“Nessie was bigger than my boat, too, but it didnae stop ye from diving the loch in a Newtsuit. Unlike ye, Zach, I brought this nightmare to the Highlands, and now I’m goin’ tae end it.”

True tightened a steel cable around the dead animal’s neck while Jim slit open its belly, anchoring a plastic thermos packed with C-4 inside the ribcage.

“Secure the udder wit’ those clamps, Jimmy, but let the entrails leak oot a bit. We’ll need a good stench tae lure tha’ bitch up from the bottom.”

Turning to my right, I saw a BBC camera crew filming a female news reporter from behind a police barricade. Keeping my back to them, I eavesdropped on her while she read from a teleprompter:

“Its name was Purussaurus, and it was a gigantic caiman, a prehistoric ancestor to the modern-day crocodile. Reaching lengths of more than fifteen meters, it lived in what is today the Amazonian rainforest but was eight million years agoa vast inland sea teeming with freshwater whales, giant turtles, and enormous rodents. How one of these monster predators survived to inhabit Loch Ness remains a mystery.

“It’s a mystery that became public seven years ago when Highland resident Finlay McDonald found an ancient egg frozen in the bowels of Aldourie Castle, a three-century-old chateau that looms over the eastern shoreline of Loch Ness. An ancient aquifer connects the Moray Firth and the North Sea with Loch Ness beneath the castle grounds, and so it’s not unusual to find sea creatures venturing inland. Still, no one had ever seen an egg quite like this.

“Footage of the egg’s discovery went viral after scientists were astonished to discover a life-form still alive inside. Three months later the egg actually hatched, producing a living, breathing, four-legged, gilled reptile roughly the size of a Bassett Hound.

“The animal, dubbed Plessie by locals, was kept in the swimming pool at Nessie’s Retreat, a luxury hotel located in the shadow of Urquhart Castle. Experts debated over the identity of the species, conducting daily examinations, while over four million visitors flocked to the Highlands that first summer to see the creature, which the hotel owner insisted was a Plesiosaurus.