by Tom Rose
Fittingly, there were hardly any members of the media on hand for the event. When during the course of the rescue had they covered the truly newsworthy developments? Most were back in Pepe’s, recovering from their coverage of Ron Morris announcing the Russians’ pending arrival. Cindy hugged nearly everyone she saw. The ice was awash in emotional embraces. Everyone was so caught up in the heady moment, it took several frantic shrieks for attention from a lone Eskimo woman to cut short the euphoric pandemonium.
“The baby, the baby!” she shrieked. “Where’s the baby?”
It struck Cindy hard. Where was the baby? How could she not have noticed that since they began celebrating she had seen only the two larger whales? She screamed in panic as she sprinted toward Arnold, the whales’ protector.
“Bone, Bone,” she cried, as if the sea mammal knew its name let alone how to respond. “Has anyone seen Bone?”
Craig George was right. The large whales had been protecting the baby whale. That was why they had only now started to move. When the baby gently slipped beneath the surface, never to be seen again, the survivors readied themselves for freedom. Bone was gone. The problem of how to save three whales had just been simplified by a third.
21
Risking Lives for a Six-Second Scoop
Arnold Brower was indignant. “Don’t scare me like that,” he admonished Cindy. “Just watch what you say.” He shook his head in aggravated annoyance and insisted that he had just seen the baby whale seconds earlier. Brower retreated into his own well-known dispassion. He focused intently on the hole he was trying to keep clear of ice. Suddenly, he paused before lifting his seal pole out of the water. In a brief moment of uncertainty, he dropped the hollow aluminum shaft and let it float on the water’s surface.
Throughout the unbridled emotion of the past several minutes, the seasoned Arctic hunter had remained a pillar of stoicism. He preached to other subsistence hunters the need for practiced discipline in the bitter elements. Now he scolded Cindy, desperately hoping she was wrong. In the Arctic, he lectured her, there was no room for misplaced emotion. Survival depended on the facts, not the unfounded whims of the heart.
“We’re out here killing ourselves, and you go and panic over Bone. Just watch,” he said, trying to restore their composure. “Just watch.”
For the next frightful moments they did. Silently, they stood just inches apart waiting for the baby whale to return. Cindy trusted Arnold. His angry rebuttal reassured her. But this time, Arnold Brower was wrong. Bone was dead. After several moments, acknowledgment of Bone’s fate became inevitable. Cindy broke down, consumed in grief. It was the most irrational week of her life. Her strength was shattered. Bone’s death marked the nadir. The tragic but unavoidable conclusion came just after the elation of watching the two surviving whales move to the new holes.
Craig and Arnold, in a desperate attempt to calm her down, tried to coax Cindy off the ice and into a waiting truck to drive her back to town. The sooner she left, they thought, the sooner she might recover from the trauma of Bone’s death. They were right. She calmed down the minute she sat down. Her hysteria behind her, Cindy insisted on taking another, last look for the baby whale and its scraped snout. She closely inspected the first holes waiting for a sign of Bone. After a moment, she knew it was not to be. A week of intense proximity enabled Craig and Cindy to grow close enough for him to clutch her with his down-covered arm.
“You did all you could,” Craig comforted her. “Cin, if it weren’t for you, they’d all be dead and you know it.”
He was right, but Cindy didn’t feel she deserved any special notice. The whales had needed help and she offered it. There was no artifice to Cindy. What she felt was what she was. Contrary to Craig’s well-meaning intention, Cindy felt Operation Breakout became what it was not because of her, but because of the way people responded to her appeals.
Fran Tate, the owner of Pepe’s, put up notices in the Top of the World Hotel to alert all the members of the media and rescuers that her restaurant was closing early. The past few nights, Tate and her glassy-eyed employees had been manning the skillets and the deep fryers past midnight only to open again at seven the next morning. Although she had been threatening to close at 9 P.M. since the rescue began, this time Craig believed her. Frankly, he was looking for any excuse to leave. Bone was dead and the melancholy on the ice was getting him down. Besides, he was hungry, cold, and tired. The more energy people expended bewailing Bone, the less they would have for the two living whales, who were still quite desperate themselves.
As soon as Cindy was in the running truck, Craig jammed the transmission into drive, expertly spun his wheels on the ice, turned the vehicle sharply around, and started the seventeen-mile return trip to Barrow. Rounding the northernmost tip of North America, Craig drove around the edge of the narrow sandspit to the smoother and safer ice of Elson’s Lagoon.
Cindy looked out her window and marveled at the totality of Arctic nothingness. She consoled herself by putting things in perspective. The rescue was just a momentary flash. Millions of people from around the globe were following the whales so closely that none of the hundred or so reporters had the time, energy, or inclination to focus on Barrow.
The story would come and go, and the drama would end, but Barrow and its Arctic surrounding would remain. The rescue activity seemed significant when experienced in person or watched on television, but when compared to the vastness surrounding it, it was nothing. Hours after the last rescuer left, the Arctic would envelop the site, leaving no trace of human presence.
While Cindy stared intently into the night, Craig focused on the lone light that shined just over the horizon. It shone distinctly through a thin bank of low-lying fog. It must be the temporary light put up by the borough to help guide vehicles on and off the ice, Craig thought. He was startled by its remarkable luminance. Even through the fog, it showed the way for miles. Craig couldn’t understand why the light didn’t get brighter the closer he got. Perhaps he had lost his way. The very instant Craig contemplated panic, the gravel road that marked the beginning of the continent came into view. He thanked the light that led him there. He thanked the Arctic moon.
When Cindy checked for messages, she hoped to see one from Kevin. Suddenly she missed him terribly. She couldn’t bear to be alone in her grief; she wanted to share it. The receptionist could read the disappointment on Cindy’s face when she broke the news that no one had called. The first time Cindy wanted messages, there were none. She ran upstairs to phone him. It was just after 8 P.M., Friday night, October 21, two weeks to the day after the whales were discovered and one week since Cindy first started orchestrating their rescue. Until now, she never had the time or reason to miss her boyfriend. Bone’s death changed all that. She hurriedly called Kevin’s office. As she was about to hang up, she remembered that the election was just two weeks away and that Kevin was probably busy at work. Next to Cindy, elections were the most important thing to Kevin Bruce, Alaska’s most successful Democratic political consultant. Surely, he couldn’t have gone home yet, she told herself. Maybe he was screening his calls.
“Kevin?” she asked lamely at the sound of the beep. “Are you there?” Before she could finish, Kevin dashed across the room to pick it up.
“Hi,” he exclaimed with relief. “I’m really sorry about the baby whale.”
“How do you know about that?” Cindy was puzzled. “You’re the first person I’ve talked to since I’ve been back and I haven’t told anybody.”
“Oh really?” said Kevin. “It’s all over the news. I just saw it on CNN.”
Cindy was amazed. It wasn’t an hour since Bone was first discovered missing and there were few reporters on the ice to cover it. But in less time than it took Cindy to drive back to Barrow, pick up the phone, and dial Kevin’s number, reports of Bone’s all-but-certain death were already big news on TV broadcasts, bigger news than the Russians. She marveled at how the revolution in telecommunications had shrunk the world. New
s, even from one of the most remote regions on Earth, crossed the planet in an instant. Viewers in the Lower 48 learned about Bone’s death before most reporters in Barrow.
October 21 was a day of double headlines: Soviet participation and Bone’s presumed death by drowning. By emphasizing the bad news, the media might well have sounded the operation’s death knell. Unlike most news events that portray negative aspects of the world in which we live, Operation Breakout proved an international sensation because it described humans following a noble impulse to save helpless animals. If the coverage that Friday continued to focus on Bone’s death, the story’s good feeling might end. News executives didn’t want their reports to provoke despair. If it turned as negative as every other story, their audience would lose interest.
Newsmen knew that this was different from almost any other story they had ever covered. It was the ultimate perversion of the cat-up-a-tree story, a redux of the media frenzy surrounding Jessica McClure’s 1987 rescue from a well in Midland, Texas. The public’s only interest in the whales was to see them saved. People were tired of politics, economics, and war. Aren’t we always? They looked to the whales to help them escape, if only for a little while. Notwithstanding the State Department spin doctors, news that the Russians were on the way led Saturday morning papers across the United States and Canada. Many editions carried banner headlines befitting a major story. Weekends are usually slow news periods. But papers need headlines to print on weekends just as on any other day, and TV newscasts still need top stories to broadcast. That weekend of October 22 and 23 belonged almost solely to the whales.
What worked against the State Department worked for Operation Breakout. Bone’s death was not reported in the Lower 48 until after midnight Eastern time, much too late to run in the Saturday papers. By the time Sunday rolled around, Bone’s passing was already old news, but Cindy wouldn’t have known it by the constant ringing of her phone. Through Friday night, reporters from the Lower 48 and around the world called to verify that Bone had died. Even though it was all but apparent that the baby whale had drowned she didn’t want to confirm it until first light Saturday morning. She and the rescuers could search the area once again for the missing whale and then let Ron Morris make whatever pronouncement he saw fit.
* * *
Around 10 P.M., Bill Allen and Ben Odom returned to Barrow to help prepare for the arrival of the giant Archimedean Screw Tractor. Allen and Odom’s men at Prudhoe Bay were scheduled to work all night breaking down the pontoon ice crusher into sections small enough to fit on board an airplane that would fly it to Barrow, 270 miles away. After a day of round-the-clock maneuverings, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens convinced both the White House and the Pentagon to authorize the U.S. Air Force to deploy the tractor to Barrow. VECO faxed the screw tractor’s dimensions from Prudhoe Bay to the Pentagon. The only plane big enough for the massive load was the biggest one in the American fleet, the Lockheed C-5A Galaxy cargo transport aircraft.
Bill Allen was busy until late at night using the phone in Ed Benson’s apartment. Benson, who owned the jammed Airport Inn, wanted the big oilman out of his home so his family could get some sleep. Luckily, Benson would win a reprieve after Chuck Baker, another VECO representative, gave up his hotel room for Allen and Leathard in exchange for permission to return to Anchorage. It was a no-lose proposition for Baker. He was the envy of most of us who had to stay in Barrow.
By Saturday morning, Allen and Leathard were famished. They hadn’t eaten since leaving Anchorage the day before. The hungry oilmen were first in line at Pepe’s on Saturday morning. Cindy Lowry was in the same predicament. While she, too, waited for a table, Cindy immediately recognized Bill Allen’s unmistakable Texas drawl. Allen was too busy talking with Pete about details of the screw tractor to notice the tiny woman who orchestrated the massive international rescue. When Craig and Geoff came in, two of Operation Breakout’s biggest players were introduced.
Allen politely tipped his ten-gallon Stetson hat as if being introduced to royalty. He broke into a thin sympathetic smile and quietly said, “Ma’am, it’s awful damn nice to meetcha. People all over the world owe you a lot of thanks, me included.” Cindy warmly accepted his good graces and asked Allen and Leathard to join her for breakfast. They happily obliged.
Before they sat down, Allen whispered in Cindy’s ear. “Can I see you over there,” he whispered pointing to a quiet corner of the dining room. “I’d like to talk with you in private.” Cindy was repulsed at the self-absorbed thought that the gangly oilman might be about to make a pass at her. Allen walked ten paces to the corner while Cindy followed warily behind. When they both stood in front of the kitchen door, Allen leaned against the overhanging door frame and took on a look of sympathy and understanding.
“Hell, I know how much you wanted to save that baby,” he said to Cindy’s vanishing smile of curiosity. “I just want you to know that you have done all that you can, and that you have my word that we’re going to do our damnedest to save them last two critters. I ain’t never seen no whales until I came up here last week, and let me tell ya something, they are incredible animals. We’re gonna save ’em, ma’am. I promise you.”
Before Operation Breakout, Cindy felt nothing but hostility for oil companies. Come to think of it, she didn’t feel much but hostility toward any person or group with whom she disagreed. People who opposed her and her agenda were the bad guys. Ill intent, malice of forethought, or just plain evil were the only possible explanations for opposing anything the environmentalist establishment supported. Oilmen pumped oil. Since oil was bad, those who produced oil were bad.
Now, suddenly, here was the quintessential oilman showing goodness, not evil. Without hesitation, she gave an unprepared Bill Allen an impromptu hug. They laughed, and Cindy walked back to the table sporting her infectious smile that returned for the first time since Bone’s death.
In the moment it took Bill Allen to convey his genuine empathy, Cindy realized how muddled her perceptions had become. She was a professional environmentalist whose personal life had been made better by what the oil industry has produced. In fact, were it not for the oil industry there would be no whales left to save. They would have long since been hunted to extinction for their oil. The ultimate irony, of course, was that it was the “evil” oil industry, not purehearted environmentalists, who saved the whales, by providing a better, cheaper, more abundant, and safer source of fuel than whale oil.
* * *
While Cindy, Geoff, Craig, and Arnold were getting ready to go back on the ice to continue to search for the missing whale, Ron Morris was trying to find out when the Russian ships would arrive. According to the State Department, the Soviet vessels were due in Barrow the next night, Sunday, October 23, a week to the day after Operation Breakout began, sixteen days after the whales were found. When the two Soviet vessels finished their work on the Northern Pole 31 float station, they faced a three-hundred-mile journey to the southwest.
When the announcement was first made the day before, on Friday, October 21, Captain Sergei Reshetov’s best analysis indicated that it would take two days to reach Barrow. However, soon after their departure from the floating ice station, he found conditions much worse than expected. The shifting ice pack made navigation treacherous. His artful dodges and traverses would add hours to the trip. Reshetov was worried. Rarely had he seen such dangerous ice conditions so early in the year. He could only imagine what kind of winter lay in store. He sent a cable to Vladivostok asking officials for aerial ice reconnaissance. Having spent a career in the Soviet Merchant Marine, Reshetov knew not to get his hopes up. U.S. reconnaissance capabilities were light-years ahead of his own country’s, and Reshetov knew it. If ever there was time to demand quid pro quo, this was it.
It was the Americans who asked the Soviets for help. Now the Soviets could ask the Americans for help of their own. The Soviet Merchant Marine forwarded their request to the U.S. State Department. Saturday morning, the State Department passed it on
to Glenn Rutledge at the Navy/NOAA Joint Ice Center in Suitland, Maryland. Rutledge assembled Arctic ice data compiled daily by the National Ocean Service, an arm of NOAA. He put together large maps detailing ice thickness and openings in the polar pack. The data proved invaluable to Master Reshetov and the Soviet icebreakers. But as good as the data proved to be, Rutledge knew it could be better. Aside from stranding themselves in the first place, the whales had been carried by an uncanny streak of luck since the very beginning. It was luck that led Roy Ahmaogak to find them in a tiny hole in the ice, and luck that caused the whole world to pull for them and spend millions to free them. Now, as that same luck would have it, American satellite imaging was on the verge of a major leap forward.
On September 24, 1988, just two weeks before the whales were discovered, the U.S. Air Force deployed the most sophisticated weather satellite ever built, launched into orbit aboard an unmanned Atlas rocket. The state-of-the-art $100-million satellite, called NOAA-11, could produce much more sharply defined images than earlier U.S. satellites. But NOAA-11 was not scheduled to start operating until December 1988—too late to help the whales. The media firestorm over the whales proved as much a NOAA emergency as any life-threatening hurricane. The agency had received more publicity in Operation Breakout’s first week than it had in the eighteen years of its existence. The previously obscure federal agency, unknown to most Americans, was on the front page of every newspaper in the country. That included the Washington Post, the newspaper read by the people who approved NOAA’s annual budget. For people inside the Beltway, it was NOAA’s coming of age. For the agency, the whole affair was a godsend. NOAA ordered its special satellite turned on immediately.
