Megatooth: A Deep Sea Thriller Read online

  “How far out?” Cliff asked.

  “We don’t have any real intel,” Harper said. “Maybe about ten or twenty miles.”

  “Where’d the information come from?”

  “Some internet geek.”

  “Sounds promising.”

  “I know. Check it out if you want. Never hurts, you know?”

  “Yeah, we’ll head to the west, then,” Cliff said.

  “Fill me in when you get there,” Harper said.

  “Will do. Out.”

  Cliff hung the mic up and kicked the boat back into gear. There was a noticeable surge forward as the boat started moving again, heading west this time.

  “Who was that?” Emily asked.

  “A friend of mine,” Cliff said. “I texted him this boat’s channels just before we left. He sort of works in the background for me, scouring message boards, forums, Reddit, and every other black hole of the internet where people try to keep tabs on illegal whaling practices.”

  “Oh,” Emily said, suddenly a little uncomfortable with just how shady and determined Cliff seemed to be. “That doesn’t sound very official.”

  Cliff laughed. “Yeah, it really doesn’t. But it’s the quickest way to get information these days. Think about it. Because of Twitter, you can get real-time news within about twenty seconds of it happening. Meanwhile, other news outlets are hauling ass just to be the first to get it to the air in about five minutes. It’s the same way collecting info out here.”

  “That’s pretty cool,” Zoe said, seemingly not affected by it at all. “It’s sort of like an underground network of spies.”

  Cliff shrugged. “I guess so,” he said. “Now, if you ladies don’t mind, take posts down below and help keep an eye out. If you see anything, don’t yell…sound carries very weirdly out here over the water sometimes. Come on up and tell me. And above all, remember…don’t be scared. I’ve done this a dozen or so time and I’ve never even come close to getting into an altercation of any kind with the vessels I turn in.”

  Emily and Zoe headed down the stairs and back out onto the open spaces of the boat. Now that it seemed they might be on the brink of finding a poaching vessel, Emily truly started to worry about the potential dangers. Even with Cliff assuring her that all was well, it was hard to truly believe it. With no land in sight and only ocean to all sides, she was beginning to understand just how isolated and alone they were out here.

  “Hey, Zoe,” Emily said. “The whole ‘hey, some dude on the internet thinks there might be a boat out your way’ thing…did that creep you out a little bit?”

  “Maybe a little,” Zoe admitted. “But to be honest, I really wasn’t sure what to expect from all of this anyway.”

  Same here, Emily thought. But it certainly wasn’t anything like this. She had been expecting the renowned cliff Zinsser to be very organized and cautious—not the type to take tips from nobodies on the internet. Then again, the man’s track record spoke for itself.

  She took her post to the rear of the boat while Zoe walked to the front. As Emily stood there, she caught a flicker of motion to her left. She saw Steven slowly pacing around the boat as if he were looking for a way to escape. Their eyes locked for a brief moment and something about the look in his eyes almost made her feel bad for him. It was evident that he did not want to be here. And while he carried the appearance of a school yard bully that had finally gotten his feelings hurt, there was something else there, too.

  Is he scared? It was a humbling thought and made him seem a little more relatable but Emily was too preoccupied with her own worries to really care.

  She looked away, her eyes once again back out to the water. She listened to Steve pass behind her and then head back to the front of the boat to finish his circuit. Emily closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, suddenly wishing she’d stayed in Minnesota.

  5

  “I had no idea these things were so ugly,” Trevor said, squeezing in next to Carl to get a better look.

  The whale was now within ten feet of their boat and had taken a slight path to the right, fortunately missing their pump by a good fifteen yards. It was easily over fifty feet long; its head was directly beside their boat while its tail was further out behind them, barely visible as it was curled lifelessly just beneath the water. Carl, Trevor and Bo were all standing at the back of the boat, looking at the dead whale. Its right side was above the water, one large dead eye looking at them.

  But its eye wasn’t what Carl was paying attention to. What was of particular interest to him was the bloody mess along the center of the whale’s body. It was mostly hidden by the water, but it was clear that the whale had been seriously injured. It looked like a large portion of its underside had been torn open and, if Carl was assuming correctly, the wound came all the way around to the side that was currently exposed to the air.

  “That’s pretty gruesome,” Bo said. “Poachers, you think?”

  “That’s my guess,” Carl said. “Aren’t sperm whales supposed to be the biggest creature in the ocean?”

  “I think that’s blue whales,” Bo said.

  “What about giant squids?” Trevor asked. Sadly, Carl couldn’t tell if he was trying to be funny or if it was a legitimate question. When it was clear that neither Carl nor Bo were going to address this, Trevor added: “I wish we could turn it over somehow.”

  “What for?” Carl asked.

  “That’s a big wound,” he said. “If poachers did that, they were either sloppy with their work or just really like inflicting abuse.”

  “You think it was attacked by something?” Bo asked.

  Carl looked to the part of the wound that was visible above the water. Though he hated to admit it, Trevor was right. The portion of the wound that they could see was ragged and looked enormous—it took up about half of the whale’s length. The skin had been shredded and flayed in a violent manner, tearing through the hide and revealing the tissue beneath. Carl assumed it was much worse beneath the water.

  “I’m pretty sure there’s nothing out there that could do that sort of damage,” Carl said. “Even a great white…there’s no way in hell a great white’s mouth is that wide.”

  “Well,” Trevor said, “I can’t help but wonder…”

  Carl wondered if he was pausing for dramatic effect or if he was really thinking. With Trevor, it was always hard to tell. He sometimes did things for the sole purpose of getting on people’s nerves.

  “You wonder what?” Bo asked.

  “I’m getting a lot of debris on the ocean floor, even before I switch on the rovers. It’s been screwing with my readings for the last day or so. Maybe there is a shark or something down there that did this.”

  “That’s unlikely,” Bo said. “Now, maybe if it was like a group of sharks working together…”

  “Do they do that?” Carl asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bo said.

  “Me neither,” Trevor said. “Outside of Jaws, I know squat about sharks.”

  Carl looked back to the whale and then further out to the water. Something about being this close to the whale sort of creeped him out. He looked to the pump and frowned.

  “Trevor, I need you to shut the pump down. Retract it and bring the ROVs up. Let’s move another half a mile forward.”

  “But we’ve got another hour or so here. I’ve already programmed it in. And bringing those rovers up, locking them down, and then submerging them again is about a half an hour wasted.”

  “I understand that,” Carl said. “But I need you to do it anyway. We’re moving.”

  Trevor gave a heavy sigh but said nothing. He gave the whale one more cursory look and headed into the galley. Looking at this reaction, Carl wondered how much longer he’d be able to work with Trevor before they came to blows. When Trevor got pissed off (which seemed to be most of the time these days), there was a tangible tension between them. Trevor had issues with anyone giving him orders and maybe rightly so; he was incredibly smart and his engineeri
ng degrees probably trumped the little bit of college that Carl had under his belt. But none of that mattered on this little journey out to sea. Out here, Carl called the shots regardless of qualifications, and it got under Trevor’s skin.

  “Sort of scary, isn’t it?” Bo asked after Trevor was out of hearing range.

  “What do you mean?” Carl asked.

  “To think that there could be something out there that could give this massive whale such a beating.”

  “Yeah,” Carl said. He then recalled a story in the news a few years back about how some giant squid had been found near Japan. At the time, it had been believed to be the largest creature in the ocean, rivaling the sea monsters that had been reported during pre-Colonial times. Carl also knew that there were undiscovered depths in the ocean where God only knew what sorts of things existed.

  He looked away from the whale when he heard the vacuum within the pump shut down. This was followed by a hissing noise as the pump was raised, folding up on itself as Trevor retracted it from the main controls. The Collector was an independent piece of the pump and would come up with the ROVs, jettisoned up through the water by small but effective air boosters along the bottom of each rover. While he waited for all of this to play out, Carl went back inside and headed up to the bridge.

  He peered in at Trevor and saw that he looked absolutely pissed to be moving away from the area earlier than planned, but didn’t let it bother him. Trevor was usually pissed off about something so it was nothing new.

  “You said yourself that there’s been too much debris,” Carl said. “I figure if we move away from this dead whale and whatever might have happened to it, we’ll get better results.”

  Trevor gave a mock shrug and an exaggerated smile. “Hey man, it’s cool. You’re the boss. Just tell me what you want done.”

  Carl didn’t even bother with a sarcastic “Thanks.” He scurried past Trevor’s small corner set-up where the pump and other mining equipment were installed and operated and continued on to the bridge. When he started the engine and waited for Trevor to give the go-ahead, he looked out to the ocean, and, not for the first time since starting his career out on the seas, was awestruck by it.

  There were innumerable creatures in its depths, some of which had not yet even been spied by human eyes. He often lost himself in wondering what sort of mysteries might be down there. He did that now, staring blankly out to sea and wondering what sort of unnamed beast could have possible taken down that poor sperm whale.

  6

  Emily Nevins was also beginning to feel restless as a creeping uneasiness started to settle on her nerves. She had been so wrapped up in the idea of potentially saving the lives of the whales that she hadn’t taken the time to consider how they would be doing it. Her mind ran rampant with visions of modern day pirates like in that Tom Hanks movie Captain Phillips. After all, if a man had no problems with ruthlessly killing an endangered whale, why would he have an issue with putting a bullet in the brain of a clueless yet motivated grad student from Minnesota?

  Thinking back on it, she supposed all of the warning signs had been there, clear as a bell. She knew a few other students that had been invited on trips like this—usually for actual studying and research—by professors or connections made through professors. Emily had always envied the students that had been selected for such trips so when she had received the e-mail from Cliff Zinsser’s personal assistant, she had jumped at the chance to be a part of this trip. It had seemed a little too good to be true at first, so she had done some very basic research. She had Googled the name of the assistant (Monica Denbrough) and that checked out. She also saw on Cliff’s blog that he had a few trips planned for the remainder of the summer, so that checked out as well. When she had called the number given in the e-mail, it had skipped Monica Denbrough and had gone directly to Cliff. She’d been too elated to even care, much less assume that something underhanded was going on.

  Even now, looking out for potential poacher vessels like some poorly trained mercenary, Emily wasn’t entirely convinced that something about this trek smelled a little fishy (terrible pun not intended). She had no experience with these sorts of trips; her only knowledge came from a few shows she’d seen on The Discovery Channel and a handful of articles she’d read online.

  Something about the easy nature in which she’d been invited seemed odd at best and she started to wonder just how trustworthy Cliff was. Sure, he’d done nothing to make her think ill of him so far and as far as people within nature conservation circles were concerned, the man was a saint. Maybe she was now seeing some sort of secret underbelly to what Cliff and others like him did. Maybe he had to be just as covert as the people he was trying to stop on occasion. What confused Emily, though, was why this made her think less of him rather than painting him as a hero.

  As if he was aware that she was thinking such things, his voice sounded out from behind her.

  “Emily, come here for a second,” he said, poking his head out of the upper cabin window where he remained on the bridge.

  She went willingly enough—anything to get her eyes off of the water and the horizon behind them. She had no idea how she would react if they did happen to come upon a poacher ship. She figured she’d probably just freak out and let her nerves take over. Steven would love that, she thought. It would give him a chance to come running in to my rescue.

  She climbed the cabin stairs into the bridge, wondering where Steven was now. If she was lucky, perhaps he was striking up a conversation with Zoe and relocating his borderline-stalker interests.

  When she reached the bridge, she found Cliff very excited. He was looking at the instrumentation panel and leaning from left to right in an anxious sort of lazy dance.

  “What is it?” Emily asked. She was pleased to find that her feelings of unease started to fade in the presence of his excitement.

  Cliff pointed to the depth finder. “Right there,” he said. “See that?”

  She gazed to the spot where his finger hovered and saw a rather large dot on the blue screen. There were other dots here and there, but the dot Cliff was pointing to dwarfed them; the smaller ones were the size of pepper flakes while the larger one was the size of a peanut.

  “I see it,” she said.

  “That’s one of our friends,” he said. “Definitely a whale…and of that size, I’m guessing a blue.”

  “Really?” she asked, her own excitement now growing.

  “I’m almost positive. This is a big one, too. Being so close to us, if we keep our eyes peeled, we might see it surface for a bit. It’s a crapshoot, really.”

  “Awesome,” she said. “Let me go tell the others.”

  “Sounds good,” Cliff said. “And when you tell Steve, if you want to give him a hard shove overboard, I won’t tell anyone.”

  “Don’t tempt me,” she said as she started bouncing her way down the stairs.

  Back out in the open air, the sea around her now seemed more exciting than ever. She looked to her right, where the depth finder had indicated the whale would was swimming, and saw nothing of note. Still, there was a spring in her step as she approached Zoe, standing along the port side of the ship.

  Zoe looked away from the water and gave her a smile. “I’m beginning to think I am not cut out for a life at sea,” she said.

  “Same here,” Emily said. “But Cliff just showed me something on the depth finder.” She pointed out to the direction where she imagined the whale should be, swimming deep below them. “Somewhere over there, a very large fish is swimming. Cliff says it’s so big that it almost has to be a blue whale.”

  Zoe instantly started digging into her back pocket for her iPhone. In a motion so slick and practiced that it made her look like a machine, Zoe opened her camera and readied it.

  “We may not actually get to see it,” Emily said, hating to rain on the parade.

  “See what?” came Steven’s voice from behind them.

  “Blue whale,” Zoe said.

  “
Yeah?” he asked, mildly interested. “How do you know?”

  “I saw it on the depth finder,” Emily said.

  “With Cliff?” he asked.

  Emily rolled her eyes and didn’t bother responding. She looked back out to the water expectantly. As she did, she noticed a darkening of the sky towards the horizon. Somewhere ahead of them was about to get rain, or so it seemed.

  “I don’t see anything,” Steven said.

  “Well, they do live underwater,” Emily said. “They don’t just swim up to the surface when people are overhead. It has no idea we’re here. We might get lucky, though and—”

  “Hey guys!” Cliff’s head was out of the window again. “Go up front and get a look...up ahead and slightly to the left. It’s getting close and its coming up…looks like it might breach. I think we might have a show on our hands!”

  Zoe responded immediately, rushing to the front of the boat. Emily smiled as she watched her go, remembering what it had been like to have that sort of enthusiasm. Yes, there was only five years between them, but college had pulled Emily away from what had once been a genuine interest and passion and shoved her into something that was supposed to evolve into a career. In that regard, five years felt like a lot.

  Emily and Steve followed her to the front. Emily looked up into the dark glass of the bridge’s windshield and saw Cliff looking to the depth finder and then to the water—then again and again, like one of those little plastic birds people put on their dashboards. He slid one of the windows open and his face was alight, like a kid looking under the tree at Christmas.

  “It’s close, guys,” he hollered. “Any second now! Any s—”

  Emily turned when he started yelling to them, just in time to see a massive shape rising towards the surface of the water roughly fifty yards ahead of them. Watching the shape of the whale grow closer and larger made her both elated and slightly nervous. This thing was big; if it was another thirty of forty yards closer, it could potentially cause some damage to the boat.