Dog Training The American Male
Page 28
Having dodged a bullet we rose, thankful to be alive.
Unfortunately, the crack in the bubble cockpit continued to spiderweb outward until it burst – two hundred and thirty-three feet below the surface. The sea rushed in, killing the pilot. Dragging the cameraman from the sinking sub, I kicked for the surface . . . and never made it.
This time when I came to I was in a hospital bed. My colleague, David Caldwell conveniently blamed me for the pilot’s death and for the loss of the submersible. Fired from my teaching position at Florida Atlantic University, I left the hospital intent on finding a new job.
My brain had other plans.
Unbeknownst to me, long-dormant childhood memories had been released. Sleep became my enemy – I’d wake up screaming from night terrors. Worse, I found myself deathly afraid of the water, the anxiety threatening my future as a marine biologist.
In a span of a few months I lost everything – my job, my career, my fiancι and my quickly-fading sanity.
I began drinking heavily – being inebriated kept me from entering the deepest stages of sleep where the night terrors lay in wait. Days were devoted to recovering from hangovers, nights reserved for binging on expensive booze and cheap women, both of which I found in abundance in South Beach, my new haunt.
That’s where Maxie Rael found me. My half-brother, who I never knew existed, had been sent by my estranged father to bring me back to Scotland.
The aforementioned five-star resort known today as Nessie’s Retreat had been Angus Wallace’s idea, and my father rarely met an idea (or a woman, for that matter) that he didn’t fall in love with. The Wallace clan had left him title to prime real estate just south of Urquhart Bay and once the zoning laws had been manipulated in his favor, Angus wasted no time in selling the water-front property to John Cialino of Cialino Ventures – the two partners intent on bringing luxury accommodations to the Scottish Highlands. Then one fateful afternoon during the construction phase, my father and Johnny C. became engaged in a heated argument on Urquhart bluff, and before you could say Yer bum’s oot the windae! Angus struck his younger partner with a right cross, sending Johnny’s arse (and the rest of him) into Loch Ness – never to be seen alive again.
While I was struggling to survive my own post-traumatic symptoms in Miami Beach, Angus was locked away in a Highland prison cell awaiting his murder trial. Maxie had been sent to bring me to Scotland so that my estranged father would have both his sons by his side in the fight to stave off the gallows and prove his innocence.
Seventeen years away from the old man and I fell for his lies – hook, line and sinker.
It was all part of a well-orchestrated plan intended to save my father’s neck, jumpstart his new venture, and force me to face the demons of my past – all by placing my head in his noose.
That noose unexpectedly tightened when the creature’s temperament suddenly changed.
***
TWO YEARS HAVE passed. With my demons exorcized, I felt free to marry my childhood sweetheart Brandy MacDonald, a dark-haired beauty with piercing blue eyes and a body that could have landed her in any swimsuit catalogue. Our son, William Wallace, named after our legendary ancestor, was born last year. Last summer, Nessie’s Retreat, bankrolled by Angus’s lover, Theresa (Johnny C’s widow) opened to great fanfare.
Ten months later and the resort and Drumnadrochit are both on the verge of bankruptcy.
Don’t get me wrong – the hotel is first-class, every one of its three-hundred and thirty-six rooms featuring a balcony-view of Loch Ness, each of its third-floor luxury suites equipped with a fireplace, sauna, and Jacuzzi.
The problem – no monster.
Loch Ness without its legendary creature was just a peat-infested twenty-three mile-long deepwater trough filled with water far too cold to swim in or jet-ski on. And it wasn’t just Angus’s hotel that was hurting. Without Nessie, all of the Highland villages had become destitute – the vacation equivalent of Orlando without Disneyworld and its other local theme parks. Of course, Orlando was a modern city located in sunny Florida. The Scottish Highlands were an isolated cold weather region with seasons more akin to living in Alaska. Centuries ago, the Highlanders worked the land to feed and clothe themselves, now the villages were committed to tourism. It was the feast of summer that got them through the famine of a long winter, and the sudden collapse of the Highlanders’ livelihood threatened a cultural and economic collapse.
Something similar had happened to the Inuit. Living in sub-zero temperatures in North America’s Arctic Circle, the indigenous Eskimo population had thrived for centuries – until the Canadian Provincial government started regulating their game. Widespread unemployment led to a sense of powerlessness. As I had learned myself, nothing attracts a fallen soul more than booze. Alcohol addictions became rampant in the Innu villages. Teens saw their parents losing hope; they too grew depressed and started sniffing gasoline in order to get high – a lethal habit.
Suicide rates among the Innu remain some of the highest in the world.
Concerned over the state of its villages and the economic toll they were taking on the capital city of Inverness, the Highland Council had been holding monthly “brainstorming” sessions to figure out how to bolster tourism for the coming season. My father attended these meetings along with Brandy’s father, Alban, and her big brother – my boyhood friend, Finlay “True” MacDonald. The imposing big man with the auburn ponytail served as master of arms. Although the meetings were open to the public, True’s Do Not Allow To Enter list had but one name on it . . . mine.
In the span of two years, I had gone from local hero to persona non grata. With tourism down, hundreds of villagers faced the prospect of not being able to feed their families without government subsidies and I soon felt the wrath of their anger. Why couldn’t Wallace have subdued the creature without vanquishing it in the public eye? Had he no respect for the legend?
As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.
By December, I had become a hated man and was forced to move my wife and young son from our once rent-free cottage into the near-vacant resort. I no longer visited Sniddles or Drumnadrochit’s other watering holes, preferring the hermit-like quiet of Nessie’s Lair, the resort’s closed restaurant and pub.
To make matters worse Brandy and I were fighting, most of our arguments dealing with monetary issues. For nearly a year I had earned a good living traveling the world with my pregnant wife, signing books at sold-out appearances where I’d tell enraptured audiences how I had battled a sixty foot barbed-toothed species the Navy had nicknamed the bloop and our Highland ancestors had called Guivres. But fame is fleeting, and my fifteen minutes in the limelight faded quickly thanks to a myriad of YouTube videos overexposing my tale.
Having gone through most of our savings, we were hurting financially like the rest of the Highlanders.
Unlike the villagers, I had options – lucrative offers for me to teach and complete research at major universities. The problem was Brandy. Her father, Alban had recently been diagnosed with ALS and his health was deteriorating. Having just reconciled her relationship with the Crabbit, Brandy refused to abandon him in his hour of need and the old fart was not about to leave the Highlands to relocate to California or New York, or heaven-forbid London. “Lad, yer aff yer heid iffin ye think me or my lass will move tae bloody England!”
A quick word about my lovely wife. Brandy MacDonald-Wallace was as beautiful as she was loyal; she had already gotten into two fistfights with locals who had the bollocks to criticize her husband and his work. And yet as the days of winter grew shorter, her opinion of me changed.
“Been o’er to the neebs, Zach. There’s bairns bein’ put tae bed hungry. Instead o’ grabbin’ yer daily nips and starin’ at the loch every day, why dinnae ye use that big ol’ brain o’ yers and figure oot a way tae lure another monster into the Ness.”
“We’ve been over this, Brandy. Nessie grew big because she was trapped in Loch Ness and couldn’t return
to the Sargasso to spawn. It was a freak situation – one in a million. There’s none like her out there anymore. And even if there was, the tourists flocked to Loch Ness to see a plesiosaur, not a predatory fish that went insane due to hydrocarbon poisoning.”
“Zach, don’t git yer panties in a ball. Ye dinnae have tae lure a real monster; ye could jist claim tae find clues. Tracks in the mud– ”
“Or how about a half-eaten deer with a plesiosaur tooth lodged in its rib?”
“No one’s askin’ ye tae go Nessie hunting. A few white lies and ye could jumpstart tourism again. Ye could save Drumnadrochit.”
“A few white lies? Brandy, I’m a scientist – a respected marine biologist, not a cryptozoologist or some headline seeker feeding fake monster stories to the news tabloids. Do you want to destroy everything that I worked for?”
“There’s weans goin’ hungry, Zach. What if it were yer son . . . yer kin? They’re starving because o’ ye bein’ such a great and respected marine biologist.”
“You’re blaming me? Brandy, the damn thing killed three people!”
“Aye. And far more will go hungry this winter because of yer heroics. You really want tae be a hero – make things right again.”
“You’ve been talking to Angus, haven’t you? Brandy, what you’re asking for – I can’t do it; it goes against my morals. My father, on the other hand, would sell his sons’ souls to the devil if it meant filling his resort to capacity.”
“And tae whit devil have ye sold yer soul, Zachary Wallace? The one who feeds yer own massive ego?”
That conversation took place in late December. It was the last time we spoke civilly to one another . . . the last time we made love.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. Brandy was a MacDonald after all, as loyal to her clan and to their own thousand year old history as I was to maintaining my high academic standards
It was mid-March when history came calling again . . .
* * *
NESSIE’S LAIR WAS located on the third floor of my father’s resort. After sleeping off a bad hangover, I entered the restaurant at half past three in the afternoon. The chamber was dark, the only light coming from the floor to ceiling windows which offered a breathtaking view of Loch Ness and the snow-covered peaks of the Monadhlian mountains rising along the far eastern bank.
The closed venue and its abundance of liquor was a dangerous place for a former alcoholic to be contemplating his future. Dark thoughts entered my head, its seeds growing roots. There was nothing for me in the Highlands, no social life, no career, no future. I felt unloved, unappreciated, and rudderless; only the hours spent playing with my infant son had brought me a respite from my sadness.
Brandy was barely civil. Having been through one bad marriage that led to a divorce, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had already filed papers with a local solicitor.
Her cold mind set forced me to make a tough decision – to get on with my life. If my happiness and self-worth resided outside the Great Glen, then I would follow that road and see where it took me . . . even if it meant leaving my family.
The career decision came first. I had narrowed my job offers down to Cambridge and Scripps Institute. The former would allow me to visit my family on weekends; the latter paid better. In truth, I was more enticed by the work at Scripps, but the importance of being there for William – of being a better father to my son than Angus had been to me overruled my own needs.
I was about to place a call to Professor John Rudman, the director of Cambridge’s department of oceanography when Brandy entered the restaurant, accompanied by four strangers – three men in their thirties and an exotic Asian woman dressed in a tight-fitting black silk dress.
Women remain a foreign species to me. For two months my wife had barely shown me an ounce of interest, and yet in the presence of this Chinese beauty I could sense the acidic jealousy churning in her belly as she escorted the ravishing woman and her three male companions to my table.
“Zachary, this woman is here tae speak with you. Are ye sober?”
I stood. “Of course I’m sober. Zachary Wallace . . .”
“Dr. Wallace, this is a great honor. My name is Ming Soto and I am a climatologist working in East Antarctica. These are two of my colleagues; Dr. Rehan Ahmed from Karachi, Pakistan and George McFarland, a marine engineer working at Arizona State University. Mr. McFarland was recruited for this mission by NASA.”
“NASA? Now you’ve got me curious.” I motioned for the four to sit. I was about to ask the third gentleman his name when I noticed the Pakistani man was shivering. “Dr. Ahmed, would you like something warm to drink? Coffee? Tea?”
“Tea would be most appreciated.”
“For me also,” smiled Ming, drawing my wife’s ire.
“Coke,” said George McFarland.
I turned to the man I had not yet met. While all four visitors were about my age, this stranger carried a different aura – more military than academic. Rugged looking, with a taut physique; his somber mood and sullen look spelled depression.
A kindred soul?
He looked up at me through bloodshot eyes. “Coke, only put a shot of rum in mine.”
I turned to Brandy, foolishly hoping she’d volunteer to bring my guests their beverages on her way out. Instead, she plopped down in the remaining chair. “Whit? Do I look like the barmaid then?”
Red-faced, I strode around behind the bar and filled two cups with bottled water. Placing them in the microwave, I fished out a few tea bags, then grabbed a can of cola from a stack of sodas and filled two glasses with ice, adding a splash of rum to the second. Loading everything onto a tray, I returned to the table.
“Zachary, did ye ken yer new scientist friends here are all single and in their thirties? And here ye are – same age but married wit a bairn.”
I handed out the beverages, refusing to be baited by my wife’s remark. “Guess that makes me a lucky man. Brandy, would you mind giving me a few minutes alone with Ms. Soto and her colleagues so we can talk?”
“Ms. Soto and her colleagues are here tae recruit ye for something. Bein’ as I’m still yer wife and the mother of yer child, I think I’ll give a listen. Is that a problem, Ms. Soto?”
Ming smiled. “No problem Mrs. Wallace, provided you abide by a non-disclosure agreement like the one we are requesting your husband to sign.”
Brandy smiled back, her blue eyes daggers. “Sure, I’ll sign. Whit ‘ve I got tae lose? Willie’s crib?”
Her response did not please Ming. “Dr. Wallace, we’ve come a long way at great expense to speak with you. While I can assure you the subject matter will both interest and astound you, it is not something we want exposed to the general public.”
Seeking unfiltered answers, I turned to the fourth stranger, the man who had not bothered to introduce himself. “You were recruited for this mission?”
“Straight out of a California psychiatric ward.”
“What’s your role?”
“Submersible pilot.”
“What’s mine?”
“Money. Your association with the expedition brings the sponsors that pay the bills.”
I stared hard at the man’s face. “I’ve seen your photo before . . . it was on the Scripps Institute website. You said you’re a submersible pilot?”
“Deep sea pilot. I was . . . until about six months ago. U.S. Navy discharged me after the last in a series of dives went bad. Ming and the ding-a-ling boys here found me in San Diego last week and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse . . . contingent, of course, on your participation. After what happened to you in the Sargasso Sea, I’m guessing they figured you’d feel safer with someone like me piloting the sub.”
He turned to Brandy. “My fiancé, Maggie – she can be a bit of a ball-buster, too. Probably why I signed on for this lunacy. It’s none of my business why you’re busting Zach’s chops, but since there’s a kid involved let me offer some friendly advice – either support your man or don’t, but d
on’t chase him off to me out of spite. One depressed shithead per submersible is my limit.”
I smiled, suddenly remembering the man’s name. “You’re Jonas Taylor. I saw you on that Discovery Channel special. Jesus man, what the hell happened to you?”
“I got crucified, pal. Same as you.”
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
SAMPLE - VOSTOK: Loch 2
NANCY
JACOB
VINNIE