Arctic Wargame

Chapter Four

The DHC-6 Twin Otter charter sat at the end of the hard-packed gravel runway of the Nanisivik Airport waiting for its passengers. Two mini-snowploughs circling around the aircraft had long conceded defeat to the flogging snowfall, which kept pouncing against their windshields and steel blades like a rabid beast. The drivers, sardined into their compact cabins, zeroed in on clearing a narrow strip of the runway. The Twin Otter was the only airplane scheduled to take off or land for the remainder of the day. The bush plane required a short but solid path for its swift ascent.

Justin’s stared at the snow ploughs through the terminal windows and sighed. The snowstorm had left them stranded at the airport. His team was waiting for clearance from the air traffic controller.

His satellite phone chirped inside his jacket. He removed his right-hand glove and frowned as he glanced at the screen. How did he get this number?

“Who’s dead?” he asked on the phone.

Carrie shook her head, apparently recognizing the only person Justin would greet in such a way: his dad, Carter.

“Justin, how are you?” Carter asked quietly.

“What do you want? I don’t have much time.” Justin turned his back to his team and took a few steps.

“Wanted to see how my son is doing.”

“Fine. I’m doing fine.”

An awkward silence followed for a few seconds.

Justin tapped his foot on the floor, staring at the small skywalk connecting the airport terminal to one of the hangars. Resting on high stilts, the skywalk resembled a bridge. At least in Justin’s mind. He hated this bridge. In fact, he hated all bridges. It was a bridge that shattered his life when he was only eleven years old. His mother had gone off a bridge in her car. The police had ruled out suicide and instead blamed the icy roads for the accident. But Justin knew better. He hated the man he blamed for his mother’s death. The man he would never call “dad” again.

“You’re still there?” Carter asked.

“Sure. Now who’s dead?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but no one is dead.”

“Strange. You usually call when a relative dies.”

Carter sighed. “Can we… can we have at least one conversation without fighting?”

Justin kept silent.

“Your brother, Seth, was in car accident last night. It happened close to his home in Vanier.”

Justin offered nothing but his uneasy silence. Seth, Carter’s firstborn, had always been his favorite son. Even now.

“He’s doing OK,” Carter said after another deep sigh, “but he’ll be at the Montfort Hospital for the next day or two. It would be nice if you—”

“I don’t have time to see him,” Justin snapped, “and I’ve got to go now.”

He punched the End button on his phone and clenched it in his hand. A groan escaped his lips.

“Justin?” Carrie said.

“Yes?”

“Is everything OK?”

“Yes, everything’s OK.”

“I just got an update on the weather forecast. The snowfall is local and stretches for only a few miles. We’re clear for takeoff.”

“Great, let’s go,” Justin said.

After they got in their seats, Kiawak’s abridged version of the flight safety instructions included two phrases: “No smoking during the flight” and “fasten your seatbelts for takeoff and landing.” He gave them the distance to their destination, one hundred and thirty-five miles; the length of their flight, an hour, give or take; and the expected temperature upon their arrival to Pond Inlet, about minus eight degrees. Then he walked to the end of the plane, about fifty feet in length, and slammed the passengers’ door shut.

“Now we’re good to go.” Kiawak returned to the cockpit. “Let me know if you need anything during the flight. If not, see you when we land.”

Justin looked around the cabin. Anna, sitting across the aisle, was fumbling with her seatbelt buckle as if flying for the first time. Next to her, Carrie had taken a deep plunge into a thick folder spread across her lap. It seemed only an abrupt crash-landing would deserve her attention. In the seat in front of her, Alisha typed on her laptop, only occasionally peeking outside the small oval window.

The rumble of the airplane’s twin engines shook the entire cabin. Anna dug her nails in her seat’s armrest. Carrie rested a reassuring hand on her forearm. Alisha still hammered on her keyboard, ignoring the metallic rattle as if it were a faint whisper. The terminal faded behind a white curtain of thick clouds as the Twin Otter arrowed skywards at about twenty-five feet per second. The climb lasted about five minutes. Once the pilot reached his cruising altitude of eight thousand feet, Justin switched off the seatbelt sign. He waited a few minutes, a sufficient time for Anna to regain her composure, before turning on his laptop.

“I was reviewing the CSE report last night, and a couple of points made me wonder,” he said. “It seems there were a couple of… how to put this… inconsistencies.”

“Huh? What inconsistencies?” Alisha raised her left eyebrow, and her usual gruff voice rasped a bit louder than necessary.

Justin tapped on his keyboard, bringing up a scanned copy of the report on his laptop’s monitor.

“On page 3, Stryker refers to what he calls ‘unscheduled maintenance’ of one of the Polar Epsilon satellite wings.” Justin pointed at the screen, although neither Alisha nor anyone else could see the highlighted section.

Carrie leafed through her folder until she found Stryker’s report.

“I checked with one of my contacts,” Justin continued, “who knows about the upgrades of the RADARSAT 2, the satellite providing the feeds to the Polar. He had no information about any maintenance, scheduled or not.”

Alisha shrugged and waved her hand in front of her face, as if to squash Justin’s concerns like an annoying mosquito. “So? Your man wasn’t aware of a problem. I’m sure you don’t run to your boss every time something goes wrong in the field.”

“This was not a small problem, as it caused the eye in the sky to turn blurry and the result was unrecognizable and useless pictures,” Carrie said. “Someone should have filed a status report.”

“I’m sure they have.” Alisha stared deep into Justin’s eyes. “And these pictures are not useless. They show these two ships, icebreakers, and the precise course they followed.”

“The second discrepancy,” Justin said, “is the weather report about the time of the incidents, when the icebreakers were crossing into our internal waters. According to Stryker’s memo, ‘an overcast sky hindered the satellite telescopes from zooming in the moving targets.’ But other sources report that the clouds were small and scattered, not the best conditions for taking pictures, but sufficient for clear shots.”

Alisha shrugged. “Who are these misleading sources of yours?” Her voice still carried a hint of menace, although she had dropped a few decibels of its volume.

“I can’t tell you.”

“In that case, what’s the purpose of your allegations? To discredit the Associate Director’s report?”

“Of course not. I have no reason to doubt Stryker conducted due diligence in assessing the evolving situation. I know he’s a very skeptical kind of guy. Maybe someone has taken him for a ride.”

“You mean somebody deliberately misled him?” Anna asked incredulously.

“That’s complete nonsense,” Alisha burst out, shaking her head and furrowing her brow. “The CSE provided accurate information, and we’re expected to act upon that information. I’m not going to allow you or anyone else to throw mud over my colleague’s hard work.” She clenched her long bony fingers into a tight, threatening fist.

“I have no intentions of discrediting Stryker’s report,” Justin replied. “I pointed out what I consider some difficulties in explaining this situation. But then, this is why we’ve been sent here to investigate and to find out exactly what happened at Ellesmere Island.”

A few moments of cold, awkward silence followed. No one was willing to concede defeat or declare victory. It felt like an unstable ceasefire.

Justin decided to take the first step toward peace.

“Our Ranger friend will guide us to the right people and the right places,” he spoke softly, looking mostly at Alisha.

She seemed uninterested in his words and kept staring at her computer’s screen.

“How long has he been a Ranger?” she asked.

Her question caught Justin off guard. Her eyes may be elsewhere, but her ears are in the right place. “Hmmm, oh, I don’t know.” He rubbed his chin and shrugged. “I think about ten years or so.”

Carrie looked up from her folder. “What is he like?” she asked.

“Well, you saw he’s a friendly kind of guy. He’s very knowledgeable about the Arctic. His dad used to be a hunter. Kiawak was raised to find his way around and survive in the frigid landscape without any of today’s gadgets. He has never left the Arctic for more than a few days.”

“What’s our itinerary?” Anna asked. The rose-tinted hue had finally returned to her face.

“First, we’ll scout Pond Inlet,” Justin said, “to check with residents to see if they’ve noticed anything unusual or suspicious around their area or the coastline. If we come up empty-handed, we’ll fly over the coastline and hit Grise Fiord, the other community on the southern shore of Ellesmere. That’s how far I’ve gone in planning.”

Carrie nudged him with a gentle fist to his arm to keep talking.

“No, I didn’t forget you,” he said. “A chopper will be waiting for us at the Pond. One of the American geologist teams researching Devon Island has agreed to lend us one of their choppers, since we’re their Canadian ‘colleagues.’“

“I thought they did no research this time of year?” Alisha asked.

“They don’t,” Justin replied, “but they’ve stored a couple of helicopters in a hangar, waiting for the summer. The one we’re taking needed some work on the rotor blades, but now it’s ready.”

“So what exactly are these Americans looking for in Devon?” Anna asked.

“Oh, who knows,” Carrie replied. “We have no idea what they’re doing or where they send their research teams.” After noticing Anna’s eyes blinking in disbelief, she added, “Well, other than what they tell us when they’re kind enough to do that. Remember a few years back, when some illegal immigrant from East Europe showed up at Grise Fiord in a rubber boat?”

Alisha gave a small nod. Anna shrugged.

“Well, this guy had set sail from Greenland in mid-September. A week later, he pops up on our shores. One man, one single engine boat, one trip of a lifetime. We had no idea he was there, until he showed up.”

Anna nodded thoughtfully.

“Keep in mind this was a lone man, very determined and maybe a bit crazy, but still only one man. This amateur sailor crossed into our waters entirely undetected by our satellite systems and our Coast Guard. And we’ve got more intrusions, foreign submarines, Russian bomber incursions. You would think the Russian and the American warships and jet fighters would be easier to detect, right? But here we have two icebreakers and no idea where they came from or where they went.

“Like Alisha said, we know the Russians are always either lurking underneath our frozen waters in their nuclear subs or looming overhead in their bombers. On the other hand, the Americans have always dismissed our claims that the Northwest Passage is a part of our internal waters, regardless of the fact that it cuts right through the heart of Arctic Canada. There is Pond Inlet and Arctic Bay to the south and Resolute to the north of the Passage. These are all Canadian towns. Their population may be sparse, but those are some pretty good numbers for the harsh conditions of these barren lands.”

Carrie stopped to catch her breath. Justin nodded at her with understanding. She replied with a tired smile and a deep sigh.

“I didn’t expect you to be so patriotic,” Alisha said. “We’ll have to make sure you’re kept on a leash if we run into any ‘comrades.’”

Justin held his tongue. There was no point in discussing the merits of her obvious bias.

“Won’t be necessary.” Carrie returned to her folder. “Whatever and whoever was there, they’re now long gone. We’ll be extremely lucky to find even a single trace.”

“The pilot was shaking so hard, I thought he was gonna die.” Kiawak raised his voice in order to overpower the shouting of his drinking mates. One of them, a skinny man who seemed to be losing his balance, slammed his beer jug on the table, splashing his buddies. They cursed and shoved him, and he cursed and shoved them back.

“So, you were… were you… man, you wanted to kill the pilot, ha, ha…” the skinny man pointed his empty jug at Kiawak and raised it to his thick lips. Disappointed that no happy portion flew down his throat, he yelled at the bartender for another beer.

“No, no,” Kiawak replied, the only one sober in the wild bunch. “I wanted to put him to sleep for a few hours, so we could clean his wounds. He was allergic to the drugs or something.”

Their chuckles echoed again throughout the small but crowded bar. Kiawak was telling some old hunting adventure, which became more entertaining when embellished with exaggerated details over a few drinks.

Qauins Bar and Hotel, at the southern edge of Pond Inlet, provided the overnight lodging for Justin’s team. In the bar, Kiawak grilled his unsuspecting friends for information on anything out of the ordinary in and around town. With a little more than twelve hundred people, everybody knew the affairs of everybody.

Three tables down from Kiawak’s, Justin kept an eye on the rest of the thin crowd. Earlier in the day, interviews with some of the residents and the courtesy visit to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment produced no results. About two hours earlier, Kiawak had moved to Plan B: the Bar Operation. In vino veritas. Justin remembered the Latin expression he learned while attending McGill University. Vine, or whisky and beer in this case, the saying went, always brings out the truth, even in the best of people.

The wooden door of the bar squeaked as Anna rushed in. The little man at Kiawak’s table ogled her figure, although she was wrapped in a thick Gore-Tex jacket and a black balaclava.

“It’s… it’s so… bloody, freezing cold out there.” Anna sat at Justin’s table, still shivering. She wiped the snow off her gloves and the hood of her jacket. Her nose was strawberry red, and tiny icicles adorned her thin eyelashes.

“Well, yeah. With the wind chill, it probably feels like minus twenty five out there.”

“More like minus one hundred.” She placed her balaclava on the table and straightened her hair. “The inside of my noise is frozen solid. I can’t feel my nostrils any more. All this happened while I was out for no more than five minutes. Oh, I need some hot coffee to warm up.”

“It’s almost midnight. Will you be able to sleep?”

“I know I won’t be able to sleep without warming up.”

Justin called the waitress and ordered coffee. He noticed Kiawak gobbling a whisky shot, his last one. Five drinks and two hours were the agreed terms of the Bar Operation. Kiawak was getting close to his endgame.

“Where did Carrie and Alisha go?” Anna asked.

“Alisha whined about a terrible headache and left at about the same time you took off. Carrie wanted to get a good night sleep before tomorrow’s long day. Did they know anything at the co-op?”

Anna blew carefully on the hot cup of coffee the waitress brought her and took a small sip.

“No, nothing useful. They wanted to talk to me about everyone and everything, but they knew nothing about icebreakers. The food prices were so crazy. I wanted to buy a can of pop and it was five dollars. Five freaking dollars.”

“Well, do you think your coffee will be less? Everything is very expensive here, since most of the year they have to fly in the food.”

The barman, a bald, middle-aged man, approached Kiawak’s table and exchanged a few words with its patrons. Some loud cursing followed, and Kiawak picked up the tab. He escorted his buddies to the bar door and exchanged a bear hug with each of them.

“You’re gonna lock up, Kiawak?” shouted the barman after he had cleared the rest of the bar from its drinkers, with Justin and Anna the only remaining customers.

“No, he will.” Kiawak pointed to Justin, while meandering toward their table. “I’ve got to hit the sack right away.”

“All right.” The barman flipped a switch behind the counter, turning off the main ceiling lights. The bar sank into half-darkness. Justin’s and Anna’s shadows danced under the flickering lights of two floor lamps at the far end corner, near stairs leading to the hotel rooms on the second floor. Another faint blue light glowed behind the bar counter.

“Oh, Justin, always the unrepentant romantic,” Kiawak said as he dropped in an empty chair next to Justin. Kiawak rested his hands on the table. They were now the only three people in the bar. “Enjoying some female companionship, eh?”

Justin chuckled. “Anything good come out of all that drinking, beside your sarcasm?”

“Nothing. Well, almost nothing.”

“What is it?” Anna asked.

“This guy from Grise Fiord, a well-known con, is trying to fence some guns. Big guns.”

“What caliber?” Justin asked.

“They didn’t know. This guy and his partner, well, girlfriend, buy or steal weapons in the south and sell them here, all over the place. Usually, it’s handguns and the occasional semi. This time, according to Mike, the little guy, it’s large cal.”

“Did he give you a name?” Justin said.

“Yes. Nuqatlak. That’s the con’s name. Ring a bell?”

“No. Should it?”

“I don’t know. I hear he’s a small fish, but I don’t know whether the Service knows about him.”

“I’ll call my office and see what they can dig up on this guy. What’s his last name?”

“Beats me, but there can’t be many Nuqatlaks in Grise Fiord. The whole place has only a hundred and fifty people.”

“Do you think this man is somehow related to our mission?” Anna asked.

“I don’t know.” Kiawak pushed a few loose hairs away from his forehead and rubbed his puffy eyes. “I’m very drunk and very tired.”

“Five shots and you’re out?” Justin said.

“Five’s the limit if you want me to remember names and facts. Anything on top of that and I won’t remember my own name. Good night.”

Justin looked over at Anna. Kiawak’s steps creaked on the wooden staircase.

“Are you going to bed soon?” Justin asked Anna.

“Not that soon. What do you think of this guy, Nuqatlak?”

“He’s not the focus of our mission, unless he’s bringing in weapons from Russia, if we’re to trust Alisha’s hunch. But we asked Kiawak to find anything suspicious, and this increase in Nuqatlak’s business is definitely worth a second look. We’re on our way to Grise Fiord anyway, so tomorrow we’ll have a chat with this guy. Before we do that, I’ll see if the CIS has any files on him.”

“Oh, now that I remember, I was thinking about what you said earlier, the discrepancies in the CSE report.”

“Yes. What about it?”

“I was wondering about the odds of these ‘coincidences.’ The bad weather and the computer failure happened at the same time these two ghost ships turned into our waters.” Anna leaned forward, resting her chin on her fists.

“Murphy’s Law?” Justin said with a grin. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”

“I know that, but these seem to work in favor of the ships. I can’t help but think of the movie scene when the security cameras stop working just as the bad guys break into a bank.”

“You think someone is trying to screw up our satellite defenses so these ships go undetected? That’s a bold claim. If Alisha were here, I would have to break up a fight.”

Anna drew her lips together, closed her eyes, and gave Justin a big headshake. “Oh, gosh.” She sighed before looking up. “Don’t even get me started. I can’t believe you can stay so calm when even her presence angers me.”

“Why does she bother you?”

“She’s so difficult to work with and stuck in her old, strict ways.”

“How so?”

“Well, she’s so bloody arrogant and patronizing, like she already knows all the answers before even asking the questions. And for some unexplained reason, everything is somehow connected to those Russians she’s so mad about.”

“That happens to everyone. You work in a certain field and to you, everything is related to that. Since it’s so important to you, it becomes your obsession. It grows and tries to take over your life. You see Russians everywhere and their influence in anything, as if they were, well, pretty much omnipresent.”

Anna peered deep into Justin’s eyes. “You talk from experience, I presume.”

Justin hesitated a brief moment. “Yeah, I guess so, to some extent. But really, Alisha has no life outside her work. She’s not married, has no kids, not even a pet.”

“What the hell? How do you know that?”

“Professional hazard, maybe. But she has a great reputation at her work and a striking record. So we’ll get this job done and leave all this behind us.”

Anna nodded and covered a yawn.

“Hopefully,” Justin said, “we’ll cover more ground tomorrow when Carrie flies us in the chopper. Now we should try to get some rest.”

“No, I’m still buzzed from the coffee. And I’ve got the munchies. Hmmm, I’m in the mood for something sweet.”

“I’ll get you some dessert.” Justin stood up. “Strawberry shortcake? I think I saw some in one of the fridges. I’m sure the barman wouldn’t mind if we dipped our fingers in the pie, as long as we pay for it.”

“Sure.” Anna smiled. “Why did you notice the shortcake? Is that your favorite dessert?”

Justin hesitated.

“Well… yes. No. It… it used to be.” He struggled for the right words, the fatigue of the late hour and the fond memories visible in his flinching eyes. “It’s actually Carrie’s favorite dessert.”

“And you served it to her as a midnight snack on your dates?” Anna dared to ask.

Justin did not answer. He walked behind the bar counter, although the fridge was on the other side. Anna stalked him, apparently determined to get an answer.

“It was a long time ago,” Justin conceded after a long pause, leaning over the fridge. He dug out two plastic boxes and placed them on the counter. “We’re still good friends.”

Anna took a fork from a drawer underneath the counter and handed it Justin.

“Since you opened this door,” Justin asked, “care to tell me about your midnight dates?”

Anna blushed and smiled.

“I haven’t had any midnight dates for a while,” she said with a sense of anticipation in her voice. She took a brief pause as if rethinking the rest of her reply. “Until now,” she added under her breath. Her last two words were loud enough for Justin to hear, but soft enough for a quick denial.

Justin read between the lines. I’ve promised myself not to fall for someone I work with. Besides, it’s not the right time. He pretended he missed Anna’s not-so-subtle hint.

Anna shrugged and dug into her dessert. “Hmmm, this is so good,” she said in a long moan. “Thank you so much.”

“Oh, you’re welcome.”

“Justin, what made you wanna do this?”

“You said you were hungry.”

“No, silly. I mean this job. Being a secret agent.”

“In preschool, when playing hide and seek, I was very good at finding the other kids.”

“Ha! Very funny. In that case you should have been a PI.”

“This job is much more fun. What made you want to impress a jury?”

“I don’t do litigation. Our section does research, analysis, and gives legal advice. I’m usually locked in the office for eight hours straight. On the rare occasions when I’ve seen the inside of a courtroom, it has been from a spectator’s seat or the witness stand.”

Justin nodded and licked his fork.

“But, you’re right in a sense,” Anna said. “I do want to impress someone. My father.”

“What does he do?”

“He used to be a judge, for the Court of Queen’s Bench, until he retired last year.”

“Health problems?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“A simple guess.” He shrugged. “That just happened to be right. Well, I have kind of a bit of insight, since I know a few people here and there, who can access certain databases—”

“No, you didn’t?” She threatened him with a fork full of whipped cream. “You ran a background check on me?”

“Guilty as charged, your honor.”

“You won’t be smiling when I’m finished with you.” Anna placed her box and fork on the counter, but Justin had already darted for the stairs.

“Don’t forget to clean up,” he said, keeping his voice as low as possible.

“Tomorrow, you’ll pay for this, Justin Hall.” Anna stabbed his image with her fork, but Justin noticed a joyful glint in her eyes. “And I’m not talking about the cake.”

“Good night, Anna. Sleep well.”

“Good night, Justin.”

As he climbed up the stairs, Justin failed to notice a small shadow creeping next to the fire exit door, at the far end of the hall on the second floor: Alisha hiding in the dark. She had been eavesdropping on their entire conversation.

“Arrogant? Difficult to work with? Patronizing? Somebody’s life is going to get extremely difficult, Justin. And I promise you won’t even see it coming,” Alisha mumbled as she tiptoed toward her room.