MEG: Nightstalkers (38 page)

Jonas surfaced the sub. Zach aimed the flashlight’s beam into the dark orifice overhead, illuminating a hideous clawed beak inside the giant squid’s mouth.

Two of the eight massive roots animated from beneath the ice sheet. Thick and powerful, these sucker-lined appendages aided the cephalopod’s tentacles in securing the three hundred pound manta ray. Gripping the captured animal by its two wings, it tore the creature’s torso in half, its bloody innards falling out of its body into the lake, splattering across the sub’s cockpit.

Through the blotched Lexan glass, Jonas saw one of the squid’s thicker arms shove half its meal into its mouth, the giant squid’s beak tearing into the succulent meat.

Hundreds of centipedes scrambled inside the feeding orifice, fighting over the scraps.

Jonas felt queasy. He adjusted his air vent to blow on his face, then reached into the refrigerated compartment beneath his seat for a bottled water and bag of trail mix.

“All right, professor? Did you see what you needed to see?” Jonas turned to Zach, who was staring at his sonar monitor. “What is it?”

“I dinnae ken, but the manta rays are taking off like bats out of hell.”

Zzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

The burst of echolocation rattled the sub’s cockpit, causing both pilots’ pulses to race.

Jonas strapped himself back in his harness. “Where is he?”

Zach traced the location of the whale on his sonar array. “He’s about a mile tae the southwest and he’s not alone—his acoustics painted three smaller adults and two juveniles.”

“Sounds like Brutus has himself a harem. You think he knows it’s us?”

Zzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

“I would say he kens. Follow the mantas. Maybe we can lose him in the crowd.”

Jonas submerged, accelerating after the school of rays. “What happened to that brilliant plan of yours to escape through the ice sheet?”

“Take a look around—haven’t ye noticed how dark it’s become? The ice squid, or whatever the hell those things are, retracted their tentacles the moment they registered Brutus’s echolocation.”

Jonas looked around. Zachary was right; Lake Ellsworth had vanished into pitch darkness, the bioluminescent impulses gone.

*   *   *

At eighty-two feet and a hundred tons, the Miocene bull sperm whale remained the unchallenged authority of Lake Ellsworth. Over the last four decades it had sired twenty-three offspring with seven different cows in three subglacial lakes. Adhering to the lake’s population limits, it had forced itself into exile, spending the last few mating seasons wandering through subglacial rivers, awaiting death.

The collapse of the Ronne Ice Shelf had opened a new world to the sixty-three-year-old predator. Endowed with the largest, most complex brain on Earth, it had adapted easily to open water and was progressively exploring the Weddell Sea. Sunlight did not affect its eyes—the sub-species of
Livyatan melvillei
that had survived the last ice age had borne their young blind for more than twelve million years, however the ultraviolet rays did irritate its hide, limiting its exposure to surface waters during the day. Having come across a pod of modern-day sperm whales, it had chased off a mature silver-headed bull and supplanted him as the dominant male. Twice in the last week it had returned to its adopted family, impregnating two of their cows.

The Miocene sperm whale’s unexpected encounter with the strange life form during its return trip beneath the ice sheet had set the bull off. Instinctively, it had recognized the submersible as a threat. Now, its presence in its own roost was not only a direct challenge to the male’s authority, it placed the safety of its brood in question.

Bearing down on the sub, the dominant bull would not allow it to escape.

*   *   *

“Jonas, the whale’s gaining on us; it’s closed tae within a hundred yards.”

“Go active, ping the hell out of this place. Find me that river, some shallows … anything.”

Zach hit the sonar array’s green button, causing three loud sonic
pings
to reverberate from beneath the sub’s prow. “There’s some kind of landmass up ahead. Maybe there’s a beach?”

“I don’t want to beach, I want shallows.”

Zach set off three more pings. “Forty yards tae starboard; can ye hear wave variations in your headset? It might be an inlet.”

Jonas forced himself to focus in on the acoustics, catching a hollow echo of sound. “You might be right; hold on.”

Powering on the sub’s exterior lights, Jonas veered hard to starboard, following the targeted area on his sonar screen.

Appearing up ahead was a city block-long gauntlet of volcanic rock—no shallows, nothing resembling an inlet. And then he saw it—a dark crevasse that was either a natural split between two rock formations or the entrance to an underwater cave.

Accelerating toward the fissure, he realized—too late—that the passage was less than half the width of his submersible.

Zzzzzzzzzzt. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

The strength behind the acoustic barrage ended any internal debate. Rolling the Manta onto its port wing, Jonas shot the sub sideways through the rift, fully expecting to smash bow-first into rock.

The starboard wing scraped basalt, the Manta jarred roughly as one of the pump-jet propulsors was sheared away from the sub’s undercarriage—and then night ignited into day as the ship’s exterior lights refracted off the walls and ceiling of an underwater grotto.

Jonas pulled his feet away from the propulsor pedals and rolled the sub level again just in time to veer away from a cavern wall.

Before he could steal a breath, a monstrous force struck the cave entrance, unleashing a thunderous reverberation that caused baseball-size rocks to rain inside their refuge.

Jonas banked away from another wall, spinning the sub around so that it now faced the cave entrance—the narrow passage blocked by the Miocene whale’s enormous head.

“Don’t move, Brutus, stay right where you are,” Jonas whispered, powering on the
Valkyrie
lasers.

“J.T., whit are ye doing?”

“Just teaching our friend a lesson on what happens when you mess with the wrong sailor.”

Zachary grabbed his right hand as he reached for the joystick. “You’ll kill him.”

“It’s him or us, now let go of my hand.”

“Fine, jist tell me the truth so we can set the record straight—are ye a marine paleobiologist dedicated tae preserving extant life forms or are ye still a disgruntled navy submersible pilot with a thirty-five-year-old chip on yer shoulder? Because the Jonas Taylor I thought I ken would find any way he could tae avoid slaughtering a majestic creature like this.”

Jonas shut down the lasers. “Listen. Do you hear that cavitating sound? That’s what’s left of our starboard propeller. Look at your life support gauges; we’re down to our last six hours of air. You like this cave? That whale may just end up burying us in here. You want to question my motives, start by questioning your own. Why are we here, Zachary? We’re here because you told me some crazy story about a mission to Lake Vostok that never happened. We’re here because you needed my help, warning me that my son’s life was in danger. If it’s between my son and that Miocene nightmare then—”

“Try backing it off. Scorch its hide if ye must … give it a painful burn but don’t press the
Valkyrie
tae its flesh or ye’ll kill it. Trust me on this.”

“Trust you? You’re a hypocrite, do you know that? Last week you were prepared to kill this animal in order to protect your little Vostok secret. What changed?”

“Ye’re right. Having lived through it, I guess I forgot everything I learned.” Zachary laid his head back. “The last time we went through this together—ye ken, my crazy Vostok story—the bad guys ended up slaughtering an entire pod of these Miocene whales. Seeing what ye were about tae do, I realized that we’re supposed tae be better than this … not jist me and ye, but mankind … humanity. It’s a lesson I had learned before but forgot until this very moment; that at the end of the day our survival as a species may jist come down tae whether or not we respect the rights of other species tae live. God, listen tae me, I sound like a bloody Disney character.”

Jonas weighed his friend’s words. “All right, Donald Duck, we’ll try it your way.” Restarting the Valkyires, Jonas rolled the sub onto its port wing and inched forward, guiding the Manta slowly out of the passage.

The heat from the lasers set the water to boil, blistering the whale’s exposed hide.

The creature retreated, allowing the sub to exit.

Once outside the cave, Jonas righted his vessel, keeping the Manta’s prow ten feet from the bull’s silver-gray head. Growing more agitated, but unable to devour its searing-hot prey, the whale swam from side to side like a caged tiger as it attempted to circumnavigate the lasers’ intense heat.

Jonas waited it out, refusing to allow the creature to get around the sub’s prow even as he was forced to compensate for his damaged starboard propeller.

After several minutes of cat and mouse maneuvers, the frustrated beast swam off.

Zach breathed a sigh of relief. “See now? Dinnae that feel good?”

“It’ll feel good when we’re back on board the
McFarland
, now stop yapping like a woman and find that river leading us out of here.”

29

Ross Sea

A neon-green ribbon of light snaked across the midnight sky, the aurora reflecting off the Manta’s cockpit as it was hauled out of the dark sea onto the trawler’s stern ramp.

David Taylor opened the Lexan hatch. For several minutes the twenty-one-year-old pilot simply breathed in the frigid Antarctic air, exhausted from having completed a nine-hour game of cat and mouse with the
Liopleurodon
and its offspring.

He glanced over at Jackie, who was being lifted out of her side of the cockpit by two members of the
Dubai Land
crew. The marine biologist deserved credit for having learned how to operate the sub on short notice, but passing a crash course on a simulator and repeatedly being chased by a hundred-and-twenty-foot pliosaur as they attempted to herd it out from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf were two different things. For forty minutes Jackie had screamed and cursed-out David until she was hoarse; twice vomiting into a sea-sick container. After her third valium, she had mercifully passed out.

The experience reminded David of one of his Uncle Mac’s funnier military stories. While stationed at the U.S. naval base in Guam, the brash chopper pilot was approached by the pretty aide of a visiting congressman, who was looking to boost her boss’s “tough guy” image for an upcoming election. Mac negotiated a date with the woman in exchange for a thirty minute helicopter flight for the politician and his film crew. But the congressman turned out to be a “chicken-hawk,” his brash pro-war stances in Washington conflicting with his wealthy family’s influence, which had exempted him from the draft. Nothing bothered Mac more than a hypocrite. In David’s godfather’s words, “on our first aerial maneuver the southern boy screamed, on the second he puked across the dashboard. By the time we landed he was passed out cold. Unfortunately, the aide turned out to be his niece so I didn’t get laid, but I did get it on with the Filipino nurse who treated him at the base hospital.”

Monty approached, his friend handing him a ski jacket and wool hat as they watched Jackie being led inside. “Don’t feel bad; eighty-nine percent of couples surveyed report damaged relationships as a result of insensitive or inappropriate use of technology. From the look of things, I’m guessing you won’t be getting laid tonight.”

“Nice to see you, too. Where’s bin Rashidi?”

“Aboard the
Tonga
, waiting for you to debrief him. Is it true the Lio gave birth to a Lio Junior?”

“It’s true. And just like a momma croc, she’s extremely protective of it. What are you doing aboard the trawler; I thought you were sick?”

He nodded to a cameraman filming them from across the deck. “Can’t afford to miss my reality show bonus. Come, our chariot awaits.”

Monty led them to a cargo net spread out across the middeck.

A steel cable rose nine stories overhead, threaded to one of the supertanker’s winches. Standing back to back in the middle of the net, they waited for a crewman to take up the slack.

Seconds later they were rising along the
Tonga
’s starboard flank inside their makeshift elevator.

*   *   *

Commander Molony greeted David with a bear hug as he entered the bridge. “Outstanding job, kid. How was Jackie? Rock-steady, I’ll bet.”

“Absolutely. The last few hours—I barely heard a peep out of her. Where’s the Lio?”

“She’s moving east, following the coast. We’ve taken up positions to the south, keeping her from escaping into open water.”

Fiesal bin Rashidi entered the chamber, announcing himself by blowing his nose into a paper towel. “Six months we’ve chased this devil. Today was another wasted opportunity.”

“Not at all,” Liam Molony said. “In order to have a chance to capture the Lio we first had to locate the monster and then flush it out from beneath the ice sheet. David accomplished both tasks in half a day—tasks that could have taken weeks, perhaps months. Even better news—the Lio gave birth to an offspring. Fiesal, we don’t need to capture the monster; only its pup.”

“I don’t want the pup without the mother!” The tirade sent him into a coughing fit, which ended with the engineer spitting into another paper towel. “David, you know this creature better than anyone. Be honest—can it be captured or are we wasting our time?”

David looked into his employer’s dark, fever-ridden eyes. “The adult is exhausted, that gives us a fighting chance. Plus she definitely doesn’t like the Manta. If we can drive her into the shallows, I think we can net her.”

“How?”

He turned to Commander Molony. “Under the ice, I got a good feel for the momma Lio’s speed. When she chased me and I ran fast she gave up the chase pretty quickly. But when I allowed her to feel like she could catch me, I got her to follow me a good mile.