The Loch Ness Legacy (32 page)

But Zim had a better idea of what to load in them.

The whaler had a full complement of harpoons used to hunt minke whales. Thanks to international pressure, each harpoon was tipped with an explosive penthrite grenade to minimize the suffering of the whales. The round would go off once it penetrated a foot of flesh. With a well-placed shot to the Minke’s head, death was designed to be instantaneous.

Zim was looking forward to seeing what kind of damage it would do.

Using a “cold” nonexplosive harpoon, they’d tested shooting it from the launcher on the sub. In the water it had barely a quarter the range of one fired from the cannon mounted on the
Aegir
’s forecastle, but it would be able to hit Nessie if they got close enough. It also packed enough of a punch to sink a small vessel.

With two harpoons ready to fire, Zim had one for the monster and one for Locke.

Once the monster was dead, they would haul it up onto the deck of the whaler. With the cloud cover, the darkness would shield their activities from prying eyes on the shore. They’d tack it to the deck, ready for the final phase.

Dunham had suggested sailing out of the loch during the night, but the canal at the north end wouldn’t reopen until morning, meaning they’d have to motor past Inverness and into the North Sea in broad daylight.

Too risky. They had an entire loch to dispose of the creature. Ness averaged seven hundred feet deep. It might take weeks to find the location of the sinking and then would require special equipment to get to it that far down. All they needed to do was weigh down Nessie, a beast that could tip the scales at a couple of tons. Something very heavy would be required to assure the job would be done.

“Pryor,” Zim said, “how long do you need once we have the creature locked down?”

“Say, three minutes to set everything. How much time should we allow to get away?”

“I think five minutes should do it. You’re sure of the detonators’ placement?”

“While you were talking to Dunham, I set them all up exactly as you directed. No way the Norwegians will find them unless they’re looking for them.”

“Good. Then while we’ve got some time, let’s go over the plan again. We’ll have all the whalers on deck during the tie down process. Once it’s secure, I’ll waste them while you start the timers.”

“Seems a shame,” Pryor said. “They’re Scandinavians. Our kind of people.”

“They’re already chafing at holding two men hostage. They’ll talk, and we don’t want witnesses to lead anyone back to the point where it sank.”

“What about the submariners?”

“They’re locked up. That problem will take care of itself.”

“And Dunham?”

“She comes back with us. She still has to pay us.”

“And after that?”

Zim smiled. “I want to make sure she gets away alive.”

“Why? You hate her. I can tell.”

“She’ll understand.”

“All right,” Pryor said. “Hey, they’re slowing down.”

“Match their speed. I want to see what they’re planning. Make sure to stay behind them.”

“Will do.”

Zim could feel the tingle of excitement he remembered when he’d sabotaged the chemical plant. The endgame was near. Locke and his sister would soon be dead, and the explosive charges on board the
Aegir
would scuttle the whaling vessel, sending the Loch Ness monster down to the icy depths once and for all.

As she peered through the window of the gift shop in Drumnadrochit, Alexa was amazed at the number of Nessie-related items that could be squeezed into one store. It was packed with all manner of toys, books, and clothes emblazoned with the creature’s likeness. In the window display was a plush Nessie stuffed animal, a Disney-fied version with a goofy smile and doe eyes. If only the real thing ended up being as friendly and tame.

Alexa moved away from the window and checked her watch. The sunlight was fading, only twenty minutes until their preset rendezvous with Tyler and Grant. Brielle rubbed her arms and stood quietly at the door where the skipper of the
Nessie Seeker
would meet them to take them to his boat. The shop, now closed, was the final stop for patrons of the Loch Ness Centre and Exhibition, so the tour operator had contracted to sell his trips from the store.

“Are you warm yet?” Alexa asked.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be warm again after that dunking,” Brielle replied. “My whole view of swimming has been radically altered in the last few days.”

“You should try Lake Michigan in winter. I did a polar bear plunge while I was in college to support the Special Olympics. It was mid-January, and we’d just gotten twelve inches of snow.”

Brielle rolled her eyes. “You Lockes are a bit touched, aren’t you?”

“If you mean crazy, then yes. I’ll never get in water that cold again.”

A white van with the logo of Loch Ness Voyages pulled into the parking lot and circled around to the front door of the shop. The driver, a tall man with a paunch, a grey beard, and a sailor’s cap, lumbered around the van and stuck out his hand.

“Greg Sinclair, skipper of the
Nessie Seeker
,” he said in a Scottish brogue thick enough to pour on pancakes.

Alexa and Brielle introduced themselves using false last names in case Sinclair had caught a radio report about them while he was on the loch.

“As you know from our phone conversation,” Alexa said, “we have a special request.”

“Doubling my usual fee takes care of anything you’d like, barring any illegal activities, of course.”

“We want to go fishing.”

Sinclair rubbed his beard. “I don’t have any fishing tackle, so you’d have to be bringing your own. Is it salmon you’re after?”

“Something bigger. We’re looking for Nessie.”

Sinclair laughed. “I’ve been sailing Loch Ness for thirty-five years, and I’ve seen Nessie once in all that time.”

“You’ve actually seen it?” Brielle asked.

“‘Her’ is what I call Nessie. Fifteen years ago, she surfaced about five hundred yards away while I was out on my own.”

“What did she look like?”

“A black hump with a snake head, just like the surgeon’s photograph. I didn’t have a camera with me to record it, but you can be sure I carry one now. How is it you’ll be expecting to find her?”

“We’re going to chum the waters,” Alexa said.

Sinclair furrowed his brow at the two of them. “You’re serious about this?”

“Yes.”

He shrugged. “I won’t be telling you how to spend your money. But I hope you don’t come away disappointed.”

Alexa looked at Brielle with concern. “I hope we don’t, either.”

They lugged the shipping box full of saltfish from the trunk to the back of the van. When they were belted in, Sinclair drove the minute it took to get to the boat dock.

He pulled up next to a crisp white power cruiser with “Nessie Seeker” on the side. The forty-foot-long boat had a railing around the bow, an upper deck above the wheelhouse, and an open-air aft area. It was perfect for their needs.

Once they had hauled the box on board, Sinclair cast off. He fired up the engine and sailed into Urquhart Bay. The castle was resplendent across the bay in the waning light. The floodlights used to illuminate the ruins at night were already visible, and the Grant Tower smoldered with an ethereal glow.

Alexa donned the rubber gloves they’d bought while Brielle opened the box. She uncapped the plastic container inside, and the pungent odor of cured fish assaulted their noses.

“Mind not to spill any of that on the cushions,” Sinclair called out from his position at the helm. Alexa had asked him to take the boat out to the open loch and cruise back and forth three hundred yards offshore of the castle.

Alexa and Brielle put a towel on the bench seat and rested the plastic container atop it. Alexa retrieved another purchase, an ice scoop. She dug it into the pile of fish and drew out a heaping scoopful.

“Here we go,” she said and tossed it into the water.

“You think this will really work?” Brielle asked.

“I don’t know. It was a fluke that we got to see it the first time.”

Brielle shook her head as Alexa threw another scoop into the loch. “I don’t understand why Nessie would be interested in shark meat.”

“Remember the coelacanth?”

“That ugly fish in Laroche’s vault?”

Alexa nodded. “That species evolved into its current form four hundred million years ago. Maybe Nessie’s species is just as old, although not a dinosaur. Shark may very well have been part of its diet since they have been around for four hundred and fifty million years.”

“How could Nessie still be around after all that time?”

Alexa had gotten into a rhythm of doling out scoops as she talked. “If she’s not a sturgeon—which I still think is the best explanation for the legend—she could be the last of her species, isolated here hundreds of years ago.” She shook her head and scanned the desolate loch. “It’s actually sad when you think about it. Alone all that time.”

“That would explain why it’s rarely seen,” Brielle said. “But if it’s a sturgeon, how could it be the source of the Altwaffe chemical? There are sturgeons in other parts of the world, and nobody has made weapons out of their flesh.”

The question of how it could be the source of the Nazi Altwaffe was definitely a puzzle for Alexa. She couldn’t reconcile that aspect of the creature’s anatomy with what she knew about the most likely candidate for all those Nessie sightings over the years.

“The other possibility, of course, is that it’s a unique species,” Alexa said, “one not discovered yet in the fossil record.”

“And in all these years, we’ve only had apocryphal stories? Why haven’t we ever seen one wash up on shore or get caught by a fisherman?”

“Giant squid have been reported by sailors for centuries, but it’s only in the last couple of years that we’ve gotten actual videographic evidence of living specimens.”

“We can’t wait that long,” Brielle said, “so let’s hope this works.”

Alexa flashed on Grant’s drawn face and silently agreed with Brielle as she tossed another dollop of chum in the water.

They continued trolling for twenty more minutes while the sky went from gunmetal to charcoal. Alexa had kept an eye out for Tyler’s sub, but she hadn’t seen it. It had to be out there, though, because Tyler would have called her if he couldn’t get the GhostManta into the water.

Despite the stench of the saltfish, the unique smell of the peat and highland air and the dimming light brought Alexa back to the last time she’d been on the loch with Michael Dillman. She happened to be looking at the opposite shore and saw a sinewy black form on the water.

“Oh, my God!” She cried out. “Look!

She and Brielle rushed over to the starboard side and leaned out as far as they dared. Sinclair wheeled the boat about and headed for the humped shape. Alexa’s knuckles were white on the railing. They were actually about to come face to face with the monster.

The black shape remained motionless, and Alexa hoped it wouldn’t dive before they had a chance to approach it. She got a scoop of saltfish ready to throw at the creature to lure it closer.

Sinclair suddenly slowed the
Nessie Seeker
and began turning away from their target.

“What are you doing?” Alexa yelled.

“Sorry, miss,” Sinclair said. “It’s not what you’re looking for. It’s just a log.”

“What are you talking about? I saw it move when…” Alexa’s voice trailed off. The black shape was now close enough for her to see it for what it really was. Sinclair was right. It was a rotten log bobbing in the water.

The rush of disappointment was overwhelming. She was so sure they had found it. Now Alexa felt like a fool. She’d fallen for the same optical illusion that had tricked so many other observers hoping to spot Nessie before her.

“I’ll keep trolling if you’d like,” Sinclair said.

Alexa nodded her assent, but her enthusiasm was shot.

They went on for another ten minutes, until the sun was below the mountains, leaving only a diffuse light in the clouds to illuminate the loch. Darkness would be total soon, effectively ending the expedition.

Alexa was methodically doling out the chum when Brielle, who had been keeping an eye on the boat’s wake, stiffened in her seat. Alexa looked back, trying not to get her hopes up, but could see nothing. She’d been so busy with the chum that she hadn’t been watching the water closely.

“What is it?” she asked.

“I thought I saw movement.”

“Tyler’s sub?”

Brielle pursed her lips. “It was a disturbance in the water that didn’t look like our normal wake.”

“Tyler said the sub would be black.”

“I couldn’t see anything come out of the water, just a difference in the surface pattern.”

They waited, but Alexa couldn’t see anything. She felt them both deflate, the anticipation subsiding again.

“Must be another false alarm,” she said dejectedly. “It’s almost dark, and I don’t have much bait left—”

Brielle stood and pointed. “There! You see it?”

Alexa followed the line of her finger, but it took her a moment to see what Brielle meant.

A swirl of whitewater where it shouldn’t have been.

And it was closing on them.

Alexa’s heart pounded at the sight. Something was definitely out there.

“Keep chumming,” Brielle said.

Alexa sped up the pace of her scoops. The breadth of the whitecap grew wider and closer.

“My God,” Alexa breathed.

She kept tossing saltfish behind the
Nessie Seeker
until the unusual wave was forty feet from the boat’s stern. It was only then that Alexa realized that the extra wake wasn’t necessarily created by the creature’s head.

Brielle was leaning out over the transom trying to get a better look, her head close to the water.

“Brielle!” Alexa shouted, and dropped the scoop. She yanked Brielle back by the shoulders just as a great maw of jagged teeth broke the surface of the water, yawning wide to take its next gulp.

Tyler was speechless.