by JE Gurley
“Pick them up,” he called to Bodden.
Bodden expertly pulled the Miss Lucy alongside the lifeboat. Germaine helped them aboard. By the looks of the battered and leaking lifeboat, they were lucky it was still afloat.
“Welcome aboard the Miss Lucy,” he greeted them. “I’m Captain Germaine. He’s Bodden.”
The thin, older man in a uniform spoke. “I’m Doctor Chase of the Neptune. Have you located any other survivors?”
“Survivors? No, no one.”
“Are there many ships searching for us,” a woman asked.
“No one knows about you. I’m on my way to Jamaica. What happened to the Neptune?”
Josh set their few supplies on the deck and spoke up. “This may sound mad, but it was attacked by sea monsters.”
Germaine laughed. “Mad? Maybe, but if so, we’re all mad. I’m from George Town. It was overrun by swarms of giant sea lice.”
Josh was stunned. The attacks weren’t a local phenomenon. “I was on Little Cayman. There, it was isopods and then a tidal wave during the hurricane. I was adrift, and the Neptune picked me up. Viperfish attacked our lifeboat and killed one of the passengers.”
“Viperfish.” Germaine growled. “I’ve seen ‘em. So, this is your second rescue. You have the luck with you, boy.” He looked down at the lifeboat. “Cast the boat adrift and we’ll be on our way.”
A soft, steady pinging came from the wheelhouse. Germaine jerked his head toward the sound. “What is it, Bodden, fish?”
“Too big for fish and moving too fast.”
Germaine turned to his new passengers. “It may be more Viperfish. Get below and grab some food. We’re leaving.”
“I think it’s bigger than Viperfish,” Josh said.
Germaine stared at him. “What do you know?”
“We saw a sea serpent. It rammed the Neptune and sank it.”
Anything that could sink a passenger liner deserved respect from a distance. “How big was it?”
“Two-hundred- feet long, maybe more. It has a long, reptilian neck and head. I’m a marine biologist, and I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“The sea’s spitting up a lot of things I’ve never seen.” Germaine looked at Bodden. “Maybe we can outrun it?”
Bodden shook his head. “It’s making twenty-five knots.”
Josh glanced at the gasoline drums. “I have a plan, captain.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“Give me enough fuel to run the lifeboat engine. We can load a fuel drum on it, punch holes in it, and set it on fire. If the sea monster goes for it, maybe we can cook it.”
Germaine considered their options. They had none. “Okay.”
The four of them, Josh, Doctor Chase, Germaine, and Rawlins, rolled the drum over the side and into the lifeboat, almost overturning the lifeboat. Josh leaped in, removed the bung with a hammer, and let fuel spill into the boat. He siphoned a couple of gallons of fuel into the empty fuel tank and cranked the outboard engine. The boat strained against the rope.
“It’s here!” Bodden called out, as Josh made the leap back to the Miss Lucy. The lifeboat moved as a wave hit it. Josh lost his footing, fell overboard and went under. He could feel the displaced water as something large swam beneath him. He struggled to the surface and grabbed Germaine’s outstretched arm. The captain hauled him back aboard.
While Germaine stood by with a knife, Josh struck a match and tossed it onto the lifeboat. It sputtered and went out.
“There’s too much water in the boat,” he said.
“Use the flare gun,” Germaine suggested. “Do you still have flares?”
Josh removed the Very pistol from the lifeboat supplies. “One,” he said.
“Then don’t miss,” Germaine advised as he cut the rope.
The lifeboat slowly pulled away from the schooner in a tight curve. The head of an enormous creature rose from the water just ahead of the lifeboat and continued to rise until half its body was on the surface. The beast was colossal, looking like a submarine. The head hung suspended forty feet above the water. The creature resembled a photo of the Loch Ness monster, except it had a shorter head and longer fins. The boat and the creature were fifty yards away. Germaine stared at Josh as he aimed the Very pistol, praying he didn’t miss. He fired the pistol and watched breathlessly as it sailed over the boat and hit the sea monster in the head. The creature bellowed in rage. Just as he thought all was lost, the flare bounced off the monster’s head and tumbled into the lifeboat. The boat burst into flames, and then struck the creature just as the fuel drum exploded. The explosion lit up the night. Burning fuel spread over the water and around the creature, engulfing it in a pool of fire. Bellowing, it endured the flames for another minute before submerging.
Germaine slapped Josh on the back. “I think you did it.”
“I don’t think we killed it. We had better get out of here before it decides to try again.”
“I’ll push the engines ‘til they bust.”
“No! I suggest you use the sails. I think the creature is attracted to sound. That’s why it went after the lifeboat. It was probably following you.”
Germaine gulped. Maybe it had been fortuitous that he had encountered the lifeboat. “I’ve only got one crewman.”
“I can help. I’m no sailor, but I can follow orders.”
“Show him what to do,” Germaine said to Bodden.
While Germaine dropped the centerboard, Bodden and Josh raised the jib sail, mainsail, and foresail. In spite of Josh’s inexperience, the job went smoothly. The fore gaff topsail was ripped and useless, but the three sails were sufficient to catch the breeze. Within fifteen minutes, they were under way. They quickly left the burning and sinking lifeboat behind. Germaine hoped they had left the creature behind as well.
* * * *
Josh was now afloat on his forth sea vessel, if he counted his roof-raft ride from Little Cayman as his first. He was thankful that Germaine had spotted them and hoped that he had repaid the captain’s generosity with his fire ship idea. Sir Francis Drake had used fire ships against the Spanish Armada at the Battle of Gravelines in 1588. While Josh’s hastily improvised interpretation involved a sea monster, something in which Drake might well have believed, the concept had been sound. He harbored no misgivings that luck had played a major part in the outcome.
Raising the schooner’s sails had been hard work. His palms still burned from the rope burns. If his belief that the creature targeted sound or vibrations, they might be safe. It was a big if. Satisfied he had done all he could do, he joined his fellow survivors. They were a haggard bunch. Mrs. Bivens and Mrs. Hart still wore salt-stained formal gowns. Finally succumbing to their grief at the deaths of their husbands, they had little to say to anyone. Rawlins wore slacks and a dirty white shirt. He had discarded his tie in the lifeboat. He appeared to be coping on the outside, but Josh noticed a few nervous tics and shakes of his head that indicated that he was still having trouble with the situation.
Doctor Chase still wore his bloodstained uniform. The journey had taken a hard toll on him. He appeared gaunter than before, and his steps were slower as he moved about the cabin. Bodden loaned Josh a shirt that was two sizes too big, but he badly needed a bath. Bodden cooked them all a meal of bacon and eggs. It was the best meal Josh had ever eaten, or it seemed so. His memories of other meals were too hazy to recollect. It occurred to him in a moment of mental clarity that recent memories were not only more vivid, but actively sought to diminish the potency of older memories. Each time he tried to remember something good in his past, grisly images of monsters and of people dying flooded his mind.
Josh finished his meal and carried a cup of coffee to the captain. Germaine sat on a stool, steering the boat with one hand, while searching the frequencies on the radio dial with the other.
“Any luck?” Josh asked.
“Nothing clear.” Germaine switched off the radio.
“Too bad. I need to contact my professor.
”
“What about your cell phone?”
“No reception.”
“Does he have internet?”
“Of course. Why?”
Germaine smiled. “This may be an old tub, but I do have a satellite dish with an internet connection. I don’t use it much, but it works. We’re on battery, so make it short. We might need the juice later.”
Germaine pulled his battered old laptop from a cabinet, hooked it up, and logged on. Josh downloaded his photos and sent them to his professor at TCU. The reply was swift, taking only fifteen minutes.
“Josh. Glad you’re all right. I was worried. Amazing photos. The large creature resembles a ceresiosaurus calcagni, an extinct reptile from the Triassic. Fascinating. I contacted the Navy, only to discover that they are aware of numerous strange reports from the Caribbean. The Navy has requested our cooperation and discretion, so in keeping with my views on the dissemination of dangerous information, I urge you to refrain from sending photos to anyone else. I am flying to Jamaica on the first available flight. Meet me in Kingston. I’ll attempt to charter a boat.
Gerald Hicks, M.S., PhD
Head of Depart of Marine Biology
Texas Christian University
Josh was briefly puzzled by his professor’s admonition to refrain from sending the photos to anyone else. Then, he realized the professor feared the e-mail would be intercepted and meant just the opposite. Recalling a former colleague now at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, he forwarded a copy of Hicks’ e-mail and the photos. The professor’s comment about chartering a boat could mean only one thing – he intended to capture the creature. It was a foolhardy quest. As much as Josh would welcome the opportunity to study the creature, he would try to dissuade the professor from this folly.
He shut down the computer and went back to Germaine. “The U.S. Navy is getting involved.”
Germaine’s expression at the news was grim. “Good, blow the bloody things to hell with depth charges.”
“My professor is meeting me in Kingston. We’ll need a boat. I assume you’re available for charter?”
“If the price is right. I don’t sell my life cheaply.” He took a sip of his coffee and set the cup on the windowsill. “You going after it?”
“It would seem so.”
Germaine shook his head. “It’s a death wish.”
“I’ll try to limit Professor Hicks’ curiosity to photographs.”
Germaine looked away in muted pain as Josh mentioned photographs. “I’ve never met a biologist or a photographer yet who didn’t push the limits.” He took another sip of coffee to disguise the catch in his throat.
Josh needed to know more about Germaine if he was to work with him. “What happened on Grand Cayman?”
Germaine’s eyes glazed for a few seconds. At first, Josh thought he would refuse to answer. “A group of photographers charted my boat. They were licensed, but not very experienced. We were on a night dive off the North Wall, when a school of those Viperfish attacked. All three divers died. I … I couldn’t do anything but watch. The next night in George Town the sea lice attacked, thousands of them, as big as lobsters. It was a damned massacre. Me and Bodden pulled up stakes and left.”
Josh now understood the captain’s bitterness. He had lost a charter group, his friends, and his home.
“Something caused these creatures to grow to tremendous size. Then something else, an earthquake or the hurricane, brought them up from the depths. The big boy we just met, the ceresiosaurus, is the top predator. He followed them. Sauropteoygian reptiles have been extinct for over two-hundred-million years. How it survived,” he shrugged his shoulders, “I don’t know? It seems nightmares have come alive.”
Germaine sighed, “Maybe it’s the end of the world.”
Josh walked to the door of the cabin and stared out into the darkness. “No, it’s just nature breaking free of normal constraints.”
“Well, nature’s doing a great job at kicking our ass.”
“Nature has a way of correcting itself. Maybe if we study these creatures …”
“Kill them; then study them. You’ll learn nothing by dying.”
“For a man so intent on their deaths, why did you agree to let us charter your boat?”
“It’s how I make my living, that and fishing. You’ll need my expertise,” he added.
“I’m sure we will,” Josh agreed.
“Just how do you catch a sea monster?” Germaine asked.
Josh scratched his head. He had not given the idea a lot of thought. Capturing a two-hundred-foot reptile was remarkably different from capturing a dolphin or turtle.
“There are a couple of drugs that should be effective – MS-222 or Propofol.”
“Do they eat it? Do you put it in the water?”
“No, it’s injected.”
Germaine scowled. “So you tranquilize the creature, and then try to keep out of its way until it goes to sleep. You have to be some special kind of fool to try that.”
Josh laughed. His thoughts were along the same lines, but he knew Professor Hicks wouldn’t miss the opportunity to study a new species, and he couldn’t let the professor try it alone.
“I guess you’re looking at one.”
Germaine shook his head and continued steering them toward Jamaica and an uncertain future.
11
Oct. 27, Pandora, Caribbean Sea –
The freighter sliced through the blue-green Caribbean water headed south. She showed no flag, and no name marked her black hull. No lights showed from her gray upper structure. Her captain and crew called her the Pandora, though no official papers bore that name. Two months earlier, the Pandora had sailed under the name Kiya Maru with a Kyoto registration. Six months before that, it had been the Sea Maiden out of Lisbon. Its mission was top secret, known only to a handful of men in Washington. This was nothing new for Simon Knotts. He had captained the black site freighter around the world on missions of equal importance for ten years, expecting no reward or public recognition for his efforts. He believed in what he was doing and trusted his crew implicitly. They were the best trained crew on the seven seas, hand-picked for their expertise and experience.
Knotts’ own experience had been not in the Navy, but as a Marine. He had participated as a fresh-faced recruit in the Invasion of Granada in 1983 and as a captain during three tours of Iraq during the Gulf War in 1991. Working his way up from captain to major had taken three more years. An IED in Afghanistan had damaged his leg, forcing him limp with a cane, and ending his military career. He retired as a lieutenant colonel in 2004. The Central Intelligence Agency had approached him a year later. Since then, he had worked for the Company, which its employees quietly knew as the CIA.
Fourteen-thousand feet beneath the Pandora’s keel, four Russian nuclear warheads from the Cold War era lay in their watery grave in the debris of the Russian freighter, A.V. Pokhomov, a casualty of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Knotts had been born two months before the Crisis, but he knew all about it or thought he had until given the specifics of his mission. Like most Americans, he had not known of the Pokhomov’s sinking.
His primary mission was to retrieve the warheads. The Pandora had indulged in similar clandestine salvage operations many times, acting as a CIA black site, a mobile operations center. He had no concerns about that part of his dual mission. His secondary orders were somewhat more esoteric. He was to obtain, alive and intact if possible, the sea monster responsible for sinking the cruise ship Neptune.
Knotts didn’t believe in sea monsters, but his superiors did and considered the rumors about the creature reliable enough to send the Navy missile frigate U.S. Andrews to investigate. The Andrews was forty miles to their south in pursuit of the creature. He had seen blurry photos taken by a young marine biologist and news footage of the carnage in the Caymans, but he still had doubts. Until he saw the creature with his own eyes, it was a myth. Myth or not, it didn’t really matter to him. He would run the miss
ion as if such a creature existed.
His priority was the nukes. Four, 30-kiloton warheads in the wrong hands would be disastrous. On the other hand, a nuclear warhead bearing an unmistakable Russian nuclear signature, exploded in Tehran would divide Middle East loyalties to the breaking point, allowing the U.S. to move in with financial aid and military protection. Such political schemes were beyond his pay grade. His job was to get results.
He had a secret weapon, a deep submersible vehicle, or DSV, DSV-5 to be exact, named the Nemo after the captain of the Nautilus, not the cartoon fish. With it, he could reach the area where the Russian freighter rested fourteen-thousand feet beneath the surface. Built to withstand the crushing pressure at that depth, the submersible could locate and retrieve the warheads.
The records of the incident had been buried in military archives for decades, known only to a handful of men who were sworn to secrecy. Most were now dead, but a historian given permission to cull the archives for a book found the captain’s log of the U.S.S. Allen M. Sumner, the destroyer that had sunk the freighter. He, too, was sworn to secrecy, but like most academicians, confided his findings to a few friends. Word had finally reached the widespread and eager ears of the Company, and the Pandora had been given her mission. It was while training was under way that his second set of orders had arrived.
Knotts’ cabin was vastly superior to most captains’ quarters on freighters. His spacious suite had a private bath, a sitting room, and a king-sized bed. An adjoining office with a conference table served as a meeting room. Around this table now sat five men, Craig Devers and Lyle Matthews, the two men who would operate the Nemo, weapon’s specialist Mike Bates, chief engineer Roy Starnes, and ship’s doctor Millard Fenton, who would monitor the submersible’s crew during their dive. At one end of the room, a sixty-inch flat-screen monitor displayed a depth map of the Cayman Trench, the Pandora’s destination.