On the last day they were working against the clock and, as usual, company personnel came last. Whenever he landed to board the next lot of VIPs, Drake kept seeing Georgina with Mona in her arms, waiting in line at Los Angeles airport … or what was left of it. The entire city was on fire, the smoke billowing high, and the heat was unbearable. But there was still time before the gauge tipped into the red.
‘Soon, darlings,’ he would shout, ‘soon it will be your turn!’ But every time he went back they hadn’t been picked up by some other team; they were still in line, waiting.
‘Francis!’ Georgina cried, ‘I’m getting scared, honey.’
He hugged her. ‘If you’re still here the next time I’m back, damn it, I’m taking you out of here.’ He eyeballed the dispatcher, ‘Fuck you. Put them on priority.’
But there never was another trip.
A sudden solar flare, blinding, burning, and that was it. The operation evacuation was closed down.
And Drake began to weep.
‘No, no, no …’ he told himself don’t cry, because you know what will happen, it’s always like an invocation, they’ll hear you, don’t.
It was too late. Memories shimmered like mirages against the mirror of the sea. Francis? Is that you, darling? Have you come again?
Although they were charred beyond recognition, Drake would have recognised them anywhere — Georgina and Mona, a hideous angel with a charred cherub in her arms. With a banshee cry of gladness they came on their drifting wings of flame, ashes in their wake. They flew quickly up towards the chopper, there to knock on the glass, Let us in, let us in, oh, let us in, and to gaze through at him, their eyes already burnt from their sockets.
We’re still waiting, Francis. And then they fell away from him, down, down into the roaring, extinguishing sea.
Drake dried his eyes. He knew he would see them again … and again. They were his cross. His heart was scarred with recriminations.
Yes, by his tears he would bid them appear again.
‘Bingo,’ Colby said.
Beyond the fogbows and hazy mist the sky brightened, the sun spreading pools of light across the gleaming sea. And below, waiting, was an expanse of dense floes: tabulars, blockies, domes, wedges, pinnacles with one or more statuesque peaks and dry docks with two or more such peaks separated by water-filled channels. They were all extraordinary creations: ice Everests whose glassy surfaces created dangerous reflections that could fool a pilot into thinking he was navigating open sky. Many pilots, not having a spotter as alert as Colby, had crashed into the ice walls of a floating berg.
With relief, Drake saw his squadron, and Queequeeg’s, bursting behind him from the cloud cover. ‘Okay, fellas,’ he radioed, ‘we’ve found our happy hunting ground. Start tagging. Colby? Radio the tugs and submarines the coordinates.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Thirty minutes max, boys, and then let’s head for home. I don’t want anybody dropping into the sea.’
The two squadrons began their work, peeling off left and right … but Drake drove Pequod further, and out of sight. ‘Sir?’ Colby asked. ‘We’ve reached our maximum parameters.’ She had a puzzled look in her eyes.
‘I hear you,’ Drake answered. ‘Okay.’ Reason took over. With a sense of disappointment, he banked the chopper into a turn but, wait, what the hell was that? The sea was boiling on the horizon. ‘There she blows …’ he whispered, I knew you were out here, Moby Dick. From the depths began to climb an unholy white colossus, which stared at Drake and then slipped back into the sea.
One moment there. Next minute gone. But Colby had done her job and managed to calculate the mass of the majestic, malevolent ice leviathan. ‘You bastard, Drake, why didn’t you tell me you were after him? Well, he’s too big. We won’t be able to take him in by ourselves unless we cut him down to size.’
‘No way will I do that,’ said Drake. ‘How much help do we need to bring him in?’
‘Maybe two more choppers to help stabilise.’
The seconds were passing. ‘Radio our find to the others,’ Drake said.
‘No can do.’ Bazza had been eavesdropping; his voice came over the earphones from the base. ‘You’re already too far out and you should be heading for home … Jesus … are you crazy? Live to fight another day.’
‘I can’t let him go,’ Drake said. ‘There might not be another day. I’d rather die out here with him.’
Colby looked at Drake, startled. There was a pause, a crackle and then Bazza’s voice again. ‘Don’t be blackmailing me now. You do that and no more porn or ancient movies. Are you sure it’s Moby Dick?’
Colby spoke. ‘He’s serious, and so am I. And look, here’s something that might persuade you: a readout of the berg’s mass. Moby Dick’s almost a hundred per cent pure! Shit, if we bring this one in, Kuia can buy some better planes and we can all shout ourselves a holiday too. I’m sending the readings to you for confirmation, now.’
They were hovering over the sea, waiting for Bazza’s reply.
‘Drake!’ Colby screamed. Something came growling from beneath the chopper. The sea parted like jaws and vomited from its mouth something huge, something sinister that sang with supernatural force. ‘Bank left!’ Colby yelled.
And there was Moby Dick, looking in, eyeball to fucking eyeball. ‘Yes, I see you,’ Drake whispered. This must have been how Ahab had witnessed the whale: the cyclopean eye, the monstrous frame in all its awful asymmetry.
The helicopter shuddered, its skiffs scuffing the berg’s mountainous tip as Moby Dick tried to lurch into it and throw it out of the sky. The rotors were working hard, creating snowstorms from the drifts streaming off the berg. Suddenly, one of the rotors nicked Moby Dick, slashing that hideous eye, and he roared his deafening and arrogant displeasure at the sky.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ Drake muttered, not sure where up was, or down until, with a final shudder, he righted the chopper and they gained the horizon.
The berg was already plunging back to the sea, its cliff faces pouring with water. With its accustomed death roll, it corkscrewed into the depths and disappeared from the radar. ‘Where’s he gone?’ Colby asked.
‘He’ll be back,’ Drake replied as he set the helicopter to hover. ‘Get the harpoon ready.’
Minutes passed. The sea boiled again and, this time Moby Dick cracked through a sheet of thin ice. Come and get me, e hoa.
‘Looks like you’ll be able to afford that bath of yours,’ said Drake to Colby.
Moby Dick leapt with majestic insolence. Oh, he was so beautiful, a kaleidoscope of colours flashing across his skin. There was something wilful and purposeful in the way he turned to the approaching chopper, almost as if he’d been waiting all his life for this day.
‘Aye, breach your last to the sun, Moby Dick!’ cried Ahab, ‘thy hour and thy harpoon are at hand! — Down! down all of ye, but one man at the fore. The boats! — stand by!’
The airwaves crackled again, but it wasn’t Bazza.
‘I’m on my way.’ It was Queequeeg; he’d been listening in. ‘Come on, Bazza, this is Moby Dick, for Chrissake! And Drake’s got the motherfucker.’
Bazza’s voice came back. ‘I need to remind you all of the safety reg ulations … And this is a suicide mission, Squadron leader Haapu …’