“Whales. And we’re in their path. Shift controls back to my console—”

A forty-five-foot humpback whale shot past us out of the ether, its thrusting gray fluke barely missing the sub.

Two more bulls followed, and suddenly there were whales everywhere. They were not just humpbacks. I saw minkes and fins, and a pygmy sperm whale struck our portside wing, spinning us about.

Jonas attempted to accelerate out of the roll, only to have the Manta sideswiped by another fleeing dark gray body.

It was a cetacean stampede, and we were swept up in it.

Jonas ignited the Valkyries, attempting to fend off the swarm. “Zach, start pinging. Find that monster before it finds us.”

“What monster? You mean the Liopleurodon? ”

“What the hell else would be causing these whales to panic? Ain’t no Megs in these waters.”

Manning the sonar, I attempted to switch from passive to active, only nothing was working. The monitor blinked off and on. The radio turned to static in my headphones.

I tossed them aside. “The Tortuga’s jamming our electronics.”

Having managed to point our bow east, Jonas accelerated, maneuvering ahead of the panic-stricken behemoths before banking hard to port, momentarily freeing us from the frenzy of moving goliaths.

Then I saw the cause of the cetacean disturbance, and fear suddenly took on a whole new meaning.

34

In Loch Ness, I had confronted a legendary beast. In Vostok, I had been attacked by giant crocs and Miocene whales. Years later in Monterey, I had watched a captive megalodon feed and thought I had seen the definition of true terror.

Nothing could have prepared me for the monster racing at us out of that olive-green sea.

Its jawline alone had to be thirty feet long, its mouth filled with ten- to twelve-inch dagger-like teeth, the largest of which jutted outside of its mouth. Big? It seemed as long as a city block, propelled by thirty-foot flippers—all wrapped around a lead-gray-and-white hide that partially blended into the backdrop of ice.

Most frightening, it seemed to be hyperactive, its movements on overdrive. Its head turned on a swivel as its crocodilian jaws snapped at the fleeing whales, its mind unable to single out the most vulnerable member of the herd until it saw our twin lasers blazing in the darkness like two vermillion eyes.

“Oh, geez. Jonas, hard to port!”

Jonas tried to get us out of its way, but the creature was far quicker and cut us off. My eyes bugged out as the left side of the pliosaur’s mouth suddenly bloomed into view, its jaws agape.

The back of my head slammed against the seat as the Manta leaped forward, Jonas attempting to escape by passing between those hideous rows of curved teeth like a car trying to beat a train across railroad tracks.

I squeezed my eyes shut—

—and we were through, only the creature was right behind us, snapping at our tail.

We were dead.