by Rick Chesler
“Find out if the tag is still on the whale—is it still working?” Tara asked Anastasia. The detective leaned over the boat’s rail, peering into the water.
The scientist nodded. “Good question. Bob, check my laptop. Is the whale-cam still transmitting?” A skinny man in his late twenties with shoulder-length hair gave an informal salute on his way to the radio.
Tara looked to the sky, searching for signs of a seaplane returning to pick up the divers. There were none. It almost made her sick a second time to think that these men—whoever they were—seem to have evaded her yet again. But as she replayed her mental image of the three men struggling on the surface as the Scarab neared them, she paused the picture in her mind and zoomed in.
Something significant had happened this time. The diver’s mask had been removed. She hadn’t been close enough to distinguish his facial features, but she had seen his skin color. He was Latino, she thought, probably Mexican.
Juan and Fernando halted their descent at the dangerous depth of one hundred sixty feet, where the air they breathed was five times denser than surface air. They were deep enough to ensure that their coworker’s body wouldn’t be returned to the surface by upwelling or currents. They scanned the area with their dive lights to be sure they were clear of the seamount’s many pinnacles. Then they gave Carlos’ weighted body to the sea with a final shove. When the corpse was out of sight somewhere below them, Juan broke the air-conserving silence they had held until now.
“Fourteen hundred pounds,” he said, indicating he had just under half a tank of air remaining.
“Thirteen hundred,” Fernando said, consulting his pressure gauge.
“Now what?”
The pair drifted slowly through the eerie twilight born of deep, cloudy water.
“We stay away from the whale. Just try to get away as far as we can underwater, then ascend and hope the plane is nearby.”
“How?”
“Let’s go up to forty feet, where we will use less air and get a chance to decompress. Then we’ll follow the compass west out to sea, away from the boats.” As if to emphasize his point, the faint whine of an outboard one hundred sixty feet above came to a muted crescendo as it passed over them.
“And when we run out of air?”
“We will worry about that then,” Juan said, already kicking toward the light.
“They don’t have the tag,” Anastasia’s long-haired crewman said. “The Blue’s feed is still live. The guys on the bridge said you could see a diver with a knife come up to the tag, but he didn’t get it, because you can still see the whale’s body in the picture.”
“Who’s this?” Tara asked, nodding in the direction of a white ship drawing near the Scarab.
“NOAA?” a crewmember guessed.
They wouldn’t have long to wonder. The ship deployed a Zodiac inflatable raft, which headed straight for them. Once there, a short man sporting a neatly trimmed black beard and prescription glasses held up a coil of line. He tossed it up to a crewman on the Scarab’s deck.
“Hi, I’m Pete Pehl of the L.A. County Marine Mammal Disentanglement Network. I assume one of you two ladies is Dr. Reed.”
Tara continued to scan the water and sky for any signs of divers or planes when Anastasia stepped forward. “That would be me,” she said.
Pehl nodded. “From what we understand there’s an adult female blue whale near these coordinates with a serious entanglement problem.”
Anastasia was used to the Blue being referred to as her whale, or the wired whale, or some sort of deference to her connection with it, but the bespectacled man standing in the Zodiac offered no such recognition. Instead he only stared up at her, his expression betraying nothing but earnest professionalism while waiting for an answer.
“She’s here, yes, but she hasn’t surfaced in over thirty minutes. The video feed from our satellite tag on the whale shows her to be entangled in what looks like a monofilament trawling net. Her movements have been severely hampered since this morning, when the nets were first observed via biotelemetry.”
“I see,” Pehl said, his eyes roving for maybe a second too long over the curves of Anastasia’s wetsuit before moving on to the gear assembled on deck. “Say, you’re not thinking of using that, are you?” He pointed to the dart tag, this one both longer and newer than the one Tara had used in the helicopter.
Anastasia shrugged and pointed to Tara. “I’m assisting the FBI in their attempt to retrieve the whale’s video-imaging tag for a murder investigation. The Blue’s GPS is malfunctioning, so I brought along this simple tracking dart to try—”
Pehl shook his head emphatically. “No, no, no. Stow that, please. That whale is fighting for its life, and we need full control of the space surrounding it. It will not be shot with anything today.”
Anastasia looked to Tara, who reluctantly nodded. Pehl waved an arm at the array of dive gear being prepared on deck. “No diving either, right? I mean, that would be extremely dangerous. This is all just for show, for the TV cameras. . . .”
Anastasia’s cheeks flushed. “Look, Dr. Pehl, I can understand the tagging thing, but as far as diving goes, I’m well aware of the dangers involved. I appreciate your concern, but I’m an experienced diver. I’m a PADI instructor trainer, certified DAN O2 provider, Enriched Air Nitrox trainer, and I’ve got over two thousand dives logged, many of them with cetaceans in open water.”
Pehl exchanged awkward glances with the operator of his Zodiac. “That’s impressive, Dr. Reed, to be sure. But using our methods it’s not necessary for anyone to be in the water to free the whale.”
“Nobody?”
“That’s right. Ninety-five percent of the time, anyway. The other five percent the whale is trapped at depth, and usually those are already dead by the time we get to them.”
“We just want to get some establishing shots in the water over the seamount.”
“Maybe you don’t understand. No one is to be in the water during our operation.”
“We don’t need to approach the whale.”
“Dr. Reed, I’m sorry, but it’s simply not possible. Any presence in the water has the potential to negatively impact the whale, and bodies in the water will be in the way of our rescue equipment. We need to enforce a perimeter around the whale at this time.”
“You can’t stop me from going in.” A camera operator maneuvered to get Pehl’s reaction.
Pehl raised his eyebrows slightly but other than that seemed nonplussed.
“I’m afraid I can, Dr. Reed, not that I want to. I do respect your work. However, we are a contracted agent of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. As such, we have the authority to secure all marine mammal rescue sites as we see fit, according to established protocols.”
“We’ll pay whatever fines you throw at us,” Anastasia said. She took a step toward the dive platform. The camera operators took it all in. Pehl was about to say something when they heard splashing.
The Blue surfaced fifty yards from the boats. Her great melon trailed masses of netting. She went under again and then feebly broke through to air a second time before falling back, her encumbered fluke unable to provide sufficient propulsion to keep her afloat.
CHAPTER 22
Pete Pehl barked into his radio, “Fix that position. Get the buoys ready.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” Anastasia said. “Let us have a camera team on your boat to cover your rescue, and our team will stay out of the water.”
Pehl eyed her dubiously.
“Scout’s honor,” Anastasia said, flashing her best television hostess smile.
“Deal,” he said, scanning the water for the whale. His mind was already on the rescue. Anastasia nodded to two cameramen, who jumped into the Zodiac.
“You’re getting this, right?” Anastasia said to a third cameraman still on the Scarab. He gave her a thumbs-up in response, never taking his eye off the viewfinder.
Minutes later, not one but three Zodiacs deployed fro
m the rescue ship. They headed for the Blue, which could still be seen struggling and thrashing to stay on the surface.
Each of the Zodiacs carried two rescuers—a boat operator and an equipment handler. A mound of red buoys occupied the majority of deck space on the motorized rafts. The Zodiacs slowed as they neared the trapped whale, circling her, assessing her condition. Pehl spoke into his radio.
“Confirmed, adult female blue whale—very large individual—approximately ninety feet in length. Severe entanglement with monofilament.” He paused while observing the Blue’s condition through binoculars, then continued his report. “Netting obstructing the mouth is preventing her from feeding. Caudal peduncle and fluke areas are heavily wrapped. This is a dead whale swimming, people, unless we can cut her loose. Let’s get to work. Keep all bystanders well clear; we don’t want to spook her.”
Pehl’s boat cut its engines and drifted up to the Blue. Using an extension pole, a snap-hook on one end of a line was attached to a mass of netting trailing from the distressed beast’s mouth. The other end was connected to a large buoy. The trio of Zodiacs proceeded to attach several more buoys to the Blue’s mouth and fluke areas. The aim was to slow the creature so that it wouldn’t panic.
With the buoys attached, Pehl called for the use of a specialized tool called a flying knife. A blade was rigged to be run along a line on the end of an extendable pole. This enabled the handler to cut material attached to the whale while the rescue boat remained as far as twenty feet away.
Netting was sliced as Pehl pulled the knife back in along its line. All three boats worked in this way on the mouth area. The Blue occasionally lunged, but the running-line tools remained fastened to the netting.
As the rescuers worked, spectator boats began to congregate. They were escorted by the Coast Guard cutter Los Angeles, which launched a tender vessel to patrol the scene. The high-powered rigid inflatable boat, black with the unmistakable orange stripe denoting the military branch, flitted from vessel to vessel, checking registrations, safety equipment, and advising people not to interfere with the official rescue operation.
Passengers on boats coming within shouting distance of Anastasia’s Scarab yelled stupid things and waved, making a scene for the cameras, hoping to get on television. Someone made a bad joke about the World Wide Whale “really surfing the net now.” A few private marine mammal groups came in rented boats capable of making the offshore trip, their good intentions outweighing their equipment and experience. They were told in no uncertain terms by the Coast Guard, the NOAA support ship, and the Wired Kingdom Scarab to stay out of the way.
Once the Blue’s head was free, the animal regained some measure of its natural movement and began to make small breaches. This brought cheers from the growing crowd of onlookers.
Pehl commanded his fleet to position themselves for the tricky job of liberating the fluke.
To a casual observer, the scene of three small boats carrying men with metal spears and knives circling a beleaguered whale evoked images from another century. But for these modern men of the sea, their operation was a high-tech marvel which had been painstakingly developed after watching thousands of videotaped rescues, successful and otherwise. Some of the rescuers even wore helmet-cams so that afterward they could pore over every detail of the rescue like professional football players watching a post-game tape. Every advantage and disadvantage was noted, recorded, and organized into protocol. The result was the most effective whale disentanglement system ever developed.
The effort began to pay off as a modified grapple, designed to pull netting away from the whale’s body so that it could be cut without injuring the animal, found its mark on the fluke. More mesh fell from the wired whale.
The Blue stirred. Her dorsal fin broke the surface and twin gleams of sunlight reflected off stainless steel.
“Look. You see that? She’s got two knives sticking out from under the dorsal,” a rescuer noted. In the Scarab, Tara and Anastasia heard the observation over the marine radio.
“Those bastards tried to cut the tag off her body with a dive knife!” Anastasia yelled. Crewmembers expressed their disbelief. Tara could see anger transforming Anastasia’s face. “Turn that thing on,” the show hostess demanded of a cameraman resting a camera on a bench while he stared at the enmeshed whale.
He scrambled to aim the lens at Anastasia. With a backdrop of the Blue and its three boats revolving around it like electrons around a nucleus, Anastasia launched into a tirade against animal cruelty, ending in a plea for the audience’s help. “So if you know anything—anything at all—that might help law enforcement track down who’s responsible for hunting our whale for its tag, call us at the studio right now. Or call the FBI.”
Anastasia motioned for Tara to step forward. Wearing a dark blue windbreaker with the yellow letters FBI emblazoned on the back, a baseball cap and black sunglasses, she stepped forward. Wonderful. National television after puking up my guts. She wiped her mouth once on the back her sleeve, then spoke as rapidly as possible while still enunciating clearly.
“Anyone with information on either the apparent murder broadcast by the whale’s equipment, or on persons using a seaplane and dive gear to approach the tagged whale, should contact the FBI immediately.” She recited the hotline number and stepped from view, making it clear she would say nothing further on camera. Once clear of the lens, she couldn't help feeling that her words had been uninspired, even boring. This was reality TV, after all, she thought. I should have said, ‘call the hotline and press 1 if you think a murder was committed by someone in the seaplane . . . press 2 if you think no one really died . . .’ She was snickering to herself as she pictured Branson's reaction when she heard a noise.
Then the Blue exhaled—not the powerful geyser of spray Tara had witnessed the day before from the helicopter—but a ragged, wispy plume which was instantly lost to a light wind.
Tara considered the creature while Anastasia concluded her rant. The whale both terrified and amazed her. Some of its blood vessels were large enough for a child to crawl through. The car-sized heart pumped a miniature sea of blood, a sea within a sea . . .
“Look out! That’s it. She’s free. She’s free.” The voice of Pete Pehl boomed over the Scarab’s radio. The Zodiacs propelled themselves away from the Blue at high rates of speed.
The whale breached, well out of the water this time, as if testing her newfound freedom. Applause erupted from the spectator boats. The Blue exhaled again, more forcefully this time. She rolled and righted herself, rolled and righted herself.
Then she went deep.
People quieted while they waited for the whale to show itself again. It did not.
Anastasia’s satellite-connected laptop was produced on the Scarab deck. Tara and Anastasia could see dimly lit rock formations on its screen as the whale skirted the complex undersea topography of the seamount. Minutes passed while she remained at depth.
The Coast Guard began ordering the onlooking boats to return to shore, to give the whale space, and they slowly complied.
For several minutes everyone in the Scarab scanned the water in all directions, but the Blue was not to be seen. Boats continued to straggle away from the site. When only the Scarab and the rescue ship remained, the Coast Guard cutter also motored away, the seas safe once more for humans and cetaceans alike.
But as Anastasia debated with her crew about the most likely direction the Blue had gone, a sailing ship appeared on the horizon.
CHAPTER 23
WIRED KINGDOM TECH SUPPORT FACILITY
Trevor Lane’s hands shook so badly he dropped his keys twice before stumbling into his office. He was beyond tired, physically and emotionally, but there was nothing for him in his crappy apartment. He didn’t feel safe there. He almost wished they’d left him in jail. His blackmailers would know that he’d be willing to tell what he knew about them in return for leniency from the courts.
Trevor fell into his chair and fished around on his desk for an
open can of Red Bull. His left eye throbbed, as it always did when he was under stress. He guzzled the half-empty can of warm, flat pop. He looked around at the computers, the damn Martin-Northstar manual that had gotten him into so much trouble, and at another PC on the floor by the wall.
He took from his pocket the paperwork he’d been given when his attorney bailed him out of jail. Summons to appear. Only two weeks away. The form looked innocuous enough, but under a section denoted “Charge,” a checkbox next to the word “Felony” was marked with an X. Description: “Attempted murder of a federal officer with a firearm.” Funny how a little piece of paper could spell so much disaster, he thought.
But through the daze of his fatigue and distress, he remembered being fingerprinted. He’d even offered assistance to the fingerprinting operator when she couldn’t get the computer to bring up the appropriate screen—having studied extensively the design of biometric capture devices, after all, before becoming interested in telemetry algorithms. Then his mug shot was taken, and his attorney, who had come courtesy of his employer, informed him in no uncertain terms of his likely fate: prison. The only question was how much time. The legal team might be able to uncover some loophole, perhaps relating to his treatment in the interrogation room, but unlike in the movies, his attorney had said it probably wouldn’t happen to him. Then he’d told Trevor to get some sleep, stay out of trouble, and come in for a meeting on Monday morning.
Trevor bent down to the PC on the floor. Blinking LEDs on the front suggested activity within, but he snapped off a side panel from the case and reached inside. He extracted a roll of bills. He undid the rubber band and counted the money: two thousand dollars, mostly in twenties and tens. His emergency stash, tucked away a few bills at a time over the past several years. It wasn’t much, but it would get him out of L.A.
