MEG: Nightstalkers

by Steve Alten

  Pulling back on the joystick, he increased his angle of ascent—his right foot slipping off the starboard propulsion pedal, the port engine sending the sub slicing sideways toward the pliosaur’s open mouth!

  Tina screamed as David stamped down hard with his right foot, managing to catch the edge of the pedal just enough to send the ship whipping back to port a split second before the creature’s fourteen inch fangs could close on the Manta’s acrylic skin.

  “What the hell?”

  “Sorry.” Facing forward, David targeted a faint outline of floats, which marked the trawl net’s upper lip.

  “Seventy yards. Depth is two-two-seven feet. Thirty yards, two-zero-nine feet. Pull up!”

  He pulled back on the joystick—momentarily forgetting about the Lio, which bit down on the Manta’s tail assembly, snapping its antenna like kindling while altering the sub’s trajectory.

  The vessel’s wings cleared the top of the trawl net by four inches, the cockpit’s belly smashing into a float. The glancing blow caused both pilots to jump. Having shed his harness, David was propelled out of his seat, his skull smashing hard against the Lexan glass as they soared over the net.

  The Liopleurodon’s snout caught the inside edge of the net, sending its head and upper torso torpedoing inside the steel mesh until its head filled the cod end, causing the bridle to seal the trap.

  The net pulled tight, sheering barnacles from the pliosaur’s back while pinning its fore flippers to its side. The creature went berserk, rolling and twisting its body against its unseen foe.

  Aboard the Tonga

  Fiesal bin Rashidi paced before the command center’s forward bay window, his nerves on edge as he and the tanker’s officers waited to hear from Commander Molony aboard the trawler.

  “Fiesal, we bagged her! She’s in the net.”

  The Dubai engineer’s dark eyes widened. He managed to mutter, “Praise Allah” a second before his men swarmed upon him in a celebratory embrace.

  “Enough! We’ll celebrate when she swims inside her pen. Captain, how far are we from the trawler?”

  “Just under seven kilometers. Not to worry, sir. I began our braking procedure two kilometers ago.” The skipper turned to his executive officer. “Mr. Saxe, reverse all engines.”

  “Reverse all engines, aye, Captain.”

  Aboard the Dubai Land-I

  Commander Molony stepped out on deck to a cloudy midnight sky backlit by an intense waning moon. The wind was gusting at thirty knots, churning seven-foot seas that lifted the trawler from port to starboard.

  Molony worked his way to the gantry where the trawler’s chief engineer was standing by the winch drum, engaged in a heated argument with Jacqueline Buchwald.

  “Is there a problem?”

  Jackie held on as another swell lifted the boat. “Your engineer is threatening to free the Lio.”

  The Arab pointed aft to the boom, which was feeding steel line into the Pacific, spinning the winch eight revolutions per minute. “Your fish may be in the trawl, but it is still able to swim. There is less than two hundred meters of cable left on the line. You know what happens when it runs out? The gantry, the boom, the deck … bit-tawfig—good luck.”

  Molony removed the radio from his belt holster. “Patch me through to Manta-Six.”

  “Sorry, Commander, we still haven’t been able to raise them.”

  “Then put me through to Manta-Five.”

  Aboard Manta-Five

  Rick Frazier continued descending, keeping pace with the netted Liopleurodon, which was dragging the trawl line seventy meters off his port wing. Trapped from head to hindquarters, the creature was propelling itself through the water by wriggling its body like a crocodile.

  “Depth … seven hundred meters. They better do something soon or … stand by.” Gregg Hendley switched his headset from sonar to radio. “Hendley here. Go ahead, Commander.”

  “What’s the hell’s going on down there? How the hell is the Lio still taking line?”

  “She’s in the trawl but her tail’s free. Where’s the Tonga?”

  “Four minutes away, but we’ll be out of cable long before she arrives. What happened to Manta-Six?”

  “They lost their radio antenna when the Lio was netted. We’ve got a visual off our port wing.”

  “Commander, this is Frazier. The Lio can swim but she isn’t generating a lot of torque. If you reverse the winch I don’t think she’ll offer much resistance.”

  “Stand by.”

  Aboard Manta-Six

  Tina stared at the creature descending off her starboard wing, mesmerized by the monster’s size, grace, and ferocity. “It’s so massive. How did it get so big?”

  “Cold water and competition; multiplied by sixty-five million years of adaptation.”

  They both grabbed at their headsets as a bone-chilling screeeech filled their ears.

  “David, what was that?”

  “The steel cable went taut. The trawler’s going to try to reel her in.” Pressing down on his starboard pedal, he veered to port, giving the Lio a wider berth.

  The Liopleurodon stopped descending, its whipping tail and snake-like movements no match for the 196-foot, 280-ton fishing trawler. Twisting within its bonds, the beast was dragged backwards toward the surface at a steady sixty feet per minute.

  As David and Tina watched, the 122-foot pliosaur pitched and pulled itself into long, wide arcing pendulum-like movements, battling to find a direction in which it could escape the unyielding force.

  On its next easterly swing it succeeded.

  Using the taut line to generate torque, the creature found itself arcing beyond its 180-degree loop. As its head pointed toward the surface the tension suddenly eased.

  Whipping its tail into a frenzy, the Liopleurodon rose to attack its enemy.

  Aboard the Dubai Land-I

  Commander Molony stood by the stern ramp, one hand gripping the starboard rail, the other holding a pair of night binoculars to his face, his eyes focused on the approaching Tonga. The supertanker’s forward momentum had dropped to three knots. The trawler was matching its speed, waiting for the massive ship to stop.

  A whirring sound caught Molony’s attention. Lowering the binoculars, he turned to the boom. The steel cable had gone slack; the winch was rewinding too quickly, causing the line to tangle.

  Molony’s initial thought was that the cable had snapped. Disgusted, he retrieved his radio to confirm his fear—only to realize he had the volume turned down and Manta-Five was on the line.

  “Repeat, the Lio’s surfacing! Move the trawler—”

  Liam Molony felt the boat’s thrusters rev beneath his feet a split second before the deck was pulled out from under him and he found himself sliding face-first down the stern ramp—which suddenly exploded beneath his chest!

  The breath was driven from his lungs as he flailed through the night air, landing hard on his back.

  Jacqueline Buchwald pulled herself off the main deck, her jaw dropping as she looked aft. The Liopleurodon’s upper torso was out of the water, towering three stories above the stern ramp. The incensed slime-coated creature was whipping its head back and forth in a furious attempt to shed the cod end of the trawl net from its snout.

  The boom became an airborne missile which struck the masthead. The winch drum was uprooted, shearing wood slats from the main deck.

  The cable finally snapped, causing the bridle to unthread, easing the tension on the net.

  The beam from a powerful spotlight reached down from the supertanker, placing the creature in a surreal heavenly glow as it continued to fight to free itself from its bonds.

  A fore flipper popped loose. The appendage flopped down onto the stern deck, the Lio’s 240,000-pound girth sinking the aft end of the boat at a forty-degree angle.

  The sea rushed at Jackie, sweeping her up in its cold embrace. Covering her head, she was blindly carried across the main deck, her knees and back abused by unseen equipment before she was able t
o grab the rung of the ladder leading up to the navigation bridge. Clinging to the aluminum slat, she saw the monster slip free from the shredded trawl net and heave itself back into the ocean, causing the boat’s submerged aft end to pop out of the water.

  Fearing the nearing presence of the Tonga, the Liopleurodon dove beneath the trawler, the creature’s back arched as it circled the keel in full attack mode.

  Detecting familiar vibrations, the pliosaur went deep, its senses homing in on its prey.

  Aboard Manta-Six

  David never had a chance.

  With two powerful strokes of its fore flippers the monster was upon them, its jaws crushing the Manta’s chassis, separating it from its Lexan bathyscaph like an avocado pit.

  Tina screamed.

  David winced as a dagger-shaped tooth the length of a football struck the escape pod above his head—and snapped in half upon impact with the thick Lexan glass. For an insane moment he actually laughed—until the mouth closed around them and the creature’s tongue lifted them, propelling them backwards down its throat.

  “David!”

  Tina screamed again as the spherical cockpit became an amusement ride through a hell revealed in terrifying glimpses behind the night-vision glass.

  David frantically tore open the panel to the sub’s fuse box as they slid past two-story-tall fluttering gill slits. He reached for a luminous red toggle switch as they teetered between the esophagus and the trachea, seconds from plunging into the monster’s stomach.

  “Tina, don’t touch the glass!”

  A blinding burst of blue current short-circuited both control panels as ten thousand volts of electricity was redirected from the sub’s batteries through a latticework of microwires set within the cockpit glass.

  The shock stunned the Liopleurodon’s nervous system, triggering a powerful gag reflex that caused the creature to regurgitate the sphere. One moment David and Tina were about to be swallowed, the next they were being propelled through the open sea at sixty knots, rising to the surface.

  Tina gripped the edges of her seat, her eyes wide as her mind tried to grasp what had just happened. “Oh my God, oh my God, we could have been … I mean we were—”

  The blood rushed from her face. Fumbling through her storage panel, she hurried a seasickness bag to her mouth and vomited.

  16

  Tanaka Institute

  Monterey, California

  James Mackreides sat in his office easy chair, staring out the bay windows overlooking the institute’s man-made lagoon. Beyond the southwestern bleachers, anchored at the institute’s pier was the McFarland, a 319-foot-long hopper-dredge Jonas had purchased in a government auction and converted to a Megalodon transport. Mac had spent three long weeks on the rusted monstrosity of steel, hauling Angel to what turned out to be her final resting place, and now Jonas was asking him to ready the ship for a ten-thousand-mile voyage to Antarctica.

  His wife entered, carrying their son, Kyle, in his car seat. “Well? Are you going with him, or are you staying here with your family?”

  “For right now I’m staying. There’s no reason for me to travel with the boat, the captain said he’d pick me up in Santiago, Chile. That buys me two weeks to make a decision.”

  “As far as I’m concerned … well, you know my opinion.”

  “Trish, he’s my best friend and he’s my partner.”

  “A partner in what? A bankrupt business? I’m supposed to be your best friend; I’m supposed to be your partner. And why Antarctica?”

  “I told you; David is hunting the Lio and the Lio is headed for Antarctica.”

  “According to who? The last reality show episode we watched had David capturing those creatures off the Japanese coast.”

  “The reality shows are taped. David’s aboard the Tonga now and the Tonga is searching for the Lio in the waters off East Australia.”

  “Then why go to Antarctica?”

  Mac sighed. “I told you this last night; Zachary Wallace said—”

  “How the hell does Zachary Wallace know where the creature is headed? Is he psychic? He’s not even a marine biologist anymore; you told me he’s involved in some covert energy scheme.”

  “It’s not a scheme. We invested in his company years ago, and since then Jonas takes what he says as the gospel.”

  “Then let him risk his own life.”

  “Enough. If it were our son out there hunting that creature you could bet the farm Jonas would be by my side.” Mac stood, moving to his desk to retrieve a flight itinerary for Danielle Taylor. “Dani’s plane arrives from London in three hours. Terry’s seeing her doctor; she asked if one of us could pick her daughter up at the airport.”

  “By one of us, you mean me.”

  “I’m ordering supplies for a three-month trip to Antarctica, refitting the Mantas with lasers, and recruiting a crew. Think you might help me out on this one?”

  “Sure. And you can breast-feed your son.”

  She snatched the itinerary and left.

  “Trish, come on—” Mac winced as she slammed the door. “And that, Kyle, is why God made Adam before Eve; He didn’t want a woman nagging Him about the specs.” He checked the diaper bag, making sure his wife had left him a bottle of milk. Propping the car seat in front of the flat screen television, he fished through a stack of Barney and Sesame Street DVDs. Tossing them aside, he selected a Three Stooges short from his book shelf.

  “We’ll begin your formal education into manhood with the classics.…”

  Obstruction Pass, Salish Sea

  There are over two hundred species of kelp growing in the waters surrounding the San Juan Islands. These algae stalks, attached to sea bedrocks by “holdfasts,” are an essential part of the marine food chain, attracting crustaceans and snails, salmon and orca. Clusters of kelp appear as algae forests, their floating canopies forming vegetative rafts that provide rest areas for seals, sea otters, and the occasional kayaker.

  Paul Agricola squinted into a blinding sunset as he guided the sixty-six-foot fiberglass fishing trawler west through Obstruction Pass. The channel’s current picked up as it swept the boat past Obstruction Island, driving them toward Orcas Island’s East Channel. The hopper-dredge Marieke remained in the deeper waters of Rosario Strait a half mile away, her superstructure disappearing from view behind Obstruction Island’s tree-covered highlands.

  Jonas Taylor sat in the bridge hunched over a rectangular computer screen, his eyes bleary from almost seven hours of staring at the fish-finder.

  “That’s it Paul, I’ve had enough for one day. My back is breaking, that lunch made me queasy, and whatever your crew has covered beneath that tarp stinks to high heaven. Take us back to the Marieke, we’ll get an early start in the morning.”

  “Morning is for catching salmon; we’re after night stalkers.”

  Jonas’s adrenaline kicked in, his heart pounding heavy in his chest. “That wasn’t our deal. When the sun goes down you agreed we’d be in port or aboard the dredge.”

  “The dredge can’t enter the passes around Obstruction and Blakely Island and there’s a kelp forest up ahead I wanted to check out.”

  “And if we spot one of the sisters? What then?”

  “Then we hightail it back to the dredge. Stop worrying; I’ve got a plan.”

  A muscular man in an Army Strong T-shirt entered the bridge. “Cheney and Rumsfeld had a plan, and look where that got us.” He extended a callus-covered palm. “Presley Gibbons, part-time grease monkey, full-time sport fisherman. So how big are these sisters? I was in the Tallman-II asleep when your beasties decided to sink the yacht. From the newscast I’d guess they’re about thirty-five feet.”

  “Forty-six feet and twenty tons of nasty.”

  “Ouch. At the risk of over-abusing the phrase—I think we’re gonna need a bigger boat.”

  “We have a bigger boat; we need to be on the bigger boat.”

  “Relax, Jonas. Presley is the one who caught Bela’s pup. Lured her to the su
rface with a bloody burlap bag of salmon and netted her for one of my guests. Of course, once I saw her markings I knew what we had.”

  “Is that what’s in the stern attracting all the flies?”

  “Not this time,” Presley said. “Last night the boys and I went hunting for Columbia black-tail deer; got us a big buck. Just an appetizer for your sisters, but it’s a nice meal for a six to eight footer. We’ll gut it and drag it around the surface. Last time the entire procedure from cast to capture took less than ten minutes. The key is to net her and get her out of the sea into one of the saltwater holds before momma and auntie get close enough to catch a vibration.”

  Jonas slid his sunglasses back over his eyes and squinted against the late afternoon sun. Obstruction Pass was bringing them to the spot where Orcas Island’s East Sound waterway emptied into the Salish Sea. “You’re heading for the site of the charter boat attack?”

  Paul nodded, pointing out the spot on his chart. “It’s shallow water with a big kelp forest and some major rock formations—perfect for a Megalodon nursery. The diver you rescued can’t remember much of anything. But I have a good feeling about this one.”

  Paul slowed the boat to three knots. “Take a look off the starboard bow. Can you see the kelp canopies? I’ll circle the mat; Pres, take over for Jonas at the fish finder.”

  Jonas relinquished his seat to the fisherman, who adjusted the range finder. “It’s a kelp forest all right … I’m guessing bull kelp. A few nice sized salmon moving among the stipes. Wait, I see seals in the canopy. I don’t know, Paul. If there are seals hanging out I doubt the juvies are in the area.”

  “Keep watching. The diver swore he saw at least one six-foot albino great white.”

  Jonas looked up. “I thought you said he couldn’t remember anything?”

  “That was before I paid him five hundred bucks. Pres, tell your guys to drop the bait in the water. Let’s see if we can flush them out.”

  The fisherman reached for the two-way radio clipped to the back of his belt. “Rod, we’re a go. Gut her and drag her.”

  * * *

  It took Rod Larrivee three attempts to suck in his belly enough to shove the radio back into its belt holster, during which time the wind shifted, blowing a cloud of blue-gray carbon monoxide in his face. Cursing under his breath, the big man turned away from the engine exhaust and reached for the red kerchief dangling from his shirt pocket, mopping sweat beads from his receding hairline.