MEG: Nightstalkers (33 page)

With the current fading on his starboard flank, Jonas flew the sub along the bottom, searching for a soft landing spot. Easing up on the Manta’s dual pump-jet propulsion units, he allowed the neutrally buoyant vessel’s belly to come to rest on an open patch of sea floor surrounded by sea urchins.

The digital clock on his console read 04:36. “
Manta-Four
to
McFarland
.”

“Go ahead, Jonas.”

“Terry, we located the subglacial river. Any sign of the whale?”

“Negative. It’s still off the grid.”

“Acknowledged.” Settling back in his seat, Jonas closed his eyes, the sound of rushing water soothing his frayed nerves.

*   *   *

“Just came on screen two-point-six kilometers due north of sonar buoy eight. Jonas, do you read me?”

“Huh?” Jonas opened his eyes, repositioning the fallen headset over his ears. “Two-point-six kilometers from buoy eight … acknowledged.” Turning to Zachary, he punched the sleeping marine biologist on his left shoulder.

“Oww. Whit was that for?”

“You fell asleep.”

“So did ye!”

“True, but I’m older than you. Check your sonar, the whale’s on the grid.”

“Got him. He’s thirteen kilometers due west, heading straight for us.” Zach pointed to the cockpit glass. “I think we picked up a few stragglers.”

Jonas looked up, surprised to find the cockpit’s entire field of vision obscured by red and orange starfish. “Damn it.”

“Can ye get rid of them?”

“Sure, I’ll just roll down the window and pluck them off one at a time.”

Zach shrugged. “I thought maybe the Manta had a windshield wiper.”

“Just keep an eye on your damn whale.” Pressing down on both foot pedals, Jonas accelerated away from the sea floor, attempting to shake the invertebrates loose.

To his horror the creatures remained suctioned to the Lexan glass.

“Son of a bitch, these things are glued on.”

“The whale jist passed sonar buoy thirteen. He’s less than eight kilometers away.”

“Hold on.” Whipping the sub 180 degrees to starboard, Jonas listened for the rush of water generated by the subglacial river. Locating the current, he aimed the bow of the sub into the intense sixteen knot stream, the blast of sea prying loose a cluster of starfish, leaving less than a third of the cockpit glass still obscured.

“Jonas, I lost him.”

“What do you mean, you lost him?”

“He passed sonar buoy fourteen and disappeared off the screen.”

“Christ, he’s under the ice shelf.” Banking to starboard, Jonas pulled the Manta out of the current and accelerated beneath the ceiling of ice. “So much for your theory about the whale using the subglacial river as a reference point. You Ivy League eggheads … you always think you’re right.”

“For the record, I played Division I football in college, jist like ye did.”

“You’re comparing Penn State’s football program to Princeton? Please.”

“Ah yes, forgive me. At an Ivy League school, we actually have academic requirements.” Zach winced as the sub barely missed scraping a jutting section of ice. “Okay, so I was wrong about the whale. But if ye stay close tae the river we should run right intae him.”

“Let’s not take a chance. Go active on sonar.”

“Go active?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“No. It’s jist—these whales, they become extremely agitated when you start pinging.”

“And I get extremely agitated when I have to fly an unstable sub beneath a mile and a half of ice without my anxiety pills. Now do your job and find that fucking fish …
mammal—
I know!”

Zach switched the sonar controls from passive to active and pressed a green button, causing a loud sonic
ping
to reverberate from beneath the sub’s prow.

“Nothing yet. Wait … there he is. Three kilometers tae the southwest on course two-two-seven. He’s ahead of us, heading right for the current.”

“Continuous pinging. See if you can bring him to us.”

Zach started to object, then thought better of it.

PING … PING … PING …

“We’ve got its attention. He jist altered his course to intercept. Two kilometers and closing fast.”

Zzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

The burst of sound rattled the sub’s cockpit like a giant tuning fork.

“What the hell was that?”

“Echolocation. We’re not the only ones that can go active on sonar. He jist closed tae one kilometer. How do ye intend on tagging him now that he kens we’re here?”

Jonas reduced the sub’s speed to eight knots. “How about one right between the eyes on that big square head of his. Should be like tossing a football through a truck tire.”

“Only this truck tire wants tae eat ye. Three hundred meters.”

Jonas flipped the safety on the harpoon gun with his left hand, fingering the trigger as he stared into the olive-green abyss.

Then he saw it, and the sheer size of the creature caused his heart to race.

The squared-off head bearing down on them was as large and as wide as a three-story barn. Charcoal-gray on top, it faded into lighter shades of silver; its lower jaw and belly ivory-white. The whale’s entire body undulated as it swam, its head rising as its lower torso and fluke completed a powerful downstroke, its skull dropping below the hump midway down its back as its tail rose. From this angle Jonas could not gauge the bull’s length, but it was moving at a speed in excess of twenty knots.

Christ, it’s faster than the Manta.…

Cursing Zachary’s decision to use the laser-laden sub, Jonas accelerated at the charging beast.

Sensing its approaching prey, the Miocene sperm whale rolled onto its left flank, opening its formidable mouth to feed.

For a frightening moment the whale disappeared from Jonas’s view behind a cluster of starfish. Quickly adjusting his course to compensate, he targeted the gyrating head, allowing the massive skull to fill his partially obstructed field of vision.

“Sixty meters…”

“God, what a brute. Hey, that’s a good name—Brutus.”

“Naming the whale isn’t important right now.” Zach clenched his arm rests. “Forty meters … thirty. Jonas, that’s close enough!”

Jonas waited another three seconds before squeezing the trigger and banking hard to starboard.

Twice as thick as an arrow, the barbed spear exploded out of the gun barrel at sixty knots. With a puff of black blood the tag struck the whale two feet below its blowhole, the shaft’s remote sensors buried within the thick blubber ten inches deep.

The sting was barely perceived by the enraged cetacean. The eighty-foot
Livyatan melvillei
snapped its lower jaw upon empty sea even as its left eye caught sight of its escaping prey.

Jonas fought to regain control of the sub, the one gee maneuver shaking the Manta while nearly snapping the steel support bands securing the port laser to the sub’s wing.

Zachary opened his eyes. “We’re still alive?”

“For the moment.”

Zzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

“It’s chasing us?”

“And here’s more bad news—it’s faster than us.” Jonas’s eyes jumped from the partially obstructed view of the bottom of the ice sheet to the aft camera monitor where the Miocene whale was bearing down on the Manta like a bat out of hell.

“It’ll be dawn soon. Can ye make it out of here?”

“We’re heading south, the exit’s north. Sharp turns are off the menu; I nearly lost one of the
Valkyries
on that last maneuver. Gradual turns and we lose ground—ah, crap, hold on!”

Jonas veered to starboard a heartbeat before the bull whale clamped its jaws on the port wing.

“Ye realize this is a losing battle.”

“No shit, Sherlock. I’m open to suggestions.”

Zach closed his eyes, deep in thought. “Enter the river.”

“The river runs north, I told you we’re heading south.” Jonas banked hard to port, the gnashing jaws of the enraged whale forcing him into a thirty-degree turn, the sub reverberating behind the torque.

“There, now we’re heading east.”

“Stay on this course. When you reach the subglacial river, enter the current and head south.”

“Into a sixteen-knot current? You’re crazy.”

“Just listen. The sub’s far more hydrodynamic than the whale; the force of the current will not only cut its speed in half, it’ll wear it down. We can open up some distance, then double back when we can.”

“Okay, that sounds semi-intelligent. Where’s the river?”

“Less than a kilometer ahead.”

Eying the charging whale in his aft camera, Jonas banked to starboard, resuming his trek to the south.

“Jonas, I jist told ye tae stay on course.”

“Let me do the driving, Mr. Peabody. If we enter that river from the east that current will tear us apart. I need to ease my way in.”

“Okay, that sounds semi-intelligent—for a Penn State graduate. Jonas, watch out!”

The Miocene whale suddenly lunged forward, its teeth biting down on the tail section of the Manta. For a brief second the sub reverberated and slowed until the radio antennae snapped off in the
Livyatan melvillei
’s mouth.

A
whoosh
of current filled Jonas’s headphones. Edging his sub to port, he felt the current rippling along the wing. Continuously tapping the joystick, he managed to immerse the Manta into the subglacial river, its boundary as wide as a six-lane highway.

A glance in the aft monitor revealed the whale had followed them in. Battered by the current, the aging bull had to fight twice as hard just to maintain its pace. As Jonas watched, the creature fell behind, eventually disappearing from view.

Zach turned and punched Jonas on the right shoulder.

“What was that for?”

“That was for all us Ivy League student athletes who had tae put up with comments from dumb jocks like you.”

“Hey, I graduated with a three-point … oh shit!” Jonas veered the Manta to port, slicing his way across the subglacial river as the left side of the whale’s enormous head suddenly appeared outside the current.

Unable to reach the sub, the goliath beast was forced to reenter the river and was immediately pummeled by the intensity of the forty-meter-wide stream.

Shooting out the other side of the current, Jonas maintained his southerly course, distancing the Manta from the still-immersed
Livyatan melvillei
. When the whale left the current to pursue, Jonas reentered, slicing his way back across the vortex, exiting out the opposite side. This repeated maneuver enraged the beast while wearing it down.

After ten minutes the exhausted cetacean had had enough. Breaking free of the current, it disappeared from view.

Zach continued pinging until the whale was beyond the range of sonar.

Jonas kept the sub east of the river. The starfish were gone, the cockpit view revealing a noticeable narrowing of the gap between the bottom of the ice sheet and the sea floor.

Without warning, the passage dead-ended at a wall of ice.

Jonas eased up on the propulsors. The subglacial river had curved to the southwest, the cockpit’s night-vision glass revealing a narrowing passage that faded into darkness.

“Zach?”

“Looks like we’ve reached the end of the Ronne Ice Shelf. The passage must lead inland until it connects with Lake Ellsworth. I suggest we head east for a while longer jist tae make sure we don’t cross paths with Brutus before we exit tae the north.”

“Fine by me. Is the tag working?”

“The tag … I completely forgot.” Removing his laptop from a storage pouch, Zach powered up the unit and scrolled through the data being uploaded by the tag’s sensors.

“Well?”

“Good news. The trace minerals pumping out of the geothermal vents in Lake Vostok are absent from Brutus’s blood gases. The whale’s never been tae Vostok.”

“So everything’s good?”

Zach smiled. “Everything’s good.”

The loud warning
beep … beep … beep
from sonar wiped the smile from the Scot’s face. “It’s coming at us from the east. Jonas, move!”

Jonas stamped down on his right foot pedal while jamming the joystick hard to the left, sending the submersible into a tight turn to port as the
Livyatan melvillei
’s enormous head bloomed out of the olive-green darkness.

There was no other option. A gauntlet of ice lay before them, with the Miocene whale bearing down on them from the east, its angle and speed cutting off any chance of escaping to the north.

Pressing both pump-jet propulsion pedals to the floor, Jonas aimed the Manta down the throat of the subglacial river … into oblivion.

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