Eye of the Whale (34 page)

He had spent many happy hours hunting quail, duck, and deer. But harpooning Apollo felt like shooting fish in a barrel and offended his instincts as a hunter.

Scientists had recommended every reasonable possibility to rescue the whale, and many well-meaning people from around the world had suggested far less reasonable ones. His daughter Kayla had suggested trying to lure the whale back to sea by dripping salt water down the Sacramento River. He looked up at his daughter’s drawing, with teardrop-shaped circles leading the whale back to the ocean and two girls riding on its back.

C
ONNIE’S CELL PHONE
began to vibrate as the ring tone “Power to the People,” by John Lennon, began to play. She looked at the caller ID. It was the vet calling her back.

“Hello?”

“Is this Mary Jane Williams?”

“Ah, yes, it is,” Connie said, deepening her voice, trying to pretend that she was the assistant to the regional stranding coordinator for the National Marine Fisheries Service.

“This is Bob Townshend again. I got your message, but I’m just watching the live coverage on CNN, and it looks like they’re planning to euthanize the whale. Are you sure they don’t need me?”

“I assure you, Dr. Townshend, that the lieutenant governor has decided to pursue other means for the time being, but we will let you know if that changes.”

“Well, no one likes to put a whale down, but call me if you need me.”

“We certainly will.”

T
HERE WAS A HEAVY KNOCK.
The flimsy door rattled, and Lieutenant James opened it reluctantly.

“Lieutenant, some men are here to see you.”

Lieutenant James adjusted his blue cap and stepped down the metal stairs. A spotlight above the door of the portable cast a circle of light.

“Halvard Nilsen,” the man said in a Scandinavian accent, without holding out his hand. “I’ve got your gun.”

“You got a form for me to sign?” Lieutenant James asked.

“No.”

“No paperwork?”

“This is a gift.” The man smiled, gesturing to the large gray polymer case. “I’ll show you how to assemble and fire it.”

“You a veterinarian?”

“I’m a whaler,” Nilsen said.

Instead of sending over a vet, they send over a whaler?
The more James heard, the less he liked what he was hearing. He wanted to
know what was going on. “You guys connected with the consortium that owns this land?”

“No.”

“Who called you in?”

“Dr. Skilling. He thought we might be able to supply you with the harpoon gun. They are not so easy to come by these days.”

“Is that so?”

“This is a Norwegian model,” Nilsen said. “It’s smaller and lighter and more suitable for your boat.”

Lieutenant James looked up at the sky and saw more clouds covering the moon quickly. The air was thick and smelled like rain. The barometer had been plummeting all day. A storm was definitely coming.

Nilsen pointed at the gray metal gun within the case. It looked like a miniature cannon. “The harpoon fits in the bore of the gun and attaches to the rope. This is the explosive head.” The harpoon flared out into four large, hinged barbs and then narrowed into a torpedolike point. “When the tip strikes, a time-fused charge will explode in three seconds, driving the harpoon into the whale’s side. As the whale wrestles with the line, the barbs will snap open, anchoring the whale and detonating the grenade.” Like any professional, Nilsen obviously enjoyed the details of his craft. Lieutenant James listened, thankful that the veterinarian would be firing this thing and not him. “The explosion will cut into the lungs and other organs, if you’re lucky, so it’ll die quick. Sometimes they go fast, but it can take ten, even thirty, minutes or more. This is a big whale you got here. It helps if you aim between the shoulder blades.”

Where the hell are the shoulder blades on a whale?
Lieutenant James wondered. He asked the next question, not sure he wanted to know the answer. “What happens to the whale after it’s struck?”

“The whale’s rib muscles weaken, and when the air valves collapse, the water will rush in, suffocating the whale. She’ll roll over when she’s dead.”

“He.
The whale’s a he.”

Nilsen stared at him, then pointed to a crude metal rod on top. “This is the sight, and over here is the trigger.” It was a little lever that one squeezed against the handle.

“If the vet doesn’t show, are you going to fire this thing?”

“Oh, no, I’m afraid I can’t,” said Nilsen. “It must be the U.S. government that compassionately puts the whale out of its misery.”

Lieutenant James prayed that the vet would get there by sunrise. Otherwise, he’d have to shoot the whale himself.

EIGHTY-TWO

1:00
A.M.
Farallon Islands

A
LL
S
KILLING COULD SEE
in the moonlight was gray fog, so thick it eclipsed any possible line of sight. He slowed the engine, knowing he was close. Moments later the islands appeared out of the mist, granite icebergs jutting from the water, sharp and menacing. As he threw the throttle into reverse, the engines snarled and backed away. The landscape looked prehistoric, unfinished and barren. To Skilling, the shape of the islands had always resembled sharks’ teeth, although superstitious sailors had long called them the Devil’s Teeth for the many ships they had devoured. The Coast Miwok knew them as the Islands of the Dead, the place where bad Indians were condemned to live forever, like some spectral Alcatraz.

Skilling shook away a shiver and told himself that death was an inevitable part of life. He did feel a pang of guilt when he remembered that Elizabeth was pregnant. But the planet was already overrun with people. It wouldn’t miss yet another child. Humans were like locusts. The only hope was that increasing infertility might someday end the plague they had become on the planet.

Skilling steered the boat skillfully around the gray-brown outcroppings, spattered white by the hundreds of thousands of birds that lived and defecated here. The sharp smell that blew off the island and filled his nostrils was a mixture of ammonia, rotting anchovies, decomposing salt water, and decades of accumulated
fecal matter. The odor was so strong it was almost mind-numbing, and it often made first-timers wince or gag reflexively. Even Skilling had to get used to it each time he came out. Fortunately, the wind also helped to keep down the kelp flies that often covered one’s skin and were particularly drawn to mucous membranes—mouths, noses, and in the case of seals, anuses.

Despite the Farallones’ infernal number of torments, he found a strange charm in the place, and spending time with the white sharks made up for any discomfort. He looked at the shark-tagging pole resting in the metal hooks on the side of the boat. If he was lucky, he would accomplish two goals: getting rid of Elizabeth and tagging the largest shark ever recorded.

Although still on the lee side of the island, he could feel the gathering storm coming from the west. The swells made the boat buck like a horse as he motored past the Gap, and raindrops, heavy and swollen, started to pelt the boat. The moon freed itself from a smothering cloud, and he could see the black cormorants, black-and-white murres, and brown pelicans huddling together, preparing for the worst. The sea lions with their dexterous flippers had climbed high above the surf zone and were ominously silent, not barking as usual. The seals, who could not climb like the sea lions, were being pelted by waves in the coves. Some had already been dragged into the surf.

This “zone of death,” just around the perimeter of the island, was where white sharks picked off many seals. Several looked up at him questioningly. Their black doll eyes always had the fearful stare of prey, but now they rocked their heads nervously, perhaps concerned about the squall that was quickly approaching. One rode a wave onto the black rocks and squirmed desperately up the shore.

Skilling could read the animals and the conditions and didn’t like what he was seeing. But he had no choice—he had to steer around Sugarloaf and into Maintop Bay. This was never a completely safe
proposition even in the best of weather, as the swells on the windward side of the island were always unpredictable, and conditions changed quickly. But that was where the shark was.

He reconsidered simply tying the anchor to Elizabeth’s feet and letting it drag her to the bottom. The sharks would eventually find her—but what if someone else found her first? No, it was safer if he knew for sure that the evidence of her demise had been digested in the stomach of the shark.

As he passed the Gap, he heard the islands whistling, as they often did in a storm. This time the sound was shrill, like a woman shrieking.

E
LIZABETH BLINKED
her blurry eyes as she came around. She saw something black scurrying across her face and felt the legs of a kelp fly as it brushed up against the hairs inside her nose. With her hands immobilized, she could not wave it away, and repeatedly tried to twitch her nose. It flew away at last but then landed on her lip and crawled back up the other nostril. She tried desperately to puff it out.

No luck. This kelp fly was used to stronger gusts than she could manage.

Elizabeth’s eyes began to adjust to the dim light, and she realized she was in the galley of a boat.
Skilling.
Above her, she could see him steering, the side of his chiseled face like stone in the silvery light. He was standing, trying to balance as the waves battered the boat. Her body rocked precariously on the thin vinyl bench cushions. She tried to remember what had happened to her, and then the memories started to flood back: the stun gun, the injection, the struggle.

A wave of pain and nausea traveled from the side of her head down to her stomach.
He’s going to drown me.
Then, with an even stronger wave of nausea, she realized,
No, he’s going to feed me to his sharks.
She had heard the stories circulating in the department about
the camera-shy monster shark that he had almost tagged underwater and had named Mother. She felt like she might vomit.

The boat slapped against a wave. She started to feel her arm against the cushion—her body was regaining sensation. Stretching her legs slowly, she made sure not to attract Skilling’s attention. The boat lurched, and she swallowed the sharp bile in her throat, willing her stomach not to give her away.

Elizabeth looked at her hands. They were bound several times with hemp rope, which was part of a longer stretch of line that snaked up the stairs to the deck.

Skilling seemed to be preoccupied topside driving through the storm, so she was free to work on her hands. She began pulling them apart as the rope dug into her wrists. Breathing through the pain, she was able to bring her wrists a few inches apart but still couldn’t pull them out of the rope handcuffs. In the galley light, she saw the skin of her wrists, chafed raw.

T
HE BOAT STAGGERED
against the wind as Skilling entered Maintop Bay. The storm was arriving fast.
Perhaps this is not such a good plan,
he thought. But it was too late to stop now. He couldn’t exactly call it off and decide to kill her on another day.

His legs absorbed the roll of the boat, buffeted by the ever-growing whitecaps. From a cooler, he pulled out the lower half of a newborn elephant seal. It had been crushed—no doubt by the bulls fighting for dominance—and he had kept it for a special occasion. The blood and entrails were seeping out. These dissections were always the perfect chum for baiting sharks. The deep, almost ferrous odor made him wince. He put the bloody mess in a burlap bag and threw it overboard after tying it off so that it hung at the surface and dunked like a tea bag with each swell. An oily chum slick began to spread out behind the boat.

Steering toward the blip on his RAPS display, he switched on his fish finder sonar. As the color screen flashed to life, it revealed a large red elliptical shape almost directly below him. Scar Eye.

Skilling descended the steps to the cabin. Elizabeth was still lying where he’d left her. Using her tied wrists for leverage, he hauled her over his shoulder, managed to carry her up the few stairs from the galley, and laid her down against the far gunwale. The waves were pounding the port side squarely, pushing the boat toward the island. He jumped back to the steering wheel.

“Jesus,” he said as he gunned the engines. They were drifting fast toward the rocky shore, the fog hiding most of its brutal coastline. There were hidden rocks all around the island, too, and only his intimate knowledge of the dark gray waters kept him from running aground.

He looked down at the doubloon, trying to avoid looking at Elizabeth.
Unless you are a certifiable psycho,
he thought,
it isn’t so easy to kill someone.

He revved the engines, but his thrust was only half of what it should have been. His fist clenched around the throttle, as he knew that he had not just bent the propeller—he had sheared off the pin. He now had only one engine. Elizabeth’s eyes flickered open. She was coming around. Now he would have to kill her in cold blood, with her staring back at him.
Damn, she isn’t making this easy for me.

W
HEN
E
LIZABETH FELL
against the gunwale, she tried not to utter a sound. She opened her eyes quickly to see what was happening, but he saw her. She pretended her body was still paralyzed.

“Why are you doing this?” she said, noticing that the hemp rope was tied to one of the cleats on the starboard gunwale.

“Because you gave me no choice.” Skilling looked at her and back at the rocks.

“Because I found out that you were working for the ESC?”

“I’m not working for anybody. I work for myself. They are just one of my…funders.”

“Are they
funding
you to kill me?” Elizabeth was stalling, looking for a plan, as her eyes scanned the deck for potential weapons.