Cautious, despite smelling fresh blood in the water, the creature zeroed the still-warm remains, but this time without its normal, aggressive approach. Instead, it floated up underneath the Sycophant – so slowly its mammoth body created no displacement wave at all – and opened wide from ten feet beneath the surface. Utilizing the powerful suction created, it inhaled its meal.
From his vantage point, Harcourt saw nothing but a sudden swirl. Then Stitches’ corpse was yanked beneath the waves. There was a gentle tug, and a moment later, the chewed-up rope floated to the surface.
Harcourt stared blankly at the stretch of water where his bait had been. The wind died down, leaving the air hot and heavy with the cries of circling seabirds, and the sounds of waves slapping against the Sycophant’s hull. He stumbled back, his eyes bulging so wide they threatened to pop from their sockets. Fury and frustration see-sawed across his face, and he dropped down onto the nearest gunwale, slack-jawed and indecisive.
Long moments passed, with Harcourt sitting there wallowing. Finally, a strange noise drew him back to reality. He twisted his head in the direction of the sound – and came face to face with his enemy.
Floating placidly on the surface, twenty feet away, was the gigantic creature he’d sacrificed so many people to. It was the biggest living thing he ever saw, as huge as the blue whale mount hanging in the American Museum of Natural History. Its monstrous head, alone, was bigger than his stretch limo. Its jaws were lined with battery after battery of ivory-colored fangs, each as long as a machete blade and as thick as his forearm.
It was its glittering eyes that frightened him most. As big as footballs and the color of fresh blood, the creature’s gleaming orbs and their abyssal black pupils were daunting. The senator peered spellbound into their depths. There was a primordial savagery mirrored there, a primitive brutality that stretched back over eons, to the dawn of time. He could sense an intellect of some kind staring back at him: a cold and calculating mind that glared menacingly into his power-mad eyes, boring through to his pitch-black soul. Then, as they drifted closer to each other, so close he could have reached out and touched the creature, he realized he was reflected in its eyes.
Screaming so loudly he spat up blood, Harcourt snatched Stitches’ M-16 rifle up. He pointed it directly at the pliosaur, emptying it into its face and partially opened mouth at point blank range.
The beast reeled back as steel-cored slugs punched holes into its exposed tongue, roaring so deafeningly it sent the Sycophant bobbing a full five feet from the force of its bellow. A second later, it turned and plunged beneath the surface.
Harcourt dropped to his knees and started working feverishly on the remaining sticks of dynamite. His quivering hands moved so quickly they were a blur. He seized a small roll of tape from the box the dynamite came in and wrapped it around the remaining explosives, binding them tightly together. Then he clambered to his feet and raised the makeshift bomb to his lips. He bit down on the exposed wicks, chewing through the dynamite’s foul-tasting fuses until there was almost nothing left. His weapon complete, he turned and made his way to the edge of the Zodiac, bracing his knees against its rigid hull. Smiling grimly, he reached into his pocket and removed his gold lighter.
Long moments passed. All of a sudden, he looked up at the sky and laughed uproariously. Coated from head to toe with the blood of dead men, his eyes were more like a cobra’s than a man’s. His mouth foamed uncontrollably as he shifted his weight from foot to foot, waiting for his own personal Armageddon to commence. It was divine providence, and he welcomed it.
The minutes ticked by and the senator remained where he was, unmoving except for the sweat that streamed in dirty little rivers down his bloated face and collected in steamy pools beneath his hairy armpits. As the tiny inflatable began to bob up and down, he smiled malevolently. He readied himself, flicking his lighter open and closed, watching its butane-fueled flame blaze away like a miniature blowtorch. The precious pieces of dynamite he clutched tightly to his breast, waiting for just the right moment.
It was coming up under him, just as it had when it killed Stubbs. He’d studied its approach from a nearby railing. It was heralded by the same displacement wave now surrounding the Sycophant. Predictable to the end, the creature would breach the surface of the water and seize him in its cavernous maw, just like the attack sled. But he had a surprise for it . . .
He grinned evilly at the thought. Although the beast would certainly kill him, it too, would die. He held enough explosive power in the palm of his hand to reduce a city bus to a pile of molten slag. Nothing on land or sea could survive a point blank blast like that. Not even the leviathan rising up beneath him. He lifted his eyes to the heavens and hoisted his weapons high. “And in that day the LORD, with his sore and great and strong sword, shall punish the Leviathan.”
Other than Jake and Amara, Harcourt’s audience consisted of a few birds and the vast ocean, its surface churning like river rapids across an area over a hundred feet across.
“The piercing serpent, even Leviathan that crooked serpent . . .” He bellowed louder, holding the blazing lighter and dynamite close to his chest. He leaned over the bucking Sycophant’s edge with a delirious smile on his face, peering into the frothy depths in the hope of savoring his enemy’s final approach.
“And he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea!” He screamed over the approaching maelstrom, his arms extended at chest level less than twelve inches apart, as he waited for the end.
A second later, the Kronosaurus erupted out of the water with enough force to punch a hole through the bottom of the Harbinger’s hull. Like an ICBM, it soared one hundred feet into the bright blue sky, clearing the sea below it in its rage-induced desire to annihilate the insignificant mammal that dared to challenge it. Engulfed within its colossal jaws were the Sycophant and its pilot.
With a rumbling roar, the creature slammed its teeth together hard enough to bite through steel plate. Its devastating bite sheared through the Zodiac’s fragile hull material, as the sixteen-foot inflatable and its screaming occupant vanished from sight.
Silently, the mammoth reptile plummeted back into the sea. The only thing remaining of Dean Harcourt was his hands, protruding like some grisly wall sculpture from the creature’s wrinkled lips. Wedged tight between its conical teeth, they twitched spasmodically. His expensive gold lighter, its flame doused by seawater, was held tightly in one, the unlit dynamite in the other. They remained frozen as the creature crashed back into the raging vortex from which it came.
A second later, it vanished into the depths, taking Harcourt and his visions of biblical vengeance with it.
From the Harbinger’s steeply sloping decks, Jake and Amara watched with satisfaction as Senator Dean Harcourt’s political career was cut far shorter than his senatorial rivals could ever have envisioned.
“Nicely done,” Jake said. His bruised and bloodied forearms were interlaced across his chest as he watched the enraged pliosaur vanish from view. “Too bad the creature didn’t die too.”
“Yeah . . .” Bending at the waist, Amara laid her forearms atop an intact portion of the research ship’s portside railing, resting the uninjured side of her face on them. She sighed as a cool sea breeze pulled her hair away from her eyes, then looked up. “You win. This animal cannot be allowed to live.”
A grim smile slid across Jake’s rugged features. “You know, it’s funny you should say that.”
“Why’s that?” Amara pushed herself upright and swiveled around, giving him a painful view of her swollen eye.
“Because, I have a feeling your little pet down there has reached the same conclusion about us!”
Less than a hundred feet away, the pliosaur’s mammoth head and neck speared up from the water, rearing skyward until its toothy muzzle was extended thirty feet into the air. Keeping itself motionless with all four of its flippers, it remained there, gazing intently at the nearby Harbinger and the two remaining humans that stood atop her.
/> “Jesus . . .” Amara gasped aloud as she took in the sheer hugeness of the apex predator. “That’s cetacean behavior; it’s called spyhopping. He’s studying us. The question is why.”
“Probably trying to figure out how to get us off the ship,” Jake said, his narrowed blue eyes every bit as intense as the creature’s glittering crimson ones. “Or maybe, the easiest way to tear what’s left of it out from under us.”
“It doesn’t matter. We’re going down anyway.” Amara gazed pensively at the ship’s prow and shuddered. It was nearly awash, with oncoming waves continuing to crash over it. “All he has to do is wait and we’ll come to him.”
“Looks that way.” Jake frowned. He noticed her shivering, and put a protective arm around her.
Amara turned and lowered her cheek onto his shoulder, pressing herself against him. She averted her eyes from the pliosaur’s. “I always feel safe when I’m with you. I’ve . . . been meaning to ask you something, but I didn’t want to pry. I guess now . . .”
“Ask me what?”
“I told you about my dad. But whatever happened to your father after your mom passed away?”
Jake stiffened. “He died screaming, nine months later, tied to a hospital bed.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. From what?”
“Pancreatic cancer.”
Amara continued talking into his shoulder. “That’s awful. You have a lot of anger toward your father, and I don’t blame you. There’s nothing worse than loving someone who’s hurting you. I can relate.”
Jake kept one eye locked on the creature while gently caressing her back. “That’s something you’ll never have to live through again, doc. I promise you.”
Amara’s body shook in what he took to be an involuntary chuckle of irony. “I believe that. Can I ask you something else?”
“Anything,” he said, and felt her smile.
“Did you and your father reconcile before he died?”
“No. I never even saw him in the hospital.”
“Why not? He was an asshole, but he was still your father.”
“Not to me. You remember I told you my mom was killed by a drunk driver?”
“Yes.”
“That was my dad.”
Amara gasped.
Jake’s voice turned to granite. “I’m glad he’s dead. If I could have stood the sight of him, I’d have watched him die.”
Amara wrapped her arms around him and squeezed. “Your hardness is only on the surface.” She drew close again, resting her chin on his chest and hugging him hard. She smiled as she looked up at him, her luminous eyes shining through the bruises. “You’ve got a good heart, Jake Braddock.”
Jake looked away, willing his own eyes not to tear up. No big deal. Just the pain of the injured ribs she’s squeezing. “Thanks, doc,” he managed. Suddenly, his eyes widened in alarm. “Um, if you have any tricks up your sleeve to keep us ending up as dessert, you’d better unveil them.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because he’s made up his mind . . .”
The pliosaur submerged. Powering its way beneath the waves, it moved purposely toward what was left of the Harbinger’s bow.
“Shit!” Her pale eyes wide, Amara pulled away from Jake, stepping fearfully back from the railing. “Come on. We’re getting the hell out of here!”
Jake instinctively reached for the pistol at his belt. He shook his head at the absurd notion, then turned and limped quickly after Amara.
“Um . . . exactly what do you have in mind, doc?”
Amara paused near the former whaler’s starboard loading crane, surveying the frightful pile of wreckage scattered in front of her. She sucked in a deep breath. “We’re leaving in this.”
The pliosaur moved in for the kill. Though still wary of colliding with the ship’s metal hull, the gigantean beast’s territorial nature had fully reasserted itself. Its rage overrode its desire to simply feed upon the tender morsels clinging to the creaking vessel. For the first time it could remember, its relentless need for flesh was forgotten. It wanted the Harbinger gone from its territory, and every living thing on it destroyed.
As it cruised closer to the ship’s reinforced bow, the creature exercised caution. Even though its utmost desire was to send the infuriating ship and the two bipeds infesting it straight to the bottom, it would no longer rush blindly in to attack.
Submerging and scanning the Harbinger’s hull with its sonar, it probed once more for weaknesses. Again, it sensed the gaping wound in the ship’s forward hull, as well as the water rushing into it, but it was incapable of comprehending what that meant. It needed something within the realm of its experience.
Then it saw the anchor chain. Its black and rust-colored length pierced the surface and extended all the way to the seafloor, its arcing span like the lashing tentacle of some monstrous squid. Surging forward and downward, the pliosaur crunched down on the thick iron links. Ignoring the cracking sounds as several of its teeth fractured from the strain, it twisted its huge head to and fro, pulling against the heavy fetters with all the power its one hundred plus-ton body possessed.
On the surface, the Harbinger’s inundated bow reverberated with the sounds of shifting metal as the anchor chain was yanked to and fro. The ship’s nose began to be hauled violently back and forth, succumbing to indescribable power. Then, with one final, monstrous tug, it was dragged completely under, unleashing a wall of water that came crashing up over the rails and went flying forward, immersing its telltale harpoon cannon and flooding any and all remaining compartments within seconds.
Moments later, the doomed vessel emitted its last call, a rumbling death knell that caused the water’s surface to shiver for miles around. Then the entire two-hundred-and-twenty-foot, seven hundred-and-forty-ton vessel rolled sideways and sank beneath the waves. Pieces of equipment and debris flew from her decks like windblown chaff. Bubbles spewed from her holds and portholes as she plunged eerily downward, twisting and turning in a spiraling roll that carried her fifteen hundred feet, straight to the bottom.
TWENTY-EIGHT
With his gaze fixed on the horizon and his back to the Oshima’s stainless steel captain’s wheel, Haruto Nakamura remained a stone study in discipline: posture perfect, feet braced to compensate for the slow roll of the ship. He peered through the helm’s curved windshield, his watchful eyes crinkling up as the afternoon sun emerged from behind a nearby cloud bank, blazing its way through the twenty-foot wide portal like an acetylene blowtorch. His tense expression dissipated as their computer systems’ chromatophores transmuted the glass to a dark brown tint, shutting out the painful glare.
He spoke over his shoulder. “Sonar, any update on target location?”
“No change, sir,” the tech replied. “Location is steady, approximately twenty-four miles due east.”
“Very well.”
“Sir, I’m picking up more explosions.”
“Caused by the same military ordnance?”
“No, sir. This is something different. Very loud. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it’s something outside the realm of my experience. Could be possible damage to that ship we’ve been tracking. Maybe her diesels have blown . . .”
“Very well, ensign. Keep on it and apprise me of any changes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Haruto’s mind weighed possibilities. With the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard shutting down boat and aerial traffic over five hundred square miles, it was an easy matter for their advanced sonar and radar systems to pinpoint the location of the giant marine predator that damaged his ship, several days prior. The thunderous sounds it produced and its unique sonar signature were unmistakable. Based on its current location, the brute posed no threat. It was laying siege to another vessel, a mile or so within U.S. territorial waters. The identity of the hapless ship was a mystery: probably an old freighter or an antiquated transport of some kind. Whatever manner of ship it was, it wasn’t emanating a traditional transponder code to identify itself, and i
ts crew ignored repeated hails from the Oshima. Even more bizarre: Its captain had failed to issue a distress call that might have brought aid. Only the explosions onboard kept Haruto from assuming it was a derelict wreck.
He shrugged, dismissing the matter. Let the Coast Guard deal with the beast. His only concern was getting his heavily-laden ship home safe, with its valuable cargo intact.
“Excuse me, captain?”
Haruto turned to see Watch Commander Iso Hayama standing awkwardly nearby, his eyes straight ahead and an electronic clipboard in hand.
“Yes, commander?”
“I came to get your signature, sir,” Iso said. “And, if I may say, it’s been a great honor serving with you. The Oshima has broken every record in the history of the company.”
“Thank you, commander.” Haruto reached over and scrawled his name using Iso’s pen. Although he was pleased with their success, he wondered how much of it was really a byproduct of his oft-touted skill, as opposed to the pliosaur causing all sea life within a hundred miles to flee straight to their baited hooks.
“Um, captain?”
“Yes, commander?”
Iso hesitated, swallowing nervously. It was obvious he had yet to recover from the castigation Haruto gave him. “Will you be making an announcement to the crew, to notify them of our success prior to departure?”
Haruto nodded slowly. With their holds crammed to capacity, his exhausted ship’s complement deserved to know their tireless efforts were so hugely successful, and that they’d all be receiving bonuses. He walked to the nearby communication station and grabbed a wired mike. He gestured to the technician, who nodded and flipped a switch.
Haruto cleared his throat. “Attention, Oshima crew. This is the cap–”
“What the hell?”
He released the mike’s talk button immediately and wheeled on the startled sonar tech, his dark eyes fierce.
“I’m terribly sorry, captain-san,” the tech stammered, his face turning pale. “It . . . it just popped up on the screen and I . . .”
KRONOS RISING: After 65 million years, the world's greatest predator is back. Page 54