying for power in remote places. Hell, if not the Russians or Chinese, just an oil company that wants access to your surveys. We need to keep this mission secret.”
To his credit, he thought about it. Slowly, he said, his voice losing some stiffness, “We haven’t had any problems.”
“How would you know? Furthermore,” I said, “the civilians you carry receive only low-level vetting. And, Captain? Even if there’s no spy aboard, any blogger, tweeter, an innocent e-mail home saying We’re on a rescue mission could blow it. If a spouse back in Pittsburgh phones the local TV station, or she’s got a brother at the Washington Post, maybe a niece on that sub, the instant the public hears, Arctic submarine on fire… I guarantee you, our satellites would suddenly track every Russian icebreaker within a thousand miles make a run at intersection. And some of their icebreakers have artillery. You have a few M16s.”
“You think we’d really fight?” he asked, not believing it possible in the new century.
“If our sub is in international water, abandoned? It’s drifting. It could drift into Russian waters. Next time our boys and girls are submerged off China, Syria, you want their lives in jeopardy?” My voice hardened. “You want a test?”
He nodded, unhappy. “So it’s a race,” he said.
“A race.”
He was eyeing me differently now. “Just what kind of doctor are you anyway?”
The kind who treats worst-case scenarios.
I said, “Oh, hypothermia. Frostbite.”
He sighed. It would be all right with him, at least at first. “Right,” he said. “And you won’t tell me what really happened on that submarine?”
Finally I could tell the truth, not that this relieved me. “I wish I knew what happened.”
Ten minutes later I learned that one of the Arktos propulsion units was broken, and could not quickly be repaired. There was no way to get the second rescue craft to the Wilmington. We’d have to leave with just one.
Two hours later we were under way, heading toward the North Pole at full speed, to start, at least, seventeen knots.
THREE
“If you spot a polar bear,” I told the man who shared my ex-wife’s bed back in Fairbanks, in a dry, academic voice, “record it in the log.”
Major Pettit almost responded, “Yes, Colonel,” but he changed it, at the last second, to “Sure, Doctor.”
I unscrewed a ventilation shaft door, peering in, scanning for hidden microphones, running a meter box. I kept talking because the meter was supposed to jump if a transmitter was sending. “Bears use ice as platforms for feeding. When the ice melts, the polar bear population drops.”
My quarters consisted of a two-room suite on the level four deck, which also housed cabins for the captain, ship’s officers, scientists, and held a radio room and helicopter control station. There were electronics shops and a pantry. We were one level down from the ship’s pilothouse.
My cabin was large, light streaming through a porthole. The sea was calm and there was no sense of movement, although I felt a low vibration from the diesel engines below. The sun outside was a hazy orb, as if viewed through gauze, a glow which would circle low in the sky, horizon to horizon, but in late August, almost never go away. If I needed to sleep, I’d close the porthole cover.