by Russ Elliott
The jagged-toothed helicopter soared over the glimmering waters, heading farther southeast. John peered into the distance, wondering if the new plan would finally bring the nightmare to an end. He looked at Kate. “How far away are we?”
“We’re about three miles from the site,” said Kate, “but we’re losing daylight.”
John glanced at his watch. “I can’t believe it isn’t dark already. It’s eight thirty-five.”
“We’re fortunate,” Kate said. “December is our high summer; the longest days of the year. Sometimes the sun doesn’t set until nine p.m.”
John leaned back to relax for the remaining few minutes before they’d reach the site. He needed to get his head right, focus on the task at hand. Just as he closed his eyes, a frantic voice came over the helicopter’s radio.
“SOS! Mayday or whatever! We have a woman on board who’s been in a boating accident. She’s going into shock. We need an ambulance to meet us on shore.”
John sprang to the edge of his seat. “Do you think that was the pliosaur?”
“I don’t know!” Kate replied. “It could have been just an accident, but I’ve got enough fuel to check it out!”
The frantic voice returned. “. . . and there’s a dinosaur chasing us the size of Moby Dick!”
Kate flipped a switch on the console. “What’s your location?”
“About four miles South of Pearly Beach.”
“Okay, hang tight! We’re only a couple of minutes away!” Kate eased back on the stick and adjusted the helicopter’s course. John picked up a pair of binoculars and scanned the waters east of the chopper.
With each passing minute, John’s stomach tingled. The binoculars felt moist from his hands.
“Keep looking east,” Kate said. “You should be able to pick up a visual by now.”
Suddenly, a shiny red speedboat ripped into John’s field of view. Not far behind the boat, he spotted the enormous frill. The tingling in John’s stomach rose to his heart, making it flutter wildly.
“I’ve got ’em in sight.”
“Where? Where?”
“Eleven o’clock. And that frill is moving! Your friend Steve wasn’t kidding about the creature’s agility.”
“Okay, I see them now.” Kate turned toward the boat. As they drew closer, a massive shadow appeared beneath the frill. “Wow, you said the creature was eighty feet, but still I didn’t think it would look that big. Its head is wider than the poor boat!” She gasped. “What are we supposed to do now?”
“Just get me behind the boat and keep it steady.” John ripped off his headset and ran back to the cargo bay.
“What are you doing?” Kate yelled.
John slid the cargo door open. The sound of the main rotor filled the cargo bay as the wind pushed back at him. Pulling a depth charger from the crate, he carried the awkward object to the doorway. Thirty feet below he saw the spray shooting up behind the speedboat’s props.
Kate shouted back, “Remember to give a—”
“I know, I know . . . give a three-second count first. It says so on the crate!” He held steady, aiming just behind the boat. He estimated that the chopper had about a fifteen-yard lead on the creature. Activating the depth charge, he gave a three-count, and let it go.
KABOOM!
A plume of water erupted about twenty yards behind the pliosaur. No way, John thought. It’s not gonna work. The creature’s moving too fast to use the depth charges. I’ll never time it right. Thinking fast, he ran back to the chum barrels.
“Now what?” Kate shouted, brow tense with worry as her eyes flickered between John and the creature and the speedboat.
John unhooked the strap from around the first barrel. “Our only chance is to draw it away from the boat. Get about forty yards ahead of them and lower the chopper!”
Kate shouted back, “We’re going nearly thirty-five knots just to keep up. That beast is flying!”
Sliding the barrel to the doorway, John looked down at the speedboat. He saw a young woman lying on the deck. A boy knelt beside her. Just behind them was an enormous bite mark in the stern. The driver looked straight up at John and then back over his shoulder to the giant shadow. Even from the air, John could see the horror in the driver’s eyes.
Furious, John grabbed the barrel. “There’s no way I’m gonna see these three faces added to the tally on tonight’s news!” he muttered to himself.
The helicopter sped up until it was in front of the boat. John threw the soup ladle aside and poured the chum straight from the barrel. He looked back at Kate and shouted, “Zigzag the chopper from left to right . . . but slow!” He poured more chum from the barrel. “Yeah, yeah . . . that’s it! Now pull the chopper to the right.”
Kate slowly veered off to the right while John continued to pour the red trail leading away from the boat’s path.
The frill sped through the bloody trail, never veering from the boat’s wake. The giant paddle fins pumped even harder, keeping the giant on pace with its quarry.
“We’ve got to try again,” John shouted. “It didn’t pick up the scent.”
Kate nodded. She veered the helicopter back around and flew over the boat. John waved to get the driver’s attention then motioned for him to pick up the radio mike. Just as the boy picked up the mike, the beast dove. The boy looked back to the stern and yelled into the mike. John couldn’t hear a word, but he could read his lips. Where . . . where did it go?
John saw the creature’s shadow soften as it dove farther beneath the waves. In a split second, the shadow lightened as it arced straight back up toward the surface, transforming into an open set of jaws beneath the boat’s port side. John yelled to Kate, “Tell him to cut starboard. NOW!”
Kate relayed the message.
The driver cut to the right just as the massive head broke the surface. The upper row of teeth scraped against the hull, lifting the side of the boat from the water. The boy fought the steering wheel as the boat skimmed across the surface on its starboard side, out of control.
~~~
The speedboat’s hull miraculously dropped back down to the surface, picking up the greatest distance thus far from the beast. Gaining control of the boat, Mat looked past the stern and found the frill already back on track. His heart sank. By the sound of the engine, he could tell that it was already overheating—and still there was no trace of the shoreline.
~~~
From the doorway of the helicopter, John watched helplessly as the frill again closed in on the boat. The barrel in his hands was half full. There was one barrel left, but he knew that by the time he unstrapped it and pried the lid off, this would be over. This was his last shot.
John looked down at the boat—both boys were looking at him now, mouths open, eyes wide with fright, the girl lifeless on the deck floor. He again motioned to the driver to pick up the radio mike, and then said to Kate, “Tell him when you say ‘NOW’ to cut the boat as hard as he can.”
“Which way?”
“It doesn’t matter—just hurry!” After Kate relayed the instructions, the boy looked up at John and nodded, then glanced back to check his distance from the speeding giant. The helicopter darted ahead of the boat.
John hand signaled for Kate to start zigzagging while he began to pour a thick stream of chum from the barrel. Then, as the creature entered the red trail, he shouted, “Now!”
“Now!” Kate echoed.
The second John saw the boy turn the steering wheel, he pushed the entire barrel out the side door. As the boat turned hard to the right, the barrel hit the surface in an explosion of blood. Red-stained water shot up behind the chopper. John watched, holding his breath . . . until it finally happened.
The pliosaur slowed and adjusted its course for the barrel. The boy who’d been kneeling beside the girl ran up to the cockpit and high-fived the driver. They both looked up and gave John the thumbs-up sign, and the speedboat pulled far away from the massive shadow.
“You did it!” Kate shouted. �
��Looks like it took the bait!”
“Yeah, but let’s keep an eye on them until they reach the coast. Just in case.”
As they flew behind the speeding boat, John looked ahead to the coastline and saw dozens of flashing ambulance and police car lights pulling into the beach parking lot. He looked down at the driver and waved.
He looked to Kate who was grinning wide. He flashed a half-smile of his own, wiping the sweat off his face with his shirtsleeve. “Looks like they’re gonna be okay. Let’s get back on our course now. With the creature slowing its pace some, I’d like to take another crack at the depth charges.”
As the helicopter slowly turned around, John watched the receding lights along the coastline and said, “Any bets on what tomorrow’s headlines will say?”
Kate looked down at her watch. “Better make that the evening news!”
~~~
Beneath the bloodstained waters where three young lives had nearly become human chum, the enormous silhouette of the sea beast glided through the red haze. Its colossal mouth opened and closed searching for prey. Sensing the glare of the light from the chopper, it rose to the surface in greeting, breaking the red with its gray tiger-striped skin.
Kate shook her head. “I still can’t believe the size of that bloody thing!”
John carried another depth charge to the doorway. Wind from the main rotor pounded his shirt. “Okay, this is it,” he shouted to Kate over the roaring rotor blades. “Drop down, and stay over it . . . close!”
“You want close, you got it, baby!” Kate lowered the chopper, and the frill turned on its side, slipping into the sea. The entire right side of the colossal head appeared in the light, keeping pace with the chopper.
Wow, I didn’t mean to land on it.
Now hovering about a dozen feet above the creature, the reality of its size took John’s breath away. He stood at the edge of the doorway, hypnotized by the giant eye staring up at him.
Mindless killer? John thought. No way. That thing is thinking. It was almost as if the creature knew it had been tricked. He could see the wheels turning. It seemed to be sizing him up, and plotting its next deadly move. All the while, John’s thumb searched for the detonation button. He found it . . . okay, now! But as he went to activate the depth charge, his sweaty thumb slipped off the button, instead pressing it in. He cursed and regrouped, ready to try again. As if reading his mind, the monster’s head rolled into the sea. An explosion of water reached up to the chopper’s doorway, showering John as a kicking paddle fin propelled the pliosaur far beneath the waves.
Dripping with seawater, John couldn’t believe his eyes. He collapsed back onto his knees, the depth charge clanking against the floor as he slowly pulled his shaking thumb off the detonation button. He stared down at the frothy water. That didn’t just happen. He’d missed his only shot. The creature was gone.
Sliding the depth charge away from the doorway, John slowly made his way back to the cockpit. He wiped his wet hair from his eyes and took a seat.
“What happened?” Kate asked. “I was dead on top it. You didn’t get a shot?”
He had no answer.
~~~
The binoculars had been pressed against John’s eyes for the better part of an hour. He stood at the cargo bay, straining to see something, anything, but there was clearly nothing. Visibility was almost nil with just a hint of light rippling across a lead-gray sea. Still, he couldn’t look away. The creature had to be out there somewhere.
Kate shouted back from the cockpit, “John, we’ve been searching for an hour or more now. At this point, we’re just wasting petrol.”
John walked back to the cockpit nodding his agreement and paused beside Kate. Resting a hand on the back of the pilot’s seat, he stared blankly through the windshield.
Kate followed his gaze to the silhouetted mountaintops in the distance. “Since we’re so close to shore, we may as well make a fuel stop before heading out to the ship. On the outskirts of Simon’s Town there’s a small airport. I share an office there with one of my late husband’s old military mates. I use it when I’m up here flying charters during the tourist season, so the stop shouldn’t take long.”
John again nodded his agreement, too frustrated to speak.
Kate nudged him with her shoulder. “I know how you feel. We didn’t get the creature, but we saved three lives; even in your book, that should count for something.”
John gave her a forced smile and took his seat. In spite of his unrelenting guilt, he knew she had a point.
~~~
John rinsed his face in the cramped restroom of Kate’s office at Simon’s Town airport. As much as he splashed his face, the cool water did little to calm his nerves. He caught his reflection in the small, dirty mirror. In the dim light his cheeks were hollow, and his face looked drawn. No surprise, he thought. He hadn’t had more than three hours of sleep since he’d left the island, and it showed. Yet he wasn’t even tired; pure adrenaline kept him going.
He struggled to wrap his mind around the pliosaur. After witnessing the beast up close, it was easy to see why the islanders worshiped it as a deity or an avenging spirit spawned from the abyss. Its power and size—even its intelligence—seemed almost supernatural.
Drying himself with a towel, he headed back into the small office and eased down onto a firm leather couch. Across from him was a wall-mounted, flat-screen TV. Behind it, an oscillating fan hummed on an office desk. To the right of the desk was a small kitchenette. The room felt sterile compared to Kate’s office in the Eastern Cape. No photos on the walls. No exercise equipment or workout clothes strewn about. In fact, nothing in the office felt like Kate.
She hadn’t returned from fueling the chopper, so he still had a few minutes to check the news. John found the remote and turned on the TV, scanning the channels even as his mind’s eye wouldn’t leave the chopper. He could still see the foreboding head trailing below, the red, glowing eye looking up at him, taunting him. He had to stand, finding it impossible to stay seated. Every thought of the creature rekindled his fury. How could I have blown the perfect shot? An adrenaline-charged rage pulsed through his veins. He felt like a warrior in the midst of battle—he couldn’t come down from the rush.
At least the night had proven one thing—the transmitter inside the creature worked.
Now to get Nemo’s cooperation. He flipped to another channel and paused. There it was beside a female reporter—the red speedboat parked haphazardly at the shoreline. In the background, several policemen struggled to hold back anxious onlookers as they tried to get closer to the boat. The camera zoomed in on the bloody deck and followed the red trail to the bite mark in the stern.
“Well, that didn’t take long!” John sat back down to the couch, elbows on knees, leaning forward in anticipation of the news he already knew.
The camera panned to a curly-haired teenager standing by the jagged opening. John immediately recognized him as the driver of the speedboat. A constant flurry of flashbulbs illuminated the night shoreline in the background. As the boy spoke to the reporter and the crowd, John was struck by how different the kid looked now—his face no longer contorted in fear. “. . . uh, like my bro Greg said. . . uh, man, we were lucky we had an inboard; otherwise, that thing would have taken the motor right off.” The boy pointed to the vessel’s ravaged stern. “I mean it was unbelievable, like a sci-fi creature . . . I mean, its head was way wider than the boat. Waaay. It had to be a hundred feet long. And. . . and. . . yeah, it started bumping us and all. I mean, basically, I thought we were history, okay?
“Then, this helicopter came out of nowhere, and some guy poured some bloody gore into the water to distract the creature. Lucky for us, it worked. I mean, we wouldn’t be here telling this story if he hadn’t done that. Man, we owe that dude big time. I mean, yeah, sure we pulled the girl from the water and kinda saved her too, but the guy in the chopper, he . . . well, he’s the one you ought to be interviewing. He’s the one that saved us all.”
/> The camera returned to the reporter as she summarized the story for her TV public.
For the first time in a while, John’s guilt was shoved aside. They had made a difference. A smile came to his face as he thought about what the kid just said, what Kate had said earlier in the copter. Three lives saved is good. But his joy was short-lived when he looked back at the TV. One by one, four photographs of black men of various ages appeared on screen. The reporter said, “And these are the faces of four other people who weren’t as fortunate as our survivors on the speedboat. Many men are still reported missing from the Motanza Fishing Festival. Details are still sketchy on how these four men met their fates yesterday in the waters at that festival. But already many are linking the incident to the same creature that attacked this boat behind me. Now we’re going to take you live, to Ron Albertine, who is with one of the fishermen who’d participated in the festival.”
The image on screen switched to a male reporter interviewing an old black fisherman. Several overturned dinghies were collected along the dark shoreline in the background. The old man shook his head adamantly while using a stick to draw something in the sand. All the while, he spoke rapidly in Afrikaans. Once finished, the old man pointed to what he’d drawn. The camera closed on a twelve-foot-long paddle fin etched in the damp sand.
The reporter interpreted. “And there you have it: another eyewitness who claims to have seen an unusual sea creature under the net and insists what he saw was no whale, but a beast that swam with enormous paddle fins—a beast that matches up disturbingly well with the speedboat attack this evening.”
The office door swung open. “The chopper’s topped off.” Kate entered the office with a duffle bag. “Ready to head out to Nemo’s ship?”
“Ohhh yeah,” John said, a trace of disdain in his voice. “I can’t wait to have a little chat with the good captain.”
“Well, I suggest you cool your jets. Just because the bugger wouldn’t relay us the beast’s coordinates doesn’t mean you can punch his lights out. We still need their cooperation.” She winked. “But after we destroy the beastie . . . I suppose you could still have your little chat.”