White Plague Read online

  “Seventeen knots, at first,” he said, “but once we get into ice, we slow down. In heavy ice we back and ram. We can push through four-foot masses at a couple miles an hour. That pack may not be ten feet thick like it used to be, but it’s still heavy in places. Hit it the wrong way, it can crack us open. Plus we’ve got that storm up there.”

  “Two days,” I said.

  “Two to five, depending on conditions. I determine speed,” he said. “Unless you want another hundred and fifty people in need of a rescue.”

  I blew out air. He made sense and even four days would get us there before the nearest U.S. sub could reach the victims. But would anyone still be alive? Would anyone else get there first?

  DeBlieu’s mind was on other matters and he asked, with some tightness, “Colonel, do you have any evidence to support this idea of yours that I may have a spy on board?”

  “Evidence, no. But it’s a logical possibility.”

  The brown eyes veered between irritation, doubt, and amusement over my cautious behavior. He’d come up through the ranks as an engineer, his file said. He had no combat experience. “Why logical?”

  “Because trillions of dollars are at stake up here; because the Russians have declared the Arctic to be the probable site of the next big war, over mineral rights or trade routes. The Chinese want the minerals and routes, too. We spy on them. They spy on us.”

  “The Cold War is over,” he said.

  “The cold peace never is. It’s perfectly logical for them to try to keep track of the research, screw it up or try to slow you down. They’ve made the Arctic a priority, even if we haven’t.”

  I preferred to make this man an ally, not an enemy, so I explained further, in a softer voice.

  “Saudi Arabia was wasteland two hundred years ago, and the countries who got control of that oil and those Mideast trade routes ruled the world. You ever read Rudyard Kipling, Captain? It’s the great game, jockeying for power in remote places. Hell, if not the Russians or Chinese, just an oil company that wants access to your surveys. We need to keep this mission secret.”

  To his credit, he thought about it. Slowly, he said, his voice losing some stiffness, “We haven’t had any problems.”

  “How would you know? Furthermore,” I said, “the civilians you carry receive only low-level vetting. And, Captain? Even if there’s no spy aboard, any blogger, tweeter, an innocent e-mail home saying We’re on a rescue mission could blow it. If a spouse back in Pittsburgh phones the local TV station, or she’s got a brother at the Washington Post, maybe a niece on that sub, the instant the public hears, Arctic submarine on fire . . . I guarantee you, our satellites would suddenly track every Russian icebreaker within a thousand miles make a run at intersection. And some of their icebreakers have artillery. You have a few M16s.”

  “You think we’d really fight?” he asked, not believing it possible in the new century.

  “If our sub is in international water, abandoned? It’s drifting. It could drift into Russian waters. Next time our boys and girls are submerged off China, Syria, you want their lives in jeopardy?” My voice hardened. “You want a test?”

  He nodded, unhappy. “So it’s a race,” he said.

  “A race.”

  He was eyeing me differently now. “Just what kind of doctor are you anyway?”

  The kind who treats worst-case scenarios.

  I said, “Oh, hypothermia. Frostbite.”

  He sighed. It would be all right with him, at least at first. “Right,” he said. “And you won’t tell me what really happened on that submarine?”

  Finally I could tell the truth, not that this relieved me. “I wish I knew what happened.”

  Ten minutes later I learned that one of the Arktos propulsion units was broken, and could not quickly be repaired. There was no way to get the second rescue craft to the Wilmington. We’d have to leave with just one.

  Two hours later we were under way, heading toward the North Pole at full speed, to start, at least, seventeen knots.

  THREE

  “If you spot a polar bear,” I told the man who shared my ex-wife’s bed back in Fairbanks, in a dry, academic voice, “record it in the log.”

  Major Pettit almost responded, “Yes, Colonel,” but he changed it, at the last second, to “Sure, Doctor.”

  I unscrewed a ventilation shaft door, peering in, scanning for hidden microphones, running a meter box. I kept talking because the meter was supposed to jump if a transmitter was sending. “Bears use ice as platforms for feeding. When the ice melts, the polar bear population drops.”

  My quarters consisted of a two-room suite on the level four deck, which also housed cabins for the captain, ship’s officers, scientists, and held a radio room and helicopter control station. There were electronics shops and a pantry. We were one level down from the ship’s pilothouse.

  My cabin was large, light streaming through a porthole. The sea was calm and there was no sense of movement, although I felt a low vibration from the diesel engines below. The sun outside was a hazy orb, as if viewed through gauze, a glow which would circle low in the sky, horizon to horizon, but in late August, almost never go away. If I needed to sleep, I’d close the porthole cover.

  Inside, two more Marines were silently up on steel chairs with screwdrivers in hand, reattaching grills to ventilation shafts that hung between the two single beds on opposite sides of the room, both crisply made. A lance corporal was going through the two upright steel lockers with a meter detector. A private was in the bathroom. My quarters smelled of pine-scented cleaning fluid.

  The ceiling was a mass of insulated pipes and bunched multicolored wires.

  I said, “I hope the food here is good.”

  Major Pettit slid out from under my desk and shook his head. He’d found nothing. I pointed at the screws fixing porthole cover to hull.

  A conference room abutting my cabin—which we examined next—held a bolted-down steel conference table and eight metal chairs. There was a topographical map of the sea bottom off Alaska, with areas shaded blue for “U.S. Zone” and yellow for Russian. On the map the Arctic Ocean resembled a jagged lake and its surrounding nations: U.S., Russia, Canada, Norway, Greenland, Iceland, and Sweden.

  Major Pettit shook his head. No mikes.

  “I saw the menu. Steak tonight,” he said.

  In recent years, I knew, voice-activated mikes—Phillips screw tops, minis, or stick-ons—have been recovered in, among other places, the golf bag of the general who runs Elmendorf Air Force Base in Anchorage, the Lexus leased by Shell Oil’s head of Alaskan offshore exploration in the Arctic, the sunglasses of a fighter pilot sent out regularly to monitor Russian bear bomber activity off our border, and the laptop computer belonging to a University of Alaska professor advising the U.S. Navy on which ships to build to handle a region with less ice.

  It is not known who planted these devices, but the director believes they originated with Russian or Chinese military or commercial—shipping or mining—interests.

  I liked the silent concentration with which the Marines moved and used hand signals. I admired the focus on details and the way they operated as a team. I was less pleased with the continued coldness emanating from them. Marines are trained to keep emotions in check, and as it takes one to know one, I was picking up almost minuscule muscle tightness, extra distance in voices, the barest rigidity.

  Why? And will it hamper our mission?

  “All clear, Colonel,” Pettit said.

  “Thank you, Major. Stay a moment.”

  The men left. Pettit was a bulky, broad-shouldered blond in his mid-thirties, with deep laugh or frown lines around his mouth, suggesting an inner life of strong emotions. He had thin brows, a boxy face, a strong jaw, and eyes of robin’s egg blue, which somehow lacked the warmth normally associated with that color. He was my height, about six two. He’d done duty
in Afghanistan, in winter, where he’d won a Navy Cross and Silver Star after being shot in the thigh and saving two wounded men, carrying them, under fire, to safety. He’d also excelled at joint maneuvers with Norwegian Arctic troops, in Europe.

  I fought off a vision of this man in bed with my ex-wife. Stop it!

  Now, told to relax, Pettit moved his feet apart slightly, but his back remained straight, wary. Good Marines can broadcast disdain with nothing more than a minuscule adjustment of the spine.

  I’d not yet fully briefed him on the mission, as I’d spent my time on the plane reading the files of Wilmington officers, and about the submarine. Now I gave him the bare-bones picture, but unlike Captain DeBlieu, who, upon learning about the sub, was horrified, Pettit gazed directly into my face, as if questioning why of all people I’d been sent to deal with it.

  “Major, I’m detecting some issue here, perhaps something you’d care to discuss, affecting the mission.”

  He regarded me coolly. “No, Colonel. There’s no issue!”

  “Major, my powers of detection are vast, powerful, all seeing, and mysterious, and I believe you meant to say something else. So here’s the deal. What if I told you that for the next two minutes, two only, you could say anything and it will stay between us. Marine to Marine.”

  The eyes shifted, came back. He made his decision. “Then, Colonel, I would tell you that I heard a story about you and I would appreciate knowing if it is true.”

  The pulse started up in my forehead. I’d thought this was going to be about Nina. I felt hot. “What is that story?”

  Those robin’s egg blue eyes went darker now, intelligent, measuring, yet to his credit, I detected hope, so he was fair. “It is that you personally panicked in combat, sir, and blew up a truck carrying nine Marines. That you killed your own men. The incident was hushed up and you transferred out.”

  “Where did you hear that story?”

  “I’d prefer not to share that, Colonel.”

  Another plus for him. My head throbbed. I said, “And?”

  “If the story is true, I believe it my duty to tell you that I think you are the worst sort of human being, a disgrace as a Marine officer, and that you should have been cashiered and put on trial. Also, if it is true, I don’t understand why you are in command here.”

  “Will these feelings hamper your ability to follow orders, or slow your responses even a fraction of a second if I tell you to do something on this mission?”

  He shook his head. “My men and I are good Marines!”

  He didn’t need to add the rest, unlike you.

  “Then I will inform you that the story you heard is not true.”

  The eyes relaxed a little.

  I said, staring directly into those pupils, “There were eight Marines on that truck, not nine. And I choose not to explain anything else to you.”

  He seemed to be hit by a small force in the back, so that his posture, seemingly perfect before, stretched even higher as his gaze shifted away. I could have lied to him, but I was finished with that. You dominate people with truth as well as falsehoods. Or was it that, like a shrink once told me, I needed to keep punishing myself?

  I asked, in a hard voice, “Anything more, Major?”

  “Yes.”

  I waited. He said, almost reluctantly, “It didn’t come from Nina. She’s never said anything bad about you.”

  “Thank you. You will complete sweeps of the captain’s cabin, exec’s, and wardroom. You will make sure the boys get chow, and sleep. You will then map all routes from forward areas to the helo hangar, where we will set up a field hospital. We won’t be carrying a chopper on this trip.”

  He exhibited no hint of the animus he had displayed a moment earlier. He saluted and left.

  I sat on the bed, slumped, my insides grinding. For a moment I flashed back to the only time I’d ever defied the director. It was in his office in D.C., two months after the killings. He’d sat me down and explained with some pain in his voice that a rumor had gotten out about the incident. He did not want me to be surprised if I heard it on a base, a gathering, or worst case, if I received a call from a reporter. He assured me that he intended to track down the source and prosecute the Marine who had leaked the story.

  “After all, Joe, all witnesses were sworn to secrecy. I’ll lock that damned leaker away for so long that—”

  “No,” I’d blurted out.

  “Joe?”

  “I’d appreciate it if you left it alone, sir.”

  “Joe, this isn’t just about you. Those people were warned, told what would happen to them if anyone spoke—”

  I’d stood up, heart slamming in my chest, my breathing hot, seeing, in my mind, a sand-coated tarp-topped truck racing toward me. I’d said, through pounding in my ears, “Sir, I won’t have anyone punished because of what I did. I don’t care what else is at stake. If you do this, I’ll be the one to go to the papers. Drop the inquiry, now.”

  He’d seemed angry, and then, in turn, thoughtful, and sad.

  “All right, Joe. For you. I’ll leave the punishment out of it. But we need to stop that story.”

  Eight dead Marines, I thought now. Fuck the story. Who cared about a story? I cared about the truth.

  I killed eight good U.S. Marines.

  Thirty seconds later came a knock on the conference room door and I said, “Come!” I composed myself. I’d given DeBlieu a list of people I needed to see immediately, whose participation would be vital to the mission. They were waiting in the wardroom, and would be escorted here one by one by a Marine, who would keep anyone else away.

  I always prefer personal meetings—even brief ones—to give me a sense of people I must work with. Later would come group strategy sessions. Now I wanted a close-up look.

  “I’m Marietta Cristobel,” the woman in the doorway said.

  The nation’s foremost Arctic sea ice expert—“ice forecaster”—was plump and fortyish, with curly black hair streaked with gray, brushed to her shoulders. The eyes were black, skin a tea color, clothing loose but warm looking: corduroy painter’s pants over Eastern Mountain lace-up boots, red and black checkered flannel shirt, fleece zip-up vest with an outer pocket showing the tip of a thin cigar.

  This woman’s ability to pick open routes through hundreds of miles of sea ice could determine the success or failure of the rescue. We sat beneath the map of the Arctic Ocean, blue at the fringes, white showing the permanent ice cap, a jagged presence at the top of Earth.

  Marietta’s name was on every report I’d read on the plane—Naval, Coast Guard, scientific task force—dealing with future military ops in the Arctic. She worked for NOAA. Mother of two. Home in Miami. Her parents had fled Cuba under Castro, when she was four. Husband a professor of biology at Florida International. I asked, “How did a Cuban get interested in ice?”

  “We like it in rum and Cokes,” she said, and smiled. It was probably a standard answer to a question the Stanford graduate got all the time.

  “How bad will the ice be ahead?”

  She leaned back, easygoing but thoughtful. “Colonel, used to be, twelve years ago, we’d be in ice now in August/September, but within a couple hours we’ll start seeing bergy bits, little pieces of white. Later, growlers, bigger ones. Then slush and pancake ice, a glaze over the surface, then light first-year ice. The big pack won’t come for a day.”

  “The captain says that can damage the ship.”

  “Even an icebreaker can be holed if it hits too hard, or at the wrong angle. Or we can be trapped in heavy ice. This ship carries a six-month supply of food if that happens.”

  “I’d prefer to avoid that,” I said.

  “Me, too. My daughter’s sixteenth birthday is in a month.” She grinned. “I plan to be there.”

  I liked her. “Tell me how you forecast ice conditions.”

 
Marietta slid an electronic tablet across the table. She worked with the National Ice Center in Suitland, Maryland. “Normally, with satellite pictures. But you’ve shut down communication,” she said. “I lost contact forty minutes ago. I can’t see anymore.”

  I envisioned my Marines—first thing they’d done—placing a portable terrestrial jammer on the high point on the ship, the aloft conn, a closed-in nest above the bridge. The jammer was effective at a range of two miles, at least on all known frequencies.

  On Marietta’s tablet, I read: NO RECEPTION.

  “If you want forecasts, I need access,” she said.

  “I’ll give you ten minutes once in a while, then we close it up again. What’s the minimum amount of time you need to pick up information?”

  She sat back, considering. “Well, with the storm, we may get nothing even when it’s on, but give me ten minutes every two hours, and hope that’s when cloud cover lets us see.” She shook her head. “You couldn’t have picked a worse time for a drill.”

  “Ten minutes then, at staggered intervals.”

  “Thanks. But even if it works, we’ll learn the extent of the ice, but not thickness, and thickness,” she said, “is what’s dangerous. I have a drone on board which we can fly in wind below twenty miles per hour. It’ll show open routes. But winds lower than that?” She laughed. “Don’t hold your breath. It’s worsening up there.

  “Also, about this rescue drill,” she added. “I’m curious, how did you pick the spot where we’re going?”

  “We’re heading for a buoy dropped by plane,” I lied.

  “You know that it will drift with the ice, and won’t be where you dropped it, right?”

  “The buoy has a radio beacon on it. At a certain point, we should pick up the signal,” I said. This was true; there was an emergency transmitter on the Montana. Normally it was good at long distances, but in a storm, who could tell?

  I added, “Dr. Cristobel, please keep the sat channel access arrangement a secret between you and me.”