The pilot wasn’t being facetious. Since the Phoenix could not be located using instrument flight rules alone and flying by visual flight rules in the blowing snow was almost impossible, the pilots resorted to a combination of both. While Dunlop, the copilot, monitored the GPS and checked that the Sikorsky remained over water, Tibbits gripped the collective, looking for sudden obstacles and keeping his eye on the radar altimeter.
Garner was strapped into a jump seat behind the cockpit, facing aft, an orientation where, as Tibbits pointed out with a fierce grin, “All the statistics show that you’re a helluva lot safer in a crash.” The pilot had evidently heard of Garner’s acrophobia and wasn’t above using any tactic to remain on the deck.
“Then I guess we shouldn’t crash,” Garner hollered back.
“No promises, sir,” Tibbits said, only half joking. “On a day like this, it’s like flying inside a glass of milk.”
The fog was pale gray outside the cockpit windows, cut irregularly by swirling snow and glimpses of the cold, black sea one hundred feet below. Garner’s uneasy imagination was fueled by a host of disturbing mechanical noises, from the whine of the transmissions to the blaring of the inverters. While Tibbits set a course for the Phoenix’s estimated position, Garner occupied himself by monitoring a comm channel kept open for any word from the ship. The farther they moved to the east, the more the helicopter was buffeted between the corridors of blasting wind. He took careful note of the emergency locator beacon and the evacuation procedures stenciled on the door beside him, just in case.
Thirty minutes later, passing over Committee Bay, they should have arrived at Tibbits’s estimated position of the Phoenix, but there was no sign of the ship or its two companion vessels. Given the vastness of the area traversed, it was more likely that Tibbits had simply strayed off course or miscalculated the vessels’ track. Rechecking the map and their instruments, Dunlop confirmed that the landfall below them was indeed Melville Peninsula, which meant they had somehow flown south of the Phoenix’s location. As the helicopter turned back in a wide arc, Garner couldn’t help but look more closely at the sea surface for any sign of debris or wreckage. The floe looked as if it had been fractured into hundreds of smaller pieces and Garner once again worried about the aftereffects of the detonation.
A true tsunami was unlikely in the confined and relatively deep basin of the Gulf of Boothia. But small solitons a related phenomenon occurring as an isolated rogue wave, were often generated in narrow canals or in the wake of fast-moving ships. Given the depth of the gulf, the force of the detonation, and the lack of obstructions in its path, a soliton of gigantic proportions could have originated over Thebes Deep. A soliton could travel for miles as a wave only a few inches high, then, upon reaching shallower water, could grow without warning into a massive wall of water. As a single, towering wave crest without a corresponding trough behind it, water exploded forward with nowhere else to go. Once the subject of maritime folklore, solitons had been proven to exist via calculations and scale-model reproductions only after they had demonstrated themselves with devastating and deadly results.
Another half hour passed without any sign of the icebreakers. Contact with the Rushmore was still possible, though fading the farther east the helicopter progressed, but the support ship had been no more successful in contacting the Phoenix.
“I dunno, sir,” Tibbits said, a shade less confidence in his voice. “We should be right on top of them.”
“Keep looking.” In Garner’s mind there could be no other alternative.
They had just half an hour of fuel left to expand their search area before they would have to head back to the Rushmore.
Garner sent one more hail over the radio, then squeezed his eyes shut against a passing wave of vertigo. He blinked it away, then tried to discern the surface once again. Sea and sky blended into a single, vague shade of gray. One moment they looked to be two hundred feet above the ice, the next it could have been fifty. Or less. It wasn’t hard to imagine a low-slung island or an iceberg the size of a building flashing out of the fog at them.
The helicopter bucked roughly and Garner snapped his eyes open. He turned to look forward at Tibbits.
“What is it?”
Through the cockpit door, the pilot appeared to be struggling with the controls.
“Nothing, sir,” he panted. “Just a little fata morgana.”
“Say again?”
“A little snow blindness, is all.”
“It’s a real bad time to say you told me so, Roger,” Garner cautioned.
“Don’t worry, it’ll pass,” Tibbits said. “Always does. I’ll just revert to instruments “
“Get it up!” Dunlop shouted and Tibbits cursed again.
In the blinding whiteness, the helicopter had slowed its forward speed too much while descending too quickly. Tibbits pulled the collective back to the very top, to no avail. Garner felt the bottom drop out of his gut as the helicopter plunged toward a ragged plateau of sea ice.
“Oh shit,” Tibbits said. There was no anger in his voice, only quiet resignation. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Garner’s throat constricted in sudden terror.
“Sorry about what?!”
“Mayday mayday mayday! Rushmore, this is Sierra two-two niner Tibbits shouted into his headset. “We are ditching at this position.”
Garner heard Dunlop yell at Tibbits, whose reply was lost below the scream of the engines. Through clenched teeth the copilot began to read the helicopter’s coordinates as the violent spin continued. It all happened so quickly there was no way to know if the Rushmore even heard them.
A split second later, the altimeter reached zero and the helicopter smashed into the ice.
23
For the third time in the past hour, Byrnes grappled with the hovercraft’s steering controls to prevent the seafaring hot rod from flipping over on its inflatable cushion. After a gut-wrenching bounce, the craft landed heavily, right-side up, sending a cascading spray of water up and over the windows.
“Damn, this thing is fun!” Byrnes hollered, quickly steering back in the opposite direction.
Sitting next to him, Zubov grabbed for the safety handle beside him and cursed under his breath.
“Slow down!” he growled, uncomfortable with Byrnes’s recklessness.
“Yeah, yeah,” Byrnes replied. “Do you want to get done with this before that storm hits or not?” The hovercraft nosed over a partially submerged floe and both men felt the air forced from their lungs as the vehicle smacked the water once again. Byrnes jockeyed the controls, swinging the stern around and once again attacked the mass of ice bobbing in the wash. Byrnes’s “reckless” piloting was doing more to keep them upright than risking unnecessary danger.
The squad of SEALS assigned to the North Sea ably assisted the Canadian Forces personnel in dynamiting the edges of the larger pieces of floe, calving several large but manageable pieces into the water. Using sonar, ice radar, and the Global wrangling equipment, the three icebreakers had managed to collect nearly a quarter million tons of ice. The hovercraft was now relegated to scurrying between the thick lumbering hulls packing small pieces of ice between the larger chunks.
Despite the hovercraft’s limited size, it seemed they were actually making some progress. By midday they had greatly supplemented the larger ice floes scooped up by the string of icebreakers. The manmade, composite iceberg was beginning to take shape.