Big Miracle

by Tom Rose

  By Monday, October 24, eight days after Operation Breakout began, the newest and most sophisticated weather satellite ever deployed would have its first assignment. Suddenly, the two whales sputtering in the waters off Barrow had entered the space age. But while a $100-million geosynchronous satellite compiled ice analysis, Eskimo crews under the direction of Arnold Brower continued the task of cutting open holes so the whales could breathe. When Cindy returned to the ice Saturday morning, the whales were energetically popping in and out of the last of the fifty-five holes. They swam under more than a mile of frozen sea in one night. Now, there was no doubt, the whales were on their way. If the Russians could cut through the pressure ridge, they would soon be free.

  After a week’s practice, the Eskimos were cutting new holes at a furious pace. That Friday night, Ron Morris had pushed them all to work even faster. “The Russians will be here in two days,” he told Brower. “They told us they can work only one day. I want the whales as close to that damned ridge as we can get them.” Brower took his order and ran. Saturday, Brower’s men cut fifteen new holes before noon. The two whales were keeping right up with them. Morris wanted all his guns firing. He pressed Colonel Carroll to get his concrete bullet into the arsenal.

  On Saturday morning, the colonel managed to stave off yet another near disaster, potentially the worst one yet. Just hours before, Colonel Carroll’s National Guard contingent had completed the last of its redeployment from Prudhoe. All twelve guardsmen landed safely in Barrow aboard two Bell Huey helicopters, the workhorse of the Alaska National Guard. The Guard unit prided itself on its ability to operate in America’s most hostile weather.

  But that Friday night, Colonel Carroll’s unit displayed just the opposite foresight. After shutting down their engines, the guardsmen left the expensive helicopters outside the hangar. Moments later, the helicopters were frozen solid. Discovering the lapse, Colonel Carroll was outraged. He opened the huge bay doors to roll the helicopters inside. Thankfully, Randy Crosby was there to stop him. Crosby was shocked to see the Guard about to break one of the first rules of Arctic aviation: never let frozen equipment thaw too quickly.

  “What the hell are you guys doing?” Crosby shouted in disbelief. He explained that if the frozen helicopters were brought inside, vital parts of the aircraft would crack. Crosby told Carroll and his men that his helicopters had to be defrosted slowly. If he wanted the Hueys to fly again, Carroll would have to leave them outside wrapped in nylon parachutes and let the feeble Arctic sun do the rest. Saturday, October 22, was the warmest day yet of the rescue.

  While it was still fifteen degrees below zero out on the ice, the temperature in town almost reached the double digits. Scantily clad locals made the conditions seem almost balmy. The heaviest garb to be seen was a light, unbuttoned windbreaker. Even they were scarce. Few wore hats and almost no one wore gloves. Teenagers strutted through the frozen streets in sneakers and T-shirts.

  I saw one child dressed in nothing more than a brightly colored bathing suit and T-shirt. He was riding through the icy streets on a bicycle. Reporters stuck out plainly among the locals. To us it was more than cold: it was downright bitter, even in our expensive designer ski clothes. Eskimos never donned hats and gloves in weather warmer than twenty degrees or thirty degrees below, whereas we always wore them.

  Later that Saturday morning, the Colonel unveiled the ARCO ice crusher, his latest scheme for Operation Breakout’s next media spectacular. For the insatiable press and their whale-crazed audience, the sixth and seventh days of Operation Breakout, Friday and Saturday, October 21 and 22, were a news bonanza. The Russian icebreakers, Bone’s death, and now the ice smasher being added to the rescue’s climax: this was the Super Bowl of whale-saving.

  After traveling to the top of the world to cover what started as a nature story, reporters soon found themselves facing the same inveterate media manipulation they dealt with every day down in the Lower 48. Early Saturday morning, Mike Haller, Tom Carroll’s media relations officer, posted a schedule for the day’s events at the entrance to Pepe’s, in the Top of the World Hotel, and at NARL, where the international and late-arriving press stayed. Activities began at 8 A.M., several hours before daybreak, at the old Navy hangar south of NARL. Colonel Carroll’s men hitched ARCO’s five-ton concrete block to the CH-54 Skycrane helicopter.

  Some reporters faced a dilemma. They could go to the ice with Cindy or watch the bullet. Having each invested up to $10,000 a day in covering the event, the competitive American television networks weren’t going to take the chance of being beaten. By Saturday morning, each network had at least two camera crews, enabling them to cover more than one event at a time. While one crew could film ARCO’s bullet, the other could be on the ice with Cindy and the two whales.

  Amid a modicum of fanfare, half a dozen cameras watched the Skycrane lift the five-ton battering ram off the frozen tarmac. Since the event was designed with the media in mind, Gary Quarles landed the helicopter after a quick circle around the hangar. He took off again to give the cameras a second chance. On the ground, cameramen ran around the helipad to photograph the Skycrane from different angles. The helicopter flew slowly so the camera crews would have plenty of time to board the three SAR helicopters and film the Skycrane while still in flight. Haller knew that the longer the Skycrane flew, the more chance every cameraman would have to take the perfect picture of it.

  Carroll agreed with Morris’s order not to frighten the whales. He would test the bullet several miles from the Eskimo holes. But by Saturday morning, it seemed that nothing could startle the freedom-starved leviathans. The deafening clatter of the helicopters didn’t appear to have any effect. The chances of the five-ton concrete block spooking them seemed remote. While the three press helicopters formed a mile-wide triangle around it, the Skycrane hovered fifty feet above the frozen sea awaiting final orders from Colonel Carroll.

  Once again, the colonel was on the line. He was getting used to it. During that time his world underwent a remarkable transformation, from quiet anonymity to the turbulent center of an absurd operation. Whatever Tom Carroll said or did was reported around the world. Tom Carroll was headline news, a key figure in one of the decade’s biggest media events. But the height of his great adventure wasn’t played out on the ice or in the air; instead, it took place each night on the telephone with a woman 7,000 miles away. Her name was Bonnie Mersinger, and his bond with her was instant. This faceless woman in Washington was suddenly the constant center of his frazzled life. Carroll became convinced that the three whales he was summoned to rescue stranded themselves so that he could meet the woman of his dreams. They spoke every day. Officially, it was a chance for the colonel to brief the White House on the progress of the rescue. But unofficially, it was the chance for Tom and Bonnie to grow closer. With each conversation, their relationship intensified.

  After wishing Bonnie the “top of the morning,” the colonel gave the order for Quarles to “drop the bomb.” Just as it had two days earlier, the free-falling battering ram easily broke through the ice. Quarles punched ten more holes before Arnold Brower and his Eskimo scouts arrived to examine the results. The Eskimos immediately saw a problem. The bullet broke the ice, but it didn’t remove it. The heavily broken blocks still floated in place. Brower knew that the only way the gray whales would use a hole was if it had been meticulously combed free of even the smallest pieces of ice.

  The bullet was retired after just one run. Operation Breakout had taken yet another of its many ironic twists. The distinguished colonel met with more logistical setbacks in the first week of the whales rescue than he had in twenty years. Yet, Tom Carroll was a national figure. Next to a forty-one-year-old junior senator from Indiana who was about to become vice president, Tom Carroll was the person most Americans associated with the National Guard but for better reasons.

  Colonel Carroll learned of the next crisis with the whales when he returned to the Navy hangar. The high-priced NOAA biologists flown in from Seat
tle were baffled. The two whales had stopped dead in their tracks. They seemed stuck, as if something was preventing them from moving on. The whales’ eagerness to forge ahead was as strong as ever. The walkie-talkies crackled with activity. Anybody with suggestions was urged to help.

  But the sophisticated technology was of little use. Malik went to the Eskimo warm-up shack without his radio. The rescuers were eager for him to return so Craig raced to fetch him. He waited while Malik finished chewing a piece of smoked walrus meat. On his way out the door, he picked up a chunk of muktuk from the whale he and his crew killed a few weeks earlier and popped it into his mouth. They jumped on the back of Craig’s waiting ski machine. The loud roar of the fast machine made conversation en route impossible. Instead, Malik savored the particularly tasty piece of whale blubber. As the crowded holes came into view, Malik wiped his mouth with satisfaction and prepared to get back to the task of saving the dead bowhead’s two stranded cousins.

  “Little Big Man” jumped off the machine and lifted up his red baseball cap, now a trademark. It was emblazoned with an oval black-and-white patch bearing the name of the trade group to which every subsistence whaler belonged: “Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.” Malik knew the contours of the frozen ocean he was standing atop better than anyone. Before he even saw them, Malik had a strong suspicion what held the whales back. The instant he peered into the hole they wouldn’t enter, his suspicions were confirmed.

  Unlike the other seventy holes the whales used in the past twenty-four hours, this one wasn’t black. Light reflected from the ocean bottom cast a distinctly gray hue. The whales were stuck at the edge of an underwater sand shoal only twelve feet deep. That was dangerously shallow, even for shore-dwelling grays. The whales had hit a roadblock and, like their rescuers, were unsure how to proceed. Saving whales was new to Malik. Normally, he killed them.

  Suddenly, the answer hit him. “A detour,” Malik exclaimed. “Would a whale swim if he thought he might get stuck?” he asked no one in particular. “Let’s cut holes around the shoal.” During the hour the whales were blocked by the sand bar, Arnold Brower and his Eskimos cut fourteen new holes.

  Bill Allen was impressed. “Well, look at that Archie Bowers work,” he said, mistakenly referring to Brower. But the holes would never be used. Malik and Arnold Jr. turned their back on the errant path and probed the area for deeper water. As soon as an alternate path was marked and new holes cut, the whales followed. The fourteen misdirected holes froze without a trace.

  The rush was on to get the whales through the last four miles of ice and out to the pressure ridge. Supposedly, the Russians were only a day away. The rescuers counted on having but one chance to get the whales through any openings the Russians could cut in the pressure ridge. No one knew what kind of a problem the ridge would present, or if the Soviet ships could even surmount it. Ever since Bone vanished, the whales lived up to their end of the bargain. They burst into the new holes even before they were fully cut. Now more than ever, the rescue’s success depended on the Eskimos.

  When the Soviets agreed to join the party, the media scrambled for the first pictures of the Russian ships plowing through thick polar ice en route. But NBC was the only network with an independent means to win the race: a helicopter. It was a widely known secret in the prefab corridors of the Top of the World Hotel that NBC would start its chase through the menacing Arctic skies as soon as the Russian ships were within two hundred miles of Barrow.

  No one was more aware of the looming scoop than ABC News producer Harry Chittick, who had been griping to Ron Morris for days about NBC’s helicopter and the unfair advantage he thought it gave his competition. Jerry Hansen, Chittick’s NBC counterpart, reminded Morris that there was no law against renting a helicopter and that, to date, there were no restrictions on flights that prevented the NBC chopper from getting the rescue’s best and most reliable aerial video.

  Chittick knew NBC had the edge, but he thought there might be a way to steal the scoop right from under Hansen’s nose. Chittick spent Saturday morning trying to rent his own aircraft. The airplane he found would enable him to slip right past the slow-flying NBC helicopter and out to the icebreakers. He didn’t even need a pilot. He was licensed to fly himself. Researchers in his Los Angeles office looked up the icebreakers in the maritime bible, Jane’s All the World’s Fighting Ships. Figuring out the icebreakers’ speed, the ABC researchers calculated when the vessels would come within range. But by the time Chittick finally rented an airplane, it seemed too late. NBC appeared to have won again.

  On Saturday afternoon, NBC’s Don Oliver checked in with the international information exchange that connected the Soviet Merchant Marine, the U.S. government, and the Russian ships. Almost everyone knew where the center was located, Randy Crosby’s office at the SAR hangar. SAR easily adapted to its new role. It was already headquarters for Tom Carroll’s National Guard unit and the transit terminal for the media. SAR was Operation Breakout’s official headquarters. The U.S. government reports estimated the Russians to be about 170 miles northeast of Barrow. Then the icebreakers encountered unexpectedly thick ice. The ships reduced their speed to less than three knots, much slower than originally predicted. Moreover, the satellite photographs and computer-enhanced charts transmitted to the bridge of the Admiral Makarov revealed that a large ice floe lay directly across their planned route to Barrow. Master Reshetov had no choice but to chart a lengthy detour. The revised schedule estimated the icebreakers would arrive in Barrow between twenty-four to thirty-six hours late.

  Though still too far away to help the whales, the icebreakers were within striking distance of making it on the evening news. The NBC helicopter had a standard range of about 350 miles under “favorable conditions,” a term which could not be applied to the Arctic. The “no return point” was 175 miles. Flying outbound any further than that meant there would not be enough fuel to make it back. The weather threatened to make the trip even more dangerous.

  Dense ice fog hugged the ground, hiding a thick layer of cloud cover just overhead. By the end of October 1988, Barrow was already so cold that even the tiniest particles of water vapor froze into ice crystals so small they escaped even the force of gravity. The ice fog enveloped everything. In settled areas like Barrow, ice fog reduced visibility to absolute zero. By mid-afternoon, Randy Crosby grounded all his helicopters and advised others to do the same. NBC was not about to let the weather get in the way of a good story.

  The safety of the freelance crew was a minor impediment to obtaining the first video of the icebreakers, pictures that would run at most for five to eight seconds on the evening news. Viewers would never know the risks taken to get them. The pressure to fly was never explicit. It didn’t have to be. News doesn’t wait for the timid and it doesn’t give second chances. Since NTV, the network my company was hired to represent, was paying for half the helicopter, I insisted we try to get in on the action. Earlier that morning, over Pepe’s greasy home fries and soft, butter-soaked Wonder bread, I asked Jerry Hansen, the NBC producer, what he thought about using our chopper to find the approaching ships. Hansen swallowed nervously as if I had spoken a secret too loudly. His eyes looked around to see if anyone had heard, motioning for me to keep quiet. “Everything is being taken care of,” he told me. He was right.

  My cameraman, Steve Mongeau, and I went to NARL where the helicopter was based. For several hours we waited for the pilots to give the “go.” By late afternoon, it was apparent that the ice fog wasn’t going to lift. The two pilots showed little enthusiasm for the Saturday-night death run, but they had most demanding clients. They had long since quit reminding us to keep our seatbelts on while hanging out the hovering helicopter’s open doors. The weather was as uncertain as the precise position of the Soviet ships. All that was certain was that we were going to look for them. If the icebreakers were 170 miles or closer, they would be five miles inside the “no return point,” just ten miles short of the helicopter’s maximum range. This was litt
le margin for error. NBC cameraman Bruce Gray remarked that finding the ships in the thick fog with so little room to maneuver would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Long stretches of silence marked the eerie journey out. But as the fuel gauge neared half empty, there was still no sign of the Russians.

  Encroaching darkness threatened to spoil more than the photography. As night fell so too did the chances of survival should anything go awry. As No one would have survived of the crew in an emergency landing anyway. We later learned there were no flotation devices aboard the aircraft. As the helicopter came closer to the “no return point,” the pilots turned off the inner cabin intercom so they could talk among themselves without us hearing.

  If they didn’t turn the helicopter around within the next couple of minutes, we would not have enough fuel to get back. There would be no choice but to land on an iceberg and pray to be saved. Because of the safety violations, the pilots didn’t want to take the chance of radioing for rescue for fear of losing their licenses. When they turned around to announce the situation, Gray was preparing his camera to shoot. At almost that exact instant, the eerie silhouette of the 496-foot Admiral Makarov, the pride of the Soviet icebreaker fleet, loomed menacingly into view. The satellite tracking proved dead on. It was within yards of the pilots’ projections. Spinning his finger in the air to signal a flight around the ship, Gray pleaded for the chance to at least get some decent pictures of the immense Soviet icebreakers. He furiously readied his camera for the difficult task of shooting under such rushed conditions. It was now or never.

  The chopper dove within just a few hundred feet of the ships towering deck. Curious sailors clambered on deck to inspect the unidentified visitor. Gray told the pilots to slow their air speed so he could make the special adjustments his camera needed to work in the near dark. When the chopper’s nose pulled away on its uncertain flight back to Barrow, the only footage of the Soviet icebreakers sat on Gray’s lap. He had a marginally important scoop. But as his own life hung perilously in the balance, he wondered whether what he had just done was courageous or stupid.