“Download its bearing to our navigation system. We’ll take a look.”
A line of position appeared on our monitors, connecting our present location with Mac’s destination, the eastern face of the Loose Tooth Rift.
For the next twenty minutes, I kept the Manta on a northwesterly course that brought us to inside a mile of the Amery Ice Shelf. To simulate the feeling of operating in a tight enclosure, Jonas insisted I keep the sub within six feet of the frozen surface while maintaining a velocity in excess of twenty knots, a harrowing endeavor culminating in no less than half a dozen wing scrapes and Valkyrie collisions.
“Jonas, it’s my first time out. Give me a chance to get a feel for her.”
“This is your chance, Zach. From here you graduate straight to a subglacial river squeezed beneath the Antarctic ice sheet. If you can’t handle this, how are you going to deal with that claustrophobic nightmare?”
Jonas checked our target’s position on sonar. “That’s close enough. Slow to three knots and power up the Valkyries.
“Now dive to fifty feet and put us in a slow, steep ascent. Allow the lasers to open a hole in the ice directly above us. The moment you see the night sky, cut your engines and the Manta will float topside.”
I followed his instructions, opening a gap in the ice large enough to accommodate the sub. We surfaced, bobbing beneath a star-filled sky awash with a pink swoosh of southern light. A quarter mile to the west, we could see the surface ship’s stern lights, our night-vision binoculars revealing an A-frame towering above her aft deck, a Canadian registry, and the name Tortuga written across her backside.
Mac searched the ship’s name on the McFarland’s computer, finding three dozen matches but only one vessel her size flying a Canadian flag. “She was built by the U.S. Navy, decommissioned in 2002, then purchased and refitted by a private Toronto firm owned by a subsidiary of the Bank of Liechtenstein.”
I turned to Jonas. “The bank’s a private institution, a tax haven for billionaires. I realize this will sound like more conspiracy theory, but hundreds of billions of dollars have passed through the Bank of Liechtenstein to fund MJ-12 projects. I think we’d better submerge. There’s a GeoEye-1 satellite over Antarctica, equipped with an imaging payload that can locate any surface object on the planet.”
I descended the Manta to ninety feet and leveled off just above the sea floor.
A blip appeared on sonar as we headed for the Tortuga’s keel.
Jonas donned headphones. “Lots of noise up ahead. Sounds like it’s coming from the ice shelf. Come to course two-seven-seven, we’ll take a look.”
With the early arrival of its support ship, the Tethys had launched fourteen hours ahead of schedule. Jonas and I arrived at the Amery Ice Shelf moments before the tail section of the thirty-seven-foot submarine disappeared from view, following its laser-spewing bow on a thirty-degree down angle into the base of the Loose Tooth Rift and a newly formed underwater cavern.
Jonas stared at the hole, dumbfounded. “That was impressive. You say Skunkworks built that beast?”
“With your tax dollars.” Banking the Manta into an awkward turn, I raced east toward open water.
“Zach, where are you going?”
“Back to the McFarland. I need to pick up Angus, load the Manta with supplies, and get through that passage before the Tethys gets too far ahead of us.”
“It’s a suicide mission. You’d be lucky to make it a mile before getting lost down there.”
“I’m not just going to let my son die.”
“Agreed. But how will getting you to Vostok save your son? Explain that part to me, and I’ll take you there myself.”
A text message flashed on both our monitors: MOVE!
My eyes darted to the sonar where dozens of blips were converging upon us. “Jesus, what is that?”
“Whales. And we’re in their path. Shift controls back to my console—”
A forty-five-foot humpback whale shot past us out of the ether, its thrusting gray fluke barely missing the sub.
Two more bulls followed, and suddenly there were whales everywhere. They were not just humpbacks. I saw minkes and fins, and a pygmy sperm whale struck our portside wing, spinning us about.
Jonas attempted to accelerate out of the roll, only to have the Manta sideswiped by another fleeing dark gray body.
It was a cetacean stampede, and we were swept up in it.
Jonas ignited the Valkyries, attempting to fend off the swarm. “Zach, start pinging. Find that monster before it finds us.”
“What monster? You mean the Liopleurodon? ”
“What the hell else would be causing these whales to panic? Ain’t no Megs in these waters.”
Manning the sonar, I attempted to switch from passive to active, only nothing was working. The monitor blinked off and on. The radio turned to static in my headphones.
I tossed them aside. “The Tortuga’s jamming our electronics.”
Having managed to point our bow east, Jonas accelerated, maneuvering ahead of the panic-stricken behemoths before banking hard to port, momentarily freeing us from the frenzy of moving goliaths.
Then I saw the cause of the cetacean disturbance, and fear suddenly took on a whole new meaning.
34
In Loch Ness, I had confronted a legendary beast. In Vostok, I had been attacked by giant crocs and Miocene whales. Years later in Monterey, I had watched a captive megalodon feed and thought I had seen the definition of true terror.
Nothing could have prepared me for the monster racing at us out of that olive-green sea.
Its jawline alone had to be thirty feet long, its mouth filled with ten- to twelve-inch dagger-like teeth, the largest of which jutted outside of its mouth. Big? It seemed as long as a city block, propelled by thirty-foot flippers — all wrapped around a lead-gray-and-white hide that partially blended into the backdrop of ice.
Most frightening, it seemed to be hyperactive, its movements on overdrive. Its head turned on a swivel as its crocodilian jaws snapped at the fleeing whales, its mind unable to single out the most vulnerable member of the herd until it saw our twin lasers blazing in the darkness like two vermillion eyes.
“Oh, geez. Jonas, hard to port!”
Jonas tried to get us out of its way, but the creature was far quicker and cut us off. My eyes bugged out as the left side of the pliosaur’s mouth suddenly bloomed into view, its jaws agape.
The back of my head slammed against the seat as the Manta leaped forward, Jonas attempting to escape by passing between those hideous rows of curved teeth like a car trying to beat a train across railroad tracks.
I squeezed my eyes shut—
— and we were through, only the creature was right behind us, snapping at our tail.
We were dead.
And then it was gone.
I took a moment to catch my breath before I relocated it, the dark blotches of its back and tail blending in with the sea. It was up ahead chasing another Manta, this one far quicker than ours.
“David?” Jonas switched his headphones to the radio setting. “Mac, contact the Tonga. Have them put me through to my kid. Damn this static!” He slammed his fist against the dome above his head, then accelerated after the monster, now chasing his son’s submersible.
“Zach, there’s a communication panel by your right foot. Pop it open.”
“Got it.”
“You’ll see a series of toggle switches set in the OFF position. Is there one with a blinking blue light?”