“It’s been twenty minutes since Rudi gave us the callback. He’s probably a sack of nerves by now. We probably ought to think about punching the UP button or else there will be two storms facing us topside.”
“Rudi’s not happy unless he has something to fret about,” Giordino replied, “but I guess there’s no upside in tempting the weather gods.” He turned the pilot’s yoke left, angling the submersible to the west while keeping it hovering just above the seafloor. They had traveled several hundred yards when the bottom became flecked with a succession of small boulders. The rocks grew larger as Giordino noted that the seafloor was gradually rising. Dahlgren picked up a bathymetric chart and tried to pinpoint their position.
“There looks to be a small seamount in the neighborhood. Didn’t look too promising to the seismic boys for some reason.”
“Probably because they’ve been sitting inside a climate-controlled office for too many years.”
Dahlgren set aside the chart and gazed at the computer monitor, suddenly jumping up in his seat.
“Hot damn! The water temperature just spiked ten degrees.”
A slight grin spread across Giordino’s face as he noted the cluster of rocks on the seabed growing in size and mass.
“The seafloor geology is changing as well,” he said. “The profile looks good for a vent. Let’s see if we can trace the water temperature to its core.”
He adjusted the submersible’s path as Dahlgren read out the water temperature readings. The higher temperatures led them up a sharp rise in the seafloor. A high mound of boulders blocked their path, and Giordino drove the submersible upward like an airplane, ascending nose first until they cleared the summit. As they descended down the opposite side, the scene before them suddenly changed dramatically. The gray, drab moonscape transformed into an iridescent underwater oasis. Yellow mollusks, red tube worms, and bright gold spider crabs littered the seafloor in a rainbow of color. A blue squid squirted past the view port, followed by a school of silver-scaled polar cod. Almost instantaneously, they had traveled from a desolate world of black-and-white to an electric-colored plantation teeming with life.
“Now I know how Dorothy felt when she landed in Oz,” Dahlgren muttered.
“What’s the water temperature now?”
“We’ve jetted to seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit and rising. Congratulations, boss, you’ve just bought yourself a thermal vent.”
Giordino nodded with satisfaction. “Mark our position. Then let’s exercise the mineral sniffer before . . .”
The radio suddenly crackled with a transmission sent via a pair of underwater transponders. “Narwhal to Bloodhound . . . Narwhal to Bloodhound,” interrupted a tense voice over the radio. “Please ascend immediately. Seas are running at ten feet and building rapidly. I repeat, you are directed to ascend immediately.”
“. . . before Rudi calls us home,” Dahlgren said, finishing Giordino’s sentence.
Giordino grinned. “Ever notice how Rudi’s voice goes up a couple of octaves when he’s nervous?”
“Last time I looked, he was still signing my paycheck,” Dahlgren cautioned.
“I suppose we don’t want to scratch the paint on our new baby here. Let’s grab a few quick rock samples first, then we can head topside.”
Dahlgren radioed a reply to Gunn, then reached over and grabbed the controls to an articulated arm that rested upright on the submersible’s exterior hull. Giordino guided the Bloodhound to a patch of grapefruit-sized nodules, hovering the sensor pod over the rocks. Using the stainless steel arm as a broom, Dahlgren swept several of the rocks into a basket beneath the sensor head. Onboard computers quickly assayed the density and magnetic properties of the rock samples.
“Composition is igneous, appears consistent with pyroxene. I’m seeing concentrations of manganese and iron. Also reading elements of nickel, platinum, and copper sulfides,” Dahlgren reported, eyeing a computer readout.
“That’s a pretty high-octane start. Save the assessment. We’ll have the lab boys crack open the samples and see how accurate the sensor readings are. Once the storm passes, we can give the site a thorough inspection.”
“She looks like a sweet one.”
“I am still a bit disappointed, my west Texas friend,” Giordino replied with a shake of his head.
“No gold?”
“No gold. I guess the closest I can get is just riding to the surface with a goldbricker.”
To Dahlgren’s chagrin, Giordino’s laughter echoed off the interior walls of the submersible for the better part of their ascent.
25
THE BEAUFORT SEA WAS BOILING WITH TWELVE-FOOT waves and near-gale-force winds when the Bloodhound burst through the surface of the Narwhal ’s moon pool. Water inside the pool sloshed onto the deck as the research ship pitched and rolled in the mounting seas. Twice the steel flanks of the submersible slapped against the cushioned rim of the moon pool before hoisting lines could be attached and the vessel yanked out of the water. Giordino and Dahlgren quickly climbed out of the Bloodhound and collected their rock samples before fleeing the elements into the adjacent operations center. Gunn stood waiting for them with a look of displeasure on his face.
“That’s a ten-million-dollar submersible that you nearly crushed like a beer can,” he said, glaring at Giordino. “You know we’re not allowed to launch and recover in these kinds of weather conditions.”
As if to emphasize his point, the ship’s driveshaft suddenly shuddered beneath their feet as the vessel wallowed heavily through a deep trough.
“Relax, Rudi.” Giordino beamed, then tossed one of the dripping rocks over to Gunn. NUMA’s Deputy Director fumbled to catch it, smearing his shirt with mud and seawater in the process.
“You’re on the trail?” he asked, his brows arching as he examined the rock.
“Better than that,” Dahlgren piped in. “We sniffed out some thermal deviations, and Al drove us right to the heart of the vent. A sweet mile-long rift pouring out hot soup with plenty of dumplings.”
Gunn’s face softened. “You’d better have found something for surfacing so late.” His gaze became like that of a kid in a candy store. “Did you see indications of a mineral field?”
“A large one, by the looks of it,” Giordino replied, nodding. “We only saw a section of it, but it appears widely dispersed.”
“And the electronic sensors? How did the Bloodhound perform? ”
“She was barking like a coyote under a full moon,” Dahlgren replied. “The sensors diagnosed over thirteen different elements.”
“We’ll have to leave it for the lab analysis to determine the Bloodhound’s accuracy,” Giordino added. “According to the sensors, that soggy rock you’re holding is chock-full of manganese and iron.”
“There’s probably enough of that stuff littering the bottom to buy you a thousand Bloodhounds, Rudi,” Dahlgren said.
“Did the sensors indicate any gold content?” Gunn asked.
Giordino’s eyes rolled skyward, then he turned to leave the ops center.
“Everybody thinks I’m Midas,” he grumbled before disappearing out the door.
26
THE SPRING STORM WAS NOT WIDESPREAD BUT packed the concentrated punch of a heavyweight boxer as it rolled southeast across the Beaufort Sea. Pummeling wind gusts of over sixty miles per hour blew the falling snow in horizontal sheets, turning the flakes to hardened particles of ice. Gusting swirls spread thick curtains over the white ice, often plunging visibility down to zero. The already hostile environment of the Arctic north became a place of brutal savagery.
Kevin Bue listened to the frames of the mess hall creak and shudder under the bristling gale and idly contemplated the structure’s strength rating. Draining the remains of a cup of coffee, he tried to concentrate on a scientific journal spread open on the table. Though he had experienced a dozen storms during his tenure in the Arctic, he still found their ferocity unnerving. While the rest of the crew went about their jobs, Bue fou
nd it hard to focus when the entire camp sounded like it was about to blow away.
A heavyset cook and part-time carpenter named Benson sat down at the table across from Bue and sipped at his own steaming mug of coffee.
“Pretty good blow, eh?” he said, grinning through a thick black beard.
“Sounds like it’s about to take us along with it,” Bue replied, watching the roof overhead swaying back and forth.
“Well, if it does, I sure hope it deposits us somewhere where the weather is warm and the drinks taste better cold,” he replied, sipping at his coffee. Eyeing Bue’s empty cup, he reached over and grabbed the handle, then stood up.
“Here, let me get you a refill.”
Benson walked across the mess to a large silver urn and refilled the cup. He started back toward Bue, then suddenly froze with a quizzical look on his face. Above the din of the buffeting wind, he detected a low-pitched mechanical churn. That wasn’t what bothered him, though. It was the sharp crackling sound accompanying it that struck a nerve deep in his gut.
Bue glanced up at Benson, then picked up on the sound as well. The noise was drawing upon them rapidly, and Bue thought he heard a shout somewhere off in the compound before his whole world collapsed around him.
With a crunching jar, the back wall of the mess hall completely disintegrated, replaced by a massive gray wedge. The towering object quickly surged through the room, leaving behind a thirty-foot swath of destruction. Torn free from its supports, the hut’s roof flew off in a gust, while a blast of cold air flooded the interior. Bue looked on in horror as the gray mass devoured Benson in a spray of ice and froth. For one moment, the chef was standing there holding a mug of coffee. In the next instant, he was gone.
The floor buckled up beneath Bue, throwing him and the table toward the entry door. Struggling to his feet, he stood and stared at the gray behemoth that materialized before him. It was a ship, his jumbled mind finally fathomed, storming through the center of the camp and the thin ice beneath it.
The swirling, snowy winds gave the vessel a ghostly appearance, but he was able to make out a large number 54 painted in white on the bow. As the bow burst past with a deep rumble, Bue caught a glimpse of a large American flag rippling from the ship’s masthead before the vessel disappeared into a cloud of white. He instinctively staggered back toward it, calling out for Benson, until nearly stepping into a black river of water that now trailed the ship.
Dazedly shaking off his state of shock, Bue pulled on his parka, which lay crumpled on the ground, and stepped past the remains of the entryway. Fighting his way against the winds, he tried to assess the condition of the camp while noting that the ground beneath his feet seemed to sway in an odd manner. Circling a few dozen feet to his right, he stopped at a ledge where the ice dropped away to open water. Just beyond him was where all three bunkhouses had stood. Now they were all gone, replaced by scattered chunks of ice floating in the dark water.
Bue’s heart sank, knowing that one of his men had been off duty and asleep in his bunk just a short time before. That still left two men unaccounted for—Case the radio operator and Quinlon the maintenance man.
Bue turned his attention toward the lab building, catching sight of the structure’s blue walls still standing in the distance. Struggling to move closer, he nearly fell into the water again, finding a lead in the ice that separated him from the lab. Against his better judgment, he took a running leap and hopped over the three-foot chasm, falling hard to the ice on the opposite side. Willing himself forward, he staggered into the wind until reaching the threshold. Resting briefly, he burst through the door, then froze.
The interior of the lab, like the mess hall, had been obliterated by the passing ship. Little remained standing beyond the doorway, just some scattered remains floating in the water a few feet away. Miraculously, the radio shack had somehow survived the blow, severed from the main building but still standing upright. Through the whistling wind, Bue could hear Case’s voice calling out a plea for help.
Stepping closer, Bue found Case seated at his desk talking into a dead radio set. The ice camp’s power generators, stowed in the storage building, had been one of the first things to sink when the ship charged through. There was no power left in the camp, nor had there been any for several minutes.
Bue put his hand on Case’s shoulder and the radioman slowly set down the transmitter, his eyes glazed with fear. Suddenly a crackling sound erupted beneath them and the ground began to shudder.
“It’s the ice!” Bue shouted. “Get out of here now.”
He pulled Case to his feet, and the two men scrambled out of the shack and across the ice as the crackling sound seemed to chase them. They hopped over a low rise and turned to see the ice beneath the lab and radio hut shatter like a cracked mirror. The surface splintered into a dozen chunks of loose ice that quickly fell apart, causing the remains of the structure to dissolve into the water below. In less than two minutes, the entire camp had disappeared before Bue’s eyes.
As the two men stared blankly at the destruction, Bue thought he heard the shout of a man above the wind. Peering through the blowing maelstrom, he strained to hear it again. But first his eyes caught sight of a figure flailing in the water, near the site of the radio shack.
“It’s Quinlon,” Case yelled, also spotting the man. Regaining his composure, Case bolted toward the struggling maintenance man.
Quinlon was rapidly losing a fight against shock from immersion into the icy water. Laden by his parka and boots, he would have quickly sunk had he not been able to grab hold of a floating chunk of ice. He quickly lost the energy to pull himself out of the water but propelled himself toward Bue and Case with his last ounce of effort.
The two men ran to the edge of the ice and reached out for Quinlon, desperately grasping a flailing arm. Pulling him closer, they tried to yank him from the water but could only get him a few inches out of the water before he fell back in. With his saturated boots and clothing, the average-built Quinlon now weighed over three hundred pounds. Realizing their error, Bue and Case lunged at the human load again, dragging and rolling him horizontally until finally coercing his entire body out of the water.
“We’ve got to get him out of the wind,” Bue said, looking around for shelter. All of the man-made remnants of the camp were gone, save for a small section of the crumpled storage shed now floating away on a car-sized chunk of ice.
“The snowbank by the runway,” Case replied, pointing through the swirling snow.
Quinlon’s efforts to keep the airfield clear had resulted in several deep snowbanks built up from his plowing. Though most of the airfield had now vanished, Case was right. There was a high mound of snow less than fifty yards away.
Each man grabbed one of Quinlon’s arms and began dragging him across the ice like a bag of potatoes. They knew the maintenance man was near death, and if he was to have any chance of survival, they would have to move him clear of the minus-twenty-degrees windchill. Panting and perspiring despite the bitter cold, they hauled Quinlon to the back side of the ten-foot snowbank, which blocked the worst of the westerly gale.
They quickly stripped off Quinlon’s wet clothes, which had already frozen stiff, then they briefly rubbed snow on his body to absorb the remaining moisture. Brushing the snow aside, they then wrapped his head and body in their own dry parkas. Quinlon was blue and shaking uncontrollably, but he was still conscious, which meant he had a chance at survival. Following Case’s lead, Bue helped dig a small hole in the side of the snowbank. Sliding Quinlon in first, the other two men crawled alongside, hoping to share body heat while cowering from the slashing winds.
Peering out of their meager cave, Bue could see a watery passage expanding between their shelter and the unbroken ice sheet. They were part of a separate ice floe now, drifting slowly into the Beaufort Sea. Every few minutes, the scientist would hear a deep thunderous crack as their floating ice shelf ruptured into smaller and smaller pieces. Propelled into the storm-driven wat
ers, he knew it would be only a matter of time before their own frozen refuge would be battered to bits and all three men tossed into the sea.
With no one else even aware of their predicament, they had no hope for survival. Shivering in the frightful cold, Bue contemplated the merciless gray ship that had decimated the camp so unexpectedly and without reason. Try as it might, his frozen mind could make no sense of the brutal act. Shaking his head to clear away the marauding vessel’s ghostlike image, he peered at his comrades with sad compassion, then quietly awaited death to visit them all.
27
THE RADIO CALL HAD ARRIVED FAINTLY AND IN a single transmission. Repeated efforts by the Narwhal’s radio operator to verify the message were met with complete silence.
Captain Stenseth read the hand-scribbled message transcribed by his radioman, shook his head, and then read the message once more.
“Mayday, Mayday. This is Ice Lab 7. The camp is breaking up . . .” he recited aloud. “That’s all you got? ” he asked, his eyes glaring.
The radioman nodded silently. Stenseth turned and stepped to the helmsman.
“All ahead flank speed,” he barked. “Come left, steer course zero-one-five.” He turned to the executive officer. “I want a plot to the ice lab’s reported position. And call three additional look-outs to the bridge.”
In an instant, he was towering over the radio operator’s shoulder.
“Notify the regional U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards of the distress call and tell them that we are responding. Alert any local traffic, if there is any. Then get Gunn and Giordino to the bridge.”
“Sir, the nearest Coast Guard station is Canadian, at Tuktoyaktuk. That’s over two hundred miles away.”
Stenseth gazed at the blowing snow buffeting the bridge’s windscreens, his mind conjuring an image of the ice camp inhabitants. Softening his tone, he replied quietly, “Then I guess that means their only saving angel is wearing turquoise wings.”