MEG: Nightstalkers (30 page)

“If that’s true and the events coming down the pike thirteen days from now all take place at the Amery Ice Shelf, why are we in the Weddell Sea?”

“Good question. We’re here tae insure nothing happens that might cause things tae revert back tae that March third reality. Ye see, altering the past is like diverting a river—sometimes it works and sometimes the river over-compensates farther downstream—in this case from the Amery Ice Shelf in East Antarctica tae the Ronne Ice Shelf in West Antarctica. Whit hasn’t changed is that the bad guys still want tae find out whit’s causing the magnetic disturbances in Lake Vostok. The difference between now and then is my actions back then led them tae believe Vostok could be accessed from the Amery Ice Shelf. My mission to Vostok never happened, but they’re still looking for an access route to investigate the lake. Unfortunately, last summer’s collapse of the Ronne Ice Shelf may have provided them with one. The answer lies in that whale’s bloodstream.”

“Which is the real reason you had Mac outfit our subs with
Valkyrie
lasers and load all those sonar buoys aboard the
McFarland
. It had nothing to do with the
Liopleurodon
, or helping bring David back to California.”

“Not true. In fact, both David and that monster may play an important cause and effect role on March third.”

“Why? What role did they play the last time?” Jonas felt his pulse quicken. “Your recurring nightmare … David died in that alternative reality of yours, didn’t he? That’s why I agreed to pilot the Manta into Vostok—to allow you an opportunity to reset the clock and alter the present—this present!”

“Stay calm—”

“Answer the question. Am I right?”

“Yes. But we’re here now and things have changed.”

“Bullshit. You won’t know that until after March third.”

“True, but I’ve taken precautions.”

“Like what? Having me install air bags in the Manta’s pilot consoles?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not enough. I want my kid off that tanker!”

“Jonas, that’s extremely dangerous. These events aren’t random, ye have tae let them play out or the butterfly effect can lead tae a hurricane. David’s safe for now. We need tae deploy sonar buoys around the Ronne Ice Shelf and hope we can locate and tag that Miocene whale. Meanwhile we’ll continue tae monitor the
Tonga
. If they head east after the
Liopleurodon
, then we make way for the Amery Ice Shelf; if they head west then we wait here in the Weddell Sea. Either way, we’ll be there when it counts.”

24

Friday Harbor, Orcas Island
Salish Sea

Jennifer Marentic, president of the Salish Sea Association of Marine Naturalists took her place at the podium before a small assembly of board members, guests, and three news crews.

“Members of the board, honored guests, and my fellow naturalists … I have been asked by Nick Van Sicklen, head of the Whale Museum as well as our county manager, to assess the damage the two juvenile adult Megalodons are rendering unto our southern resident killer whales. The purpose of this investigation will be used to determine if marine sanctuary laws can be bypassed under an invasive species clause, allowing officials to kill the two Megalodon siblings. I asked Seth Bowling to complete this investigation, comparing annual orca sightings over the last ten years with this year’s activities, including any deaths directly or indirectly caused by the Megs. Seth?”

The sixty-two-year-old environmentalist and semi-retired aquaculture engineer exchanged places with Jennifer at the dais. “Resident killer whales, known as J-clan, are subdivided into J, K, and L pods. Nine members of K-pod were killed by these two Megalodon sharks six weeks ago. Since the attack the surviving members of K-pod have relocated to the Strait of Juan de Fuca along with J- and L-pod members. Sightings around Vancouver Island are up; sightings around the San Juan Islands non-existent. There have been no other documented attacks by the Megs on resident orca.

“Does this lone attack justify exterminating two juvenile females belonging to a species once believed extinct? An invasive species is defined as an organism, either a plant, animal, fungus, or bacterium, that is not native and has negative effects on our economy, our environment, or our health. There are other people present in this room that are far more qualified to address the Megalodon’s negative effect on our economy, so my comments will be restricted to the resident killer whales. The absence of our three orca pods around the San Juan Islands certainly affects tourism as well as the health of the Salish Sea, however it must be noted that the resident orca population has experienced a substantial decline over the last decade. This decline can be attributed to three variables.

“Variable one is changes affecting the orca’s local food source. Ninety-five percent of our resident killer whales’ diet consists of chinook. This species of salmon, specifically those spawning in the Fraser River area, are in a steep decline.

“The second variable is toxicity passed from the chinook to the killer whales. Chinook feed on Cherry Point herring which spawn at sea in the winter and then migrate in the spring to fresh water estuaries. These estuaries are now being exposed to thousands of tons of coal dust, the poisonous residue of which is being generated by the fifty million tons of coal exported every year from our ports. The coal contaminates the herring, the herring contaminate the chinook, and the chinook poison the resident orca population.

“The third variable affecting our killer whale population is noise pollution. Coal and crude oil exports are expanding rapidly. With upwards of twenty new coal and crude oil terminals and refineries being proposed in Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, the problem will only grow worse. Rapid expansion has led to more tanker and bulk carrier traffic. These immense carriers cruise past the San Juan Islands every day. Orca vocalizations are essential for hunting and the noise generated by these vessels reduces the whales’ range of communication by sixty-eight percent.

“It is the shared opinion among Salish Sea marine biologists that the variables of toxicity and noise pollution would have caused the resident orca population to go extinct within the next five to seven years. Ironically, by occupying the San Juan Island shipping channels and driving the pods out to sea, the two Megalodons may have actually saved the local killer whale population from extinction.”

Aboard the Hopper-Dredge
McFarland
Ronne Ice Shelf, Weddell Sea

The sheer white cliffs towered five hundred feet over the Weddell Sea, the convergent point where water met ice bathing the coastline a brilliant emerald green.

The remains of the Ronne Ice Shelf were separated from the Filchner Ice Shelf by a three-thousand-foot rise known as Berkner Island. Together, the two plateaus still accounted for more than 83,000 square miles of ice, but the loss due to climate change had raised global sea levels by a frightening five centimeters.

Jonas Taylor and his wife stood before the starboard bay windows in the control room, gazing at the spectacle of Mother Nature.

“Cyel Reed is rigging Zach’s device to the prow of the Manta. It’s a powerful harpoon gun that will tag the whale while analyzing its blood and tissue samples. The data is downloaded to his laptop—one quick shot and we’re out of there before Moby Dick even knows what happened.”

“One quick shot … only you have to travel fifty miles beneath the ice shelf to take it. You quit trying to recapture Bela and Lizzy because it was so dangerous, now you’re right back at it again.”

“What do you want me to do, Terry? Tell Zach I’m backing out?”

“Tell him we came here to find our son, not to hunt whales.”

“The
Tonga
hasn’t arrived in Antarctic waters yet, and Zach has eyes and ears aboard the tanker. The moment we know where the Lio is headed we’ll set sail to intercept. But if what Zach says is true—”

“You don’t honestly believe that crazy story about the two of you being in Lake Vostok?”

“I don’t know. Zach’s admittedly a strange bird—”

“He’s certifiable.”

“Maybe. But he’s also quite brilliant. This entire episode with David—he’s always been two moves ahead. And I think it all ties in with Vostok.”

Pulling Terry aside, he lowered his voice to a level just above a whisper. “Seven years ago, when Zach came to us asking for seed money to start up his solar energy company, I initially turned him down. I had three experts study his designs and business plan and all three said there was nothing special about his thermal collector specs. Mac agreed. It made no sense to us that one of the world’s best known marine biologists would suddenly throw everything away to build a solar plant in the Scottish Highlands, of all places.

“Zach wasn’t surprised that we turned him down, in fact he was expecting it. He asked to meet in private, then showed us something else—a small device the size of a hockey puck. He had Mac shut down power to the office complex and then plugged the device into a wall socket. Suddenly everything worked again—at least it did for about twenty minutes until the adaptor short-circuited. The unit was just a prototype for a clean energy technology that channeled negatively-charged electrons in the air into a positively-charged core, creating a magnetic field which spun three sets of internal rotors. He called the technology zero-point energy and said that even a small device like the prototype could provide enough electricity to power the entire institute for a hundred years. He explained that the solar plant was a necessary ruse to keep the powers-that-be from shutting him down.”

“You mean the fossil fuel industry?”

“I mean the powers that run everything—the oil companies, the banks, the military industrial complex. A clean, free source of energy would flip the world’s economy on its head.

“Zach was extremely paranoid, but the device was impressive and back then the institute had money to burn. Instead of putting up the seed money we decided to fund the entire plant in Drumnadrochit and became his silent partner. Here’s the kicker—when I asked him what he was going to call these miraculous new devices, he said the
Vostok
, then quickly coughed and re-pronounced the name as Voltec before asking my feedback on a dozen other names.”

“You’re saying he slipped up.”

“Like a government informant given a new identity who accidentally introduces himself using his old name. Zach’s not a guy who makes these kind of mistakes, which is why I still remember it. To answer your question, I don’t know what’s in Lake Vostok, nor do I want to know, but yeah, I think he was there, which means that maybe I was there, but only because David was somehow involved in the equation. If finding this ancient whale safeguards our son from something that may or may not happen on March third … well, then call me Ahab.”

Terry eyed her husband. “I know that look, Jonas Taylor. You’re thinking about capturing this creature and bringing it back to the institute.”

“Terry, we’re after a tissue sample—”

“Then why are you tagging it?”

“Okay, fine. If this thing is real, then capturing it serves two purposes—it removes a predator from these waters and resurrects the institute. Think about it—your father’s whale lagoon would finally get its whale.”

“It does have a nice sense of closure to it. But how would we even get it into the hopper?”

“Paul Agricola showed me a way. By draining the tank and opening the keel hatch above the whale, the suction would inhale it straight up into the hopper. The problem is sedating it. Angel breathed the phenobarbital that was injected in the water through her gills. The whale’s an air-breather. We’d have to figure out how to—”

The ship’s navigator approached. “Excuse me, Dr. Taylor, but we’ve arrived at the first sonar buoy drop zone.”

“Are there any other ships in the immediate area?”

“No, sir.”

“How long will it take us to deploy all thirty-five buoys?”

“Sixteen hours. The sonar array will cover approximately one hundred and eighty miles of coastline along the southernmost tip of the ice shelf that parallels Lake Ellsworth.”

“Commence deployment. Oh, and ask the captain to drain the hopper-dredge.”

“Yes, sir.”

Jonas turned to his wife. “Looks like we have sixteen hours to kill. Any ideas, Mrs. Taylor?”

Terry hooked her arm around her husband’s waist. “Why don’t we go to our stateroom; I could sure use a back rub.”

Coulman Island
Ross Sea, Antarctica

Located in the Ross Sea, Coulman Island is an eighteen-mile-long, eight-mile-wide landmass composed of overlapping shield volcanoes. Flat craters share the geology with cinder cones that rise thirty-six hundred feet. A caldera occupies the southern end of the island, its magma chamber situated more than two thousand feet below the surface.

Emperor penguins inhabit the coast, the curious birds avoiding the northern section of the island where the landmass meets the Ross Ice Shelf. In another month the frozen land bridge would thin and break apart, yielding to the sea. For now it remained thick enough to support a base camp that housed scientists, technicians, and researchers from the International Antarctic Geological Drilling (ANDRILL) Program. A fleet of vehicles and two cranes mounted to tractor trailers had traversed the ice sheet from the American research station at McMurdo Sound, transporting enough equipment and supplies to support a small army. Two platforms towered above the camp, their hot water drills having melted access holes through the eight-foot-thick ice sheet.