Clive Cussler: Iceberg

"It helps on occasion."

"I have no choice but to be satisfied," Koski said heavily. "That last part, if I'm not infringing upon some sacred trust, was code'3"

"No great secret," Pitt answered. "It's only Admiral Sandecker's sly way of telling Dr. Hunnewell and me to continue on to Iceland after our investigation of the iceberg."

Koski stood there for a moment not saying anything. He shook his head slowly in puzzlement and was still shaking it when Hunnewell thumped his fist on the chart table.

"There it is, gentlemen. The precise location of our ghost ship-give or take a few square miles." Hunnewell was magnificent. If he had been aware of the tension a few moments before, he showed absolutely no evidence of it. He folded the chart and shoved it into the pocket of his windbreaker. "Major Pitt, I think it best if we take off as soon as possible."

"Whatever you say, Dog" Pitt said agreeably. "I can have the chopper warmed up and ready to go in ten minutes."

"Good." Hunnewell nodded. "We're now in the area where the berg was sighted by the patrol plane.

According to my calculations, at the present rate of drift, the iceberg should reach the edge of the Gulf Stream sometime tomorrow. If the ice patrol's estimate of the size is correct, the berg is already melting to the tune of a thousand tons an hour. When it hits the warmer water of the Gulf Stream, it won't last ten days.

The only unanswered question is when Will the derelict be released from the ice? Conceivably it could already be lost; hopefully it's still there and will be for a few more days."

"What do you figure for the flight distance?" Pitt asked.

"Approximately ninety miles to the general vicinity," Hunnewell answered.

Koski looked up at Pitt. "As Soon as you take off, I'll reduce speed to one third and maintain a heading of one-zero-six degrees. How long do you make it before we rendezvous?"

"Three and a half hours should do the job," Pitt replied.

Koski looked thoughtful. "Four hours-after four hours I'm coming into the icepack after you."

"Thank you, Commander," Pitt said. "Believe me when I say I'm grateful for your concern."

Koski believed him. "Are you certain I can't bring the Catawaba in closer to Your search area? if you should have an accident on the berg or have to dive in the sea, I doubt if I could reach you in time. In forty-degree water a man in full clothing only has a life expectancy Of twenty-five minutes."

"We'll have to risk it." Pitt took a final sip of his coffee and stared idly at the empty cup. "The Russians might already smell a rat if one of their trawlers has sighted your Coast Guard vessel Sunday cruising in an area outside its regular patrol station. That's why the end run with the helicopter. We can stay low enough to avoid any radar scanner and still be tough to sight visually. Time is important also. A copter can get in and out of the Novgorod's location in one tenth the time it would take the Catawaba."

"Okay." Koski sighed.

"It's your show. Just see that you're back on the landing platform by… he hesitated looking at his watch "no later than 1030." Then he grinned. "If you're a good boy and arrive on time, I'll have a fifth Of Johnnie Walker waiting." Pitt laughed. "Now that's what I call one hell of an incentive."

"I don't like it," Hunnewell shouted above the racket of the helicopter's engine exhaust. "We should have sighted something by now."

Pitt looked at his watch. "Timewise, we're in good shape. Still over two hours to go."

"Can't you go higher? If we double our range of vision, we'd double our chances of detecting the iceberg."

Pitt shook his head. "No can do. We'd also double the possibility of our own detection. It's safer if we stay at a hundred and fifty feet."

"We must find it today," Hunnewell said, an anxious expression on his cherub face. "Tomorrow may be too late for a second try." He studied the chart draped across his knees for a moment then picked up a pair of binoculars and focused off to the north at several icebergs floating together in a cluster.

"Have you noticed any bergs that come close to matching the description we're looking for?" Pitt asked.

"We crossed one about an hour ago that passed the size and configuration requirements, but there was no red dye on its walls." Hunnewell swung the binoculars, scanning a flat restless ocean studded with hundreds of massive icebergs, some broken and jagged, others rounded and smooth, like paper-white geometric solids thrown haphazardly over the blue sea.

"My ego is shattered," Hunnewell said mournfully" Never since my high school trigonometr-j class have my calculations been so far off."

"Perhaps a change in wind direction blew the berg on a different course."

"Hardly," Hunnewell grunted. "An iceberg's underwater mass is seven times the size of what shows on the surface. Nothing but an ocean current has the slightest effect on its movement. It can easily move with the current against a twenty-knot wind."

"An irresistible force and an immovable object rolled up into one lump."

"That and much moreamned near indestructible." Hunnewell talked as he peered through the glasses. "Of course, they break up and melt soon after drifting south into warmer waters. But during their passage to the Gulf Stream, they bow neither to storm nor man. Glacier icebergs have been blasted by torpedoes, eight-inch naval guns, massive doses of thermite bombs, and tons of coal dust to soak up the sun and speed up the melting process. The results were comparable to the damage a herd of elephants might suffer after a slingshot bombardment by a tribe of anemic pygmies."

Pitt went into a steep bank, dodging around the sheer sides of a high-pinnacled berg-a maneuver that had Hunnewell clutching his stomach.

He checked the chart again. Two hundred square miles covered and nothing achieved. He said: "Let's try due north for fifteen minutes. Then head back east to the edge of the ice pack. Then south for ten minutes before we cut west again."

"One graduated box pattern to the north coming up," Pitt said. He tilted the controls slightly, holding the helicopter in a side-swinging movement until the compass read zero degrees.

The minutes wore on and multiplied and the fatigue began to show in the deepening lines around Hunnewell's eyes. "How's the gas situation?"

"That's the least of our worries," Pitt replied. "The elements we're short on at the moment are time and optimism.

"Might as well admit it," Hunnewell said wearily.

"I ran out of the latter a quarter of an hour ago."

Pitt gripped Hunnewell's arm. "Hang in there, Dog" he said encouragingly. "Our elusive iceberg may be just around the next corner."

"If it is, it's defied every drift pattern in the book."

"The red dye marker. Could be it washed away in the storm yesterday?"

"Fortunately no. The dye contains calcium chloride, a necessary ingredient for deep penetration-takes weeks, sometimes months for the stain to melt away."

"That leaves us with one other possibility."

"I know what you're thinking," Hunnewell said flatly. "A-nd you can perish the thought. I've worked closely off an(I on with the Coast Guard for over thirty years, and I've never known them to mistake an ice position sighting."

"That's it then. A million-ton chunk of ice evaporated mt" Pitot left the sentence unfinished, partly because the helicopter was beginning to drift off course, partly because he glimpsed something. Hunnewell suddenly stiffened in his seat and leaned forward, the binoculars jammed against his eye sockets.

"I have it," Hunnewell cried.

Pitt didn't wait for a command; he dipped the helicopter and headed toward the direction indicated by Hunnewell's binoculars.

Hunnewell passed the glasses to Pitt. "Here, take a peek and tell me these old eyes aren't picking up a mirage."