North Cape

Formed from a katabatic storm somewhere on the Greenland Icecap and fed by a smaller low pressure area of relatively warmer, moister air, the two centers had met; the colder, moist, and therefore heavier air had settled down onto the glacier. The Greenland Icecap rises from the coast to nearly two thousand feet in the interior. The settling cold air had merely flowed down the eastern side of the icecap, encountered a low-pressure area off the foggy coast into which it rushed, picked up more moisture and speed, and spewed itself out into the Greenland Sea as a full-scale cyclone. Now, the storm, fully built and overpowering everything in its path, was sweeping in a huge curving arc up into the Norwegian and Barents seas. Lieutenant Commander Peter Folsom swiveled on his high seat as-Captain Henly Larkin, commanding officer of the RFK, came onto the bridge, peered out through the driving wipers, and shuddered. Folsom indicated the coffee pot and grinned as Larkin poured his famous oversized cup and carefully took a sip of the steaming black liquid as he came over to stand by Folsom.

"How's she look, Pete?"

"A real ball coming up, Captain. The wind is about seventy-five knots and rising. The barometer is 28.52 and still falling — fast. We've had a four-tenths drop in the last half hour."

"Anything coining in over the weather channel?"

"Thule's forecasting what they call 'heavy weather' again. They claim that little breeze two days ago was only a prelude. At least 125-knot winds, possibly higher for this area in the next twenty-four hours."

Folsom passed over the sheaf of flimsies that had come in since Larkin went off watch four hours before. Larkin took them over to his console and settled into the high stool with a muffled sigh of weariness and began to read. The picture was not good. Arctic cyclones are not to be fooled with. Any shipping without dire need steered well clear of such storms and even submarines moved down to the two-hundred-foot level to avoid the angry currents and crosscurrents churned up by the furious winds above. Larkin read on. The volume of meteorological information that had been gathered, collated, and disseminated in the past four hours was far more complete than that available to commercial shipping. In addition to the reports from the civilian agency weather satellites, the Department of Defense maintained a series of its own, devoted exclusively to gathering weather information strictly for the military. Larkin therefore had available to him more data about the storm and more accurate projections as to its future course than did commercial shipping. But Larkin had one other thing that commercial captains did not have — strict orders to maintain station in the Barents Sea at all costs, short of losing his ship. However, if it should become clear to Larkin that he was about to lose his ship, it would probably be too late to save her.

Larkin rubbed his eyes aid swiveled around to face Folsom at the adjacent panel. "Ah… my aching back. How long till contact?" He peered at his watch and checked it against the chronometer readout above his command console.

"Five minutes to go. Communications tells me everything is set. There shouldn't be any trouble on this end." Folsom slid out of the seat and walked over to the forward ports and stared out through the revolving screen into the wind-and wave-filled night. The ship crested another wave, tipped, slid and smashed again into the Arctic seas. Folsom hung onto the coaming, riding easily with the motion of the ship, and winced involuntarily as solid spray rattled like grapeshot against the tempered glass.