Dog Training The American Male Part 39

THOMAS NILSSON HELD on to the seat in front of him as the AS-350BA "Squirrel" flew with its nose down against the wind, the single-engine five pa.s.senger helicopter's soaring over Prydz Bay en route to the Amery Ice Shelf.

Seated in back next to Nilsson, Ming nevertheless had to use her headset to be heard over the thunderous rotors. "For the record, Doctor, I am with Zhongshan station. Australia and China are working together on this discovery."

"But not the Russians?"

"The Russians control Vostok. There may be a conflict of interest."

"I'm sorry . . . what does Vostok have to do with the Amery Ice Shelf? The lake's a good eight hundred miles away."

"True, but what lies beneath the ice are interconnecting rivers and lakes . . . let us start at the beginning. Antarctica's land ma.s.s is covered by a dome-shaped glacier. Gravity is actually pulling the ice into the ocean by way of the continent's ice shelves. As these ice shelves reach the coastline their bottom sections. .h.i.t seawater and melt faster, causing sections of the flow to crack a natural process known as rifting. Global warming has accelerated rifting. Last year, Antarctic ice sheets lost a combined ma.s.s of 355 gigatonnes. A gigatonne is a billion metric tons. Three hundred and fifty-five gigatonnes is enough to raise global sea levels by 1.3 millimeters. That may not seem like a lot, but add Greenland's ice sheet, mountain glaciers, and the melting polar caps all multiplied by the present rate of acceleration and your winter home in sunny Florida may be underwater by the time you are ready to retire."

"My winter home is in Scottsdale, Arizona. And just so there's no misunderstanding, I have no intention of remaining on the ice through the winter. Where are we headed?"

She removed a folder from a mesh pocket behind the pilot's seat in front of her and opened it, handing him a satellite photo.

"This the Avery Ice Shelf. It is over four hundred kilometers long . . . about two-hundred and fifty miles. We've been studying this highlighted area a twenty-nine kilometer-long rift nicknamed 'Loose Tooth.' The first rift appeared seventeen years ago and consists of two longitudinal-to-flow creva.s.ses. Two transverse-to-flow rifts formed years later. The fissures were opening at a rate of three to four meters a day but the rift has recently accelerated. We antic.i.p.ate Loose Tooth will calve into Prydz Bay within the next five to seven years."

"I'll alert the Tooth Fairy. Again, why am I "

Thomas hugged the seat in front of him as the helicopter suddenly climbed to a higher alt.i.tude. Stealing a glimpse out the c.o.c.kpit window he saw the sheer white cliffs of the Amery Ice Shelf rising a thousand feet above the frozen bay.

Moments later they were flying over the top of the ice shelf a flat white plateau of ice violated by an immense jagged creva.s.se. The fissure was as wide as an eight lane highway, its sunken crack filled with loose blocks of collapsed snow and blue ice originating from below. The rift seemed to run endless to the southern horizon, splitting open the ice desert like the San Andreas fault.

"It's huge. How deep is the creva.s.se?"

"It drops four hundred meters to the sea about a quarter of a mile down, but it will thicken four times that amount as we move away from the bay. Our destination is up on the left."

The chopper slowed to hover, the pilot attempting to stabilize the aircraft for a landing. Below was a hastily a.s.sembled base camp. Nilsson counted three four-wheel-drive vehicles, each possessing skis for front tires and traction belts rigged to their rear axles. There were also six skidoos small transports that resembled motor bikes on skis.

Dominating the scene was a crane that towered three stories over the eastern edge of the rift, its cable attached to something hidden beneath a white tent large enough to conceal two eighteen wheel trucks.

The pilot targeted his landing area, adjusted his pitch and dropped the helicopter quickly, Nilsson's teeth rattling upon the strut's impact with the ice.

Ming dressed, speaking quickly. "You are here, Dr. Nilsson because we found something in the creva.s.se that is beyond explanation. We need you to identify the species."

Suddenly more curious than irritated, Nilsson followed her out of the swaying cabin onto the ice sheet. By now the sun was up, the wind maintaining temperatures of minus forty-three degrees Fahrenheit. Steam rose from beneath the hoods of the running vehicles, their built-in electric heaters preventing the engine blocks from cracking.

Ming led him to the tent. She unzipped a door flap and he ducked inside.

The air was heavy with musk and exhaust from the gasoline generators that powered the lights and hot-air blowers. Perhaps a dozen men Asians and Aussies and a few members of the Scripps Inst.i.tute were busy snapping photos. One researcher hacked at the melting ice with a bog chisel, impatient to reach the coveted tissue samples.

Thomas Nilsson staggered toward the object, wide-eyed as he stripped goggles and gear from his head. "My G.o.d. You say you found this in the creva.s.se?"

"Yes. The water pressure pushed it up from the bottom. One of the Tasmanian researchers spotted it three days ago while en route to a GPS station."

The object was not the remains of one species but two a prehistoric battle preserved in a block of ice. The creature that had been doing the eating was serpent-like and immense; Nilsson estimated its length at perhaps forty to sixty feet. The monster was lead-gray in color where flaky, leather patches of skin were visible over its exposed skeleton, its girth impossible to gauge accurately as it was coiled around the crushed, squeezed-to-death unconsumed remains of the second monster its meal. The tail of this second creature extended out of the terminally open fangs of the first along with part of its left rear leg which was a skeletal mess, the exposed bones having been damaged long ago by the relentlessly s.h.i.+fting ice. The rest of the second animal's body was concealed within the serpent's belly, the cartilage of which had expanded to the size of a Sperm Whale to accommodate its undigested, life-choking supper which had been the attacker's demise.

"Can you identify either of these two species, Dr. Nilsson?"

"No. But I know someone who can."

1.

"One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl, four for a boy. Five for silver, six for gold, and seven for a secret that must never be told."Scottish saying.

Drumnadrochit, Scottish Highlands Scotland The village of Drumnadrochit lies on the west bank of Loch Ness, a sleepy Highland hamlet of nine hundred nestled between Urquhart Bay, the Caledonian Forest, and two thousand years of history. I was born in Drumnadrochit; in fact I died here and was resurrected twice. I suppose that last rebirth was more of a metaphor, but when your existence is haunted by demons and you exorcize them by staring death in the face, that's what us Templars call a resurrection.

More about that later.

Drumnadrochit achieved its modern-day fame by proclaiming itself the Loch Ness Monster capital of the world. Two hokey museums, a few smiling plesiosaur statues, hourly tours by boat, and enough souvenir shops to shake a stick at was all it took that and Castle Urquhart.

No doubt you've seen photos of Urquhart, its ruins perched high on a rocky promontory like a medieval memory, the loch's tea-colored swells roiling against its steep cliff face the surrounding mountains drifting in and out of fog. Perhaps the photographer caught an unexpected wake or a mysterious ripple, or better still something that resembled humps violating the surface. Such are the sightings that once enticed a quarter of a million tourists to Drumnadrochit each spring and summer everyone hoping to catch a glimpse of the legendary monster.

My name is Zachary Wallace and I'm the marine biologist that resolved the legend. Using science, I brought light to seventy years of darkness, separating a contrived myth from the presence of a very real, very large amphibious fish that had become a serious threat to locals and tourists alike. In the end, I not only identified the predator, I also baited it, stared into its eyes, and vanquished the miserable beast from its purgatory.

In doing so, I turned a thriving cottage industry into a bunch of vacant bed and breakfasts, rendered two local museums obsolete, and brought ruin to a brand-new five-star resort. If you're curious, it's all there in my telltale biographical thriller, aptly t.i.tled, The Loch.

This is the story of what followed, the tale I leave by audio diary to my young son, William in case I don't survive this latest act of insanity. It's a journey that my wife, Brandy warned me not to take, and as usual, it began when I was manipulated into accepting the mission by the most diabolical creature known to inhabit the Great Glen . . . my father.

In his youth, Angus Wallace was a brute of a man who possessed the piercing blue eyes of the Gael, the wile of a Scot, the temperament of a Viking, and the drinking habits of the Irish. Now in his seventies, he's less temperamental, just as wily, and abuses v.i.a.g.r.a with his whiskey.

In his younger days, it was yours truly that he abused with his drink.

Angus met my mother, the former Andrea McKnown when she was on holiday. It didn't take long for the older dark-haired rogue to sweep the naive American beauty off her feet. I was born a year later heir to the Wallace history. I was small compared to my big-boned Highlander peers, leaving my father to right his namesake's "bad genes" the only way he knew how by intimidating the runt out of me.

I won't bore you with the details, other than to mention one pivotal event which transpired on my ninth birthday. Angus had promised to take me fis.h.i.+ng on Loch Ness so I could try out my new invention an acoustic fis.h.i.+ng lure. Those plans changed when I caught my inebriated sperm donor b.a.l.l.s-deep in a local waitress.

Allowing a childhood's worth of anger to get the best of me, I returned to the loch and launched the boat myself. As fog and night rolled in, my reverberating device attracted a school of fish . . . and with it a very real creature that rarely left its bottom dwelling. Without warning my boat flipped and I found myself treading in forty-two degree Fahrenheit water . . . and then something closed around my lower body and dragged me with it into the depths.

Terrifying darkness surrounded me; the growling gurgles of the creature accompanying me into the abyss. I saw a flash of white light . . . and then the fire in my aching lungs was quenched by those tea-colored waters . . . and I drowned.

When I next opened my eyes it was to h.e.l.lish pain, a veterinarian's needle, and the frightening face of my rescuer my best-friend's father, Alban MacDonald. At the time, Alban served as water bailiff and it was lucky for me that the man I disrespectfully called "the Crabbit" had happened upon the scene to rescue my sorry, pulseless a.r.s.e.

When my mother learned what had happened (the Crabbit and vet claimed I had become entangled in barbed wire that was wrapped around a tree, thus the b.l.o.o.d.y markings), she saw to my recovery, divorced my no-good father, and moved us to the good ole U.S. of A.

America. Land of the free, home of the brave only I was neither brave nor free. In an attempt to escape the mental abuse a.s.sociated with my near-drowning, my traumatized brain had isolated and compartmentalized the incident. Buried in denial, the unfiltered memory remained dormant, waiting for just the right moment to return.

That moment occurred fourteen years later . . .

By the age of twenty-five, I had already earned a Bachelors and Masters degree from Princeton and a doctorate from Scripps, and my research into deep-sea acoustic lures had been featured in several prominent journals. As a budding "Jacques Cousteau" I had been asked to lead a National Geographic-sponsored expedition to the Sarga.s.so Sea in search of the elusive giant squid. To attract the legendary colossus, our three-man submersible was armed with a lure I had designed which emulated the sounds and vibrations of salmon.

We descended into the blackness of the depths and waited . . . our patience rewarded with what would be the first visual doc.u.mentation of Architeuthis dux the Giant Squid. Unfortunately, once more the lure worked a bit too well, summoning not only a curious squid but a swarm of unexpected and unknown predatory fish. The squid panicked and tore loose our ballast tank, sending us sinking into oblivion. The acrylic c.o.c.kpit cracked, threatening to burst as we waited desperately for a drone to secure a tow-line the underwater robot finally reaching us in four thousand feet of water.

Having dodged a bullet we rose, thankful to be alive.

Unfortunately, the crack in the bubble c.o.c.kpit continued to spiderweb outward until it burst two hundred and thirty-three feet below the surface. The sea rushed in, killing the pilot. Dragging the cameraman from the sinking sub, I kicked for the surface . . . and never made it.

This time when I came to I was in a hospital bed. My colleague, David Caldwell conveniently blamed me for the pilot's death and for the loss of the submersible. Fired from my teaching position at Florida Atlantic University, I left the hospital intent on finding a new job.

My brain had other plans.

Unbeknownst to me, long-dormant childhood memories had been released. Sleep became my enemy I'd wake up screaming from night terrors. Worse, I found myself deathly afraid of the water, the anxiety threatening my future as a marine biologist.

In a span of a few months I lost everything my job, my career, my fianc and my quickly-fading sanity.

I began drinking heavily being inebriated kept me from entering the deepest stages of sleep where the night terrors lay in wait. Days were devoted to recovering from hangovers, nights reserved for binging on expensive booze and cheap women, both of which I found in abundance in South Beach, my new haunt.

That's where Maxie Rael found me. My half-brother, who I never knew existed, had been sent by my estranged father to bring me back to Scotland.

The aforementioned five-star resort known today as Nessie's Retreat had been Angus Wallace's idea, and my father rarely met an idea (or a woman, for that matter) that he didn't fall in love with. The Wallace clan had left him t.i.tle to prime real estate just south of Urquhart Bay and once the zoning laws had been manipulated in his favor, Angus wasted no time in selling the water-front property to John Cialino of Cialino Ventures the two partners intent on bringing luxury accommodations to the Scottish Highlands. Then one fateful afternoon during the construction phase, my father and Johnny C. became engaged in a heated argument on Urquhart bluff, and before you could say Yer b.u.m's oot the windae! Angus struck his younger partner with a right cross, sending Johnny's a.r.s.e (and the rest of him) into Loch Ness never to be seen alive again.

While I was struggling to survive my own post-traumatic symptoms in Miami Beach, Angus was locked away in a Highland prison cell awaiting his murder trial. Maxie had been sent to bring me to Scotland so that my estranged father would have both his sons by his side in the fight to stave off the gallows and prove his innocence.

Seventeen years away from the old man and I fell for his lies hook, line and sinker.

It was all part of a well-orchestrated plan intended to save my father's neck, jumpstart his new venture, and force me to face the demons of my past all by placing my head in his noose.

That noose unexpectedly tightened when the creature's temperament suddenly changed.

TWO YEARS HAVE pa.s.sed. With my demons exorcized, I felt free to marry my childhood sweetheart Brandy MacDonald, a dark-haired beauty with piercing blue eyes and a body that could have landed her in any swimsuit catalogue. Our son, William Wallace, named after our legendary ancestor, was born last year. Last summer, Nessie's Retreat, bankrolled by Angus's lover, Theresa (Johnny C's widow) opened to great fanfare.

Ten months later and the resort and Drumnadrochit are both on the verge of bankruptcy.

Don't get me wrong the hotel is first-cla.s.s, every one of its three-hundred and thirty-six rooms featuring a balcony-view of Loch Ness, each of its third-floor luxury suites equipped with a fireplace, sauna, and Jacuzzi.

The problem no monster.

Loch Ness without its legendary creature was just a peat-infested twenty-three mile-long deepwater trough filled with water far too cold to swim in or jet-ski on. And it wasn't just Angus's hotel that was hurting. Without Nessie, all of the Highland villages had become dest.i.tute the vacation equivalent of Orlando without Disneyworld and its other local theme parks. Of course, Orlando was a modern city located in sunny Florida. The Scottish Highlands were an isolated cold weather region with seasons more akin to living in Alaska. Centuries ago, the Highlanders worked the land to feed and clothe themselves, now the villages were committed to tourism. It was the feast of summer that got them through the famine of a long winter, and the sudden collapse of the Highlanders' livelihood threatened a cultural and economic collapse.

Something similar had happened to the Inuit. Living in sub-zero temperatures in North America's Arctic Circle, the indigenous Eskimo population had thrived for centuries until the Canadian Provincial government started regulating their game. Widespread unemployment led to a sense of powerlessness. As I had learned myself, nothing attracts a fallen soul more than booze. Alcohol addictions became rampant in the Innu villages. Teens saw their parents losing hope; they too grew depressed and started sniffing gasoline in order to get high a lethal habit.

Suicide rates among the Innu remain some of the highest in the world.

Concerned over the state of its villages and the economic toll they were taking on the capital city of Inverness, the Highland Council had been holding monthly "brainstorming" sessions to figure out how to bolster tourism for the coming season. My father attended these meetings along with Brandy's father, Alban, and her big brother my boyhood friend, Finlay "True" MacDonald. The imposing big man with the auburn ponytail served as master of arms. Although the meetings were open to the public, True's Do Not Allow To Enter list had but one name on it . . . mine.

In the span of two years, I had gone from local hero to persona non grata. With tourism down, hundreds of villagers faced the prospect of not being able to feed their families without government subsidies and I soon felt the wrath of their anger. Why couldn't Wallace have subdued the creature without vanquis.h.i.+ng it in the public eye? Had he no respect for the legend?

As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

By December, I had become a hated man and was forced to move my wife and young son from our once rent-free cottage into the near-vacant resort. I no longer visited Sniddles or Drumnadrochit's other watering holes, preferring the hermit-like quiet of Nessie's Lair, the resort's closed restaurant and pub.

To make matters worse Brandy and I were fighting, most of our arguments dealing with monetary issues. For nearly a year I had earned a good living traveling the world with my pregnant wife, signing books at sold-out appearances where I'd tell enraptured audiences how I had battled a sixty foot barbed-toothed species the Navy had nicknamed the bloop and our Highland ancestors had called Guivres. But fame is fleeting, and my fifteen minutes in the limelight faded quickly thanks to a myriad of YouTube videos overexposing my tale.

Having gone through most of our savings, we were hurting financially like the rest of the Highlanders.

Unlike the villagers, I had options lucrative offers for me to teach and complete research at major universities. The problem was Brandy. Her father, Alban had recently been diagnosed with ALS and his health was deteriorating. Having just reconciled her relations.h.i.+p with the Crabbit, Brandy refused to abandon him in his hour of need and the old fart was not about to leave the Highlands to relocate to California or New York, or heaven-forbid London. "Lad, yer aff yer heid iffin ye think me or my la.s.s will move tae b.l.o.o.d.y England!"

A quick word about my lovely wife. Brandy MacDonald-Wallace was as beautiful as she was loyal; she had already gotten into two fistfights with locals who had the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks to criticize her husband and his work. And yet as the days of winter grew shorter, her opinion of me changed.

"Been o'er to the neebs, Zach. There's bairns bein' put tae bed hungry. Instead o' grabbin' yer daily nips and starin' at the loch every day, why dinnae ye use that big ol' brain o' yers and figure oot a way tae lure another monster into the Ness."

"We've been over this, Brandy. Nessie grew big because she was trapped in Loch Ness and couldn't return to the Sarga.s.so to sp.a.w.n. It was a freak situation one in a million. There's none like her out there anymore. And even if there was, the tourists flocked to Loch Ness to see a plesiosaur, not a predatory fish that went insane due to hydrocarbon poisoning."

"Zach, don't git yer panties in a ball. Ye dinnae have tae lure a real monster; ye could jist claim tae find clues. Tracks in the mud "

"Or how about a half-eaten deer with a plesiosaur tooth lodged in its rib?"

"No one's askin' ye tae go Nessie hunting. A few white lies and ye could jumpstart tourism again. Ye could save Drumnadrochit."

"A few white lies? Brandy, I'm a scientist a respected marine biologist, not a cryptozoologist or some headline seeker feeding fake monster stories to the news tabloids. Do you want to destroy everything that I worked for?"

"There's weans goin' hungry, Zach. What if it were yer son . . . yer kin? They're starving because o' ye bein' such a great and respected marine biologist."

"You're blaming me? Brandy, the d.a.m.n thing killed three people!"

"Aye. And far more will go hungry this winter because of yer heroics. You really want tae be a hero make things right again."

"You've been talking to Angus, haven't you? Brandy, what you're asking for I can't do it; it goes against my morals. My father, on the other hand, would sell his sons' souls to the devil if it meant filling his resort to capacity."

"And tae whit devil have ye sold yer soul, Zachary Wallace? The one who feeds yer own ma.s.sive ego?"

That conversation took place in late December. It was the last time we spoke civilly to one another . . . the last time we made love.

I shouldn't have been surprised. Brandy was a MacDonald after all, as loyal to her clan and to their own thousand year old history as I was to maintaining my high academic standards It was mid-March when history came calling again . . .

NESSIE'S LAIR WAS located on the third floor of my father's resort. After sleeping off a bad hangover, I entered the restaurant at half past three in the afternoon. The chamber was dark, the only light coming from the floor to ceiling windows which offered a breathtaking view of Loch Ness and the snow-covered peaks of the Monadhlian mountains rising along the far eastern bank.

The closed venue and its abundance of liquor was a dangerous place for a former alcoholic to be contemplating his future. Dark thoughts entered my head, its seeds growing roots. There was nothing for me in the Highlands, no social life, no career, no future. I felt unloved, unappreciated, and rudderless; only the hours spent playing with my infant son had brought me a respite from my sadness.

Brandy was barely civil. Having been through one bad marriage that led to a divorce, I wouldn't have been surprised if she had already filed papers with a local solicitor.

Her cold mind set forced me to make a tough decision to get on with my life. If my happiness and self-worth resided outside the Great Glen, then I would follow that road and see where it took me . . . even if it meant leaving my family.

The career decision came first. I had narrowed my job offers down to Cambridge and Scripps Inst.i.tute. The former would allow me to visit my family on weekends; the latter paid better. In truth, I was more enticed by the work at Scripps, but the importance of being there for William of being a better father to my son than Angus had been to me overruled my own needs.

I was about to place a call to Professor John Rudman, the director of Cambridge's department of oceanography when Brandy entered the restaurant, accompanied by four strangers three men in their thirties and an exotic Asian woman dressed in a tight-fitting black silk dress.