They prepared to ballast up.
A short time later, the technician cried, "It doesn't like being trapped!"
The creature was viciously ramming itself against the trap wall, trying to breach the bars. The trap itself was moving violently in the water. Dr. Rubinstein contacted the anchor tugs. The tugs reported they were under tremendous stress. The command barge's instruments indicated the bottom anchors were also being strained. He watched closely. The creature had gone completely berserk. They could hear the sounds of combat over their sonic receivers as well as what they perceived was the animal's cry, a terrible, high-pitched roar that nearly shattered eardrums.
The creature was fighting for its life.
Scotty slowed the launch. He could see the command barge's floodIights up ahead.
He quickly pulled alongside, jumped aboard, and raced into the cabin.
"Scotty!" Jerry Foster exclaimed.
Dr. Rubinstein turned as Scotty moved to his side.
"We have it!" Dr. Rubinstem screamed.
Scotty was sweating heavily. "What do you mean?" he asked.
Dr. Rubinstein pointed to several pictorials. "It's in the trap. Fighting ferociously. We've had to ballast up quicker than we wanted because it's ripping the trap from its moorings!"
"How long have the clamps been shut?"
"Seven minutes."
"Let it go!"
"Are you mad?"
Scotty threw Dr. Rubinstein against a console. "The trap is mined. You've got three minutes until it blows."
A pall surged over Dr. Rubinstein's face. Scotty moved to the controls. Dr. Rubinstein grabbed his hands.
"You' re lying!" he exclaimed.
Scotty pushed him off. "Lefebre mined the trap for Whittenfeld. Whittenfeld wants the beast dead. The hunt over. The return to normal operations. He does not want the world to descend on the loch. Do you understand?"
Dr. Rubinstein just stared. Scotty started to manipulate levers. Realization reached Dr. Rubinstein. He screamed angrily.
Then he moved next to Scotty and began to help.
Whittenfeld grabbed Dr. Fiammengo by the shoulders and pointed to the myriad of monitors and pictorials.
"What the hell is going on?" he screamed.
Dr. Fiammengo looked on in disbelief. "They opened the trap. The beast is out!"
Chapter 41
The concussion was enormous; the trap had blown.
The command barge rocked out of the water and then settled back on to the top of violent swells.
Debris fell on top of the cabin.
Scotty peered through the window at the fog, the blackness, then moved next to Dr. Rubinstein. The trap graphic had been erased. The television monitors had blanked out, as had the trap sonar screens. Apart from a few scattered traces and images of debris, there were few representationals left of the capture.
As soon as the beast had been released, it had descended to the loch bottom, angrily moving toward the trench.
The Magellan called in. Dr. Rubinstein answered.
"Who opened the trap?" Whittenfeld screamed across the air wave.
"Mr. Bruce and I," Dr. Rubinstein replied.
"Goddamn you!"
"The trap was mined!"
"Goddamn you!"
"You lied to us!"
"What I did is none of your business!" Whittenfeld thundered.
"Rubinstein! Get the hell . . ."
Dr. Rubinstein clicked off the radio.
Whittenfeld and Lefebre rushed on to the Magellan's main deck.
"Can the defense people do it?" Whittenfeld asked.
"Yes," Lefebre replied, chewing his tobacco fiercely.
"We'll have to track the target."
"We can use the drill ship's sonar and the lead sonar tug."
"And Dr. Rubinstein?"
Lefebre smiled; tobacco juice dribbled over his lower lip. "I will talk to him later. Then I will talk to Mr. Bruce."
Whittenfeld shook his head. "Are you sure the depth charges won't endanger us?"
"The distances have been carefully calibrated. We will not even feel a concussion."
They rushed up to the drill floor. Tony Spinelli met them.
"What exploded?" Spinelli asked, visibly disconcerted.
"The trap!" Whittenfeld replied. "The creature is loose!"
"What do we do now?"
"Start the rotary!"
"Are you mad?"
"Start it!"
"We're in a gas zone!"
Lefebre slammed Spinelli's head against one of the derrick's ribs. "You get this drilling crew on the stick or I will break your neck!" He threw Spinelli on the floor, then looked at the crew. "Start the rotary!"
Spinelli pulled himself up; the driller primed the rotary table.
Lefebre summoned the depth-charge technicians up top. Whittenfeld returned to the command room, contacted Captain Harrigan, and ordered him to bring his tug parallel to the Magellan, one hundred yards off her port, prepared to relay sonar data.
"What do I look for?" Harrigan asked.
"The target!" Whittenfeld bellowed.
Captain Harrigan did not reply.
The launch moved slowly through the darkness. Scotty held tight to the wheel. On the console was the compass, the rifle, and a radio beam tracking monitor, which Dr. Rubinstein had requisitioned from command barge ordnance. There were intermittent blips on the monitor screen; he was moving toward the source of the Magellan's radio transmissions.
Scotty was puzzled. He could hear the echo of the Magellan's rotary, the last sound he'd expected to hear!
The beast had returned to the trench, licking its wounds. God knew how it would react to a new provocation.
Sonsabitches!
* * *
"Bring her around!" Captain Harrigan ordered.
The first officer turned the tug's wheel, swinging the vessel parallel to the drill ship.
They had navigated to the spot by using the Magellan's marine riser as a point of reference. They had also picked up the creature, rising explosively out of the trench once more.
"It's closing in!" one of the sonar engineers cried.
Harrigan looked at the scopes; the target was circling beneath them.
He ordered the tug hard astern. The tug swung around. The target moved off their scopes.
The tug jerked violently. The side-scan display went blank. The target had ripped off their sonar fish.
"Get the hell out of here!" Harrigan screamed.
A tremendous tremor hit. Men and equipment skidded all ,over the tug. Harrigan grabbed the controls and opened the throttle. The tug jerked forward. Another tremor hit, knocking Harrigan to the floor. Crewmen rushed on to the deck with life gear. Harrigan rose and grabbed the communications mike.
"It's attacking us!" he screamed.
The floor erupted beneath him. Planks flew into the air. A technician was impaled.
Harrigan crawled toward the wheel. Another eruption stopped him. The window shattered. Glass slivers rained down. The tug's radar unit crashed to the floor, shattering Harrigan's ankle. All the lights blew out; the cabin fell dark.
Harrigan cried out, consumed with pain, then cried out again as the beast ruptured invisibly up into the cabin, tearing a gaping hole in the vessel's floor.
Water surged upward. Harrigan held to the bulkhead. Freezing water flooded over his head. He tried to swim. The bulkhead collapsed. The roof of the bridge fell in.
There was water everywhere.
And then blackness.
He'd heard it all. The sounds of impact. The wail of dying men. The gut-wrenching gurgle of a sinking ship.
He'd also felt the water surge violently around him.
Could it have been one of the anchor tugs?
He cut the engine, listened. Were there any survivors? He heard nothing. No cries. No calls. He screamed. No reply.
Hell! He still couldn't see a damn thing.
He looked at the radio beam monitor. He was closing
on the drill ship.
He reached for the engine primer. He heard a sound, a thunderous slush of breaking water. Waves suddenly beat against the launch's hull. An unearthly shriek split the darkness.
The beast had risen!
A shadowlike object slid through the fog, then descended.
He'd seen only a blur, but he'd seen enough. The beast! Father MacPherson's beast!
He started the engine again.
He saw lights!
Directly ahead.
The Magellan!
Whittenfeld slammed the clipboard against the console. "Bring those goddamn tugs in!" he ordered once more.
"I'm sorry!" a voice crackled back. "We will come in to aid the drill ship. We will not come in to patrol the sector!"
"Are you disobeying my orders?"
"I have a crew to worry about. The lead tug is down. Harrigan is dead. I'm now in charge, and there are superseding orders from the Ministry of Defence."
Whittenfeld started to scream. The sonar tug captain refused to comply. Whittenfeld smashed the microphone to silence.
"We'll use the drill ship's sonar alone!" he said, addressing the Magellan team.
Dr. Fiammengo protested. "Our sonar doesn't have sufficient range. It's not sensitive. There are dead sectors. We won't pick up the target until it's on top of us!"
Whittenfeld pulled Dr. Fiammengo from her seat. "You're no longer involved," he warned. "You just stand there and keep your mouth shut." He listened to the roar of the rotary, then asked the sonar engineer if the target was still being tracked. The engineer replied that they had lost it. "Well, find it! Grabowski! Take Fiammengo's seat and cut off all outside communications!"
Whittenfeld handed Billl Nunn his headset.
"I'm going topside," Whittenfeld explained. "You're to relay vectors!"
* * *
Dr. Rubinstein tapped his hand nervously on the cold metal of his console. There was stillness on all sides. No one was moving in the cabin. The icy stroke of terror had invaded. They had seen the lead sonar tug go down. They had also seen the creature follow the stricken vessel to the bottom, then disappear. The creature was angered beyond focus. The drill ship was no longer the sole object of its emotions. Every alien object was now an object of hatred.
They were all aware of their vulnerability.
A consumptive, frightened cough summoned attention. "Contact," a technician yelled.
Dr. Rubinstein moved to the technician's scope.
"Where are you beaming?" he asked, confused.
"On the other side of the ship!" the technician replied. "The target's near the loch walls along the shore of Urquhart Bay."
"It has met opposition from the south," Dr. Rubinstein marveled. "It will now approach the drill ship from the north."
Dr. Rubinstein radioed the drill ship. There was no response.
He looked through the window.
There was nothing he could do.
"Goddamn fools!" he cursed.
They looked out into the milk-thick fog, leaning against the guard rail, their bodies aching from anticipation and bone-destroying dampness. Whittenfeld, Lefebre, and the two defense specialists were wearing headsets and flak jackets. Mounted on the guard rail were two sets of depth-charge ejection racks, ready for use. Next to them were the rack controls and additional rounds.
"Anything yet?" Whittenfeld asked.
"Nothing," Bill Nunn communicated from below.
Lefebre took off his headset. He listened. He could hear the pumps and rotary. Several minutes before, though, he thought he had picked up the sound of a launch, but no launch had appeared, and he had not heard the sounds again.
He started to reset his headgear.
The rotary stopped.
"What the hell?" Whittenfeld snapped.
They looked toward midship; they could barely see the derrick.
"Stay on the comm-channel," Lefebre ordered.
The defense specialists nodded.
Whittenfeld and Lefebre rushed midship and climbed to the drill platform. The crew was in place. So was Tony Spinelli.
"Start the goddamn rotary again!" Whittenfeld cried, beside himself with rage.
No one moved. No one responded.
"Do you hear me!" Whittenfeld cracked. "Spinelli, who gave the order to stop the rotary?" His temper grew. "Start it! Now!"
Lefebre rushed the driller; the driller stood aside.
"Lefebre!"
Someone had called Lefebre's name. Lefebre and Whittenfeld searched for the source. The call came again. They looked up.
A man was standing high on the derrick platform, his body punching out at them through the fog.
Scotty Bruce!
Scotty trained his rifle on the drill floor, switching aim back and forth between Whittenfeld and Lefebre. "The rotary is dead. The beast will be left alone." He stared at Whittenfeld, letting seconds pass.
"You killed Mary MacKenzie!"
Whittenfeld was aghast. "Kill? I didn't kill anyone. She's dead? Believe me, I had nothing . . ."
"Lefebre?"
Lefebre stared upward, unarmed. The nozzle of the highpowered rifle was pointed right at his head.
"I don't know what you're talking about," he said.
Scotty tightened his grip on the rifle. "The Magellan is down permanently. And . . ."
A shockwave hit. The ship rolled. Everyone was thrown to the ground. The derrick twisted on its frame. Metal buckled. Part of the drill floor gave way. Railings collapsed. Scotty fell off the derrick. Two roustabouts were crushed. A huge metal girder caught Whittenfeld on the head. Men jumped off the drill floor.
Lefebre ran down a staircase into the moon pool.
Scotty followed.
Dr. Allen Rubinstein, his face damp with sweat, stared at the array of sonar screens. Several minutes before, he had ordered all systems trained on the Magellan's marine riser.
And he and his staff had seen the creature rising out of the depths like a missile and ramming the hull of the Magellan near midship.
Now the horror grew. Shortly after impact, the beast had descended to the floor of the loch and had attacked the wellhead, trying to chew off the blowout preventer.
God help them!
The rifle extended in front of him, Scotty walked carefully along the narrow third-deck corridor, searching. The ship's interstices were illuminated by yellow ceiling lights; the atmosphere was surreal.
He had not found Lefebre in the moon pool or in any of the workrooms or crew quarters. Lefebre might have returned to the main deck, but his senses told him otherwise. He could feel Lefebre's foul presence. They were alone together below deck.
"Lefebre!" he called. "Listen to me! I'm here! Come! Get me! Get me, you fucking murderer!"
He moved between cement pods, listening. The mud pumps continued to run, camouflaging sounds.
He heard something. He turned, pointing the rifle.
Nothing.
Dr. Rubinstein watched the drama unfold.
He had seen the creature chewing at the wellhead—unsuccessfully.
Now he was a witness to the latest attempt at destruction.
The creature was ascending the marine riser toward the drill ship's moon pool.
Scotty jumped off the staircase through the shifting shadows on to the moon-pool catwalk. In front of him was the marine riser. Below the catwalk was water. There was a small hole in the ceiling where part of the floor had given way. Debris littered the area. The roar of the mud pumps was deafening.
He inspected each of the exits—nothing. He breathed deeply as his body trembled, his guts twisted by the tension. Had Lefebre fled?
A sound—movement.
Scotty turned, looked sideways, then up.
Lefebre was suddenly on him from above, twisting a guide wire around his neck, digging it into his flesh.
"You meet your God!" Lefebre cried. "Your God, monsieur!"
Scotty dropped the rifle, choking. Lefebre forced Scotty face down on
the catwalk.
"I will make you suffer slowly," the Frenchman hissed through gritted teeth. "And I will enjoy it, almost as much as I enjoyed the death of the councilwoman!"
Scotty cried out, struggling.
"God has decreed your death, Bruce!" Lefebre's hands were bleeding from the tight grasp on the line. Scotty's throat bled, too. Their blood mixed. "You have never overcome. God has decided you are not worthy of life. God has asked me to execute His wishes!"
Scotty's hand crawled between the wire and his skin. Lefebre tightened his grip. Scotty gasped for air, then twisted.
They dropped off the catwalk into the water.
Dr. Allen Rubinstein and his team watched the holographic images splatter across the screens.
The beast was halfway up the riser.
Whittenfeld opened his eyes and looked across the drilling platform. Groggy, insensate, he rose to his knees, touched his face. He was covered with a ghoulish mixture of grease and blood; he could hardly see.
He heard the mud pumps. He heard screaming, men moving below on the deck. There was no one on the drill floor with him.
He tried to clear his thoughts. Blood flowed over his face. He crawled toward the drillers' controls, shivering. The rotary table wasn't turning. But that was impossible! Nothing ever stopped operations. Ever. No, the vile bitch—Loch Ness—never stopped him. He had to reach his child before the vile bitch destroyed everything.
He tightened himself into a ball, trembled, cried. Tears mixed with the blood. He felt fear and pain.
He rose shakily to his feet. The ship seemed to be listing slightly. Where had everyone gone? The crew of the Columbus hadn't deserted their posts! Why had these men?
He studied the panel. No, the rotary table had to turn. Progress! They had to drill ahead.
He hit the rotary engine switch!
* * *
Scotty could feel his strength ebbing. He could feel the wire noose tightening. All that remained between life and death were the bleeding fingers between his neck and the line.
Struggling in the water, they were now along the side of the moon pool. Lefebre was on his back.
Monster: Tale Loch Ness Page 39