Arctic Drift (A Dirk Pitt Novel, #20)

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Arctic Drift (A Dirk Pitt Novel, #20) Page 1

by Cussler, Clive




  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  PART I - DEVIL’S BREATH

  Chapter 1 - APRIL 2011 THE INSIDE PASSAGE BRITISH COLUMBIA

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  PART II - BLACK KOBLUNA

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  PART III - NORTHERN PURSUIT

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Chapter 84

  Chapter 85

  Chapter 86

  Chapter 87

  Chapter 88

  Chapter 89

  EPILOGUE - THE ROCK

  Chapter 90

  Chapter 91

  Chapter 92

  Chapter 93

  Chapter 94

  Chapter 95

  DIRK PITT ® ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  Treasure of Khan

  (with Dirk Cussler)

  Black Wind

  (with Dirk Cussler)

  Trojan Odyssey

  Valhalla Rising

  Atlantis Found

  Flood Tide

  Shock Wave

  Inca Gold

  Sahara

  Dragon

  Treasure

  Cyclops

  Deep Six

  Pacific Vortex

  Night Probe

  Vixen 03

  Raise the Titanic!

  Iceberg

  The Mediterranean Caper

  KURT AUSTIN ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER WITH PAUL KAMPRECOS

  The Navigator

  Polar Shift

  Lost City

  White Death

  Fire Ice

  Blue Gold

  Serpent

  OREGON FILES ADVENTURES BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  WITH JACK DU BRUL

  Plague Ship

  Skeleton Coast

  Dark Watch

  WITH CRAIG DIRGO

  Sacred Stone

  Golden Buddha

  OTHER FICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER

  The Chase

  NONFICTION BY CLIVE CUSSLER AND CRAIG DIRGO

  The Sea Hunters The Sea Hunters II Clive Cussler and Dirk Pitt Revealed

  DRIFT

  CLIVE CUSSLER

  A N D

  DIRK CUSSLER

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

  New York, New York 10014, USA • Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East,

  Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Canada Inc.) • Penguin

  Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England • Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s

  Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) • Penguin Group (Australia), 250

  Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia

  Group Pty Ltd) • Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

  New Delhi-110 017, India • Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore

  0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd) • Penguin Books (South

  Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2008 by Sandecker, RLLLP

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned,

  or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do

  not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation

  of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Cussler, Clive.

  Arctic drift / Clive Cussler and Dirk Cussler.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-440-65427-5

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  In memory of Leigh Hunt.

  And yes, there really was a Leigh Hunt.

  A dear friend, bon vivant, wit, and madcap Don Juan who had a way with women that made him the envy of every man in town.

  I killed him off in the prologues of ten Dirk Pitt books. He always wanted to play a bigger role in the stories but didn’t complain because he enjoyed the fame.

  So long, old pal, you are sorely missed.

  PROLOGUE

  PASSAGE TO DEATH

  APRIL 1848 VICTORIA STRAIT THE ARCTIC OCEAN

  THE CRY RATTLED THROUGH THE SHIP LIKE THE howl of a wounded jungle beast, a mournful wail that sounded like a plea for death. The moan incited a second voice, and then a third, until a ghoulish chorus echoed through the darkness. When the morbid cries ran their course, a few moments of uneasy silence prevailed until the tortured soul initiated the sequence again. A few sequestered crewmen, those with their senses still intact
, listened to the sounds while praying that their own death would arrive more easily.

  In his cabin, Commander James Fitzjames listened as he squeezed a clump of silver rock in his hand. Holding the cold shiny mineral to his eye, he swore at its luster. Whatever the composite was, it seemed to have cursed his ship. Even before it had been brought aboard, the mineral carried with it an essence of death. Two crewmen in a whaleboat had fallen overboard while transporting the first sample rocks, quickly freezing to death in the icy Arctic waters. Another sailor had died in a knife fight, after trying to barter some of the rocks for tobacco with a demented carpenter’s mate. Now in the last few weeks, more than half his crew had gone slowly and inexorably mad. The winter confinement was no doubt to blame, he mused, but the rocks somehow played a role as well.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a harsh banging on the cabin door. Conserving the energy needed to stand and answer, he simply responded with a raspy, “Yes?”

  The door swung open to reveal a short man in a soiled sweater, his ruddy face lean and dirty.

  “Cap’n, one or two of ’em are trying to breach the barricade again,” the ship’s quartermaster stated in a thick Scottish accent.

  “Call Lieutenant Fairholme,” Fitzjames replied, rising slowly to his feet. “Have him assemble the men.”

  Fitzjames tossed the rock onto his bunk and followed the quartermaster out the door. They stepped down a dark and musty passageway, illuminated by a few small candle lanterns. Passing the main hatchway, the quartermaster disappeared as Fitzjames continued forward. He soon stopped at the base of a tall pile of debris that blocked his path. A mass of barrels, crates, and casks had been strategically wedged into the passageway, piled to the overhead deck and creating a temporary barricade to the forward compartments. Somewhere on the opposite side of the mound, the sound of shifting crates and human grunts resonated through the mass.

  “They’re at it again, sir,” spoke a sleepy-eyed marine who stood watch over the pile with a Brown Bess musket. Barely nineteen, the guard had a dirty growth of beard that sprouted off his jaw like a patch of briar.

  “We’ll be leaving the ship to them soon enough,” Fitzjames replied in a tired voice.

  Behind them a wooden ladder creaked as three men climbed up the main hatchway from the orlop deck below. A cold blast of frigid air surged through the passageway until one of the men tugged a canvas hatch cover in place, sealing it shut. A gaunt man in a heavy wool officer’s jacket emerged from the shadows and addressed Fitzjames.

  “Sir, the arms locker is still secure,” Lieutenant Fairholme reported, a frozen cloud of vapor rising from his mouth as he spoke. “Quartermaster McDonald is assembling the men in the officers’ Great Cabin.” Holding up a small percussion-cap pistol, he added, “We retrieved three weapons for ourselves.”

  Fitzjames nodded as he surveyed the other two men, haggard-looking Royal Marines who each clutched a musket.

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. There shall be no firing except by direct order,” the commander said quietly.

  A shrill cry erupted from behind the barrier, followed by a loud clanging of pots and pans. The sounds were becoming more manic, Fitzjames thought. Whatever abominations were taking place on the other side of the barricade, he could only imagine.

  “They’re turning increasingly violent,” the lieutenant said in a hushed tone.

  Fitzjames nodded grimly. Subduing a crew gone mad was a prospect he could never have imagined when he first signed on for the Arctic Discovery Service. A bright and affable man, he had quickly risen through the ranks of the Royal Navy, attaining command of a sloop of war by age thirty. Now thirty-six and in a fight for survival, the officer once referred to as “the best-looking man in the Navy” faced his toughest ordeal.

  Perhaps it was no surprise that part of the crew had become deranged. Surviving an Arctic winter aboard an icebound ship was a frightful challenge. Bound for months in darkness and unrelenting cold, the men were trapped in the cramped confines of the ship’s lower deck. There they battled rats, claustrophobia, and isolation, in addition to the physical ravages of scurvy and frostbite. Passing a single winter was difficult enough, but Fitzjames’s crew was coming off a third consecutive Arctic winter, their ills compounded by short rations of food and fuel. The death of their expedition leader, Sir John Franklin, earlier only added to the fading sense of optimism.

  Yet Fitzjames knew there was something more sinister at work. When a bosun’s mate tore off his clothes, climbed topside, and ran screaming across the ice floes, it could have been marked down as a single case of dementia. But when three-fourths of the crew began yelling in their sleep, staggering around listlessly, mumbling in confused speech patterns, and hallucinating, there was clearly something else at play. When the behaviors gradually turned violent, Fitzjames had the afflicted quietly moved to the forward deck and sequestered.

  “It’s something on the ship driving them mad,” Fairholme said quietly, as if reading Fitzjames’s mind.

  Fitzjames started to nod in reply when a small crate came hurtling off the upper reaches of the barrier, nearly striking him in the head. The pale face of an emaciated man burst through the opening, his eyes glowing red under the flickering candlelight. He quickly squeezed himself through the opening and then tumbled down the face of the barrier. As the man staggered to his feet, Fitzjames recognized him as one of the stokers for the ship’s coal-fired steam engine. The stoker was shirtless despite the freezing temperatures inside the ship, and in his hand he wielded a heavy butcher knife taken from the ship’s galley.

  “Where be the lambs for slaughter?” he cried, holding up the knife.

  Before he could start slashing, one of the Royal Marines countered with a musket stock, striking the stoker on the side of the face. The knife clanged against a crate as the man crumpled to the deck, a trickle of blood running down his face.

  Fitzjames turned from the unconscious stoker to the crewmen around him. Tired, haggard, and gaunt from an inadequate diet, they all looked to him for direction.

  “We abandon ship at once. There is still more than an hour of daylight left. We will make for the Terror. Lieutenant, bring the cold-weather gear up to the Great Cabin.”

  “How many sledges shall I prepare?”

  “None. Pack what provisions each man can carry but no extra equipment.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fairholme replied, taking two men with him and disappearing down the main hatch. Buried in the ship’s hold were the parkas, boots, and gloves worn by the crew when working on deck or while exploring away from the ship on sledging parties. Fairholme and his men quickly hauled up sets of foul-weather gear and dragged them to the large officers’ lounge at the stern of the ship.

  Fitzjames made his way to his stateroom, retrieving a compass, a gold watch, and some letters written to his family. He opened the ship’s log to the last entry and wrote a final notation in a shaky hand, then squeezed his eyes shut in defeat as he closed the leather-bound book. Tradition would dictate that he take the logbook with him, but instead he locked it in his desk atop a portfolio of daguerreotypes.

  Eleven crewmen, the sane remnants of the ship’s original complement of sixty-eight men, were waiting for him in the Great Cabin. The captain slipped into a parka and boots alongside his crew, then led them up the main hatchway. Shoving aside the top hatch, they climbed onto the main deck and into the elements. It was like stepping through the gates of a frozen hell.

  From the dark, dank interior of the ship, they entered a blistering world of bone white. Howling winds hurled a trillion specks of crystalline ice at the men, peppering their bodies with the force of a hundred-degrees-below-zero windchill. The sky could not be distinguished from the ground, nor up from down, in the dizzying vortex of white. Fighting the gusts, Fitzjames felt his way across the snowbound deck and down a stepladder to the frozen ice pack below.

  Unseen a half mile away, the expedition’s sister ship, HMS Terror, sat locked in the same ice sheet. But the
relentless winds reduced visibility to just a few yards. If they should miss locating the Terror in the ravaging winds, they would wander around the ice pack and die. Wooden marker posts had been planted every hundred feet between the two ships for just such a contingency, but the blinding conditions made finding the next marker post a deadly challenge.

  Fitzjames pulled out his compass and took a bearing at twelve degrees, which he knew to be the direction of the Terror. The sister ship was actually due east of his position, but her nearness to the magnetic north pole produced a deviated compass reading. Silently praying that the ice pack had not materially moved since the last bearings were taken, he hunched over the compass and began trudging across the ice in the targeted direction. A rope line was passed back to all the crewmen, and the party proceeded across the ice field like a giant centipede.

  The young commander shuffled along, head down and eyes glued to the compass, as the frigid wind and blowing snow stung his face. Counting a hundred paces, he stopped and peered about. With an initial sense of relief, he spotted the first marker post through the cottony swirls. Moving alongside the post, he took another bearing and proceeded to the next marker. The string of men leapfrogged from marker to marker, clambering over uneven mounds of snow that often rose thirty or forty feet high. Fitzjames focused all his energy on the journey, shaking off the disappointment of abandoning his ship to a contingent of madmen. Deep down, he knew it was a matter of survival. After three years in the Arctic, nothing else now mattered.

  Then a deep boom shook his hopes. The sound was deafening, even over the howling winds. It sounded like the report of a large cannon, but the captain knew better. It was the ice beneath his feet, layered in massive sheets that moved in a rhythmic cycle of contraction and expansion.

 

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