Leviathan Page 13
“What are you doing?”
“What I was put on this earth for,” Wright said.
Thorpe got so close to the old man’s face that Wright saw his own reflection in the hunter’s polarized sunglasses. “You asked me to help you. Let me do that. I don’t need you butting heads with me every time I give orders. If you want to go home with anything more than shattered hopes and a sunburn, we do this my way. Do I make myself clear?”
The billionaire swallowed his pride and nodded.
“I count at least ten,” Captain Jenkins said from starboard. “What’s down there?” he asked the hunter.
One of the figures crested the surface, followed in short succession by several others. A loud burst of water spewed from the waves, sending salt spray into the air and onto the deck.
“Sperm whales,” Thorpe said. He turned back to Wright, the old man still seated at the cannon. “Y’hear that, whales.”
Three more blasts came from the mammals’ blowholes. “I’ve never seen anything like it. I mean, not this close,” the captain said.
“They’re pretty majestic,” Thorpe agreed. “Masterful hunters too, the only creatures willing to fight the Kraken.”
“Kraken?”
“A giant squid of sailing myth so large it sank entire armadas. Whalers used to pray never to encounter the beast.” The hunter motioned to the largest whale. Along its flank were mottled, circular bruises the size of saucer plates. “Looks like that one already got in a tussle with a squid. These are the only animals known to eat giant squid. I’m actually surprised to see them here. They usually keep to the colder waters up north.”
“Maybe that’s where they’re headed,” Wright said as he walked to the gunwale. “Clearly they’re racing somewhere.”
The hunter shook his head. “No, it looks like they’re trying to escape from something.”
“My something?” the old man said.
“It’s possible. They’re frightened, that much is apparent. See how the bigger ones have corralled the adolescents in the center? The adults are in a protective formation circling the juveniles.”
“But why are they around the boat?” the captain asked.
“We’re the biggest thing on the water out here. They must think it’s safer near the yacht.”
“Isn’t this what you’re after?” the captain asked Wright. “I thought this is what you wanted to hunt.”
“Are you kidding? What kind of idiot chases after a whale?”
“Then what are you looking for?”
“The mightiest of beasts.”
“What’s that mean?” the captain asked. “Wouldn’t it be better to keep alive? I’m sure someplace like SeaWorld would love to get such an animal. Killing it sounds a bit . . . barbaric.”
The billionaire shot him so hateful a glance the captain regretted opening his mouth. “You’re telling me what SeaWorld does to those damn orcas isn’t humiliating and barbaric?”
“It’s educational.”
“My ass,” Wright said.
The hunter gestured and said, “Lookit that. About ten o’clock, twenty yards off the stern.” Neither the captain nor Oscar Wright saw what Thorpe found exciting. “That dark shape there, it’s incoming fast.”
“I see it now,” Jenkins said.
“Com’on, show yourself,” the old man muttered.
“Let’s get the bait,” Thorpe said. He sprang to the main deck in a single lithe motion.
The old man moved as quickly as his arthritic bones allowed, hurrying to the buckets of slurry. “Do you want me to dump the chum?” he asked.
The hunter shook his head. “Think bigger.” He nudged the dolphin chunks with his boot. “Bring me that grappling hook coiled yonder.”
Wright brought the tool to the hunter while Jenkins wondered what type of person used the word yonder. “Don’t let it out of your sight,” Thorpe told the captain. “Holler if it vanishes.”
“Do you think this is our moment of providence?” the old man asked.
“Either way, we have to be ready.” He took the hook and tossed it over a crossbeam above the water. The grappling dangled down and he leaned out to retrieve it, never losing sight of the mass off port. The whales circled to the opposite side of the Naglfar, the ocean transformed to white froth from their thrashing tails.
Thorpe took the hook and punctured it through the porpoise meat. The old man helped Thorpe heft the fifty-pound piece of flesh until it swung freely over the gunwale, six feet above water and flush to the main deck.
“Now use the chum,” Thorpe instructed. Wright took a bucket to the side and scooped the red offal overboard. “We have to tempt it with food more appetizing than the whales. Hopefully it’ll see this as an easy meal and leave the others alone.”
“It disappeared,” the captain shouted. “Just went out of sight. It was there one moment and gone the next.”
Around them the ocean calmed. “Our friends left too,” the hunter noted. “They all took a dive.”
The old man asked, “Is that bad?”
“They must’ve deemed it too dangerous up here after all, went down to a deeper depth.”
“How long can they stay under?” said the captain.
“Whales are resilient. Their bodies are adapted to withstand enormous strain from water pressure. They can easily swim to fourteen atmospheres and stay there for over an hour.”
“Will we have to wait that long?” Wright asked. He hadn’t amassed a fortune by being patient, and the thought of delaying gratification any longer irritated him.
“Assuming your creature has similar anatomy. The key about diving is that air volume compresses with depth. If the Leviathan swims to fourteen atmospheres with the whales, its lungs only contain one-fourteenth the oxygen they did at the surface. The deeper it goes, the less time it can stay under.”
“The same goes for the whales,” Jenkins added.
“They have air cavities stored in their foreheads so they can sustain being down there for long periods.”
“But our thing isn’t a whale,” the old man said.
“I don’t think so. Maybe an amphibian or perhaps — ”
A wall of water suddenly erupted over the side of the Naglfar. A mass of scales and teeth came with it, tearing at the dolphin carcass with enough force to make the gigayacht list to port.
Wright lost his footing and toppled on deck. The captain and Thorpe gripped the side railing for balance.
The beast dived into the water and took the meat with it. The rope attached to the bait went taut as the creature swam off with the hook in its jaws. Thorpe was the first to guess the chain would fail under such tremendous exertion.
“Down. Everybody get down,” he shouted. “It’s gonna snap.”
A moment later the line cracked like a whip and snaked across deck, slamming into the captain’s shoulder. Jenkins cried out and dropped to his knees.
Then the chain vanished into the waves along with the Leviathan.
Without the added strain, the ship instantly righted itself. Within seconds the sea becalmed to normal and there was no evidence the beast had been there at all.
Thorpe tended to the wounded captain. “I’m okay,” Jenkins said. “It only grazed me.” His right sleeve had been ripped away to reveal a nasty slice deep in the deltoid muscle.
“That chain was rusty. This wound needs to be cleaned and dressed before it gets infected.”
The old man paid no attention to his injured captain, still searching the dark water for any hint of the creature’s re-emergence. There was none.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Thorpe asked.
Jenkins waved him away. “Bring me a first-aid kit and I’ll be fine.” The hunter set off to scrounge up some medical supplies.
The captain stood and took a few steps toward the old man. “I wouldn’t stand too close to the edge if I were you,” he said. “Christ, what the hell was that thing?”
Oscar Wright answered, “My destiny.”
* * * * *
Kelly Andrews overlooked the Atlantic Ocean from the Aurora, lost in contemplation. The temperature had dipped during the past hour; in spite of the chill, she hadn’t notice.
The marine biologist knew mankind was insatiable. If God wanted humans to explore the ocean, He would’ve given people congenital gills. If He wanted folks to fly, He would’ve given them wings. Except man wasn’t content with the temperate environment he was given and soon canvassed the harshest places in the world. The endless deserts, the polar tundras, the highest mountaintops: no locale was beyond man’s reach.
That wasn’t enough though, never enough for humanity’s twin lusts of knowledge and adventure. Man’s curiosity caused him to seek out greater voyages, to the skies and to the seas.
There was but one problem, God had created Homo sapiens to be tethered to the earth by a vital need for oxygen. That proved to be a temporary hindrance; as soon as technology allowed, people discovered ways to transport air to the darkest depths of the ocean and the limitless void of space.
Over a scant ten-thousand-year reign, mankind had gone from being defenseless against nature’s cruelty to shaping the world to his whims. Kelly understood Mother Nature couldn’t be controlled, only mollified.
Man had been granted a veritable paradise but threw it away in hopes of finding something better.
Kelly often wondered whether humanity had angered God by breaking out of its cage. In bleaker times she questioned God’s existence altogether.
She’d been raised Methodist by her mother and spent time with her atheist father after her parents divorced. The conflicting belief systems caused her not to resent faith itself but organized religion. Kelly considered herself an agnostic. She suspected there was something beyond death. The marine biologist also felt any Creator had long ago abandoned humanity, steering clear of people as an act of omnipotent arrogance. If God existed, He had no interest in His creations.
That’s how she pictured Him, an aloof figurehead on the outskirts of the cosmos, completely unengaged with the events of the universe. Other times she thought Him so needy and insecure, He had to invent an entire species merely to praise His name and kiss His ass. She considered humanity to be God’s science fair project, and thought Him as interested in the affairs of human beings as a child who studied the colony life of an ant farm.
Years of scientific training beat out much of her paltry faith. She understood the universe was a chain of random coincidence. It was by luck alone that civilization formed at all. If an intelligent designer existed, Kelly was sure He had a sense of humor. Any supreme being would have to with so many sardonic contradictions in the world. God made man dependent on water, then covered three-fourths of the earth with the same liquid that would kill him if ingested.
“What’cha doing?”
Kelly turned to find Edgar standing behind her. She didn’t know how long he’d been there, felt like he’d violated her solitude. She hadn’t heard him approach since he moved with a rodent’s agility.
“Do I need to put a bell on you?” she asked.
“Evan wanted me to ask if he can bring up the rover.”
“Tell him to start reeling it up. Have Rafe help him get it out of the water. It’s always easier putting it in than taking it out.”
A burst of wind swirled around them. Edgar glanced at the darkening skies. On the horizon the clouds were ominous and sparked off heat lightning. “Looks like a storm’s blowing in.”
“All the more reason to hurry.”
He nodded and left. She lingered on the aft deck a few moments longer before making her way to the stabilizer platform on the stern. It took a few minutes for reinforcements to appear, Evan and the Jamaican.
“Where’d you disappear to?” the ranger asked.
“Came out here to clear my head. Did I miss anything?” She started the Yumbo crane that pulled the rover to the surface.
“Nothing much,” Rafe said.
A rhythmic chik-chik-chik-chik sounded as the windlass coiled the stainless steel thread. It took five minutes before the robot crested the waves.
Edgar watched from the railing as the others maneuvered the heavy contraption with a massive hook, situating the camera on the platform.
The two scientists jumped to the lowest deck and repositioned the machine while struggling to keep balance against the growing waves. “Looks good on my end,” Evan said. “How’s it over there?”
Kelly checked the camera. It was safely secured. “Hooked on this side too.”
Rafe helped the researchers back on deck, then Kelly used the crane to raise the rover and bring it to rest on a gurney. As it dangled over the weather deck, everyone was careful not to step underneath it for fear the chain might slip.
Their other present emerged from the water as well, still tied to the rover. “That’s the smallest I’ve seen,” the Jamaican said. The foam mannequin head was a quarter of its original size. It had been slightly smaller than a volleyball at first; now it had the circumference of a softball.
“How far down did it go?” Rafe asked.
“A hundred and fifty meters.”
Kelly was unimpressed by the head. “That’s hardly worth bragging about.”
Edgar pressed past the others and spied the object, recognizing the caricature of himself. “That’s not funny,” he said sharply. “Mister Hamilton will hear about this,” he said.
“Go ahead, tell him,” Kelly said. She untied the shrunken head and tossed it to him. “Have a souvenir.” The lawyer caught it by reflex then dropped it as though it were a real severed skull.
Laughter exploded from the intercom as Bart watched the scene from the pilothouse. “You got him good,” the captain remarked.
The nervous tension between them released at that instant and everybody joined in the jollity. Even Edgar smiled in spite of himself.
Bart added, “Get up here, guys. You’ll wanna see this.” He needn’t say anything else to grab their attentions. The four of them filed onto the bridge.
“What’s going on?” Kelly asked. The captain started the engines. “Do we have new coordinates?”
“I assume you’ll want to follow these.” He gestured to the sonar viewfinder where several forms had been detected.
“When did this start?”
“A couple minutes ago.”
Evan watched over the marine biologist’s shoulder. “Good Lord, how many are there?”
“At least half a dozen,” Bart said. “That’s not all of them either. They’re still swimming into range.”
“At the rate they’re moving from the east, they should be in the area within ten minutes.”
Bart navigated the Aurora toward the figures.
“What do you suppose they are?” Edgar said.
“Probably a pod of whales, based on the size,” Evan supposed.
“What’s that?” Rafe asked. He looked at a different screen for the ship’s radar. It pictured a secondary object ahead of the others, four times their mass.
“I’d say it’s another vessel.”
Bart altered course headings as they sped to the next location. “ETA seven minutes.”
Larger than the others, another form lagged behind the rest.
“What’s that,” Edgar asked, “a slacker?”
Evan shook his head. “If it were one of them, something that large would be in the lead. No, I think it’s chasing them.”
“That may be our creature,” Kelly said. Although Evan said nothing, the look on his face told her that he agreed.
“See for yourself,” Bart said. He handed Kelly a telescope from beneath the console.
She used the instrument to scan the water for abnormalities. The sky had turned a slate color against the coal hue of the waves, a world of gray. The telescope saw seven miles into the horizon, before the curvature of the earth hid everything else from view.
She spotted a white speck in the distance. “Look twenty degrees off true north,�
� she said. As the Aurora grew closer, the speck became a discernable object. “You’re right, it’s another ship,” she said. “A big damn yacht by the look of it.”
“And everything’s headed straight for it,” Evan said.
With the telescope, a minute later she made out the vessel’s name. “What the hell’s a Naglfar?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE BILLIONAIRE’S GRUFF voice boomed over the yacht’s intercom. “All hands on deck.” Wright stood in the pilothouse and kept an eye on the sonar. Although there were still several forms in the area, he couldn’t differentiate between the whales and his Leviathan.
He barked a second order into the microphone. “Claude, report to the wheelhouse.”
The chef soon appeared in the doorway. “What do you need, sir?”
“Stay here and watch the sonar.” He showed Claude the equipment. “This shows what all is swimming around the boat. I want to know whether they’re coming or going, and how many there are at any given time. Is that clear?” The chef nodded as Wright handed him the intercom mike. “Use this to communicate. Press to talk, release to listen. I’ll be on deck; keep me informed of any developments.”
The billionaire returned to the weather deck where Thorpe, Captain Jenkins and the first mate were gathered.
Wright said, “Each of us should be posted on a separate side of the ship. If you spot anything out of the ordinary, I want to hear about it. Captain, you take the bow.” He pointed to the first mate. “And you — ”
“It’s Hatfield,” the man said.
“I know that,” the billionaire lied. “You’re on starboard. I’ll keep to port, and Mister Thorpe can have the stern.”
The men drifted to their assigned sections of the ship. “What do you expect will happen?” the hunter asked Wright.
“I have Claude checking sonar. I’m not about to let that thing dine and dash.”
Wright aimed high-powered binoculars at the horizon. If anything showed itself, he would see it.
After ten minutes his strained vision needed a break. He wandered over to the hunter. “Find anything?” he asked.
“Not so far.”