by Steve Alten
She laid out a map of the North American coast, detailing the locations of several elephant seal rookeries. “The nearest known elephant seal gathering points are in the Channel Islands. There are eight islands for the displaced members of the Farallon rookery to choose from. They could join an existing group or establish a new nesting area. My plan is to send a stakeout team, armed with a transmitter gun, to each island. We’ll tag the Lio, then once we know which island she’s stalking, we’ll set up an ambush.”
The plan was circulated among the crew, earning Jackie a temporary stay of execution. As the tanker headed south along the California coast, passing over the wreckage of its sunken sister ship en route to the Channel Islands, the marine biologist made a list of supplies, instructing the ship’s supply officer that they should be delivered to Avalon, a port city on Santa Catalina.
* * *
The Channel Islands are an archipelago of eight landmasses situated off the southern coast of California, divided into a northern and southern cluster. Elephant seals reside in the four northern islands as well as in Santa Barbara, the five habitats falling under the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. The remaining three islands had small human communities, the largest populace on Santa Catalina.
Jackie ordered shipments of transmitters and harpoon guns to be delivered in Avalon, at which time she would jump ship. Those plans were dashed when the captain, a wily seaman named Cryss Blackwolf, arranged for the supplies to be delivered by helicopter.
Northern elephant seals populate their rookery in shifts that vary among competing bulls, mature females and their pups, and juvenile males. Breeding takes place in the winter months; molting occurs in spring and summer.
The Mogamigawa arrived in the Channel Islands in mid-March when the last adults were leaving. For nine days, three-man teams equipped with radios and transmitter guns staked out the northern islands.
The Liopleurodon never showed.
With the rookeries nearly empty and her life hanging in the balance, Jackie altered her plan.
“When these elephant seals leave here, they’ll head west, where they’ll inhabit the deep waters off the continental shelf. I think the Lio knows exactly where they’ll be. If we tag the seals, there’s a chance at least one of them will be eaten. Unless the transmitter is damaged, it will continue to send off signals. Once we verify we’re following the Lio, it will lead us back to whatever island rookery it will be feeding at during the seals’ molting season.”
“And how are we to know the transmitter is in the belly of the beast?”
“Bull elephant seals can dive three to five thousand feet deep. If the signal suddenly descends beyond that, it means the Lio ate the seal and its transmitter.”
“Most of the seals have left the sanctuary; there are less than thirty left. By the time the transmitters and harnesses arrive, they’ll be gone, too.”
“Well then,” Jackie said, “we’ll just have to drug them.”
Operating under the cover of darkness, teams of crewmen carrying hypodermic syringes filled with phenobarbital injected the massive mammals using reach poles. Thirteen bulls and four adult cows were kept in a semiconscious state for three days until a supply of harnesses and extra transmitters arrived by helicopter.
The harnesses were pliable plastic adjustable collars that fit loosely around the elephant seals’ necks. The transmitter was secured inside a porous titanium sphere roughly the size of a softball that attached to the back of the collar. Each homing device had a range of sixty nautical miles, and their lithium batteries provided ten months of power.
The groggy pinnipeds awoke the next morning, sporting hangovers. Within twenty-four hours only the pups remained on shore.
For the first two weeks, the seventeen elephant seals remained within transmitter range of one another, foraging for food along the seafloor for upward of two hours before returning to the surface to grab a breath. Employing a grab-and-swallow technique, the mammals consumed hagfish and rays, squid and crabs, oblivious to the tanker keeping pace a thousand feet above and several miles to the northeast.
The Mogamigawa’s sonar kept a 24/7 vigil on the elephant seals. By the fifth week the bulls had split up from the cows, heading farther out to sea. Jackie chose to shadow the males, since there were far more of them. Several weeks later they arrived at the continental shelf, diving along the vertical slope into depths exceeding four thousand feet.
Still, there was no sign of the Lio.
Spring turned to summer, bringing with it tropical depressions and hurricane season. While most of the cyclone action remained to the west, the ocean grew noticeably rougher. Twenty-to-thirty-foot swells became the new norm, battering the ship and crew while making Jackie regret her decision to head farther from land by tracking the males.
Elephant seals’ blood does not circulate to their skin when they are in water; it is only while on land that they grow a new epidermis and hair. By mid-July, the females had begun their trek east to the Channel Islands to molt; their male counterparts lagged a month behind.
The crew’s temperament changed with the worsening weather. Jackie knew her days were numbered—if the Lio did not appear soon, the crew would toss her overboard and take the ship.
On August 10, the bulls abruptly abandoned the continental shelf and headed east.
At first Jackie thought this was simply nature’s way, the bulls’ annual molting bringing them back to land around mid-September. But as she tracked their movements on sonar, she noticed the elephant seals were not foraging on the return trip—they were moving with a sense of urgency.
When one of the homing devices ceased transmitting, she grew excited. When a second unit shut down in close proximity to the first, she ordered Cryss Blackwolf to bring the ship about to intercept.
The captain refused, claiming the seas were too rough and there was no evidence the Lio was anywhere within a hundred miles of the tanker.
She took her plea to the crew. “I was hired to do a job, and I’ve done it. The Lio is sixteen miles to the southwest of us. If we don’t act now, we’ll lose it.”
By the men’s lack of a response, she knew the crew was committed to taking the ship.
“Okay … fine. If I’m wrong, we’ll end the voyage; you can drop me off at the nearest port.”
One of the ringleaders stepped forward. “We’ll come about. But if you are wrong, we will drop you off right here.”
It is not easy to turn a Malacca-class oil tanker, the degree of difficulty in rough seas increasing tenfold. By the time the ship reached the last known coordinates of the second downed transmitter, Jackie held little hope of locating their quarry.
Scanning the sonar, she targeted the closest elephant seal. The mammal was several miles away, moving along the surface. “There! That’s the Lio’s next meal.”
The ringleader nodded to the captain. “Take us there; our American friend wishes to go for a swim with her seal.”
Before she could react, the crew was upon her, their calloused hands groping her breasts and groin as they carried her out of the control room and down five flights of stairs to the main deck—a heaving runway of steel more than a football field long. Towering swells rolled beneath the ship, raising the bow before dropping it. Seasickness combined with Jackie’s fear, and she puked her last meal, taking a final moment of pleasure in spewing her refuse over the heads of her intended assassins. They released her and she tumbled to the deck; she tried to run, but there were far too many of them.
Grabbing her by the hair, the ringleader dragged her to the port rail to toss her overboard.
In the predawn gray, Jacqueline Buchwald looked out at the foam-covered waves and spotted the elephant seal as it rode the swell. For a brief second, she experienced a moment of serenity—an acceptance of her fate … an end to her anguish—
—and then the beast rose out of the sea.
Crocodilian jaws clamped down upon the fifteen-foot, four-thousand-pound pinniped, crushing
it like a ripe tomato. The animal’s blood and guts shot through the gaps between the Liopleurodon’s teeth as it continued rising out of the Pacific, its immense forelimbs thirty feet from its fang-laced snout, its chocolate-brown back blotting the horizon—seventy tons … eighty feet, its girth mocking its would-be captors.
The crew stood in awe as the reptile god slipped silently back into the sea, all evidence of its appearance gone, save for the racing pulses of its eyewitnesses.
The Arab ringleader stepped forward, dropping to one knee. “Forgive us for ever doubting you. Allah has blessed you with a gift; instruct us and it shall be done.”
The other men bowed their heads and knelt.
She led them back to the control room, to discover that the dead elephant seal’s transmitter had been swallowed whole and was giving off signals.
“You did it … you tagged the creature!”
“Yes. Unfortunately, the Lio has grown too immense to capture at sea; therefore, we must capture it on land when it attacks the rookeries. For now, we’ll shadow it and allow it to lead us ashore.”
That was the last time Jackie was ever challenged, the last time she experienced fear. The crew members were now her royal subjects, and she was their queen. She would find a way to capture the beast, and make each of them wealthy men in the process.
* * *
For three months the Lio had followed the continental shelf to the south, until late in the past week, when it abruptly changed course, heading east at a steady 22 knots. The elephant seal rookeries would be heavily populated by now; the beast was returning to land to feed.
Jacqueline Buchwald stood in the bow, staring at the sea. The creature was close: three thousand feet below and less than a mile ahead. A plan was in motion, a trap being prepared—
—the hunter had become the hunted, the slave a master of her domain.
Aboard Global Group International Holdings’ Private Jet
87 Miles Northwest of Guam
The brochure in the magazine rack stated that the passenger cabin aboard the Airbus ACJ319 private jet was not only the widest in the industry but also the tallest. Despite these impressive dimensions, after nearly twelve straight hours in the air, Jonas Taylor was feeling as if the walls were closing in.
The last time he had experienced claustrophobia was twenty-five years ago, when the deep-sea submersible pilot had returned to the Mariana Trench seven years after his final, fateful dive with the U.S. Navy. Down on his luck, Jonas had been recruited by Masao Tanaka to escort his son, D.J., to the bottom to recover a damaged seismic drone. The two men had made the nearly thirty-six-thousand-foot descent aboard one-man submersibles scarcely larger than a coffin, so the claustrophobia was certainly justified. The encounter with a pair of Megalodons had not ended well for either Terry’s younger brother or the male shark that had killed him.
Jonas had dived the abyss twice more over the years—once to rescue his wife at the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the last time two years earlier to save his son, who had been trapped with Kaylie Szeifert several thousand feet below the seafloor in the ancient realm of the Panthalassa Sea. His wingman on that dive had been Angel, and the journey had not ended well for either the Meg or David’s girlfriend … but still, the claustrophobia had not returned.
So why was he feeling so nervous aboard a billionaire’s private jet?
Maybe it had something to do with the information Mac had emailed him an hour earlier regarding one of Dr. Johnny Hon’s business ventures.…
* * *
Jonas and Terry had met the billionaire days earlier on a Skype call.
“Professor Taylor, it is an honor to finally speak with you and your lovely wife, who I am so thrilled to see up and about. When I heard Terry was in a coma, I immediately contacted my friend Dr. Chi to see if he could be of service.”
“Terry and I are incredibly grateful for what you’ve done. If there is anything we can ever do to repay you—”
“Nonsense. What I did was simply to plant the seeds of friendship with someone whose work I have admired for several decades. I appreciate your wife cutting her therapy short to meet with me. Time is of the essence, as you will learn.
“The truth, Professor Taylor, is that the three of us share a common enemy. Cancer has robbed me of friends and loved ones, fueling a passion to find a cure. Two years ago, a colleague of mine made an incredible discovery in the field of neurogenesis that has brought us to phase two of human trials. So far, everything looks very good.”
Terry had been especially excited. “That’s wonderful, Dr. Hon. When will you be announcing your discovery to the rest of the world?”
“Soon. There are still a few small hurdles to overcome before we make it public.”
“If there is anything Jonas and I can do to help…?”
“Actually, Mrs. Taylor, I was hoping to pick your husband’s brain regarding a few potential solutions. If the two of you would be willing to come to Hong Kong, it would be an honor to share the information with you … provided you have no problem signing a nondisclosure agreement.”
They had signed the NDA and Johnny Hon had sent his private jet to meet them.
Always suspicious, Mac had done some investigating of his own. He had learned that Global Group International Holdings had made seven-figure donations to several cancer research funds over the years, the most recent monies going to a nonprofit research company run by a microbiologist named Sara Jernigan.
Sixteen months earlier, Global Group had invested upward of a billion dollars into China’s number two–ranked science and technology project to construct an underwater lab, the new venture involving an engineering firm in Sweden. This struck Mac as odd, since the project was part of China’s five-year economic growth package. Upon further investigation he learned that the Swedish firm was headed by Sara Jernigan’s brother-in-law, Jordan Bittel, a structural engineer who was discreetly recruiting members of the Dubai team hired to capture prehistoric life-forms inhabiting the Panthalassa Sea.
* * *
Jonas looked up as one of the Chinese flight attendants entered the cabin. “Excuse me, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor. The captain has asked me to inform you that we have begun our descent and will be landing shortly.”
Jonas checked his watch. “I must have miscalculated—I don’t have us arriving in Hong Kong for another two hours.”
The attendant forced a smile. “There’s been a slight change in plans. Dr. Hon will be meeting you at the cancer research facility.”
“And where is that?”
“I do not know; the location is secret.”
“You must know where we’re landing.”
“Of course, Mr. Taylor. We are landing in Guam.”
* * *
The private jet eased into a gentle touchdown. Rather than heading for the terminal, the pilot taxied several miles to the east end of the airport and an awaiting Z-18A Chinese utility helicopter.
The attendant opened the cabin door, releasing a short flight of stairs. “The helicopter will take you directly to the cancer research facility. Dr. Hon is waiting for you there.”
“No.”
Terry turned to her husband. “What’s wrong?”
“For starters, we were supposed to land in Hong Kong, not Guam. I don’t like last-minute surprises.”
The flight attendant blushed. “Forgive me. I should have informed you earlier. Dr. Hon was able to free up his schedule at the last moment and preferred to meet you at the facility, rather than offer you a virtual tour from his headquarters in Hong Kong.”
“And is the facility on Guam, or is it on another island in the Marianas?”
“Sir, as I told you earlier, I don’t know.”
“Jonas, what difference does it make? We’re here.”
“It makes a big difference. Guam and I don’t have a good history together. Guam was our port of call back when I was piloting submersibles for the United States Navy. It’s also where Mac and I nearly died trying to pr
ove the Megalodon had surfaced after your brother was killed.”
“You’re being silly. Come on, I need to get off this plane and stretch my legs.”
Jonas paused, not wanting to admit his real fear to his wife. Instead, he followed her down the steps to the tarmac—
—and into the embrace of Dulce Lunardon. “Mrs. T, oh my God, can you believe we’re all in Guam? Mr. T—”
“Don’t call me Mr. T; Jonas is fine. What are you doing here? Is David with you?”
“Do you think he’d actually leave his pet for more than a day? As for me, I arrived last night in a C-5 cargo plane.”
“Carrying what?”
“I can’t tell you, Mr.… Jonas. I had to sign all these confidentiality papers.”
Terry smiled sweetly. “Dulce, do you still wish to marry my son?”
“Okay, okay. Sting Ray subs … three of them. All outfitted with some serious weaponry.”
“And why are you here?”
“I don’t know. I’m assuming they need me to train their sub pilots.”
The helicopter’s overhead rotors started revolving, and the captain signaled them to board.
Jonas helped his wife into the sixteen-seat passenger cabin, their luggage already stowed in back.
The Chinese copilot joined them, offering each of them a hot towel and beverage, then a set of headphones. “You’ll need these to hear. It’s a quick twenty-minute flight—Dr. Hon is excited to meet you.”
Terry squeezed Jonas’s hand, cutting him off. “And we are looking forward to meeting him.”
* * *
They flew east over the island before following the coastline to the north. For a brief moment Andersen Air Force Base appeared in the distance, and then the view turned to a stretch of deep blue as far as the eye could see.
