Arctic Drift dp-20 Page 11

  A pounding at his temple brought him back a second time. He felt a rap against his back and legs, then he felt like he was being stuffed into a closet. He heard a voice say his name, but the rest of the words were indecipherable. The voice vanished with the sound of receding footsteps. He tried with all his might to pry open an eyelid, but they were cemented shut. The pain in his head returned, growing fierce until a constellation of stars burst before his closed eyes. And then the lights and the sound and the pain blissfully departed once more.

  21

  Summer was led off the dock and past the long building housing the pumping station. The unexpected brutality against her brother had been a shock, but now she willed herself to suppress the difficult emotions and think logically. What was so important at the facility that it would warrant such behavior? Were they in fact pumping CO2 onto the tanker? She glanced over her shoulder at the guard, who marched several paces behind with his pistol drawn. Even the hired guards acted like it was a top secret installation.

  The drone of the pump machinery receded as they walked past the main building and across a small open area. Approaching the administration office and adjacent security station, Summer heard a rustling in some bushes to her left. Recalling the stuffed grizzly bear in the café, she quickly stepped right to veer away from the noise. The confused guard swung his gun hand after Summer while cocking his head toward the bushes. The rustling ceased as the guard stepped closer, then suddenly a figure rose from behind the bushes swinging his arm. The guard spun his gun to fire, but an object whipped out from the prowler’s hand and struck him on the side of the face before he could shoot. Summer turned to see a dive belt, its lead weights strung to the end, clank to the ground. The guard had also dropped hard but managed to stagger to one knee. Stunned and bleeding, he slowly reaimed the pistol at the shadowy figure and squeezed the trigger.

  Had the toe of Summer’s foot not struck the guard’s jaw, the bullet might have found its mark. But a hammering kick to his mouth forced the shot high and laid the man out. He slumped over unconscious, the gun slipping out of his hand.

  “Those pretty legs are more dangerous than I suspected,” spoke a familiar voice.

  Summer looked toward the bushes to see Trevor Miller emerge with a crooked smile. Like Summer, he was clad in a dry suit, and appeared slightly out of breath.

  “Trevor,” she stammered, shocked at seeing him there. “Why are you here?”

  “Same reason as you. Come on, let’s get out of here.” He picked up the guard’s gun and flung it into the bushes, then grabbed her hand and began running toward the dock. Summer saw a light turn on in the building as she raced to keep up with Trevor.

  They didn’t stop until they reached the dock, rushing over to where the security boat was moored. Summer stopped and gazed down at the water as Trevor scooped up the nearby dive gear and tossed it in the boat.

  “Dirk went in the water,” Summer panted, pointing toward the gangplank.

  “I know,” Trevor replied. He nodded toward the boat, then stepped aside.

  Sprawled across the stern bench, dazed and groggy, Dirk stared up at them through glassy eyes. With a laborious effort, he raised his head slightly and winked at his sister. Summer leaped into the boat and collapsed next to him in surprised relief.

  “How did you make it out?” she asked, eyeing a trickle of dried blood along his temple.

  Dirk weakly raised an arm and pointed at Trevor, who untied the lines and jumped into the boat.

  “No time for platitudes, I’m afraid,” Trevor said with a hurried smile. Starting the motor, he gunned the throttle and spun the small boat around the back side of the tanker and out the covered dock. Never looking back, he aimed the boat down the channel and pushed it to its top speed.

  Summer tried to check Dirk’s wound under the starlight, finding a large knot on the top of his skull that was still damp with blood. His dive hood had saved him from a deeper gouge to the skin, and perhaps a worse fate as well.

  “Forgot to wear my hard hat,” he mumbled, trying hard to focus his eyes on Summer.

  “Your hard head is much too tough to break,” she said, laughing aloud in an emotional release.

  The boat plowed through the darkness, Trevor hugging the shoreline until suddenly easing off the throttle. The darkened boat Summer had spotted earlier loomed ahead, now recognizable as Trevor’s Canadian Resources vessel. Trevor brought the outboard alongside and helped Dirk and Summer aboard, then let the security boat drift. He quickly pulled anchor and motored the research craft down the channel. When they were well out of sight of the facility, he crossed to the opposite side of the channel, then turned and crept back toward Kitimat at slow speed.

  Cruising past the Terra Green facility, they witnessed several flashlight beams crisscrossing the grounds but noticed no obvious alarms. The boat slipped unseen into the Kitimat dock, and Trevor killed its motor and tied it off. On the stern deck, Dirk had begun to regain form, save for some dizziness and a pounding head. He shook Trevor’s hand after the ecologist helped him ashore.

  “Thanks for fishing me out. I would have had a long sleep underwater if not for you.”

  “Entirely good luck. I was swimming along the dock when I heard the small boat come in. I was actually hiding in the water beneath the gangplank when the guard came ashore. I didn’t even realize it was you until I recognized Summer’s voice right before you went over the side. You hit the water just a few feet from me. When you didn’t move, I immediately jammed my regulator in your mouth. The hard part was keeping us both submerged until we were out of view.”

  “Shame on a federal employee for trespassing on private property,” Summer said with a grin.

  “It’s all your fault,” Trevor replied. “You kept talking about the importance of the water samples, so I thought we needed to know if there was a link to the facility.” He handed Summer a dive bag containing several small vials of water.

  “Hope they match mine,” Summer replied, showing her own samples. “Of course, I’ll need to get our boat back to complete the analysis.”

  “Miller’s taxi service is always open. I have a mining site inspection in the morning but can run you back down in the afternoon.”

  “That would be fine. Thanks, Trevor. Perhaps next time we should work a little closer together,” Summer said with a beguiling smile.

  Trevor’s eyes twinkled at her words.

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  22

  Scattered chunks of ice dotted the rolling waters of Lancaster Strait, appearing in the dusk like jagged marshmallows floating in a sea of hot chocolate. Against the dim background of Devon Island, a black behemoth crept along the horizon billowing a trail of dark smoke.

  “Range twelve kilometers, sir. She’s beating a path right across our bow.” The helmsman, a red-haired ensign with jug ears, peered from a radarscope to the ship’s captain and waited for a response.

  Captain Dick Weber lowered a pair of binoculars without taking his gaze off the distant vessel.

  “Keep us on intersect, at least until we obtain an identification,” he replied without turning.

  The helmsman twisted the ship’s wheel a half turn, then resumed studying the radar screen. The eighty-foot Canadian Coast Guard patrol vessel plowed slowly through the dark Arctic waters toward the path of the oncoming vessel. Assigned to interdiction duty along the eastern approaches to the Northwest Passage, the Harp had been on station just a few days. Though the winter ice had continued the trend of breaking up early, this was the first commercial vessel the patrol craft had seen in the frosty waters this season. In another month or two, there would be a steady stream of massive tankers and containerships making the northerly transit accompanied by icebreakers.

  Just a few years prior, the thought of policing traffic through the Northwest Passage would have been laughable. Since man’s earliest forays into the Arctic, major sections of the annual winter pack ice remained frozen solid for a
ll but a few summer days. Only a few hardy explorers and the occasional icebreaker dared fight their way through the blocked passage. But global warming had changed everything, and now the passage was navigable for months out of the year.

  Scientists estimate that over forty thousand square miles of Arctic ice have receded in just the past thirty years. Much of the blame for the rapid melt off is due to the ice albedo-feedback effect. In its frozen state, Arctic ice will reflect up to ninety percent of incoming solar radiation. When melted, the resulting seawater will conversely absorb an equal amount of radiation, reflecting only about ten percent. This warming loop has accounted for the fact that Arctic temperatures are climbing at double the global rate.

  Watching the bow of his patrol boat slice through a small ice floe, Weber silently cursed what global climate change had done to him. Transferred from Quebec and comfortable sea duty along the Saint Lawrence River, he now found himself in command of a ship at one of the most remote locations on the planet. And his job, he thought, had been relegated to little more than that of a tollbooth operator.

  Weber could hardly blame his superiors, though, for they were just following the mandate of Canada’s saber-rattling Prime Minister. When historically frozen sections of the Northwest Passage began to melt clear, the Prime Minister was quick to act, affirming the passage as Canadian Internal Waters and authorizing funds for a deepwater Arctic port at Nanisivik. Promises to build a fleet of military icebreakers and establish new Arctic bases soon followed. Powerful lobbying by a shadowy interest group propelled the Parliament to support the Prime Minister by passing tough restrictions on foreign vessels transiting the passage.

  By law, all non-Canadian-flagged ships seeking transit through the passage were now required to notify the Coast Guard of their planned route, pay a passage fee similar to that imposed at the Panama Canal, and be accompanied by a Canadian commercial icebreaker through the more restrictive areas of the passage. A few countries, Russia, Denmark, and the United States among them, refuted Canada’s claim and discouraged travel through the waters. But other developed nations gladly complied in the name of economics. Merchant ships connecting Europe with East Asia could trim thousands of miles off their shipping routes by avoiding the Panama Canal. The savings were even more dramatic for ships too large to pass through the canal that would otherwise have to sail around Cape Horn. With the potential to cut the shipping cost of an individual storage container by a thousand dollars, merchant fleets large and small were quick to eye the Arctic crossing as a lucrative commercial path.

  As the ice melt off expanded more rapidly than scientists anticipated, the first few shipping companies had begun testing the frigid waters. Thick sheets of ice still clogged sections of the route for much of the year, but during the heat of summer the passage had regularly become ice-free. Powerful icebreakers aided the more ambitious merchant fleets that sought to run the passage from April through September. It was becoming all too evident that within a decade or two, the Northwest Passage would be a navigable waterway year-round.

  Staring at the approaching black merchant ship, Weber wished the whole passage would just freeze solid again. At least the presence of the ship broke up the monotony of staring at icebergs, he thought drily.

  “Four kilometers and closing,” the helmsman reported.

  Weber turned to a lanky radioman wedged into a corner of the small bridge.

  “Hopkins, request an identification and the nature of her cargo,” he barked.

  The radioman proceeded to call the ship, but all his queries were met with silence. He checked the radio, then transmitted several more times.

  “She’s not responding, sir,” he finally replied with a perplexed look. His experience with passing vessels in the Arctic was that they were usually prone to excessive chitchat from the isolated crews.

  “Keep trying,” Weber ordered. “We’re nearly close enough for a visual ID.”

  “Two kilometers off,” the helmsman confirmed.

  Weber retrained his binoculars and examined the vessel. She was a relatively small containership of no more than four hundred feet. She was by appearance a newer vessel but oddly showed only a few containers on her topside deck. Similar ships, he knew, often carried containers stacked six or seven layers high. Curious, he studied her Plimsoll line, noting the mark was several feet above the water. Moving his gaze vertically, he looked at a darkened bridge, then at a masthead behind the superstructure. He was startled to see the Stars and Stripes fluttering in the stiff breeze.

  “She’s American,” he muttered. The nationality surprised him, as American ships had informally boycotted the passage at the urging of their government. Weber focused the glasses on the ship’s bow, just making out the name ATLANTA in white lettering as the evening light began to fade.

  “Her name is the Atlanta,” he said to Hopkins. The radio operator nodded and tried hailing the ship by name, but there was still no response.

  Weber hung the binoculars on a metal hook, then located a binder on the chart table and flipped it open, searching for the name Atlanta on a computer printout. All non-Canadian vessels making a transit of the Northwest Passage were required to file notification with the Coast Guard ninety-six hours in advance. Weber checked to see that his file had been updated by satellite link earlier in the day but still found no reference to the Atlanta.

  “Bring us up on her port bow. Hopkins, tell them that they are crossing Canadian territorial waters and order her to stop for boarding and inspection.”

  While Hopkins transmitted the message, the helmsman adjusted the ship’s heading, then glanced at the radar screen.

  “The channel narrows ahead, sir,” he reported. “Pack ice encroaching on our port beam approximately three kilometers ahead.”

  Weber nodded, his eyes still glued to the Atlanta. The merchant ship was moving at a surprisingly fast clip, over fifteen knots, he guessed. As the Coast Guard vessel edged closer, Weber again observed that the ship was riding high on the water. Why would a lightly laden ship be attempting the passage? he wondered.

  “One kilometer to intercept,” the helmsman said.

  “Come right. Bring us to within a hundred meters,” the captain ordered.

  The black merchant ship was oblivious to the Coast Guard patrol craft, or so it seemed to the Canadians. Had they tracked the radar set more closely, they would have noticed that the American ship was both accelerating and subtly changing course.

  “Why won’t they respond?” muttered the helmsman, growing weary of Hopkins’s unanswered radio calls.

  “We’ll get their attention now,” Weber said. The captain walked to the console and pressed a button that activated the ship’s marine air horn. Two long blasts bellowed from the horn, the deep bray echoing across the water. The blare drew the men on the bridge to silence as they awaited a response. Again, there was none.

  There was little more Weber could do. Unlike in the United States, the Canadian Coast Guard was operated as a civilian organization. The Harp’s crew was not military trained, and the vessel carried no armament.

  The helmsman eyed the radar screen and reported, “No reduction in speed. In fact, I think she’s still accelerating. Sir, we’re coming along the ice pack.” Weber detected a sudden urgency in his voice. While focused on the merchant ship, the helmsman had neglected to track the hardened pack ice that now flanked their port side. To starboard, the steaming merchant ship rode just a dozen meters away and had drawn nearly even with the patrol craft.

  Weber looked up at the high bridge of the Atlanta and wondered what kind of fool was in command of the ship. Then he noticed the bow of the freighter suddenly veer toward his own vessel and he quickly realized this was no game.

  “Hard left rudder,” he screamed.

  The last thing anyone expected was for the merchant ship to turn into them, but in an instant the larger vessel was right on top of the Harp. Like a bug under the raised foot of an elephant, the patrol boat madly scrambled to esc
ape a crushing blow. Frantically reacting to Weber’s command, the helmsman jammed the wheel full over and prayed they would slip by the bigger ship. But the Atlanta was too close.

  The side hull of the freighter slammed into the Harp with a deep thud. The point of impact came to the boat’s stern, however, as the smaller vessel had nearly turned away. The blow knocked the Harp hard over, nearly capsizing her as a large wave rolled over the deck. In what felt like an eternity to the stricken crew, the Coast Guard craft gradually rolled back upright as it fell away from the bristling sides of the merchant ship. Their peril was not over, however. Unknown to the crew, the collision had torn off the vessel’s rudder. With its propeller still spinning madly, the patrol boat surged straight into the nearby ice pack. The Harp drove several feet into the thick ice before grounding to a sudden halt, flinging the ship’s crew forward.

  On the bridge, Weber picked himself up off the deck and helped shut down the vessel’s engine, then quickly assessed the health of his ship and crew. An assortment of cuts and bruises was the worst of the personal injuries, but the patrol boat fared less well. In addition to the lost rudder, the ship’s crumpled bow had compromised the outer hull. The Harp would remain embedded in the ice for four days before a tow could arrive to take the ship to port for repairs.

  Wiping away a trickle of blood from a gash on his cheek, Weber stepped to the bridge wing and peered to the west. He saw the running lights of the merchant ship for just a second before the big ship disappeared into a gloomy dark fogbank that stretched across the horizon. Watching as the ship disappeared, Weber shook his head.