Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

When it was finished he lowered the periscope.

There was no course change as Julius had predicted, no Lancaster Sound, just that continual northward push. We passed latitude seventy-five, only fifteen degrees short of the North Pole, yet continued up toward the encroaching glaciers of Greenland and Ellesmere Island. It looked to me like a dead end, at least on the map. There was only one narrow cut threading those landmasses, a permanently frozen-over passage called the Kennedy Channel, and I dearly hoped we were not going to attempt that. The frustrated atmosphere in the sub told me I was not alone-everyone was confused. But our fears turned out to groundless: on February 25, Commander Coombs ordered a course correction that put us on a direct heading for the Greenland ice cap.

"Thule!" Cowper announced triumphantly to me through the door when I was next able to sneak to the goat locker. He seemed to be feeling better. "Thule Air Base!"

"Where's that?"

"Just where we're heading, on the west coast of Greenland. It's a dead giveaway."

"I didn't see any air base on my atlas."

"They don't advertise it. Look again-it's probably just listed as Thule, or maybe even Qaanaaq." He spelled it for me. "Seventy-six north by sixty-eight west. It hasn't been a fully functioning air base since the eighties, but it has an airstrip and a permanent Air Force contingent of about a hundred and thirty: the Air Force Space Command. There's also Air National Guard, some Canadians, Danes, even native Greenlanders-about a thousand people all told."

"A thousand people way up here?"

"That's nothing-it used to be a city of ten thousand, back during the height of the Cold War. Part of the Ballistic Missile Warning System. It's practically a ghost town these days, but they still monitor space launches for NASA… or did. No telling what they're up to now."

"Why would we be going there?"

"Who knows? Ask Coombs."

"Maybe I will."

As it turned out, Coombs came to me.

He approached me as I was "cranking"-doing chores-and told me that when I was through with the lunch dishes there was a small job of relagging he needed done. Relagging was one of the few menial jobs nobody complained about. Except for stainless steel, all exposed metal on the sub was covered with something, whether it was perforated foam paneling on bulkheads, hard rubbery tiles on tanks and stanchions, or cloth wrapping around air ducts. This last was called lagging. Being fairly flimsy, it frayed over time like an old leg cast, eventually becoming so dirty and ragged it had to be reapplied like plaster of Paris-an artsy-craftsy activity I found soothing. Relagging was a never-ending job, but for me it was break time… usually.

This time the duct was in Coombs's cabin, which would have been interesting except that he hung around while I prepared the materials. It made me very uncomfortable.

"So I guess the boys must be enjoying the new provisions," he said, sitting at his small desk. He had his own compact command console in there, and a fold-up sink, which was kind of cool, but the place was papered with fake wood paneling like so many of the cheap motel rooms my mother and I had stayed in. Up at eye level there was a safe that must have once held secret launch codes. It looked like someone had burned through the lock-it was the heat from this that had scorched the lagging above.

Working, I said, "Oh my God-yes, sir. They're calling it 'Barbie's Dream Sub.'"

"They are, huh?" I could feel him staring at me.

"Oh yeah. They're turning the Big Room into their own Galleria, and the British guys have made a private little den-I think they're feeling a little overwhelmed. But the boys are fine. I guess this is the first time they've had enough to eat in weeks."

"No doubt. I'm glad to hear it. Must make your job easier."

"Yeah, morale's good… except for one thing, I guess."

"What's that?"

"Just the uncertainty. Same old thing."

"Hm." He had suddenly become disinterested, checking figures on his computer screen.

I couldn't stand it. Hesitantly I said, "Sir, I was wondering… about Thule…"

He looked sharply at me. "What about it?"

"Are we going there?"

He turned back to his screen. "Of course we're going to Thule. Where else would we be going?"

Surprised by his frankness, I said, "Well, there was talk of Alaska."

"Alaska! Lord no. You see what happens when rumors get started?"

"Why Thule?" I was scrambling for follow-up questions; he had caught me off guard.

"The military installation, of course. Right now it's the most secure facility in this hemisphere, except maybe for Alert up on Cape Sheridan. Thule has been designated a federal SPAM depot. With nobody watching the store, the government has been moving anything critical to national security up here."

"Sensitive Personnel and Materials."

"Yes. Of which we are still a vital part, in spite of the serious breaches that have occurred."

"Why didn't you tell anyone about this earlier?" I was freshly outraged. "How could you let all those people get off, when you knew-"

"Knew what? Yes, I let them-I did not make them. What did I have to offer them if they had stayed aboard? I haven't been in contact with Thule-they're restricting their emissions just as we are. For all we know, they may be no more amenable to refugees than St. John's. It's a harsh place to survive."

"But at least you could have told them…"

"Miss Pangloss, I am under no obligation to share any information whatsoever with you or any other civilian, especially in regard to a highly classified operation. Thule's status is probably the most closely guarded secret in the world at this time. If a bunch of civilians with that knowledge were to land on a foreign shore, do you have any idea how fatally that could impact the mission? One well-placed bomb-boom! No more SPAM. And SPAM is the key to rebuilding America."

"So… what are we supposed to do if Thule doesn't want us?"

"Cross that bridge when we come to it. Don't worry-you're one of us now."

I was not in the control room at the time, but Julian would later describe to me how we surfaced through twenty feet of solid ice. The black water off the western Greenland shore offered very little clearance, being only about a hundred feet deep from bottom to frozen ceiling. Since the boat was some seventy feet high, this did not allow for much "wiggle room," but Coombs got as close as he dared-around two miles offshore. Once he found a good spot, he backed a thousand yards away from it and fired two Mark 48 ADCAP torpedoes. They were wire-guided, and Mr. Noteiro (who had been some kind of torpedo specialist in ages past) wove them over shoals and around hanging ice masses to the precise spot Coombs had chosen. Julian said everyone in the control room held their breath as the "fish" unspooled.

Then Vic detonated them.

This, no one on board failed to appreciate. The torpedoes seemed to hatch two howling leviathans that descended on the sub and swallowed it whole, causing the rock-steady floor to bounce like a trampoline. For a minute the stealthy ship was a rattletrap jalopy, all squeaks and bangs and rattling cutlery, but in short order things settled down, replaced by more reassuring sounds of cheering and applause from the control center. Apparently we were all right.

We made our way back to the site of the explosion, penetrating a cloud of silt to find a wide, shallow crater in the seabed. Above was all loose floating rubble, broken in a spiderweb pattern outward from the blast. Even shattered, the volume of ice was so massive that Coombs did not try surfacing the entire boat but only raised the fairwater like a gopher peering from its hole.

This was the true arctic winter. This was darkness at noon. I ascended to my lookout on the bridge and for a moment could only stare at the lunar desolation: black and white, yin and yang. By comparison, the snowy landscape of St. John's had been a ski resort, with its buildings and lights and forested hills. The sea there was still a liquid presence, just as it had been around the cruise ship, where the liner itself had been a constant reminder that we were in fact at sea. But in this place…