21

Risking Lives for a Six-Second Scoop

Arnold Brower was indignant. “Don’t scare me like that,” he admonished Cindy. “Just watch what you say.” He shook his head in aggravated annoyance and insisted that he had just seen the baby whale seconds earlier. Brower retreated into his own well-known dispassion. He focused intently on the hole he was trying to keep clear of ice. Suddenly, he paused before lifting his seal pole out of the water. In a brief moment of uncertainty, he dropped the hollow aluminum shaft and let it float on the water’s surface.

Throughout the unbridled emotion of the past several minutes, the seasoned Arctic hunter had remained a pillar of stoicism. He preached to other subsistence hunters the need for practiced discipline in the bitter elements. Now he scolded Cindy, desperately hoping she was wrong. In the Arctic, he lectured her, there was no room for misplaced emotion. Survival depended on the facts, not the unfounded whims of the heart.

“We’re out here killing ourselves, and you go and panic over Bone. Just watch,” he said, trying to restore their composure. “Just watch.”

For the next frightful moments they did. Silently, they stood just inches apart waiting for the baby whale to return. Cindy trusted Arnold. His angry rebuttal reassured her. But this time, Arnold Brower was wrong. Bone was dead. After several moments, acknowledgment of Bone’s fate became inevitable. Cindy broke down, consumed in grief. It was the most irrational week of her life. Her strength was shattered. Bone’s death marked the nadir. The tragic but unavoidable conclusion came just after the elation of watching the two surviving whales move to the new holes.

Craig and Arnold, in a desperate attempt to calm her down, tried to coax Cindy off the ice and into a waiting truck to drive her back to town. The sooner she left, they thought, the sooner she might recover from the trauma of Bone’s death. They were right. She calmed down the minute she sat down. Her hysteria behind her, Cindy insisted on taking another, last look for the baby whale and its scraped snout. She closely inspected the first holes waiting for a sign of Bone. After a moment, she knew it was not to be. A week of intense proximity enabled Craig and Cindy to grow close enough for him to clutch her with his down-covered arm.

“You did all you could,” Craig comforted her. “Cin, if it weren’t for you, they’d all be dead and you know it.”

He was right, but Cindy didn’t feel she deserved any special notice. The whales had needed help and she offered it. There was no artifice to Cindy. What she felt was what she was. Contrary to Craig’s well-meaning intention, Cindy felt Operation Breakout became what it was not because of her, but because of the way people responded to her appeals.

Fran Tate, the owner of Pepe’s, put up notices in the Top of the World Hotel to alert all the members of the media and rescuers that her restaurant was closing early. The past few nights, Tate and her glassy-eyed employees had been manning the skillets and the deep fryers past midnight only to open again at seven the next morning. Although she had been threatening to close at 9 P.M. since the rescue began, this time Craig believed her. Frankly, he was looking for any excuse to leave. Bone was dead and the melancholy on the ice was getting him down. Besides, he was hungry, cold, and tired. The more energy people expended bewailing Bone, the less they would have for the two living whales, who were still quite desperate themselves.

As soon as Cindy was in the running truck, Craig jammed the transmission into drive, expertly spun his wheels on the ice, turned the vehicle sharply around, and started the seventeen-mile return trip to Barrow. Rounding the northernmost tip of North America, Craig drove around the edge of the narrow sandspit to the smoother and safer ice of Elson’s Lagoon.

Cindy looked out her window and marveled at the totality of Arctic nothingness. She consoled herself by putting things in perspective. The rescue was just a momentary flash. Millions of people from around the globe were following the whales so closely that none of the hundred or so reporters had the time, energy, or inclination to focus on Barrow.

The story would come and go, and the drama would end, but Barrow and its Arctic surrounding would remain. The rescue activity seemed significant when experienced in person or watched on television, but when compared to the vastness surrounding it, it was nothing. Hours after the last rescuer left, the Arctic would envelop the site, leaving no trace of human presence.

While Cindy stared intently into the night, Craig focused on the lone light that shined just over the horizon. It shone distinctly through a thin bank of low-lying fog. It must be the temporary light put up by the borough to help guide vehicles on and off the ice, Craig thought. He was startled by its remarkable luminance. Even through the fog, it showed the way for miles. Craig couldn’t understand why the light didn’t get brighter the closer he got. Perhaps he had lost his way. The very instant Craig contemplated panic, the gravel road that marked the beginning of the continent came into view. He thanked the light that led him there. He thanked the Arctic moon.

When Cindy checked for messages, she hoped to see one from Kevin. Suddenly she missed him terribly. She couldn’t bear to be alone in her grief; she wanted to share it. The receptionist could read the disappointment on Cindy’s face when she broke the news that no one had called. The first time Cindy wanted messages, there were none. She ran upstairs to phone him. It was just after 8 P.M., Friday night, October 21, two weeks to the day after the whales were discovered and one week since Cindy first started orchestrating their rescue. Until now, she never had the time or reason to miss her boyfriend. Bone’s death changed all that. She hurriedly called Kevin’s office. As she was about to hang up, she remembered that the election was just two weeks away and that Kevin was probably busy at work. Next to Cindy, elections were the most important thing to Kevin Bruce, Alaska’s most successful Democratic political consultant. Surely, he couldn’t have gone home yet, she told herself. Maybe he was screening his calls.

“Kevin?” she asked lamely at the sound of the beep. “Are you there?” Before she could finish, Kevin dashed across the room to pick it up.

“Hi,” he exclaimed with relief. “I’m really sorry about the baby whale.”

“How do you know about that?” Cindy was puzzled. “You’re the first person I’ve talked to since I’ve been back and I haven’t told anybody.”

“Oh really?” said Kevin. “It’s all over the news. I just saw it on CNN.”

Cindy was amazed. It wasn’t an hour since Bone was first discovered missing and there were few reporters on the ice to cover it. But in less time than it took Cindy to drive back to Barrow, pick up the phone, and dial Kevin’s number, reports of Bone’s all-but-certain death were already big news on TV broadcasts, bigger news than the Russians. She marveled at how the revolution in telecommunications had shrunk the world. News, even from one of the most remote regions on Earth, crossed the planet in an instant. Viewers in the Lower 48 learned about Bone’s death before most reporters in Barrow.

October 21 was a day of double headlines: Soviet participation and Bone’s presumed death by drowning. By emphasizing the bad news, the media might well have sounded the operation’s death knell. Unlike most news events that portray negative aspects of the world in which we live, Operation Breakout proved an international sensation because it described humans following a noble impulse to save helpless animals. If the coverage that Friday continued to focus on Bone’s death, the story’s good feeling might end. News executives didn’t want their reports to provoke despair. If it turned as negative as every other story, their audience would lose interest.

Newsmen knew that this was different from almost any other story they had ever covered. It was the ultimate perversion of the cat-up-a-tree story, a redux of the media frenzy surrounding Jessica McClure’s 1987 rescue from a well in Midland, Texas. The public’s only interest in the whales was to see them saved. People were tired of politics, economics, and war. Aren’t we always? They looked to the whales to help them escape, if only for a little while. Notwithstanding the State Department spin doctors, news that the Russians were on the way led Saturday morning papers across the United States and Canada. Many editions carried banner headlines befitting a major story. Weekends are usually slow news periods. But papers need headlines to print on weekends just as on any other day, and TV newscasts still need top stories to broadcast. That weekend of October 22 and 23 belonged almost solely to the whales.

What worked against the State Department worked for Operation Breakout. Bone’s death was not reported in the Lower 48 until after midnight Eastern time, much too late to run in the Saturday papers. By the time Sunday rolled around, Bone’s passing was already old news, but Cindy wouldn’t have known it by the constant ringing of her phone. Through Friday night, reporters from the Lower 48 and around the world called to verify that Bone had died. Even though it was all but apparent that the baby whale had drowned she didn’t want to confirm it until first light Saturday morning. She and the rescuers could search the area once again for the missing whale and then let Ron Morris make whatever pronouncement he saw fit.

*   *   *

Around 10 P.M., Bill Allen and Ben Odom returned to Barrow to help prepare for the arrival of the giant Archimedean Screw Tractor. Allen and Odom’s men at Prudhoe Bay were scheduled to work all night breaking down the pontoon ice crusher into sections small enough to fit on board an airplane that would fly it to Barrow, 270 miles away. After a day of round-the-clock maneuverings, Alaska Senator Ted Stevens convinced both the White House and the Pentagon to authorize the U.S. Air Force to deploy the tractor to Barrow. VECO faxed the screw tractor’s dimensions from Prudhoe Bay to the Pentagon. The only plane big enough for the massive load was the biggest one in the American fleet, the Lockheed C-5A Galaxy cargo transport aircraft.

Bill Allen was busy until late at night using the phone in Ed Benson’s apartment. Benson, who owned the jammed Airport Inn, wanted the big oilman out of his home so his family could get some sleep. Luckily, Benson would win a reprieve after Chuck Baker, another VECO representative, gave up his hotel room for Allen and Leathard in exchange for permission to return to Anchorage. It was a no-lose proposition for Baker. He was the envy of most of us who had to stay in Barrow.

By Saturday morning, Allen and Leathard were famished. They hadn’t eaten since leaving Anchorage the day before. The hungry oilmen were first in line at Pepe’s on Saturday morning. Cindy Lowry was in the same predicament. While she, too, waited for a table, Cindy immediately recognized Bill Allen’s unmistakable Texas drawl. Allen was too busy talking with Pete about details of the screw tractor to notice the tiny woman who orchestrated the massive international rescue. When Craig and Geoff came in, two of Operation Breakout’s biggest players were introduced.

Allen politely tipped his ten-gallon Stetson hat as if being introduced to royalty. He broke into a thin sympathetic smile and quietly said, “Ma’am, it’s awful damn nice to meetcha. People all over the world owe you a lot of thanks, me included.” Cindy warmly accepted his good graces and asked Allen and Leathard to join her for breakfast. They happily obliged.

Before they sat down, Allen whispered in Cindy’s ear. “Can I see you over there,” he whispered pointing to a quiet corner of the dining room. “I’d like to talk with you in private.” Cindy was repulsed at the self-absorbed thought that the gangly oilman might be about to make a pass at her. Allen walked ten paces to the corner while Cindy followed warily behind. When they both stood in front of the kitchen door, Allen leaned against the overhanging door frame and took on a look of sympathy and understanding.

“Hell, I know how much you wanted to save that baby,” he said to Cindy’s vanishing smile of curiosity. “I just want you to know that you have done all that you can, and that you have my word that we’re going to do our damnedest to save them last two critters. I ain’t never seen no whales until I came up here last week, and let me tell ya something, they are incredible animals. We’re gonna save ’em, ma’am. I promise you.”

Before Operation Breakout, Cindy felt nothing but hostility for oil companies. Come to think of it, she didn’t feel much but hostility toward any person or group with whom she disagreed. People who opposed her and her agenda were the bad guys. Ill intent, malice of forethought, or just plain evil were the only possible explanations for opposing anything the environmentalist establishment supported. Oilmen pumped oil. Since oil was bad, those who produced oil were bad.

Now, suddenly, here was the quintessential oilman showing goodness, not evil. Without hesitation, she gave an unprepared Bill Allen an impromptu hug. They laughed, and Cindy walked back to the table sporting her infectious smile that returned for the first time since Bone’s death.

In the moment it took Bill Allen to convey his genuine empathy, Cindy realized how muddled her perceptions had become. She was a professional environmentalist whose personal life had been made better by what the oil industry has produced. In fact, were it not for the oil industry there would be no whales left to save. They would have long since been hunted to extinction for their oil. The ultimate irony, of course, was that it was the “evil” oil industry, not purehearted environmentalists, who saved the whales, by providing a better, cheaper, more abundant, and safer source of fuel than whale oil.

*   *   *

While Cindy, Geoff, Craig, and Arnold were getting ready to go back on the ice to continue to search for the missing whale, Ron Morris was trying to find out when the Russian ships would arrive. According to the State Department, the Soviet vessels were due in Barrow the next night, Sunday, October 23, a week to the day after Operation Breakout began, sixteen days after the whales were found. When the two Soviet vessels finished their work on the Northern Pole 31 float station, they faced a three-hundred-mile journey to the southwest.

When the announcement was first made the day before, on Friday, October 21, Captain Sergei Reshetov’s best analysis indicated that it would take two days to reach Barrow. However, soon after their departure from the floating ice station, he found conditions much worse than expected. The shifting ice pack made navigation treacherous. His artful dodges and traverses would add hours to the trip. Reshetov was worried. Rarely had he seen such dangerous ice conditions so early in the year. He could only imagine what kind of winter lay in store. He sent a cable to Vladivostok asking officials for aerial ice reconnaissance. Having spent a career in the Soviet Merchant Marine, Reshetov knew not to get his hopes up. U.S. reconnaissance capabilities were light-years ahead of his own country’s, and Reshetov knew it. If ever there was time to demand quid pro quo, this was it.

It was the Americans who asked the Soviets for help. Now the Soviets could ask the Americans for help of their own. The Soviet Merchant Marine forwarded their request to the U.S. State Department. Saturday morning, the State Department passed it on to Glenn Rutledge at the Navy/NOAA Joint Ice Center in Suitland, Maryland. Rutledge assembled Arctic ice data compiled daily by the National Ocean Service, an arm of NOAA. He put together large maps detailing ice thickness and openings in the polar pack. The data proved invaluable to Master Reshetov and the Soviet icebreakers. But as good as the data proved to be, Rutledge knew it could be better. Aside from stranding themselves in the first place, the whales had been carried by an uncanny streak of luck since the very beginning. It was luck that led Roy Ahmaogak to find them in a tiny hole in the ice, and luck that caused the whole world to pull for them and spend millions to free them. Now, as that same luck would have it, American satellite imaging was on the verge of a major leap forward.

On September 24, 1988, just two weeks before the whales were discovered, the U.S. Air Force deployed the most sophisticated weather satellite ever built, launched into orbit aboard an unmanned Atlas rocket. The state-of-the-art $100-million satellite, called NOAA-11, could produce much more sharply defined images than earlier U.S. satellites. But NOAA-11 was not scheduled to start operating until December 1988—too late to help the whales. The media firestorm over the whales proved as much a NOAA emergency as any life-threatening hurricane. The agency had received more publicity in Operation Breakout’s first week than it had in the eighteen years of its existence. The previously obscure federal agency, unknown to most Americans, was on the front page of every newspaper in the country. That included the Washington Post, the newspaper read by the people who approved NOAA’s annual budget. For people inside the Beltway, it was NOAA’s coming of age. For the agency, the whole affair was a godsend. NOAA ordered its special satellite turned on immediately.

By Monday, October 24, eight days after Operation Breakout began, the newest and most sophisticated weather satellite ever deployed would have its first assignment. Suddenly, the two whales sputtering in the waters off Barrow had entered the space age. But while a $100-million geosynchronous satellite compiled ice analysis, Eskimo crews under the direction of Arnold Brower continued the task of cutting open holes so the whales could breathe. When Cindy returned to the ice Saturday morning, the whales were energetically popping in and out of the last of the fifty-five holes. They swam under more than a mile of frozen sea in one night. Now, there was no doubt, the whales were on their way. If the Russians could cut through the pressure ridge, they would soon be free.

After a week’s practice, the Eskimos were cutting new holes at a furious pace. That Friday night, Ron Morris had pushed them all to work even faster. “The Russians will be here in two days,” he told Brower. “They told us they can work only one day. I want the whales as close to that damned ridge as we can get them.” Brower took his order and ran. Saturday, Brower’s men cut fifteen new holes before noon. The two whales were keeping right up with them. Morris wanted all his guns firing. He pressed Colonel Carroll to get his concrete bullet into the arsenal.

On Saturday morning, the colonel managed to stave off yet another near disaster, potentially the worst one yet. Just hours before, Colonel Carroll’s National Guard contingent had completed the last of its redeployment from Prudhoe. All twelve guardsmen landed safely in Barrow aboard two Bell Huey helicopters, the workhorse of the Alaska National Guard. The Guard unit prided itself on its ability to operate in America’s most hostile weather.

But that Friday night, Colonel Carroll’s unit displayed just the opposite foresight. After shutting down their engines, the guardsmen left the expensive helicopters outside the hangar. Moments later, the helicopters were frozen solid. Discovering the lapse, Colonel Carroll was outraged. He opened the huge bay doors to roll the helicopters inside. Thankfully, Randy Crosby was there to stop him. Crosby was shocked to see the Guard about to break one of the first rules of Arctic aviation: never let frozen equipment thaw too quickly.

“What the hell are you guys doing?” Crosby shouted in disbelief. He explained that if the frozen helicopters were brought inside, vital parts of the aircraft would crack. Crosby told Carroll and his men that his helicopters had to be defrosted slowly. If he wanted the Hueys to fly again, Carroll would have to leave them outside wrapped in nylon parachutes and let the feeble Arctic sun do the rest. Saturday, October 22, was the warmest day yet of the rescue.

While it was still fifteen degrees below zero out on the ice, the temperature in town almost reached the double digits. Scantily clad locals made the conditions seem almost balmy. The heaviest garb to be seen was a light, unbuttoned windbreaker. Even they were scarce. Few wore hats and almost no one wore gloves. Teenagers strutted through the frozen streets in sneakers and T-shirts.

I saw one child dressed in nothing more than a brightly colored bathing suit and T-shirt. He was riding through the icy streets on a bicycle. Reporters stuck out plainly among the locals. To us it was more than cold: it was downright bitter, even in our expensive designer ski clothes. Eskimos never donned hats and gloves in weather warmer than twenty degrees or thirty degrees below, whereas we always wore them.

Later that Saturday morning, the Colonel unveiled the ARCO ice crusher, his latest scheme for Operation Breakout’s next media spectacular. For the insatiable press and their whale-crazed audience, the sixth and seventh days of Operation Breakout, Friday and Saturday, October 21 and 22, were a news bonanza. The Russian icebreakers, Bone’s death, and now the ice smasher being added to the rescue’s climax: this was the Super Bowl of whale-saving.

After traveling to the top of the world to cover what started as a nature story, reporters soon found themselves facing the same inveterate media manipulation they dealt with every day down in the Lower 48. Early Saturday morning, Mike Haller, Tom Carroll’s media relations officer, posted a schedule for the day’s events at the entrance to Pepe’s, in the Top of the World Hotel, and at NARL, where the international and late-arriving press stayed. Activities began at 8 A.M., several hours before daybreak, at the old Navy hangar south of NARL. Colonel Carroll’s men hitched ARCO’s five-ton concrete block to the CH-54 Skycrane helicopter.

Some reporters faced a dilemma. They could go to the ice with Cindy or watch the bullet. Having each invested up to $10,000 a day in covering the event, the competitive American television networks weren’t going to take the chance of being beaten. By Saturday morning, each network had at least two camera crews, enabling them to cover more than one event at a time. While one crew could film ARCO’s bullet, the other could be on the ice with Cindy and the two whales.

Amid a modicum of fanfare, half a dozen cameras watched the Skycrane lift the five-ton battering ram off the frozen tarmac. Since the event was designed with the media in mind, Gary Quarles landed the helicopter after a quick circle around the hangar. He took off again to give the cameras a second chance. On the ground, cameramen ran around the helipad to photograph the Skycrane from different angles. The helicopter flew slowly so the camera crews would have plenty of time to board the three SAR helicopters and film the Skycrane while still in flight. Haller knew that the longer the Skycrane flew, the more chance every cameraman would have to take the perfect picture of it.

Carroll agreed with Morris’s order not to frighten the whales. He would test the bullet several miles from the Eskimo holes. But by Saturday morning, it seemed that nothing could startle the freedom-starved leviathans. The deafening clatter of the helicopters didn’t appear to have any effect. The chances of the five-ton concrete block spooking them seemed remote. While the three press helicopters formed a mile-wide triangle around it, the Skycrane hovered fifty feet above the frozen sea awaiting final orders from Colonel Carroll.

Once again, the colonel was on the line. He was getting used to it. During that time his world underwent a remarkable transformation, from quiet anonymity to the turbulent center of an absurd operation. Whatever Tom Carroll said or did was reported around the world. Tom Carroll was headline news, a key figure in one of the decade’s biggest media events. But the height of his great adventure wasn’t played out on the ice or in the air; instead, it took place each night on the telephone with a woman 7,000 miles away. Her name was Bonnie Mersinger, and his bond with her was instant. This faceless woman in Washington was suddenly the constant center of his frazzled life. Carroll became convinced that the three whales he was summoned to rescue stranded themselves so that he could meet the woman of his dreams. They spoke every day. Officially, it was a chance for the colonel to brief the White House on the progress of the rescue. But unofficially, it was the chance for Tom and Bonnie to grow closer. With each conversation, their relationship intensified.

After wishing Bonnie the “top of the morning,” the colonel gave the order for Quarles to “drop the bomb.” Just as it had two days earlier, the free-falling battering ram easily broke through the ice. Quarles punched ten more holes before Arnold Brower and his Eskimo scouts arrived to examine the results. The Eskimos immediately saw a problem. The bullet broke the ice, but it didn’t remove it. The heavily broken blocks still floated in place. Brower knew that the only way the gray whales would use a hole was if it had been meticulously combed free of even the smallest pieces of ice.

The bullet was retired after just one run. Operation Breakout had taken yet another of its many ironic twists. The distinguished colonel met with more logistical setbacks in the first week of the whales rescue than he had in twenty years. Yet, Tom Carroll was a national figure. Next to a forty-one-year-old junior senator from Indiana who was about to become vice president, Tom Carroll was the person most Americans associated with the National Guard but for better reasons.

Colonel Carroll learned of the next crisis with the whales when he returned to the Navy hangar. The high-priced NOAA biologists flown in from Seattle were baffled. The two whales had stopped dead in their tracks. They seemed stuck, as if something was preventing them from moving on. The whales’ eagerness to forge ahead was as strong as ever. The walkie-talkies crackled with activity. Anybody with suggestions was urged to help.

But the sophisticated technology was of little use. Malik went to the Eskimo warm-up shack without his radio. The rescuers were eager for him to return so Craig raced to fetch him. He waited while Malik finished chewing a piece of smoked walrus meat. On his way out the door, he picked up a chunk of muktuk from the whale he and his crew killed a few weeks earlier and popped it into his mouth. They jumped on the back of Craig’s waiting ski machine. The loud roar of the fast machine made conversation en route impossible. Instead, Malik savored the particularly tasty piece of whale blubber. As the crowded holes came into view, Malik wiped his mouth with satisfaction and prepared to get back to the task of saving the dead bowhead’s two stranded cousins.

“Little Big Man” jumped off the machine and lifted up his red baseball cap, now a trademark. It was emblazoned with an oval black-and-white patch bearing the name of the trade group to which every subsistence whaler belonged: “Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission.” Malik knew the contours of the frozen ocean he was standing atop better than anyone. Before he even saw them, Malik had a strong suspicion what held the whales back. The instant he peered into the hole they wouldn’t enter, his suspicions were confirmed.

Unlike the other seventy holes the whales used in the past twenty-four hours, this one wasn’t black. Light reflected from the ocean bottom cast a distinctly gray hue. The whales were stuck at the edge of an underwater sand shoal only twelve feet deep. That was dangerously shallow, even for shore-dwelling grays. The whales had hit a roadblock and, like their rescuers, were unsure how to proceed. Saving whales was new to Malik. Normally, he killed them.

Suddenly, the answer hit him. “A detour,” Malik exclaimed. “Would a whale swim if he thought he might get stuck?” he asked no one in particular. “Let’s cut holes around the shoal.” During the hour the whales were blocked by the sand bar, Arnold Brower and his Eskimos cut fourteen new holes.

Bill Allen was impressed. “Well, look at that Archie Bowers work,” he said, mistakenly referring to Brower. But the holes would never be used. Malik and Arnold Jr. turned their back on the errant path and probed the area for deeper water. As soon as an alternate path was marked and new holes cut, the whales followed. The fourteen misdirected holes froze without a trace.

The rush was on to get the whales through the last four miles of ice and out to the pressure ridge. Supposedly, the Russians were only a day away. The rescuers counted on having but one chance to get the whales through any openings the Russians could cut in the pressure ridge. No one knew what kind of a problem the ridge would present, or if the Soviet ships could even surmount it. Ever since Bone vanished, the whales lived up to their end of the bargain. They burst into the new holes even before they were fully cut. Now more than ever, the rescue’s success depended on the Eskimos.

When the Soviets agreed to join the party, the media scrambled for the first pictures of the Russian ships plowing through thick polar ice en route. But NBC was the only network with an independent means to win the race: a helicopter. It was a widely known secret in the prefab corridors of the Top of the World Hotel that NBC would start its chase through the menacing Arctic skies as soon as the Russian ships were within two hundred miles of Barrow.

No one was more aware of the looming scoop than ABC News producer Harry Chittick, who had been griping to Ron Morris for days about NBC’s helicopter and the unfair advantage he thought it gave his competition. Jerry Hansen, Chittick’s NBC counterpart, reminded Morris that there was no law against renting a helicopter and that, to date, there were no restrictions on flights that prevented the NBC chopper from getting the rescue’s best and most reliable aerial video.

Chittick knew NBC had the edge, but he thought there might be a way to steal the scoop right from under Hansen’s nose. Chittick spent Saturday morning trying to rent his own aircraft. The airplane he found would enable him to slip right past the slow-flying NBC helicopter and out to the icebreakers. He didn’t even need a pilot. He was licensed to fly himself. Researchers in his Los Angeles office looked up the icebreakers in the maritime bible, Jane’s All the World’s Fighting Ships. Figuring out the icebreakers’ speed, the ABC researchers calculated when the vessels would come within range. But by the time Chittick finally rented an airplane, it seemed too late. NBC appeared to have won again.

On Saturday afternoon, NBC’s Don Oliver checked in with the international information exchange that connected the Soviet Merchant Marine, the U.S. government, and the Russian ships. Almost everyone knew where the center was located, Randy Crosby’s office at the SAR hangar. SAR easily adapted to its new role. It was already headquarters for Tom Carroll’s National Guard unit and the transit terminal for the media. SAR was Operation Breakout’s official headquarters. The U.S. government reports estimated the Russians to be about 170 miles northeast of Barrow. Then the icebreakers encountered unexpectedly thick ice. The ships reduced their speed to less than three knots, much slower than originally predicted. Moreover, the satellite photographs and computer-enhanced charts transmitted to the bridge of the Admiral Makarov revealed that a large ice floe lay directly across their planned route to Barrow. Master Reshetov had no choice but to chart a lengthy detour. The revised schedule estimated the icebreakers would arrive in Barrow between twenty-four to thirty-six hours late.

Though still too far away to help the whales, the icebreakers were within striking distance of making it on the evening news. The NBC helicopter had a standard range of about 350 miles under “favorable conditions,” a term which could not be applied to the Arctic. The “no return point” was 175 miles. Flying outbound any further than that meant there would not be enough fuel to make it back. The weather threatened to make the trip even more dangerous.

Dense ice fog hugged the ground, hiding a thick layer of cloud cover just overhead. By the end of October 1988, Barrow was already so cold that even the tiniest particles of water vapor froze into ice crystals so small they escaped even the force of gravity. The ice fog enveloped everything. In settled areas like Barrow, ice fog reduced visibility to absolute zero. By mid-afternoon, Randy Crosby grounded all his helicopters and advised others to do the same. NBC was not about to let the weather get in the way of a good story.

The safety of the freelance crew was a minor impediment to obtaining the first video of the icebreakers, pictures that would run at most for five to eight seconds on the evening news. Viewers would never know the risks taken to get them. The pressure to fly was never explicit. It didn’t have to be. News doesn’t wait for the timid and it doesn’t give second chances. Since NTV, the network my company was hired to represent, was paying for half the helicopter, I insisted we try to get in on the action. Earlier that morning, over Pepe’s greasy home fries and soft, butter-soaked Wonder bread, I asked Jerry Hansen, the NBC producer, what he thought about using our chopper to find the approaching ships. Hansen swallowed nervously as if I had spoken a secret too loudly. His eyes looked around to see if anyone had heard, motioning for me to keep quiet. “Everything is being taken care of,” he told me. He was right.

My cameraman, Steve Mongeau, and I went to NARL where the helicopter was based. For several hours we waited for the pilots to give the “go.” By late afternoon, it was apparent that the ice fog wasn’t going to lift. The two pilots showed little enthusiasm for the Saturday-night death run, but they had most demanding clients. They had long since quit reminding us to keep our seatbelts on while hanging out the hovering helicopter’s open doors. The weather was as uncertain as the precise position of the Soviet ships. All that was certain was that we were going to look for them. If the icebreakers were 170 miles or closer, they would be five miles inside the “no return point,” just ten miles short of the helicopter’s maximum range. This was little margin for error. NBC cameraman Bruce Gray remarked that finding the ships in the thick fog with so little room to maneuver would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Long stretches of silence marked the eerie journey out. But as the fuel gauge neared half empty, there was still no sign of the Russians.

Encroaching darkness threatened to spoil more than the photography. As night fell so too did the chances of survival should anything go awry. As No one would have survived of the crew in an emergency landing anyway. We later learned there were no flotation devices aboard the aircraft. As the helicopter came closer to the “no return point,” the pilots turned off the inner cabin intercom so they could talk among themselves without us hearing.

If they didn’t turn the helicopter around within the next couple of minutes, we would not have enough fuel to get back. There would be no choice but to land on an iceberg and pray to be saved. Because of the safety violations, the pilots didn’t want to take the chance of radioing for rescue for fear of losing their licenses. When they turned around to announce the situation, Gray was preparing his camera to shoot. At almost that exact instant, the eerie silhouette of the 496-foot Admiral Makarov, the pride of the Soviet icebreaker fleet, loomed menacingly into view. The satellite tracking proved dead on. It was within yards of the pilots’ projections. Spinning his finger in the air to signal a flight around the ship, Gray pleaded for the chance to at least get some decent pictures of the immense Soviet icebreakers. He furiously readied his camera for the difficult task of shooting under such rushed conditions. It was now or never.

The chopper dove within just a few hundred feet of the ships towering deck. Curious sailors clambered on deck to inspect the unidentified visitor. Gray told the pilots to slow their air speed so he could make the special adjustments his camera needed to work in the near dark. When the chopper’s nose pulled away on its uncertain flight back to Barrow, the only footage of the Soviet icebreakers sat on Gray’s lap. He had a marginally important scoop. But as his own life hung perilously in the balance, he wondered whether what he had just done was courageous or stupid.

Flying across the pitch-black Arctic, no one was sure what lay below: water or ice. Either way it was cold and getting colder. Worry intensified. The fuel gauge continued to plummet. With the heat turned off to conserve fuel, the temperature in the cabin dropped below zero. The minutes stretched long and uncertain. Thankfully, a fortuitous shift in the wind cut the helicopter’s drag, giving it just enough fuel to allow a safe landing at the NARL helipad. The footage everyone had risked their lives for didn’t even air until twenty-four hours later on Sunday’s NBC’s Nightly News. By the time the precious pictures had run, ABC had already aired their own footage shot sixteen hours after NBC’s. NBC won the battle but lost the war, a war that, like the rescue itself, was created and fought by and for the media.