War of the Whales Read Online Free Page A

wounds, but found none. Then she unrolled the large blue tarp. She and Balcomb and Ellifrit drew the edge of the tarp underneath the whale’s head. As the Earthlings rocked the whale from side to side, they worked the tarp up under his trunk.
    Ellifrit handed out driftwood clubs to three of the bravest-looking souls and hefted one himself. “Beat the water in front of the whale as we move him out,” Balcomb directed them. “Dave will show you how. Fan out in a semicircle. The sharks aren’t interested in you, unless your feet are bleeding, so check them now for cuts, and watch out for the coral.”
    Ellifrit led the three Earthlings out into the water, thrashing the surface as hard as they could and shouting as they went. Claridge and Balcomb, alongside four more Earthlings, grabbed hold of the blue tarp.
    “Now lift and drag,” Claridge commanded. “Just a few feet at a time.” The tarp made a nasty tearing sound against the coral. “I said
lift
!”
    In a moment, they were off the ledge and half hauling, half floating the whale through the shallows. The kayakers beat their paddles in the water to disrupt the sharks, which scattered, then quickly regrouped. The sharks maintained a constant distance, circling and darting in feints toward the whale, but eventually giving way in front of the V formation of wildly thrashing beaters. The kayaks fell in beside the tarp bearers, creating a floating barrier between the sharks and the whale.
    When they pulled the tarp out from under the whale, he listed slowly to the left. Balcomb and Claridge propped him up on opposite sides, as if he were a drunken sailor.
    “What do you think?” she asked.
    “Seems kind of wobbly,” he said. “But he’s not bleeding. Anyway, we’re out of time.”
    “Right. Let’s give him a go, then.”
    They eased him ahead into open water. The whale hung in the water, not moving forward, but not listing to the side, either. Ellifrit ran over and gave him a final shove from behind. “Get outahere!”
    The whale moved his fluke weakly up and down, ducked his head, and dove. Balcomb held his breath as he watched him fluking away in the direction of the canyon. It occurred to him that he’ d never seen a beaked whale swim in the shallows, until today. Was that a normal fluking action? Was he actually heading back to the canyon, or was he simply swimming away from the commotion of sharks and humans?
    He waited and watched. Nothing. Nothing was good.
    Claridge tugged at his T-shirt. “Let’s get out of the water,” she said.
    They didn’t talk on the short drive back to the house. It was past 1:00 p.m., and Claridge was fielding calls on the truck’s VHF radio. Reports were still coming in of other strandings on nearby cays. Two whales, probably minkes, had stranded alive near Royal Island, 25 miles to the southeast. A beaked whale mother and calf had come ashore two hours ago on a small cay near Grand Bahama, 60 miles northwest of their house. The calf was already dead. It was unprecedented—and unexplainable.
    Balcomb knew it was time to make a call.
     
    * More than 25 percent of the 78 whale species are beaked whales, though only a few species of beaked whales have been well studied.

    2
    Castaways
    DAY 1: MARCH 15, 2000, 1:30 P.M.
    Sandy Point, Abaco Island, the Bahamas
    Back in the house at Sandy Point, Balcomb rifled his desk drawers for Bob Gisiner’s business card. He distinctly remembered Gisiner handing him his Office of Naval Research card at the Society for Marine Mammalogy conference in Maui, Hawaii, back in December. Balcomb had thrown it into some drawer along with all the other cards he collected that week. Now where was it?
    Balcomb wasn’t used to reaching out for help. He always fixed his own cars and boats when they broke. Money was chronically tight, but he managed to keep his boats gassed up and in the water. A couple of wealthy donors had helped along the way with the gift of a survey boat and a down payment