Big Miracle (37 page)

The whales stranded themselves close to a village modern enough to boast a satellite television transmission facility. But once the story exploded, the value of the location was inverted. It wasn't Barrow's proximity that saved the whales, now, it was its remoteness. Had the stranding occurred in a location Outsiders thought even marginally accessible, a crushing tide of media would have overrun Barrow. Proper coverage of the story would have been all but impossible. Media relations personnel from every federal agency and news service coming to Barrow to help would only have gotten in the way.

Fortunately for the whales, their rescuers and those reporters who did make the long journey northward, Barrow did not have the facilities to support the huge entourage that usually accompanies the networks on megastories. There were only so many hotel beds and only so many airline seats in and out of town each day. There were no alternatives. The instant Barrow hung out its
NO VACANCY
sign, the influx stopped dead. Barrow was full. By Thursday, October 20, day five of Operation Breakout, not even Colonel Tom Carroll could find a place to stay.

From the jungles of Southeast Asia to the untamed wilds of the Alaskan bush, Colonel Tom Carroll thought he had seen and slept in it all. Then he got to Barrow, a place where he would spend sixteen hours a day but never spend the night. At quitting time, he would hop on an Alaska Air National Guard eight-passenger Otter aircraft and fly 270 miles across the tundra's numbing void to Prudhoe Bay. He slept in a tastefully decorated room in the ARCO compound now littered with empty coffee cups.

Since the day Ron Morris arrived, the rescue was recharged at daily early-morning meetings. As the operation progressed in size and prominence, so too did the meetings' importance. By the end of Operation Breakout's first week, an invitation to attend was a symbol of access to the man with the operation's ultimate power. What started as an open breakfast at Pepe's became a mark of rank. Network producers assigned television crews to wait for the meeting to adjourn so they could pepper the departing participants with questions about the proceedings. But the rescuers were under strict instructions from Ron Morris to direct all media queries to him.

By Thursday night, October 20, six days after his arrival, Ron Morris wanted changes. He reshuffled his rescue command. Those who didn't conform to his approach were pushed out. In came the Outsiders, biologists Dave Withrow and Jim Harvey from Seattle's National Marine Mammal Laboratory, ice experts Gary Hufford and Bob Lewellen from the National Weather Service, and on Saturday, October 22, NOAA's Pacific fleet commander, Rear Admiral Sigmund Petersen.

As the Outsiders arrived, the original insiders were left out, Craig George and Geoff Carroll among them. The North Slope Borough biologists who helped keep the whales alive for the five days before Operation Breakout began were no longer invited to the morning meetings, their knowledgeable counsel ignored, their pride hurt. Eskimo Arnold Brower Jr., the man who kept open the whales' original holes and had successfully cut more than fifty others, became no more than a “native” employee. They stored their resentments for another day.

The coordinator failed to learn the one critical lesson of Operation Breakout's first week. Simple technology and native knowledge kept the whales alive; elaborate equipment did not. Even those involved in the ill-fated tow of the hoverbarge learned that in the Arctic the low-tech approach is often the best. Taking a cue from Arnold Brower and Malik, Colonel Carroll fell back on the simplicity of the concrete bullet, the most unadorned method yet found for.

By Friday morning, October 21, the two larger whales appeared in better physical shape than since Roy Ahmaogak first discovered them. The deicers brought from Minneapolis succeeded in keeping half a dozen breathing holes open during the rescue's most bitter night. The biting winds and encroaching darkness were no match for the compact water circulators. The more reliable the machines proved, the more calm the whales became.

By Friday morning, the three famous whales began displaying a remarkable attachment to the ever-present massaging jets emitted by the machines. The two larger whales, Siku and Poutu, surfaced within inches of the deicers, rolling playfully in the seductive flow of the “Arctic Jacuzzis.” Blissful, euphoric relaxation quickly replaced their fortnight of stress.

Arnold Brower and his crews tried in vain to get the whales to make significant moves toward the open lead, now almost five miles away. Brower made an observation that quickly spread from rescuer to reporter and back again. Perhaps, he suggested, the deicers were working too well, so well in fact that they had started to domesticate the once leery whales. What if the ultimate obstacle to the whales' freedom became the whales themselves?

That such an unmentionable observation was just now being examined proved that the rescuers had as much to learn as the whales. Of course, the whales' chief obstacle was themselves. If the cetacean trio had properly interpreted the changing climatic conditions, they, like their fellow creatures, would be well on their way south, leaving the media to search for other spectacles.

The time of the morning meeting was moved back to 8:30 to allow the participants more time to prepare their presentations and make early-morning phone calls. Some of the rescuers reported early at the Search and Rescue hangar for the morning briefing. When they arrived, they were met by several cameramen and their reporters desperate for a morsel of substantiation to confirm rumors of imminent Soviet involvement.

They gathered at the conference table in the hangar's L-shaped office area. Not unlike the colonel's command table at Prudhoe, it was strewn with stained plastic coffee mugs and tinfoil ash trays exuding the noxious smell of vaporized carcinogens. Cindy Lowry, Tom Carroll, Randy Crosby, and Arnold Brower Jr. were determined to propel their unprepared leader toward decisive action. The coordinator, who had proven an adept media manipulator, had yet to offer tangible amelioration of the whales' condition. After a week of public relations, substance was long overdue.

Plus, without Morris's attention to media management there may well not have been a coordinated rescue at all. Massaging the press was critical to the rescue's chain of command. Ideas that would have been unthinkable just a week before were now well within the realm of possibility: invoking the mayor's jobs programs, employing hundreds of Eskimos to cut open holes in the ice, the five-ton concrete bullet, and now, perhaps, Soviet icebreakers. They were all made possible by the masterful wooing of the press. But this Friday morning saw an abrupt end to the atmosphere of good feeling.

Morris trudged irascibly up the thick rubber-tipped steps of the SAR hangar and entered the presence of his minions in a foul mood. The initiative and comity Morris brought to Barrow had regressed into bitter recriminations of almost everyone involved in the rescue. They were all exhausted, especially Morris who hadn't slept more than few hours at a time in nearly a week.

If Morris sought to hide his frustration with Arnold Brower Jr. and his Eskimos, he didn't do a good job that morning. The meeting proceeded with an icy chill. Morris reiterated his insistence that he alone deal with the media. His once reassuring control now fell on hostile ears. Cindy Lowry tried to convince others to give the beleaguered man the benefit of the doubt. He had an impossible task. There was no way everyone was going to agree with him. He was the only one empowered to make tough decisions that would inevitably upset those he overruled. Like him or not, Cindy said, Ron Morris kept the operation together and alive through some very trying times. The whales were about to be saved, she pleaded with her colleagues. Couldn't people try to keep their antipathies toward him in check for just a few more days?

After convincing her skeptical colleagues to give Ron Morris another chance, she spoke by phone with a reinvigorated Bill Allen. Allen and VECO still wanted to be part of the rescue. With delight, Cindy accepted help from anyone kind enough to offer it. Like Colonel Carroll, Allen resolved to attempt less herculean methods to free the three trapped whales. Thursday night, the official abandonment of the hoverbarge all but complete, Allen lowered his sights but kept the freeing of the whales firmly in them. In many ways, the voluntary acceptance of the humanitarian mantle was the biggest single boost to company morale that Billy Bob Allen could remember. The unexpected strength of his employees' will to help creatures in trouble filled him with pride. The rescue transcended industry, culture, and language. His VECO laborers worked as hard to free the whales as anyone. They were trained in oil exploration and extraction, not wildlife management; nevertheless, they displayed a remarkable commitment to freeing distressed animals. The stranded whales changed not only Billy Bob Allen but also the empire he created.

Allen ordered his men to use more tested, less-sophisticated equipment. Over a conference call, the North Slope operations manager, Marvin King, told Allen that another VECO device had been tested during the day and seemed up to the task. It was a custom-made amphibious vehicle built to tow the hoverbarge to and from offshore oil platforms.

To the delight of the humor-starved press in Barrow, VECO was serious when they named their machine the Archimedean Screw Tractor. Smaller than the hoverbarge, it was still too large to transport in one piece, even in the largest cargo aircraft. The tractor cut a fifteen-foot-wide swath of ice, slicing through it with the propellant force of its two long screw-shaped pontoons. Like the hoverbarge, it sat idle since the 1984 failure of the Mukluk Island oil well.

“Hell,” Billy Bob exclaimed. “Let's get that son of a bitch on up there.” When the euphoria subsided, Allen weighed the screw-tractor option with tempered expectations. Allen was well aware that at best, his device would augment the rescue, not direct it.

Early Friday morning, Bill Allen told Colonel Carroll about the screw tractor. Pete Leathard couldn't get through on Cindy's interminably busy phone line. He left a message with the receptionist at the Top of the World Hotel, asking Cindy to call him or Billy Bob as soon as she had a spare minute. They wanted to talk about the screw tractor. It was one of several calls Cindy would be unable to return.

The meeting on Friday morning, October 21, became a crucible for Operation Breakout. It was the first session without a master plan. The rescuers were on their own. All that carried the rescue forward was the momentum of Arnold Brower Jr., the Minnesota deicers, and rumors of the Russians. Just when the whales' condition appeared stable, the rescue's seemed terminal.

The rumor of Soviet involvement was not the only one bantered about in Barrow. So was word of the collapse of the rescue; at least in its formal manner. If the Russians failed to come, Ron Morris would have little choice but to exercise his recognized authority, quietly put down the whales, and go home. After mobilizing hundreds of people and millions of dollars, the U.S. government would not have any way to save three whales from the Arctic elements.

Unsubstantiated rumors of Soviet involvement abounded. They sent Ron Morris over the edge. If the rumors were true, why hadn't he, as project coordinator, been consulted? He confronted Cindy Lowry, demanding to know whether she knew anything. Since Soviet participation was first discussed, Campbell Plowden had insisted on secrecy. Only if diplomatic channels failed to produce the desired results would going public become an option. At Plowden's insistence, Cindy kept her tongue.

Morris insisted on an answer from his one remaining friend. His mind raced through the possibilities. He couldn't avoid the conclusion that if indeed the Soviets came, he would be swept away in the Arctic wind. But it wasn't as though he truly expected the adrenaline of the past week to continue unabated. In his heart he knew that one way or another the operation would end. The whales would either die or be freed. His fear that Friday morning was perhaps a sharp and welcome reminder that there was only so much any one man could be expected to do.

As Morris's flare-up came to an end, the room filled with silence. He leaned forward and slowly pushed back his chair. He wiped the beads of sweat from his face and uttered a slight harumph, as if to offer an apology. His colleagues were all too glad to accept. It was time to return to the matter at hand. In the first brainstorming session of the operation, Morris encouraged everyone in the room to offer what they thought were feasible recommendations on how to free the whales. After each person listed his or her options, the group evaluated them.

Morris eagerly swept around the conference table collecting the papers. Options ranged from the concrete bullet Colonel Carroll was scheduled to test on the ice later that day, to the Archimedean Screw Tractor. Not surprisingly, the options most mentioned were the only ones that already worked: the Eskimos and the deicers. The rescuers agreed to continue cutting holes toward the pressure ridge in the hope that the whales would use them.

In the week since Operation Breakout began, the average temperature out on the ice had already dropped to twenty-five degrees below zero. The Arctic ice pack moved south nearly twenty miles and the shore ice grew farther out each day. The once fourteen-mile-wide lead had shrunk to barely a mile across at its narrowest point. If the whales could not be freed before the lead closed, no one could save them, not the Eskimo chain-saw gangs, not the National Guard, not the president of the United States, not even the mighty icebreakers from the Soviet Union.

If the Soviets did not offer their assistance, the rescue command would have to think of other alternatives or call it quits and leave the whales to their fate. Suggestions once laughed at were now considered. Colonel Carroll offered to study the effects of detonating bombs of various destructive forces to blast a path through the ridge. Knowing Cindy might object, he promised to clear his plans with her before trying anything on his own. Even if explosives could break the ridge, they might not justify the risks to other Arctic life.