by Steve Alten
She moved to his side of the bed, removed the T-shirt, and straddled him.
“Jackie, what are you doing?”
“Keeping the man I love warm.” She hugged him, her bare flesh on his chest generating body heat.
He hugged her back, the warmth chasing away the coldness of death.
Aboard the Hopper-Dredge McFarland
Amundsen Sea, Antarctica
Zachary Wallace leaned over the chart table, studying the map of Pine Island Bay. Surrounded by glaciers and ice shelves, the waterway vaguely resembled the coastline of the Amery Ice Shelf—the access point to Lake Vostok he had relived a thousand times in a recurring dream.
He looked up as Terry entered the bridge, limping noticeably.
“Are ye all right?”
“Stress and Parkinson’s don’t mix very well. We need to talk.”
He followed her one flight down to the officer’s deck, entering a deserted break room.
Terry sat on bench, stretching out her right leg. “Today is March third, your big déjà vu day. The last time you experienced this, where was Jonas?”
“With me, piloting one of the Mantas.”
“Where was my son?”
“Piloting another Manta, playing a game of cat and mouse with the Liopleurodon. He led it away from us and back tae the tanker where it was netted.”
“And that’s where David died?”
“Terry, it never happened. Everything is different this time around.”
“What happened to the Lio after it was netted?”
“The creature was too big and too active. The trawler flipped, the tanker was swaying dangerously. We had no choice but tae kill it.”
“And how did you manage that?”
“Jonas struck it in the chest with both lasers. It was a mortal wound.”
“So, Jonas saved both crews?”
“Yes.”
“And this time around, Jonas is in sickbay, unable to pilot the Manta. Even if my son survives, what’s to prevent the Lio from going berserk and sinking both vessels? Who’s going to kill this monster with my husband out of commission?”
Zachary felt the blood drain from his face. “I hadn’t considered that.”
“Of course not. You were too busy with your own agenda to think things through.”
“Is there anyone else on board who can pilot the Manta?”
“You’re looking at her. Our ETA at Pine Island Bay is sixteen hundred hours. Make sure you’re wearing a compression suit, I’d hate for you to die from a blood clot.”
She stood, limping toward the door. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to wake up Cyel Reed and inform my engineer he has eight hours to attach those two lasers to Manta number three.”
Pine Island Bay, Amundsen Sea
The Thwaites Glacier has been heavily studied by geologists because of the rapid flow rate in which it is melting into Pine Island Bay. Researchers at the University of Texas in Austin recently discovered the cause of this alarming phenomenon—magma and related volcanic activity arising from the rifting of the Earth’s crust beneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. This geothermal dynamic distributes heat across the bottom of the ice like a pancake griddle, threatening to collapse the glacier and raise ocean levels.
The Liopleurodon could sense the geothermal activity, the neuromastic cells located along its lateral lines registering the grinding of the ice upon a 2,296-foot-tall ridge located beneath the glacier along the sea floor. It could also detect several pods of minke whales feeding on fish attracted to a stream of warm water flowing out from beneath the glacier into Pine Island Bay.
With its newborn held in tow within the current created by its own water displacement, the Lio entered a narrow channel leading to the glacier. Remaining deep, it waited for darkness, its primordial senses homing in on the pod of whales feeding along the surface.
Aboard the Dubai Land-I Trawler
David Taylor pulled the compression suit into place over his arms and legs, zipping it over his chest.
Monty handed him the matching boots. “It was just another night terror, kid. Don’t let it phase you.”
“Easy for you to say, you didn’t see her.”
“What’d she look like? Did she look like a zombie?”
“No.”
“Did she look regurgitated?”
“You’re an asshole.”
“Then how did she look?”
“She looked dead … scary dead. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Commander Molony entered the staging area. “Our luck just turned; the Lio entered a channel that dead ends at the Thwaites Glacier. We’ll be in position at the mouth of the inlet in twenty minutes. Are you ready to do this?”
“Yeah … sure.”
Molony heard the inflection of doubt. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“His dead girlfriend visited him in a dream.”
“Shut up, Monty.”
“You dreamt Jackie was dead?”
“Kaylie Szeifert. It was just a stupid dream.”
Jackie entered, dressed in a compression suit. “Are you ready? Bin Rashidi wants us in the water the moment we arrive at the glacier’s inlet.”
“Molony, if she goes, I’m staying.”
“Sorry, kid, that’s not your call.”
“The fuck it’s not. It’s either my call or you can pilot the damn sub yourself.”
“David, I can handle it. We’re in the shallows; it’s daylight.”
“Not for long.”
“Shut up, Monty.”
David sat on a bench by his locker stall, pulling off his compression boots.
“Okay, hold on,” Molony said. “Jackie, David’s going solo on this one.”
“Or you could go with him,” suggested Monty. “Think about it; if you’re in the co-pilot’s chair, his dead girlfriend won’t have anywhere to sit.”
David started to say something, then thought about it. “That’s true.”
Jackie looked at the commander, her eyebrows raised. “Well?”
Molony’s face flushed, matching his red hair. “Goddam it. Everyone out while I change.”
Before they could move, Fiesal bin Rashidi’s voice blasted over the intercom. “Commander Molony, report to the bridge at once.”
Granted a momentary reprieve, Molony left the room.
Monty shook his head. “Saved by the yell.”
* * *
Bin Rashidi passed the binoculars to the commander, pointing out the bridge’s starboard bay windows.
Molony peered through the glasses at the large ship in the distance, a name emblazoned across her stern. “The McFarland.”
“It’s Jonas Taylor’s vessel; the hopper-dredge he used to transport Angel.”
“What’s it doing in Antarctica?”
“Fool! Taylor’s after the Lio.”
Aboard Manta-Three
Terry eased the sub into the crystal-green waters of the bay, the late afternoon sun fading quickly. “Anything on sonar?”
Zachary listened intently on his headphones. “The Crown Prince’s ships are entering the bay. David’s sub should be in the water soon.”
“Where’s the Lio?”
“I dinnae ken; it’s not showing up on my screen. Should I go active?”
“And reveal ourselves? No, thank you. With these two lasers weighing us down I doubt we could outrun a sea elephant, much less a one-hundred-and-twenty-foot pliosaur. What we’re going to do is lie along the bottom and wait until David makes his move.”
Pushing down on the joystick, she descended two hundred and thirty feet before leveling out over the sea floor. Keeping her speed below seven knots, she trekked east, moving toward the glacier.
After another minute a series of objects appeared on Zach’s sonar screen, his headphones chirping with acoustics.
“Terry—”
“I hear them. They sound like minke whales. Zachary, there’s a communication panel b
y your right foot. Open it, please. You’ll see a series of toggle switches set in the OFF position. Is there one with a blinking blue light?”
“No.”
“Keep an eye on it. If a light starts blinking that means David’s sub is in the area. Flip the switch and we’ll be able to speak with him over an inter-sub comm-link.”
Zach’s gaze shifted from the panel to his sonar monitor, the pod of whales materializing as blips on the edge of his screen.
* * *
The Antarctic minke is small for a baleen whale. Twenty to thirty feet in length and weighing between seven and eleven tons, the mammal resembles a stocky porpoise with two long flippers and a hook-shaped dorsal fin. Dark backed and white bellied, minke feed on plankton and krill, filtering the small fish through their baleen as they sieve the frigid polar waters.
Seventeen minke whales and three adult humpbacks had gathered within a hundred yards of the Thwaites Glacier to feast on a school of sardines. The cetaceans took turns diving through the swirling maelstrom of fish, their chuffing exhalations echoing across the bay, the setting sun reflecting gold off the sheer white cliffs of ice.
As the sun bled into shades of red and magenta the mammals’ auras changed. Becoming agitated, the whales stopped feeding. As darkness fell they segregated into two pods, the adults pushing their young into the center.
An immense predator had entered the channel, circling the sea floor directly beneath the panicked herd.
With a thrust of its powerful forelimbs the Liopleurodon rose, its hideous mouth opening as it launched itself straight up through the gyrating islands of blubber. The surface exploded in bloody froth as a five-ton female minke was hoisted out of the sea within the breaching monster’s jaws, the Lio’s dagger-like teeth nearly severing the whale in half.
The pods dispersed—the cetacean stampede fleeing the channel.
* * *
A bizarre sensation of déjà vu washed over Zachary Wallace as a wall of sonar blips appeared on his screen, converging upon the Manta. “Terry, the whales are fleeing the channel—we’re in their path!”
A forty-five-foot humpback materialized out of the olive-green ether, its thrusting gray fluke barely missing the sub.
Two more appeared, followed by a chaotic rush of minke whales.
Terry tried to dive free of the stampede but the cetaceans were everywhere. Powering up the Valkyries, she faced the swarm head-on, the lasers’ intense heat forcing the whales to give the Manta a wide berth.
“Zach, start pinging. We need to find the Lio before it finds us.”
His mind overwhelmed with yet another bad déjà vu, Zachary went active on sonar, sending out multiple bursts of sound.
An immense object appeared on his screen a kilometer to the east, close to the glacier.
And then a second object approached from the southwest. Passing beneath the Tonga and the McFarland, it was clearly homing in on the Manta’s sonar pings.
Zzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.
Zachary’s heart raced, the familiar burst of echolocation paralyzing his limbs.
“Zach, what was that?”
He tried to speak, only the muscles in his throat had constricted in fear.
A blue light illuminated inside the panel by his foot. Reaching down, he flipped the toggle switch on the comm-link.
“Dad, is that you?”
“David!”
“Mom? What are you doing in Antarctica?”
Zachary grabbed Terry’s right wrist. “It’s Brutus—he followed us here! Ye’ve got tae move!”
“Huh?” She glanced at her sonar screen, then accelerated the Manta into a tight loop, nearly losing both Valkyries as the eighty-foot, hundred-ton Miocene sperm whale shot past the sub.
“Mom, was that a sperm whale?”
“Terry, the whale’s too fast for us; ye need tae confront it with the lasers. David, this is Zach Wallace. The whale is a Livyatan melvillei, it’s a big-jawed—”
“I know what it is. What the hell is it doing here? Mom, above you—watch out!”
The bull had ascended, only to circle back and descend upon the fleeing sub.
Terry and Zach looked up at the charging beast and knew they had no chance. The Miocene whale had the angle and speed, and the Manta’s pilot could not maneuver the sub’s bow around fast enough to direct the lasers at the enormous square head bearing down upon their cockpit glass.
Soaring through the sea at thirty-six knots, David continuously pinged the whale as he homed in on the prehistoric mammal’s left eye.
The presence of another Manta confused the behemoth. Less than two body lengths from the first sub, it veered away from the sea floor to attack the second.
Pulling his craft into a one gee, 180-degree turn, David led the Miocene denizen to the west. He had no desire to net the huge sperm whale; his only thought was to draw it away from his mother’s sub. But the creature was surprisingly quick and clearly agitated, and the two cumbersome objects strapped to his mother’s sub’s wings rendered it vulnerable to an attack. Soaring beneath the McFarland’s keel with the whale closing to within fifty yards, he realized the leviathan was not the least bit intimidated by the hopper-dredge, nor would it cease its relentless pursuit until either he or it was dead.
Suit yourself, big fella.
Easing back on the joystick, David began a quick ascent, the Tonga’s massive bottom looming ahead.
* * *
The two Dubai ships’ captains had taken up parallel positions to one another the moment their vessels had entered the channel. Deck hands aboard the Tonga quickly lowered an immense trawl net into the water between the two ships. While the trawl remained attached to the tanker’s two largest winches, the Dubai Land-I’s crew had to stretch and maintain the opening of the trap in order to ensnare the Lio as it swam headfirst into the triangular net.
From his perch inside the bridge of the Tonga, Fiesal bin Rashidi stared at the tanker’s sonar monitor, his adrenaline pumping as he watched the small blip lead the much larger blip into the alley of water between his two ships.
* * *
Jonas Taylor had awoken in sickbay to learn his wife and Zachary were aboard the Manta-Three, attempting to help David. Ascending six flights of steps, he staggered into the McFarland’s bridge just as his son’s sub surfaced astern.
Night-vision binoculars revealed the trawl net stretched between the two Dubai ships. And then the creature chasing after the Manta surfaced, allowing Jonas to identify the species.
Son of a bitch, it’s that damn whale!
“Sonar, where’s Manta-Three?”
“Passing beneath our keel, heading west toward the tanker at six knots.”
“And the Lio?”
“Two miles to the east.”
“Captain, come about! Get us to the tanker. Sonar, if that Lio so much as farts, I want to know about it.”
* * *
Sweat poured down David Taylor’s face. Echolocating the tanker, the whale had nearly given up the chase, forcing the pilot to cut his speed in half and weave from side to side in order to keep the melvillei interested. Cruising at only eighteen knots, he knew the Manta could not generate enough lift to leap out of the sea in order to clear the trawl net. And yet he had to keep the creature close … knowing that if he failed to ensnare the bull sperm whale it would turn and pursue his mother’s submersible.
So he took a chance.
Throttling back, he dropped his speed to thirteen knots, allowing the Miocene beast close enough for its open mouth to taste his sub’s jet-pump propulsor bubbles.
Incensed, the whale increased its speed as it passed the Tonga’s bow—just as David crushed the right accelerator pedal to the floor and wrenched the joystick hard to port.
The Manta launched sideways out of the sea. It cleared the steel cables running from the trawler to the net—and smashed nose-first into the Dubai Land’s bow with the force of a race car striking a brick wall.
One moment David was a
irborne, the next he was consumed by an explosion of darkness.
* * *
Unaware that its prey was gone, the Miocene sperm whale swam into the trawl net, stopping only after its massive head became stuck at the pointed cod end. It attempted to turn around, but the crew manning the Tonga’s starboard winch were already tightening the noose upon the beast’s flapping fluke.
A collective cheer went up from both ships as the creature was hauled tail-first out of the sea.
A moment later the Tonga’s searchlights revealed the catch.
Fiesal bin Rashidi’s hands quivered in rage as he stared at the sperm whale thrashing within the trawl net six stories below. “What is this? This is not my monster! Sonar, where is the Lio?”
“Four kilometers to the east, heading this way.”
* * *
Terry Taylor surfaced her sub between the McFarland and the two Dubai ships, praying the presence of the immense hopper-dredge and supertanker would be enough to keep the Liopleurodon away. She tried to reach her son by comm-link, but there was no reply. Accelerating to twenty knots, she raced for the tanker. “Zachary, start pinging. Find me David’s Manta.”
“Terry, look.”
The two pilots stared at the scene before them.
The Miocene whale was suspended upside-down from a trawl net, thrashing along the starboard side of the tanker as it was hauled up to the main deck. As this was happening, the crew of the trawler were tossing a smaller cargo net into the water, a team of divers jumping in after it.
As Terry watched, her son’s sub was hauled out of the sea, the Manta’s port wing smashed beyond recognition.
“David…”
* * *
The Liopleurodon had consumed most of the minke whale when it registered the familiar sonic pings coming from Manta-Three. Leaving its young to feed on the remains of the carcass, it followed the vibrations, intent on protecting its offspring.
* * *
“Jonas, the Lio’s on the move; it’s heading toward the tanker.”
“Get Manta-Three on the radio.”
* * *
“Terry, Jonas is on channel one.”
Terry switched her headphones to the McFarland’s frequency. “Jonas, David’s sub struck the trawler, it looks really bad. I’m going to dock—”
