Polar Shift (11 page)

T
HE SPHERICAL FIGURE ON
the computer screen reminded Austin of the membrane, cytoplasm and nucleus of a malignant cell.

He turned to Adler. “What exactly are we dealing with here, Professor?”

The scientist scratched his shaggy head. “Hell, Kurt, you got me. This disturbance is growing by the second, and it's moving in a circle at thirty knots. I've never seen anything like it, in size or speed.”

“Neither have I,” Austin said. “I've run into rough swirling currents that gave me sweaty palms. They were comparatively small and short-lived. This seems more like something out of Edgar Allan Poe or Jules Verne.”

“The vortex in
Descent into the Maelstrom
and
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
are largely literary inventions. Poe and Verne were inspired by the Moskstraumen maelstrom off Norway's Lofoten Islands. The Greek historian Pytheas described it more than two thousand years ago as swallowing ships and throwing them up again. The Swedish bishop Olaus Magnus wrote in the 1500s that it was stronger than Charybdis from
The Odyssey
and that the maelstrom smashed ships against the bottom of the sea and sucked in screaming whales.”

“That's the stuff of fiction. What about reality?”

“Far less frightening. The Norwegian whirlpool has been scientifically measured, and it isn't even close to the violent cauldron described in literature. Three other significant whirlpools, Corryvreckan, Scotland, Saltstraumen, also off Norway, and Naruto, near Japan, are far less powerful.” He shook his head. “Odd to see any whirlpool action on the open sea.”

“Why is that?”

“Whirlpools usually appear in narrow straits where there is fast-moving water. The whirling confluence of tides and currents, combined with the shape of the sea bottom, can create substantial disturbances on the surface.”

The image on the screen showed the distance shrinking between the whirlpool and the
Benjamin Franklin
. “Could that thing be a danger to the ship?”

“Not if earlier scientific observations are any indication. The Old Sow whirlpool off the coast of New Brunswick is approximately the same strength as Moskstraumen, with speeds of about twenty-eight kilometers per hour. It's the largest ocean whirlpool in the Western Hemisphere. The turbulence near the phenomenon can be dangerous to small boats, but it poses no hazard for larger vessels.” He paused, staring in fascination at the screen.
“Damn!”

“What's wrong?

He stared at the malignancy on the screen. “I wasn't sure at first. But this thing is growing rapidly. In the time we've talked, it has almost doubled in size.”

Austin had seen enough.

“I'd like you to do me a great favor, Professor,” he said, keeping his voice cool and calm. “Get to the survey control center, fast. Tell Joe to pull the ROV immediately and come to the bridge as soon as possible. Tell him that it's urgent.”

Adler glanced at the screen once more, then hurried off. While the professor went on his errand, Austin climbed to the bridge.

Tony Cabral, the
Throckmorton
's skipper, was a genial man in his late fifties. His tanned face was dominated by a strong nose, he had an upturned black mustache and his mouth was usually stretched in a crooked grin that made him look like a benevolent pirate. But he wore an expression of dead seriousness that changed to one of surprise when he saw Austin.

“Hey, Kurt, I was just about to send someone looking for you.”

“We've got a problem,” Austin said.

“You know about the SOS we received?”

“First I've heard of it. What's going on?”

“We picked up a Mayday from the NOAA vessel a few minutes ago.”

Austin's worst fears were realized. “What's their status?”

Cabral frowned. “Most of the message was garbled. There was a lot of background noise. We recorded the call. Maybe you can make sense of it.”

He flicked a switch on the radio console. The bridge was filled with a cacophony that sounded like an oratorical contest at a madhouse. There was wild shouting, but the words were mostly incomprehensible except for a hoarse male voice that cut through the pandemonium.

“Mayday!”
the voice said. “This is the NOAA ship
Ben Franklin
.
Mayday.
Come in, anybody.”

Another voice, more garbled, could be heard in the background, bawling: “
Power!
Damnit, more power…”

Then came a quick phrase. It was only caught for an instant, but that was all that was needed to convey the unmitigated terror.

“
Damnit!
We're going in!”

Cabral's recorded voice came on. He was trying to respond to the SOS.

“This is the NUMA ship
Throckmorton
. What is your situation? Come in. What is your situation?”

His words were drowned out by a dull, churning roar as if a monsoon were howling through a cavern. Then the radio went dead. The silence that followed was worse than any noise.

Austin had tried to imagine himself on the
Franklin
's bridge. The scene was obviously one of chaos. The voice calling the Mayday was probably the captain's. Or, more likely, he was the one urging the engine room to give them more power.

The unearthly swirling roar was beyond anything in Austin's experience. He realized that the hair on the back of his neck was standing up like soldiers at attention. He glanced around the bridge. Judging from the apprehensive faces of captain and crew, it was clear that he was not alone in his thoughts.

“What's the
Franklin
's position?” Austin said.

Captain Cabral stepped over to a blue-glowing radar monitor.

“That's another crazy thing. We picked them up on radar eighteen miles away. They were moving in a southwest direction. Then they disappeared from the radar screen.”

Austin watched the radar sweep line go around a couple of times. There was no sign of the ship, only some patches of scatter where the radar beam touched the wavetops. “How long will it take to get there?”

“Less than an hour. We've got to haul in the ROV first.”

“Joe's doing it now. He should have the vehicle aboard by now.”

Cabral gave the order to get under way and head toward the
Franklin
at top speed. The
Throckmorton
pulled anchor, and its high bow was starting to cut through the ranks of waves when Zavala showed up with Professor Adler.

“The professor told me about the whirlpool,” Zavala said. “Any word from the
Franklin
?”

“They sent an SOS, but the radio transmission got cut short. And we lost them on radar.”

Cabral heard the brief exchange. “What's this about a whirlpool, Kurt?”

“The professor and I were checking satellite images and picked up a big, spinning water disturbance near the
Franklin
's position. Maybe a mile or two across.”

“Isn't NOAA doing a study of ocean eddies?”

“This is no slow-moving eddy. It's probably hundreds of feet deep, and spinning at more than thirty knots.”

“You're not serious.”

“Deadly serious, I'm afraid.”

Austin asked the professor to describe what they had seen. Adler was filling the captain in on the details when they were interrupted by the radio operator.

“We're picking them up on radar again,” the operator said.

“Captain,” the radio operator said a second later. “I'm getting a transmission from the
Franklin
.”

Cabral took the microphone. “This is Captain Cabral of the NUMA ship
Throckmorton
. We have received your Mayday. What is your current status?”

“This is the
Franklin
's captain. We're okay now, but the ship was almost sucked into a big hole in the sea. Damnedest thing I've ever seen.”

“Anyone injured?”

“Some bumps and bruises, but we're dealing with them.”

Austin borrowed the microphone. “This is Kurt Austin. I've got a couple of friends aboard your ship. Could you tell me how Paul and Gamay Trout are doing?”

There was a heavy silence, and at first it seemed that the radio transmission had again been cut short. Then the voice came on. “I'm sorry to tell you this. They were making a plankton survey in the Zodiac inflatable when the whirlpool pulled them in. We tried to go to their aid, and that's when we got in trouble.”

“Did you actually
see
them in the whirlpool?”

“We were pretty busy, and the visibility is practically nil.”

“How close are you to the whirlpool now?”

“We're about a mile away. We don't dare get any closer. The currents flowing around that thing are still pretty strong. What do you want us to do?”

“Stay as close as you're able. We're coming over to take a look.”

“Will do. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” Austin said, turning to Cabral. “Pete, I'd like to borrow the ship's helicopter. How soon can you have it ready to fly?”

Cabral was aware of Kurt's reputation at NUMA. He knew that despite Austin's easy smile and casual manner, this self-assured man with the battering ram shoulders and pale hair could handle whatever weirdness was going on. Cabral was a seasoned mariner, but the developing situation was beyond his ken. He would keep the ship going and let Austin deal with the rest.

“It's all fueled and ready to go. I'll tell the crew to meet you there.” He picked up the intercom microphone.

Austin suggested that the NUMA ship stay at its present course and speed. Then he and Zavala raced down to the helicopter pad on the main deck, stopping first at the ship's supply room for a few items. The deck crew had the engine warming up in the McDonnell Douglas light utility helicopter. They climbed into the cockpit and buckled up. The rotors thrashed the air and the chopper lifted off the deck, then scudded low over the water.

Austin scanned the sea through a pair of binoculars. After the helicopter had been in the air for several minutes, he spotted the antennae and then the superstructure of the NOAA ship. It was near a circle of dark ocean that dwarfed the ship in size. The whirlpool seemed to have stopped growing, but he had to admire the gutsiness of those on the
Franklin
for staying close to the maelstrom.

Zavala moved the helicopter a couple of hundred feet higher, keeping the aircraft on a straight-line course headed directly for the vortex. As they drew nearer, he said:

“It looks like a volcano caldera.”

Austin nodded. There were some volcanic similarities, mainly having to do with the funnel shape of the hole, and the mist issuing from it. The steamy exhalation was the source of the haze that covered much of the ocean.

The slick, black sides of the funnel glimpsed through gaps in the steam cloud were far smoother than those of any volcano Austin had ever seen. Nothing of the image transmitted from the satellite could convey the simple awfulness of the phenomenon. It looked like a big, festering puncture wound in the sea.

“How big do you figure this pothole to be?” Austin said.

“Too
damned
big!” Zavala measured with his eye. “But, to be precise, I'd say it's about two miles across.”

“That's my estimate too,” Austin said. “From the angle of the sides, it could go down all the way to the ocean bottom. Hard to tell, with the swirling mists. Can we get closer?”

Zavala obliged, until they were directly above the whirlpool. From this vantage point, the gyre looked like an immense, steam-filled cone. The chopper hovered a couple of hundred feet above the vortex, but they were still unable to see deep inside of it.

“What now?” Zavala said.

“We can go in, but we might not come out.”

“What's your point?” Zavala said.

“I'm giving you an option. From the looks of that mess below us, we may already be too late to do anything for our pals. You may be risking your life for nothing.”

A grin crossed Zavala's dark face. “Like I said, what's your point?”

Austin would have been surprised at any other answer. There was no way either one of them would have deserted their friends. He jerked his thumb downward. Zavala nodded and worked the controls. The helicopter started its descent into the black heart of the maelstrom.

T
HE INFERNAL NOISE WAS
the worst part of the descent into the abyss.

The Trouts could clamp their eyes shut to avoid having to look into the deep, whirling pit, but it was impossible to block out the deafening waves of sound that battered them with no interruption. Every molecule in their bodies seemed to be vibrating from the aural onslaught. The sound took away their last small comfort: the ability to talk. They communicated with gestures and hand squeezes.

The crashing waters at the base of the vortex produced a rolling thunder, as if a hundred lightning storms were in progress. The clamor was amplified by the megaphone shape of the whirlpool. Even more terrifying were the loud snorts and chortles that came from the bottom, as if the Zodiac were being drawn into the hungry maw of a giant pig.

The Zodiac and its two passengers had slipped about two-thirds of the way down the steep sides of the funnel. As the cone narrowed in diameter, the speed of the whirling current increased until the inflatable boat spun around like a scrap of lettuce headed down the kitchen drain.

The lower the boat descended, the darker the stygian atmosphere around them became. The thick mists being churned up at the bottom of the whirlpool had thickened and further cut down the meager sunlight from the surface. Both Trouts were suffering from vertigo induced by the constant spinning. The moisture-soaked air would have been hard to breathe even without the choking exhalations from the pit: a foul combination of brine, fish, dead things and muck that smelled like the inside of a fisherman's boot.

The boat had remained at the same slanting attitude with its bottom parallel to the side of the vortex. Gamay and Paul sat side by side, so close they seemed to be joined at the hip. They were holding on to the boat's safety line, and to each other. They were numb with exhaustion from riding in a half-standing, half-sitting position, with their bodies angled and feet wedged under the lower pontoon. Moisture had seeped in around their rain gear, soaking their clothes, and the cold added to their misery.

At their accelerating rate of descent, it was clear that their suffering would end soon. They were minutes away from plunging into the thickest part of the billowing mists. Gamay glanced upward for one last look at the sun. She blinked, unable to believe her eyes.

A man was dangling above the Zodiac. He was silhouetted against the dull sunlight, and she couldn't make out his face, but there was no mistaking the broad shoulders.

Kurt Austin.

He hung from a line attached to the helicopter. He'd been waving his arm and shouting himself hoarse, but the noise from the whirlpool had drowned out his voice as well as the sound of the whirling rotors.

Gamay dug her elbow into Paul's side. He managed a grim smile when he followed her pointing finger with his eyes and saw Austin doing his Peter Pan imitation above their heads.

The helicopter was matching the Zodiac's speed around the inside of the whirlpool. In an amazing example of stunt flying, Zavala flew the chopper at a banking angle to keep its rotors from touching the funnel's watery walls. A miscalculation, a drift of a few feet, and the helicopter would come crashing down on the Zodiac in a whirl of broken rotors.

The rescue had been hastily improvised. As the helicopter descended into the whirlpool, Austin had spotted a small flash of bright yellow more than halfway down the side of the funnel. He recognized Trout's foul-weather gear immediately and pointed it out to Zavala.

The helicopter chased after the whirling Zodiac like a cop pursuing a speeding car. Austin quickly tied a series of man-harness hitches in the rescue line. He had his foot in one of these loops and his hand in another as he swung back and forth in the turbulence caused by the rotor downwash and the updraft from the whirlpool.

Trout motioned for Gamay to go first. She waved at Austin to signal that she was ready. The helicopter dropped lower until the bottom loop of the ladder was about a foot from her outstretched hands.

Austin had climbed to the lower end of the makeshift ladder in the hope that his weight would stabilize it. But the line still jerked and snapped like a bullwhip.

The lifeline grazed Gamay's fingertips, only to evade her grasp. She tried two more times to grab the loop, but the same thing happened. In a desperate move, she stretched her body to every inch of its five-foot-eight height and pulled herself up until she was onto the higher pontoon.

The line came down again. She balanced herself precariously, threw her hands up like a volleyball player trying a block and this time she grabbed the lower loop with both hands.

She became airborne. With the weight of two people holding it down, the line became more stable. She hung on with one hand, grabbed the next loop and pulled herself higher. The rope spun as she climbed, increasing the effects of vertigo.

She faltered for a moment and might have fallen, but Austin saw that she was in trouble. He reached down, grabbed her wrist and hauled her to the next loop. She raised her chin, saw Austin's fierce grin a few feet above her and mouthed a silent thanks.

With the bottom loop free, it was Trout's turn to abandon the Zodiac. He reached above his head to signal that he was ready. The line dropped to within inches of his outstretched hand. As Trout went to grab the line, turbulence battered the helicopter, and it shifted toward the slanting water wall. Trout's fingers grasped at air, and he almost lost his balance.

Zavala had been struggling to compensate for the added weight on one side of the chopper. With a cool hand at the controls, he moved the helicopter back into position. Trout concentrated his full attention on the lowest loop, estimated its distance, then, using the springiness in the pontoon of the rubberized boat, he lunged up and grabbed the line. He held on to the single loop with one hand, unable to grab on to a higher handhold as he twisted in the wind.

The helicopter began a slow, steady ascent, moving up at an angle roughly parallel to the whirlpool's sloping side. The water walls fell away as the aircraft gained altitude. They had reached the funnel's midpoint when the Zodiac made one last revolution around the funnel and disappeared into the seething cauldron. Soon the helicopter was even with the water level at the surface, then above it. Zavala began to move the helicopter laterally, away from the vortex.

Trout had been unable to pull himself up to another loop. He still dangled with one outstretched arm. His fingers were raw from rope burn. He felt as if his elbow socket would pop at any second. Throughout the entire ascent, he had twisted at the end of the swinging line.

Zavala was trying to balance the need to put distance between the helicopter and the whirlpool with the added strain that would be placed on his human cargo by an increase in the chopper's speed.

The helicopter was about two hundred feet from the whirlpool's edge when Trout's strength gave out. He lost his grip and fell into the sea, hitting the water with a mighty splash.

He was fortunate that he hit the surface feetfirst. His legs cushioned the shock, but his knees came up into his chest and knocked the wind out of his lungs. He plunged several feet under the surface before the buoyancy in his flotation vest took hold. He came up spitting seawater. Trout didn't think his body could get much colder, but the frigid Atlantic immediately penetrated to his bones.

Zavala had felt a slight jounce when the load lightened and suspected he had lost one of his passengers. He brought the helicopter around in a banking turn, hovered for an instant, then dropped down so his friend could reach the rope ladder. For the second time that day, Trout was reaching for the rope. But as his stiff, sore fingers came within inches of the loop, he found himself dragged away by a strong current. Trout was a strong swimmer who had been around the ocean all his life, but the more he stroked, the farther from the rope he found himself.

The helicopter tried to keep pace.

The current was pulling Trout with such force that he found it impossible to stay in place long enough to reach for the loop. Time and again, he tried. He was rapidly drawn back to the edge of the whirlpool, sucked into the ring of breakers and swept under the wall of foam.

It was all he could do to keep his head above water to breathe. The whirlpool seemed to be trying to drag back at least
one
of the humans who had the audacity to escape its clutches.

The current carried him around the rim. Trout struggled to keep his head above water in the surflike conditions around the whirlpool.

Austin had no intention of giving up on his friend. He pulled himself up the line hand over hand and back into the helicopter. Then he braced his legs, grabbed the rope in two hands and hauled Gamay aboard.

He gave her a quick peck on the cheek, then threw the line back through the open door and climbed down to the end of the crude ladder.

Zavala was following Trout around the frothing rim. Again he brought the helicopter down until the rope was close enough for Trout to reach. Trout made a feeble grab for the line but it again eluded his grasp.

Austin guessed that Trout was too exhausted to pull himself out. He saw Gamay peering anxiously down at him from the helicopter. He gave her a wave, took a deep breath and jumped from the helicopter.

He came down in the water several feet from Trout and stroked his way closer to his friend. Trout croaked like a bullfrog with a bad cold:

“What…the…hell…are…you…doing…here?”

“You looked like you were having fun, so I thought I'd join you.”

“You're crazy!”

Austin gave him a soggy grin. He struggled to buckle their flotation vests together. With that task finally accomplished, he looked up and saw the helicopter swooping back and forth over their heads.

Austin waved, and Zavala brought the helicopter in for another rescue attempt. After several tries, Austin saw that he would have to have the speed of a rattlesnake to grab the flapping rope. The cold water had sapped his energy, and he knew there was little chance he'd be able to pull them both from the water. But he kept on trying for the line, and didn't notice right away that something odd was occurring.

They were moving more slowly around the whirlpool. The angle of the water in the great watery pit was less steep than it had been. He thought it was his imagination, or simply an optical illusion, but after a moment or two he saw that the bottom of the whirlpool was rising, giving the gyre a bowl shape.

Around the rim of the gyre, the raging circle of breakers seemed to be subsiding. The water was dropping back to ordinary sea level.

The bottom continued to rise. At the same time, their forward motion slowed, until they were moving at the pace of a walk.

Zavala had seen the change in the whirlpool's configuration, and once more brought the helicopter in low over the struggling figures.

Austin felt a surge of adrenaline-fueled energy. He reached up and his fingers closed around the line. Gamay was tending it and giving him plenty of slack. His cold, fumbling fingers slipped the line under Trout's armpits, then around himself, and he signaled Zavala to haul them out.

As they rose above the wavetops, Austin could see the NOAA ship and the
Throckmorton
cutting the distance in their direction.

He glanced down, and his eyes grew wide at the sight that greeted them. The whirlpool had virtually vanished, and in its place was a great, dark circle of slowly rotating water filled with every kind of ocean debris imaginable.

At the center of the puckered area was a massive bubbling, like that made when a scuba diver is about to surface, only much bigger. Then the water rose in a greenish white mound, and a huge object emerged from the sea and wallowed in the waves.

In its death throes, the maelstrom had disgorged a ship.