The Trench

by Steve Alten

  “And I’m saying, fuck you. It’s taken me twenty minutes to collect these samples and I’ll be damned if we’re going anywhere before I secure the bucket back on board.”

  Arie moved to the sonar console, staring at the three images. He thought back to his training sessions. Were Megalodons pack hunters?

  “Maybe it’s just a school of fish,” Linda suggested. “Try to stay calm—”

  “A school of fish? Stick to geology, Linda. Sonar indicates that these things are more than forty feet long. Out of my way—”

  Barry ignited the lateral thrusters. Steady. Not too fast. Don’t hit anything, or you’ll rupture the hull. The sub spun counterclockwise. A bone-rattling jolt shook the Proteus.

  “Goddamn it, Leace,” Ellis yelled. “You nearly tore the mechanical arm off. I just lost every sample.”

  “I told you to retract the arms.” Barry accelerated the Proteus to its top speed of 1.8 knots. He knew the Benthos was moving toward them, somewhere out there in the darkness.

  The blips grew stronger.

  ETA thirty-two minutes, Arie thought. We’re too far out....

  “Captain, listen to me,” Linda said, grabbing his arm. “They’re not sharks.”

  Barry stared ahead. “So, you’re a biologist now?”

  “I think Linda is right,” Arie said, trying to reason with his own fear.

  “Listen, Habash, whatever these things are, they’re a helluva lot bigger and a helluva lot faster than the Proteus.”

  The blips grew faster; Arie’s heart raced to keep pace.

  “This is absurd,” Ellis said.

  Barry ignored him and leaned forward, staring through the porthole into the abyss. The smoke rising from the hydrothermal vents made it difficult to see beyond the perimeter. He shielded his eyes and strained to focus.

  Long minutes passed in silence.

  A darting movement ahead. Another to starboard. Very swift. Very large.

  “They’re here,” the captain whispered, a lump in his throat. Fast fuckers . . .

  For a long moment, no one said a word, the only sounds coming from the Proteus’s propeller.

  With a sudden jolt, the sub pitched to starboard. Barry crashed face first into his console.

  “What’s happening?” Ellis asked. “What did you hit?”

  “I didn’t hit anything. They hit us.” Barry struggled with the navigational controls. “She’s not responding. . . something’s wrong.”

  “Shhh. Listen,” Linda whispered.

  From above their heads they heard a faint sound—metal groaning.

  “Oh, Christ, one of them is on top.”

  Arie listened at sonar, studying the screen.

  “Leace, do something,” Ellis ordered.

  “Hold on.” The pilot swung the submersible hard to port, then back to starboard, trying to shake the creature off.

  “Captain, stop,” screamed Linda. “That plate’s loosening!”

  The sound of grinding metal screeched along the top of the hull. The pilot reached up and touched one of the titanium rivets welded into the plate above his head. He felt moisture and tasted his fingers. “Seawater,” he moaned. He leaned forward, praying for the Benthos to appear in his view port.

  The sound of shearing metal grated in their ears as the Proteus dipped sideways.

  “Son of a bitch.” The captain wiped the sweat from his face. “They’re tearing the fucking tail fin loose.”

  Linda pushed her face against her view port. “Where’s the Benthos?”

  Something huge broadsided the sub, hurtling stacks of recording equipment against the far wall.

  “Captain, I think I know what they’re doing,” Arie shouted. “The two smaller ones are driving us to their larger companion.”

  “These things are intelligent?”

  “Look!” Linda yelled, pointing out the porthole.

  Barry could just make out an ominous shape moving toward them. “It’s the Benthos—”

  “You don’t have time to dock,” Arie warned. “Signal the Benthos to open the hangar doors!”

  “It takes five minutes to flood the chamber,” Linda shouted.

  The pilot grabbed the radio. ‘Mayday . . . Mayday . . . Benthos, this is Proteus, request you open hangar doors immediately—”

  “Proceed to docking area, Proteus—”

  “Goddamn it, open the fucking hangar doors, now—”

  Standing beneath the loosening rivets, arms above his head, Arie Levy felt the titanium plate reverberate against his sweating palms. “Whatever these things are, they’re tearing this entire section loose—”

  A whistling sound infiltrated the cabin.

  “What’s that?” the team leader whispered.

  Barry Leace looked up. “We’re losing integrity of the plates.”

  “Captain,” Arie yelled, “the third creature—”

  A tremendous force struck the sub’s bow, flinging Linda and Ellis to the floor. Barry Leace plunged over his navigation console, his head striking the view-port glass. Blood flowed from his brow. He wiped it clear, staring in horror.

  A luminous crimson eye peered in through the glass.

  Arie pushed his palm futilely against the titanium plate reverberating above his head. He thought about the information he had fought so long to acquire but had not been able to report. He thought about his wife and children, whom he had forsaken in the line of duty.

  The whistling sound above his head ceased. A pair of twisted rivets spit into the cabin like five-caliber machine-gun slugs.

  The MOSSAD agent’s head imploded before the rivets hit the floor.

  Waking Nightmare

  Flickering sunlight penetrated the gray-green depths. Jonas Taylor plunged nose cone first into the void, struggling to draw breaths, his chest constricted, his throat burning. He opened his eyes wide, pressing his hands against the LEXAN pod.

  The ocean turned black. He continued descending, spiraling downward into the gorge, all the while searching the darkness below.

  A swirling vortex of soot appeared in the sub’s headlights. An object rose out of the muddied current, another LEXAN pod. His light revealed a woman’s body lying inside. Her face was obscured in shadows, but Jonas could make out her long black hair flowing like silk. For a brief moment he caught a glimpse of her dark almond eyes—vacant eyes staring through him.

  Terry . . .

  He accelerated toward her, the sub barely moving, struggling against a strong current. He screamed her name again, a feeling of dread washing over him.

  From the swirling current of debris behind her, a luminescent glow appeared. The unearthly light turned Terry’s features to gray silhouette.

  Jonas stopped breathing as Angel’s monstrous head appeared. The demonic grin cracked open, a cavernous mouth revealing a stretch of pink gums and rows of serrated triangular teeth.

  Jonas tried to scream, but had no mouth.

  Her eyes flashed open in recognition—and fear.

  “Jonas,” she whispered—as the beast took the entire pod into its mouth.

  * * *

  “Jonas.”

  “No!” Jonas shot upright in bed, his chest heaving, his hands shaking uncontrollably.

  “Honey, it’s okay, it’s okay.” Terry sat up, stroking his hair, her own heart racing following her husband’s sudden screams.

  Morning sunlight streamed through the wooden shutters, illuminating the familiar bedroom as Jonas came out of the night terror. He turned and kissed Terry’s hand.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded, struggling to find his voice.

  “Was it the same dream? The one where you’re back in the Trench?”

  “Yes.” Jonas lay back in bed, allowing his wife to use his chest as a pillow. He stroked her long silky black hair, then let his hand drift down the small of her back to her smooth bare behind.

  “It isn’t getting better,” she said. “You should see Dr. Wishnov before you give me a heart
attack.”

  “Posttraumatic stress disorder—I already know what he’ll tell me. He’ll tell me to quit the Institute.”

  “Maybe you should. Four years studying that monster is enough to give anyone nightmares, especially after all you’ve been through.”

  The ring of the phone made them both jump. They smiled at each other. “Guess we’re both a little on edge,” Jonas said.

  She rolled over and snuggled naked against him. “Don’t answer it.”

  Jonas pulled her close, nuzzling her neck as he ran his hands across her breasts.

  The phone continued ringing.

  “Goddamn it.” Jonas grabbed the receiver. “Yes?”

  “Doc, it’s Manny. Sorry to bother you, but I think you ought to get back to the lagoon.”

  The tone of his assistant’s voice caused Jonas to sit up. “What’s the problem?”

  “It’s Angel. Something’s wrong with her. You’d better get down here.”

  Jonas felt his heart pounding in his throat. “Give me twenty minutes.” He hung up, then slipped out of bed to get dressed.

  “Jonas, what is it?”

  He turned to his wife. “Manny says something’s wrong with the female. I have to go—”

  “Hon, take it easy. Maybe you should eat something, you look as pale as a ghost.” To her surprise, he stopped getting dressed and sat down on the edge of the bed to hug her.

  “I love you,” he whispered.

  “I love you, too. Jonas, tell me what’s wrong? I can feel your arms trembling.”

  “I don’t know. I think I just had déjà vu, like my absolute worst nightmare is about to become real.”

  * * *

  It had been eleven years since Jonas Taylor had first encountered Carcharodon megalodon, the fiercest predator ever to have lived. He had been nearly seven miles down in the Mariana Trench, the deepest and most unexplored location on the planet, piloting the Navy’s three-man submersible, the Seacliff. On the last of the top-secret dives, the exhausted argonaut had been staring into the pitch-black waters below when the unearthly white glow had appeared. Mesmerized by what he first took to be an aberration, he quickly found his thoughts turning to fear as the sixty-foot Great White shark’s luminescent torpedo-shaped head began rising at them from the depths, the demonic smile opening to reveal seven-inch teeth.

  A primordial panic had seized him, changing his life forever. Disregarding protocol, he had jettisoned the vessel’s ballast and raced the sub back to the surface, the rapid rise causing a malfunction in the pressurization system. Both scientists aboard the sub had died, and Jonas’s career as an argonaut was over. Or so he had thought.

  Over the next seven years, Jonas became obsessed with proving to the world that the creature really existed. Returning to school, he earned advanced degrees in paleo-biology while his first wife supported them. Research over the mysterious disappearance of the Megalodon species soon led to a controversial theory and several publications. Jonas surmised that many of the prehistoric Great White sharks had migrated to the warmer abyssal waters of the Mariana Trench in order to avoid the cold surface temperatures brought about by the last Ice Age. Despite the scientific basis for his conclusions, his research was dismissed by colleagues as utter fantasy, his papers banned from many institutions.

  Four years later, the opportunity to return to the Mariana Trench was offered by Masao Tanaka, an old friend and mentor. The founder of the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute had not been interested in Megalodons or Jonas’s theories about the creature’s possible existence. Masao was building an artificial lagoon off the Monterey coast, a man-made habitat in which to study whales. To finance the project, he had entered into a joint-venture agreement with the Japanese government to deploy an array of seismic detection robots, called Unmanned Nautical Information Submersibles (UNIS), along the floor of the Mariana Trench. Something had gone wrong with several of the devices, and Masao needed Jonas’s assistance in order to retrieve one of the instruments. At first, the former deep-sea pilot had refused, unable to face his fear. But with his first marriage falling apart and his career in disarray, the thought of redemption became too seductive to pass up.

  And then there was Terry.

  Masao Tanaka’s only daughter was as beautiful as she was rebellious. If Jonas would not accompany her brother on the mission, she would go in his place. And so Jonas had returned to the gorge, this time descending in a one-man submersible. Once more, fate would deem that he cross paths with one of nature’s most prolific killing machines. Tanaka’s son died within one of the creatures’ jaws, while another, a huge pregnant female, managed to rise from its purgatory in the depths. In the end, Jonas had been forced to kill the very creature he had wanted to save, his heroics becoming the stuff of legend. Once the target of ridicule and scorn among his peers, the paleontologist suddenly had his career vindicated, and literally overnight became an international celebrity: The man who cut the Meg’s heart out. Talk shows, television specials, reporters—it seemed everyone wanted a piece of him—as well as a peek at the female Megalodon pup that had been captured within the Tanaka lagoon.

  He and Terry had wed. Masao Tanaka made his new son-in-law a partner at the Institute, and a year later, the most popular live exhibit in the world had opened for business in Monterey.

  But fame is fleeting, and celebrity, with all its perks, also makes one an easy target. Eight months after the lagoon had opened, Jonas and the Tanaka Institute found themselves defendants in a $200-million class-action lawsuit, filed by grieving relatives of those who had perished within the jaws of the Megalodon. Terry was four months pregnant when the trial began, a media frenzy rivaling that of the O.J. Simpson hearings:

  “Would you explain to the court, Professor Taylor, why you risked so much to capture a creature we’ve heard described as the most dangerous predator of all time?”

  “We had the means to contain the Megalodon and study it.”

  “Tell us, Professor, when you had actually succeeded in sedating and capturing the monster in your cargo net, did you ever consider killing it?”

  “No. We had it under control. There was no reason—”

  “No reason? Isn’t it more accurate to say that you and the Tanaka Institute simply made a business decision not to kill it? Money, Professor, it was all about money, wasn’t it? You decided not to slay the goose when you had ample opportunity to do so, only because you wanted its golden eggs. In the end, your greed cost innocent people their lives. And now, the offspring of the creature that violently slaughtered my clients’ loved ones is reaping millions of dollars in profits for the Tanaka Institute. Is that your idea of justice, Professor?”

  In the end, the jury had awarded damages exceeding everyone’s expectations. When the courts refused their appeals, the Tanaka Institute had been forced into bankruptcy. Then, out of the blue, the Japanese Marine Science Technology Center (JAMSTEC), which had first lured Masao Tanaka into the Mariana Trench, offered the Institute a way out of their financial fix. Concerned about the rise in seismic activity along the Philippine and Pacific tectonic plates, the Japanese once again gave the Tanaka Institute an opportunity to deploy an entire array of UNIS robots along the Mariana Trench floor. The contract was lucrative, but the dangers of returning to the abyss forced Masao Tanaka to seek the help of billionaire energy mogul Benedict Singer, who was in the midst of constructing his own fleet of deep-sea submersibles to explore the world’s trenches. A partnership was formed and Masao was forced to give up controlling interest of his beloved Institute in order to fulfill the JAMSTEC contract and keep the doors of his attraction open.

  * * *

  Jonas drove past the giant billboard advertisement of the Meg: “SEE ANGEL—NATURE’S MOST PROLIFIC KILLING MACHINE. THREE SHOWS DAILY.” He turned down the employee access road, waved to the guard, then pulled into his parking spot.

  The haunting sound of baritone drums began pounding from the loudspeakers of the outdoor arena. He checked his watc
h and saw that the ten o’clock show was moments away from starting.

  Viewed from above, the man-made Tanaka lagoon appeared as an oval lake surrounded by a concrete arena, which ran along the shoreline of the Pacific ocean. Connecting this enormous aquarium to the sea was an eighty-foot-deep, thousand-foot-long channel at the midpoint of the lagoon’s western wall. Consisting of two concrete seawalls running parallel to each other, the canal was cut off from the ocean by a set of mammoth double doors of reinforced steel, which prevented the lagoon’s star attraction from escaping.

  As Jonas entered the ten-thousand-seat stadium, a hush fell over the impatient capacity crowd. All eyes, all camera lenses, turned to focus on the south side of the aquarium where a five-hundred-pound headless carcass of beef was now being attached to a thick chain dangling from an enormous A-frame. Somewhere deep within the three-quarter-mile lagoon, still remaining out of sight, lurked Angel, the monster they had paid theater-ticket money to catch a glimpse of. The moment they had waited for would soon be upon them. Breakfast was being served.

  Jonas followed the arena’s circular walkway until he came to the concrete platform supporting the steel winch. He glanced up to see his assistant, Manny Vazquez, swing the raw carcass carefully into position above the tranquil blue water.

  Below the concrete platform was a steel door marked “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” Jonas noticed that the steel safeguard protecting the locking mechanism had been partially pried back. Damn kids . . . He made a mental note to have it repaired, then unlocked the door and entered the dank stairwell, slamming the door closed behind him.

  Jonas inhaled the familiar cool dampness, taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He descended the two flights of stairs slowly, the voodoolike drumbeats growing fainter as he moved deeper into the bowels of the facility.

  The stairwell emptied into a subterranean semicircular corridor that ran along the southern circumference of the enormous tank. Eerie reflections of blue-green light illuminated an otherwise dark passage. Jonas moved slowly to the source of the light, turning to face the fifteen-foot-high, six-inch-thick LEXAN bay aquarium windows.