Cate reached out and placed a hand on his forearm. “I want it dead. If not for my friend, Greg, then for all the others it has already killed, and those it certainly will in the future.”

Valery placed a hand over hers. “Yes.” He stared into her eyes. “What is it you want? Another submarine?”

Jack shook his head. “Unless we have an Ohio Class, then I wouldn’t recommend going below the surface with that thing down there.” His eyebrows flicked up. “But there might be something we can use. Modern whaling ships are fast and equipped with enough technology to bring it to the surface. They also have harpoon cannon with explosive tip projectiles. We need the best there is.”

Sonya frowned. “A whaling ship?”

“That’s not all. We need it within a few days. There’s a tracking device in the Megalodon’s gut that will be excreted in a week.”

“Now I’m interested.” Mironov began to smile and he stood. “Leave it to me. And be ready to leave immediately.”

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 35

Cate and Jack sat next to Regina on one side of the cavernous helicopter. Valery Mironov, the statuesque Sonya, and a besotted Vincent on the other. Regina shot Vince hard glances from time to time, but for the most part, everyone sat in silence – or as much silence as you could conjure inside the yawning interior of the Russian built Mi-8T Helicopter.

The massive and powerful helicopter could fit twenty-four people inside. And with a sixty-nine-foot rotor being whipped madly by two Klimov TV3-117Mt turbo shafts, it was like sitting inside a combination of flying tank and metal tornado.

They travelled at the maximum speed of one hundred and fifty miles per hour, and their destination was somewhere in the Northern Pacific. Mironov had obtained their whaling ship – a Russian-built whaler, whose designation was research, but had a ninety millimeter harpoon cannon built by Kongsberg Våpenfabrikk mounted on its foredeck. Plus it had a full armament of whale grenades in a variety of flavors – explosive tip, tranq-dart, and percussion heads.

The ship, the Slava, was rented for the year at a fee that made Jack’s eyes water. There was no crew required as Drago and four of his team had already left to take over the controls. As there was no actual whaling work to be done, they only needed a pilot, engineers, and deck hands. Vincent would take over the ship when they arrived.

There was only one Russian crewmember that Mironov negotiated into the transaction – and that was Alexi, the harpooner.