“With that kind of international goodwill, perhaps there’s a future for you in the diplomatic corps,” Stenseth joked to Giordino.
“My liver would lodge a protest,” Giordino replied.
The men stopped at the harbormaster’s office, where Stenseth paid the docking fees. Leaving the office, they bumped into Pitt stepping out of a small hardware store with a triangular package under one arm.
“Were we missing something aboard?” Stenseth asked,
“No,” Pitt replied with a tight grin. “Just an added insurance policy for when we get to sea.”
The sky overhead had grown dark and threatening when the Narwhal slipped its lines two hours later and slowly cruised out of the harbor. A small fishing boat passed in the opposite direction, seeking refuge in port from the pending rough weather. Pitt waved out the bridge, admiring the black-painted boat and its hearty breed of fishermen who braved the Beaufort Sea for a living.
The waves began rolling in six-foot swells when the Northwest Territories coastline fell from view behind them. Light snow flurries filled the air, cutting visibility to less than a mile. The foul weather aided the Narwhal ’s stealth voyage, and the ship quickly altered course to the east. The Korean freighter had built a twenty-five-mile lead, but the faster research ship quickly began closing the gap. Within hours, the oblong image of the freighter appeared on the fringe of the Narwhal ’s radar screen. Captain Stenseth brought the NUMA ship within three miles of the freighter, then slowed until he had matched speed with the larger ship. Like a coal tender behind a locomotive, the research ship tailed the freighter’s every turn as it steamed along the uneven coastline.
Sixty-five miles ahead, Cape Bathurst jutted into the Beaufort Sea like a bent thumb. It was an ideal location to monitor the marine traffic entering the western approach to Amundsen Gulf. Though the nearest northerly landmass, Banks Island, was still a hundred miles away, the sea ice encroached to within thirty miles of the cape. With radar coverage extending more than fifty miles, the small Coast Guard station could easily track all vessels sailing through open water.
As Pitt and Stenseth studied a chart of the approaching cape, Dahlgren entered the bridge lugging a laptop computer and a string of cables. He tripped over a canvas bag near the bulkhead, dropping his cables but hanging on to the computer.
“Who left their laundry lying around?” he cursed.
He realized the bag contained a sample of rocks and picked up a small stone that had skittered out of the bag.
“That happens to be your laundry,” Stenseth said. “Those are the rock samples that you and Al brought back from the thermal vent. Rudi was supposed to take them to Washington for analysis, but he left them on the bridge.”
“Good old Rudi,” Dahlgren lauded. “He could make an atom bomb out of a can of dog food, but he can’t remember to tie his shoes in the morning.”
Dahlgren slipped the stone into his pocket while he picked up the cables, then stepped over to the helm. Without further comment, he opened a panel beneath the ship’s console and began connecting the cables.
“Not an opportune time to be reformatting our nav system, Jack,” Stenseth admonished.
“I’m just borrowing a bit of data for a computer game,” he replied, standing up and turning on his computer.
“I really don’t think we have the need for any games on the bridge,” Stenseth said, his agitation growing.
“Oh, I think y’all will like this one,” he replied, quickly typing in a number of commands. “I call it Shadow Driver.”
The screen on his laptop suddenly illuminated with the image of two boats sailing in tandem from bottom to top. An angular beam of gray spread from a point at the top corner of the monitor, illuminating the majority of the screen, save for a moving shadow behind the upper boat.
“A little software program I just put together, with some help from the ship’s GPS and radar systems. This shaft of gray light is targeted from Bathurst, mimicking the station’s radar coverage.”
“Which will allow us to stay out of the eye of the ground radar system?” Pitt asked.
“You nailed her. Because of our changing angle to the radar station, we’ll have to constantly adjust our position behind the freighter in order to duck the signal. We just can’t chug right alongside her or else we’d be detected at the fringe angles. If the helmsman keeps us locked in the indicated shadow, then we have a darn good chance of sailing past Bathurst like the Invisible Man.”
Stenseth studied the computer, then turned to the helmsman. “Let’s put it to the test before we get in range. Engines ahead one-third. Take us five hundred yards off her port beam, then match speed.”
“And play Shadow Driver?” the helmsman asked with a grin.
“If this works, you’ve got a six-pack on me, Jack,” the captain said.
“Make it a six of Lone Star and you’re on,” he replied with a wink.
The Narwhal kicked it with an extra burst of speed until the running lights of the freighter flickered off the bow. The helmsman nudged the NUMA ship to port and continued drawing closer.
“One thing worries me,” Stenseth said, eyeing the rust-streaked freighter. “Hanging closer to her side for any length of time is liable to generate a radio call from her captain. And I’m sure our Canadian friends at Bathurst have ears as well as eyes.”
“My insurance policy,” Pitt muttered. “I nearly forgot.”
He stepped down to his cabin, then returned a few minutes later with the triangular package he had purchased in Tuktoyaktuk.
“Try running this up,” he said, handing the package to Stenseth. The captain ripped open the package, unfurling the Canadian maple leaf flag that was folded inside.
“You really want to sail in harm’s way,” Stenseth said, displaying the flag with uncertainty.
“It’s only for the freighter’s benefit. Let them think we’re part of Canada’s Arctic ice patrol. They’ll be less likely to question us hanging on their flank for a few hours.”
Stenseth looked from Pitt to Dahlgren, then shook his head. “Remind me never to get on the wrong side of a shooting war with you guys.”
Then he promptly ordered the flag run up the mast.
With the maple leaf rippling overhead in a stiff westerly breeze, the Narwhal drew alongside the Korean freighter and matched lurches in the wallowing sea. Together they sailed through the short night and into a bleak gray dawn. On the bridge, Pitt kept a tense vigil with Stenseth, spelling the helmsman while Giordino appeared every hour with mugs of strong coffee. Holding the research ship in the freighter’s shadow through the turbulent waters proved to be a taxing job. Though the freighter was a hundred feet longer than the Narwhal, the distance between the two vessels made for a narrower shadow path. Dahlgren’s computer program proved to be a godsend, and Stenseth happily agreed to increase his beer debt with each hour they advanced undetected.
When the vessels reached due north of Bathurst, the men on the bridge froze when a call suddenly came over the radio.
“All stations, this is Coast Guard Bathurst calling vessel at position 70.8590 North, 128.4082 West. Please identify yourself and your destination.”
Nobody breathed until the Korean ship responded with its name and destination, Kugluktuk. After the Coast Guard acknowledged the freighter, the men fell silent again, praying there would be no second radio call. Five minutes passed, then ten, and still the radio remained silent. When twenty minutes slipped by without a call, the crew began to relax. They sailed for three more hours glued to the side of the freighter before passing well clear of the radar station without detection. When the Narwhal reached a bend in the Amundsen Gulf that put Bathurst out of the line of sight, the captain increased speed to twenty knots and zipped past the lumbering freighter.
The Korean ship’s captain studied the turquoise ship with the maple leaf flag fluttering overhead as it steamed by. Training his binoculars on the Narwhal ’s bridge, he was surprised to see the crew laughin
g and waving in his direction. The captain simply shrugged his shoulders in confusion. “Too long in the Arctic,” he muttered to himself, then resumed plotting his course to Kugluktuk.
“Well done, Captain,” Pitt said.
“I guess there’s no turning back now,” Stenseth replied.
“What’s our ETA to King William Island?” Giordino asked.
“We’ve just over four hundred miles to go, or about twenty-two hours through these seas, assuming the lousy weather hangs with us. And we don’t encounter any picketboats.”
“That’s the least of your problems, Captain,” Pitt said.
Stenseth gave him a questioned look. “It is?” he asked.
“Yes,” Pitt replied with a grin, “for I would like to know where in the Arctic you plan on locating two cases of Lone Star beer.”
52
KUGLUKTUK, FORMERLY CALLED COPPERMINE after an adjacent river, is a small trading town built on the banks of Coronation Gulf. Situated on the northern coast of Canada’s Nunavut province, it is one of just a handful of populated havens lying north of the Arctic Circle.
It was the deepwater port offerings that attracted Mitchell Goyette to Kugluktuk. Kugluktuk represented the closest port facility to the Athabasca oil sand fields in Alberta, and Goyette invested heavily in order to stage a terminus for exporting his unrefined bitumen. Cheaply acquiring a little-used rail line from Athabasca to Yellowknife, he financed the expansion of the line north to Kugluktuk. With special snow-clearing locomotives leading the way, a long string of tank cars transported twenty-five thousand barrels of bitumen on every trip. The valuable heavy oil was then off-loaded onto Goyette’s mammoth barges and sent across the Pacific to China, where a tidy profit awaited.
With the next railroad shipment several days away, Goyette’s Athabasca Shipping Company rail terminus sat ghostly quiet. The icebreaker Otok sat at the dock, an empty barge tied to its stern. Two more of the massive barges were moored out in the bay, riding high above their waterlines. Only the rhythmic pumping of a fuel line filling the icebreaker’s tanks with diesel fuel gave an indication that the boat and dock were not completely deserted.
No such illusions were evident inside the ship, where an engaged crew made advance preparations for departing port. Seated inside the ship’s wardroom, Clay Zak twirled a glass of bourbon over crushed ice as he examined a large chart of the Royal Geographical Society Islands. Sitting across from Zak was the Otok’s captain, a puffy-faced man with gray hair cut close to the scalp.
“We’ll be refueled shortly,” the captain said in a heavy voice.
“I have no desire to spend any more of my life in Kugluktuk than necessary,” Zak replied. “We leave at daybreak. It looks to be about six hundred kilometers to the Royal Geographical Society Islands,” he said, looking up from the chart.
The skipper nodded. “Ice reports are clear all the way to King William Island and beyond, and this is a fast ship. We’ll be there easily in about a day’s sail.”
Zak took a sip of his bourbon. His hastily arranged trip to the Arctic had been undertaken without a detailed plan, which made him uncomfortable. But there was little to go wrong. He would drop a team of Goyette’s geologists on the north coast of the main island to search for the ruthenium mine, while he examined the Mid-America mining operations in the south. If necessary, he would put Mid-America out of business with the aid of an armed team of security specialists he had brought aboard, along with enough explosives to detonate half the island.
A door to the wardroom suddenly burst open, and a man in black fatigues and parka walked hurriedly over to Zak. He had an assault rifle strapped to his shoulder and carried a bulky pair of night vision binoculars in one hand.
“Sir, two rubber boats approached from the bay and tied up at the dock just astern of the barge. I counted seven men in total,” he said, slightly out of breath.
Zak glanced from the man’s binoculars to a bulkhead clock, which read half past midnight.
“Were they armed?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. They moved past the loading facility and onto the adjacent public dock before I lost sight of them.”
“They’re after the Polar Dawn,” the captain said excitedly. “They must be Americans.”
The Polar Dawn was docked only a few hundred feet away. Zak had noticed a throng of locals crowding around the American cutter when he had first arrived in Kugluktuk. He walked down and had a look for himself at the captured vessel. It was teeming with Mounties and Navy guards. There was no way that seven men would be able to retake the ship.
“No, they’re here for the crew,” Zak said, not knowing the ship’s crew was being held in the old fish house just a stone’s throw away. A devious smile crept slowly across his face. “Very kind of them to drop by. I think they will be a fine aid in ridding us of the Mid-America Mining Company.”
“I don’t understand,” the captain said.
“Understand this,” Zak said, rising to his feet. “There’s been a change in plans. We depart within the hour.”
With the mercenary in tow, he abruptly marched out of the room.
53
RICK ROMAN DUCKED BEHIND A PAIR OF EMPTY fuel drums and looked at his watch. The luminescent dial read 12:45. They were twenty minutes ahead of schedule. Humping the Zodiacs down to the water’s edge the night before was going to pay dividends now, he thought. They’d be able to make a clean evacuation without fear of losing the cover of darkness.
So far, the mission had gone flawlessly. With a six-man team, he had set off in the Zodiacs just before midnight, right after the sun had finally made its brief retreat beneath the horizon. Powered by electric motors, the inflatable boats had silently crossed the gulf into the mouth of the Coppermine River and quietly tied up at the Athabasca Shipping Company’s marine dock. The satellite photos Roman carried with him had showed that the dock was empty seventy-two hours earlier. A large tug cabled to an even-larger barge now occupied the waterfront, but both vessels appeared empty and the dock deserted. Farther down the quay, he could see the Polar Dawn, brightly illuminated by the dock lights. Even at the late hour, he could see guards pacing her deck, moving ceaselessly in an effort to keep warm.
Roman turned his attention to a faded white building barely thirty yards in front of him. Intelligence reports had indicated it was the holding cell for the Coast Guard ship’s crew. Judging by the lone Mountie standing in the doorway, the prospects still looked good. Roman had assumed that the men would be lightly guarded and he was right. The harsh surrounding environment was enough of a deterrent for escape, let alone the six-hundred-and-fifty-mile distance to the Alaskan border.
A low voice suddenly whispered through his communications headset.
“Guppies are in the pond. I repeat, guppies are in the pond.”
It was Bojorquez, confirming that he had viewed the captives through a small window at the side of the dilapidated building.
“Teams in position?” Roman whispered into his mouthpiece.
“Mutt is in position,” replied Bojorquez.
“Jeff is in position,” came a second voice.
Roman glanced at his watch again. The rescue planes would touch down on the ice runway in ninety minutes. It was plenty of time to get the Polar Dawn’s crew across the bay and up to the airfield. Maybe even too much time.
He took a final look up and down the dock, finding no signs of life in either direction. Taking a deep breath, he radioed his orders.
“Commence go in ninety seconds.”
Then he sat back and prayed that their luck would hold.
CAPTAIN MURDOCK WAS SITTING on a concrete block smoking a cigarette when he heard a loud thump at the rear of the building. Most of his crewmen were asleep in their cots, taking advantage of the few hours of darkness. A handful of men, also finding sleep difficult, were crowded into a corner watching a movie on a small television set. One of the men, a Canadian Mountie who oversaw the captives inside the building armed with nothing
but a radio, stood up and walked over to the captain.
“You hear something?” he asked.
Murdock nodded. “Sounded to me like a chunk of ice falling off the roof.”
The Mountie turned to walk toward a storeroom at the back of the building when two men stepped quietly out of the shadows. The two Delta Force commandos had traded their Arctic white apparel for black jacket, fatigues, and armored vests. They each wore a Kevlar helmet with a drop-down display over one eye and a foldaway communications headset. One of the men carried an M4 carbine, which he pointed at Murdock and the Mountie, while the second man fielded a boxy-looking pistol.
The Mountie immediately reached for his radio, but before he could bring it to his lips the man with the pistol fired his weapon. Murdock noted that the gun didn’t fire with a bang but emitted just a quiet pop. Instead of firing a bullet, the electroshock stun gun fired a pair of small barbs, each tailed by a thin wire. As the barbs struck the Mountie, the weapon delivered a fifty-thousand-volt charge to the man, instantly incapacitating his muscular control.
The Mountie stiffened, then fell to the ground, dropping his radio as the surge of electricity jolted through his body. He had barely hit the floor when the firing soldier was at his side, locking his wrists and ankles in plastic cuffs and slapping a piece of tape over his mouth.
“Nice shot, Mike,” the other commando said, stepping forward while his eyes searched the room. “You Murdock?” he asked, turning back toward the captain.
“Yes,” Murdock stammered, still shocked by the sudden intrusion.
“I’m Sergeant Bojorquez. We’re going to take you and your crew on a little boat ride. Please wake your men and get them dressed quickly and quietly.”
“Yes, certainly. Thank you, Sergeant.”
Murdock found his executive officer, and together they quietly roused the other men. The front door of the building suddenly burst open, and two more Delta Force soldiers burst in, dragging the limp body of another Mountie guard. Stun gun barbs protruded from his legs, where the soldiers had been forced to aim in order to bypass the man’s heavy parka. Like his partner, the Mountie was quickly gagged and handcuffed.