Dahlgren nodded with a grim look on his face. Pitt and Giordino were no worse off than they were, he thought. Coaxing the tender’s motor to life, he turned the boat south and disappeared into a dark bank of fog.
69
Pitt and Giordino had been hovering over the ship’s bell when they received a brief transmission from Dahlgren that the Narwhal was moving off-site. Preoccupied with uncovering the bell’s inscription, they had not followed up the call.
The discovery that the shipwreck was the Terror proved to be a small relief for Pitt. With no indication that there was any ruthenium aboard, there was still room for hope. The Inuit must have obtained the ore from the Erebus, and perhaps she alone held the secret to the coveted mineral. The question lingered as to where had the Erebus ended up. The two ships were known to have been abandoned together, so presumably they would have sunk close to each other. Pitt felt confident that expanding the AUV’s search area would turn up the second ship.
“Bloodhound to Narwhal, we’re beginning our ascent,” Giordino radioed. “What’s your status?”
“We’re on the move at the moment. I’m trying to get an update from the bridge. Will let you know when I do. Over.”
It was the last they were to hear from Dahlgren. But having extended their bottom time, they were more concerned about reaching the surface with auxiliary power to spare. Pitt shut off the external lights and sensing equipment to save power, while Giordino did the same with the nonessential interior computers. As the submersible fell dark and they began gliding upward, Giordino sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, and closed his eyes.
“Wake me when it’s time to let in some fresh ten-below air,” he muttered.
“I’ll make sure that Jack has your slippers and newspaper waiting.”
Pitt again reviewed the electrical power readings with a wary eye. There was plenty of reserve power for the life-support systems and the ballast-control pumps, but little else. He reluctantly shut down the submersible’s propulsion system, knowing they would be subject to the strong currents during their ascent. Plugging the Narwhal’s moon pool would be out, as they would likely end up a mile or two down current when they broke the surface. And that’s only if the Narwhal was back on-site.
Pitt shut down a few more electrical controls, then stared out at the black abyss beyond the view port. Suddenly, an urgent cry rang out on the radio.
“Bloodhound, we’ve been…”
The transmission was cut midsentence and was followed by complete silence. Giordino popped forward in his chair and was returning the call even before he had his eyes open. Despite repeated attempts, his transmissions to the Narwhal went unanswered.
“We might have lost their signal in a thermocline,” Giordino offered.
“Or the transponder link was broken when they began running at speed,” Pitt countered.
They were manufactured excuses to reason away the truth neither man wanted to accept, that the Narwhal was in real trouble. Giordino continued making radio calls every few minutes, but there was no response. And there was nothing either man could do about it.
Pitt looked at the submersible’s depth gauge and wondered if they were tied to the bottom. Since receiving the interrupted call, their ascent rate had slowed to a crawl, or so it seemed to Pitt. He tried to keep his eyes away from the gauge, knowing the more he watched it, the slower it moved. Sitting back, he closed his eyes for a time, imagining the troubles the Narwhal might be facing, while Giordino diligently kept up his radio vigil.
He finally opened his eyes to see they were just over a hundred feet deep. A few minutes later, they rocked to the surface amid a rush of bubbles and foam. Pitt kicked on the external lights, which simply reflected back a surrounding billow of fog. The radio remained silent as they rocked back and forth in the heaving waters.
Alone in a cold and empty sea, Pitt and Giordino both knew that the worst had happened. The Narwhal was no more.
70
“What do you mean the rescue team disappeared? ”
The President’s angry voice echoed off the walls of the White House Situation Room on the lower level of the West Wing. An Army colonel, brought in by the Pentagon generals to serve as a sacrificial lamb, responded in a quiet monotone.
“Sir, the team failed to appear at the extraction site at the appointed time. The airfield support squad was not advised of any problems from the strike team and were themselves evacuated on schedule.”
“I was promised a low-risk mission with a ninety percent probability of success,” the President said, glaring at the Secretary of Defense.
The room fell silent, no one wishing to antagonize the man further.
Seated two seats down from the President, Vice President Sandecker found a touch of amusement to the inquisition. When called to an emergency meeting by the National Security Advisor, he was surprised to find no less than five generals seated around the Secretary of Defense in the conference room. It was not an omen of good things to come, he knew. Sandecker was no fan of the secretary, a man he found to be narrow-minded and trigger-happy. Yet he quickly put his personal feelings aside for the crisis at hand.
“Colonel, why don’t you tell us exactly what you know,” Sandecker said, deflecting the President’s anger.
The colonel described the planned mission in detail and the intelligence that supported the rescue strike. “The befuddling aspect is that there are indications that the team was successful in freeing the captives. Radio intercepts from Canadian forces in Tuktoyaktuk report an assault on the holding complex and the subsequent escape of the Polar Dawn’s crew. We’ve detected no indications that they were recaptured.”
“What if the Special Forces team was simply delayed?” Sandecker asked. “The nights are short up there right now. Perhaps they were forced into hiding somewhere for a period before making it back to the airfield.”
The colonel shook his head. “We sent an aircraft back to the extraction site under darkness just hours ago. They touched down briefly, but no one was there, and additional radio calls went unanswered.”
“They couldn’t have just vanished,” the President grumbled.
“We’ve analyzed satellite reconnaissance, radio traffic, and local contacts on the ground. They’ve all come up empty,” stated Julie Moss, the President’s National Security Advisor. “The only conclusion that can be made is that they were quietly recaptured and relocated to a new location. They might be back on the Polar Dawn or possibly flown out of the area.”
“What has been the official Canadian response to our request for release of the ship and crew?” Sandecker asked.
“There has been no response,” Moss said. “We’ve been curtly ignored through diplomatic channels, while the Prime Minister and Parliament continue to make outlandish claims of American imperialism that are straight out of a banana republic.”
“They have not limited themselves to words,” the Secretary of Defense interjected. “They have placed their military forces on alert status, in addition to their recent port closures.”
“That’s true,” Moss echoed. “The Canadian Coast Guard has started turning away all American-flagged ships approaching Vancouver and Quebec, as well as Toronto-bound barge traffic. It’s expected that their border crossings will be temporarily closed in a day or two.”
“This is getting quite out of hand,” the President said.
“It is even worse. We’ve received word that our pending natural gas imports from Melville Sound have been suspended. We have reason to believe the gas has been diverted to the Chinese, although we don’t know if this was directed by the government or the gas field operator.”
The President slunk into his chair with a dazed look on his face. “That threatens our entire future,” he said quietly.
“Sir,” the Secretary of Defense declared, “with all due regard, the Canadian government has wrongfully blamed us for the loss of their Arctic ice lab and damage to one of their patrol craft. They have illegally c
aptured a U.S. Coast Guard vessel in international waters and are treating the crew as prisoners of war. They have done the same to our Delta Forces team, or perhaps killed them and the ship’s crew as well, for all we know. On top of that, they are threatening our entire nation with energy blackmail. Diplomacy has failed, sir. It is time for another option.”
“We’ve hardly met the threshold for a military escalation,” Sandecker said bitterly.
“You may be right, Jim, but those men’s lives are at stake,” the President said. “I want a formal demand presented to the Prime Minister for the release of the crew and rescue team within twenty-four hours. Do it privately, so that the media-happy PM can save face. We can negotiate for the ship later, but I want those men freed now. And I want a reversal on those natural gas shipments.”
“What’s our response if they don’t comply?” Moss asked.
The Secretary of Defense piped up. “Mr. President, we’ve drawn up several options for a limited first-strike engagement.”
“A ‘limited engagement’… What is that supposed to mean?” the President asked.
The conference room door opened and a White House aide silently entered and handed a note to Sandecker.
“A limited engagement,” the Secretary of Defense continued, “would be deployment of the minimum resources required to incapacitate a high percentage of Canada’s air and naval forces through surgical strikes.”
The President’s face turned red. “I’m not talking about a full-blown war. Just something to get their attention.”
The Secretary of Defense quickly backed down. “We have options for single-target missions as well,” he said quietly.
“What do you think, Jim?” the President asked, turning to Sandecker.
A grim look spread across the Vice President’s face as he finished reading the note and held it up before him.
“I’ve just been informed by Rudi Gunn at NUMA that their research vessel Narwhal has gone missing in the Northwest Passage, off Victoria Island. The ship is presumed captured or sunk with all hands, including the Director of NUMA, Dirk Pitt.”
The Secretary of Defense broke into a wolfish grin as he gazed across the table at Sandecker.
“It would seem,” he said pointedly, “that we have suddenly found your threshold.”
71
The United States has launched armed incursions into Canada on at least a half dozen occasions. The bloodiest invasion occurred during the Revolutionary War, when General Richard Montgomery marched north from Fort Ticonderoga and captured Montreal, then moved on Quebec City. He was joined by a secondary force that had entered Canada via Maine, led by Benedict Arnold. Attacking Quebec City on December 31, 1775, the Americans briefly captured the city before being beaten back in a fierce battle with the British. A shortage of supplies and reinforcements, as well as the loss of Montgomery during the fight, meant that the Americans had little choice but to break off the foray into Canada.
When hostilities heated up again during the War of 1812, the Americans launched repeated strikes into Canada to fight the British. Most ended in failure. The most notable success occurred in 1813, when Toronto (then York) was sacked and its parliamentary buildings burned to the ground. The victory would prove to haunt the U.S. a year later when the British marched on Washington. Angered by the earlier destructive act, the British returned the favor by taking a torch to the public buildings of the American capital.
With colonial independence achieved in 1783, Canada and the United States quickly grew to be amicable neighbors and allies. Yet the seeds of distrust have never completely vanished. In the 1920s, the U.S. War Department developed strategic plans to invade Canada as part of a hypothetical war with the United Kingdom. “War Plan Red,” as it was named, called for land invasions targeting Winnipeg and Quebec, along with a naval assault on Halifax. Not to be outdone, the Canadians developed “Defence Scheme No. 1,” for a counterinvasion of the United States. Albany, Minneapolis, Seattle, and Great Falls, Montana, were targeted for surprise attacks, in hopes that the Canadians could buy time until British reinforcements arrived.
Time and technology had changed the world considerably since the 1920s. Great Britain no longer stood in Canada’s defense, and America’s military might made for a dominating power imbalance. Though the disappearance of the Narwhal angered the President, it hardly justified an invasion. At least not yet. It would take weeks to organize a ground offensive anyway, should things degrade that far, and he wanted a quick and forceful response in forty-eight hours.
The strike plan agreed to, barring the release of the captives, was simple yet pain-inducing. U.S. Navy warships would be sent in to blockade Vancouver in the west and the Saint Lawrence River in the east, effectively blocking Canada’s foreign trade. Stealth bombers would strike first, targeting Canadian fighter air bases at Cold Lake, Alberta, and Bagotville, Quebec. Special Forces teams would also be on standby to secure Canada’s major hydroelectric plants, in case of an attempted disruption in exported electric power. A later strike would be used to seize the Melville gas field.
There was little the Canadians could do in response, the Secretary of Defense and his generals had argued. Under threat of continued air strikes, they would have to release the captives and agree to open terms on the Northwest Passage. All were in agreement, though, that it would never come to that. The Canadians would be warned of the circumstances if they didn’t comply with the twenty-four-hour deadline. They would have no choice but to acquiesce.
But there was one problem that the Pentagon hawks had failed to consider. The Canadian government had no idea what had become of the Polar Dawn’s crew.
72
Trapped in their sinking iron coffin, the Polar Dawn’s crew would have begged for another twenty-four hours. But their prospect for survival was down to minutes.
Murdock’s prediction had so far held true. The barge’s number 4 hold had steadily filled with water until spilling over into the number 3 compartment. As the stern sank lower under the weight, the water poured in at a faster rate. In the small forward storage compartment, the deck listed ominously beneath the men’s feet as the sound of rushing water drew nearer.
A man appeared at the aft hatch, one of Roman’s commandos, breathing heavily from scaling the hold’s ladder.
“Captain,” he gasped, waving a penlight around the bay until spotting his commander, “the water is now spilling into the number 2 hold.”
“Thank you, Corporal,” Roman replied. “Why don’t you sit down and take a rest. There’s no need for further recon.”
Roman sought out Murdock and pulled him aside. “When the barge starts to go under,” he whispered, “will the hatch covers pop off the holds?”
Murdock shook his head, then gave a hesitant look.
“She’ll surely go under before the number 1 hold is flooded. That means there will be an air pocket underneath, which will build in pressure as the barge sinks. There’s probably a good chance it will blow the hatch cover, but we might be five hundred feet deep before that happens.”
“It’s still a chance,” Roman said quietly.
“Then what?” Murdock replied. “A man won’t last ten minutes in these waters.” He shook his head with irritation, then said, “Fine. Go ahead and give the men some hope. I’ll let you know when I think this tub is about to go down, and you can assemble the men on the ladder. At least they’ll have something to hang on to for the ride to perdition.”
At the entry hatch, Bojorquez had listened to the exchange, then resumed his hammering on the locked latch. By now, he knew it was a futile gesture. The tiny hammer was proving worthless against the hardened steel. Hours of pounding had gouged only a small notch in the lock spindle. He was many hours, if not days, away from wearing into the lock mechanism.
Between whacks, he looked over at his fellow captives. Cold, hungry, and downcast, they stood assembled, many staring at him with hopeful desperation. Surprisingly, there was little trace of panic in th
e air. Their emotions frozen like the cold steel of the barge, the captive men calmly accepted their pending fate.
73
The Narwhal’s tender was perilously overloaded. Designed to hold twelve men, the boat easily accommodated the fourteen crewmen who had evacuated the ship. But the extra weight was just enough to alter her sailing characteristics in a rough sea. With choppy waves slapping at her sides, it was only a short time before a layer of icy water began sloshing around the footwells.
Stenseth had taken hold of the tiller after a laborious effort to start the frozen motor. With a pair of ten-gallon cans of gasoline, they had just enough fuel to reach King William Island. But Stenseth already had an uneasy feeling, realizing that they would have to march in the footsteps of Franklin’s doomed crew if they were to reach safety at Gjoa Haven.
Leery of swamping the boat, the captain motored slowly through the whitecapped seas. Fog still hung heavy over the water, but he could detect a faint lightening of the billows as the brief Arctic night showed signs of passing. He refrained from turning directly east toward King William Island, holding to his word to make a brief search for Pitt and Giordino. With next to no visibility, he knew the odds of locating the submersible were long. To make matters worse, there was no GPS unit in the tender. Relying on a compass distorted by their nearness to the magnetic north pole, Stenseth dead reckoned their way back to the site of the shipwreck.
The helmsman estimated that they had collided with the icebreaker some six miles northwest of the wreck site. Guessing at the current and their own speed, Stenseth piloted the boat southeast for twenty minutes, then cut the motor. Dahlgren and the others shouted out Pitt’s name through the fog, but the only sound they heard in reply was the slap of the waves against the tender’s hull.
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