ON BOARD THE SUNRISE WARRIOR

ARE WE THERE YET?“ Vivienne Kincaid said. Dylan Doyle grabbed for a handhold when the Sunrise Warrior heeled to port as they ascended the weather side of the swell. ”We are there, Vivienne,“ he said with a faint hint of County Cork in his accent, ”but be damned if I know where there is.“

“Do my ears deceive me? You’ve finally found a stretch of water that has the North Sea beat?”

Doyle gave a snort of laughter. “It might be that I’m wishing I was on my way to Foinaven.” The ship rolled over to starboard and skidded down the opposite side of the swell into the trough. Heaving green seas gave way only to dense ice fog in every direction. Vivienne was hovering over the radar, attention fixed on targets.

“They’re icebergs,” a new voice said at her shoulder.

She looked around to see that Kevin had arrived on the bridge.

“I don’t think so,” she said.

“It’s ice, and we’re drifting into it.”

“There are two echoes with the same course and doing the same eleven knots. Of course they are ships. Not to mention which, the last reports have the ice pack stuck at fifty-nine degrees.”

Kevin’s lips tightened. Doyle grinned at him, which didn’t help.

Footsteps sounded and Ernie Hart and Darryl Hickey tumbled into the room. Jack Lestenkof, Concetta Dalilak, and Evelyn Caudle were right behind them. They were dressed in orange jumpsuits, hard hats, and their Deep Sea Defender vests. “We got ‘em?” Jack said. “Vivienne? We got ’em?”

Vivienne looked at Doyle. “Full steam ahead.”

Everyone whooped except Kevin, although he looked less sullen than he had a moment before. Doyle worked the controls, and the engines responded with an eager roar. They closed to within half a mile of the closest echo, and the outline of another ship materialized out of the fog.

“And what to our wondering eyes should appear,” Vivienne said. She was tempted to stick her tongue out at Kevin, but resisted.

“Hello, Marinochka,” Doyle said.

“Oh, shit,” someone else said.

In one of those rapid Arctic shifts the weather had decided enough with the fog and the snow and the ceiling was rising rapidly, all the better to see the scene before them. Everything was still green and gray, sky, water, everything except for the rich red of the blood draining from the carcass of the little narwhal tangled in the long net the catcher-processor was at present winching in.

“Son of a bitch.”

Vivienne reached for the mike and said in Russian, “Fishing vessel Marinochka, fishing vessel Marinochka, this is the MV Sunrise Warrior. campaign vessel of the environmental organization Greenpeace. We r here to protest your taking of illegal bycatch in protected waters. P‘ haul in your gear and leave this area immediately.”

They got a lot of static in reply.

“Gee, maybe they don’t want to talk to us.”

“Ya think?”

Into the mike Vivienne repeated, “Fishing vessel Marinochka, fishing vessel Marinochka, this is the MV Sunrise Warrior, campaign vessel for the environmental organization Greenpeace. Please leave this sanctuary immediately. If you leave now, we will leave with you. If you choose to continue your activities, we will use any and all means to prevent you from continuing to fish. We are a nonviolent organization and we will do nothing to put your crews and vessels at risk. I repeat, we are a nonviolent organization, but we will use all peaceful means at our disposal to prevent you from taking any more illegal bycatch.”

They waited for a reply and didn’t get one.

“Vivienne?” Jack Nuyalan said tensely.

“Launch,” Vivienne said, and Jack was out of the bridge before the word was all the way out of Vivienne’s mouth.

“Vivienne?” Ernie said.

“Launch, launch, launch!” Vivienne said, watching the stern of the catcher. Sure enough, water boiled up as the catcher kicked it in gear.

Vivienne couldn’t stand it. She headed for the door.

“Wait a minute, where are you going?” Kevin shouted.

Doyle laughed. Vivienne followed Ernie’s crew to the starboard boat deck where they were scampering down a rope ladder to the inflatable, heaving and tossing on the waves below. Vivienne tumbled in after them and Ernie gunned the engine. He yanked hard on the wheel, jerking the bow around in an eyeballer of a course heading that would have them crossing the catcher-processor’s bow with maybe an inch and a quarter to spare.

The dead whale was half up the chute, but Jack’s crew didn’t let that stop them. As they approached, the Marinochka’s crew opened up with water hoses. Concetta and Evelyn responded by holding up clear Plexiglas riot shields, one on either side of Jack. The force of the water from the hoses caused the shields to waver but Jack held grimly to his course.

“Those riot shields were a good idea!” Ernie shouted.

“Yeah!” Vivienne shouted back, and then they were on the Marinochka and Vivienne lost sight of the other inflatable.

“Oh man oh man oh man,” Evelyn said, eye to the shutter of his camera. Evelyn was British and notoriously hard to impress, but not today. “This is beautiful,” he breathed as the shutter clicked rapidly through a roll of film.

Vivienne knew that Neil was on the bridge wing getting it all on videotape as well. “Hoo-yah!” Concetta, the ex-marine, shouted, and then immediately cursed when the inflatable came into range of the water hoses. Vivienne and Concetta got their shields up but not before the water had knocked Evelyn to his knees, and they were all soaked through.

“Is your camera all right?” Vivienne shouted.

He looked at her, dazed and still on his ass in the bottom of the boat. She hauled him up and grabbed the camera. The shutter didn’t respond when she pressed the button.

“It’s okay!” he shouted. “It’s waterproof!” He tucked it inside his coat and pulled out another. No wonder he looked so lumpy.

Ernie, in an attempt to avoid the water hoses, took the inflatable beneath the bow of the Marinochka with inches to spare, and an unexpectedly large swell raised it nose to nose with one of the men handling the hoses. He gaped at them. Vivienne smiled and extended a hand. “Hey,” she said in her best Joey Tribbiani imitation, “how you doing?”

He stared at the hand, openmouthed, and then the swell dropped them down again, and Ernie hit the throttles, laughing out loud.

Jack’s crew managed to hook his craft on the line that was pulling in the gear and his inflatable was hauled up the slipway right along with the net. They were hit with all four water hoses at once. Even the riot shields were no use, and Jack let go and they slid back into the water.

It went on like that for the next two and a half hours, until it started to get dark. “Let’s pack it in,” Vivienne said, and they returned to the Sunrise Warrior and a hero’s welcome.

A hot shower and dry clothes later, Vivienne was on the phone to Amsterdam. “Well done,” Benjamin Cavo told her.

“Thanks. We got some terrific film. Neil is editing it right now. We’ll upload it and get it out to you pronto.”

“Good. We’ve got an interview set up for you on CNN.”

“CNN? They’re actually paying attention?”

“Looks like.”

“Let’s hope no one takes a shot at the president today.”

“Yeah, that would cut into our airtime,” Ben said.

There was a knock at the door, and at her call Doyle stepped inside. “What’s up?”

Vivienne said goodbye and hung up. “Ben’s pleased.”

“He’ll be even happier when he sees the video.”

Vivienne’s grin was tired but satisfied. “Neil get it all?”