Leviathan

by Jared Sandman

  “How ‘bout we get a second opinion? Third person acts as a tiebreaker. Deal?”

  “Who else is awake at this hour?”

  Kelly pointed to the wheelhouse where a single lightbulb shone in the darkness. “Bart usually stays up through dawn.” She led the ranger to the pilothouse.

  A Willie Nelson song played inside the small bridge. Bart switched off the radio as the scientists entered. The Aurora was too far out to receive terrestrial radio signals, so Bart had subscribed to digital channels since he couldn’t live without country music. “What do I owe the honor?”

  “We need your opinion.”

  Bart said, “Hit me.”

  “You know why we’re out here, right?” Kelly asked.

  “You’re looking for some new kinda fish or something.”

  “That’s right, or something. I think it’d be a smart idea to use the mini-sub to track this animal and learn about it.”

  “Ignoring the fact it’s unnecessary,” Evan added. “It’s ill-conceived and could get her killed. The whole operation could be botched by a single wrong move.”

  Bart listened to both researchers, weighed each argument in his mind.

  “So whaddya think?” Kelly said. “Be honest.”

  The captain took a moment to mull the options. Both sides had compelling claims. At last he reached a decision. “I think it’s crazy.” Kelly was disheartened by the captain’s choice. “That said,” Bart continued, “history favors the crazy. I say go for it.”

  The marine biologist clapped her hands together. “Fabulous,” she said.

  Evan honored the captain’s verdict even though he didn’t agree with it. He told her, “The only way I’ll allow you to go is if I tag along. It’s both of us or neither of us.”

  Those terms were acceptable to her. Kelly wasn’t able to drive the submersible by herself anyway. That had been a bluff to mess with Evan. “It’s settled then. We’ll head down tomorrow.”

  * * * * *

  Oscar Wright had his share of medical problems. Anyone in his or her golden years suffered from the same general ailments: high blood pressure, failing vision, bad hearing. He didn’t understand why people called them golden years anyway; there was nothing golden about them. If anything, he was living through the waning years. One of the sporadic infirmities he endured was insomnia.

  Many nights he dreamed of Brenda and Joseph. Invariably he’d jerk awake, covered in a cold sweat. Sometimes the fantasies were so intense he feared going to bed, knowing the ghosts of his loved ones awaited him behind heavy eyelids. Tonight was no different. He lay awake in his suite well after midnight.

  Eventually he abandoned sleep altogether, made his way to the galley where he found Ian Thorpe again scouring navigational maps. Wright thought the hunter may be an android, having never seen Thorpe eat, drink or do anything remotely human. The clock on the microwave told him it was half past one. “Do you sleep at all?” he asked.

  The hunter looked up from his charts. “Usually not more than four or five hours a day. Too many nights on the open savannah programmed me to sleep lightly.”

  “I had the same problem after the war,” the old man said.

  “Did you fight in Europe or the Pacific?”

  “Pacific, but not the Second World War. I was part of the Forgotten War, stationed two years in Korea.” Wright sat across from Thorpe and said, “Did you see a crossword puzzle around here? I can’t remember where I put it.”

  Thorpe moved one of the maps, under which hid the billionaire’s half-finished puzzle. He handed it to Wright.

  “What are you up to?” the old man asked.

  “Planning our next move,” he said. “The Leviathan has been chased off from its feeding grounds, at least for now. I doubt it’ll be back for a week or more, if ever.”

  “Then we have to stay one step ahead. Where’s it going next?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to pinpoint. Based on its history, I’d say it’ll continue its path along a northwesterly route. It should keep to the warmer water.”

  The hunter pointed to a sizeable swath of the Atlantic near the East Coast. “You can’t narrow it down from there?” Wright asked.

  “I’m afraid not. I have a feeling it’ll trace the ridge of the continental shelf. I don’t think it likes the deep waters because it’s not as safe.”

  “Safe from what? The Leviathan doesn’t have any natural enemies. It’s the ultimate predator.”

  “That may be true. And that’s also part of its motivation. There’s less prey in the deepest parts of the Atlantic. The shallow water brims with prey. That’s what it needs, food. A lot of it.”

  Wright glanced up from his puzzle. “What’s a four-letter word for serendipity?”

  “Luck?” Thorpe said.

  The old man scowled. “No, it ends in E.” Then it dawned on him. “Fate,” he said as he filled in the blocks. “Fate, of course. I mustn’t be thinking straight. I’m sorry, you were saying it has to eat.”

  “Yes,” Thorpe said. “How long do you suppose it was — thirty, forty feet? Probably weighed north of ten tons. A creature of that magnitude expends an enormous amount of energy on a daily basis. That means it must devote nearly every waking moment to hunting.”

  “We can’t wait for the Leviathan to return. Time is a luxury, especially with those meddlesome researchers around. We’ll have to take a proactive approach. You think a northern trek is a sure bet?”

  “Northwestern, yessir.”

  “I’ll inform the captain of that.”

  “There’s not much else we can do except wait ‘til it attacks again. And it will, I’m certain of that. We have to make sure we’re nearby when it happens, so we can beat the Aurora to the scene.”

  The old man was fully engrossed in the puzzle, half listening to the hunter.

  “Do you have any suggestions? You seem a bit preoccupied.”

  “I’m surprised how many of these I can answer after setting it aside. Coming back with fresh eyes makes all the difference.”

  “Aren’t you worried about the others?” Thorpe asked. It bothered him how disengaged the billionaire appeared.

  Wright leaned across the table, his gaze narrowing on the hunter. “Do whatever you like,” he said. “I have a plan of my own.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “I HOPE IT’S good news,” Kelly told Bart. The captain had called her and Evan to the bridge the next morning because of irregularities with the Aurora’s sonar.

  “You’ll want to see this,” he said. The viewfinder chirped with so many visible dots that it looked like a starlit sky. “I got to fifty before losing count.”

  “What is it?” Evan asked.

  “A school of something,” she said.

  “Dolphins?”

  “Perhaps.” For a moment she expected Bart had caught the Leviathan on sonar. Without a tracking device on the creature, there was no accurate way to approximate where it had gone. The Atlantic was an immense area to cover, more than forty-one million square miles. If the researchers weren’t able to focus their search, they had little chance of finding the animal.

  Kelly realized she could use the situation to her advantage. “I can make this work.”

  “Work for what?” the captain asked.

  Evan echoed her line of thought. “If you can’t track the hunter, track its prey.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “That school’s four miles to the east. Set coordinates and put us directly atop those fish.” She turned to Evan. “And you’re coming with me.”

  The scientists left the pilothouse and descended three levels to the bowels of the ship. On portside near the stern was a storage compartment. Evan asked, “What are we after?”

  “Ammo,” she said as she opened a gun cabinet. Four rifles were mounted on the wall; she took one for herself, gave another to Evan.

  They next walked across the corridor to the laboratory. It took a couple minutes to locate half a dozen LS-350 trackers. They we
re three-inch gray capsules that could be inserted into hollow-tipped darts and loaded into the rifles. The corkscrew end bore into the flesh and made it difficult for any prey to free itself from the device. In the same drawer were the darts themselves, the tips soaked with local anesthetic. Kelly took ten of them and then fiddled with an elaborate sound system on the other side of the room.

  “That must have some wicked bass,” Evan said.

  “It’s not for music.” She cued up the proper track on the machine. “This will start in five minutes. It’s connected to underwater speakers on the ship’s keel. Most of these frequencies are too low for us to hear, but anything swimming in the vicinity will be alerted.”

  “Alerted to what?”

  “It’s a looped orca recording.”

  They returned to the weather deck and waited a few moments before Bart shut off the engines. “If our beast is anywhere nearby, it’ll be drawn to this spot.”

  “From the noise?”

  She fit the trackers into several of the darts then loaded some into each rifle. “No, the banquet. It can’t refuse an open buffet like this.” Kelly handed one of the firearms back to Evan. “Are you a good shot?”

  “I’ve bagged my share of critters in the swamp.”

  “You only have a few shots, so make ‘em count.” She turned to the wheelhouse, hands cupped around her mouth. “Keep on the shoal no matter what,” she called to the captain.

  “Is there something specific we’re looking for?” Evan asked.

  “Patience.”

  It was two minutes before their first prey appeared. A speckled marlin jumped from the waves, cresting its entire body before plunging back into the water. Another fish emerged seconds later. It was followed by a third, then several more until at least ten of them vaulted at regular intervals.

  “The whale calls are scaring them. They’re trying to get outta the water,” Kelly explained. Looking through the riflescope, she zeroed in on one to get a feel for its natural rhythm of rising and falling. Crest . . . dive . . . crest . . . dive . . . crest —

  CRACK.

  She fired off a shot. The loaded dart stuck into the marlin’s flank, near its tail.

  The Aurora drifted along with the shoal. Evan took Kelly’s example and singled out a sailfish before firing. He missed at first but redeemed himself the next minute when he tagged one.

  Over ten minutes they marked half a dozen of the fish before Kelly was satisfied with their progress. “That should be enough to track the whole school.”

  “And now we wait?” Evan asked.

  “Now we wait.”

  * * * * *

  Bart called them back to the bridge around noon for an update. “I’ve kept an eye on the marlins for the last couple hours.”

  “Where are we?” Evan asked.

  “About three hundred miles east of Miami.”

  “And the trackers are working?”

  “All six of them.”

  Evan counted the dots on the GPS equipment. “This only shows four.”

  “When did two of them disappear?” Kelly asked.

  “I-I’m not sure. They were there when I last checked, not five minutes ago.”

  “You think a couple tags stopped working?

  “It’s possible,” Kelly said. “The disposable ones aren’t the most reliable.”

  “It looks like someone’s lagging behind,” Evan said.

  Bart shook his head. “No, it’s not moving at all.”

  At once the other dots sped away, branching out in a fan shape.

  Evan’s face lit up. “Two of the marlins vanished, one stopped dead and the others have been frightened off. Anyone wanna guess why?”

  A large blip appeared on sonar, dwarfing the other objects.

  “I’ll ready the Simon,” Kelly said.

  With Rafe’s assistance at the Yumbo crane, the submersible was transported to the stabilizer platform. The engineer spot-checked the mini-sub for any defects as the researchers arrived. Captain Bart cut the Aurora’s engines.

  Kelly said, “It’s now or never.”

  “When should we expect you back?” the Jamaican asked.

  “Forty-five minutes, an hour at most. There’s enough air for two people to last a full day. If we see this thing in action and snap a few pictures, I’ll be happy.”

  “Based on that preliminary information, we’ll be better able to formulate a plan to capture it outright,” Evan said.

  Kelly climbed the ladder on the Simon’s hull and uncapped the small conning tower. She waved for Evan to join her. “You’ll need to get in first.”

  He ascended to the top and peered inside the cramped space. “Tight fit,” he said.

  “Get in and face the rear viewport. You’ll have to lie on your stomach. If you’re claustrophobic, this is the time to speak up.”

  “Never bothered me any,” he said and disappeared into the belly of the submersible. She heard him call out once, cursing as he banged his head on the low-hanging ceiling. Moments later he yelled, “Okay, come in.”

  The engineer helped Kelly step inside the mini-sub. She turned to Rafe, only her head visible. “Are you sure you wanna do this?” he asked.

  “What I want is irrelevant,” she said. “It has to be done.”

  “Be careful and stay safe.” He replaced the hatch, tightened it in place from the outside.

  Rafe then lowered the deck’s hydraulic system. The platform slowly descended into the water. To the Jamaican it appeared as though the dark, swirling waters of the Atlantic had swallowed the Simon whole.

  * * * * *

  Evan told the marine biologist, “If you need any help, just ask.” Kelly sat cross-legged at the prow while Evan’s feet prodded her in the butt. He lay prone behind her, watching out the back window.

  “I’ll worry about navigation if you take care of the research. And I want good data,” she said.

  The water around them rose as the Aurora vanished from view. Soon the waterline disappeared completely as the Simon sank beneath the waves. “Are we ready?” she asked.

  Evan responded, “Ready as ever.”

  She took the control joystick and revved the motorized, twin thrusters. The submersible jerked at first before Kelly became more confident in steering. The Simon left the stabilizer deck, teetering over the gaping Atlantic abyss. “And we’re off.”

  Kelly turned on a small fan in the corner. It circulated warm, stale air that would only get hotter as time wore on. She placed an earpiece in her right ear, linked directly to the Aurora. “Testing, testing. Can you hear me, Bart?”

  Static crackled through the line as the captain answered. “Loud and less than clear. We’ll make do.”

  “How are the sensors?” she asked Evan.

  “Depth gauge is at ten meters and dropping. Water current is four knots, ambient temperature eighty-five degrees.”

  “I want you in constant contact,” Bart said over the intercom. “If anything happens — ”

  “Don’t jinx us,” the marine biologist advised.

  “Thirty meters,” Evan said.

  By this point the world transformed to muted, bland colors. Hues in the light spectrum were scattered by water molecules. At ninety feet down, red was the first to fade. Evan’s scarlet shirt was now gray. Yellow and green were the next to disappear. By a hundred and fifty feet under the water, blue and purple finally ceased to exist.

  Visibility was clear to thirty feet, and shapes could be discerned up to fifty feet out. “Spot anything?” she asked Evan.

  “Not yet.” A stingray billowed around the Simon, gliding like an eagle on the ocean currents. “I see a manta ray.”

  “Looks like a shoal of blenny ahead,” Kelly said. “I’ll get closer for a better view.” The Simon veered north and stopped, floating outside a wall of small fish. Their fluid movements impressed the marine biologist. They acted as a flock of birds, hundreds of creatures ebbing and flowing in a giant heartbeat. They formed a writhing mass of fi
ns and scales that moved in total harmony, each member in sync with the next. “They’re agitated,” she said.

  At once — as if thinking like a single entity — they began swirling in a vortex. Within seconds the throng morphed into a tornado of fish, a protective measure to thwart predator attack.

  “I only see scavengers in the area. We must have just missed the feast.”

  A dark mass passed in the distance, beyond the line of clear visibility. “Maybe not,” Kelly said. She nosed the Simon closer and the blennies compensated, shifted from the submarine. “There’s something about twenty meters out,” she reported to Bart.

  “Roger that,” the captain replied.

  Kelly maneuvered the submersible to skirt the group of blenny. She kept a lookout on the shadow ahead. Its outline grew more defined as the Simon bridged the span. “I think that’s it,” she said. Evan twisted around and peered over Kelly’s shoulder out the front viewport.

  “Are you sure that’s our animal?” he asked.

  The curtain of fish parted as the creature attacked. Enormous jaws snapped sideways at the blenny, instantly scattering them into smaller groups.

  “Pretty damn sure.”

  The researchers felt insignificant in the presence of the Leviathan.

  In the hot mini-sub, a cold shiver ran down Kelly’s spine. To see the creature, witness its full glory . . . she didn’t know how to react. Her entire life had led to this moment, and now her body went numb.

  “Jesus Christ,” she said. It wasn’t meant as a derogatory remark, rather was spoken with ostensible religious reverence. “The Leviathan . . . It’s an alligator.” This was the first time she’d referred to the animal by its Biblical name.

  Evan shook his head, unable to take his gaze off the creature. “No, a crocodile.”

  “Repeat that,” Bart said.

  “We found it.”

  Evan said, “It’s monstrous.”

  “It’s beautiful,” she corrected.

  A moment of awed silence before Bart said, “What’s going on?”

  “It’s a crocodile,” Kelly relayed to the Aurora.

  “Crocodile?” Bart shouted through a haze of static. “How’d a croc get in the Atlantic?”