Arctic Rising

by Tobias S. Buckell

  “So where is it?”

  “The Coast Guard cutter?” He pulled a satphone out of his front jeans pocket and thumbed around on its screen a bit. “According to the Coast Guard cutter fan club, she’s moving south down the western side of Somerset Island. Three hours ago.”

  He smiled at her. Terrorists had been buying satellite footage for years to help build pictures of their targets, he said as they continued to sail farther from Baffin. While police arrested vacationing tourists for taking shots of national monuments, bombers used Google Earth and online photo-sharing sites.

  So now small nation states, like those in the Caribbean that couldn’t afford full intelligence agencies, hired freelancers and used the tools on the ground.

  “You don’t mind not having a full-time job, then?”

  “Look, working in an office somewhere, unless your job really requires you to interface with that environment for a customer, like a waiter, or a factory worker, then why should you remain in a single place? It’s a fool’s job to stay put if you don’t have to, right? Is more efficient to hire out, and for all the Caribbean islands to pool their agents. We island nations trying to guide a course through the tempest of the world without getting run over by the big ones.”

  They hit a point in the conversation where Anika realized she would have to reciprocate, to give something of herself up to Roo. But she didn’t feel like it.

  After everything she’d been through, she felt she deserved to be selfish for a bit. She had days ahead to try to decide who Roo really was, and what she might reveal to him.

  She looked around. “This is a beautiful boat. I’ve never been on one that someone lives aboard.”

  “I won it.”

  “Like, in a bet?”

  “A lawsuit. Purchased it with my share. Anegada versus the United States of America, Europe, China, Japan, and South Korea et al.”

  “Who was Anegada?”

  “What, not who. It used to be home,” Roo said, looking out at the sea. “Before the sea levels rose. We sued, and I decided I’d put my share of the settlement into something that would float.”

  And like that, the conversation died.

  In a way, Anika was relieved.

  * * *

  She took a shower. An acrobatic procedure. At first she’d been a bit alarmed at the small, claustrophobic fiberglass confines of the shower. But now, with the entire hull pitching about, she was relieved she could jam a foot up against a wall, her back against the other side, and keep herself locked in place.

  It was not a relaxing, luxurious shower, but she enjoyed the feeling of accomplishment and the mild sense of routine it gave her.

  If the weather got any rougher, she decided it would be better just to wipe herself down quick rather than risk another shower.

  She crawled into the bed. Within minutes she found herself dozing off. This was really no worse than sleeping through turbulence, she thought.

  “Anika!” Roo banged on the cabin door, and she sat up.

  “Yes?”

  “Your watch,” Roo said. “You been asleep for half the day, and I need to turn in a bit. Time for you to stand watch.”

  She stared at him, shaking her head and trying to get up to speed. “You really want me to sail your ship?”

  “We at sea for a week, yes, I need you to sail.”

  “I don’t know the first thing…”

  He cut her off. “Just stand there, keep an eye on the radar. Look around. See any ships: wake me up quick. Look, it’s not as hard as flying a blimp, right?”

  So he knew who she was, she thought. Then she nodded. “Airship. Not a blimp. But wake you up. Okay.”

  He escorted her up to the enclosed cockpit, and she hugged herself as the cold wind blew in through the eyeholes the sheets ran through.

  “Four hours,” Roo said.

  “And what about that Coast Guard cutter?”

  “An hour ago it was still headed south.” Roo left, sliding the salon door behind him.

  And then it was just her alone with her thoughts and the open sea again. The tap of saltwater spray against the cockpit windows.

  * * *

  It was a rhythm she felt comfortable with. Watches in the air, or watches on a deck, the life remained the same: four-hour intervals, broken down between leisure, watch, and sleep.

  She chose sleep for the first two days, aided by more oxycodone.

  In the cockpit, she played with the sails a bit. Nothing drastic, just trying to understand how they worked. She understood the theory. They were like plane wings. Another curved surface that wind rushed past, and where the negative pressure was created, it pulled the ship forward.

  Unless you were going downwind, she knew. Then you were just letting the wind push you.

  On her morning watch of the second day, she’d changed course to dodge a large container ship on the horizon. Why bother Roo? she reasoned.

  But as the ship grew larger, bearing toward the Spitfire’s right-hand side (starboard, Roo had explained), a shrieking alarm had gone off, and Roo had come running up.

  He wore shorts and nothing else, his eyes wide. He looked at the container ship. “Fucking Christ, fucking hell.”

  “I changed course. We’re fine,” she said.

  For a moment he squinted at the ship, then relaxed and nodded. “If it gets close, the proximity alarm goes.” He reached over to the radar and hit a button, and the alarm cut off.

  “I’m sorry.” She was looking at his torso. Three bullet wounds on his shoulder, one in his stomach. All scar tissue now.

  Not a desk jockey.

  He sat down and they watched the freighter pass together. And now Anika found her pulse racing. Seeing the large steel hull glide past made her think of the Kosatka ripping past her in the water, shoving the debris aside.

  “Tack,” he ordered.

  “What?”

  She’d started to understand the sails, that tightening them in closer would let her point farther into the wind, but now he showed her a great deal more about how to handle the boat, teaching her until he was satisfied. “Keep further away next time.”

  “I could shut off the alarm.”

  “It’s tied to my thumbprint, and no, this is my home. Still rather wake up and see a close one myself. But yeah, you seem to be getting the hang of things.” He rubbed his eyes. “You hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  * * *

  The winds died and the ocean turned to glass. They ate on the front of the boat, letting the autopilot guide them along. “There are no satellites overhead, or airships, for a while,” Roo told her. “You should come out on deck and enjoy the weather!”

  The space between the two hulls, forward of the cabin, was a large piece of fabric laced onto the hulls, like a trampoline. He set down a few sandwiches on plates and tossed her a soda.

  “I’m sorry I was short, earlier. Not things I like talking about. After Anegada, it was too hard for me to stay in the British Virgin Islands,” he told her. “I used the leftover money and went to Britain. The BVI is a part of the empire still. Studied. And ran out of money. Didn’t know what to do, until I ended up bring recruited. Spent time with MI6: they needed more dark-skinned agents. Learned Arabic and ended up in North Africa. But I left.”

  She pointed at his shoulder. “You were shot.”

  “That’s another story. No, I just … left once I could. Everything we were doing, the great game. I couldn’t play. The small countries, they were pawns in a greater battle. Multinational corporations, media empires, larger nations, all fighting their proxy battles, eating through these places. I just wanted to come home and protect it.”

  “So you’re in the Arctic.”

  “Of late,” Roo grinned. “See, until me and a number of cohorts came in, the Caribbean nations weren’t thinking expansion. They would beg a European or a U.S. factory to open a branch down there. Beg a hotel to develop, so more tourists could be housed. But that money, the tourist brings, just
leaves and goes back to the mother hotel corporation. That factory’s profits, they don’t stay.”

  He took a sip of water. “When the Arctic began to melt and open, we persuaded some people in government to think a little … sideways. Oil corporation needs a nation to permit drilling somewhere in the Arctic? Well, it’s international waters. Come apply for a permit in sunny Antigua, and we’ll let you set up a satellite offshore company that feeds the profits where you need it. For a percent. So now we get a taste of the north while giving a flag of convenience.”

  “Cynical.”

  “Always,” Roo said, very seriously.

  “Thanks for letting me, and teaching me, to pilot,” she said. “I know, with the automatic gear, all you really need is for me to be a better collision alarm than the automatic one.”

  “It’s good to have something to do, to focus on, simple, when you recovering off a shock.”

  Anika nodded. “You know about the airship.”

  “Violet didn’t tell me much, other than your name. That’s enough. I wouldn’t be a good intelligence man if I didn’t do at least a quick search. But the deeper I dig, the stranger your problem becomes.”

  Now Anika sat up. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a UNPG pilot. Shot out of the sky. Survive. The men who shot you were captured by the U.S. Navy. Now you’re on the run, Vy’s helping you. The heat is pushing hard on her. More interesting to me: the men who tried to kill you have disappeared.”

  “What?”

  “Poof. Like they never existed.” He threw the remains of his meal over the side. “So, if you willing, I can draw up a nondisclosure agreement regarding anything you can tell me. Because at this point, anything I can figure out about what is happening around you might be the sort of thing that could, depending on what you know and are willing to talk about, let me turn a tidy profit in terms of anticipating certain people’s movements and actions. But even more important, I might be able to help you by connecting the dots, right? That’s why Violet put us together. I know a lot about what’s happening around here.”

  Anika nodded. “Let me think about it.”

  “Of course. But don’t take too long.”

  He leaned back and looked up at the sky. “Time to be getting back inside.”

  * * *

  The collision alarm snapped Anika out of a groggy sleep in her cabin a day later. Fear hammered through her and cleared her head.

  She grabbed her jacket, gloves, and shoes and dressed in seconds as she also hopped out the door and toward the salon. “Pack your shit up quick,” Roo yelled through the door at her. “And keep low. Don’t come up.”

  “What is it?”

  “Coast Guard. And this ain’t the ship from Somerset I was tracking.”

  Anika got back to her room and stuffed everything in there into her backpack. She looked the room over twice to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything.

  Roo jumped down. “Got it? Come on.” He led her up the hull, through the bathroom at the tip of the bow. At the back of the small toilet, he banged on the wall.

  It opened slightly, and he pulled the panel open.

  Slimy, wet organic ocean smell spilled out. “What’s that?”

  “It’s the anchor locker.” He pushed her toward it. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”

  She crawled up on the toilet and into the crawl space. The stench of barnacles and seaweed caused her to gag a bit, but she held it.

  Wet seaweed clinging to the anchor line squelched as she pushed herself into the mass of soaked rope that had been festering in the locker since Roo had pulled it up. She had to curl up into a tiny ball to fit, and could barely breathe. And already it felt like the fiberglass walls were pushing at her sides, closing in on her.

  Roo gave her a gray blanket. “Put this over yourself, and then pull those ropes over your head, get them all piled up on top of you good, in case they look in from on top,” Roo pointed up. There was a hatch right there that led to the deck.

  “Won’t that be the first place they look?” Anika asked.

  “Sure,” he said cheerily. “As well as the bilges, engine room, and so on. We just hope they won’t be expecting this side panel by the toilet and don’t poke around too much. The obvious place is a better chance. Let the dirty anchor rope do the work, it’s why I don’t clean them.”

  “Has it worked before?” Anika asked, burrowing into the slime and rope, pulling it over herself and the blanket.

  “I don’t smuggle people, I was doing a favor for a friend, see? I’d have put you in the water tank with scuba gear, or something clever if this was something I did regularly. I’m improvising, okay?”

  He clicked the panel shut, leaving her shoved against the rope, a piece of anchor jammed against her cheek, and the horrible stench. Just her, alone in the dark. A small cramp began to form in her bunched-up legs, and she had to force herself to take slow, deep, calming breaths that then gagged her with the smell of dead sea life that was all around her.

  A few minutes later, the Spitfire changed direction, facing the waves and slowing.

  Then the loud gurgle of engines approached, and loud voices shouted commands, and then finally, boots hit the deck and spread out.

  They were being searched.

  Anika tensed as footsteps passed nearby. She could hear them on deck, voices muffled by the distance and anchor gear lying on top of her. The hatch above her opened, and she tensed. Small pieces of light pierced the few spots she’d failed to cover with the ropes, but the blanket did the job. Someone kicked around with a foot, then evidently satisfied, shut the hatch, plunging her back into the dark.

  Anika allowed herself to move slightly, take a deeper breath. This might work.

  Eventually the voices moved inside the boat. The bathroom was searched, and then to her dismay, a surprisingly gentle voice asked, “So that would be that anchor locker, just through there, wouldn’t it?”

  Roo replied quietly, “Yes. But…”

  A loud smack cut him off as someone hit the panel.

  It very quietly, but certainly audibly, clicked open. There was no way the gray blanket and ropes were hiding her from the side Roo had stuffed her in.

  Anika turned her head to face a serious-looking man holding a small submachine gun up at shoulder height. “Please step slowly down, ma’am, and come toward me with your hands up. Leave that bag there.”

  Anika nodded, and almost grateful to be out of the stench, stepped onto the bathroom floor.

  Roo looked at her apologetically.

  18

  Three armed crewmen led her down the scoop of the port hull into a bright red semirigid inflatable dinghy half the length of the Spitfire.

  Without ever meeting her eyes, they asked her to turn around, and one of the men zip-tied her hands behind her back. Roo jumped down a second or two later, was restrained, and then they were taken over to the patrol ship.

  It was a hundred-and-forty-foot-long Damen Stan hull. She recognized the old compressed, mid-hulled bridge in the center and low profile. The UNPG had a few of these in the Northwest Passage as well.

  There was a ramp that led down to the water smack in the middle of the ship’s transom. The solid slab of metal that usually dropped down to fill in the stern’s gap was currently raised in the air; it looked like a giant garage door on the back of the ship. They shot up the flooded boat ramp in their dinghy, were attached to a winch to get pulled the rest of the way up onto the deck, and then the transom of the patrol ship slid back down into place.

  A helicopter arrived and swooped around to circle the patrol boat as two crewmen took Anika forward and down a set of steep stairs. She was locked into what was clearly a conference room, but everything had been pulled out so that it was now just a giant holding cell. There was room for ten or so people, and there were three bunks along the back end.

  She was tired, reeking of dead barnacles and seaweed from the anchor rope, and terrified.

  The fac
t that the clean-cut, uniformed Coast Guard who zip-tied her had refused to look directly at her—that burrowed down into her subconscious. She’d once flown a charter from the edge of a DESERTEC station in the Sahara to the Democratic Republic of Congo with four prisoners. They’d been zip-tied, dark sacks over their heads. Four grim, Nigerian soldiers working for the Intelligence Department had sat with guns on their laps, guarding them. She’d had to agree to turn off her GPS and let them guide her in with small pocket systems.

  She’d been told not to look at the prisoners. After landing in a strip over the border and dropping them off at the squat, recently built buildings at the edge of the airstrip, she’d been told, “This didn’t happen, no one was here.”

  A guard flew back with her to make sure she didn’t turn on any location systems.

  In the DRC, anything that happened to those prisoners was legal. In a more prosperous, careful Nigeria, the middle class wouldn’t put up with such things as torture. But in the DRC, European and Nigerian and U.S. and Canadian forces could yank terrorists into a world that was all but invisible.

  Current world powers like Brazil, India, and Nigeria were once on the blunt end of that stick, indignant as Western European and American forces hopped in and out of their borders like they didn’t exist to find people they wanted. But now those same countries had their own sophisticated intelligence forces carry on much the same missions in the dark. The price of growing national power, some said.

  Outside, she could distantly hear the helicopter land, and the rotors spin slowly down.

  * * *

  The door creaked open, and a thin, older white man who looked like he should be well past retirement walked in. She noticed the fluid walk, the hard strength underneath the soft, wrinkled skin. The almost Zen-like eyes.