by Alten-Steve
"Captain," said the Chief. "Damage control says one screw is out, the other should be on-line within ten minutes. Emergency batteries only, sir."
"Torpedoes?"
"Still ready, sir."
"Flood torpedo tubes one and two, Chief. Sonar, I want to know when we have a firing solution."
The hull plates groaned again. Seawater suddenly sprayed into the control room.
"Sonar..."
"Sir?" the sonar man looked pale. "I think the Megalodon's attempting to bite through our hull!"
* * * * *
The Kiku arrived at the last known coordinates of the whaler; but without the support of the Meg, pushing from below, the Tsunami had gone under without a fight.
Jonas and Heller, dressed in life jackets and secured to the ship by lines around their waists, stood at the bow. Heller guided the searchlight. Jonas held the rifle loaded with the tracking dart in one hand, a life ring in his other. The Kiku rose wildly and fell, swells crashing over her bow, threatening to send both men into the sea.
"There!" Jonas pointed to starboard. Two men clung to what was left of the whaler's mast.
Heller aimed the light, then called Barre on his walkie-talkie. The bow swung hard to the right.
Jonas handed the rifle to Heller, held on to the rail, and threw the life ring toward the men. With the sea breaking in peaks and valleys and the Kiku bucking Jonas like a wild bronco, he could not tell whether the men could even see the flotation device, let alone reach it.
"Forget it, Taylor!" Heller yelled. "You'll never reach them!"
Jonas continued scanning the water as the bow dropped thirty feet, another swell rising ten yards away. The bow rose again and Jonas saw the light flash on the men. One was waving.
"Get some men as my rope's anchor!" Jonas screamed.
"What!"
The bow dropped and Jonas placed one foot onto the rail. As the ship rose again, he leaping into the maelstrom with all his strength. Propelled by the rising deck, Jonas flew into the sea, over and beyond the incoming swell. The icy water shocked his body, driving the breath from his chest, sapping his strength. He rose with the next wave, unable to see anything, and swam as hard as he could in the direction he prayed was correct.
Without warning, Jonas found himself plunging again in midair, then dropping into the sea. Swimming was not an option: he was being hurled up and down mountains of water. And then his head smashed into a hard object, blacking out his vision.
* * * * *
The Meg couldn't tell if the creature was alive. The piercing sound impulses had ceased. The strange fish seemed too large to grip in her mouth; her senses told her it was inedible. She circled again, occasionally trying to wrap her hyperextended jaws around the object, but the creature was simply too large. And then the Meg detected familiar vibrations along the surface.
* * * * *
"It's moving off, Captain!" the radar man pointed to his screen.
"Affirmative, sir" confirmed sonar. "She's headed back to the surface."
"Engines back on-line, Captain," reported Chief Heller. As if in response, the Nautilus leveled.
"That's my girl. Helm, bring us around, make your course zero-five-zero, up ten degrees on the planes, take us to one thousand feet. Chief, I want a firing solution on that monster. On my command, you start pinging again. When she descends to attack, I want hit her with both torpedoes!"
Heller looked worried. "Sir, engineering says the ship cannot withstand another collision. I strongly suggest we return to Pearl—"
"Negative, Mr. Heller. We end this now."
* * * * *
A hand grabbed Jonas by his collar and hung on. The senior lookout sputtered something in Japanese, obviously grateful. Jonas tried to look around. The second sailor was gone. He felt a strong tug on his waist. Heller and his men were pulling him back.
"Hold on!" Taylor grabbed the sailor from behind, and the two were dragged backward toward the Kiku.
* * * * *
The Meg locked in on the vibrations, rising fast at its prey. One hundred feet from its next meal, she heard the pinging again. The female could smell the warm blood, but he aggressive challenge of the vibrations overwhelmed her hunger. She wheeled around in a fluid motion, a white blur on course with its challenger.
* * * * *
"Six thousand yards and closing quickly, Captain," screamed sonar.
"Chief Heller, do we have a firing solution?"
"Yes, sir!"
"On my command..."
"Two thousand feet..."
"Steady, gentlemen."
"One thousand feet, sir!"
"Let her come in..."
"Sir, she's changed course!" Dennis Heller looked up frantically. "I lost her!"
Danielson ran to the console, sweat and thickening blood dripping down his face. "What happened?"
Sonar was bent over, cupping his ears, trying to hear. "Sir, she went deep. I can barely hear her... Wait, four thousand feet... Oh, shit, she's below us!"
"Full speed ahead!" ordered Danielson.
The crippled forty-year-old submarine lurched forward, struggling to reach a speed over ten knots. The Megalodon rose from below, homing again on what it perceived to be the creature's tail. Her snout impacted the steel plates at over thirty-five knots, puncturing the already stressed hull. The entire engine room was immediately vented to the sea.
The collision also ruptured the submarine's aft ballast tanks. As the keel of the Nautilus filled with seawater, the crew's environment shifted to a forty-five-degree tilt. The engine room was hardest hit. Assistant Engineer David Freyman tumbled backward in the dark. His head slammed hard against a control panel, knocking him unconscious. Lieutenant Artie Krawitz found himself pinned under a collapsed bulkhead, his left ankle shattered. As the engine room filled with water, he managed to free himself and crawl upward into the next compartment, sealing the watertight door seconds before the sea could rush in.
"Damage report!" commanded Danielson.
"Engine room flooded," said Chief Engineer Heller. "I can't—"
A loud wail and flashing red sirens cut Heller off.
"Core breach" he yelled. "Someone's got to shut it down."
"Helm, high-pressure air into the ballast tanks, put us on the ceiling. Heller, get down to the reactor room—"
"On my way!"
The Nautilus rose, still listing to starboard as she climbed at a forty-five-degree angle. Heller ran through a maze of absolute chaos. In every compartment, crew members attended to the wounded while attempting to staunch the flow of seawater spraying from a thousand leaks. At least half of the electrical consoles looked down.
Lieutenant Krawitz was frantically throwing switches, shutting down the nuclear reactor, when Heller entered the compartment. The chief finished the last three, then shut off the alarm.
"Report, Lieutenant."
"Four dead in here, a whole section of pipe collapsed on impact. Everyone and everything aft of the engine room is underwater."
"Radiation?"
The officer looked at his chief engineer. "Denny, this ship's over forty years old. We've lost the integrity of the hull, the steel plates are falling off like shingles. We'll drown before any radiation kills us.
* * * * *
Jonas was hauled on deck and carried into the pilothouse. A moment later, Frank Heller and his men dragged in the Japanese seaman.
"Taylor, are you insane?" screamed Heller.
"Frank, quiet," said DeMarco. "We're receiving a distress call from the Nautilus."
Heller strode into the command center. "Well?"
Bob Pasquale cupped his ears, trying to hear. "They're surfacing. No power. They need our assistance immediately!"
Captain Barre barked his orders to change course. The Kiku turned, fighting against the relentless twenty-foot swells.
* * * * *
David Freyman had regained consciousness, his face pressed hard against the watertight door where a small pocket
of air remained. The chamber was bathed in a red light. Blood gushed from his forehead.
As the Nautilus rose, debris began seeping out of the gap in the hull and into the Pacific. The Megalodon rose with the sub, snapping its jaws at anything that moved. The predator smelled the blood.
Driving her enormous head into the opening, the Meg began separating the already loose steel plates, enlarging the gap in the hull significantly. Her white glow suddenly illuminated the flooded compartment from below. The engineer put his face underwater, looked down... and screamed! The monster's nine-foot-wide jaws filled the entire compartment, the upper jaw pushed forward away from the head like something out of a 3-D horror film. The hideous triangular teeth were less than five feet away. Freyman felt his body being sucked into the vortex. He tore at the door, his screams muffled by the sea. Unable to stop his descent, he ducked his head down, inhaling the salt water deep into his lungs, struggling to kill himself before the nine-inch daggers reached him.
The female sucked his body into her mouth, crushing and swallowing it in one gulp. The warm blood sent her into a renewed frenzy. She shook her head, freeing herself from the opening, then circled again as the Nautilus burst through the surface waters.
* * * * *
"Abandon ship! All hands, abandon ship!" Captain Danielson barked his orders as the Nautilus tossed hard to starboard against the incoming swells.
Three hatches exploded open, water pouring into the hull, pink phosphorescent flares piercing the blackness. Three yellow rafts, eight feet in diameter, sprang to life. Minutes later, the survivors were aboard, struggling to maintain their balance against the raging sea. The Kiku was close, her spotlight now guiding the rafts.
Danielson was in the last raft. Bolts of lightning lit the seascape as he looked back at the Nautilus. Within seconds, the submarine was overcome by the sea. Her once-mighty bow rose out of the ocean, then another swell drove the ship toward her final resting place below the Pacific.
Flash. The first raft reached the Kiku, fifteen men scrambling up a cargo net along her starboard side. A swell slammed against the ship, lifting it high, then dropping it thirty feet. Flash. The force of the wave had pulled some of Danielson's crew back into the sea.
Jonas aimed the spotlight into the swell, locating a seaman. It was Dennis Heller. Frank saw his younger brother struggling to stay afloat less than fifteen feet from the Kiku and tossed the ring buoy as the second raft closed from behind.
Dennis grabbed at the life preserver and held on as his brother pulled him toward the Kiku. The crew from the second raft had climbed aboard, the last group now within ten feet of the ship. Dennis reached the net and began climbing. He was halfway up when his shipmates from the last raft joined him.
The Kiku rose straight up, the climbers holding on tightly as a mammoth wave lifted them with the ship. Frank Heller lay prone on deck beneath the rail, one hand holding the metal pipe, the other extending toward his brother, now only three feet away.
"Denny, give me your hand!" They touched momentarily.
Flash. The white tower rose straight out of the swell, grasping Dennis Heller in its jaws. Frank froze in place, unable to react as the tip of the snout passed less than a foot from his face. The Meg seemed to hang in midair, suspended in time. And then the monster slid back into the sea, dragging Dennis Heller backward with her.
"No, no, noooo!" Frank screamed, helpless. He stared at the sea, waiting for the Meg to return with his brother.
Danielson and the others had witnessed the scene. Petrified, they scramled up the cargo net like insects, climbing for their lives with reckless abandon.
The Meg rose again, the bloody remains of Dennis Heller still shredded within its fangs. Danielson turned and screamed, flattening himself against the cargo net.
Jonas grabbed the searchlight, spinning it toward the Meg with his left hand as he raised the rifle with his right. He was close, a mere thirty feet. Without aiming, he pulled the trigger. The dart exploded out of the barrel, burying itself within the thick white hide as the device attached itself firmly behind the female's right pectoral fin.
The searchlight's powerful beam blazed into the right eye of the nocturnal predator, burning the sensitive tissue like a laser. The excruciating pain sent the monster reeling backward into the sea, repelling her attack only feet from Danielson's back. The Meg slammed its wounded eye into the swell below, then disappeared.
Danielson and his men collapsed onto the deck and were pulled, one by one, inside the shelter of the pilothouse. Jonas grabbed Frank, tugging him backward, but he refused to let go of the rail.
"You're dead, bitch, you hear me?!" Heller screamed into the night, his words deadened by the wind. "This isn't over. You're fucking dead!"
OPENING DAY
At precisely noon, in front of a crowd of nearly six hundred onlookers, including the governor of California, several members of the 49ers football team, a high school marching band, and four television networks, the giant sliding doors of the D.J. Tanaka Memorial Lagoon opened to the sea. Millions of gallons of ocean water rushed into the valley to fill the world's largest swimming pool.
Jonas stood next to Terry Tanaka on the lower observation deck, admiring yet another extraordinary example of human ingenuity. Using designs and technology developed during the building of the great dams, the Tanaka team had constructed an artificial lake connected to the Pacific Ocean by an access canal large enough to allow a pod of whales to enter and exit uninhibited. Once inside, the mammals could be observed through twenty-two-foot-high acrylic windows that lined the lagoon and from smaller observation posts constructed beneath the floor of the facility.
Nearly two weeks had passed since the disaster at sea. Twenty-nine members of the Nautilus 's crew had perished, as had fourteen from the Tsunami. A ceremony honoring the dead had taken place at Pearl Harbor. Two days later, Captain Richard Danielson retired from the Navy.
Commander Bryce McGovern was on the hot seat. Who had authorized the United States Navy to hunt the Megalodon? Why had McGovern selected the Nautilus to complete the mission, knowing the forty-year-old submarine was far from battle-worthy? The families of the deceased were outraged, and an internal investigation was ordered by the Pentagon. Many believed Commander McGovern would be the next naval officer to retire.
Frank Heller, on the other hand, was a raging bull. His brother Dennis had been his only family, following the death of their mother three years earlier. Now Heller's hatred for the Megalodon threatened to become all-consuming and burn out of control. He informed Masao that he flatly refused to be a part of any more insane attempts to capture the monster, stating that he had his own plans for the white devil. After the ceremony in Oahu, he flew home to California.
Thanks to David Adashek, the Tanaka Institute's plans to capture the Megalodon appeared on the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post within twenty-four hours of the Nautilus disaster. From that moment on, the hunt for the Megalodon turned into a media circus. JAMSTEC was secretly delighted at the publicity, as it stood to share in the proceeds from the captive Megalodon display. Construction crews had worked around the clock to complete the lagoon. Now everyone wanted to know one thing: when would the guest of honor be appearing?
Twelve days, Jonas thought, and not a sign of the female. For six consecutive nights following the attack on the Nautilus, he and Mac had flown over Hawaii's coastal waters in search of the Megalodon. The homing device had worked, allowing the copter to track the predator as it headed east, the Kiku always trailing close behind. But the female, perhaps still in pain, refused to surface, remaining deep. And then, on the seventh day, the signal had simply disappeared.
For two days, the Kiku and its helicopter crew circled the area without relocating the signal. Frustrated, Jonas finally recommended to Masao that the Kiku should return to Monterey, guessing the Meg would head for the California coast and the migrating whale pods. Now, one week later, there was still no sign of the female. T
he question was: where had she gone?
THE CANYON
Situated less than two hundred yards offshore from the Tanaka Lagoon's western wall lies the deep waters of Monterey Bay Canyon. Created by the subduction of the North American plate over millions of years, the massive underwater gorge traverses over sixty miles of sea floor, plunging more than a mile below the ocean's surface. There, the canyon meets the ocean bottom, eventually dropping another 12,000 feet in depth.
The Monterey Bay Canyon is the heart of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, the nation's largest marine wildlife preserve. Similar to a national park, the sanctuary consists of federally protected waters, encompassing an area roughly the size of Connecticut. The marine park extends from the Farallon Islands just west of San Francisco, south for more than three hundred miles, to just off Cambria, California. Home to 27 species of marine mammals, 345 different types of fish, 450 kinds of algae, and 22 endangered species, the sanctuary also serves as the winter breeding ground for 20,000 whales.
* * * * *
Moving north along the sheer canyon wall at a speed of just under five knots was the largest creature ever to inhabit the planet. Ninety-six feet long, weighing almost one hundred tons, the female adult blue whale glided in six hundred feet of water, catching tiny particles of plankton in her baleen grooves as she swam. Directly above the gentle giant, rising to the surface for air, was her six-month-old calf. The adult mammal required only three to five breaths per hour, but her calf had to return to the surface once every four to five minutes. This meant mother and calf had to separate from each other every few minutes as they fed.
* * * * *
Five miles to the south, traveling in total darkness, a fluorescent white glow slowly cruised above the canyon's rocky seafloor. Having deserted the coastal waters of the Hawaiian Islands in search of whales, the Megalodon had come across a warm undercurrent flowing along the equator to the southeast. Riding the huge river of water just as a Boeing 747 rides an airstream, the female had traveled across the Pacific Ocean, arriving in the tropical waters off the Galápagos Islands. From there, she had migrated north along the coast of Central America, hunting gray whales and their newborn calves.
