The Trench

by Steve Alten

  Terry felt the security door crushing her rib cage when the pressure ceased, the door retreating away from her face. Without hesitation, she slipped inside, the door locking into place behind her.

  She had entered a large lounge. To her left, several chairs and sofas faced a big-screen television and VCR. To her right, a kitchenette with sink, microwave, and refrigerator. Directly ahead was a closed door.

  She pulled it open gently. A blast of humidity hit her square in the face. To her surprise, she found herself standing in a large locker room. Sinks and toilets to her left, lockers on the right, a passage leading into the showers directly ahead.

  She heard men’s voices in the showers.

  Terry exited the locker room, only to hear the familiar buzz of the steel security door reopening. Racing back into the locker room, she ducked into one of the toilet stalls and locked the door. Heart racing, she sat on the seat, drawing her feet up to her chest, praying that no one would notice her.

  Several minutes passed. Terry heard the slapping of bare feet against tile. Peering through the crack between the door and frame, she saw a naked man standing directly in front of her stall, facing the sinks. Dark-complexioned, with thick mats of black hair along his back, he turned on the water and proceeded to shave. Another man spoke to him in Arabic from the changing area.

  The Arab finished shaving and moved out of sight. The men continued speaking, occasionally laughing. Moments later, Terry heard them exit the locker room through the lounge door.

  She waited another few minutes. Then, drenched in sweat, she opened the stall door and tiptoed out of the bathroom. The locker room was empty, but she could hear the television playing in the lounge.

  Damn . . .

  Trapped, she walked past the shower stalls, entering a small alcove ending at a watertight door mounted within a framework of rubber insulation. Above the door was a white sign with red lettering, its message written in English, Russian, German, and Arabic:

  “WARNING: ALL PERSONNEL MUST SHOWER BEFORE ENTERING LAB.”

  Terry pulled hard on the door, which opened outward, a powerful hiss of air pushing at her back. What kind of lab is designed to prevent air from escaping? Is Benedict dealing with viruses?

  She stepped into an antechamber, which appeared to be a changing area. White tile lined the floor, walls, and ceiling. Stacks of fresh towels sat on shelves above two large laundry baskets and a row of benches. Suspended from hooks were dozens of pressurized bodysuits.

  At the end of the room was another pressurized door with a warning sign posted above it:

  “NO ONE MAY ENTER TOKAMAK LAB WITHOUT A PRESSURIZED SUIT.”

  Sweat poured down her face, her nerves quivering from the tension. She swore at herself, wishing she had remained in her room. She also realized she should have urinated while in the bathroom stall.

  You came this far. Finish it.

  Searching the racks, she located one of the smaller pressurized suits and laid it on the floor. Removing her shoes, she stepped into the suit, slipping her feet into the attached rubber boots. Pulling the rest of the bulky suit onto her shoulders, she tucked her shoes into her jogging-suit pockets, then slid her arms into the sleeves, struggling to push her fingers all the way into the attached rubber gloves.

  Terry reached behind her neck and pulled the hooded headpiece into place, then zipped the front of the suit up. A popping sound filled her ears. The faceplate steamed up, blinding her. She unzipped the suit, gasping, then noticed an orange hose attached to a machine along one wall. Resealing the zipper, she grabbed the end of the hose and connected it to a valve on her suit.

  A rush of air filled her ears as the suit inflated around her, clearing her faceplate. She detached the hose, then opened the pressurized door and stepped inside.

  Terry gawked at her new surroundings. She was on a narrow catwalk towering five stories above a vast interior that spanned the entire forward compartment of the Goliath. What had once been vertical launching silos had been gutted out, creating a ten-thousand-square-foot high-tech chamber, the centerpiece of which was an enormous object, shaped like a giant metallic ring.

  Terry gripped the rail in front of her, unsure of what to do next.

  Two technicians exited the strange object. Both wore pressurized suits and air tanks. One looked up in her direction. Terry waved and they moved on. She proceeded down the spiral flight of stairs, wondering how she had gotten herself into this mess.

  She approached the doughnut-shaped vacuum chamber, an enormous circular tube of steel towering twenty feet above the floor. Thick copper coils encircled its outer hull. Numerous cables ran from the machine, attaching to computer terminals and high-tech equipment situated around the perimeter. Within the farther recesses of the lab were massive generators, their deep thrumming sounds causing the steel floor to vibrate beneath her feet.

  Terry looked around. The two technicians were nowhere to be seen. She located a computer terminal whose monitor was on and sat down, engaging the mouse. A program menu appeared:

  GTI TOKAMAK

  Alpha particles Electromagnetic Force

  H-mode Ionization Chamber

  Magnetic Well Neutral Beam Injectors

  Neutron Energy Particle-in-cell (PIC)

  Absorber Program

  Passive safety systems Poloidal Field Plasma

  Primary Transformer Current

  Superconducting Reactor Fuels: Deuterium

  Magnets Tritium

  Target chamber Toroidal Field Coils

  Turbulence Vacuum Vessel

  Terry looked up from the monitor. The technicians had returned and were staring at her from across the room. One motioned to the other. They approached.

  Terry stood, realizing that the air within her pressurized suit was diminishing. Walking casually toward the spiral staircase, she kept her head low to hide her face. The men followed her. Nearing the stairs, she broke into a run, climbing two steps at a time.

  Men’s voices shouted in her headpiece, first in Russian, then in English. “Whoever you are, stop now! Identify yourself.”

  Terry reached the catwalk, out of breath. She lunged for the pressurized door, her pursuers gaining on her. Passing through the changing area, she reached the pressurized door and pulled it open, stumbling awkwardly into the showers, her rubber boots skidding out from under her. She fell hard onto her back and slid across the wet floor.

  Russian voices filled her ears.

  Get up, girl—move your ass!

  Regaining her feet, Terry ran into the lounge. Four men, all dressed in surgical gowns, looked up from the television.

  Concealing her face with her gloved hands, Terry darted through the lounge to the security door, searching desperately for the means of opening it. She located a green button and pushed it as the Russian technicians came bolting out of the locker room.

  Terry squeezed through the door and ran through the connecting corridor. She pushed open the watertight door and ducked inside, smashing her forehead painfully against the steel casing. Slamming the door closed behind her, she secured the hatch as the Russian voices grew louder in her ears.

  As she dragged herself up two flights of stairs, Terry began stripping the pressurized suit from her body. Her lungs ached from the physical exertion; her heart pounded in her ears. At the top of the stairs, she reached for the remote control in her jogging suit, groaning as she felt it slip into her right boot.

  Terry could hear the Russian technicians panting in the headpiece’s earphones. Pulling her legs free of the pressurized suit, she reached into the boot for the remote, then pressed the green button. The hatch swung open above her head.

  The Russians pushed through the watertight door, ascending the stairs as Terry emerged on deck. She turned and sealed the hatch behind her, still dragging the pressurized suit.

  The drunk!

  She ran to the life rafts, relieved to find the man passed out on deck. She pulled his shoes off, then shoved his feet into the boots
, working the suit up his back.

  She heard the hatch opening.

  Terry shoved the man’s arms roughly into the suit’s sleeves as a half-dozen men emerged from the open hatch.

  She ducked behind the pile of rafts and looked around desperately. The foredeck was all open space. With nowhere to hide, she ran across the deck to the rail and climbed over, clenching the lowest of the three bars as she dangled precariously along the Goliath’s outer hull, forty feet above the dark Pacific.

  Men shouted. They had found the drunk.

  Terry pressed her bare feet against the cool steel plates. Hand over hand, she made her way aft along the hull; her goal, to make it to an immense steel turret, all that remained of one of the missile cruiser’s big guns.

  Her hands and feet were numb, her fingers too small to wrap completely around the rail. After twenty feet she had to stop. Pulling herself up, she squeezed between the railing, hearing men running on deck.

  Terry crawled along the outside of the turret, remaining out of sight. Now only forty feet of open deck lay between her and the ship’s superstructure.

  Crawling on hands and knees, she reached the maze of steel and climbed up to the next deck. Hearing activity below, she entered the ship, then ascended another level.

  Five minutes later she arrived at the entrance to C deck. Hearing voices, she peered around the corridor. Benedict Singer was in his bathrobe, speaking with the two Russian technicians from the lab. They were standing in front of her stateroom, glancing at her door.

  Terry hurried back outside and crawled along a narrow deck situated beneath her cabin. Looking up, she verified that the porthole of her stateroom was still open.

  Okay, you can do this.

  She jumped, wincing as her raw, numb fingers gained a grip along the outer edge of the open porthole. Pushing her feet against the rail to gain leverage, she shoved her head through the hole, the rest of her body still dangling outside.

  Her shoulders were too wide to squeeze through.

  She heard a knock on the door.

  Terry pulled her head out, slid one arm through the porthole, then pushed her head back through the opening. Wiggling and twisting her shoulders, she managed to squeeze inside, falling headfirst in a heap on the cabin floor.

  The knock came again, this time louder, more urgent.

  “Just a minute—”

  Terry closed the porthole, then stripped off her jogging suit. Naked, she tore a sheet off the bed and wrapped herself in it, concealing her bleeding fingers and dirty feet.

  She opened the door, feigning grogginess. “Is it time to leave already?”

  Benedict and the two technicians looked at her.

  “No, my dear, not yet,” Benedict said. “We had a little disturbance earlier and just wanted to make sure you were all right.”

  “What kind of disturbance?”

  His penetrating emerald eyes shot Terry an icy glare, then caught sight of the back wall. “It’s not important. Go back to bed.”

  Terry gave him a tired smile and closed the door. She paused to listen, hearing Benedict spout orders in Russian to his men before closing his own door. Satisfied, she limped over to her bed. She was cold, sore, and felt utterly exhausted.

  What was Benedict hiding?

  Too tired to care, she lay down, smiling at her own daring. Just before drifting off, she reached for a pen and pad of paper off the night table. She scrawled the word. “TOKAMAK,” then tore away the sheet, crumpling the paper into one of her shoes.

  A minute later, she fell into a restless sleep, unaware of the trail of black fingerprints she had left along the porthole wall.

  Unhinged

  Tanaka Oceanographic Institute

  Monterey, California

  “Did I mention that you’re out of your mind?” “Yes, Mac. Several times. Cut the engines. I don’t want to spook the Meg.”

  “Spook the Meg? Fuck the Meg, pal, you’re spooking the shit out of me.”

  Mac switched off the Mercury outboard, allowing the thirty-foot pontoon to drift toward the outer edge of the canal’s seawall. He reached out and grabbed the exposed ledge of the submerged concrete barrier, securing the flat-bottomed vessel against it.

  The design of the ocean-access canal consisted of an eighty-foot deep-dredged channel bordered by two concrete seawalls running parallel to each other, sixty feet apart. Running from the western wall of the lagoon, the canal extended like a highway off-ramp across a short stretch of beach, continuing out into the Pacific another thousand feet. The eighty-foot-high steel doors that sealed the canal were positioned at the three-quarter mark, seven hundred and fifty feet offshore.

  During low tides, the upper two to three feet of seawall were visible, resembling a narrow sidewalk running into the sea. But at high tide the wall became submerged, its presence identifiable only by a dozen orange buoys and signs warning trespassers away.

  Jonas pointed to a double helix of barbed wire mounted between the two seawalls. “The barbed wire marks the location of the gateway.”

  “Christ, here she comes,” said Mac. An eight-foot wake surged through the canal, heading for the barbed wire. With a resounding boom, the creature struck the doors, the impact unleashing powerful reverberations along both seawalls.

  Mac rubbed his hands nervously across his crew cut. “Damn, Jonas . . . are we safe sitting here?”

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  “You’ll be sure to let me know before your fish escapes, right? Just out of curiosity, which way were those gates designed to swing open?”

  “Fortunately, from the outside in. Masao originally designed them to lure migrating pregnant humpbacks and grays into the lagoon to breed. The doors are porous, so ocean water moves freely back and forth into the tank.”

  The distant sound of timpani drums echoed across the canal.

  “Afternoon show’s getting ready to start,” Jonas said. “I’d better get my gear on.”

  Mac watched his friend squeeze into the neoprene wet suit.

  “Jonas, I know life’s been shittin’ on your head of late, but what you’re about to do—well, it’s just fucking dangerous.”

  “If you know of another way to assess the damage to the gate, I’m all ears.”

  The squawk of the walkie-talkie interrupted them.

  “Go ahead, Manny.”

  “Doc, we just increased the underwater acoustics. I’ll let you know the moment she enters the canal.”

  “Thanks.”

  The drums grew louder. Jonas realized his heart was beating in sync with the voodoolike cadence.

  “Jonas, we’ve been friends for what, eleven years now, right? You know you’re my closest friend.”

  “Here I thought I was your only friend.” Jonas smiled. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Actually, it’s what’s on your mind that worries me. Terry’s right. You’ve become obsessed with this damn monster. Haven’t you had enough?”

  Jonas stared across the beachhead, focusing on the packed open-air arena. “More than enough.”

  “Then get out. I’ll bet these nightmares of yours go away within a week after you leave the Institute.”

  “I plan to, very soon. First, there’s still a thirty-one-ton loose end I need to tend to. Do you have that transmitter?”

  “Right here.” Mac removed a six-inch dartlike object from a tackle box. The casing of the object was no wider than a bullet. A four-inch barbed harpoon protruded from one end.

  “Seems kind of small. What’s its range?”

  “It varies, depending on ocean depth and topography. Figure three to five hundred miles. It emits a subaudible acoustics signal that can be instantly identified by SOSUS, allowing you to track your monster anywhere in the world.”

  Jonas inspected the instrument, impressed. SOSUS was the Navy’s $15-billion underwater sound-surveillance system, which for decades had been used exclusively to track enemy ships and submarines. Consisting of more than thirt
y thousand miles of undersea cable and microphones, the global array was now used by scientists to listen to whale song, monitor seaquakes, or detect icebergs cracking apart from thousands of miles away.

  Jonas handed the dart back to Mac. “How long will the batteries last?”

  “The transmitter contains a lithium primary battery along with a nickel-cadmium booster. You should be good for up to six months.”

  “Where’s the gun?”

  Mac removed a small handgun resembling a starter’s pistol from his jacket. He screwed a plastic adaptor into the end of the barrel, then loaded the transmitter within the adaptor, handing it to Jonas.

  “For a handgun, this weapon carries quite a kick. Be sure to aim and fire using both hands. Unfortunately, the gun only has an effective range of about a hundred yards. Beyond that, I doubt the transmitter would be able to pierce the Megalodon’s thick hide. If you give me another two weeks, I can come up with something that would attach to a rifle.”

  “We don’t have that much time. I want to tag her today.”

  “Doc, come in.”

  Jonas grabbed the walkie-talkie. “Go ahead, Manny.”

  “Angel just entered the lagoon. If you’re going to do this, you’d better move.”

  Jonas grabbed his fins. “Keep the boat here. I don’t want the Meg to see it when she returns. After I inspect the hinges, we’ll pull up along the outside of the canal and tag her.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Hey, Jonas, you know what the definition of a shithead is?”

  Jonas positioned his face mask, staring into the blue water. “No, what?”

  “A shithead’s a guy who sees a pile of shit on the ground, knows it’s shit, but steps in it anyway. Go play with your fucking shark, shithead.”

  Jonas looked back at his friend, then stepped off the boat. He plunged feetfirst, a curtain of bubbles momentarily blinding him as he fell into the turbid waters.

  Leveling out at thirty feet, he remained close to the interior of the seawall on his right, the concrete facing camouflaged behind a slick layer of vegetation. A strong current pushed him through the channel. Within moments he was at the gate.