On the bridge, Weber picked himself up off the deck and helped shut down the vessel’s engine, then quickly assessed the health of his ship and crew. An assortment of cuts and bruises was the worst of the personal injuries, but the patrol boat fared less well. In addition to the lost rudder, the ship’s crumpled bow had compromised the outer hull. The Harp would remain embedded in the ice for four days before a tow could arrive to take the ship to port for repairs.

Wiping away a trickle of blood from a gash on his cheek, Weber stepped to the bridge wing and peered to the west. He saw the running lights of the merchant ship for just a second before the big ship disappeared into a gloomy dark fogbank that stretched across the horizon. Watching as the ship disappeared, Weber shook his head.

“You brazen bastard,” he muttered. “You’ll pay for this.”

WEBER’S WORDS WOULD PROVE to ring hollow. A fast-moving storm front south of Baffin Island grounded the Canadian Air Command CP-140 Aurora reconnaissance plane called in by the Coast Guard. When the aircraft finally lifted off from its base in Greenwood, Nova Scotia, and arrived over Lancaster Strait, more than six hours had elapsed. Farther west, a Navy icebreaker and another Coast Guard cutter blocked the passage off Prince of Wales Island, waiting for the belligerent freighter to arrive. But the large black ship never appeared.

The Canadian Coast Guard and Air Force scoured the navigable seas around Lancaster Strait for three days in search of the rogue vessel. Every available route west was scrutinized several times over. Yet the American merchant ship was nowhere to be seen. Baffled, the Canadian forces quietly called off the search, leaving Weber and his crew to wonder how the strange ship had somehow disappeared into the Arctic ice.

Chapter 23

23

DR. KEVIN BUE PEERED AT THE BLACKENING SKY to the west and grimaced. Only hours earlier, the sun had shone brightly and the air was still while the mercury in the thermometer tickled twenty degrees Fahrenheit. But then the barometer had dropped like a stone in a well, accompanied by a gradual building of the westerly winds. A quarter of a mile away, the gray waters of the Arctic now rolled in deep swells that burst against the ragged edge of the ice pack with billowing fountains of spray.