Killing Keiko (44 page)

“
Draupnirrr—Support,”
he drew out the introductory call. “Ahh, we need to cut the chatter. I don’t need
to know everything the whales are doin’ or what everybody thinks. We need to keep
the channel open unless its sumpthin’ serious.”

It was vital that the
Draupnir
be able to communicate on a moment’s notice. No one responded to Michael’s reprimand.
Nonetheless the supplementary reports quieted for the moment.

At half a nautical mile apart, every vessel in the formation should have been dead
in the water with engines shut down. By our estimation, this was more than close enough
for the whales to realize each other’s presence. On the contrary, that awareness would
be unlikely in the midst of rumbling engines and the distracting cavitation of boat
props. Steadfast in her leading role, the
Draupnir
shut down. Michael called to all boats to become neutral: to kill their engines and
observe.

Aboard the
Viking II
, Lanny pushed Captain Siti to continue onward. Tom debated the issue. Then his mind
cleared: this was enough. He would purposefully impose the exacting mandates that
all boats assume a neutral position. It was his responsibility. Perhaps he’d had enough
after hours of watching what equated to harassment. Perhaps he was emboldened by the
visual contact of his compatriots just a few hundred meters distant. Perhaps it was
the final sight of a lone female defiantly slapping her flukes on the surface in a
display of irritation. Tom himself didn’t know, but it didn’t matter, enough was enough.

“Siti. Stop the boat. We are supposed to shut down the engines. You need to stop the
boat,” Tom pleaded and instructed at the same time.

Lanny stood to one side in the small confines of the pilothouse.

“You’ll do no such thing. Keep the boat on this heading,” Lanny retorted, ignoring
Tom.

Siti, so good-natured, did nothing. He looked from Tom to Lanny and back again.

“We’re too close. At half a mile we’re supposed to shut down … all boats are supposed
to be neutral,” Tom addressed Lanny directly this time.

“Get the f-ck out of here,” Lanny snapped at Tom. “We’re nowhere close enough yet.
You have no idea what you’re talking about.” To Siti he commanded, “You keep going
and don’t do anything that I don’t tell you to do.”

Steaming with anger at the rebuke, Tom left the cabin and moved to the back of the
boat’s lengthy outside deck.
Life’s too short to deal with assholes like this one
, he thought.

For the briefest of moments he considered pulling the ignition key from the helm thus
physically preventing Lanny from interfering any further, but only for the briefest
of moments. Tom was not a confrontational type. He knew well enough that anything
more, whether it be words or action would only erupt into a catastrophic scene at
a precarious moment. It wasn’t a fear of confrontation that held his tongue. It was
most certainly a loathing of everything Lanny represented and how he conducted himself.

The
Viking II
was now only a few hundred meters away. I stood on the platform holding the topline,
keeping one eye on Keiko. He sat before me, no sign of anything unusual in his disposition.
Outwardly he appeared as if we were on just another leisurely stroll about the ocean.

“Robin, what are they doing?” I asked as I looked back and forth between Keiko and
the vicinity of the wild pod, which we could not see. We only knew that they were
near the
Viking II
. Oddly, the tracking boat was still drawing nearer.

Robin ignored the question and instead went directly for the solution. “Michael, tell
the tracking boat to hold position and shut down her engines.”

“Draupnir—Viking
. Hold position and shut down your engines.”

The reply didn’t follow the usual acknowledgments. Outside the pilothouse we couldn’t
hear, but we knew it must have been Lanny on the radio who responded. Michael called
out through the open port in the window.

“Robin, they want us to move closer. They’re saying the whales are heading off, and
we’re not in a good position.”

“Okay, let’s move a bit further in,” he replied as he indicated south with his hand
held out in a flat pointing position. “Just a few hundred feet, Michael, I don’t want
to get right on top of them.”

I could hear the entire exchange in the background but kept a laser focus on Keiko
expecting that some overt sign would be forthcoming, something that would indicate
awareness of the wild ones nearby. There was nothing. Keiko seemed to be the most
relaxed individual across the entire assortment of species and craft. Still, I did
not want to be “holding” Keiko’s attention when the discovery occurred.

From the beginning it was mapped out that Keiko’s first delicate meeting with his
own kind would take place during his emancipation from the
Draupnir
. It was engineered to be a calm and distanced unification. At the very least we wanted
to create the ideal conditions for a passive encounter, one propelled by genuine curiosity
on the part of both Keiko and the wild whales. It was important that I was not splitting
his attention when he awakened to their presence. I could feel the tension in my body.
I wanted to get to a stopping point, break from Keiko and get out of the picture.
In no time, the expanse between the
Draupnir
and
Viking II
had closed to that of a football field.

“Michael, we need to stop … go neutral … hold right here.” Robin and I must have been
on the same wavelength. He voiced exactly what I was feeling. It seemed everything
was happening at once.

The
Draupnir
had only been crawling forward. She stopped easily and did not linger. I stepped
over the sponson, ready to retract the platform and signal a neutral disposition.
In the background my mind recorded sounds of a helicopter, radio chatter, boats …
more than one, but I was unable to define them with any exacting clarity in my blurred
periphery. There was yelling.
Yelling? Why are we yelling?
Communications are almost always over the radio. At sea, even short distances swallow
the spoken word.

“Get control of Keiko,” Robin barked as he moved to do it himself. I wasn’t fully
off the platform yet and was able to get there first, dropping the platform hastily
in the process.

Struggling to catch up, to gain meaning from the sensory assault, I could make out
Keiko in front of me and the
Viking II
off our starboard stern. I was moving to get Keiko to follow. I heard Robin shouting
at the
Viking
to shut down. I heard someone urging the
Draupnir
to move Keiko. I heard the engines behind me turning over to start. I heard Tracy’s
voice. I saw the bow of the
Viking II
first in front of me, coming directly at us, and then turning to her starboard. I
saw her port broadside exposed. She was close. She was very close.

The gap between became a narrow alley darkened in the shadow of the tracking boat.
Holy shit, where are the wild whales?
I realized in the middle of the overload that
Viking II
had stayed with the whales just as we had stayed with Keiko. Here she was right on
top of us.
What in the hell are they doing? How did they get so close?
Another realization. At once the disorder coalesced to recognition. Somewhere in
the middle of this bedlam was a pod of wild killer whales. Keiko sat before me, still
willing to hold his faithful position at the extended appendage of the
Draupnir
. He had no clue. We needed to move.

Just as we were gathering ourselves, about to put some distance between the tangle
of boats and whales, Keiko plunged explosively to the depths. A forceful exhale burst
at the surface sending a disorganized geyser two meters into the air. He moved downward
so rapidly that he left a momentary parting of the water where his
head had been. Involuntarily I threw my arm up and jerked back away from the fray.
The void closed over him in a miniature whirlpool. I had no way of knowing how close
the wild whales were or what was happening beneath me.

For all intents and purposes I was largely unprotected. The meager platform on which
I sat could easily be sent topsy-turvy if caught in the middle of a whale-sized feud.
The lightening speed and forceful movement that would detonate from a charged mix
of whales would likely render bystanders as insignificant as a fly hitting a windshield
at highway speeds. To my good fortune, both Keiko and the wild whales went elsewhere
for the moment, presumably straight down. The more imminent threat came from the
Viking II
who had finally cut her engines and now drifted broadside directly toward the
Draupnir
.

Where Keiko had submerged now became a closing corridor between the boats with only
a few feet separating the two hulls. Only seconds had passed. Keiko had gone deep
and was nowhere to be seen. In the depths, despite suspending water clarity, all that
was visible was a vast array of bubbles thwarting any chance at deciphering the chaos
beneath.

In the moments following, exchanges rifled back and forth between the two proximal
boats and with others over the radio. Unable or unwilling to feign interest in the
premature speculation, most of us locked our gaze outward looking for any sign of
Keiko or the wild whales. There wasn’t yet time or testimony enough to itemize the
jumble or organize thought. Those of us on the frontlines knew without need of scrutiny
that the introduction had derailed as if a great and mighty freight train, the cataclysmic
wreckage still emerging before us as the smoke settled in the aftermath.

We sat adrift for the longest time. No one knew with any certainty what had transpired
in the vast watery space below us or what would come next. We did not know where Keiko
had gone. For now, the entourage of boats merely waited for
Zero-Nine-Zulu
to provide some indication of direction, some idea of Keiko’s whereabouts. Sightings
were confirmed from one of the periphery
support vessels: the wild pod had run far off in the distance due south from our position,
moving swiftly. All we knew for certain was that Keiko was not with them.

Two hours after the debacle,
Draupnir
and her crew made a hurried stop in Vestmannaeyjar Harbor. Michael insisted that
we top off the gas tanks, knowing that we could be in for a long night. Tracy and
Jen disembarked and remained on the island. Brad Hanson came aboard along with the
VHF radio tracking equipment. Blair, Michael, Robin and I never left the boat even
while she was at dock. The entire exercise took less than twenty minutes. In no time—but
all the same an agonizing delay—
Draupnir
and her crew were swiftly back at sea and joined in the search for Keiko.

Zero-Nine-Zulu
was in the air scanning the ocean’s surface. Onboard
Draupnir
we motored in a general northeasterly heading at about ten knots, waiting for some
indication of Keiko’s whereabouts. Robin’s concentration was intense. He stayed fixed
on the bow scanning the horizon, willing his eyes to focus beyond their normal capacity
and looking for any telltale glimpse of activity at the surface. Nothing.

It had been several hours since Keiko had contact with the wild pod, and no one had
seen him since. We knew his general heading was most likely north-north east of the
island based on one unconfirmed aerial sighting immediately following the incident.
It didn’t much matter; a killer whale can cover a great stretch of the sea in that
span of time. There was no telling where Keiko could be, and light was fading fast.

No one onboard uttered a word. Everyone had his eyes on the horizon covering every
direction outward from the boat. We were
each lost in thought, wondering what Keiko’s condition might be and what would happen
if or when we found him.

Robin broke the silence calling everyone together at the back of the pilothouse. I
had not seen this level of intensity and weightiness from Robin often, but each time
I did, it was paired with a profoundly sobering event. Every soul on that boat gave
him his undivided attention.

“I intend to get this whale back. I realize that I’m going against some by doing this,
but in my opinion this is exactly what’s defined in the protocols as an intervention
situation.”

After a brief pause without breaking eye contact, he continued, “Keiko is not with
other whales, and the introduction was obviously traumatic. I’m not asking for your
approval. As chief of this boat, I am making the decision to find Keiko and bring
him back to the bay. If you don’t agree, I will take the
Draupnir
in to harbor, and you’re welcome to get off the boat. But I need your decision right
now before we get too far from base.”

No one said anything, each waiting for another to go first. Then Michael spoke. “Well,
I’m in, Robin. I think we need to get him back.”

Blair and Brad nodded in agreement. Robin never looked at me; he knew there was no
need. It was settled. The
Draupnir
crew would go after Keiko. We would search until we found him … and bring Keiko back
to the bay enclosure.

Standing around the back deck, we couldn’t do anything but speculate. We theorized
about what had happened, Keiko’s reaction, and the reaction of the wild pod. No one
really knew. Although we all had somewhat different vantage points at the time of
the event, no one could see anything that went on below the surface.

Nonetheless, we dissected the event over and over, expecting that two divergent observations
might combine to provide us some insight as to Keiko’s whereabouts. As hard as we
tried to anticipate Keiko’s actions, we could not. Our discussion did nothing but
pass the time.

Hours passed at an agonizing crawl.

All the other boats from the formation were back at dock in Vestmannaeyjar. It was
now late afternoon, bordering on evening. Only the helicopter and
Draupnir
remained in the search.