Sweat poured down David Taylor’s face. Cruising at only eighteen knots, he knew the Manta could not generate enough lift to leap out of the sea to clear the net. Yet he also had to keep the creature close. He knew she was tiring, knew that if she sensed the net, she’d turn on a dime and flee.

So he took a chance.

Throttling back, he dropped his speed to thirteen knots, allowing the Liopleurodon to move in close enough for her nostrils to inhale his sub’s jet-pump propulsor bubbles.

Reinvigorated, the creature opened its jaws to devour its prey as David slammed both feet to the floor and pulled back on his joystick, easing up on his starboard engine a few precious seconds before he reached the surface.

Instead of attempting to clear the net, David launched the Manta sideways out of the sea. The submersible cleared the steel cables running from the trawler to the left side of the net—

—And smashed nose-first into the Dubai-Land’s portside bow.

Unaware that its prey was gone, the Liopleurodon swam into the trawl net, stopping only after its fore-flippers struck the unseen object. It attempted to turn and run, but the crew manning the Tonga’s starboard winch was already tightening the noose upon the unnerved colossus, whose reflexive maneuver only succeeded in gathering its lower torso into the closing net.

And that’s when all hell broke loose.

Before the hunters stationed behind their deck-mounted harpoon guns could aim their drug-filled steel lances below, the enraged pliosaur twisted its one hundred tons of fury beneath the starboard keel of the tanker.

Having been refitted as a mobile aquarium, the Tonga lacked the ballast of an ocean-bound tanker filled with crude. The unstable ship was pulled hard to starboard, flinging its harpooners and winch crew seven stories into the bay. Anything not bolted down—equipment, crates, and humans—was hurtled across the tanker’s plunging deck.

Aboard the Dubai-Land, the winch that had been holding the net open was bent sideways, making it impossible for the trawler’s crew to release control of the captured pliosaur over to the Tonga. Instead of being hauled out of the water, the Liopleurodon was left to twist and turn in the net, caught in a tug-of-war between both ships.

Jonas tried to reach his son by our sub-comm link, but David didn’t reply. Accelerating to thirty knots, he raced for the tanker. “Zachary, start pinging. Find me David’s Manta.”

I switched my headphones to sonar, my ears assaulted by a cacophony of sound.

A minute later we arrived on the scene.