“But it seems the creature is in no hurry to leave. It has been slowly following a school of herring, I assume keeping its prey close by.”
Atticus nodded. That was certainly an odd behavior, but the creature was completely unknown and unrelated to anything Atticus had ever studied. Predicting its hunting habits would be impossible. But if it shadowed a school of herring, he had no doubt it would eventually feed on them. “It will surface when it feeds on the herring.”
“My thoughts exactly,” Trevor added with a glimmer of excitement. “And we’ll be waiting for it when it does. But I must ask a favor of you before such an encounter occurs.”
Atticus waited, neither nodding nor speaking.
“I need to know everything you do about this creature. Anything you can recall about the beast will help us immeasurably. To kill it, we must first know it.”
Atticus pictured the attack-his memory still fractured. He thought about drawing the beast, but he was no artist and didn’t want to misrepresent its size, abilities, or speed. “I’m not sure how much help I could be…I don’t remember…”
“Don’t remember or don’t want to remember?” Trevor asked, his voice gentle and soothing, just as it had been the previous night. He topped the sentence off with a firm grip on Atticus’s shoulder.
Remus and O’Shea shared a glance. It seemed everyone found the gentle touch and calm voice to be strange.
“Either way,” Atticus said, “any information I provide would be suspect.”
Trevor sighed and relented. “Understood, but we still must-”
“Wait.” Atticus’s eyes were wide. “Where are we?”
“The man already told you,” Remus chimed in, “Jeffery’s Ledge.”
Atticus glowered at the man. “Jeffery’s Ledge isn’t a small place. Where are we, exactly?”
Trevor looked at the floor for a moment. “I hope it won’t ruffle your feathers too much, my friend. We are at the coordinates you broadcast in your distress call. We have been here since your boat was taken away.”
Atticus smiled, which in turn caused Trevor to relax. “Perfect.”
Confusion washed over Trevor’s face. “Why is that, precisely?”
“Giona…my daughter…and I were carrying cameras that day,” Atticus said, feeling cold as he spoke. The day she was taken seemed like a lifetime ago, yet was only two days previous. So much had changed. Would Giona understand what he was doing? Would Maria? Before the guilt found purchase, he pushed it away. “I was carrying a video camera. I dropped it when I surfaced, but there’s a chance I got it on tape.”
Trevor’s eyes lit up. “Where is the creature now?”
The captain, who was most likely not even needed, as the ship that could pilot itself if need be, looked at a circular screen displaying several green blobs of varying sizes. Atticus approached the screen and instantly understood what he was looking at. Schools of fish, whales, and other assorted sea creatures made their appearances on the screen, but most obvious was an ominous object moving slowly behind a smaller hazy one.
“It’s three miles out, still following the fish,” the captain said. “Still moving slowly.”
Trevor looked at Atticus.
“I’m going in,” said Atticus.
Trevor thought for a moment, chewing his pale lower lip. “We’ll go together.” Trevor suddenly stood tall, smiling and filled with energy. “Prepare the sub! Ready the harpoon! Hoist the mainsails! Batten the hatches! Et cetera! Et cetera!”
When Trevor was finished, the captain and three other crew members scuttled from the room, intent on fulfilling Trevor’s requests.
Remus stepped forward. “You’re not actually planning on going down in the sub with that thing down there?”
“Try not to fret, Remus. We will be perfectly safe, and I will hear no more arguments about it.”
The tone in Trevor’s voice silenced any further argument. “At least let me drive.” Remus said.
“I would rather you man the harpoon gun. If we run into trouble, we will surface, and you may defend us as gallantly as you wish.”
“And who pilots the submersible?”
“Why, Atticus, of course.”
Atticus seemed taken unawares by that pronouncement. He had not expected to pilot the sub. His experience with submersibles was not a matter of public record. He was about to inquire about the assignment when Trevor explained.
“Atticus took part in a top-secret one-man attack-sub program. NAVY SEALs could use the subs to approach enemy ships, submarines, oil platforms, what have you. And no one would be the wiser. The subs moved quickly and quietly, but in every way they appeared to be denizens of the deep-shaped as mantas, sharks, even turtles. PUSS (Personal Underwater Stealth Submersible). I won’t repeat what they called the pilots, but several SEALs, who were not submersible pilots, were used in testing the devices. Since they were to be used by your average SEAL, they had to be tested by average SEALs. Not that Atticus here was anything but stellar, but his previous experience at the helm of a submersible was nonexistent.”
Atticus stared at Trevor unblinking, astounded by the man’s in-depth knowledge of a project few even in the Navy even about. Trevor turned from Remus and looked at Atticus. “I do believe you will find our submersible not too dissimilar from the ones you piloted during your days with the PUSS program, except, of course, for its size.”
Atticus smiled. He didn’t care how Trevor had come upon the information, and he knew Trevor could sense as much. The two men were united in a common cause. Rules and morality would be set aside until their quest concluded. Maybe Trevor had an informant. Maybe he’d had the priest hack into a Navy database. Atticus didn’t care. Getting that tape off the bottom of the ocean and using the information it contained to hunt down and kill the creature was all that mattered. Nothing else did.
Not anymore.
Andrea paced the deck of the Coast Guard cutter, watching the gleaming Titan just sitting in the distance.
What were they up to?
Where was Atticus?
Why weren’t they moving?
She couldn’t stop running through the questions that wracked her mind over and over. With so little information, the number of unknowns was driving her crazy. Worse, she couldn’t tell her commanding officers of her concerns about Atticus. It would be clear to all that she wasn’t out there to watch Manfred; she was there for something-someone-far less official.
But she also sure as hell couldn’t justify keeping a Coast Guard cutter in pursuit of Trevor Manfred if he was simply sitting still! To make matters worse, Trevor had done exactly what she thought he would. Ever since the confrontation in the morning, several men could be seen fishing off the back of the Titan. They’d been monitored closely, but what was discovered only backed up Trevor’s fishing trip claim. The men were occasionally catching fish, and one man was nearly pulled in by something before his line snapped.
She’d seen the men hauling in large fish, easily a hundred pounds, some maybe more. Their lines had to be tough. What could have snapped the line? Something huge, Andrea thought.
Something huge. The torrent of thoughts in her mind came to a screeching halt. She knew why Trevor was there. She knew why Atticus had joined him. They were working together to find and kill the creature. How Atticus had contacted the mogul so quickly was beyond her, but he obviously had. Atticus and Trevor Manfred were in league with each other.
Atticus, you have no idea what you’re in for, Andrea thought, shaking her head. In that moment, Andrea determined she would get in contact with Atticus one way or another, even if she had to swim to the Titan.
22
The Titan-Gulf of Maine
If not for the unholy goal of the mission, Atticus might have felt excited. But the footage they were going to retrieve at the bottom of Jeffery’s Ledge filled Atticus with dread. His memory, fragmented and blurred as it was, would be brought into crystal clarity as the 3CCD video camera and its slow-motion capabilities would cause him to relive the violent end of his daughter’s life…again…and again.