by Steve Alten
“What if the Tonga and the trawler were dead in the water?” Jackie asked. “No engines, nothing for the Lio’s senses to perceive. All you’d have to do is get it to chase you—you could lead it right into the trap.”
David shot his “sex-buddy” a harsh glance. “If it’s that simple, why don’t you do it? Just be sure to figure out a way to keep from being netted yourself, because I don’t see any place on this schematic for the Manta to go.”
Fiesal bin Rashidi smiled. “Come now, David, you are being too modest. Last summer in Dubai, I witnessed you give our pilot candidates a demonstration of what your Mantas could do. Maneuvering within the confines of an aquarium, you accelerated in tight figure eights, then launched the sub out of the water at a forty-five-degree angle, clearing a fifteen-foot-high suspension bridge, nearly striking the duct pipes that ran along the ceiling.” Bin Rashidi turned to Jackie. “He soaked everyone there, including our instructor, a no-nonsense American naval officer named Brian Suits. Captain Suits had been putting David in his place all day. Upon exiting the sub, David handed the captain a dollar bill as if he were a valet, telling him to ‘park it in the shade.’ That was the moment I knew we had found the one man in the world capable of capturing the Liopleurodon described by Michael Maren in his field notes.”
Jackie winked from across the conference table. “He’s something special, all right.”
David was about to reply when Liam Molony entered the meeting room, the mission commander out of breath. “We just received a distress call from Macquarie Island. Two of their scientists were attacked by the Lio about eight nautical miles south of our present location. I ordered the Dubai Land-I to pick them up, but we need to get there fast before the creature leaves the area.”
Bin Rashidi dragged the engineer out of his chair. “Get the trawl net into position; I want your trap set in place the moment we arrive. Commander Molony, David will need a co-pilot.”
“I can handle it.” The red-haired former submariner turned to David. “There’s something else you need to know. The scientists were shadowing two elephant seal bulls mounted with tracking devices. At least one of the two males was eaten. It’s possible the tracking device is still functioning inside the Lio.
“We may finally be able to track this monster while it’s in deep water.”
22
Agricola Industries
Vancouver, British Columbia
The saber-gray S550 Mercedes-Benz sedan followed the two-lane private road to the security checkpoint, which was already four cars deep. Beyond the iron gate lay an industrial campus of sprawling manicured lawns and man-made ponds, all centered around a six-story office complex and a series of manufacturing plants, their matching green glass exteriors reflecting the morning sun. Nicknamed “Emerald City” by Peter Agricola, the company’s late founder and CEO, the business park had taken on more of a militaristic feel since the private Canadian firm had been bought out by the defense sector giant, ITT.
Paul Agricola waited impatiently for the drivers in front of him to be individually scrutinized. His dashboard clock advanced to 9:04.
Four minutes late and I’m still not through security. Bad enough the Board of Directors already thinks of me as inherited baggage.
He rolling down his window as the guard approached. “Morning, Mr. Agricola. Can I see your badge please?”
“Oscar, we’ve known each other since your kid was in diapers.”
The guard scowled. “Frickin’ ITT, they’re watching everything we do. Even if I let you in without seeing your badge, you couldn’t get past the lobby.”
Paul fished through his glove box, removing the plastic card hanging from a lanyard.
The guard swiped the magnetic strip. “Thank you, Mr. A. Say, how’s your sister—”
Paul drove off mid-sentence. What was the point of schmoozing with the help if you still had to comply with all the rules?
He followed the private road to the employee lot, parked the Benz in his reserved spot, and headed inside the tower for his “spanking.”
* * *
“What the hell were you thinking? Don’t you realize your name still carries weight in the business sector?”
Paul leaned back in his chair at the end of the twenty-foot-long oak conference table, his eyes following the short woman in the gray skirt and cream-colored blouse as she made her way around the crowded room. Tracy Ann King had been a rising executive at ITT when the defense company had taken over; now the auburn-haired CEO, twenty years his junior, ran his father’s company.
“Tracy, I feel horrible that the kid was eaten, however—”
“Excuse me, Mr. Agricola, but this is a board meeting. Show the proper respect.”
Paul exhaled a long breath. “With all due respect, Ms. King.”
“Actually, it’s Dr. King. I earned my Ph.D.”
“Yeah, well good for you, but I’m not calling you Dr. King unless you decide to lead a peace rally through downtown Quebec. As for going after those Megalodons, my doctorate degree happens to be in marine biology. I was also the one who discovered those sharks living in the Mariana Trench thirty-five years ago and I’ll be the one who captures those two she-devils. Then we’ll see how the Agricola name carries in the business community, especially after we rename the Tanaka Institute the Agricola Entertainment Center.”
The eighteen board members seemed to turn in unison toward Paul.
“Taylor’s selling the institute?”
“Is there a signed contract in place?”
“Dr. King, shouldn’t this sale have been brought before the board for a vote?”
Paul held up his palms. “Easy, maggots. This deal has nothing to do with Agricola Industries or ITT. I’m purchasing the Tanaka Institute using my own funds.”
Tracy King stood over him. “You have signed paperwork?”
“I have a deal in principle. The attorneys are finalizing the contracts, which will be signed after I recapture Bela and Lizzy. As for the teen’s death, that still falls under the Tanaka-Taylor liability section, so stop worrying.”
Side conversations broke out.
“Enough!” Tracy King circled the room, returning to her chair at the head of the oval table. “Tell me, Mr. Agricola, after your last disastrous attempt, how do you plan on capturing these two monsters without getting anyone else killed?”
“It’s called going back to basics. My engineer is meeting me in Warehouse B in about an hour to requisition a few items necessary to put everything into motion. If all goes as expected the sisters will be back in their lagoon and tourism in the Salish Sea will owe me a debt of thanks.”
The female CEO sat back in her chair. “Your new venture will need seed money. Perhaps we can arrange something…”
“Forget it. Once the sisters are recaptured the banks in California will be lining up to offer me money.”
The suit to Tracy King’s right turned to his CEO. “Technically, anything stored in our warehouses remains the property of Agricola Industries and ITT.”
Tracy King’s eyes widened. “What was it you needed to requisition from my warehouse, Mr. Agricola?”
Paul ground his teeth. “You know, Dr. King, if you really want to be a part of this venture then you should be on board our boat when we capture the two Megs.”
“And risk being eaten by those two monsters? Not a chance.”
“Oh, I guarantee the Megs won’t eat you. Call it a professional courtesy.”
* * *
Michael Tvrdik followed the signs to Warehouse B, parking his Chrysler minivan out back by the aluminum bay doors. The engineer found Paul Agricola inside holding a coffee-stained instruction manual while directing a forklift operator where to set down a large wooden crate roughly the size of a golf cart.
“Michael, right on time.”
“Paul, why am I here? I told you on the phone that I don’t want anything more to do with capturing the sisters.”
“You’re here because I paid you
in advance. As for the sisters, no one else is going to be at risk, thanks to the object inside this crate that you are going to get up and running for me as quickly as possible.”
“What is it?”
Paul motioned to the forklift operator, who used a crowbar to pry open a rusted combination lock, breaking the latch in the process.
Michael Tvrdik helped the two men lift the top off the container. Inside the crate was a ray-shaped metal object with a seven-foot wingspan. Peeling yellow paint along its right wing identified it as a Sea Bat.
“What the hell is it?”
“What do you mean? It’s a Sea Bat, an underwater drone.”
“If it’s a drone then why is it attached to a cable?”
“It’s not autonomous. We used it in conjunction with a Multi Beam Echo Sounder to map the sea floor of the Mariana Trench. The Sea Bat dropped beneath the hydrothermal plume—it’s what attracted the Megalodon thirty-five years ago.”
“And what am I supposed to do with it?”
“Get it operational.”
“Paul, it’s a piece of junk. I’d probably have to swap out every circuit on board. Wouldn’t it be easier to simply replace it with one of the newer drones?”
“Sure. While you’re at it, why not replace the Mona Lisa with a poster of Kim Kardashian? Michael, this thing worked, and do you know why it worked? It worked because its metal skin produced electrical discharges in the water that were detected by the Meg’s ampullae of Lorenzini. The newer drones are plastic; they don’t make them like this anymore. Inside the unit is a sonar array—that can be replaced with a new one. Same for the batteries, underwater cameras, and lights. As for the cable—get rid of it, we’ll be using the line attached to the hopper-dredge’s winch. So? How soon can it be ready?”
“I don’t know … maybe a month?”
“A month is too late. I want Bela and Lizzy sealed inside the Agricola Lagoon within ten days.”
Aboard the Hopper-Dredge McFarland
Weddell Sea, Antarctic Peninsula
The ship continued its southeasterly course at fifteen knots, paralleling the Antarctic Peninsula. To starboard were snow-packed cliffs; to port a dark ocean illuminated by curtains of aurora light.
Zachary Wallace crossed the main deck, pausing to look down at the McFarland’s massive hopper. On Jonas’s orders, the captain had drained the 175-foot long, forty-five-foot wide, fifty-five-foot-deep tub. For several moments the Scot stared at the hopper, confirming a distant memory.
Locating an interior stairwell, he ascended six flights to the bridge.
The McFarland’s command center seemed far too big for its solitary row of computer consoles. Large bay windows surrounded the chamber on all four sides, looking out nine stories above the ocean. The boat’s captain, a man named Jon Hudson, was at the helm. Terry Tanaka was seated at a chart table studying a map of the continent.
“Hey Terry. Jonas and I were supposed tae meet here tae plot out the drop zones fer the sonar buoys. Is he here?”
“Actually, he told me he was meeting you in your stateroom.”
“Me stateroom?”
Terry hid her satisfaction at seeing the marine biologist caught off-guard. “Is that a problem?”
“No … of course not. I’d better hurry; he’s probably down there pacing around in that damp corridor waiting for me.”
Terry smiled. “No worries, he has a master key. Knowing Jonas, I’m sure he’s waiting for you inside your quarters.”
Zach paled as the blood rushed from his face. Darting out the door, he descended the stairs two at a time.
* * *
Jonas was seated at a desk in front of Zach’s laptop when the Highland-born scientist rushed in. “Dr. Wallace, you’re just in time. I’ve been looking at this file—”
“That was encrypted!”
“My mistake. I was looking at this encrypted file and came across a map of Antarctica with a few GPS time codes that require, well … a bit of explanation.”
Jonas spun the laptop around so the screen faced Zachary. “I see you’ve got both the McFarland’s location and the two Dubai ships David is aboard accounted for. Today is February the eighteenth—no problem there. But somehow you’ve charted my son’s location on March third. Tell me, professor, how the hell do you know where my son will be … thirteen days from now!”
Zach sat down on the edge of his cot, his eyes focused on the screen. “Jonas, there are things I can tell ye and things I cannae.”
“Well, you’d better damn well tell me the things I want to hear or we’ll be dropping you off at the nearest research station and you can thumb your way home.”
“That would be a mistake.”
“For who?”
“Potentially, for a lot of people … yer son included.”
“From this map I can assume the lake you were in was Vostok. How the hell did you manage to access a lake buried beneath two miles of ice?”
“Two and a half.” Zachary ran a hand through his hair, pulling out the ponytail. “Seven years ago I was recruited for a mission—a mission to send a three-man submersible equipped with Valkyrie lasers through the Antarctic ice cap intae Lake Vostok. The purpose of that mission, as it was explained tae me, was purely scientific exploration. We’d go down, collect microbes, document any life forms we happened across, then pop back up through our own burn hole, riding the pressure generated by the ice sheet. For the record, I didn’t want tae go—at least not at first. Eventually my ego saw this as a Neil Armstrong-moon walk opportunity. But I had serious reservations.”
“Who funded the mission?”
“I was told it was a U.S., Chinese, and Australian venture, but that all turned out tae be a lie. The mission was a black ops venture, my presence lending credibility tae the story concocted as an excuse tae get surveillance equipment intae Vostok before the Russians.”
“Surveillance equipment? I don’t understand. What could possibly be buried in a fifteen-million-year-old subglacial lake that would interest the Pentagon?”
“Not the Pentagon—I never said it was the Pentagon. The group in charge was multinational; they play by their own set of rules and essentially run the planet. The banks, the oil companies, the military industrial complex, the energy sector—especially the energy sector. Interest in Vostok began many years ago after SOAR—the Support Office for Aero-physical Research, sent a reconnaissance flight tae conduct magnetic resonance imaging over Antarctica. When they flew over Lake Vostok their magnetometers went bonkers. Scientists from Japan and Germany later confirmed the presence of a magnetic anomaly in the subglacial lake along a rise located in its eastern sector. The affected area packed enough juice tae power every city in the world for the next hundred years.”
“What is it? What’s down there?”
Zach shook his head. “We’re not going tae talk about that. Whit we’re going tae talk about is destiny.”
“Destiny?”
“Specifically, the potentiality of multiple possible outcomes. The philosopher, John McTaggert, developed two theories about time and outcome. McTaggert’s A-Theory stated that the only real time is the present. The past is gone and the future exists only as a probability distribution, a potentiality of the possible things that can happen. Since the future isn’t set, it’s not real.”
“Makes sense. And his B-Theory?”
“That the past, present, and future all co-exist simultaneously. Since the past determines the future, everything that has happened since the Big Bang was predetermined. Quantum physics is based on B-Theory, that everything that could possibly happen has already happened, that time is dependent purely upon the observer. The overriding question—is it possible tae alter the present by changing the past?”
“I don’t know. I’m a former phys. ed. major masquerading as a marine biologist; what the hell do I know about quantum physics?”
“Let’s go back in time thirty-five years. Whit if this Paul Agricola fella hadn’t been in the Phili
ppine Sea the day ye piloted a three-man submersible intae the Mariana Trench? Would ye have still crossed paths with that Megalodon? If not, would your life be completely different right now? Different wife … different kids?”
“I don’t know. I knew Masao Tanaka, so when his UNIS drones stopped working seven years after my naval dive he probably would have still sent Terry to recruit me to pilot one of their submersibles into the Mariana Trench. If everything is predetermined like you said, then you might board a different train, but all tracks lead to similar outcomes.”
Zach nodded, Jonas’s words having a deep impact. “Seven years ago I boarded my own train—a submersible that escorted three of us intae Lake Vostok. Seven years later, the ripples from that experience forced me tae return. My family was in trouble, the world on the brink of a disaster—I desperately needed tae change the present by altering the past. I knew the source of that magnetic anomaly would allow me tae do so, if I could reach it. The powers-that-be knew it too and were out tae stop me.”
“I don’t understand. You’re here in Antarctica to go back to Lake Vostok?”
“No, Jonas. That return trip to Vostok already happened. I succeeded in rerouting the past because a close friend of mine sacrificed his life in order tae get me back tae that magnetic anomaly. On March third—thirteen days from now—we began a thirty-six hour marathon through subglacial rivers that led us intae the lake. We reached Vostok aboard one of the Manta subs your engineer is currently reconfiguring in the hold.
“Ye, Jonas Taylor, were the pilot.”
23
Aboard the Tonga
31 Nautical Miles Southeast of Macquarie Island
The crew of the Dubai Land-I found Tom Beckendorf and Brandon Cornatzer afloat in their life raft, surrounded by a sea of sharks drawn by the blood and blubber of the decimated elephant seal pack. The two scientists were taken aboard the trawler while the ship’s sonar operators and lookouts nervously scanned the ocean, fearful of what might lie beneath the dark swells.