Knight's expression became vague and a trifle irritated.
"Where does the pilot get off, endangering my ship? What's he doing around here anyway? We're hundreds of miles off commercial flight paths."
"She's losing altitude," said Pitt, staring at the blinking lights as they grew smaller in the east. "I'd say she's going in."
"God help them if they set down on this sea in the dark."
"Strange he hasn't turned on the landing lights."
The watch officer nodded his head in agreement. "Strange is the word. A pilot in trouble would surely send out a distress signal. The communications room hasn't heard a peep."
"You tried to raise him?" asked Knight.
"As soon as they came at us on radar. No reply"
Knight stepped to the window and gazed out. He dnimmed his fingertips thoughtfully for no more than four seconds. Then he turned and faced the watch officer.
"Maintain course, continue the grid pattern."
Pitt looked at him. "I understand your decision, but I can't say I applaud it."
"You're on a Navy ship, Mr. Pitt," said Knight sternly. "We're not the Coast Guard. Our mission takes first priority."
"There could be women and children on board that plane."
"The facts don't spell tragedy. She's still in the air. If the Polar Explorer is the only hope of rescue in this part of the sea, why no distress call, no attempt to signal us with his landing lights, no sign of preparations to ditch? You're a flyer, you tell me why the pilot hasn't circled the ship if he's in trouble."
"Could be he's trying for land."
"Begging the Captain's pardon," interrupted the watch officer, "I forgot to mention the landing flaps were down."
"Still no proof of an immanent crash," Knight said stubbornly.
"Damn the compassion, full steam ahead," Pitt said coldly. "This isn't war, Captain. We're talking about a mission of mercy. I wouldn't want it on my conscience if a hundred people died because I failed to act.
The Navy can well afford the time it takes to investigate."
Knight tilted his head toward the empty chart room, closing the door after Pitt and Giordino entered. "We have our own mission to consider,"
he persisted calmly. "We Turn off course now and the Russians will suspect we found their sub and home in on this area."
"Solid point," Pitt acknowledged. "But you can still send Giordino and me into the game."
"I'm listening."
"We use our NUMA helicopter on the aft deck and you supply your medical people and a couple of strong bodies. We'll chase the aircraft while the Polar Explorer keeps running search lanes."
"And Russian surveillance? What will their intelligence analysts make of it?"
"At first they won't see it as a coincidence. They're already probably trying to paint a connection. But if, God forbid, the plane crashes, and proves out to be a commercial airliner, then at least you'll have a legitimate reason for turning off course to launch a rescue mission.
Afterward we resume our search pattern, fake out the Russians and gamble on turning a disaster into a windfall."
"And your helicopter flight, they'll monitor your every move."
"Al and I will use open communications and keep a running dialogue of our search for the downed mystery plane. That should pacify their suspicions."
Knight's eyes turned downward, staring at something beyond the deck.
Then he sighed and raised his head to look at Pitt.
"We're wasting time. Get your bird untied and warmed up. I'll see to the medical personnel and a team of volunteers."
Rubin made no attempt to circle the Polar Explorer because of the almost nonexistent altitude and his sad lack of flying talent. There was every chance he would stall the plane and send it cartwheeling into the rising swells.
The mere sight of the ship had ignited a small glimmer of hope in the cockpit. Now they had been sighted and rescuers would know where to look for survivors. A small comfort, but better than none at all.
The black sea abruptly turned to solid pack ice and, magmfied by starlight, whirled crazily beneath the windshield. Rubin almost felt as if he were sledding through it. With the final impact only minutes away, it finally occurred to him to order Ybarra to Turn on the landing lights.
The Mexican feverishly scanned the instrument panel, found the marked switches and flicked them to "ON." A startled polar bear was caught in the sudden glare before he vanished beneath and behind the aircraft.
They were hurtling over a dead, frozen plain,
"Mother of Jesus," murmured Ybarra. "I see hills on our right. We've crossed overland."
Luck's pendulum had finally swung in Rubin's favor. Ybarra's hills were a desolate range of mountains that swept above the jagged Greenland coast for a hundred miles in both directions. But Rubin had somehow missed them and miraculously manhandled the descending Boeing into the middle of Ardencaple Fjord, He was flying up the narrow inlet to the sea below and between the summits of steep sloping cliffs. Luck also conjured up a headwilld, which gave the aircraft added lift.
The ice seemed close enough for him to reach out and drag his hand over it. The lights reflected a kaleidoscope of shivering colors. A dark mass loomed ahead. He gently pushed the right rudder pedal and the mass slid away to his port side.
"Lower the landing gear!" Rubin shouted.
Ybarra wordlessly complied. Under normal emergency landing procedures it was the worst possible action to take, but in their ignorance they unwittingly made the correct decision for the terrain. The landing gear dropped from their wheel wells and the plane quickly lost speed due to the added wind resistance.
Rubin gripped the control wheel until his knuckles turned ivory, and he glanced down directly at the ice flashing past. The blazing crystals seemed to be rising up to meet him, spreading as they came.
Rubin closed his eyes, praying they would come down in soft snow instead of striking unyielding ice. There was nothing more he and Ybarra could do. The end was approaching with horrifying speed.
Mercifully, he did not know, could not know, the ice was only one meter thick, far too thin to support the weight of a Boeing 720-B.
The maze of instrument lights had gone crazy, and the lights were flashing red. The ice rushed out of the darkness. Rubin had the sensation of bursting through a black curtain into a white void. He pulled back on the control column and the speed of the Boeing fell away as the nose rose up for the last time in a feeble attempt to cling to the sky.
Ybarra sat terrified. Oblivious to the 320-kilometer-an-hour airspeed, frozen in shock, he made no attempt to yank back the throttles. Nor did his dazed mind think to cut the electrical switches.
Then the impact.
On reflex, Rubin and Ybarra flung up their hands and closed their eyes.
The tires touched, slid, and gouged twill trails through the ice. The port inboard engine buckled and was torn from its mounts, madly gyrating into the darkness. Both starboard engines dug in at the same time, caught and twisted the wing away in a shrieking, mangled mass. Then all power was lost and the lights went dark.
The Boeing careened across the fjord's ice sheet, shedding pieces of protesting metal like particles behind a comet. It smashed into a pressure ridge that had been thrust up when the pack ice collided. The nose gear was crushed back against the forward belly, tearing into the hell hole. The bow dropped and plowed through the ice, crushing the thin aluminum plates inward against the cockpit. At last the momentum fell off, and the crumpled plane, distorted and dismembered, came to the end of its shattering journey. It came to a stop just thirty meters short of a jumbled group of large rocks near the icebound shore.
for a brief few seconds there was a deathly silence. Then the ice made a loud series of cracking sounds, metal groaned as it twisted against metal, and the battered aircraft slowly settled through the ice into the frigid water.
The archaeologists heard the Boeing fly up the valley too.