“Well, no,” Frisch admitted. “Either we have to move or the storm does.”
“The way we’re all strung together, I guess we’ll have to wait for the storm.”
“I can still send any message you want over to the Des Groseilliers,” Frisch offered. “Maybe they’ll have better luck.”
Carol considered it, then shook her head.
“No, it can wait. Assuming the detonation worked. Brock is probably on his way over here already. And if it didn’t, they’ll all be too busy to worry about us.”
“I heard Patrick and a couple of the techs talking in the galley,” Frisch said. “They figure the wind might even help push the slick our way a little quicker.”
“It’d be nice to have something go our way, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ll keep working on a direct connection for you,” Frisch said.
“Thanks,” Carol replied, without half the appreciation she should have conveyed.
What was one lousy radio connection in this whole operation? The rest of it was, well, progressing. At least the parts of it that could be controlled. Yet Carol remained troubled by the realization that she couldn’t talk directly to Garner.
Once again she found herself needing her ex-husband, and admonished herself for even admitting it. She needed to see him or hear his voice over the radio and glean some comfort from his assessment. She needed to hear him say everything would be all right.
She was interrupted by the clumping of Zubov’s heavy boots coming up the steps to the bridge.
“Finished?” she asked with a weary smile.
“For the moment,” Zubov said. “The Navy boys want to dynamite some more of the fast ice and see if they can free up some more debris. I figure it’s best to let a SEAL with a bunch of dynamite do whatever he wants.” He pulled out a well-worn bandanna and wiped it across his broad, sweat-slickened face.
“Any news from Brock?”
“Nothing yet,” Carol said. “It seems we’re ‘experiencing technical difficulties’ — something to do with the storm.”
“How long have we got?”
“An hour or two before it’s on top of us. It seems to be a pretty slow-moving front.”
“Did it mess up the detonation?”
Carol shrugged.
“I imagine it did. But I assume everything went well. Either that or it hasn’t gone yet and they’ll let us know when we can get moving.”
“Great. More time for Patrick and me to play bumper buggies out there.”
“You’ve done a heck of a job, considering what you’ve got for a Zamboni.”
“I think you’ll need to buy Byrnes a new hovercraft if you ever want to see him smile again. What we don’t cook, we’ll probably end up puncturing or burning out. Don’t ask me what’s keeping that engine together.”
“You can call it a day as soon as the bombers arrive.”
“When will that be?”
“At worst, about the same time as the blizzard arrives. They’re already on their way, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed that the weather will hold a little longer. With any luck, the bombers will be able to do the drop before the wind or visibility gets any worse.”
Zubov gave her a dubious look.
“Since when have you known us to have any luck?”
The three water bombers filled up with fuel in Newfoundland, then again at Nuuk, Greenland, before beginning their daunting mission, an elongated, triangular flight path across Iceberg Alley: Davis Strait and the North Atlantic.
With a two-hundred-foot wingspan and a displacement of eighty one tons, the aircraft were large by any standard. Originally designed to be long-range bombers and troop transports in the South Pacific campaign of World War II, the Martin Mars aircraft were later refitted for large-scale drenching of forest fires along Canada’s west coast. A seventy-two-hundred-gallon water tank, filled by scoops lowered from the belly of the plane, allowed the Mars to drop sixty thousand gallons per hour over a fire, or a quarter of a million gallons in a typical six-hour bombing shift.
Slowing such an aircraft to seventy knots and dipping its belly into the water for a touch-and-go approach was far different in the North Atlantic than on a serene mountain lake. Here the pilots’ main concern was not in clearing the trees lining the oncoming shoreline but to outguess the rolling water itself — none of the crews had ever attempted it. The slightest misjudgment of the sea’s surface or the height of an oncoming wave — and the bomber, slow and growing heavier as it gulped in its liquid payload, could easily be washed into the sea.
As the Mars dropped through the final few hundred feet, the captain gave his first officer control of the throttle, which would have to be steadily increased as the tank was filled. During the thirty-second intake scoop, the weight of water in the plane increased by more than a ton per second, requiring proportionally greater lift. Finally, with the belly of the beast fully loaded, the Mars could return to the sky and begin to lumber another eleven hundred miles west to where the drop zone had been determined. For the present flight, they would only have enough fuel for one approach — perhaps two with no margin for error.
As the Mars approached the drop site, a thick overcast negated any advantage afforded by the weak springtime sun. Westerly winds buffeted the heavy planes, which protested in response and doubtless lost a little more fuel efficiency.
Every member of each four-man crew captain, first officer, and two flight engineers split his attention between his assigned instrumentation and the sea below, trying to catch a glimpse of the surface. The captain of the lead plane cursed under his breath.
“A landmark or two would be nice,” he grumbled. “Otherwise we’ll end up blowing our wad with no backup supply.”
Finally, the bombers made radio contact with the Des Groseilliers in Fury and Hecla Strait. The Canadian icebreaker assured them they were on target and the bombing path was indeed directly west. At 160,000 pounds loaded weight, any miscue on the aircrafts’ approach meant a long, circling return or in this case, no return at all.
In the lead plane, the first officer continued to hail the Phoenix, and sighed in relief when the ship finally answered. The Phoenix’s mate gave them the coordinates and the first approach on the bombing run was begun.
“Okay, one time.” The captain radioed to the other planes. “Let’s one-time this baby and get our asses home.”
The clouds parted at an altitude of two hundred feet and the black surface of the Arctic Ocean came into view. Before them stretched the long corridor of water opened by the vessels, flanked on either side by fractured pieces of floating ice. Below them, sliding quickly past, was the tethered trio of vessels — the Phoenix, the North Sea, and the Vagabond — and the small mountain of ice carefully cradled between them.
This was a planned overshoot — the Ulva was to be dropped west of the vessels so that the current could carry it back over the slick and past the collected ice.
They were two minutes from the drop zone and exactly on the correct approach.
“Engineers to stations,” the first officer announced. Suddenly the big aircraft was alive with noise as the water tank was prepared for purging.
“Ninety seconds,” the captain announced. Over the radio, the pilots of the other two bombers confirmed this information.
“What the hell is that?” one of the flight engineers suddenly said. He crawled forward into the cockpit and pointed toward the sea roughly half the distance to the horizon.
Then the others saw it: a distortion in the surface. Seconds later, the sea itself rose up, flicking along its length like a carpet being shaken. The ocean rolled and exploded upward, flinging huge chunks of ice aside. For a moment, the water seemed suddenly to be speeding up at them, then just as suddenly it passed below, streaking to the east and falling away behind the bombers.