MEG: Nightstalkers (25 page)

“Jennifer, enough! It’s getting dark and I’m cold.”

“Two minutes.” She shot a short video, describing how she and her life partner had found evidence proving that Angel was still alive.

It was dark by the time she finished. The tide was coming in fast now, lifting the whale carcass beneath her.

The loud
ka
-
chauwff
sound startled her.

“What was that?”

“I don’t know.” She aimed her flash out at sea.

The beached humpback began thrashing its fins, attempting to climb farther out of the water.

“Jennie, your whale’s panicking. Come in!”

“Marie, there’s something out there!”

Ka
-
chauwff.

“Did you see that? It’s a whale spout. Maybe it is an orca; I can see black and white markings. Walk back around the cove and see if you can video it.”

“Not until you come ashore.”

“I’m coming. Go now, before you miss it.”

Marie jogged around the mouth of the inlet to where the deeper waters entered the cove. She saw the beast lurch forward as she reached her best vantage.

It was a gargantuan bull sperm whale, its enormous blunt head straining in the rising tide to reach the remains of the meal it had returned to claim. The size of the creature startled her—from the top of its skull to the tip of its slapping fluke the creature had to be eighty to ninety feet long.

Aiming her iPhone, Marie snapped a few photos.

With a sudden
ka
-
chauwff
from its blowhole, the bull breached the shallows, its head rising two stories as it forcibly chomped down upon the carcass of the female humpback. Rolling onto its side, the sperm whale attempted to tow its meal out to sea, in the process revealing a bizarre alabaster-white underbelly and a wide lower jaw that was more orca than sperm whale. It was as if the two species had mated to produce a monstrous offspring.

A scream—followed by a splash!

Jennifer
 …

Marie sprinted around the inlet, her heart racing as she reached the shallows where her fiancée was trudging out of the water, dripping from head to toe.

“It pulled the dead whale out from under me. I dropped my phone in the water.”

“Forget the damn cell phone; we need to warm you up before you freeze to death. Switch jackets with me; here, take my hat and gloves.”

Marie helped her shivering partner slip on the dry jacket, then led her back around the inlet. The two women jogged in the direction of a distant bonfire—the wounded humpback crying out in the distance.

19

Aboard the Supertanker
Tonga
Tasman Sea, 28 Miles NW of the Coast of New Zealand

Jason Montgomery opened the watertight door, releasing a blast of cold salty air. Sealing the interior hatch behind him, he descended two flights of rust-covered steel grated steps to a narrow catwalk overlooking the very bowels of the ship. The immense space, situated five stories beneath the underside of the main deck and originally designed to hold three million barrels of crude oil, now held sea water. Divided into two large holding pens, the tank was lined with a rubber sealant and contained a simplified filtration system.

Monty followed the catwalk to a circular stairwell that lead down to a porous steel deck.

Seated on the edge of the walkway was David Taylor.

The distraught twenty-one-year-old looked up as Monty joined him. “How’d you find me?”

“I was a former Marine Recon medic.” The barrel-chested, tattooed man half sat, half collapsed onto his buttocks next to his friend, wiping moisture from his shaved head and six-inch “devil’s” goatee. “Actually, Jackie told me. She’s worried about you. She says you’ve hardly slept in three days.”

“I’m afraid to sleep. Every dream is the same. I’m alone inside the escape pod … trapped in the creature’s belly. In the darkness I hear Kaylie calling out to me, calling my name.” David pounded his right fist against the grating, his knuckles covered in blood. “I keep searching, only I can’t find her … I can’t make her stop—”

“David, it was just another night terror, triggered by what happened the other night. Kaylie wasn’t in there. Even if you had allowed the Lio to swallow you, she’s long gone.”

He watched David continue to pound his fist, then reached out and grabbed his wrist, holding the bleeding knuckles up to the light. “This isn’t who we are. Flesh and bones—it’s just a wrapper the soul lugs around while we’re stuck in the physical world. Kaylie’s soul is where it’s supposed to be. She’s safe. You’re the one who needs to be rescued.”

David nodded, his eyes welling with tears. “I do. I need to be rescued. I don’t want to feel like this anymore. I’m tired of being scared.”

“When I got back from Iraq, I was the same way. You need to exercise; maybe think about getting back on the meds. You’ll get better, I promise.”

David wiped away tears—streaking his cheeks with blood. “I’m not used to you being so coherent.”

“I’ve been getting laid on a regular basis. Probably raised my serotonin levels. But you, my friend, need to sleep. There was a Russian scientist—Marie Mikhailovna de Manacéïne. She conducted one of the earliest experiments on sleep deprivation. She found that when she deprived puppies of sleep, they all died within four or five days. Fucking Commie bitch, testing her theories on puppies … like they didn’t have lab rats back then. Now giraffes are different. Giraffes only sleep about two hours a day in ten minute sessions. Koalas, on the other hand, sometimes sleep twenty-two hours a day. I think my roommate back in college was part koala.”

“Douche bag, you never went to college.”

“I didn’t?” He smiled. “I think you’re right. By the way, I heard bin Rashidi had one of his engineers devise a way to capture the Lio directly into the
Tonga
’s net. With the other pilots gone and only one Manta available, who do you think they’ll assign as your new co-pilot?”

“They’ve already started bribing me to solo. The Crown Prince offered me a hundred grand for every reality show episode I appeared in the water with the Lio; with a two million dollar bonus once it’s captured and loaded in the tanker.”

“Fucking Arabs; they think they can just bribe people to get what they want. You turned it down, I hope.”

“I told them I wouldn’t do it unless they offered you the same deal.”

“Wait, what?”

“Whatever I earn they have to pay you as well. They agreed.”

“The Crown Prince … salt-of-the-earth. And Mr. bin Rashidi—say what you will about him but the man grows on you. Where’s the Lio now? I bet you knocked some of the fight out of it.”

“The sonar buoys picked up a surface signal last night about twenty miles off the west coast of New Zealand, so it’s still heading south.”

“Don’t decide anything until you get at least eight hours of sleep. Fortunately, your old pal Monty brought a bottle of whiskey, just in case of emergencies.”

Aboard the Hopper-Dredge
McFarland
Drake Passage, 525 Miles East of the Antarctic Peninsula

The Drake Passage is six hundred miles of open water, 11,000 to 15,600 feet deep, situated between the southernmost tip of South America and the South Shetland Islands, which are located a hundred miles northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. A combination of factors make this stretch of sea the most treacherous on the planet.

Three oceans converge upon the waterway—the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Southern Ocean. Within this climatic boundary cool humid, sub-polar temperatures meet Antarctica’s frigid weather. This draws cyclones and other low pressure systems which sweep in from the west, churning up waves that can surpass sixty feet. During winter months, sea ice can extend as far north as Cape Horn, adding to the dangers associated with the crossing.

*   *   *

The hopper-dredge
McFarland
was forty nautical miles south of Cape Horn when ominous gray clouds appeared over the western morning skies. By noon winds began gusting at thirty-five knots, the seas turning into white-capped peaks.

Two hours later the storm’s full fury was upon them, with swells reaching sixty-five feet.

The captain ordered the hopper filled with sea water to increase ballast and the ship trimmed so that it was listing fifteen degrees to starboard. This raised the port side, reducing some of the pounding, but the continuous rolling over mountainous crests into steep valleys was exacting a toll on both the ship and its crew.

Jonas and Terry Taylor held onto one another as they made their way down a slanted passageway that rolled beneath them like something out of a carnival funhouse. Seasickness had chased them from their cabin, now they sought a view of the horizon, hoping to anchor their lost equilibrium.

Accessing an interior stairwell, they began the long seven-story ascent to the bridge, each step precarious as the claustrophobic corridor heaved from zero to thirty degrees. After several minutes and assorted bruises, Jonas hugged his wife to his right hip, gripped the rail with his left hand and practically carried her up to the command center.

Reaching the bridge, they quickly realized the higher the vantage, the worse the pitch. With no empty chairs available, Jonas made his way with Terry to a support rail situated before the forward bay windows. Hugging her back from behind, he gripped the rail with both hands and held on as the bow plunged into the sea, disappearing underwater, only to burst free once more, sending plumes of spray across the main deck.

Turning to his right, he saw a flat-screen monitor bolted to the navigation table. The animated map showed their position, course, and speed. A Beaufort Scale categorized the storm conditions as a twelve—the highest rating on the chart.

The captain made his way over to the couple, one hand holding the support rail, the other a cup of coffee held inside a non-spill container. “You folks really don’t want to be up here. Best place to ride out the storm would be in the galley on Deck-2. It’s lower, it has interior windows, and it’s more centrally located. Up here—it’s a friggin’ rollercoaster.”

Jonas looked at Terry, whose Asian complexion had turned a whiter shade of pale. “It’s your call.”

She nodded weakly.

“Speaking of calls…” The captain reached into his jacket pocket and removed a folded slip of paper. “This transmission was received about an hour ago.”

Jonas opened the message.

TO
:
J
ONAS
T
AYLOR

FR
:
Z
ACHARY
W
ALLACE

RE
:
URGENT MATTER

M
EET ME IN
G
RYTVIKEN IN 48 HOURS.
W
ILL JOIN YOU AND MY FELLOW
S
COT TO LOCATE YOUR SON.

—
Z
ACHARY
W
ALLACE

“Grytviken? Never heard of it.”

The captain moved to his navigation station, typing a command on a computer keypad. The monitor showing their position widened to encompass a tiny island cluster lying between the southernmost part of the Drake Passage and the Antarctic Peninsula.

“Grytviken is an old abandoned whaling station located on South Georgia Island. It’s on the way, but why your friend would want to meet you on that rust bucket makes no sense to me.”

They held on as a six-story-high swell lifted the
McFarland
’s bow toward the lead-gray heavens before plunging it three stories underwater.

Terry held on to her husband. “What did Zachary mean when he said he’d join you and his fellow Scot in finding David?”

“He must think Mac’s with me. Come on, let’s get you down to the galley before I hurl up a lung.”

20

Grytviken
South Georgia Island

Erected along the anchorage in King Edward’s Cove at the foot of the snow-capped peaks of South Georgia Island lies the remains of Grytviken, Antarctica’s first whaling station. Established in 1904 by a Norwegian whaling captain, the commercial enterprise not only hunted the beasts, they also sliced up the blubber and cooked the oils to produce meat, soap, fertilizer, margarine, nitroglycerin, and other oil-based products. By the time it was shut down in 1965, Grytviken and other stations like it had slaughtered over two million whales.

The
McFarland
’s captain anchored the hopper-dredge a hundred yards offshore, wary of the graveyard of rusted vessels listing along the quay. The storm that had battered the ship during the Drake Passage crossing had yielded to blue skies and sunshine. Jonas helped his wife into the motorized rubber raft, the
McFarland
’s executive officer, Leslie Manuel, assigned to pilot the boat. The crew lowered the Zodiac into the bay using the starboard winch. Releasing the cable, the XO started the outboard, guiding the raft past several rusted whaling vessels, their deck-mounted harpoon guns a stark reminder of the violence the ghost town’s occupants had once inflicted upon nature’s largest sea creatures.