Beckett awoke the next morning to the squawk of the intercom, “Beckett, you’re needed on deck.” He swung his legs down and jumped up, banging his head on the ceiling. He was too tall for this blasted ship.

He stepped out of the hatch and was momentarily blinded again, but there was frenetic, bordering on frantic movement. He rubbed his eyes and focused. Rebecca was leaned over a railing, straining. He called, “Rebecca, is everything okay?” She looked up, her face a grimace covered in tears and sweat. She was pulling at something below. He broke into a run, sliding to a stop beside her; she held a long metal tool of some kind, he reached down to help secure it.

Below them a gigantic whale’s tail was on the water’s surface. The body of the whale stretched away through the water, boggling Beckett’s mind with its scale. The ship’s inflatable Zodiac, holding Dr. Mags and Jeffrey, was beside the whale. Dan, in his scuba gear, was pulling at a thick rope tied fast around the whale’s tail. Dr. Mags screamed at Dan, “Hold it, hold it!”

Dan yelled up at Rebecca, “Steady!”

She said, “It’s stuck, I can’t—” Tears ran down her face.

Beckett’s heart raced.

Beckett helped her guide the metal tool straight down toward the tail, but it required an epic amount of strength to keep it still. The end of the stick had a curved blade. Beckett gathered that the blade was supposed to slice through the rope, but there wasn’t any way to get it to aim, or grab, or work.

Beckett called down, “It’s really hard to steady, Dan.”

Dan yelled up, “No shit!” as he struggled with the blade, attempting to hold it against the rope.

Sarah appeared at the railing with a second long pole.

Dan yelled, “Thanks, Babe!” and helped steer Sarah’s blade-end toward the rope.

Beckett asked, “You got it Sarah?”

“I don’t know.” Her arms shook as she held it as steady as she could. She yelled down, “Be careful! Don’t get cut—crap!”

Dan said, “It’s okay, I’m okay, just hold it still!”

Sarah said, “I can’t hold it!”

Beckett turned to help her, leaving Rebecca to try alone.

Dr. Mags called up, “If we don’t get this rope cut soon, it might go under, if it goes under we can’t do anything!”

Rebecca said, “No! We can’t, we have to!” Her arms strained with effort.

The rope was as thick as a man’s arm. It stretched out, wrapping around the front of the H2OPE, dragging the whale backwards. Beckett looked over his shoulder and saw the men from the bridge leaning over the opposite railing. One of them called, “I’m cutting the net, but you have to get it off the tail!”

The pole Beckett and Sarah held was impossible to aim, it swung maddeningly. Dan worked Sarah’s blade under the rope, but though she pulled, the rope was too thick to cut through.

Both knives needed to pull-slice-cut at the same time.

One more glance at Rebecca’s face—tears streaming down, and before he could think, Beckett climbed over the railing and scaled down the rope ladder to the frigid water. He dropped in right between the whale’s giant fluke and the ship.

Beckett’s elbows reflexively clamped to his side. Cold. Crap, it was very cold. His breaths were jagged and gulping, he took in a deep breath and held it, trying to calm his body. Treading water he carefully, cautiously placed his hand on the whale’s skin. Whoa.

Dr. Mags yelled from the Zodiac, “He’s scared and tired, but still alive.”

Beckett thought, That makes two of us. He grabbed, with his right hand, the sharp end of Rebecca’s pole, just above the blade. Then with his left hand he pulled at the rope. It didn’t budge. He attempted to steady the blade and slide it under the rope, but his left arm’s strength couldn’t give him a gap for the blade to hook under. He was fighting the tug of the (thankfully tired) trapped whale and the pull of the prow of the H2OPE and the sinking of the heavy rope. All forces with more power than he had, all pulling in opposite directions.

But he had to try again. With a surge he jerked up and yanked the blade down and just missed catching the knife edge under the rope. Crap!

He looked across the fluke at Dan. His blade was under the rope, but it still wasn’t cutting through. One more try. He met Dan’s eyes and together they pulled up and gained a small clearance. With his other arm Beckett steadied and finally hooked the curved barb under the rope—

“Pull up, pull up!” Beckett yelled.

“I’m trying!” called Rebecca.

Beckett grabbed the pole above the blade with both hands, then placed his feet against the side of the ship and shoved away, adding force and power to the blade’s pull and tear. The blade ripped through a quarter of the rope’s strands.

A cheer rose up from the Zodiac and onboard the ship.

Dan held the other blade the same way, and in unison he and Beckett put their feet on the ship, “One! Two! Three!” They shoved away yanking the knives against the rope. Beckett’s cut most of the way through, just a few strands left. He pulled the rope with his left hand toward the knife in his right hand with another, probably his last, surge of strength.

Finally, with a rip, the rope released.

It yanked from Beckett’s grip, burning across his left palm. At the same time the curved sharp knife sliced through Beckett’s right palm. Then the whale’s fluke flipped upward and splashed downward, so close to Beckett’s shoulder, that the force of it shoved Beckett down into the ocean. Deep below.

Beckett saw nothing but splash, felt nothing but searing pain in both hands and a pressure all around. Then he was deep. So deep that everything became quiet and calm. He opened his eyes to see the whale’s tail move up and down in the water, effortlessly, propelling itself in a big wide circle, until it’s head,

it’s eye,

slowly

looked at Beckett

and Beckett stared down deep into the whale’s eye.

One moment, eye to eye.

The hand crank on what made sense about the world stopped turning.

This was it.

That eye, that whale, looking right at Beckett.

Then the whale swam away, growing smaller and smaller, into the deep endless blue.

Beckett scratched for the surface.

Black neoprene-covered arms wrapped around his chest and pulled him up and he gained air just as his lungs wanted to give up.

Dan dragged him shoulders first into the inflatable boat. Someone tugged his legs aboard. Dr. Mags said, “His hand is bleeding, both his hands are bleeding. Tell Sarah I need my kit.”

Dan dropped into the water, swam three strokes, and climbed the ladder. “Doc needs the first aid kit.”

Jeffrey was beside Beckett his head bobbing, looking away, “You good man—you okay?”

Beckett nodded.

“You scared us, but man, you got through the rope, that was awesome.”

Beckett nodded again, then turned to the side and vomited sea water all over the bottom of the boat.