Kronos Read online

  He’d claimed the fishermen were his guests. If they’re guests, why isn’t he with them? Andrea thought. Just then, one of the men yanked hard on his rod. The pole bent sharply into an upside-down U. The man had hooked something big, but as he locked himself into the seat and began pulling and reeling, Andrea could see it wasn’t too big to handle. Just another small tuna, she thought. They’d pulled in two already.

  She watched the man battling with the fish, his face not more than a millimeter in size, but she could see the flash of his teeth when he smiled. She could see the other men cheering around him, whooping it up, and having fun. Maybe they were guests? Maybe Trevor was sick, or just a rude host?

  Then the men froze. They seemed to be listening to something. The man holding the fishing rod suddenly let go. The rod flew through the air and into the water. The stern deck cleared as the men rushed inside.

  What the hell?

  The sound of a metal door clanging against the side of the bridge startled Andrea away from her spying. She turned around to see the captain rushing out of the bridge, heading her way with a scowl on his face. She’d been caught. Maybe Reilly had spilled his guts? She stood tall, ready for a verbal barrage, still confident in the choices she’d made and the secrets she’d kept.

  She remained silent until the captain was upon her. “Sir, I can explain,” she blurted.

  “I seriously doubt that,” the captain said as her stood before her, glancing at the Titan.

  Andrea was confused. Up close, he didn’t seem angry, not at her anyway. His eyes were more interested in the Titan than in her. She decided to keep her explanations to herself and let the man speak.

  The captain sighed. He removed his captain’s hat and rubbed his temples. “Look, we all know about what you and your crew saw. We all heard about the rescue, the creature. Rumor spreads quickly. You know that. To be honest, not many of us took it seriously. We figured that was why you were really out here; we figured that was why Manfred was here too. But, none of us really believed it. We were going to turn back today. Some of the crew wasn’t all that happy about being on a wild-goose chase.”

  Where was he going with this? She opened her mouth to ask, but decided silence would be better for now.

  “Look,” he said. “We just intercepted a transmission.”

  Andrea’s forehead wrinkled with her rising interest. “From the Titan?”

  “Yes, but the response came from”—the captain pointed a finger over the side of the cutter, straight toward the ocean—“down there.”

  Andrea looked to the waves, trying to see through, imagining what could be down there.

  “It’s seems they’ve had an encounter with your creature. Some men must have gone down in a submersible launched from the Titan. Honest to God, I didn’t think it was real, but the fear in those men’s voices…” The captain trailed off and looked over to the Titan. He squinted and crunched his forehead. “What happened to the men fishing?”

  Andrea returned her gaze to the Titan, remembering the rush of the men on deck. Coupled with the information she now had, she could picture the crew hurrying throughout the ship, preparing, recovering the submersible, destroying their cover story.

  Why?

  Andrea gasped. “They’re going after it!”

  Trevor burst onto the bridge of the Titan and began shouting orders. Atticus and O’Shea stood behind him. The cabin became a flurry of motion as the captain and crew rushed about, preparing for a rapid pursuit. Remus greeted them on the bridge, his colorful shirt nearly washing out the pitiful look in his eyes.

  “I should have been with you,” Remus said to Trevor, with a look of genuine concern.

  “Fret not, Remus. Atticus handled the sub like a pro.” Trevor gave the man a pat on the shoulder and moved to the front window.

  Remus gave Atticus a scowl and stood next to Trevor, waiting for his command.

  O’Shea slid up next to Atticus and whispered, “You better watch out for that one.” He motioned to Remus. “He doesn’t like it when other people get close to Trevor.”

  “He’s worried about nothing,” Atticus said. “I’ve only just met the man.”

  “You called him by his first name,” O’Shea said.

  Atticus shrugged. “So?”

  “Only those who criticize Trevor on TV or in the papers, or those in his extreme favor, can call him by his first name. On the Titan, only I get away with calling him by his first name, and that’s simply because he fears the power I represent.”

  “I doubt Trevor fears God,” Atticus said.

  “No, but he fears eternity. He believes, for some reason, in the power of priests to erase sins and save souls. I am his ticket to a blessed eternal life.”

  “That’s not really how it works, is it?”

  O’Shea smiled. “Not at all, but he believes it.”

  “Then why are you here? I doubt it’s common for a priest to be paid to hear confession.”

  “That,” said O’Shea, “is a story for another day.”

  Trevor’s voice pierced the cabin again. “Where is the creature now?”

  “It’s returned to the school of herring,” the captain said, leaning over the sonar screen, still being fed multiple signals from the array of sonar buoys.

  “Must have seen the basking shark as a competitor and driven it out of the area,” Atticus said, unable to stop himself from analyzing the creature’s actions from the standpoint of an oceanographer.

  “It’s…it’s rising,” the captain said, his voice tight with tension. “It’s going after the herring.”

  Atticus felt a surge of adrenaline. He knew what was coming next.

  “Full steam ahead!” Trevor shouted. “I want us on top of it in ten minutes or heads will roll!” He turned to Remus and spoke in a calmer voice. “Prepare the harpoon, will you?”

  Remus nodded. “Yes, sir.” Then he was gone in a flash.

  Trevor turned to Atticus, a gleam in his eye. “Are you ready, Atticus? The game is afoot. I believe Melville called this portion of the hunt, ‘The Chase’”

  “That was at the end of the book,” O’Shea said.

  Trevor smiled. “I’m an impatient man.”

  White foam burst from the back of the Titan. It lurched forward and churned through the water. “There they go!” Andrea shouted.

  Standing in the bridge of the cutter alongside the captain, her shout was unnecessary but understandable. From the moment they’d realized what was happening, the crew had been on alert and ready to move.

  “Set a course to follow,” the captain said. “Bring us alongside, but keep a safe distance.”

  Andrea braced for sudden movement as the cutter’s engines roared to life. The propellers dug into the water and pushed them forward in pursuit of the Titan. While the captain and crew had their minds set on the chase and the possibility that the sea monster they’d all been joking about was real, Andrea’s thoughts were on the man she’d been pursuing from the moment she’d brought him back to life. She knew Atticus was on the Titan. But as she watched the megayacht pounding through the water, a glint of metal rising from its bow, she realized it might be too late to save him.

  While his life might not be at risk while aboard the Titan, he was going to lose himself in the fight. She feared he’d become as much a monster as the creature he sought to kill.

  A reassuring hand gripped her shoulder. She turned and found the captain looking at the photo. “He’s why we’re really here, right? He’s the man you pulled from the water, the one who lost his daughter?”

  She nodded.

  “He’s on the Titan?”

  She nodded again.

  He squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll get him back.”

  “How long have you known?”

  “I’ve been a sailor long enough to know what a woman looks like when she’s waiting for a man to return from sea.” The captain smiled. “You’ve been standing on that deck watching that ship with the same look in your eyes
I see in my wife’s every time she greets me at the dock.”

  Andrea smiled. She’d been found out after all, but, amazingly, it didn’t seem to matter. The captain was a good man. Only then did she realize she had yet to learn his name. “Captain, what’s your name?”

  “Nathaniel McCormick,” he said.

  “Well Captain McCormick,” she said, “thank you.”

  25

  The Titan—Gulf of Maine

  As the Titan began its charge through the ocean, its girth surged up and down as it cut through eight-foot swells. At full speed, the ship simply bored a path through the water. Atticus found himself enjoying the slight undulation of the deck beneath him. He felt more at home at sea than on land.

  As he headed for the foredeck, following Trevor, with O’Shea close behind, he saw something large rising out of the deck where just the night before he’d been weeping for his daughter. Its polished surface glowed in the sunlight. He recognized it instantly—a harpoon gun.

  Remus greeted them as they approached. “Almost ready, sir.”

  Trevor nodded and looked to Atticus. “Impressive, is it not?”

  Atticus loathed the killing of whales. It drove him nuts that several Japanese fleets still slaughtered the beautiful creatures. “For scientific research,” they said. Only fools believed that as the meat, oil, and fins found their way to Japanese markets. And he knew the only reason anyone would have a harpoon gun strapped to the front of a ship was to hunt whales. He wanted to ask if the harpoon gun had been used on a whale, but the answer was clear. Of course it had. Atticus felt a twist of revulsion inside him. What am I becoming, that a man like Trevor Manfred could become such a close friend so quickly? Are we really that much alike? Could I join this crew and watch as this harpoon gun kills a defenseless whale? How different is what I intend to do now?

  Atticus shoved the questions from his mind. The plan wasn’t about sport. He took no pleasure in the act. If an alligator in Florida ate a child, it would be killed. If a bear savaged a family, it would be hunted down. This is no different, Atticus told himself. This is nature.

  No, a voice shouted from deep within. When a lion takes a calf from a herd of buffalo, they don’t seek revenge; they don’t hunt down the lion. They mew for the baby animal, mourn its loss, and move on. That’s nature!

  Fine, Atticus thought, this is humanity. He could live with that. He’d killed for his country in the past. He could kill for his daughter. With his resolve reinforced, Atticus focused on the harpoon gun with renewed interest. Remus carefully looped a thick rope onto the deck, which was attached to the sinister-looking four-pronged harpoon jutting from the front of a cannon that looked like an oversized, futuristic laser gun.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Trevor said. “Every part is titanium. Overkill, I know, but it will never fail me and never dull. Cost a fortune, but it serves me well. The four flukes are razor-sharp on the outside and barbed on the inside, so the harpoon grips after it pierces. Once inside the beast, the flukes will extend and hold tight, while this…” Trevor waved his hand over the tip of the harpoon, which had an opening between each of the flukes. Inside the opening was an unlabeled cylinder. “…explosive charge finishes the job. Most people don’t know this, but harpoons carry explosive heads that explode after impaling the target, inflicting a mortal wound that slowly kills the animal.”

  “And makes one hell of a mess,” Remus chimed in.

  “I know,” Atticus said through gritted teeth.

  “Of course you do,” Trevor said, “And regardless of your past persuasions about the use of a weapon such as this, I think you’ll agree that in this case, the slow death brought on by Excalibur here is well deserved.”

  Atticus nodded, centering his mind on the task as hand, trying not to think about the whales killed by the device he would soon wield. “I’m not sure this will be enough. This thing is bigger than any whale.”

  “Indeed,” Trevor said. “But we’ve doubled the explosive charge. The beast may take some time bleeding to death, but no amount of white blood cells will be able to plug the hole this creates.”

  “Off the port bow!” The voice from the bridge was ragged. Atticus followed the captain’s pointing finger out to sea, where he saw a cloud of shimmering silver, just beneath the surface, and below that, an ominous shape rising from the depths.

  He turned to Trevor. “Is it ready?”

  “Have at it!”

  Atticus stood behind the large harpoon gun, taking its handle with both hands. He swiveled it quickly from side to side and up and down, getting a feel for how quickly it could be maneuvered. It handled like a charm. “Get us on top of that thing.” Atticus’s voice rang with rage as his thirst for vengeance reached a crescendo. “I will not miss.”

  “You heard the man,” Trevor said to Remus. “Take the helm and show those lollygaggers how to pilot this ship!”

  “Yes, sir!” Remus beamed with pride at being given the station normally occupied by the captain. He stormed off to the bridge, shouting orders the entire way.

  Atticus gripped the harpoon gun tightly; bringing it around toward the cloud of herring, now thrashing at the ocean’s surface, panicked and mindless, just as they had been…that day. The boat turned to port and thundered toward the herring. Atticus roared like a man possessed, feeling the thrill of the hunt, the moment of revenge at hand.

  Trevor stood beside him, his eyes wide, his lips spread thin in a smile. He was clearly eager, brimming with excitement. And beside him stood O’Shea, taking everything in and doing little to hide his nervousness. While his eyes moved from the ocean to Atticus, his hands clasped together tightly in anticipation.

  The herring lay dead ahead. In an explosion of movement, they launched from the water, trying to swim into the sky. This was it. The beast rose. Its prey fled.

  You should have killed me too, Atticus thought as he readied a hand on the trigger.

  The water beneath the herring bulged then exploded outward. Herring flew through the air while others fell into a massive open mouth. All three men gasped. The beast rose and fell in a fluid motion, like a whale coming up for a breath, but before the first hump had come and gone, the head was up again, taking in more fish. The head rose and fell again, and still the first hump had not submerged. A trail of humps formed behind the head as it moved forward through the water.

  “My God,” Trevor said. “It’s a sea serpent. An honest-to-God sea serpent.”

  Ten humps in all rolled through the water before the creature’s stubby tail appeared. It pushed forward, scooping up herring and swallowing them whole. Atticus knew that wasn’t how the creature moved underwater. It moved much more fluidly there, but still…

  “Fire the damn harpoon!” Trevor shouted. “It’s descending.”

  Atticus focused on the creature, whose head had gone down but not returned. One by one, the humps were following the head, disappearing into the depths. Atticus took aim at the largest hump using the harpoon gun’s sight board and held his breath before pulling the trigger. He doubted whether holding his breath would make a difference with the aim of this particular weapon, but it was a habit instilled in him after his training behind a sniper rifle.

  The harpoon exploded from the cannon, soaring through the air and trailing a long line of cable. Atticus smiled as he looked over the harpoon gun. He could see that his aim was true.

  “There she goes!” Trevor said as he leaned against the bow rail, watching the harpoon fly through the air.

  Atticus felt his whole body go rigid with anticipation. As the harpoon closed in on the creature, the world slowed down. Everything became vivid and clear. The nightmare would soon end. With a resounding clang, the harpoon struck the creature’s back…and glanced off. It bounded forward, hit a second hump, and again, with a sound resembling metal on metal, bounced up into the air out over the open ocean—where it exploded.

  Atticus grasped O’Shea and Trevor more out of instinct than a belief that they’d
be peppered by shrapnel, and tackled them to the deck.

  Smoke from the explosion quickly wafted over the deck as the Titan pushed forward. Trevor was laughing beneath Atticus. “Well played! Well played!”

  Atticus rolled off Trevor, who sat up and clapped his hands. “Bravo!”

  “You’re happy?” Atticus said with a growl as he stood, looked to the ocean, and saw nothing but blue seas ahead. “It got away.”

  “And we will give chase again.” Trevor said with a grin. “This is better than I had hoped. The beast is more formidable than I thought. What an adventure! Though I must say, I’m not fond of being tackled.”

  O’Shea helped Trevor stand. Before they left, Trevor added, “Fear not, brave Atticus. Your vengeance will be completed. I promise you that.”

  Atticus felt little comfort as the men left. He was alone on the deck, alone in the world, and in that instant he realized how empty the world appeared. The ocean had lost its magic. His family was gone. He’d betrayed his ethics.

  The crashing of water that was not caused by the Titan immediately told Atticus that a second ship cruised the water next to the yacht. He turned and looked over the port bow. Pounding the waves next to the Titan was a gleaming white, red-striped Coast Guard cutter. While the cutter was dwarfed by the Titan, Atticus still found himself impressed by the power of the ship and the audacity of its captain, bringing it so close to the megayacht.

  An oddity at the cutter’s bow caught his attention. As the ships pounded up and down through the waves, Atticus saw a woman, whose black hair caught in the wind, obscuring her face. His heart lurched with familiarity.

  Maria.

  But when the wind shifted, and her hair blew away, he came eye to eye with a woman of equal beauty but whose scowl spoke volumes.

  Andrea.

  Her arms were crossed, her shoulders high and rigid. She’d obviously seen his attack on the creature and was not impressed. Maria wouldn’t have been either.