White Plague (13 page)

Chief, get that electricity working!

I said, “I hardly find your actions friendly.”

“Please, Colonel. Pure precaution. After all, your twenty-five Marines,” he said, naming the exact number of troops here, “could misunderstand our purpose.”

“I think I understand that purpose quite well.”

Captain Zhou said, “I’ll send some helpers over. You will, of course, allow them aboard.”

The ice was groaning out there, straining, and the tearing noises came again, echoing in the wind. It sounded like laughter. Someone was pulling at my sleeve. It was Clinton. He pointed at the Chinese radio. He wanted me to turn it off. He seemed to have something important to say. So far he’d come through each time he’d suggested solutions, so I shoved the Chinese unit into my parka, in case the thing still relayed talk, even when its light was red. As in, they’d given me a trick unit.

Clinton whispered, “Ten minutes!”

“Meaning?”

“Hold them off for ten minutes. It will change then.”

“How?”

Clinton swore, in Iñupiat. He gripped my sleeve and looked out over the landscape. He hissed at me, as the Chinese boarders climbed into three Zodiacs, “You all keep forgetting that ice is not land! It’s moving. All the time! It’s not land so it won’t stay where it is!”

I looked out and took in the scene: the oxbow-shaped “river,” which was actually a lead between floes, the “shore,” which was actually two fields of ice, neither one land, and the Chinese sub facing us.

He was right. In my mind, those boundaries had seemed as fixed as if we were facing off in the Hudson River.

But it was not a river.

“The ice will help us,” Clinton said.

I still did not understand.

“Look at the damn currents, Colonel.”

“They’re going in all directions.”

“That’s the point.” Now he looked angry. “I was in the goddamn Army, Colonel. I’m a veteran. Those assholes are not getting this submarine,” he said. “When the ice speaks . . .
do what you have to do!
”

Captain Zhou was back. “I must insist, Captain, that your Marines stop moving, and stay in one place.”

I pretended the radio was broken again.

He said, “If you can hear me, Colonel, I will count to ten, then my men will assume hostile intent and be forced to fire defensively if the Marines keep moving. One . . . two . . .”

I told the Marines to stop moving. They halted, spread out, about forty feet from the sub, in easy range of the Chinese on the ridge, and close enough to the ice edge to be killed by a torpedo.

I asked Karen over our Motorola, “If the chief gets power, can you help in any way in arming torpedoes, in launching them?”

“I’m familiar with the system.”

“And?”

“We’ll do our best. But if you launch this close—”

“Just do it,” I said.

Zhou said, “By the way, Colonel, we have excellent hearing over here, and should any machinery switch on in your vessel—hydraulics, doors—I will be forced to assume hostile intent.”

He was no fool. There was only one possible way to stop or slow him for Clinton’s ten minutes, and I went for it.

I told Zhou part of the truth. “Captain, we have a highly contagious and unidentified disease on board. We will be able to solve the problem, I’m sure, in a short while, but for the moment, as you can see, we’re in hazmat gear. It is not safe below, for you or for us.”

Did he laugh, or was it just static I heard?

His men were now in their Zodiacs. They pushed off from his sub. There were wooden crates in there with them. For all I knew, they were bringing their own hazmats.

I tried again. “Captain, did you hear? We have a pathogen of unknown nature here. We’re trying to determine its origin.”

“Yes, I heard you. That is an interesting story, Colonel,” he said, a new and harder note in his voice. “So, as I understand it, you admit that your vessel was carrying a bioweapon, which somehow got loose, infected your own crew.”

I was stunned. This was the last possible response I’d envisioned.

“That is absolutely not what I am saying. There’s no bioweapon!”

He had taken the truth the wrong way. But then another, horrifying thought hit me.

He’s been right about everything else. Is it possible?

No, no, it’s not possible, if it started with bodies brought aboard from a long time ago.

I said, “I’m telling you that we’re close to determining the source of infection. Do you hear me? Captain?”

He was silent. The wind came up suddenly. The storm, which had been easing, grew instantly, violently worse. The snow fell harder. I could barely see him now, much less guess his intent.

Even the static grew louder.

I shouted into the set, and braced for gunfire or torpedoes. It was the worst possible moment for communication to fail.

“A bioweapon,” he repeated, twenty seconds later.

At least the set worked, but I cursed the distance. I wished I could see his face. I wondered if he was in contact with Beijing. I wondered if he was alone in making decisions, as I was.

I said, stalling, as the snowfall thickened and ice pellets resumed their machine-gun rattle against steel, and the exposed areas on my face, “If it will help to convince you, please do send your physician. Take the blood samples. We would very much appreciate your medicines and any assistance in identifying the pathogen here.”

I hope Clinton was right about the ten minutes.

The Marines remained in place, vague statues through snow, vulnerable to the Chinese guns, a very long forty feet from the sub. Even if they reached us, they’d have to clamber up those slippery ice blocks to reach the deck, backs exposed. If shooting started, they were doomed.

Captain Zhou said, “Good, I’ll send over Dr. Liu, with the medicines
.”

I raised binoculars and saw shadow figures on the opposite bridge, one gesturing angrily, the other in a posture of subservience. He was playing for time, too. He had his own ideas of what to do. Andrew Sachs stood staring into my face with an intensity that I did not like, and I wished I understood what he was thinking.

I know you are angry, but why?

I also thought,
Zhou is using different satellites for communication than I am. Does his system work? Is he in contact with Beijing? He’s not going to give up on the
Montana
.

The green light went on and Zhou, back now, was straining at being cordial. “Come now, Colonel. What’s the expression in America? The laying of the playing cards on a table? There was an accident. A release of an experimental toxin. Perhaps a defensive weapon only. Yes?”

What is he doing? Recording my answer? Recording this so the Chinese can release an American admission of guilt?

How can I convince him that I’m telling the truth?

Zhou suggested, “It got out of control, and made your crew sick.”

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

“An accident. A warhead. Yes, a bad accident.”

Between the static, the pellets pounding the hull, the stamping of Sachs to keep warm, and the wind, I was only vaguely aware of the new sound, a low vibration, like a far-off train, approaching through a tunnel.

“After all,” Zhou continued, “your sub was conducting cold weather weapons trials in the North, was it not?”

Who tells them these things?

I said
,
“I won’t comment on her mission, but please let me assure you—”

“Yes, I would like your assurance.”

“The United States does not use biological weapons. They are illegal and immoral and we have signed every treaty banning them.”

“I am familiar with immoral acts, Colonel. Like ramming a Chinese submarine last week in the South China Sea, causing the deaths of twenty-eight of our sailors.”

He
is
recording this!

“That was a terrible accident,” I said.

“Ah,
that
was the accident.”

It struck me, with perverse humor, that Zhou had his torpedoes pointed at us, was attempting to steal the
Montana
, that he had sent soldiers to encircle us, and yet
he
was acting like the aggrieved party.

“The two things are not connected,” I insisted.

Suddenly the hull beneath me lurched.

I looked down. We were not under power. So what had hit us? For a second, I feared it was a dud torpedo. Then I realized it had been ice.

Clinton jabbed me and nodded at the shore. There, the ice boulders had shifted slightly. The top ones had tumbled away and the pile now seemed a foot farther away from the hull than it had been a moment before.

Clinton nodded.
Five minutes
, he mouthed, holding up five gloved fingers. He’d removed his mitten for a moment to do it.

It occurred to me that the ice sounds might mask any noise coming from the
Montana
,
if our power switched on.

I told Lieutenant Speck, “Get down there. Tell them what is happening, to get a torpedo ready and power on.”

As he descended inside, he kept off his bulky head gear. He’d be breathing possibly contaminated air, risking his life to move faster. His resolve—and a vision of those men in the tents on the ice—fortified me.

I will save every one of you that I can.

The
Montana
lurched again, this time to a sound like fingernails on a blackboard. The vibration seemed to pass through the hull, to set the steel trembling beneath my mittens.

Clinton nudged me.

“See? Behind their submarine?
See?
”

I raised the binoculars and peered into the mass of flying ice pellets. I saw the ghost sub, and the vague line of ice pack behind it. The “shore” had been an inverted bow shape before. Now it was a jagged line, closer to the rear of the Chinese sub. Suddenly I understood exactly what Clinton had been telling me. My hope rose. If the ice pushed Zhou’s sub, it could swing the bow away from us, and their midships toward us, and, if
we
kept moving also, then . . .

She’ll be sitting in front of our tubes. The threat will be reversed.

I would have had no idea that the ice was about to move if not for Clinton. Zhou may be as ignorant as me. Neither of us knows ice.

I heard a
cr-ack
below, as if some large mass had snapped in half, and almost simultaneously, a soft hum sounded; a vague glow shone, and looking down, I saw yellow light inside. We had electrical power!

Had Zhou’s people heard it come on?

There was no comment from the Chinese sub.

Well, the director said to scuttle her if I have to.

Their Zodiac boats, their boarding crew, were ready.

I felt the choice facing me as a series of emotions, played out in fractions of seconds. If broken into solid thoughts, they would have sounded like this.

My God, what do I do? Decide!

Which is more important, saving or scuttling the
Montana
, or saving the people on the ice?

The people.

And which is the best way to do that? To give Zhou what he wants? To try to scuttle the sub? To hope that the ice swings us around?

If I order a scuttle, if Zhou sees her listing, they’ll try to board us before we go down, try to stop it. That will likely start a fight. My Marines won’t have a chance.

If I give him what he wants, hand over the sub, there will be no reason for him to kill us.

No, that’s not right. He’s angry about the collision with the Chinese sub last week. He’s already committed an act of war; and he’s doing it because he knows no one can see what is going on. If he leaves witnesses, he risks escalation.

I have no idea what he’s been commanded to do.

Is Zhou so cold-blooded that he’d order the murder of the entire party onshore?

Maybe he’s been ordered to do that.

He already tricked us once, parlaying while he sent his troops to circle us.

Do I want to risk finding out if he’ll honor his promise, if I hand over the
Montana
?

Hell, let him take the sub, order in his men, and let the damn sickness take them all and send him to the bottom, screaming with pain.

I made my decision, what to do.

I felt another jolt, and this time the ice to which we were chained broke off, and the bow of the
Montana
began to swing into the lead.

At the same time I saw a jagged crevice open and snake four hundred yards east, missing the Marines, and tents. The pack—on my side of the lead—was breaking up fast.

I did not know if Zhou was aware of this. His Zodiacs were now a hundred yards off and closing. I put my mouth to the Marine radio, and felt the “on” switch give beneath my three-finger mitten.

“Major Pettit, slowly, move position, flanking.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Chief Apparecio?”

“Torpedoes in tubes one and three, sir.”

“What do you need to do in order to fire them?”

In the worsening storm, the Chinese submarine dimmed to a bulky outline. The figures on their deck disappeared. The Zodiacs were dark gliding dots. My Marines would now be invisible to the Chinese gunners on the pressure ridge, a hundred yards from the survivors.

I heard a groaning sound from “shore” and a reverberating echo—a tremendous burst of thunder—followed by loud crackling. I could not make out what was happening on the ice pack behind Zhou. But the outline of the Chinese sub was suddenly swinging around in a manner too fast to be caused by his engines, and in a direction contrary to where he wanted to be. His bow went in sixty seconds from facing us to facing left. The ice was pushing him, fast.

Zhou was probably giving frantic commands.
Back up. Reverse engines. Get us out of here. Fight the push.

On my Motorola, Apparecio’s voice came through, loud and clear for once. “Ready, sir. There’s a good chance they’ll hear the outer doors if I open ’em up, although with all this noise, who knows? After that, two seconds to hit a switch.”

“Open the outer doors. But don’t fire.”

“Yes, sir.”

Here goes
, I thought.

I pushed the button on the Chinese radio. I watched the little emerald light twinkle on. If the other sub managed to overcome the pushing ice, I’d lose my advantage. It would only last a few minutes at best.

“Captain Zhou? You are now sitting directly in front of our open torpedo tubes. We are ready to fire. You will immediately order your men on the ice to throw down their arms. You can then bring them back aboard. I have a translator with me and want to hear your order go out. I want to hear your men respond. I want that right now!”

Silence.

“Captain, you threatened me and now you have thirty seconds before I fire. Twenty-nine . . . eight . . .”

Sachs had stopped translating and was screaming, “No, don’t!” His eyes were wide with panic inside his balaclava.

Zhou had been ready to fire and I was, too.

A burst of Chinese came from their radio. Zhou was giving orders, I guessed from the tone. Andrew Sachs stopped shouting. He seemed to deflate.

“He’s telling them to leave their weapons. He’s telling them not to fight, and, and
they’re acknowledging
!”

My knees were weak. But it was not over yet. I kept Zhou’s channel open while I gave Pettit instructions, trying to keep my voice steady, which was not the way I felt at all. “Major Pettit, pick up your weapons and escort the Chinese out of there, to their Zodiacs. Treat them politely. Treat them like guests. They are bringing us medicines. Their people are going back to their sub.”

“Yes, sir.” For the first time, I heard admiration in his voice.

“Captain Zhou, I hope you heard that. It will do neither of us any good if we fight. You are not going to get the
Montana
,
and there is no bioweapon aboard. Turn around. Go home safely.”

No answer. But he was there; I felt his fury and humiliation coming over the line, more palpable than words, as if the set itself were breathing, issuing malevolence into the air.

I added, “Captain? Just so you know, I meant what I said about the sick. If you still wish to provide medicine, I welcome it, with thanks. Those medicines could save lives. I do not think we will provide you with blood samples, though. Probably it is better to limit contact, at this point, between our crews.”

No answer. It was funny how the striations in the radio set, the plastic lines, resembled a mouth, set hard, set straight.

“I would appreciate your word of honor, Captain. No fighting. Sir? I need to hear you say it.”

“I . . . give . . . it.”

I thought, hope rising,
This is going to work
.

Out there the soldiers would be moving toward each other, in the storm that never stopped, like two dangerous electrical currents that needed to be kept apart or they’d spark. Two groups of distrustful men.