The Loch Ness Legacy

THIRTY-NINE

Dunham yawned and opened her eyes when she felt the Range Rover slow and turn onto a dirt road with a rutted track that looked like it saw no more than two vehicles a week. The clock on the dashboard read 2:34 p.m.

“Where are we?” she asked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.

“The east shore of Loch Ness,” Zim said.

Dunham made careful note of the location since it was going to be their way out when the mission was over. Zim parked in a turnout, and they all climbed out of the Range Rover, stretching their legs and removing their disguises before making the short hike to the point where the Zodiac outboard from the Aegir picked them up.

In contrast to the sheep pastures and scrub brush they had passed for much of their way up, the loch was surrounded by thick forests. Dunham peered over the side of the boat and could see nothing beneath the rippling black surface of the water. Three white boats were visible in the distance, all of them cruising around the ruins of Urquhart Castle clinging to a rocky promontory. Its jagged stone walls and crumbling tower were only shells of the redoubt it used to be, damaged in an explosion long ago to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

As they approached the whaling vessel, Dunham could see two seamen cutting a net away from an object floating on the water. Most of it was hidden from view, a concealing tarp hastily thrown over it. All she could spot was the black fin of a sleek craft knifing out of the water. Zim called it a gift from Gordian Engineering.

The Aegir’s cobalt blue hull was topped by a white superstructure, and the ship looked indistinguishable from any other fishing vessel to Dunham’s untrained eye. Fresh paint and a new registry number had been applied so that it wouldn’t be recognized as a whaler. The yellow foremast was equipped with a boom crane and topped by a crow’s nest for spotting whales. The harpoon launcher at the bow was covered by another tarp.

Once they were on board, they got the rundown from the captain, who finally realized he was in over his head but could do nothing about it now that he had armed men on the ship. The remainder of Zim’s men had boarded the Aegir in Inverness, and the equipment he had told them to bring with them was stowed in a locker in the crew quarters. The odd-looking ship they’d been spying on — a vessel called the Sedna and confirmed as property of Gordian — was anchored near the south end of the loch by the town of Fort Augustus. As instructed, Zim’s men forced the Aegir’s captain to capture one of the search craft the Sedna had sent out, and its two operators were currently being held under guard below decks.

Zim made a move to head down there, but Dunham said, “We need to talk.”

“Why?” Zim asked. “We need to question Locke’s men.”

“Not until we settle our strategy.”

“I told you what it was on the way up.”

“I have some problems with it.”

“You have problems…” Zim clenched his fists and tilted his head at Pryor. He and the other two men from Edinburgh left them in the galley alone.

While she munched on a sandwich, Zim poured two cups of coffee and handed her one of them. She took a sip of the bitter brew and made a face, but the warmth of the liquid made it go down well.

“What about our strategy do you not like?” Zim asked.

“You’re betting everything on Locke finding the monster.”

“Believe me, I know the man. He won’t give up. He’s a pro.”

“But then we have to make sure that not only do we kill the monster and dispose of it, but we also have to make sure Locke doesn’t get away with a tissue sample.”

“That’s why we need to question his men. That GhostManta under the tarp may be our ticket to making this all work.”

“See? You’re thinking too narrowly. All we need to do is prevent him from finding the monster in the first place.”

“You’re insistent you torched the journal,” he said sarcastically, “so that’s taken care of, isn’t it?”

“I’m open to the possibility that they may have been able to reconstruct it even if it was partially burned. That’s why we need to be thinking offensively as well as defensively.”

Zim slammed his fist on the table. “I am not thinking defensively! I’m beating Locke at his own game. I’m letting him do the work for me.”

Dunham rolled her eyes. “Yes, yes, you’re a brilliant mastermind. But it didn’t occur to you that we can stop him before he even gets onto the loch.”

“How?”

“Can your phone be traced?”

“Not if I route it through an Internet anonymizer that Pryor set up.”

“Then give it to me.”

“Why?”

“So you can learn a lesson in alternative thinking.”

Zim bellyached, but he handed over the phone and told her how to dial so that the call couldn’t be traced.

She dialed the Inverness operator and asked to be connected to the police.

Zim stared at her, incredulous. “What the hell are you doing?”

“You’ll see.”

The line picked up. “North Constabulary,” a woman said. “How may I help you?”

Dunham put on her best freaked out voice. “Oh, my God! I just saw the man who escaped after being arrested at Edinburgh Castle this morning.”

That got the call center operator’s attention. The events in Edinburgh had blanketed the national news all day.

“Which man, ma’am?”

“Tall, brown hair, good-looking. He’s with three other people: a red-headed woman, a dark-haired woman, and a huge, bald black man.”

Zim sat back and fumed at her.

“Where did you see them, ma’am?”

“I was passing through Fort Augustus and saw them get into a small boat that went out to a ship. I think it’s called the Sedna.”

“When was this?”

“Just a few minutes ago. And they had guns with them.”

“Guns? Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes. Big ones, like the military carry. You know, machine guns.”

“How many people are on the ship?”

“I don’t know. A lot. And they looked dangerous.”

“And what’s your name?”

“Oh, I’m just a tourist. I don’t want to get involved. But please hurry. I’m very worried about our safety here with people like that roaming around.”

She hung up.

“What the hell was that about?” Zim asked. “What if Locke isn’t even on the ship yet?”

“Then he won’t be able to get on it. The police will realize that it’s a Gordian-owned vessel and make the connection. It’ll take hours for them to search it and question the crew. They’ll probably even leave police behind in case he shows up here.”

“I don’t like it.”

“Why? Because now you aren’t able to carry out your little revenge angle? Do that on your own time.”

Zim glowered at her, then held out his hand. “My phone.” She gave it back.

He stood and drained the rest of his coffee.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I was under the impression that we were done. I’m going to do some of my own questioning.”

“Why?”

“I have to work on the assumption that your clever little idea won’t work. The men we captured are going to show me and Pryor how to use Locke’s own technology against him.”

FORTY

Tyler drove through the tiny village of Fort Augustus at a steady pace to give the impression that they were a group of travelers passing through on their way to a destination in western Scotland. The flashing lights of parked police vehicles in town had been visible from a mile down the road.

Alexa stared at the array of patrol cars and vans lined up at the dock. “What’s going on here?”

“Someone ratted us out,” Grant said.

“I think we can all guess who,” Tyler said.

“Looks like we’re not getting on the Sedna tonight.”

“But we have to!” Alexa protested. “We don’t have time to wait around.” Tyler saw her eyes focus on Grant.

“The longer we stay on the run,” Brielle said, “the likelier it is that you or Tyler will be recognized.”

“We’ll figure out something,” Tyler said, already forming the outline of a plan.

They could only dare one pass through the town, so he noted as many details as he could during the short trip along its main thoroughfare. The quaint village consisted of a few dozen small buildings holding businesses that catered to tourists coming by car or boat. The canal split Fort Augustus in half, and Tyler crossed it by the only route, a swing bridge that could be opened to let boat traffic from Loch Ness access the water staircase of five locks leading south. Tyler counted three boats in the middle lock slowly rising to the level of the lock above it.

To the north, Tyler could see the Sedna approaching a dock along the canal, a phalanx of policemen in body armor ready to board. The white ship looked unbalanced with the command deckhouse located at the very bow of the ship. The aft portion of the ship consisted of a stowed crane and a retractable covering that angled down toward the stern, giving the boat an aerodynamic appearance. The covered area was useful for protection against the elements when launching its craft.

This had to be the most excitement the town had experienced in years. Tourists gathered to watch the proceedings, and others wandered amongst the shops or stood in line for one of the loch tours ready to set sail. A policeman directed traffic around the parked police vehicles. Within a minute, they were out of Fort Augustus and on the road leading along the western edge of Loch Ness.

“Now what?” Brielle asked.

“Alexa,” Tyler said, “when did you say Darwin and Edmonstone had their encounter with Nessie?”

“At twilight.”

“And you saw the creature at sundown?”

She nodded. “Right. Our best chance to find it is to go out at dusk.”

At this northerly latitude, sundown in June was around 10:20 p.m.

“That gives us seven hours,” Tyler said. “If the police are gone by then, we can continue with the original plan.”

“We should be so lucky,” Grant said. “You know they’ll leave some forces behind in case we show up. We destroyed two landmarks and participated in a gun battle in broad daylight. It won’t matter that we were on the side of the good guys.”

“Which means we need to go to plan B.”

Brielle leaned forward. “Which is?

“It’s an hour’s drive to Inverness airport,” Tyler said. “We head there and pick up the bait from the courier. We also arrange for a sunset boat tour.”

“Why?”

“You’re going to have to chum the water for me using the saltfish.”

“You mean, for us,” Grant objected. “There’s no way I’m not coming with you.”

“Grant, you’re…” Tyler stopped himself from saying the unintended pun “dead tired” and chose something less cringe-inducing. “You’re exhausted as it is. Are you up for it?”

Grant straightened in his seat, unsuccessfully hiding a wince. “You may be the pilot, but I know more about the GhostManta than you. If we’re going to use it, you need me there.”

Tyler couldn’t argue with that, and normally he wouldn’t even question Grant coming along for the ride. But Grant’s face was sagging and drying out, the wrinkles more obvious. He was decaying right before their eyes. However, he was also a fighter. Sitting on the sidelines wasn’t his nature, and he’d have to be unconscious for Tyler to leave him behind.

“All right,” Tyler said. “But if you aren’t feeling up to it, let me know. We’ll only get one shot at this tonight.”

“If I keel over, just dump my ass overboard.”

Tyler smiled. “Well, of course. That goes without saying.”

“What about us?” Alexa asked. “We’re doling out the bait?”

“Yes,” Tyler replied. “There’s a town called Drumnadrochit about two-thirds of the way up the loch. It’s right across from Urquhart Castle, which is where both you and Edmonstone spotted the creature. That location seems like our best shot for finding it again. The town has a few boats that give tours.” He had researched the options on Brielle’s phone.

“We’ll make them an offer they can’t refuse?”

“Right, but we’ll use cash instead of a horse’s head.”

“That doesn’t explain how you’ll get onto your ship,” Brielle said.

“That’s where you come in. We’ll have to stop and get you some warm wool clothing.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re going to be a bit chilly.”

Brielle met his gaze in the mirror with a confused and suspicious stare. Tyler had an hour’s drive each way to and from the airport to convince her to give an encore performance of her experience at Lake Shannon.

By eight thirty in the evening, they were approaching Fort Augustus again, this time from the north, and Brielle was not pleased with the plan. However, she strained to think of anything better and failed, so she agreed to go along with it. A towel and a change of clothes were waiting for her in the boot. The car now sported a license plate pinched from a similar model in an Inverness car park.

It was less than two hours to sundown, so they had to act quickly. She was driving since she was the least conspicuous of the group. Tyler and Alexa had identified themselves to the police at Edinburgh Castle. A search of the Internet showed that their photos were being broadcast as persons of interest in the Edinburgh events that left three unidentified men and six policemen dead that morning, one of the worst mass killings in Scotland’s history. And Grant stood out because of his size and skin color. As Brielle drove into Fort Augustus, they ducked low, all of their heads covered in woolen ski hats. The police presence was diminished, but she spotted the tactical team’s van on a side street. She cruised past the dock where the Sedna was tied up and saw an unmarked car watching the vessel.

She turned around and headed back to the car park next to the closed information center. They left the rental car there and split up into two groups. Tyler and Grant headed south along the river that paralleled the canal, while she and Alexa wandered into town as if they were looking for a place to eat. Alexa wore her hair tucked under her hat with a pair of oversized tortoiseshell glasses to mask her face.

When they got to the swing bridge, Brielle pointed at the boats along the dock and they ambled down the road past the stakeout police car as if they were a couple of tourists. Alexa made sure to keep her back toward them.

Brielle handed Alexa her phone and mimed taking a picture. She made a big deal of pointing out what she wanted in the background, keeping an eye on the trees that abutted the path next to the dock. Only because she was looking right where she had to, she saw Tyler and Grant creep up to the edge of the woods, ready to make a dash for the Sedna.

When they were in position, she nodded at them and began posing in outrageous positions, putting on quite a show, sticking her bum out and cocking her hips in such a way that the two officers couldn’t resist watching her.

As she posed, she inched her way backward until she felt the edge of the dock under her heel. She winked at Alexa, and they both laughed as if she’d said some something hilarious.

Brielle took another step back, her toe on the edge. She pinwheeled her arms as if she were trying to catch her balance and then launched herself backward.

She hit the water. Brielle had prepared herself for its icy embrace, but the cold knocked the wind from her just the same. The replay of her escape into Lake Shannon was improved by the layers of wool wrapped around her, though the sudden immersion was more shocking.

She surfaced and screamed as if she were drowning, the cold doing all the work of getting her into character. On the dock Alexa acted like a panicked schoolgirl and shrieked for help.

The doors of the police car flew open and the officers came running toward the dock, their original duties momentarily forgotten. Brielle was glad she could count on good old-fashioned British gallantry, but she felt a tad guilty for taking advantage of it.

As she thrashed in simulated terror, she glanced farther down the dock and saw Tyler and Grant hustle across the open space and climb onto the Sedna. When they were safely aboard, Brielle acted like she had gotten her wits about her and paddled toward the outstretched hands above her.

She reached out and was pulled from the water, coughing and trembling as they sat her down. Alexa crouched next to her and whispered in her ear. “Did it work?”

Brielle nodded and coughed again.

“She’s okay,” Alexa said to the gathered crowd. With the glasses, her red hair covered by the hat, and the cops’ focus on the near-drowned woman, no one gave her a second glance.

“Oh, my God,” Brielle croaked, latching onto the attending policemen. “Thank you so much!”

The two men beamed at her, and one said, “We’re just glad you’re all right, ma’am.”

After an attempt to convince Brielle to seek medical attention, they accepted her decision to decline and went back to their stakeout, unaware that they’d helped the two women they were looking for. She and Alexa hurried back to the car.

Under a blanket, Brielle changed out of her wet clothes and into a dry set, depositing the dirty and smelly togs in the car park’s dust bin. She was still shivering as Alexa drove them away, headed back to Drumnadrochit for their sunset cruise.

FORTY-ONE

Jerry Yount, the captain of the Sedna, listened to Tyler and Grant tell their story, the creases in his ruddy face deepening with every new revelation. He’d been a ship’s master for more than twenty years and sailing on boats for twice that long, so Tyler was sure the old sea dog had thought he’d heard it all. Yount was being disabused of that notion quickly.

“You’re telling me that you two think the Loch Ness monster is real?” Yount said when they were finished telling him why they’d had to sneak on board. Grant leaned against the wall of the captain’s cabin and sipped a cup of tea, his hands quivering.

“Not only real,” Tyler said. “We need to find it. Tonight.”

“I thought we were out here doing a sounding survey. At least your odd request for outfitting the GhostMantas makes sense now.”

“Sorry about the deception. I was hoping you’d come across something in your search.”

“The closest we got was a few logs floating on the surface.”

“When can we leave?” Grant asked.

Yount shook his head. “Can’t. The police ordered me to stay docked here until tomorrow. They’ve even got the loch’s only rescue boat stationed in Fort Augustus temporarily to keep an eye on me in case I cast off without permission.”

“They’re hoping we’ll show up here,” Tyler said. “They probably also have the Gordian offices in London or Glasgow staked out. They probably think you have a better chance of smuggling us out of the country.”

“Just say the word.”

“I appreciate the offer, but we’re not criminals. However, it could take days for them to sort out what happened, and we don’t have that kind of time.”

“Then what do you need?”

“Grant and I need to borrow one of the GhostMantas.”

Yount shrugged. “It’s your company. You can do what you want with it. There’s only one here, but it’s charged up and ready to go.”

“Where is the other one?”

“That’s a good question. It should have been back an hour ago. We haven’t been able to contact the operators. I’m starting to get concerned.”

Tyler frowned at Grant. Coincidences hadn’t been good to them lately.

“Where was it searching?” Tyler asked.

Yount showed them on a map of the loch. The grid section where it was last heard from was near Urquhart Castle.

“Let’s hope it’s just a busted radio,” Tyler said. “We’ll keep an eye out for them.”

“It’s a big lake. What about calling in a helicopter for the search?”

“If we call in a rescue chopper,” Grant said, his voice a husky rasp, “it’ll mean giving up on the search for Nessie. We’ll have boats all around us.” His ability to speak had been deteriorating rapidly throughout the day, causing Tyler to reconsider whether he should bring Grant along on the mission. He felt damned either way.

“My men might be in trouble,” Yount said.

Tyler wrestled with the decision, weighing the need to search for Yount’s men with the consequences of not finding the Altwaffe antidote. If Zim was responsible for the disappearance, they could be dead already. A damaged radio wasn’t serious, but if it were a major equipment malfunction, the odds of finding the men in time to save them was a million-to-one. Tyler had to play the odds.

“It won’t be long until dark,” he said, “and by the time the police believe you aren’t trying a ruse to distract them, the sun will have gone down. Give us until an hour after dusk. If you haven’t heard from your men by then, bring in the police to scour the loch.”

After going a few more rounds, Yount grudgingly agreed with Tyler’s logic.

“All right, then,” Yount said. “Come on.”

They left his cabin and took a circuitous route below decks so they could come up within the covered section of the ship unseen from the outside.

Tyler felt the weight of the moment as they walked. Grant was shuffling along doing his best to hide his illness. Yount might not have noticed, but it was painfully obvious to Tyler. Then there was trying to avert the war brewing in the Middle East, and the fact that he had dragged Alexa along into this mess. He was so wrecked about turning her into a killer that he hadn’t had the heart to tell her Michael Dillman’s body had been recovered from Puget Sound with two bullets in his head. Aiden mentioned it when Tyler got the update on Laroche’s status, which was that he was still comatose but showing some response to stimuli.

All Tyler could do was focus on the task at hand, which at least provided some distraction from his morbid thoughts.

They entered the launch bay to find the GhostManta nestled in its cradle. Tyler hadn’t seen it since they began testing it last winter, so he admired anew the sleek lines of the submarine.

Modeled on the form of a manta ray, the Ghostmanta was the brainchild of a design student named Caan Yaylali. Originally meant to be used as a camera platform for documentary videographers interested in recording sea creatures at great depths, Gordian had modified the design to create a multi-purpose sub that could be used for underwater maintenance and surveying, particularly for the oil and gas industry. After the blowout of the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico, in which it had taken months to cap the sea-bottom well, Gordian saw the opportunity to produce a speedy and flexible vessel for performing undersea repairs. The two GhostMantas aboard the Sedna were headed to a North Sea oil rig for testing when Tyler had requested that Miles divert them to Loch Ness.

The black sub’s wings were used to stabilize the craft and pitch it up and down underwater while the fin-like rudder steered it. On the surface, the GhostManta performed like a boat, but when it dived, it flew like an airplane. Tyler had taken it out for several test runs. Although that had been six months ago, it wouldn’t take long to familiarize himself with the controls again.

The sub’s operators met them in the shed, as the rear covered hangar was called, and talked Tyler and Grant through the latest updates. The sub was propelled by two battery-powered pump jets similar to the ones on the US Navy’s new Virginia-class nuclear subs and could reach a speed of twenty knots. That would get them to their pre-arranged rendezvous by Urquhart Castle in little more than thirty minutes, just as darkness was falling. Of course, the sub’s regular pilots would have been much more adept at handling the craft, but Tyler couldn’t ask them to defy the police or risk another run-in with Zim.

While Tyler would pilot the sub, Grant’s main job would be to operate the firing controls. The additional modification Tyler had asked for from Yount was a spear gun, one mounted on each side of the cockpit. But this spear wasn’t for killing. It had two purposes. The first was as a biopsy tool. The spear was a customized soil sampler that had been altered to capture a tissue sample from Nessie. It had a high-tensile filament lead which would be used to retract it once it had lanced through skin, bringing back a piece of flesh the size of a toilet roll tube.

The second purpose was to implant a low-frequency radio transmitter. If the sample retrieval failed, they would be able to follow the creature in an attempt to get another.

Once they were brought up to speed on the controls, Tyler and Grant squeezed into the tandem cockpit, Tyler in front and Grant in back.

Before they closed the canopy, Yount handed Tyler a short-barrel rifle and some extra ammo.

“We keep this hidden on board for when we travel through unsavory parts of the world.” When he saw Tyler’s surprised look, he added, “Pirates are getting bolder these days. You might need it if you run into this Zim character. I don’t want to lose any more people.”

Tyler thanked Yount and stowed it in the footwell beside him. He closed and latched the canopy, while Grant made the final checks on their environmental systems.

“How are you doing back there?” Tyler asked through his earpiece.

“Ready for warp speed, Cap’n,” Grant said, trying to sound jauntier than he had looked, the words coming out like they’d been spoken by a buzz saw. However, as long as Tyler heard him say something, he wasn’t going to doubt Grant’s ability to carry out the mission.

The shed’s rear door rolled open, revealing the fading light outside. The unique configuration of the ship was designed to facilitate launching and capturing the subs. An inclined ramp extended into the water as the door raised. The GhostManta was latched onto a dolly that descended the ramp until the sub was in the water, at which point the latch would release. When the sub was ready to be pulled back in, it would simply maneuver to the stern and mate with the dolly, which would draw it back up the ramp and into the ship. Based on the well decks used by amphibious assault ships, the system made the launch and capture process go faster, more smoothly, and with less potential for damage than with a traditional crane.

Tyler gave a thumbs up to Yount, who nodded for the dolly to be lowered. The GhostManta eased down the ramp, and Tyler could see a couple watching them from a sailboat docked behind them. As long as they didn’t raise the alarm, the policemen watching the bow would never know the sub launched. The boaters watched intently and seemed content to snap a few photos with their phones.

Water surged around the sub as it reached the aft end of the ramp.

“All systems are nominal,” Yount said into Tyler’s ear. “Are you a go?”

“We’re ready. We’ll submerge as soon as we’re free.”

“Understood. Good luck, gentlemen.”

Tyler felt a lurch as the dolly released, and the GhostManta eased into the water. Tyler filled the ballast tank, and the sub sank until the canopy was covered. The sonar told him he had only a few feet of clearance above the canal bottom until they reached the open loch, so he’d need to be careful not to ground the vehicle. Tyler pushed the throttle, and the propellers whirred to life.

With a muted whine, the sub cruised into the darkness ahead.

FORTY-TWO

Zim was impressed by the technology packed into the GhostManta, particularly the fiber-optic periscope that allowed him to observe the Gordian ship while submerged. A dozen boats had already passed him and Pryor without noticing the tiny scope protruding from the water.

The view revealed Locke’s surreptitious boarding of the Sedna, frustrating Dunham’s futile attempt to prevent him from going forward with his search for the monster. Zim knew it wouldn’t work; Locke was too resourceful. He silently patted himself on the back for his wisdom in using the sub to spy on his nemesis.

Then he’d seen the second GhostManta launch from the rear of the sub tender, and Zim was sure Locke and Westfield were inside. He let them go by before swinging around to follow with Pryor acting as the sub’s pilot.

Although the sub was a marvel of sophisticated equipment, it did have one weakness. The passive sonar was processed by a computer that projected a head-up display for the pilot and navigator. Any object that was in the sonar’s field of view was shown on the three-dimensional image collimated for the operator’s eyes so that glasses weren’t necessary. The disadvantage was that it showed only what was in front of the sub. Since it wasn’t a military vessel, it wasn’t a critical problem, and the view was supplemented by a rear-view camera, although it could penetrate just a few feet through the peat-rich water. As long as Pryor kept them in Locke’s baffles, he’d never know he was being followed.

Pryor accelerated until Locke’s sub was visible on the display, its outline perfectly rendered in the HUD. He slowed to keep a respectable distance behind as they cruised up the loch.

The sub’s original pilots had been convinced to be helpful in explaining the GhostManta’s operation, which Pryor had absorbed easily. By the time they had reached the southern portion of Ness, he had become proficient enough in piloting the sub, but Zim credited that primarily to the designers. Care had been taken in making the controls simple to use, modeling the stick, rudders, and throttle on the ones in an airplane’s cockpit. Important switches and knobs unique to a submarine were well-labeled, and the rest were accessed by touch screens that looked like those found on a smartphone.

Zim was uneasy about leaving Dunham to coordinate the preparations on the Aegir. Her constant questioning of his tactics had become intolerable, but at least he could be satisfied that she would get hers when they were done here.

What he hadn’t figured out yet was Locke’s strategy. If the journal had been incinerated, the Lockes would have no way to know what Edmonstone had divulged about his encounter with the creature. But the fact that they were here must have meant they had some clue about how to find Nessie.

Which is why Zim had to be ready to respond if Locke were successful. Zim was sorely tempted to take him out right now, but the uncertainty of what Locke was up to prevented him from taking the shot. Soon, though.

Zim had the means to sink him, thanks to a modification that had been made to the sub. In addition to the retractable claws that could be extended from the streamlined body for maintenance work, the sub had been equipped with two launchers that were aimed like torpedo tubes. They’d been designed to be loaded with some kind of spear, which was ejected by compressed air.

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.

FORTY-THREE

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.

FORTY-FOUR

Tyler was speechless.

There it was, the 3-D image of the Loch Ness monster on his sonar, but he still couldn’t believe his eyes. Until this moment, he hadn’t realized how much he’d doubted the existence of the Loch Ness monster, how close to resignation he was that they were on a fool’s errand and that Grant would die. The awe and incredulity lasted a few moments more and then were swept aside by the sense of relief and elation that cascaded over him. Grant had a chance.

The creature’s sinewy form foiled the sophisticated computer’s ability to generate a cohesive image, but there was no longer any reason to be a skeptic. Tyler could make out the jaw-dropping creature’s general shape: a large, wide head, humpbacked body, four lateral appendages that could either be flippers or feet, and a long tail that swished back and forth as it swam. Overall, the animal had to be at least thirty feet in length.

The bait worked exactly as Edmonstone had said it would.

“We found it, man!” Tyler shouted over his shoulder to Grant. “You’re going to be all right.”

“As long as the fat lady finishes warming up and starts crooning,” Grant replied, his hoarse voice thin and weary but hopeful. “Get us a little closer and I’ll take the shot.”

Grant was in control of the spear that would insert the tracking transmitter and the tissue collection device. Once it hit the creature, they would retract it, leaving the tracker embedded in its flesh. Then they would return to the Sedna with the sample and call the authorities to whisk it away to the toxicologists for processing into an antidote.

Tyler inched the throttle forward to get within two dozen yards of the creature, point-blank range.

“Keep her steady,” Grant said. “One, two…”

Something whizzed past them like a torpedo, its shape barely registering on the sonar.

“What the hell?” Grant said.

Tyler didn’t know where the object had come from, but it threatened to disrupt their only chance at tissue collection.

“Launch now!” he shouted.

The torpedo sliced on through the water, missing Nessie and continuing on toward the power cruiser.

“Away!” Grant called out. The spear hissed from its tube, but it was too late. The Loch Ness monster, spooked by the unknown object, veered away, and the spear lanced through open water.

The torpedo collided with the aft underside of the tour boat, where it detonated, pummeling the sub with a deafening shock wave. Tyler wrestled with the stick to keep from going into a spin. When he had it under control, he pulled back, heading for the surface.

“Was that Zim?” Grant asked.

“Had to be.”

“Where did they get torpedoes?”

“No idea.”

Tyler circled around and saw the enemy sub speeding away. No longer in immediate danger, he pulled back on the stick. The GhostManta broke the surface, and Tyler could see the Nessie Seeker dead in the water. There was no smoke, but the boat listed to one side. He motored forward and raised the canopy.

He couldn’t see anyone, and his chest thumped in fear.

He pulled the sub next to the boat and cut the throttle. His low position in the water didn’t afford him much of a view into the cabin, so he stood awkwardly in his seat.

“Alexa! Brielle!” he called out. “It’s Tyler!”

Alexa and Brielle poked their heads above the transom. When they saw it was clear, they stood, and Tyler breathed a sigh of relief.

“Are you both okay?”

“Yes,” Alexa said. “What about you?”

“No damage. How’s the boat?”

“Sinclair’s below checking the engine,” Brielle said, “but we’re taking on water. What the bloody hell was that?”

“Zim. He’s got the other sub and equipped it with some sort of weapon.”

“Did the spear work?” Alexa asked. “Did you get the sample?”

“That asshole made me miss,” Grant said.

“Then what are you still doing here? Go get it!”

“But you—”

“We’ll be fine. You may never get another shot.”

Tyler noticed a large fishing boat headed their way. Its crew might have heard the explosion and come to help or it might be Zim’s men. The least he could do was give Alexa and Brielle a little protection.

“Here,” he said, handing Brielle the rifle and ammo. He pointed at the approaching fishing boat. “Make sure you know who that is before you let them help. When you get the boat moving again, head back to the harbor and call the police.”

“Thanks. Now go.” She pointed at a spot south of them on the loch. “I think I can make out Nessie’s wake about two hundred yards that way.”

The concern etched on their faces nearly kept him from leaving, but Tyler nodded at them and got into his seat. He pressed the button to lower the canopy. A green light indicated when it was sealed.

“They’ll be all right,” he said, more to reassure himself than Grant.

“Yeah, they will,” Grant replied, but he didn’t sound any more confident than Tyler felt.

He slammed the throttle forward and submerged. Within seconds the GhostManta was at full speed.

Zim and the creature had a head start, but Nessie was slower than the sub. Even if Zim were able to torpedo the animal and kill it before they reached it, they’d still be able to secure a tissue sample as long as it didn’t sink into the deep sediment at the bottom of the loch.

Two small dots appeared on the sonar display and grew rapidly. The creature was swimming in a zigzag pattern in an attempt to get away from the pursuing sub. Suddenly, it reversed course, and Zim’s sub swung around. A few moments later, the creature veered left, and Tyler realized it wasn’t randomly taking evasive action.

It was being herded.

Tyler slewed left and saw where they were headed.

Toward the fishing boat.

“What are they up to?” Grant asked.

“I don’t know. But something tells me we don’t have much time.”

Tyler was on an intercept course. At their present speed, he calculated that they would reach the monster just before it got to the fishing boat.

“You ready with the other spear?” Tyler asked.

“Locked and loaded.”

“Good. We’re only going to get one more pass.”

Tyler wracked his brain for a way to save the creature from Zim after he got the sample. Alexa would be devastated if Tyler let it die, but he couldn’t think of anything other than getting help from the police once he and Grant were docked on the Sedna. His GhostManta was unarmed, so he couldn’t fight back against Zim.

He would have to leave the creature to its fate. He was sick about having to sacrifice Nessie, but he had no choice. Retrieving the tissue specimen was more important than rescuing the monster, despite how he felt about it.

Tyler suppressed his qualms about sacrificing this unique creature and focused on the mission. Instead of aiming directly for the animal, he altered the sub’s course so that he was leading it like a clay pigeon.

“I’ll count down,” he said. “On my mark.”

“Ready,” Grant replied.

Nessie’s outline in the sonar grew large as they approached to intercept.

“One.”

Closer.

“Two.”

The creature nearly filled the sonar image.

“Three.”

Its torso was dead center on the screen.

“Mark!”

“Away!”

The spear launched. Tyler held his breath until he saw the red light that indicated a hit.

“Contact!” Grant shouted triumphantly.

Before Tyler could tell him to retract the sample, the creature suddenly stopped and began thrashing in place.

“Reel in the spear,” Tyler said.

After a pause, Grant said, “I can’t. It’s stuck in something.”

After a moment, Nessie seemed to curl up into a ball. It started to rise to the surface, and Tyler understood what was happening.

“They’ve caught it in a net,” he said. “Hurry.”

The winch whined, straining to retract the spear. Then Tyler heard a pop.

“Dammit,” Grant said. “The line snapped.”

Something splashed into the water from above the surface and impaled Nessie, followed immediately by a muffled explosion.

Locke realized it wasn’t a fishing boat he’d been seeing. It was a whaler. Zim didn’t have torpedoes. He had harpoons like the one shot from the boat.

Nessie stopped moving.

The next harpoon would be aimed at them.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, wheeling the sub about. “We’ll go back to the Sedna and track Nessie from there as long as the transmitter wasn’t damaged in the explosion.”

“Agreed,” Grant croaked. “Not feeling too good.” He sounded spent.

Tyler was about to throttle up when he saw an image appear on the sonar. It was the other GhostManta banking toward them.

And if Zim had installed harpoons in both spear ejection tubes, that meant the other GhostManta was still armed.

FORTY-FIVE

Zim wasn’t going to let Locke get away, not when he had the means to finish him off.

“Follow him,” he said to Pryor.

“But we have the monster—”

He reached over the seat back and grabbed Pryor by the neck. “Do it or I’ll shoot you myself when we get back.”

“All right! Back off!”

Zim let go, and the sub took off in pursuit.

Locke weaved back and forth trying to shake them, but Pryor was an accomplished pilot and stayed glued to the other GhostManta’s tail.

“I just need one clear shot,” Zim said.

“He may not give it to you,” Pryor grunted as he whipped the stick sideways. “This guy is good.”

“But he can’t see us. He can’t know if he’s lost us or not, and his evasive tactics are slowing him down. When we’re close enough, there’s no way I’ll miss.”

They continued edging closer until Locke’s sub took an abrupt dive, and Zim’s stomach rose in his throat as Pryor matched the maneuver, a forty-five-degree angle down.

Zim hung from his harness, keeping his finger near the LAUNCH button for the right moment.

At three hundred feet, Locke pulled out of the dive and swooped up, aiming for the surface. Pryor matched him again. The sub rocketed up, compressing Zim against his seat.

The desperation move was slowing Locke, bringing Pryor and Zim closer. He’d lose all momentum if he broke the surface, making him easy prey.

Zim rested his finger on the button. Any moment.

Then Locke’s sub twisted as it dodged another shape it had been masking on Zim’s sonar.

“Look out!” Zim shouted.

Pryor wrenched the stick to the right, but not in time to prevent the sub from sideswiping the obstacle. The canopy bounced against it with a crunch. The polycarbonate held, but the impact broke part of the seal loose. Pinpricks of water jetted into the cockpit.

Pryor surfaced, and the sub came to a stop. Zim could see the object they’d collided with.

A drifting log. Locke must have seen it and led them directly into it.

Zim swiveled around and saw the other sub only a few yards to his right. Locke stared back with an icy glare, his control panel casting a menacing glow. Westfield was in the back seat and looked like he was about to pass out.

Their sub began to submerge.

“Go after them.”

“With all these leaks? We can’t—”

“Do it!” Zim screamed.

Pryor turned the sub, and as they sank the jets of water returned with greater force. They’d only have a minute or two before the cockpit was full of water, but Zim was determined to take his shot.

Locke began the evasions again.

“Don’t match his weaves,” Zim said.

“What?”

“Give me a straight line.”

Pryor did as he was told, and they caught up quickly. The freezing water was accumulating around Zim’s feet, seeping into his boots, but he ignored the shocking cold.

The weaving seemed to occur at a random pace and cadence, but Zim thought he had a pattern figured out. They were within twenty yards. On the next swerve, Zim would have him.

As he expected, Locke banked right, directly into their path. Zim’s finger stabbed the LAUNCH button, and the harpoon shot out of the tube. The aim was dead-on, a perfect intercept course.

The tip of the harpoon entered Locke’s starboard impeller intake and detonated with a satisfying thump.

Because its battery-powered engines had no fuel to trigger a secondary explosion, the GhostManta wasn’t ripped apart, but the damage was severe enough.

The sub spiraled away and began an uncontrolled descent toward the bottom.

Seeing the successful hit, Pryor didn’t need to be told to surface. He tilted the sub up. Zim smiled as Locke and Westfield disappeared from his sonar display and into the inky abyss.

Dunham ducked as another round fired from the tour boat pinged off the whaler’s superstructure. She had ordered the Aegir closer to the powerless cruiser in order to finish them off, but a couple of surprise shots from Brielle Cohen killed two of their men before they could get in range to use the harpoon grenades on it.

The Norwegian crew had completed lashing the Loch Ness monster to the deck. Dunham had taken only a few moments to look at the creature that had fascinated legend hunters for generations. Even though she had to destroy it, she was still in awe of the animal, a beast like none she’d seen before. The image that would stay with her was its eely tail hanging limply from the rear. From what she could tell, Nessie was dead.

To make sure it remained at the bottom of the loch, they had to make sure no one could find it, which meant leaving no witnesses. The harpoon cannon was in an exposed position on the bow, so there was no way for Dunham to get to it without coming under Cohen’s fire. She went to the wheelhouse and ordered the captain to ram the other boat. When he refused, she took out her pistol and aimed it at him.

He eyed her with contempt, then twisted the wheel and ran up to full power.

The Aegir plowed forward on a collision course. Dunham could see the Nessie Seeker’s captain furiously trying to start the engine. Flashes of light from the upper deck preceded bullets that crashed through the Aegir’s windshield, but by this time there was no stopping the whaler even if Cohen hit the captain.

Once the Nessie Seeker was gone, they could sink the Aegir, and this whole business would be over. Israel would cease to exist.

Dunham couldn’t help grinning as the bow loomed over the smaller boat.

The grin disappeared when she heard its engine roar to life, and the boat crawled forward.

The Aegir’s captain spun the wheel to compensate, but the inertia was too great. The Nessie Seeker slid forward in time to escape the attempted ramming with nothing more than a scrape to its stern.

“Turn around!” she yelled, but it was a lost cause. Although the smaller boat seemed to have sustained enough damage to keep it from reaching its top speed, it was far more maneuverable than the whaler.

It circled around them once, peppering them with bullets, and then veered off toward Urquhart Castle.

Dunham ordered the ship back toward the center of the loch.

Zim’s sub pulled alongside the Aegir and was tied up. Zim and Pryor climbed the rope ladder to the deck, and Zim stalked over to her, stepping over bodies as he walked.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.

“I was trying to get rid of them.”

“Yeah, and how’d that go? Now they’re getting away.”

Dunham gave him a dirty look. “Did you get Locke?”

“He’s dead.”

“Good,” she said, and nodded at the motionless beast on the deck. “Then it’s time to get rid of that.”

He nodded to Pryor, who went below decks. Zim took an assault rifle from his nearest man and leveled it at the captain. The captain put up his hands in a supplicating gesture and pleaded desperately in Norwegian.

Zim pulled the trigger, and the captain collapsed to the deck. Zim’s men took their cue and gunned down the other crewmembers. After Dunham’s experience in Gaza, the sight of blood and dead bodies no longer disturbed her. She had hardened her heart to it. Nothing could be worse than seeing her fiancé’s mangled body.

Zim shoved the rifle into her hands. “Now take my men in the Zodiac and go after Locke’s sister. And this time finish them off. Pryor and I will follow in the sub.”

Dunham had the impulse to mouth off at him, but bit her tongue. Just another few hours of Zim, and she’d be on her way to Indonesia — her new home and, not coincidentally, a non-extradition country.

FORTY-SIX

Tyler was able to pull the GhostManta out of its spin, but there was nothing he could do about its trajectory. He and Grant had less than two minutes before the sub hit the bottom of the loch, and his control panel was completely dark. Only the HUD was still working. At least the blast hadn’t compromised hull integrity.

He hadn’t heard anything from the back seat since the harpoon hit.

“Grant, are you still with me? Grant!”

After a few more tries, he got a groggy reply. “I’m right here. You don’t have to shout.”

“We’re in trouble.”

Grant cleared his throat. “What’s our status?”

“We’ve lost pitch control, and the starboard impeller is dead. The port impeller is operational, but I can’t get us out of our descent. Reversing thrust would put us into another spin.”

“If we hit bottom, we’ll get buried in silt.” If that happened, they’d never get free. The muck on the bottom would act like a giant suction cup. They’d run out of air long before a rescue sub arrived.

“I know. The throttle and stick are still working, but the explosion must have taken out the electrical feed to my control panel. I can’t jettison the emergency ballast. Does your control panel have power?”

There was a moment of silence, and Tyler was about to repeat the question when Grant said, “It’s lit.”

“We only have a minute left.” The 3-D display of the loch bottom approached quickly on the HUD. “You have to activate the emergency drop.”

“Can’t see. Everything’s blurry.”

“Do it by touch. It’s the switch on the lower left-hand corner of the panel. It has a safety cover that you have to flip up.”

The bottom rushed toward them, thirty seconds away now.

When he didn’t hear anything, Tyler said, “You can do it, buddy. Time is a factor here.”

“Found it,” Grant said. “Activating.”

Two heavy weights dropped from the bottom of the sub, and Tyler felt the sudden buoyancy. The sub’s angle started to flatten, but it was taking time to counteract the downward momentum.

Tyler braced himself for impact.

The sub leveled off just as they reached the loch bottom. The underside of the sub scraped along the sediment, and the GhostManta came to a stop.

The silence was total, and Tyler could feel the weight of the crushing darkness outside.

He waited with his hands grasping the armrests, holding his breath for any sign of them sinking further into the silt. They remained motionless. Tyler briefly considered a desperation move: blow the canopy and swim to the surface. But he knew it wasn’t desperate; it was suicidal. No way they’d be able to go seven hundred feet up on one lungful of air. Better to go out of this life peacefully breathing their own carbon dioxide.

Then Tyler felt a slight nudge. It hesitated for a moment, and he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it until he heard the sucking sound of the muck releasing them. The sub slowly pulled away from the bottom, the dropped emergency ballast making it buoyant.

The GhostManta began its ascent. Tyler inhaled at the reprieve. They were free.

“We made it, buddy,” he said, but got nothing in response. He turned to see Grant’s head lolling back. He was conscious, but barely.

Now that Tyler was confident they weren’t going to be entombed on the bottom of Loch Ness, he started formulating a plan about how to get the tissue sample he needed from Nessie.

He figured Zim had only two choices: either to cart Nessie away or sink it somewhere in the loch. Tyler couldn’t imagine him trying to smuggle it back through the canal, so sinking it was the likeliest course of action. But the loss of the ballast meant the sub wouldn’t be able to dive again. If Zim were successful in sinking the monster, it would be game over. They’d never get to the creature in time to avert war and save Grant.

As the sub rose, it accelerated toward the surface. In the spiraling descent, Tyler had lost his bearings, so he had no idea where they would pop up. He had his hand on the throttle, prepared to make a getaway in case they surfaced anywhere near Zim’s boat.

Tyler checked his watch. It was now 10:40 p.m., well past sunset. If they were a reasonable distance from the whaler, it was unlikely that the black sub would be seen as it surfaced.

“Grant, if you can hear me,” he said, “shut off all the lights in the cockpit.”

He detected a grunt, and the cockpit went dark. The blackness was total, and Tyler felt as if he were floating in the void of space, the stars somehow erased from existence.

There was nothing to do now except wait. At least his eyes would be dark-adapted once they were topside.

When the sub broke the surface, he quickly looked around to get his position and saw the luminous tower of Urquhart Castle to his right. Directly ahead of him, he could see the illuminated outline of a familiar boat a hundred yards away, moving perpendicular to him.

It was the Nessie Seeker. It was limping back to the harbor at Drumnadrochit, its list now ten degrees and worsening.

He threw the throttle forward and headed for the foundering boat.

As he brushed the sub up against the hull of the tour boat, Brielle rushed over to the transom and aimed her rifle at the sub. Tyler raised the canopy and called her name.

“My God!” she exclaimed, lowering the weapon. “We thought you were dead.” She tossed him a line, which he lashed to one of the handholds on the sub’s flat manta wing, normally intended to be used by divers being transported underwater.

“We almost became a permanent part of the loch.”

Alexa ran over and leaned against the rail.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Tyler said, unbuckling his harness, “but Grant’s in bad shape. Help me get him out.”

Alexa jumped down onto the sub’s wing. “I knew he shouldn’t have been pushing himself so hard.” She bent and patted him on the cheek. “Grant. Come on, wake up.”

He shook his head, came to, and looked up at her. “You’re a sight for blurry eyes.”

Tyler took one arm while Alexa steadied him with the other, but unless Grant was able to stand on his own, there was no way the two of them would be able to lift his deadweight. Fortunately, Grant managed to get up under his own power. They helped him over the railing, and he collapsed onto the bench.

“That’s better,” he said and leaned back. Even in the dim light of the boat, Tyler could see the deep lines on his face. The hair that had grown in since his last shave was fully grey, and some of it was falling out.

“Oh, my God,” Alexa said.

“He hasn’t got much time left,” Brielle said.

“Neither have we,” came a Scottish brogue from the cabin. Tyler turned to an authentically older gentleman at the helm. “We’re taking on water so quickly that I don’t think we’ll make it back to the harbor.”

Brielle pointed to Urquhart Castle. “Can we go ashore there?”

“Aye,” the skipper said. “There’s a short pier where the loch cruises tie up. We’ll have to make a go of it.”

The whaler hadn’t been visible from the side of the Nessie Seeker where the sub was idling, but now that he was standing, Tyler saw its lights in the distance and could make out the bulbous shape of the Loch Ness monster on its deck. The Zodiac had cast off and was racing toward them.

“Okay,” he said, “you all head for the pier.”

“Where are you going?” Alexa protested.

“We lost the tissue sample. I have to try to get it back.”

“Not on your own, you’re not,” Brielle said. “I’m coming with you.”

“Do you have any ammo left?”

“Seven rounds.”

“Then you have to stay and provide protection for them. With Grant out, you’re the only one who can handle a gun.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” Alexa said.

“Absolutely not.”

She didn’t argue, but before Tyler could stop her, she hopped down onto the sub and into the rear cockpit.

“You know you need me,” she said, belting herself in. “Now we can either get going or you can try to pull me out of this sub. What’ll it be?”

Tyler shook his head, equal parts frustration and admiration. The Locke stubbornness was strong in this one.

He patted Grant on the shoulder while looking at Brielle. “Keep him safe.”

“I will.”

Then Tyler did something that surprised even himself. He pulled Brielle to him and planted a kiss on her, holding her body against him in a passionate embrace.

When he backed away, Brielle looked stunned, pleased, and slightly embarrassed. Exactly what he wanted to see.

Tyler jumped onto the sub and saw Alexa staring at him with a mischievous smile.

“What?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said.

Tyler got in and latched the canopy. He threw the throttle forward and circled around the Nessie Seeker, planning to give the Zodiac a wide berth as he and Alexa cruised toward their final meeting with the Loch Ness monster.

FORTY-SEVEN

Brielle was glad to see that the cold air revived Grant. His eyes fluttered open and he sat up massaging his head as he looked around.

“Where are Tyler and Alexa?” he asked.

“They went to get a tissue sample from Nessie.”

“Where are we?”

“About a hundred yards from the pier. Will you be able to walk when we get there?”

He nodded.

“Good. Actually, we may have to run.” She tilted her head at the sound of the Zodiac fast approaching.

Grant steadied himself on the seat. “Is it me or is our boat slanted?”

“We’re taking on water.” As if to punctuate her statement, the engine conked out.

“That’s it,” Sinclair said from the wheelhouse. “The engine bay’s flooded.”

They were still fifty yards from the pier but coasting steadily.

“Can we make it?”

“Aye,” the skipper said. “But we’ll have to be ready to get off in a hurry.”

Brielle didn’t have to ask why. Water sloshed around her feet and grew deeper by the second.

“Stand up,” she said to Grant, slinging the rifle over her shoulder.

He got to his feet, and Brielle groaned at trying to hold his bulk steady.

“Mr. Sinclair, a little help if you please.”

He didn’t move from his position at the wheel. “Can’t, dear. I’ve got to steer us just so.”

“Looks like we’re on our own,” she said to Grant.

“We’ll be fine,” he replied, and stepped up onto the port side of the transom. With Brielle’s help, he was able to stay upright by holding onto the railing next to him. The boat was now listing precariously toward the pier.

“Get ready!” Sinclair yelled.

The wooden pier jutted out into the loch perpendicular to shore, so they were coming in on a parallel course. The boat’s bow reach the end of the pier and edged along it. When the stern of the boat was beside the pier, Grant jumped off, pulling Brielle out with him. They fell on the planks and rolled to a stop.

The boat kept going and Sinclair abandoned his post. He nimbly hopped over the transom and landed on his feet.

The boat smashed into the rocks and rebounded backward. The impact was literally the tipping point for the stricken boat. Its hull creaking from the strain, the Nessie Seeker capsized. The wide hole below the waterline was visible for a count of three, and then it gurgled as it slipped beneath the surface of the loch.

“Mo chreach!” he yelled, followed by a muttered, “Excuse my language.”

Brielle heaved Grant to his feet and said, “Sorry about your boat, Mr. Sinclair, but we have to get out of here.” By her estimation, the Zodiac was only a minute away.

“It’s not just the Seeker,” he said, putting a shoulder under Grant’s other arm. “I’ve got insurance to cover the loss, but I forgot to take my camera. I got two good pictures of Nessie while she was following us, and now no one will ever see them.” He swore again softly.

They hoofed it up the pier and onto the sidewalk that led across an expanse of lawn to the entrance into the castle grounds. To their right, past an ancient trebuchet and up a long hill, was the closed visitor’s centre and the parking lot.

Shots rang out behind them, throwing up pieces of sod, and Brielle looked over her shoulder. The Zodiac was nearing the pier. With Grant slowing them down, they’d never make it up the hill to the visitor’s centre without getting killed. The castle entrance was nearer and looked like the better choice. The place was a fort, after all.

“Where’s a good defensive position in the castle?” Brielle asked Sinclair as she steered them toward the small bridge over the grassy dry moat that surrounded the castle.

“There’s a platform atop the gatehouse at the entry to the castle. It has a good view of the grounds inside and outside the castle.”

“Leave me behind,” Grant croaked.

“Don’t be so noble,” Brielle said. “Now hurry your arse.”

She heard shouts behind her as she hauled Grant across the bridge and through the arched stone gateway. Sinclair guided them left into a small room in the reconstructed gatehouse where they found a modern spiral staircase behind a closed glass door.

It was locked.

She unslung the rifle and aimed it at the key lock at the top of the door. Shooting out the glass would take more shots, and she needed to conserve every round.

Brielle blasted the lock and yanked the door open. She ran up the stairs, leaving Sinclair to usher Grant up behind her.

Once she was up top, she peeked from behind a crumbling stone wall. Four men and one woman were hustling toward the castle entrance. Brielle picked the man in the lead and fired a shot that took him down.

The others dropped to their knees and returned fire, forcing Brielle to crouch. She popped up in a different location to shoot, but the attackers had taken shelter behind a berm close to the trees that lined the shore. More bullets pinged off the stones. She crabbed over to the back wall of the gatehouse roof and poked her head up to survey the interior grounds of the fortress.

The flood lights illuminating the tower walls cast a ghostly hue on the whole complex. Although the perimeter walls were fairly intact — and tall enough to prevent Zim’s men from scaling them — most of the inner buildings had been razed to their foundation centuries ago. She could see there was little shelter for hiding.

Opposite her, a small archway in the center of the back wall had a wooden gate that opened onto a set of steps leading down to the loch, which bordered the castle grounds on two sides. To her right was an undulating series of mounds covered with manicured grass and sidewalks. To her left was a path leading to the cobbled yard in front of the Grant Tower, the imposing five-story ruin they had used as a landmark while cruising Loch Ness.

Neither direction provided any better stronghold than what they had now.

She crossed over to the front and waved for Grant and Sinclair to stay low. She raised her head and saw one of the men making a break for the castle entrance. She fired a shot that hit only grass, but it made the man dash back to his hidden position.

Her tactic wouldn’t work for long, though. She only had four rounds left. Once she was out, they would soon realize it and rush the castle, reminding Brielle of two other famous sieges that didn’t end well for the defenders inside the fort.

One was Masada in Israel. The other was distinctly American.

The Alamo.

FORTY-EIGHT

Riding on the surface of Loch Ness in the darkened and whisper-quiet GhostManta felt odd to Alexa, as if she were adrift on the open ocean, but she understood the benefit when she saw the other sub pass them on its way toward Urquhart. It was visible only because of the reflected glow of its canopy, the two occupants oblivious to its twin going in the other direction.

When she and Tyler reached the whaler, he circumnavigated it and found a rope ladder on the side away from the castle. He tied up the sub.

They knew Dunham and Zim were out of the way, but they weren’t sure how many crew had remained on the Aegir. With a boost from Tyler, Alexa raised herself up so she could peer over the edge of the deck. She gasped when she saw a corpse riddled with bullet holes. A half-dozen others littered the deck around the Loch Ness monster. It looked like they wouldn’t have to worry about the rest of the crew.

When she felt confident the coast was clear, Alexa heaved herself onto the deck and got her first up-close look at Nessie, which lay prone and unmoving. She forgot her dire circumstances as she marveled at the sight.

The charcoal-colored creature was covered by netting that was tacked down at four corners. The scale was apparent now that she was next to it. The animal rivaled an orca in size, its body stretching all the way from the boom to the wheelhouse. From her vantage point at its rear, she could make out the humped dorsal spine but saw no signs of activity.

Under the boat’s lights, the creature’s skin glistened. She reached out and touched it. The surface had a smooth, tacky feel, neither like the hard scales of a reptile nor the rubbery give of a dolphin’s hide. The tail curled around and rested against the gunwale so that the tip was close to her. She stooped and saw a pale scar across the tip where Darwin’s hatchet had sliced off a piece.

It had grown back. Other than the scar, the tail was completely intact, ending in the shape of a shovel blade. From this angle, she could see how it could be mistaken for a head from a long distance, like in the surgeon’s photograph.

Tyler hopped onto the deck and froze when he saw the legendary beast.

“Wow,” he said in hushed awe. “Incredible.” Then he noticed the dead bodies, and his jaw set in a grim expression.

“I know. I’ve never seen anything like it. Any of it.”

Their quiet contemplation of the tableau was shattered by muffled explosions beneath them. It wasn’t enough to throw them off their feet, but they stumbled against one another.

“What was that?” Alexa asked.

She could see Tyler’s gears working, culminating with an aha moment.

“Zim’s sinking the boat,” he said. “He must have placed charges to scuttle it.” The ship was already showing the first traces of a list.

Tyler gave her his Leatherman tool. “Here. Find the sample capsule and pull it out with the pliers. I think we hit it on the left side. If you can’t find it or it’s too hard to remove, there’s a small saw on the tool to cut off a piece of the animal.”

He hurried to the nearest bulkhead hatch.

“Tyler, where are you going?”

“To see if our pilots from the other sub are still alive. I’ll be right back.” He cautiously surveyed the interior, then disappeared through the opening.

Alexa stepped over the tail and walked around until she was on its left.

An appendage was splayed out to the side. She hadn’t noticed one on the right because it must have been tucked under the body. She bent and saw that the limb had the outline of a flipper but possessed vestigial toes poking from the edge, like those of a sea lion.

Embedded in the flipper was the wooden handle of a gaff hook impaled through the meatiest part, confirming what she’d seen in the video. Nessie having no way to remove it, John Edmonstone’s defensive weapon was still stuck in the animal two hundred years later.

She stood and drew a sharp breath when she saw the damage caused by the harpoon grenade. A two-foot-diameter crater had been carved out of its back. However, the injury looked odd. Instead of raw chunks of meat hanging by sinew from the gaping wound, it looked as if had been cauterized. No blood dripped from the opening. The surface of it had the same smooth look as the skin, although the coloration was a dull red.

Alexa continued on toward the head, struggling to figure out what kind of animal it was. She reached the neck and saw no gills, which meant it couldn’t be a fish.

The flat head, which had the outline of a broad chisel, rested to one side. She nearly jumped back when she saw a black saucer-sized eye staring back at her, lidless and unmoving. As with the squid, the gigantic optical organ must help the creature navigate the dark depths of the loch.

The wide jaw that she’d seen earlier lay open. She could make out rows of sharp teeth curving back toward the throat, which would aid in the capture of fish.

Her eyes drifted back and rested on an unusual stalk of feathery filaments that extended from its head like a horn. An identical stalk was on the opposite side of the head.

Alexa put her hand to her mouth to stop herself from shouting in revelation. She knew what kind of animal this was.

The stalks were external gills. The Loch Ness monster was an amphibian.

In fact, it had many of the characteristics of an axolotl, a rare fully-aquatic salamander found only in lakes around Mexico City and now almost extinct in the wild. The axolotl was prized by biological researchers because of its uncanny ability to regenerate limbs.

Suddenly, everything made sense. As an amphibian, it didn’t need air to breathe, getting all its oxygen from the water, so it rarely had cause to surface. The regenerated tail and cauterized wound was consistent with a salamander’s capability, but Nessie seemed to have an even more advanced ability to heal itself, perhaps even preventing the cells themselves from aging. Its body could have a genetic method for preventing telomere shortening so that its cells were essentially immortal.

Alexa practically shook with the exhilaration of her discovery, but her excitement was immediately dashed when she realized that the dead creature would never be studied in its natural habitat.

If nothing else, she could preserve part of this animal for posterity, so she worked back toward the creature’s rear, stooping to palpate the skin for any rupture. Just behind the front flipper, she felt the nub of a metal protrusion almost at the level of the deck. That had to be it.

She opened the pliers on the Leatherman and gripped the end of the object. With a gentle touch, she pulled with the pliers, but the angle made it difficult to get any leverage.

She sat on her butt and put the soles of her shoes against the animal’s body on either side of the pliers. When she thought she had a good grip, she yanked the tool backwards.

Two things happened simultaneously. She extracted a gleaming five-inch-long aluminum tube, and Nessie woke up.

The pain of the tube’s removal must have brought the animal out of its comatose state. It thrashed around in the confines of its restricting shackles, the tail whipsawing back and forth.

Alexa screamed and scrambled against the gunwale. She heard a high-pitched mewl, like the sound of a baby crying, and realized it was coming from Nessie. She’d heard something similar from a recording of the Chinese giant salamander’s vocalizations. Nessie’s whine was uncannily distressing, as if it were advertising its suffering.

The animal flailed a moment longer and then came to rest, either exhausted or comatose again.

Alexa stood, the tube still in her hand and tears brimming in her eyes, and realized she had to save the poor creature. If she could free it, it might be able to survive its wounds. Lashed to the deck, it would certainly starve to death no matter how efficient it was at regenerating.

She flipped the Leatherman open to its saw and hacked at the nylon tie-down near its head.

Tyler appeared on deck with two men dressed in sweatshirts and jeans. One of the Gordian employees was holding up the other, who looked badly beaten and was supporting himself with only one leg.

Tyler rushed over to her. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Get them onto the sub.”

“What are you doing?”

“Freeing her.”

“Isn’t it dead?”

“No, just wounded. Go.”

“You know what they say about a wounded animal being the most dangerous kind.”

“I know. Be ready for me.” She gave him the tube.

Tyler glanced at the men struggling to get over the side and then back to Alexa.

“Hurry up. The ship is sinking fast,” he said, and ran around to the other side out of sight behind Nessie’s tall back.

Alexa finished sawing through the strap and braced herself in case the animal thrashed again. It remained still. Her hope was that it would stay in place as long as it wasn’t disturbed, and then swim free once it was in the water.

She moved back to the rear strap and sawed again. Two would be enough to release it.

When the strap was cut, she stood and put the tool in her pocket.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement, a person climbing over the gunwale. At first she thought Tyler had circled around to pick her up on this side, but a head with a crewcut rose into view.

Victor Zim. He’d come back.

He vaulted over the side and lunged at her. She stumbled backward and tripped over Nessie’s flipper.

She tried to crawl away, but Zim grabbed her by the hair to pick her up.

“No, no,” he said, “I need you for my negotiation with your brother.”

Alexa screamed and grabbed for anything to resist his pull. Her hand settled on the handle of Edmonstone’s gaff, the wood preserved perfectly by the cold depths of the loch.

Alexa tried to loosen his hold by shaking her head as she worked the hook free. The pain set Nessie going again, squealing and thrashing about, and in raising its flipper, the gaff came loose. At the same time, Zim lost his grip on her hair. She turned and saw him momentarily paralyzed by the movement and sound of the creature he thought was long dead.

With a war whoop to give her strength, she lashed out with the hook and stabbed Zim in the thigh.

The gaff sank into his flesh until it hit the femur. This time it was Zim who screamed.

Alexa let go and he stumbled backward toward the bow, where he was knocked over by the swinging tail.

“Pryor!” Zim shrieked. “Help!”

She wasn’t going to stick around to find out what that meant. She got to her feet and ran in the other direction.

A skinny man wielding an assault rifle faced her at the opposite end of the ship near the wheelhouse. He stood safely away from the writhing head of the animal. He had to be Pryor.

Alexa was at serious risk of being crushed against the gunwale if Nessie decided to roll in her direction, but she put up her hands. If she tried to jump overboard, Pryor would kill her before she got one foot over the side.

He smiled and nodded that she’d made the right decision. Then he aimed the gun at Nessie.

“No!” Alexa screamed.

Bullets poured from the gun into Nessie’s side, the vicious man’s smile only growing wider as the animal barked in agony, wailing like a stricken infant.

The animal’s mouth gaped, and its throat convulsed. An enormous tongue shot forward at lightning speed, hitting Pryor’s body with a splat. The mucus adhered to his clothes, and he yelped as he was reeled back toward Nessie’s mouth.

He fell to his knees and was dragged the rest of the way screaming. The giant salamander clamped its jaws around Pryor and bit hard, bones crushed with a sickening crunch. Pryor’s screaming abruptly ceased.

Nessie spit him out, apparently unhappy with the taste.

Tyler appeared near the body, then ran over to Alexa, his panicked eyes searching her for wounds.

“Are you shot?”

She shook her head.

“Thank God,” he said, putting his arm around her. “We better leave. The ship’s about to go under.”

“Zim is here,” she said.

Tyler’s head swiveled around. “Where?”

“I don’t know. He was at the bow.”

“We’ll worry about him later. Let’s go.”

He escorted her around Nessie’s head and they scrambled down the ladder. Alexa saw how Tyler planned to get them all to safety with the small sub. The Gordian submarine pilots lay on the wings gripping the handholds. It didn’t matter that the GhostManta could no longer dive; the sub would have to remain on the surface.

Tyler cruised away from the ship. Alexa turned in her seat so she could see Nessie swim free.

Instead, she watched in horror as Zim climbed onto the Aegir’s harpoon cannon pedestal. He was limping, blood pouring down his leg from where he’d removed the gaff hook, as he loaded a fresh harpoon.

“Tyler!” she yelled. “Go back!”

“We can’t. We don’t have any weapons.”

The stern of the Aegir descended into the water, and the deck was immediately awash.

“Come on, Nessie,” Alexa chanted. “You can do it.”

At the feel of water on its skin, Nessie struggled to free itself of the netting.

Zim finished loading the harpoon and moved back to the trigger. With both hands on the grips, he swiveled it around to aim it at Nessie.

The animal flopped over the gunwales but it was too late.

Zim fired.

The harpoon speared Nessie through the base of the tail but didn’t explode, and Alexa understood what Zim’s plan had been. He’d loaded a cold harpoon, one without a grenade and trailing five strands of the strong nylon rope.

Zim wasn’t trying to kill Nessie. He wanted it to go down with the ship.

The other end of the rope was securely lashed to the welded pedestal holding the cannon. Nessie was big, but if she couldn’t loosen a gaff hook in two hundred years, she wouldn’t be able to pull out a huge harpoon. She struggled to swim away, but the harpoon was lodged too deeply.

Zim staggered off the pedestal and sloshed along the deck to pick up Pryor’s assault rifle, which she had stupidly left behind in her shock. He jumped back in the sub he had commandeered and came after them.

“Tyler,” she said, “Zim’s on his way. It looks like he’s faster than we are.”

“We’re running on only one impeller and weighed down by four people. I’ll make a run for that little beach in front of the castle and hope we can get there before he catches us.”

Alexa watched the Aegir founder. Its bow went up in the air, dragging Nessie backward.

She sobbed when the fishing boat disappeared beneath the water, dousing the last light illuminating the creature. All she could do was listen to the animal’s final haunting cry burble into silence as Loch Ness reclaimed its monster.

FORTY-NINE

Zim’s throbbing leg only fueled his rage at the Lockes, not only for injuring him but for killing Pryor, who was a good supporter of the white cause even if he’d been annoying at times. Zim would savor the success of getting rid of that ugly animal later. First, he was going to show Alexa and Tyler that a hook through the leg was a pinprick compared to the pain they’d endure.

He held the rifle above his head and loosed some rounds in their direction, but at this distance any hit would be luckier than winning a lottery jackpot.

Zim withdrew the rifle and used the strap to tie a tourniquet around his thigh. It slowed the blood loss to a trickle and alleviated some of the agony. He convinced himself he’d be able to walk.

Trailing by only a hundred yards, he saw where Tyler was headed: a small rocky beach with a staircase leading up to a stone archway and a wooden gate flanked by low walls on the back side of the castle grounds.

With Dunham and his well-armed men positioned at the opposite entrance, Zim could catch them all in a classic pincer movement.

Tyler ran the GhostManta up onto the beach, where it tilted to one side. The two pilots on the wings slid off and clambered up the staircase.

This might be Zim’s best chance to kill them. Tyler and Alexa climbed out of the sub and scrambled for the steps. Zim stood, ignoring the sudden lightheadedness, and loosed a volley at them. Tyler was hit in the left arm and went down. Alexa stopped to help him get to his feet.

Zim shot again, this time hitting the gate as the two rescued pilots squeaked through. Tyler and Alexa veered to the right and tore up the hill, where they climbed over the railing.

Zim beached his own sub next to Tyler’s, running it so far onto the rocks that it would be impossible to launch again. He didn’t care. Once they finished off Tyler and his friends, they’d take the Zodiac back across the loch to the stashed Range Rover and freedom.

He eased himself out of the cockpit. The pain flared up again in an excruciating jolt, but he did his best to tamp it down for now. It reminded him that he had a special present for Tyler and Alexa.

He picked up the gaff hook and tucked it in his belt. Getting off the sub was even worse, and he took a moment to gather himself before continuing on, his rifle at the ready.

He considered yelling that he was coming for Tyler and Alexa, then thought better of it as he set off up the stairs. Fear of the unknown was always scarier.

Grant snapped out of his stupor when he heard rifle fire not only in front of him, but also behind him as well. Something primal from his long stint in the Army gave him a sudden burst of adrenaline. He felt more alert than he had in days, but he knew it wouldn’t last long.

He peeked over the back wall and saw Tyler and Alexa creep out of hiding behind a crumbling retaining wall. Tyler would know that Brielle had chosen the gatehouse for their last stand and would lead Alexa in that direction.

As he watched, they kept low and were about to dash along the sidewalk to the gatehouse when another man burst from the loch gate behind them. The hulking figure in the shadows had to be Zim. He fired from the hip, sending Tyler and Alexa running away from him toward the tower.

Grant called to Brielle. “I need the rifle!”

She shook her head and whispered, “I ran out of ammo two minutes ago.”

Grant couldn’t sit there while Tyler and Alexa were killed.

“Keep showing the rifle over the wall,” he said. “Since you’re such a good shot, the bluff should give us another minute or two.”

He crawled toward the stairwell, willing the energy to move.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

“Whatever I can,” he replied, and went down the stairs.

Dunham couldn’t convince either of the remaining men to make a run for the gatehouse. They were too afraid of Brielle’s sharpshooting skills to venture out, so they kept taking potshots at the balcony.

A distant sound pierced the silence between gunshots. Dunham was the only one not firing, so she doubted the men heard it. But as it grew closer, the source was unmistakable.

Sirens.

She looked in the direction of the road and saw blue flashing lights heading toward them. The police would be there any minute, responding to the sound of gunshots.

Sticking around was no longer a good idea.

“Keep firing,” she said, and they each shot a few more rounds at the castle.

Sufficiently distracted, they didn’t notice when she backed away, got to her feet, and made a run for the pier.

It wasn’t until her footsteps were banging against the wood that she heard them shout, “Hey! Come back!”

She ignored their pleas, instead laying down her own covering fire with the machine gun. It bucked in her hands so much that she hit nothing, but it did the job. The two men dived to the ground.

She leapt into the Zodiac and untied it from the pier. After a moment of fumbling with the starter, she figured out how it operated. The engine thrummed to life, and she reversed away from shore.

Once she was clear, she twisted the throttle to full and aimed for their drop-off point across the loch. The lights at the front of the Zodiac would show her the reflectors they’d planted on shore. Dunham congratulated herself for having the foresight to swipe the car keys from Pryor before getting off the ship.

She streaked away, passing the Grant Tower to her right. The Aegir was nowhere in sight, so she assumed it was on the bottom of the loch with the monster strapped to it. Although her plan to capture Tyler hadn’t worked, she felt pretty good about the outcome.

She waved goodbye to the ruins and couldn’t help but grin that she was done with Zim even earlier than she had planned.

Tyler winced at every footstep that jarred his re-injured left shoulder. His arm dangled by his side, useless. The pain was far worse than when he was shot at the Eiffel Tower. He wouldn’t be surprised if it had shattered bone. Zim’s gunshot had hit him so hard it knocked the wind from his lungs. It was only by leaning on Alexa that he could go on without passing out.

They hobbled into the tower and onto a modern wood floor that had been built to cover the open basement.

Bullets bit into the floor, and they hobbled faster, plunging into the darkness of a doorway. It was the landing of a narrow spiral staircase.

“Up or down?” Alexa asked.

“Up,” Tyler said without hesitation. High ground was always better.

Tyler chewed on his lip to keep from screaming as they climbed the stairs. Footsteps pounding across the floor below them hurried their pace.

They reached the top of the tower, a twelve-by-fifteen-foot observation platform constructed for tourists to have an unsurpassed view of the loch, and Tyler realized they were cornered. There was nowhere to run, no other way down. Crawling to one of the other parapets along the disintegrating rampart was suicide, but the alternative wasn’t much better.

To the north, Tyler could see the Zodiac speeding away. A woman’s long hair streaming backward from the head of the only passenger was barely visible in the running lights. It had to be Dunham.

Zim, who was now on the stairs below, must have seen it too.

“No!” he screamed. “You bitch!”

He fired a long burst from a window opening in the stairwell until the weapon clicked empty. Tyler listened for the sound of him reloading another magazine, but the rifle clattered down the stairs instead.

“I’m coming for you, Tyler,” Zim cackled with glee. “I’m coming for both of you.”

Tyler considered jumping over the balustrade and landing on Zim, but decided it was too risky. In close quarters Zim had the advantage of upper body strength, doubled now because of Tyler’s injured shoulder. Better to bring him into open space where Zim’s wounded leg would hinder him.

Tyler backed Alexa against the railing behind him and readied himself for the fight.

Zim limped up the stairs one at a time, brandishing the gaff hook in front of him. Tyler didn’t want to think what landing on that would have felt like.

Alexa pressed something into his good hand.

“I forgot I had this,” she said.

Tyler looked down and saw his Leatherman gleaming in the floodlight. He flipped open the knife and held it out, bending his knees in a defensive posture.

Zim came to a stop at the top of the stairs.

“How’s your arm?” he asked with a maniacal grin.

“Nothing but a scratch. What about your leg?”

“I’ve had worse.”

“Well, now that we’ve gone through our ritual lies, why don’t you go back down the stairs and give yourself up?” Tyler pointed at the flashing blue lights in the parking lot. “Without your boat, you won’t be getting out of here.”

“I don’t care. I know you must have gotten a tissue sample, and I want it. Now.”

“Come and get it.”

Even with his gimpy leg, Zim was quick and the platform was small. He charged forward, swiping with the hook. Tyler dodged to the side and kicked at Zim’s leg, grazing it enough to elicit a howl.

Zim whirled around again with the hook but missed. He followed through with his other arm and connected with Tyler’s chest close to the shoulder. The vibration jolted the injury, causing a blaze of stars to temporarily obscure his vision. Another hit like that and he’d be down for the count.

Tyler staggered back, waving the knife. Zim came at him again, bringing down the hook in an overhand sweep.

Tyler blocked the move with his right forearm, but couldn’t bring his other hand up to ward off Zim’s right fist. It crashed into Tyler’s shoulder, and this time he buckled to his knees in agony, dropping the Leatherman to the floor as he grasped at his shoulder.

Zim raised the hook to finish him off, then dropped the weapon when Alexa smashed her knee into his wounded leg. He screamed and threw his arm back, catching Alexa with an elbow that sent her reeling.

Pain seemed to provide Zim with superhuman powers. He put one hand on Tyler’s shoulder and the other around his neck. Tyler had little strength to fight back. Once he was unconscious or dead, Zim would find the tissue sample in his coat pocket and dispose of it, killing Grant in the process as well.

As his vision tunneled, Tyler reached into his pocket and slid the tube to Alexa, who was looking at him, still on her hands and knees from Zim’s massive blow.

Zim heard the skittering metal and saw that Alexa now had it. She got to her feet and made a dash for the stairs, but Zim pushed himself up and grabbed the back of her jacket, whipping her around into the railing that overlooked the deck.

Tyler struggled to regain his footing while he watched Zim pin his sister against the rail. He grabbed the arm that was holding the aluminum tube and drew it to him. He was about to pluck it from her fingers when Alexa flicked her wrist, pitching the tube backward in an attempt to throw it down to the first floor. Instead, the tube bounced along the top of the wall and lodged in the crevice between two stones.

“Bad move,” Zim said.

Tyler staggered to his feet as Zim looked back at him and said, “Say goodbye.”

As easy as picking up a feather pillow, Zim tossed Alexa over the railing. Her terrified shriek ended with a horrible abruptness.

Tyler felt a savage scream tear directly from his soul, creating a rupture that seemed bottomless. With pure animal fury, he rushed at Zim. He landed one blow before Zim tossed him aside.

Zim crawled over the railing and out onto the top of the outer wall, grasping at the tube. As soon as he had it, he’d throw it into the loch, and Grant’s death warrant would be signed.

Tyler was not going to lose him as well. He frantically looked around and saw the Leatherman with the knife still extended. He scrabbled over to it and picked it up. With the last bit of strength he had, he pushed himself up and hurtled toward Zim, who was snatching the tube from the crevice.

Zim got to his knees and reared back, preparing to throw the last vestige of the Loch Ness monster into the bottom of the loch. He saw Tyler coming and struck out with his good leg, which was exactly what Tyler had been expecting.

He plunged the knife into Zim’s foot and twisted his leg sideways, causing enough imbalance to teeter Zim over the edge.

As Zim was going through his throwing motion, he fell off the wall. There was no scream, just a thump when his body hit the platform.

Tyler crumpled to the ground, tears streaming down his cheeks. Alexa was gone. He sensed the same darkness that had descended when Karen died now threatening to overwhelm him.

He forced himself to look down at the first floor through the mesh steel railing, preparing himself to see two bodies laying side by side.

Instead, he saw three.

In addition to Zim’s motionless form, he saw Grant cradling Alexa, who pushed herself up and waved to him.

In the grip of despair moments before, Tyler was now seized by a dizzying euphoria he’d never experienced. The rush of adrenaline gave him the energy to stumble down the staircase.

He walked over to Alexa, dropped the knife, and pulled her to him with his good arm.

“I thought you were dead,” he said, his voice cracking.

“I thought I was too. But Grant saw what was happening and caught me. Or at least cushioned my fall.”

Tyler knelt next to him and grabbed his hand. “Thanks, man. I owe you big time.”

“No problem,” he said with a weak smile and closed his eyes. “I think I’ll take a nap now.”

Brielle came running through the entrance and said, “Zim’s men surrendered to the police, so I left Sinclair to explain what’s going on.” She helped Tyler up. “Oy vey, you’re a mess.”

“I look better than I feel.”

She looked down at Grant. “How is he?”

“I don’t know, but without the antidote he won’t make it much longer.”

“Did you get it? The tissue from the Loch Ness monster?”

“I had it, but Zim threw it over the side of the castle. They might find it eventually, but not in time.”

“The police are here,” she said, looking at Zim. “I suppose they’ll take him back to prison.”

Tyler had assumed he was dead, but Zim was still breathing. Tyler picked up his knife and knelt next to him.

“He doesn’t deserve to live.”

“Tyler, don’t,” Alexa said. “There’s been enough killing for one day.”

“I know. But he still doesn’t deserve it.”

Tyler saw a glint in Zim’s palm. He opened Zim’s fingers, and there was the aluminum tube.

He felt another rush of euphoria, but the adrenaline was gone. He rocked back on his heels and sat down against the wall, laying his head against the cold stone and closing his eyes. Like Grant, Tyler decided that he needed a nap.