Arctic Drift Part 21

Captain Stenseth read the hand-scribbled message transcribed by his radioman, shook his head, and then read the message once more.

"Mayday, Mayday. This is Ice Lab 7. The camp is breaking up ..." he recited aloud. "That's all you got? " he asked, his eyes glaring.

The radioman nodded silently. Stenseth turned and stepped to the helmsman.

"All ahead flank speed," he barked. "Come left, steer course zero-one-five." He turned to the executive officer. "I want a plot to the ice lab's reported position. And call three additional look-outs to the bridge."

In an instant, he was towering over the radio operator's shoulder.

"Notify the regional U.S. and Canadian Coast Guards of the distress call and tell them that we are responding. Alert any local traffic, if there is any. Then get Gunn and Giordino to the bridge."

"Sir, the nearest Coast Guard station is Canadian, at Tuktoyaktuk. That's over two hundred miles away."

Stenseth gazed at the blowing snow buffeting the bridge's windscreens, his mind conjuring an image of the ice camp inhabitants. Softening his tone, he replied quietly, "Then I guess that means their only saving angel is wearing turquoise wings."

The Narwhal was rated at twenty-three knots, but even running flat out the research ship could barely muster a dozen knots lunging through the storm-whipped seas. The storm had reached its peak, with winds gusting over seventy miles per hour. The sea was a violent turmoil of thirty-foot waves that pitched and rolled the ship like it was made of cork. The helmsman nervously monitored the ship's autopilot, waiting for the mechanism to go tilt from the constant course corrections necessary to keep the vessel on a fixed northeast heading.

Gunn and Giordino soon joined Stenseth on the bridge, studying the ice camp's Mayday message.

"It is a little early in the season for the ice to be breaking up in a cataclysmic fashion," Gunn said, rubbing his chin. "Though the moving ice sheet can certainly fracture on short notice. Typically, you would have a little bit of a warning."

"Perhaps they were surprised by a small fracture that struck a portion of the camp, such as their radio facility or even their power generators," Stenseth suggested.

"Let's hope it's nothing worse than that," Gunn agreed, gazing at the maelstrom outside. "As long as they have some degree of shelter from the storm, they should be all right for a while."

"There is another possibility," Giordino added quietly. "The ice camp may have been situated too close to the sea. The storm surge could have broken up the leading edge of the ice field, taking the camp apart in the process."

The other two men nodded grimly, knowing that the odds of survival were severely diminished if that was the case.

"What's the outlook on the storm?" Gunn asked.

"Another six to eight hours before it abates. We'll have to wait it out before we can drop a search team on the ice, I'm afraid," Stenseth replied.

"Sir," the helmsman interrupted, "we're seeing large ice in the water."

Stenseth looked up to see a house-sized iceberg slip past the port bow.

"All engines back a third. What's our distance to the ice camp? "

"Just under eighteen miles, sir."

Stenseth stepped over to a large radar screen and adjusted the range to a twenty-mile diameter. A thin, jagged green line crossed the screen near the top edge, which remained fixed in place. The captain pointed to a spot just below the line, where a concentric ring on the scope indicated a distance of twenty miles.

"Here's the reported position of the camp," he said somberly.

"If it wasn't oceanfront property before, it is now," Giordino observed.

Gunn squinted at the radarscope, then pointed a finger at a fuzzy dot at the edge of the screen.

"There's a ship nearby," he said.

Stenseth took a look, noting that the ship was headed to the southeast. He ordered the radio operator to hail the ship, but they failed to receive a response.

"Maybe an illegal whaler," the captain suggested. "The j.a.panese occasionally slip into the Beaufort to hunt beluga whales."

"In these seas, they're probably too busy hanging on to their shorts to pick up the radio," Giordino said.

The unknown vessel was quickly forgotten as they closed in on the ice shelf and the reported position of the ice camp. As the Narwhal crept closer to the site, larger and larger slabs of broken ice began clogging up the sea in front of them. By now, the entire ship's complement had been alerted to the rescue mission. More than a dozen research scientists braved the harsh weather and joined the crew on deck. Dressed in full foul-weather gear, they lined the rails of the ominously rolling ship, scanning the seas for their fellow Arctic scientists.

The Narwhal arrived at the ice camp's reported position, and Stenseth brought the Narwhal to within a hundred feet of the ice sheet. The research ship cruised slowly along the jagged border, dodging around numerous icebergs that had recently severed from the ice field. The captain ordered every light on board illuminated and repeatedly let loose a blast from the ship's deafening Kahlenberg air horns as a possible rescue beacon. The powering winds began to abate slightly, allowing brief glimpses through the swirling snow. All eyes scanned the thick shelf of the sea ice as well as the frozen waters for signs of the ice camp or its inhabitants. Drifting over the camp's reported position, not a sign was detected. If anything or anybody was left at the scene, they were now residing two thousand feet beneath the dark gray waters.

28

KEVIN BUE HAD WATCHED THEIR PERCH ON THE ice dissolve from a battleship-sized sheet of ice to that of a small house. The battering sea waves would rip and shove at the iceberg, splintering it into smaller fragments that would be subject to the same dissecting forces. While their refuge grew smaller, the ride grew rougher as they drifted farther into the Beaufort Sea. The shrinking berg wallowed and dipped in the churning seas, while surging waves repeatedly swept over the lower reaches. Shivering in the bitter cold, Bue found himself suffering the added discomfort of seasickness.

Looking at the two men beside him, he could hardly complain. Quinlon was close to slipping into a hypothermia-induced unconsciousness, while Case seemed to be headed down the same path. The radio operator sat curled in a ball, his glazed eyes staring blankly ahead. Bue's efforts at conversation were met with nothing more than a blink of the eyes.

Bue considered stripping the parkas off Quinlon so that he and Case might regain some warmth but thought better of it. Although Quinlon was as good as dead, their own outlook for survival was no better. Bue stared at the turbulent gray water surrounding their frozen raft and contemplated diving into the sea. At least it would end things quickly. The idea pa.s.sed when he decided it would take too much energy to walk the dozen paces to the water's edge.

A large swell rocked the ice platform, and he heard a sharp thump beneath his feet. A crack suddenly materialized beneath his snow-carved seat, extending rapidly across the berg. With a jolt from the next oncoming wave, the entire section of ice beneath him abruptly fell away, dissolving into the dark sea. Bue instinctively grabbed on to the sharp face of the s...o...b..nk, lodging a foot on the small ledge that held Quinlon. Case, sitting on the opposite side, never moved a muscle as Bue desperately clung to a vertical cleft of the ice, dangling just a few feet above the stinging waves.

Bue felt his heart pounding wildly, and with a desperate lunge he jabbed his fingers into the ice and pulled himself up and on top of the remaining snow mound. Their haven had shrunk to the size of a minivan and now rocked violently in the rough seas. Bue teetered on the top, waiting for the whole mound to turn turtle and send the three men on an icy plunge to their deaths. It would be a matter of minutes now, he knew, before their ride would come to an end.

Then through the windswept snow he saw a bright light, beaming like the sun behind a rainsquall. It blinded his eyes, and he shut his lids tightly to escape the searing beam. When he opened them a few seconds later, the light had vanished. All he could see was the white of the dry ice that peppered his face in the fierce wind. He strained to detect the light again, but there was nothing to see but the storm. Slowly, he closed his eyes in defeat, sagging as the strength ebbed from his pores.

29

JACK DAHLGREN ALREADY HAD A FUELED ZODIAC winched above the gunwale when the call came from the bridge to launch. Dressed in a bright yellow Mustang survival suit, he climbed aboard and checked that a portable GPS unit and a two-way radio were stowed in a watertight bin. He started the outboard engine, then waited as a squat figure came charging across the deck.

Al Giordino didn't have time to put on an exposure suit; he simply grabbed a parka on the bridge and hustled down to the Zodiac. As Giordino leaped in, Dahlgren gave a thumbs-up sign to a waiting crewman, who quickly lowered the inflatable boat into the sea. Dahlgren waited until Giordino released the drop hook, then gunned the motor. The small inflatable burst over and through a high-rolling wave, sending plumes of icy spray skyward. Giordino ducked from the spray, then pointed an arm ahead of the Narwhal.

"We're after a small berg about two hundred yards off the port bow," he yelled. "There's an ice sheet dead ahead, so you'll have to go hard around," he added, waving to the left.

Though the blinding snow, Dahlgren could just make out a fuzzy ma.s.s of white on the surface directly ahead. Taking a quick compa.s.s bearing, he eased the Zodiac to port until the ice sheet loomed up a few yards in front of him. Turning sharply, he sped along the perimeter, slowing slightly when he figured that he had reached the opposite side.

The Narwhal was no longer in view behind them, while the ice sheet had given way to dozens of small icebergs rolling in the heavy seas. The pounding winds blew snow particles off the nearby ice sheet, reducing visibility to less than fifty feet. Giordino sat perched on the prow scanning the seas like an eagle in search of prey, motioning Dahlgren to turn this way, then that. They motored through trunk-sized chunks of ice mixed with larger bergs, all swaying and smashing into one another. Giordino had them circle several small bergs before frantically pointing at a tall, swaying spire of ice.

"That's the one," he yelled.

Dahlgren hit the throttle, racing over to the floating wedge of ice that looked to him like all the others. Only this one had a patch of darkness on the crest. As the Zodiac drew near, Dahlgren saw that it was a human body sprawled across the top. He quickly circled the berg, looking for a place to land the boat, but the ice showed only steep vertical slopes on all sides. Reaching the opposite end, he noticed two other men wedged into a crude dugout cut a few feet above the water.