Chapter 12
The wind died as soon as the sun went down. In its absence, the entire frozen venue grew still and silent, while pinpricks of starlight, too brilliant to be believed, appeared in the cloudless night sky.
In this overriding quiet, the crunch of snow underfoot and the voices of men shouting carried with surprising strength.
Several groups of Chinese crewmen were now out on the ice, lumbering in their cold-weather gear, searching here and there, flashlight beams playing across the frozen white surface in all directions.
What looked like an unorganized gaggle from one perspective was actually a long picket line of humans spread out in an echelon formation. They were scanning the ice and the water along the cut, looking for any sign of the American or his submersible.
Gushan walked behind them, ignoring the cold. If anything, he appreciated its bite, it kept the men sharp, and it made the American’s life more difficult. They would find the American soon. He was certain of that.
The headset he wore under his fur-lined hood crackled. It was Li, calling from the cozy warmth of the icebreaker’s bridge. “I need a report.”
“We’re still searching,” Gushan said. “Nothing yet.”
“The ROVs have searched up and down the cut to a range of seven miles,” Li said. “The American sub is nowhere to be found. Surely this means the American has made his way back to his mother ship.”
“His craft was damaged,” Gushan countered. “It was leaking air. He didn’t come back this way to harass us. He needed to surface. The cut we made in the ice was the only open water for miles around. He’s here somewhere.”
“Then find him and eliminate him,” Li said. “No traces.”
Gushan could hear the concern in his superior’s voice.
In Gushan’s opinion, Li was not cut out for this command.
He was too mercurial, too emotional. He continued to oscillate between fear of failure and discovery, and the possible glory of success.
One minute he wanted to crush his enemies, the next he was gripped by doubt.
But then, Li was worried about his reputation and the future of his career, while Gushan was concerned only with the job at hand.
The captain was another problem. He continued to worry about an American nuclear submarine putting a torpedo into the side of the icebreaker.
Gushan didn’t believe there was an American boat out there.
He didn’t believe the back-and-forth communications to be legitimate.
They wouldn’t have been sent on an open channel if they were.
But he knew there were at least two Americans in the area, maybe more.
In either case, the best way to protect the icebreaker was to have a hostage on board. Not kill the American on sight.
“We need information from this man,” Gushan said calmly. “He can disappear after we’ve gotten it from him.”
The admiral did not reply immediately, but Gushan had calculated the exchange correctly. Li would see the value of this approach and yet still get his way.
“Assuming you can find him,” the admiral countered.
Gushan had hoped to find the submersible trapped amid the loosely jumbled ice around the edges of the cut—that’s where he would have hidden it had the roles been reversed.
But it depended how far the American had run.
An hour of searching in the frigid darkness had revealed nothing and Gushan began to wonder if the American had ridden his damaged craft to the bottom.
A voice split the night.
“Over here!” one of the men called. “Look at this.”
Beams of light converged on their comrade from different parts of the frozen plain.
They soon focused on a frost-covered hump wedged between two chunks of ice.
The hump looked nothing like the dark submersible in color because it was now covered in a layer of ice crystals and precipitated salt. But the shape gave it away.
Gushan stepped forward, commending the man who’d found it. It would have been easy to miss.
“Stay back,” he ordered. “If you fall in, you stay in. No one is diving in to rescue you.”
That was enough of a warning to stop the approaching men in their tracks.
As they stood by, Gushan stepped ahead of them, approaching the craft himself.
He found the footing to be treacherous near the machine.
Even though the slabs of ice holding the craft in place were the size of tennis courts, they were only tenuously connected to the main shelf by a thin layer of frozen water.
Using a ski pole he jabbed at the ice, looking for weak spots. He found a thin area, stepped over it, and moved even more cautiously until he reached the frozen machine.
Through what he could only imagine was extraordinary piloting skills or incredible luck, the sleek submersible had been driven into a V-shaped gap and up onto the ice itself, like a seal leaving the water to escape a pursuing killer whale. No wonder the ROVs couldn’t find it.
It lay on the ice fully exposed and leaning slightly to one side. Encrusted in the salt and frost, the machine looked dead, like a discarded relic from some bygone era.
Gushan paused beside the hull, listening.
He heard no sound coming from the cockpit.
Nothing to indicate it was occupied or that any of its systems were functioning.
Using his gloved hand he rubbed the frost from the acrylic glass canopy in a circular motion.
Placing his flashlight against the glass he looked inside.
The interior was cramped, dark, and completely empty.
“No one home,” he told the men.
He looked around. The ice offered nothing in the way of footprints, but there was little chance the American had gone for a swim.
He gave orders for a snowcat to be brought out and lines secured to the sub.
They would drag this American machine back to the icebreaker like a prize captured in battle.
It wouldn’t make up for the missing aircraft, but it was better than nothing.
In the meantime, he would order the men to disperse and continue the search on foot.
Waiting for the tow, Gushan studied the machine.
It was sleek and streamlined in every way.
Clearing the frost, he counted the thruster vents in various places.
He examined the damaged hull plating where the ROV had rammed it.
The material grade was very high. The craft itself was absolutely unique.
It had obviously been built with significant investment and effort, as opposed to being cobbled together with off-the-shelf parts.
Perhaps it was a military craft after all.
The snowcat arrived and a line was thrown out.
Gushan caught the rope and stepped to the nose of the submersible, where he attached it to an exposed ring that was clearly designed as a towing point.
Beneath it, partially covered by the frost, he could see a vague outline of the American flag and a set of letters and numbers.
He scraped the frost from the hull, revealing the flag, the registration number, and a logo he’d seen somewhere before.
He rubbed some more of the frost from the machine and discovered four capitalized letters in the Western alphabet. They read NUMA.
Gushan stared at the letters with an angry expression on his frozen face.
“Damn,” he whispered to the night. “Damn.”