MEG: Nightstalkers (21 page)

“Oh God, David, don’t do it!”

One hundred meters …

Fifty meters … thirty—

“David!”

“Stop pinging … now!”

The muscles in the Lio’s neck and back flexed to engulf its prey—its jaws snapping together on empty sea as David rolled the sub to port, shooting sideways past the creature’s lower jowl and fluttering gill slits.

Before he could catch a breath the pliosaur’s left forelimb occupied his entire field of vision, forcing him to continue the barrel roll until they were inverted, soaring over the creature’s tail.

David righted the sub.

Tina leaned over and punched his right shoulder. “You sick son of a bitch. You actually had me thinking you were going to pull a move like your old man.”

“Maybe I was.”

She checked her sonar, then quickly spun around, looking behind them. “Oh, hell.”

David turned around—shocked to see the
Liopleurodon
had already reversed its course and was in pursuit less than fifty yards behind them.

Ping … ping … ping.

The disturbance was coming from the north.

Confused, the Lio snapped its jaws to the right and left, then arched its back into a rapid turn, homing in on the other Manta.

*   *   *

Gregg Hendley continued pinging, each acoustic blast repainting his target, which was closing fast. “Nine hundred meters … seven hundred—come on, kid! Where’s the reciprocation?”

Ping … ping … ping.

The infuriated animal snapped blindly at empty sea before contorting back to the south.

*   *   *

David banked into a tight 180-degree turn and roll to the south while Tina worked the radio. “
Manta-One
to
DB-I
; we’ve engaged the Lio … where’s the goddam nets?”

“This is Molony. First trawl net has been deployed. Net float depth is set at two hundred feet. We are six minutes away on course three-five-two.”

David jammed both foot pedals to the floor, maintaining his four-hundred-meter lead over the Lio.

“David, she’s slowing. Twenty knots. Fifteen.”

“Blast her again.”

Ping … ping … ping.

The pliosaur made a brief rush in the direction of the sub, then turned away, heading southeast.

David went after her, coming up on her right hind flipper doing twenty-two knots.

“One ping … now.”

“You’re insane.” Tina pressed the button.

The acoustic blast sent the Lio’s head twisting around, its jaws snapping blindly at the annoying creature, which was already darting over its left hind flipper, sending it into a painful contortion.

The Manta raced to the north, David matching the fatigued monster’s speed, keeping its interest by maintaining only a thirty-meter lead.

“Tina, where’s the net?”

“Two-point-seven kilometers on this course.” She read his expression. “Sorry … a little over a mile. But we’re still too deep.”

“I don’t want the trawler scaring her off. We need to keep her attention while ascending to the mouth of the net, while giving us enough escape room so we don’t end up getting trapped in there with her. Start calling out our depth and distance … in
English
. My brain can’t handle the metric system.”

Unbuckling his harness, he sat sideways in his seat, piloting the sub while facing backwards. Alternating foot pedals with his right foot, he sent the Manta lurching from port to starboard and back again while easing up on his velocity, allowing the Lio to close the gap to twenty meters.

The
Liopleurodon
snapped at its prey, too preoccupied to be distracted by the surface ship approaching from the south at three knots.

“Two hundred yards, depth is four hundred and twenty feet.”

David focused on the creature’s mouth, noting how the Lio’s jaws widened prior to each lunge.

“One hundred and fifty yards, depth is three-zero-five feet.”

Pulling back on the joystick, he increased his angle of ascent—his right foot slipping off the starboard propulsion pedal, the port engine sending the sub slicing sideways toward the pliosaur’s open mouth!

Tina screamed as David stamped down hard with his right foot, managing to catch the edge of the pedal just enough to send the ship whipping back to port a split second before the creature’s fourteen inch fangs could close on the Manta’s acrylic skin.

“What the hell?”

“Sorry.” Facing forward, David targeted a faint outline of floats, which marked the trawl net’s upper lip.

“Seventy yards. Depth is two-two-seven feet. Thirty yards, two-zero-nine feet. Pull up!”

He pulled back on the joystick—momentarily forgetting about the Lio, which bit down on the Manta’s tail assembly, snapping its antenna like kindling while altering the sub’s trajectory.

The vessel’s wings cleared the top of the trawl net by four inches, the cockpit’s belly smashing into a float. The glancing blow caused both pilots to jump. Having shed his harness, David was propelled out of his seat, his skull smashing hard against the Lexan glass as they soared over the net.

The
Liopleurodon
’s snout caught the inside edge of the net, sending its head and upper torso torpedoing inside the steel mesh until its head filled the cod end, causing the bridle to seal the trap.

The net pulled tight, sheering barnacles from the pliosaur’s back while pinning its fore flippers to its side. The creature went berserk, rolling and twisting its body against its unseen foe.

Aboard the
Tonga

Fiesal bin Rashidi paced before the command center’s forward bay window, his nerves on edge as he and the tanker’s officers waited to hear from Commander Molony aboard the trawler.

“Fiesal, we bagged her! She’s in the net.”

The Dubai engineer’s dark eyes widened. He managed to mutter, “Praise Allah” a second before his men swarmed upon him in a celebratory embrace.

“Enough! We’ll celebrate when she swims inside her pen. Captain, how far are we from the trawler?”

“Just under seven kilometers. Not to worry, sir. I began our braking procedure two kilometers ago.” The skipper turned to his executive officer. “Mr. Saxe, reverse all engines.”

“Reverse all engines, aye, Captain.”

Aboard the
Dubai Land-I

Commander Molony stepped out on deck to a cloudy midnight sky backlit by an intense waning moon. The wind was gusting at thirty knots, churning seven-foot seas that lifted the trawler from port to starboard.

Molony worked his way to the gantry where the trawler’s chief engineer was standing by the winch drum, engaged in a heated argument with Jacqueline Buchwald.

“Is there a problem?”

Jackie held on as another swell lifted the boat. “Your engineer is threatening to free the Lio.”

The Arab pointed aft to the boom, which was feeding steel line into the Pacific, spinning the winch eight revolutions per minute. “Your fish may be in the trawl, but it is still able to swim. There is less than two hundred meters of cable left on the line. You know what happens when it runs out? The gantry, the boom, the deck …
bit
-
tawfig—
good luck.”

Molony removed the radio from his belt holster. “Patch me through to
Manta-Six
.”

“Sorry, Commander, we still haven’t been able to raise them.”

“Then put me through to
Manta-Five
.”

Aboard
Manta-Five

Rick Frazier continued descending, keeping pace with the netted
Liopleurodon
, which was dragging the trawl line seventy meters off his port wing. Trapped from head to hindquarters, the creature was propelling itself through the water by wriggling its body like a crocodile.

“Depth … seven hundred meters. They better do something soon or … stand by.” Gregg Hendley switched his headset from sonar to radio. “Hendley here. Go ahead, Commander.”

“What’s the hell’s going on down there? How the hell is the Lio still taking line?”

“She’s in the trawl but her tail’s free. Where’s the
Tonga
?”

“Four minutes away, but we’ll be out of cable long before she arrives. What happened to
Manta-Six
?”

“They lost their radio antenna when the Lio was netted. We’ve got a visual off our port wing.”

“Commander, this is Frazier. The Lio can swim but she isn’t generating a lot of torque. If you reverse the winch I don’t think she’ll offer much resistance.”

“Stand by.”

Aboard Manta-Six

Tina stared at the creature descending off her starboard wing, mesmerized by the monster’s size, grace, and ferocity. “It’s so massive. How did it get so big?”

“Cold water and competition; multiplied by sixty-five million years of adaptation.”

They both grabbed at their headsets as a bone-chilling
screeeech
filled their ears.

“David, what was that?”

“The steel cable went taut. The trawler’s going to try to reel her in.” Pressing down on his starboard pedal, he veered to port, giving the Lio a wider berth.

The
Liopleurodon
stopped descending, its whipping tail and snake-like movements no match for the 196-foot, 280-ton fishing trawler. Twisting within its bonds, the beast was dragged backwards toward the surface at a steady sixty feet per minute.

As David and Tina watched, the 122-foot pliosaur pitched and pulled itself into long, wide arcing pendulum-like movements, battling to find a direction in which it could escape the unyielding force.

On its next easterly swing it succeeded.

Using the taut line to generate torque, the creature found itself arcing beyond its 180-degree loop. As its head pointed toward the surface the tension suddenly eased.

Whipping its tail into a frenzy, the
Liopleurodon
rose to attack its enemy.

Aboard the
Dubai Land-I

Commander Molony stood by the stern ramp, one hand gripping the starboard rail, the other holding a pair of night binoculars to his face, his eyes focused on the approaching
Tonga
. The supertanker’s forward momentum had dropped to three knots. The trawler was matching its speed, waiting for the massive ship to stop.

A whirring sound caught Molony’s attention. Lowering the binoculars, he turned to the boom. The steel cable had gone slack; the winch was rewinding too quickly, causing the line to tangle.

Molony’s initial thought was that the cable had snapped. Disgusted, he retrieved his radio to confirm his fear—only to realize he had the volume turned down and
Manta-Five
was on the line.

“Repeat, the Lio’s surfacing! Move the trawler—”

Liam Molony felt the boat’s thrusters rev beneath his feet a split second before the deck was pulled out from under him and he found himself sliding face-first down the stern ramp—which suddenly exploded beneath his chest!

The breath was driven from his lungs as he flailed through the night air, landing hard on his back.

Jacqueline Buchwald pulled herself off the main deck, her jaw dropping as she looked aft. The
Liopleurodon
’s upper torso was out of the water, towering three stories above the stern ramp. The incensed slime-coated creature was whipping its head back and forth in a furious attempt to shed the cod end of the trawl net from its snout.

The boom became an airborne missile which struck the masthead. The winch drum was uprooted, shearing wood slats from the main deck.

The cable finally snapped, causing the bridle to unthread, easing the tension on the net.

The beam from a powerful spotlight reached down from the supertanker, placing the creature in a surreal heavenly glow as it continued to fight to free itself from its bonds.

A fore flipper popped loose. The appendage flopped down onto the stern deck, the Lio’s 240,000-pound girth sinking the aft end of the boat at a forty-degree angle.

The sea rushed at Jackie, sweeping her up in its cold embrace. Covering her head, she was blindly carried across the main deck, her knees and back abused by unseen equipment before she was able to grab the rung of the ladder leading up to the navigation bridge. Clinging to the aluminum slat, she saw the monster slip free from the shredded trawl net and heave itself back into the ocean, causing the boat’s submerged aft end to pop out of the water.

Fearing the nearing presence of the
Tonga
, the
Liopleurodon
dove beneath the trawler, the creature’s back arched as it circled the keel in full attack mode.

Detecting familiar vibrations, the pliosaur went deep, its senses homing in on its prey.

Aboard
Manta-Six

David never had a chance.

With two powerful strokes of its fore flippers the monster was upon them, its jaws crushing the Manta’s chassis, separating it from its Lexan bathyscaph like an avocado pit.

Tina screamed.

David winced as a dagger-shaped tooth the length of a football struck the escape pod above his head—and snapped in half upon impact with the thick Lexan glass. For an insane moment he actually laughed—until the mouth closed around them and the creature’s tongue lifted them, propelling them backwards down its throat.