by Hunter Shea
“You can do that?”
Captain Stanson flashed a rigid smile. “We’re the US Navy. We can do anything we set our minds to.”
“How are you going to get it out of the mega pod?”
“With heavy duty cargo nets. Because of weight limitations, we’re going to have to select the smallest we can find, but that should be enough, I assume?”
Chet’s brain fired off so many possibilities, both good and bad, that could come about from trying to study an orca still in the throes of whatever this was that controlled them. He could only nod.
Rosario pinched his back, whispering in his ear, “You can’t be serious.”
“Maybe if we separate it from the mega pod, it will revert to its normal self.”
“And maybe it will lash out and kill us or anyone helping us.”
“That won’t be an issue,” Wolf said.
“Why is that?” Rosario asked.
“The killer whale will be euthanized the moment we detect any trouble.”
“So you’re bringing one of their babies here just to kill it?” Chet felt a wave of heat coming off Rosario. He was transfixed by the image on the monitor. The helicopter was getting so close, the rotor wash was kicking up the water, hundreds of tiny white caps dancing around the slumbering orcas. The exhalation from their blowholes was hammered by the wind, rapidly raining back down on them.
“We’re hoping it won’t come to that,” Captain Stanson said. “I think this is the lesser of two evils. Don’t you agree?”
“No, I don’t,” she said.
Wolf interjected. “Look, we can’t just sit idly by and watch forever. If the mega pod doesn’t break up before they come close to land, action will have to be taken.”
Before Rosario could object, Chet grabbed her hand. “Do you see that?”
The orcas were so close together, it looked like he could walk along their backs and never touch water. Their sleek bodies rubbed against one another as they dove and rose.
It was beautiful.
So many wonderful animals coexisting with one another, taking comfort in their close proximity. Maybe he was making more of it than it actually was, but that didn’t make it any less breathtaking.
Right in the center of a swarm of bodies was a baby orca, maybe no more than a year old. It was sandwiched between two adults. Getting it out from between them would be no easy task. With so little room to maneuver, how would they get it in the cargo net?
“And once they separate it from its mother and manage not to murder it, what are we supposed to do? Take it home with us and care for it?” Rosario said.
“I guess we’d have to make arrangements to bring it to one of the marine parks,” he said, feeling like a traitor as soon as he heard his own words.
“That’s exactly what we want to stop,” she not so gently reminded him.
He didn’t know how to answer that wouldn’t make him sound like a hypocrite and piss her off even more.
Chet had never felt so out of his depth. What the hell was he doing on a Navy supercarrier observing a mega pod of orcas? How did they expect him to know what the hell to do? If he could have one wish at the moment, it would be to bring Professor Lund back from the dead so all of the focus wasn’t on him.
The Navy had marine biologists, but the two that were onboard had deferred to him. They were there solely in the capacity to assist Chet when needed. Both men, whom he’d met briefly the night before, were about as green as stalks of broccoli. Chet had seen and worked with more orcas in a month than they had in their lives.
Rosario whirled and stormed off the bridge. Wolf and Stanson didn’t even notice her go. All of their attention was on the monitor. Chet looked back and thought of going after her.
“Tell him to proceed with the tranquilizer,” Captain Stanson said.
No, he realized he needed to be here to witness this. There was nothing he could do to stop it anyway. It was best to observe it from start to finish and if he was lucky, be part of the solution, preferably one that didn’t include mass slaughter.
The helicopter was so close, Chet was able to see the small dart bury itself in the back of the baby orca.
It reacted violently, thrashing about. There was no sound on the monitor, but Chet could very well imagine the wails the orca was making.
“Is that normal?” the Captain asked.
Chet said, “No, not at all. It should have barely felt the dart. It’s acting as if your man dropped a long harpoon into it.”
The baby orca’s wild reaction appeared to wake the adult orcas around it. In seconds, the ocean was frothing with orca activity.
“Something’s wrong,” Chet said. “Your men should pull back.”
“There’s finally some separation,” Captain Stanson said. “Get it in the net, now!”
His orders were relayed to the men in the chopper.
Chet watched a line come into the frame, a giant black net unfurling from its end. It landed beside the baby orca.
The picture enlarged as the chopper got even closer.
Chet had to remind himself to breathe. All eyes on the bridge were locked on the monitor.
In an instant, all of the adult orcas around the baby dove deep and out of sight, leaving it on its own.
“It’s like they’re giving it to us,” Wolf said, his voice uneven.
“I don’t think they are,” Chet said.
A second later, he was proved right.
Chapter Twenty
Five adult orcas burst from the ocean, heading straight for the helicopter.
Chet watched in horror as one of them locked its jaws on the landing skid. The picture canted hard to the left as the weight of the orca dragged the chopper down with startling speed into the cold water.
The video cut out instantly.
Everyone on the bridge was frozen in stunned silence.
Finally, Captain Stanson turned to Chet and said, “Why didn’t you tell me that could happen?”
Chet’s blood rushed to his face. “What makes you think I knew they were going to attack the helicopter?”
The Captain’s posture and demeanor were so preternaturally calm, it worried Chet far more than if he were screaming and losing his shit.
“I just lost five good men.”
Lieutenant Commander Wolf looked to Chet with a mix of pity and anger. How the hell had this become his fault?
“There was no way I could have predicted that,” he said in his defense. “I had no idea how close the helicopter was hovering over them. Orcas do breach the water, but I’ve never seen any go that high.”
One of the crewmen interjected, “Sir, it appears the mega pod is on the move again.”
“Have they broken up at all?”
They waited for a tense moment.
“No, sir.”
“Then it looks like we’re going to have to help them along.”
“Please, don’t do that,” Chet said. The return glare from the Captain made him mute.
There was no way of defending the orcas now. They may have been intelligent, but they couldn’t know their action was a declaration of war.
Another monitor came to life, showing a fast moving image of the ocean. There were crosshairs in the center of the screen and a ton of changing readouts on the periphery.
When Chet was a boy, he remembered watching the bombing runs on Iraq in the first gulf war. It had been like watching a video game, only the explosions were real. For him, there had always been a disconnect. It looked so small on their TV screen, he thought he could see the flaws in the graphic designer’s programming.
There was no disconnect this time.
Forcing himself not to turn away, he watched as a jet screamed over the mega pod. Something narrow and fast tore toward the center of the mega pod.
A great geyser of water and shattered orca bodies exploded high into the air.
Chet was grateful Rosario wasn’t here to see it.
“Direct hit,” the crewman s
aid without a hint of emotion.
“Now let’s see how these sons of bitches react,” Wolf said under his breath.
“The orcas aren’t our enemy,” Chet reminded him.
“Right now, they’re certainly not our friends,” the lieutenant commander shot back.
The families of the men in the chopper and trainers at the marine parks in the US and Spain would agree with the man.
“The mega pod is dispersing.”
A restrained cheer went up from the crew. The Captain remained stoic.
Sick to his stomach that it had come to murdering the orcas, Chet felt a glimmer of hope that the explosion had somehow shaken them from their collective fugue.
“I want more eyes in the sky tracking each pod,” Captain Stanson said. “If they look like they’re going to regroup, we’ll hit them again.”
“How fast can they go?” Lieutenant Commander Wolf asked Chet.
“Up to thirty-five miles an hour, sometimes faster for short bursts.”
“Thank you. We’ll call you if and when we need you. Until then, it’s best to wait in the conference room and we’ll send current video for you to review.”
Just like that, Chet was dismissed.
He stormed off the bridge just as Rosario had done earlier.
They were not asked to return to the bridge. Rosario cried when Chet told her what had been done. He’d taken a few blows to his chest. She didn’t blame him. He was just convenient to vent her frustration.
They stayed in the conference room for hours, drinking coffee. Chet had made a list of possible reasons for the violent and strange orca behavior. No theory was too crazy. He even jotted down ‘virus from Mars’ on one line.
He and Rosario worked down the list, poking holes in each theory.
“I seriously don’t think it’s physical,” Rosario said. She’d taken to pacing over the past hour, pausing every now and then to twirl a chair around and around until Chet got dizzy just looking at it. “If it was, Raquel’s tests would have showed something.”
“Not necessarily true,” Chet said. “I don’t know squat about the lab she uses and their track record. There could be contamination.”
“For the orcas in Spain and Portugal?”
“Stranger things have happened.”
She blew stray hairs from her eyes. “Stranger things are happening. How long until you get any results from Naala’s bloodwork?”
“Another couple of days. That’s too long for me.”
“Not if this keeps up.”
Chet stared at the closed door. Every now and then, they heard people hustling past. He kept waiting for Wolf to make an appearance. The military man was either pissed at them or whatever was currently going on with the fractured mega pod was commanding his full attention.
Rosario leaned against the whiteboard, tenting her fingers under her dimpled chin. “So let’s just say it’s not physical. Which leads us to it being mental.”
“The collective orca subconscious losing it at the same time across the globe?” he said, trying hard to hide his sarcasm.
“I take it you weren’t a fan of Jung in school.”
“I think I drank all the Jung lessons out of my head in college.”
She went back to pacing. “Jesus, I hate to say it, but what if this is some kind of mind control. Could that HAARP stuff really be capable of all this?”
HAARP was listed on the legal pad with a question mark next to it, along with Jamel Abrams. Double question mark.
He tossed the pad on the table. “I could sooner tell you about Katy Perry’s personal life than I can HAARP. I thought we were going to let this one go, seeing as a janitor being the only one holding the keys to the truth seems pretty damn unlikely.”
“Custodian,” she corrected him.
“Right. Besides, weren’t you the one who dismissed that guy outright?” He twirled a pencil, admiring the sly smile on Rosario’s lips.
“I was. A woman has a right to change her mind.”
Chet snapped the pencil between his fingers when the door swung open.
“Get off your lazy asses. We have work to do.”
“Ivan!” Chet exclaimed. After the mega pod had broken up, Chet assumed they had cancelled the order to bring Ivan and Raquel to the supercarrier.
The Spaniard looked disheveled but determined.
“They flew me here on a jet that went faster than your president’s mouth.”
Chet rose from his chair and took his hand. Ivan gave Rosario a quick hug and a peck on each cheek.
“What about Raquel?” Rosario asked.
“They already have her working on the orcas.”
“What orcas?” Chest said.
“They retrieved five bodies. Come on, she needs all the help she can get. Those marine biologists don’t know their assholes from a knothole.”
They were escorted to the deck, the walk feeling like a good mile from the conference room. A makeshift autopsy lab had been constructed with a heavy gray tarp rigged over both bodies and work area.
“Looks like the boys in white have been busy,” Rosario remarked.
Raquel raised an eyebrow when they entered. She was covered in gore from shoulders to feet.
“I only have one whole orca. The rest is just bits and pieces,” she said in way of a greeting. Ivan passed a box of latex gloves around and they got busy.
They worked at a feverish pace, but managed to be careful as well. The last thing they wanted to do was botch the labs because of shoddy work.
It was exhausting, cutting through the layers of fat, sawing through bone and lifting hunks of flesh so heavy, Chet was certain he’d aggravated his old hernia. Ivan cataloged and labeled while Rosario took copious notes, both on a pad and through the voice recorder on her phone.
When they were done two hours later, Raquel threw her gloves on the deck and said, “Where the hell is the shower?” Her face was beaded with sweat.
“You’ll have time for that later,” Lieutenant Commander Wolf said, stepping under the tarp. “For now, I need you all to come with me.”
Ivan looked like he was about to tell Wolf to do something physically impossible to himself. Chet motioned for him to keep calm. Out here in the middle of the Atlantic, the Navy was fully in charge.
They followed Wolf in a single file line, the two Navy marine biologists staying behind to clean things up.
It had been sunny and a tad warm when they’d entered the tarp. Now, the sky was pink and the air cool. Chet thought he smelled rain in the air, but there wasn’t a cloud to be seen.
Wolf took them to a much less appointed conference room. It had a rectangular table and several serviceable chairs that were obviously not built for comfort. The walls were bare and the room had a slight echo.
Captain Stanson was seated, waiting for them.
“Is this the brig?” Chet asked, half-joking.
“If it was, you’d know it,” the Captain said, gesturing for them to take a seat. Chet could only imagine how bad they smelled. The man didn’t seem to notice…or if he did, he didn’t care.
“Any preliminary findings?” he asked the group.
“Not a fucking thing, other than severe damage from your weapons,” Ivan replied, sitting straight in his chair, eyes boring into the Captain. Chet had told him about the Navy’s bombing of the mega pod. Even though Ivan had lost very good people to the orcas in his care, the last thing he wanted was to see them slaughtered.
Captain Stanson turned to Raquel.
“From what I can tell, everything appears normal,” she said, hands folded in front of her. “We’ll look at the blood and tissue, but I’m afraid we’ll come up with more of the same.”
“That’s not what I was hoping to hear.” He drummed his fingers on a closed file folder.
“That makes all of us,” Chet said.
“So what you’re telling me is that, in your professional opinions, there’s nothing that can be done?”
Chet cleared
his throat, tamping down the anger he felt bubbling up. “Right now, as far as finding causality for their behavior, we’re stumped. That’s not to say that the answer isn’t waiting for us in the lab. But truth be told, orcas are wild animals. Even if we do find the root cause of their unexplained…madness, I’m not sure what we can do other than steer clear of them.”
“Or kill them,” Rosario said, glaring at the Captain.
“We may be the apex predators on land, but they hold the title on the sea,” Chet continued. “As much as we like to think we’re in charge of this planet, we can’t control everything.”
Lieutenant Commander Wolf visibly bristled. “So we’re just supposed to allow them to disrupt all of our commercial, private and military operations? Do you know what that would do to our economy? Or our ability to properly defend our country?”
“I’m well aware of that,” Chet said, palms flat on the table in a conscious effort not to ball them into fists.
“So we just sit and play the role of spectators,” Wolf said with a derisive snort.
Now Chet flew from his chair. “I don’t know what you’re trying to get me to say! I feel just as helpless as you do. I’ve dedicated my life to protecting and caring for them. Jesus, I despise the fact that we keep them penned in marine parks, which is why I made it a point to be there, making sure they’re treated properly.”
He cast a quick glance at Ivan who caught his eye and looked away.
“It kills me to see what they’ve done. And I’m sick to my soul knowing that the only way people are going to feel safe is if the threat is eliminated. At least the orcas can’t control what they’re doing.” Chet felt a tremor run through his body. Saying all of his fears aloud wasn’t cathartic.
It just made him feel all the more helpless.
The Captain opened the folder. “Who is Jamel Abrams?”
“Come again?” Chet said, his heart starting to gallop.
He was shown the legal pad he and Rosario were working on. “I’m very interested to know why you wrote HAARP down as a possible reason for our current situation and who this Jamel Abrams might be.”
Rosario’s hand found Chet’s under the table.
“It’s time we were completely open and honest with one another,” Captain Stanson said, leaning forward in his chair. “Because we now have four pods of three hundred killer whales each heading in different directions at breakneck speed. Before more people…and killer whales…die, we need to come clean.”