Big Miracle (19 page)

Pete Leathard assured General Schaeffer that the most difficult part of the task would be digging the barge out of the frozen tundra where it idly sat for the last four years. Once free, the barge could easily be towed across the ocean's solidly frozen surface … or so everyone thought. Carroll checked with all the armories across Alaska to determine what equipment was available and best suited for the job. In calligraphic script, Colonel Carroll listed the options on a yellow legal pad christened for his new assignment. The colonel weighed his options and, like all good commanders, sided with caution. He chose the Sikorsky CH-54 Skycrane helicopter. The Skycrane was capable of lifting more weight than any other helicopter. If it couldn't do the job, nothing could.

Carroll wanted to make sure that the necessary fuel, the Skycrane's biggest requirement, would be available. It guzzled a staggering 650 gallons an hour. That meant it would take at least 30,000 gallons to get the barge out of the frozen earth and across the ice to Barrow. Before he ordered the helicopter, Carroll checked with Schaeffer to see whether he was authorized to use that much fuel. The general told Colonel Carroll to guzzle away: ARCO was donating all the fuel he would need.

When Ben Odom learned his offer was being taken seriously, it was too late to turn back. By the time the rescue was over, ARCO would become by far Operation Breakout's largest private cash contributor, donating more than at least half a million dollars' worth of fuel alone to help save the three whales.

Next on Colonel Carroll's checklist was office support. Between the pilots, public affairs, and ground personnel, Carroll would need a command post and living quarters for nearly a dozen people. After checking with Ben Odom, Carroll learned that ARCO would also provide office space, telephones and rooms for the National Guard and VECO in the company's ultramodern Prudhoe Bay installation 1,700 miles from the North Pole.

ARCO spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a superb habitat for their workers on the North Slope. To keep up morale, the heartless oil barons made sure their hard-working employees were extremely well paid and provided with every conceivable comfort while on the job—movie theaters, maid and room service, bowling alleys, and cafeterias that served the finest steaks and lobster flown in fresh from Anchorage. Until the Eskimos in Barrow spent $15 million to build a swimming pool in 1986, Prudhoe Bay had the only one above the Arctic Circle.

It took several hours for Colonel Carroll and his men to arrange for the aircraft and personnel to support the Skycranes. When they finished, the colonel told his men to go home. “Don't forget to get some sleep,” he reminded them. “You're all due back here at 0500 hours.” He wanted to get an early start. “Wheels up at 6:00
A.M.
” Tom Carroll had asserted his command. Carroll wanted to check the ice conditions around Barrow himself before making a final decision to okay the hoverbarge tow. For all the talk about how smooth and solid the Beaufort Sea ice was between Prudhoe and Barrow, no one had actually examined it. Carroll was a man focused on details. Details make or break missions.

Pete Leathard promised that the barge could break ice up to two feet thick. Any ice thicker than that would have to be cut by something else. He didn't have to elaborate. There was nothing else available capable of cutting ice more than two feet thick. Tom Carroll was not about to risk his men, equipment, and his own rank on an operation that didn't have an excellent chance of success. If he ever thought the deck was stacked against him, Operation Breakout would end.

General Schaeffer walked with the colonel to the copy machine across the hall. Carroll glanced at the document the general was about to copy, which contained Schaeffer's handwritten call sheet with the names and numbers of everyone involved in the rescue. The colonel was prepared to find the names of some of Alaska's most prominent citizens: Senator Stevens, Governor Cowper, Bill Allen, and Ben Odom. But he was taken aback by the name on top of the list: Cindy Lowry.

“Isn't she the Greenpeace gal with the bullhorn?” he asked the general.

“Yup. She sure is,” Schaeffer responded. “And, like it or not, you'll have to work with her. She's the one who started this whole thing in the first place. We're on her side in this one, Tom.”

Colonel Carroll had nothing against Cindy. He didn't know her personally. But he wondered how someone so well known for her rabble-rousing against the United States Armed Forces in Alaska could be so suddenly interested in participating in a top down military operation.

Tom Carroll tried to call Cindy Lowry, but he couldn't get through because she was on the phone to Geoff and Craig, who had just gotten back from a day on the ice with the whales. They were discussing strategy for that night's critical Barrow whaling captains meeting. They confirmed what she had been watching all morning on her television. The whales were fast becoming a local phenomenon, a tourist attraction, and a national news event all in one.

By Saturday afternoon, October 15, a week and a day after they were first discovered, the whales now had almost round-the-clock company. Some Eskimo hunters and the few media crews already in town joined Geoff and Craig to spend the entire day with the animals. The whales would never again go unattended during daylight hours. Geoff and Craig told Cindy that as they were about to leave, they discovered the youngest whale had trouble breathing. The baby whale wheezed, coughed up lots of water, and looked exhausted. Until that moment, Geoff and Craig were ordered to observe the whales, not to interfere. The whales needed more room to breathe. The hole they depended on for survival was once sixty feet by thirty feet. In the eight days since the whales were first discovered, it had shrunk by two-thirds. The hole would soon completely freeze over.

The two biologists wanted to help. If they could just slightly expand the hole, the whales could breathe easier and buy some precious time. They shouted their ideas for expanding the holes over the deafening whine of their ski machine as it raced across the bleak Arctic landscape on the long, cold ride back to Barrow. Before ending the conversation to clear her line, Cindy asked Geoff and Craig if they had heard anything yet from Ron Morris.

“Who is Ron Morris?” they asked.

“Ron Morris, from NOAA Fisheries. He's the project coordinator,” Cindy answered. Morris was due in on the 3:30
P.M.
flight. She didn't know if anyone had arranged lodging for him. There weren't many hotel rooms left. This wasn't Morris's problem alone; Cindy would find herself in the same spot before she knew it. The next call came from Campbell Plowden in Washington. He told her to get up to Barrow on the next available flight.

“Don't worry about packing,” he instructed. “Just throw some things in an overnight bag. You won't be up there but a day or so.”

It was too late for the last flight to Barrow, which left Anchorage at 3:40. The next flight was not until tomorrow, Sunday morning. About the same time Cindy got her marching orders, Ron Morris's plane began its descent. He was about to enter a world that after many previous visits still remained a mystery. Just five years short of becoming a naturalized sourdough, the fifty-four-year-old Morris could never quite figure out how a town like Barrow ever got started. Morris couldn't imagine a more depressing place.

When the pilot turned on the
NO SMOKING
sign signaling the final approach into Barrow's Wiley Post–Will Rogers Memorial Airport, Morris leaned back to finish his Bloody Mary mix. Morris popped a couple of Tic-Tacs and was ready to face the world. He wanted to make a good first impression. He stroked his beard as the plane taxied. He took good care to nourish his rakish nautical air. With his thinning silver hair, someone commented that Morris looked like one of those little wooden carvings of Maine lobstermen sold in souvenir shops across the country. All he lacked was the bright yellow slicker.

If he wasn't convinced already, Morris needed no further reminders of where the 737 landed once he stepped off the plane. It was nearly fifty degrees colder in Barrow than it was in Anchorage. Barrow and Anchorage seemed like two different worlds. In many ways they were. Anchorage was closer to Seattle than to Barrow. Separating them were more than a thousand miles of wilderness. Man and his ability to fly over it were all that connected the two vastly different realms.

No one was waiting for Ron Morris at the airport. Like everyone else who arrived in Barrow for this during the surreal days, he had no idea where to go or what to do. After grabbing his frozen nylon bag from the rickety stainless-steel luggage chute, Morris looked out the smoke-stained terminal window into a Barrow street scene shrouded in the steam emanating from the buildings and passing cars around him. He made out an
AIRPORT INN
sign across the street. As he pushed open the light lacquer pine door, Morris noticed no trace of his breath condensing on the window just inches from his face.

Must be Arctic plastic,
he thought. Ordinary glass would have shattered in the bone-chilling temperatures. The first blast of Arctic air hit him, as it does every visitor, square in the face. Grimacing, he sarcastically mumbled, “Not a bad day.” Remembering earlier visits when things were really bad, he regained his perspective. At least they haven't lost the light.

Ed Benson still had a couple of empty rooms at the Airport Inn. But by the time Morris showed up, Benson could ask and get $225 a night for a warm bed and a shower. Born and raised in New York City, Morris knew when he was being conned. But he also knew when he had no choice. He dropped his American Express card on the shelf atop the half-open Dutch door to the service counter.

While Morris unpacked his overnight bag, Ed Benson shouted to him from the bottom of the stairs. Tom Albert from the Department of Wildlife Management was calling to tell him about the whaling captains' meeting that night at Barrow High School. Before hanging up, Ron asked Albert where he could get a bite to eat before the meeting. Morris wanted to find out more about the whole harvesting issue. He saw reports of it on the news and on his desk back in Anchorage. If a competent Eskimo could convince him there was no hope of saving the whales, and Geoff and Craig would agree, then Morris would not stand in the way.

Tom Albert, the director of wildlife management for the North Slope, arranged for the newly assembled rescue team to get together at Pepe's before going to the high school for the whaling captains' meeting at 7:30. Over dinner, Ron Morris could debrief Geoff and Craig. If the whalers voted to spare the three California grays, Ron wanted to make sure everyone knew that he would be in charge. NOAA appointed him coordinator of a rescue, should it be approved by the whalers.

Geoff and Craig looked exhausted as they pulled up their chairs in the crowded restaurant. Five days on the frozen surface of the Chukchi Sea at thirty-five degrees below zero had started to take its toll. The human body needs at least seven thousand calories a day to stay warm outside in the Arctic. Morris watched in wonder as the two men devoured more of the world's most overpriced Mexican food in a single sitting than he could afford in a week. Between the two of them, their bill came to almost one hundred dollars. A couple fresh reporters spotted the biologists. Now that they were off duty, they couldn't refuse to answer a question or two, could they? Whenever asked, Geoff and Craig always answered that the fate of the whales lay not in their hands or any state officers' hands, but in the hands of the whaling captains. No one could help the animals if the Barrow elders decided to kill them.

“But what if they decide not to kill them?” NBC's Don Oliver asked in a gravelly voice. “Could anything be done to save them?”

Before either Geoff and Craig had a chance to answer, Ron Morris faced directly into the blinding glare of the NBC crew's lights and calmly but confidently introduced himself.

“My name's Ron Morris,” said the man from NOAA. “I was appointed earlier today as the coordinator of Operation Breakout. As you know, the whaling captains meet in just about an hour to figure out what they are going to do. The meeting is open and you're invited to attend. Once it's over, I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have, if I can.”

Finally, someone had arrived on the scene who could handle Oliver and his constant questions. They were impressed with the way Morris invited him to the whaling captains' meeting. Morris seemed a natural.

No matter how badly some of the younger Eskimos wanted to harvest the three trapped whales, none could ignore the presence of the media descending on Barrow. All three major networks were getting their acts together. By the next night, Sunday, October 16, they would all be in Barrow. Even cash-strapped CNN found a way to send its own crew to cover the stranding. Malik wanted to arrive at the meeting early. He sought to talk some sense into the brash young Eskimos clamoring for a chance to strike the stranded whales. Malik knew that killing the animals could shake subsistence whaling to its very core.

To the newly arrived press corps, Malik might have been just another Inupiat Eskimo living at the Top of the World, but he was smarter than any Outsider would realize. Walking into the high school on Takpuk Street, Malik wore a warm outer garment called a parkee. It was made from the skins of light brown caribou fawns and the shimmering gray fur of male Arctic squirrels. His traditional lightweight boots, called mukluks, were made of bearded sealskin, or Oogruk.

When Malik entered the school, several reporters were already there. Most of them had just gotten to town and stopped by the high school. Few thought the meeting worth more than superficial coverage. Almost none had ever seen anyone dressed like Malik. As he walked out into the hall way to pour himself a cup of hot coffee, NBC cameraman Bruce Gray lifted his heavy equipment back onto his shoulders. The powerful lights affixed to his camera nearly blinded a stunned Malik when he came back into the room. Gray focused his lens on Malik's mukluks, then on his parkee, while at the same time preparing to take pictures of Malik's archetypal Inuit face.