Polar Melt: A Novel Read online

  Polar Melt

  A Novel

  Martin Roy Hill

  POLAR MELT

  Copyright © 2018 by Martin Roy Hill

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in critical articles or reviews.

  Published by

  An imprint of

  M. R. Hill Publishing

  San Diego, California

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 0692096469

  ISBN-13: 978-0692096468

  For information contact:

  www.martinroyhill.com

  Cover image: Satori13 | Dreamstime.com

  Books by Martin Roy Hill

  Duty: Stories of Mystery and Suspense from the Cold War and Beyond (2012)

  The Killing Depths (2012)

  Empty Places (2013)

  Eden: A Sci-Fi Novella (2014)

  The Last Refuge (2016)

  The Butcher's Bill (2017)

  War Stories (2018)

  To the men and women of the United States Coast Guard—active, reserve, and auxiliary. The first branch of the military I served in, and my favorite.

  Semper Paratus

  Chapter 1

  "THERE IT IS!"

  The crewman pointed off the port quarter of the Research Vessel Franklin where a small, yellow object bobbed among the scattered floes of Arctic ice. The ship's captain and the team's chief research scientist stood together on the port wing of the bridge and waited for the hatch on the small submarine to open.

  Officially referred to as a deep submergence vehicle, or DSV, the mini-sub was launched nearly a day before to explore beneath the disappearing Arctic ice. It was summer in the Arctic, and the once-permanent ice cap was at its lowest ebb in recorded history. The massive ice flows that usually choked the so-called Northwest Passage were little more than over-sized ice cubes floating in an empty sea thanks to warming global temperatures. The Franklin, a research vessel built by the U.S. Navy and operated under charter by a renowned oceanographic institute, had been researching—with the help of its DSV—the impact of so much melted fresh water on the native saltwater species that lived in the frigid Arctic Ocean.

  Several hours into its mission, communication with the sub was lost. Though concerned, the Franklin's crew wasn't alarmed at first. Communications failures were routine. Plus, the DSV was the latest design and had the ability to make its own air. Still, a wave of relief swept through the crew at the sight of the mini-sub. Relief soon gave way to apprehension when the DSV's access hatch didn't open.

  "What are they waiting for?" asked the captain. "You'd expect them to pop the hatch as fast as possible."

  "Maybe they had an accident," said the scientist. "Maybe they're injured and can't turn the dogging wheel."

  The captain nodded, cupped his hands to his mouth, and hollered to the crew members on the fantail. "Away all divers!"

  A small, orange Zodiac launch sped away from the side of the ship and toward the DSV. Aboard was a coxswain to drive the boat and three divers in cold-water dry suits to retrieve the sub. Within minutes, they were alongside the DSV and a diver clambered on board. He tried to open the hatch. The dogging wheel wouldn't turn. He took a knife from a sheath on his belt and used the hilt to bang a signal on the hull of the sub. There was no response.

  The diver looked at the coxswain and shook his head. The coxswain picked up the radio mic and said, "Access hatch won't open, skipper. And we get no response from inside."

  "Bring her on in—fast," the captain said into his handheld radio.

  Within fifteen minutes the DSV bobbed at the Franklin's stern, where the ship's massive A-frame crane waited to lift it on board. The divers attached the crane's cables to the sub's lifting points, and the crane's operator eased it from the water and into its cradle on the ship's stern deck.

  The ship's chief bosun was ready with a dogging wrench. He climbed aboard the submarine, jammed the wrench between the spokes of the dogging wheel, and pulled. The muscles in his arms corded with strain.

  Finally, it turned.

  With a hiss, the hatch cracked open and the bosun peered in. The ship's medic bounded onto the sub and looked into the hatch. They straightened, looked at each other a moment, faces ashen, then the bosun turned to the crew on the deck.

  "It's empty," he said.

  Chapter 2

  THE U.S. NAVY MH-53E Sea Dragon roared across the north Alaska coastline, its three five-thousand horsepower engines deafening the six passengers on board. For this mission, the Sea Dragon carried only the pilot, co-pilot, and crew chief as crew. Six passengers huddled in the rear cabin, checking their equipment, reading, or sleeping. They wore battle gear—dark-blue trousers and blouse, and matching foul-weather jacket. Black gloves covered their hands, and black balaclavas concealed most of their faces. Black load-bearing ballistic armor vests protected their torsos. Each wore a Kevlar helmet of the same color, along with ballistic goggles. Each person had a Glock pistol either in a thigh-rigged holster or in a holster on their vest. Five carried M4 carbines with optical scopes; the sixth carried a M249 Squad Automatic Weapon, also known as a SAW machine gun, with a heavy box magazine. None wore any sign of rank or branch of service on their heavy jackets or vests.

  Only twenty-four hours before, the helicopter crew received orders to deliver this group to a specific longitude and latitude in the Arctic Ocean. There was no doubt the Sea Dragon, with its long-range and air-refueling capability, could fly the distance. However, when the pilot plotted the location on his air chart, he complained there was nothing there but open ocean. "There's something there now," he was told, and nothing more. Nor did the passengers offer any more information.

  His curiosity piqued, the crew chief duck-walked over to the one who appeared in charge and held his mouth next to the other's ear.

  "Who are you guys, anyway?" he asked.

  "U. S. Coast Guard," the man answered.

  "Bullshit," said the crew chief. "Coast Guard way out here, armed like you? You guys must be CIA. You're CIA, aren't you?"

  "Fine," the man said. "We're CIA."

  The crew chief smiled and nodded, his suspicion confirmed. Then the nodding stopped, and the smile vanished.

  "Wait a minute," he said. "If you were CIA, you wouldn't admit it."

  "Maybe that's why I told you we were Coast Guard."

  The man sitting next to the first man tapped his shoulder and pointed out a window. The coastline beneath them writhed with thousands of rotund, dark-brown bodies.

  "Sea lions," the second man said.

  From the uncovered skin around the second man's eyes, the crew chief could tell he was African American. And he wore black horned-rimmed glasses, which the Navy man thought odd. He'd never seen a spook or other special operator wearing glasses.

  "Why are they crowded up like that?" asked the first man.

  "The polar melt, sir," the black man said. "Normally, they would swim around the large ice floes looking for food or resting on the ice. Because of polar melt, they have nowhere else to go except the shoreline."

  He gestured toward the ocean below. It was summer in the northern latitudes, and the Arctic's Chukchi Sea was still white with a thin layer of drift ice. Missing, however, was the thick pack ice, which only a few years before covered the Arctic Ocean even in summer.

  The African American shook his head. The other man did the same. Strange conve
rsation for spooks, the crew chief thought, and he moved forward toward the cockpit.

  Sometime later, the crew chief came back and found the leader asleep. He shook him awake, careful not to stand too close to him. These special ops guys, he knew, didn't appreciate being roused from their sleep. The man opened his eyes and the crew chief hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  "Pilot wants to talk to you," he said.

  The team leader nodded, stood, and made his way forward, stumbling once or twice from the bucking of the aircraft. When he entered the cockpit, the pilot in the right-hand seat pointed to an object below them.

  "That your ship?"

  Below them a ship wallowed in the ice-speckled ocean. She had a dark-blue hull and white superstructure. At the aft end of the superstructure stood a large white globe housing the antennae for the HiSeasNet oceanographic telecommunications system. On the stern was a large A-frame crane and, sitting in a cradle beneath it, a small submarine. The sub's cradle sat on a railroad-like track leading into a hanger. Forward of the bridge on the second, or O-2, deck, was a small helipad, marked with a large H within a circle.

  The leader studied the vessel, comparing it to the photos he'd memorized during his mission briefing, and nodded.

  "That's it," he said.

  "That helipad is too small for us to put down on," said the pilot.

  "Understood," the leader said. "We came prepared for that. Just put us over the flight deck and we'll fast rope."

  "Roger that," answered the pilot.

  ☼

  Back in the cabin, the leader signaled his team. They stood and turned to a large duffel bag they had been leaning against. From inside the duffel, they removed a large coil of thick, braided nylon rope with an eye spliced into one end. Whipping secured the other end from fraying. They secured the eye into the maw of a hook above their heads and waited.

  As they approached the vessel, the crew chief opened the aircraft's belly hatch and, secured by a safety harness, leaned out. The chilled Arctic wind swept through the cabin, and everyone shivered with the sudden onslaught. Guided by the crew chief, the pilot settled the giant helicopter in a hover over the ship's helo pad. The crew chief stood and motioned the team leader toward the hatch.

  "Time to go," he said, though no one heard him.

  The team leader picked up the coil of rope and tossed it out the hatch. The first one out the door was the man with the SAW machine gun. Then went the team leader, followed by another. Then smallest team member waddled to the door, burdened by heavy gear. The team member glanced at the crew chief with feminine eyes, winked once, then grabbed the rope and slid away.

  My god, was that a woman?

  The penultimate team member followed, with the black team member going last. When the entire team was on the ship's landing pad, the crew chief unhooked the rope and let it fall. He made his way toward to the cockpit.

  The Sea Dragon was moving away from the ship when the crew chief poked his head into the cockpit, shaking his head.

  "What is it?" asked the pilot.

  "I could have sworn one of those guys was a girl," he said.

  "Don't be ridiculous," the pilot said. He took the helicopter to altitude and turned it toward the mainland. "What do you think? You really believe what that guy told you? That they're Coast Guard?"

  The crew chief pondered the question, then shook his head.

  "Nah," he said. "What the hell would the Shallow Water Navy be doing way out here?"

  Chapter 3

  THE FIRST MAN TO exit the helo, U.S. Coast Guard Lieutenant Commander Douglas Munro Gates, landed on the helo deck of the Research Vessel Franklin, stepped away from the rope, and dropped to one knee, his M4 at the ready. The next team member to land on the ship, Gunner's Mate 1st Class Jess Brown, moved to Gates' left, and took a knee with his SAW machine gun at his shoulder. As each member arrived, they, too, took up a position in a circular perimeter beneath the helicopter.

  When the helo moved off, Gates signaled his team to move out. As one, the team rose and, weapons shouldered, spread out, scanning the vessel's small helipad and the foredeck below. There was nothing to see. At another hand signal from Gates, the team broke off into twos and headed to their designated search areas. Gates and his executive officer, Lieutenant (junior grade) Leland Strange, the man the Navy crew chief identified as African American, climbed toward the bridge, searching compartments along the way. Brown joined the team's engineering specialist, Senior Chief George Hopper, and headed for main engineering. Chief Georgia Stalk, the team's electronics expert, and Frank Chee, a 1st class aviation survival specialist and the team's medic, made for the research vessel's science center and its elaborate mix of ocean sensors and laboratories. Each team took a prearranged, circuitous route to their destinations that allowed them to search most of the ship's compartments along the way.

  Together, these sailors made up the Coast Guard's Deployable Specialized Force–P. Deployable Specialized Forces, or DSFs, included units designed for anti-terrorism response, counter-insurgency warfare, coastal and riverine warfare, long-range drug interdiction, and chemical response. Of these, DSF–Papa was the smallest, most specialized, and least known, even within the Coast Guard itself. Those who did know of its existence insisted the P stood for Phenomena, since the team's mission was to investigate mysterious occurrences at sea that could endanger international maritime trade.

  Such an occurrence involved the R/V Franklin. Five days before, the mainland lost all communications with the ship, including the vessel's AIS, or Automatic Identification System, a satellite identifier beacon that tracked vessels across the world's oceans. For five days, Coast Guard and Navy C-130 aircraft had flown missions over the Franklin's last known position, flying search patterns that accounted for the set and drift of the ocean that could have carried the ship or debris one direction or another. Hampered by fog, the searchers found no trace of the ship.

  Then, twenty-four hours earlier, as the Coast Guard was about to list the ship as presumed sunk, one of its planes spotted the Franklin. The aircrew hailed the ship by radio and signal lamp, with no response. The gravity davits for the ship's lone lifeboat stood empty, and from what the flight crew could see, the ship was abandoned. The photographs they brought back convinced their superiors of the same. DSF–Papa deployed to investigate what the news media were already describing as a ghost ship.

  Gates and Strange reached the bridge without any sign of crew members. The pilothouse, though crammed with electronic monitors and instruments, was otherwise empty. The wheel stood locked with rudders amidships and the engine controls were in the all-stop position. Electronic screens, bridge radio, global positioning satellite monitor, and radar console were all lifeless. Gates punched the power button on each piece of equipment, and each remained cold and dead.

  The cramped chart room aft of the bridge was lifeless as well, as was the tiny deep submergence vehicle observation lab behind it. The lower compartments they checked on the way to the bridge—the ship's sickbay, and officers' and scientists' staterooms—were also deserted.

  Gates' radio earphone squelched and he heard Hopper's voice say, "Hopper to Gates, over."

  "Gates. Go."

  "Engineering spaces are secured, sir," Hopper said. "Secured, crewless, and without power. Over."

  "Roger," replied Gates. "Same for all compartments above the O-2 deck. Over."

  Aboard ships, decks above the main deck up are numbered in sequence O-1, O-2, O-3 and so forth. Decks below the main deck, called the lower decks, were simply numbered second, third, and so on the lower they went.

  The Franklin had five upper decks, and three lower decks. The O-1 housed the conference room/library, the galley and mess deck, berthing for the crew, and an electrical shop. The next deck up, the O-2, housed sickbay and more crew berthing, while the O-3 held the staterooms for the senior scientists and officers. The O-4 deck, where the two officers stood, held the bridge, chart room, and DSV lab. The small O-5 deck
above that was the fly bridge, where a lookout could get a more distant view of the horizon. Science labs filled the main deck compartments, while the second and third decks held engineering spaces and store rooms.

  Gates heard more squelch, and Chief Stalk said, "Break. Stalk to Gates. Main and second deck compartments secured and just as empty. Over."

  "Where the hell is everyone?" Gates muttered. Then he thumbed the push to talk button on his radio and said, "Roger. Double-check everything again. We'll meet in the ship's conference room in . . ." Gates checked his watch. "In fifteen mikes. Gates out."

  Gates removed his Kevlar helmet and balaclava and ran his hand through straight, black hair cut short. His handsome face was long and narrow, its dark complexion darkened more by the sun and beginning to form creases around the dark-brown eyes and the thin, determined lips. He pulled an encrypted satellite telephone from a large pouch on his vest and turned it on.

  "Leland, find the logbook and see if you can glean anything from it. I'm going out on the bridge wing and try to get a sat phone signal."

  Strange took off his K–Pot and glasses, pulled the balaclava over his head, and scratched his short, curly, black hair.

  "Aye, sir," he said, then disappeared into the chart room.

  ☼

  The Franklin's conference room was a much nicer meeting place than seen on Coast Guard cutters. A long buff-topped table, bolted to the deck, stretched across the center of the room, surrounded by no-nonsense, gray metal chairs. The chairs stood on sturdy metal legs with no wheels that would let them roll in a heavy sea. A well-padded love seat and matching lounge chairs lined the bulkheads, along with shelves crowded with scientific reference books. In one corner stood a smaller bookcase filled with novels of various genres, their spines creased and pages well-worn and dogged-eared.