by JE Gurley
In spite of his remarks to Rodriguez, he was not afraid. He felt a strange eagerness to do something, to strike a blow for his fallen comrades. He remembered the two men he had caught with the ROV on the drillship and figured they felt the same way. If things took a nosedive, they might yet get their chance.
Now, every light on the drillship was on, casting undulating pools of luminescence on the surface of the water. However, the light did not penetrate the murky water. Below the surface, in the inky depths was where the coming battle would take place. The giant ancient sharks would be in their element, equipped by millions of years of evolution to be lords of the depths, while man, a land creature, and a newcomer by comparison would rely on his technology—animal cunning versus human engineering. Will was betting on technology.
“The Utah is picking up something on her sonar. The images are fuzzy, but it looks like thirty or forty megalodon. They’re less than twenty-five clicks out.”
Will nodded. Let the battle begin.
10
December 26, 2018, 4:30 a.m. DSV Christophe, near Drillship Vanguard–
Lieutenant Stuart Haig peered out the central of the three forward facing, six-inch-diameter, acrylic observation ports, using the twin manipulator arms of the DSV to place one of the Porcupine mines in position at a depth of one-hundred-twenty feet. Operating the joystick with the delicate skill of a surgeon, he bled air from the mine’s buoyancy tank and released it. To his relief, the mine remained in place.
“Two to go,” he told Specialist Ron Foreman sitting beside him in the submersible’s cramped seven-foot-diameter pressure cabin piloting the craft.
“Good!” Foreman replied. “My ass is frozen. Let’s get it done.”
Able Seaman Brian Leeds made up the last of the three-man crew of the re-fitted Pisces IV submersible. He lay in a prone position below the pair observing through one of the portholes. “After five hours on my belly,” he called up, “I could use a stretch.”
“Another hour and we’re done. One more dive.”
The Christophe, a Pisces-class submersible built in 1985 and operated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association, was currently on loan to the U.S. Navy. After a complete overhaul and refit, including more modern electronics and updated hydraulic systems, the DSV had made the journey from Hawaii to Nome, Alaska, aboard a C-130 transport, and then loaded aboard the Utah. Haig and his crew had flown into Barrow, Alaska, and traveled to the Utah aboard the Sunfish with the group of civilian scientists in charge of the project. Of all the dives he had made in his twelve-year career, this was shaping up to be the most bizarre.
The Christophe could carry only two of the special mines on each dive, making it a tedious and laborious process. The cabin’s temperature registered 38 degrees. He could either heat the cabin or conserve battery power for the dives. The DSV had a 7-10 hour operational window, and he did not want to wait for the batteries to recharge before completing his job. Haig considered the safe delivery of the mines more important than crew comfort.
They surfaced twenty feet from the Vanguard in a pool of light cast by two spotlights, bobbing on the rough sea like a cork in a tempest, as the crane lowered a basket containing two of the Porcupine mines. The heavy waves made transferring the mines on the rolling surface impossible. He blew ballast and followed the basket beneath the surface to smoother water. Using the twin manipulator arms, he settled the mines onto the DSV’s platform, folded the arms around them like an overprotective mother, and descended to a depth of sixty feet. Moving away from the drillship to a distance of two hundred yards, he positioned one of the pair using the GPS coordinates supplied by the scientists that would allow maximum coverage, creating a Death Zone of harpoons for the megalodon. He tried not to dwell on the results of a premature explosion while he was priming the mines.
The second mine, the last of the series, proved a problem. Just my freakin’ luck. One of the harpoons had become wedged between the platform and the pressure hull. Using one of the manipulator arms, he gently rocked the mine back and forth to pop it free. In spite of the chill in the cabin, beads of cold sweat dotted his forehead by the time he finished.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, as the mine stubbornly refused to budge.
“Easy, lieutenant,” Leeds called up. “I don’t want to become a shish kabob.”
Haig swore softly at Leeds and the recalcitrant Porcupine. After almost seven hours, his half-frozen fingers were numb and swollen, difficult to control.
“Swing the Christophe around a little,” he said to Foreman. “Jiggle her like a Hula dancer. See if you can shake it loose.”
Foreman wiggled the joystick, shaking the DSV like a dog shedding water. Finally, the Porcupine loosened from its bind.
“All right. Hold it steady while I set the depth.”
Foreman grimaced. “Like a rock,” he replied with a white-knuckle grip on the joystick.
“Oh, shit!” Leeds groaned.
“What is it, Leeds?” Haig asked, resisting the impulse to glance down at him.
“I just received an update from the Utah. The megalodon are less than fifteen clicks out. The ASROCs on the drillship are about to begin launching.”
“We’re screwed,” Foreman said, almost shouting the last word.
“Can it, Foreman,” Haig snapped. “Keep the vehicle steady and let me finish the job. We have time. Then we can get the hell out of here.”
Minutes later, the first faint concussions of the Mark 46 torpedoes reached them. Haig tried to keep his hands from trembling, as Foreman concentrated on steadying the DSV. The manufacturers had not intended the claw on the end of the manipulator arm for delicate work, but it was the only tool available. His only other option was to go outside and do the job by hand, a task he did not relish, especially with megalodon coming. He slowly bled pressure from the buoyancy tank and followed the Porcupine as it sank a few feet into position.
“Done,” he said. “Take us up and out of here, Ron.”
The shock waves from the Mark 46s were growing stronger as the ASROCs fired into the midst of the school of megalodon closing on the drillship. Haig estimated the last explosion had been less than two-thousand-yards distant. The sharks had almost reached the outer line of Porcupines.
Like his crew, he was eager to reach the surface before the megalodon arrived. Soon, the dark water would become a death trap, as the Porcupines released their load of lethal metal harpoons.
“We’re not going to make it,” Leeds announced.
“We’ve got time,” Haig replied, trying to keep his concern from his voice, as he quickly calculated the distance back to the Utah. “We’ll never reach the sub in time. Take us to the drillship. The sharks are blind. We can hide against one of the pontoons. The metal will mask our profile.”
“I hope the hell you’re right,” Foreman replied, as he turned the nose of the DSV toward the Vanguard and pushed the thrusters to their two-knot maximum speed.
“They’ll reach the first mines in thirty seconds,” Leeds warned. “You’d better brace yourselves.”
The Christophe was now less than thirty yards from the drillship’s pontoon, but Haig knew it would be a photo finish. His pulse quickened when the DSV’s lights outlined the dim profile of the pontoon. The sound of the first mine detonating reached them before the shockwave. The DSV rolled to port, but Foreman quickly steadied the small vehicle. The solitary detonations turned into a cacophony of exploding mines, as the school of megalodon entered the Death Zone. The DSV bucked wildly, standing on its nose and spinning like a top, as the barrage of underwater pressure waves ripped the controls from Foreman’s hands. The three men clung to whatever they could reach and held on.
Instrument lights winked off as systems began to fail. Smoke curled from the sonar panel, quickly curtailed as Foreman fought the crushing G-forces and reached out to toggle an automatic extinguisher. The DSV rang like a church bell tolling the call to Sunday morning mass. A louder thud shook the veh
icle as it careened from one of the drillship’s columns. To Haig’s relief, the pressure hull did not rupture and no observation port cracked.
“Almost there,” he urged, but he was certain no one heard him over the rapid-fire cacophony of explosions growing louder as the sharks swam deeper into the kill zone.
“We lost the starboard thruster,” Foreman called out, his voice barely shy of panic. He placed the DSV in a steep dive and shoved the joystick to starboard to compensate and to keep the craft straight.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the small craft rose above the pontoon and eased behind the column. Safe!
The shriek of metal shearing sounded like the ripping of a bed sheet. A jet of frigid salt water sprayed Haig in the face. He wiped it from his eyes and saw the water was red. Confused, he turned to Foreman. Foreman’s head lay slumped over his chest and his hands hung limply at his sides. The razor-sharp point of a harpoon protruded from his chest. The jet of water sluiced away the blood from the blood-splattered control panel. The projectile had completely penetrated both sides of the drillship’s column and pierced the bottom of the DSV, slicing through the thick HY-100 steel like cardboard and skewering both Leeds and Foreman.
Haig had no time to dwell on their deaths. The submersible was out of control. He reached over Foreman’s corpse and cut power. The Christophe settled gently onto the top of the pontoon. He was safe from sinking, but the cabin was rapidly filling with water. He could still drown. The pontoon was only thirty feet below the surface. He had no air tank, but he could hold his breath long enough to reach the surface. He popped the upper hatch and bled the air from the cabin. When the pressure equalized, he opened the hatch and swam out. The water was near freezing, sapping his strength after his exhausting five-hour dive. He did not struggle to swim to the surface, but allowed his buoyancy to ascend him to the heaven of warmth and air.
He felt a presence nearby, pressure in the water, and turned to see a pale gray shadow three times the length of the twenty-foot-long submersible slide by him silent and deadly, illuminated by the submersible’s lights. Three harpoons protruded from its massive body. A trail of blood stained the water behind it. As he watched, two more of the creatures struck at the injured megalodon, their sixty-inch jaws ripping side-of-beef sized chunks of flesh from its body. He floated for a moment watching the surreal scene unfold, and then kicked his legs to reach the surface, careful not to attract unwanted attention to his presence. Waves slammed him against the column as he tried to suck air into his oxygen-starved lungs. His numb fingers struggled to find purchase, finally gripping a small flange between metal joints of the column. He clung to it desperately to prevent the waves from washing him away. He did not have the strength to reach the dock. If he let go, the waves would sweep him out to sea, and he would die of hypothermia. If the megalodon don’t get me first.
A spotlight blinded him. He looked up to see the patrol boat that had delivered his crew to the Utah riding the waves a twenty yards away and approaching slowly. Someone tossed him a line. With trembling hands, he released his grip on the column and wrapped the line around his chest and under his arms several times. He grasped the line with his remaining strength, as the thrower pulled him toward the boat. He expected one of the megalodon to snatch him from the water at any second, but instead, hands reached down to pull him aboard the boat.
“Welcome back.”
He recognized the boat’s captain, Will Cobb. “Get me out of the water,” he said.
* * * *
4:15 a.m.–
Will watched the plumes of water rise into the air in the distance as the ASROC torpedoes detonated. The explosions, muffed by wind and water, were dull reports, like the sound of crashing surf. Beneath the surface, he knew the torpedoes were producing results that were more dramatic. The arc of fire from the rocket-launched torpedoes lit up the sky above the drillship, their arcs growing tighter as the distance between the megalodon and the drillship grew shorter.
“Man the guns,” he called to his crew. “Chico, you take the port Griffin missile launchers.”
He wanted to get into the fight, but his orders were clear. He was to maintain a safe distance unless needed, but he would not let the megalodon catch him unaware. Louder explosions lifted plumes of water as the first of the Porcupines exploded. Between the Porcupine mines and the torpedoes, the sea around the drillship had become a kill zone.
“There’s someone in the water!” Able Seaman Patrick Levitt yelled, pointing toward one of the drillship’s columns.
He swung a spotlight around and saw a figure in the water hugging the column as the waves sought to break his tenuous grip.
“Move us closer.”
When they were close enough, he tossed a line to the figure and watched him wrap it around his body. He and Able Seaman McGee pulled the figure aboard. When the half-drowned man rolled over onto his back, sputtering out water he had swallowed, he recognized the DSV dive team leader, something-or-other Haig.
“Welcome back, lieutenant. We’ll get you into something warm and dry.” He glanced out to sea expectantly. “Where is the rest of your crew?”
Haig coughed up a mouthful of water. “Dead. One of the mine’s harpoons struck the Christophe. I’m the only survivor.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
He nodded to two crewmen standing nearby. They lifted the exhausted lieutenant to his feet and carried him inside the cabin and down the stairs to the wardroom. As Will’s gaze returned to the sea, a gray dorsal fin taller than the Sunfish rose from the water alongside the boat. One of the 25mms cut loose, peppering the water around the fin, but it slid back beneath the surface in a leisurely manner. Mindful of his orders but against his instincts to join in the fight, he ordered the Sunfish away from the drillship and back to her original position. The fate of the DSV aptly conveyed the all too real danger of lingering too near the Porcupines when they exploded.
From a safe distance, he watched the battle unfold. It was a surreal battle between unseen opponents. The only indications of the event were the dull thuds of underwater explosions and plumes of water sent skyrocketing into the air as a result. He saw the occasional dead shark float to the surface, but they quickly became the centers of cannibalistic feeding frenzies that took them back to the depths. One harpoon from an exploded mine, having missed its target, soared thirty feet into the air before falling back into the sea. The ASROC launchers were now firing almost directly into the water less than a thousand yards from the drillship. Occasionally, one of the Mark 46s struck a Porcupine, causing a double explosion of gigantic proportions.
The radio chatter from the Utah painted a more accurate picture of the battle, and it was not the news for which he had hoped. She remained at a safe distance from the drillship and the minefield picking off stray sharks. Unfortunately, her torpedoes had proven next to useless. Of sixteen fired, only six struck their intended targets. A large concentration of megalodon had centered their attention on the Utah, battering her hull and opening several leaks in her seams. The forward torpedo room was flooding, and her ruptured starboard ballast tank made maneuvering difficult. The sharks attacked the sub unmercifully and without let up. Even metal would soon give way to flesh if the flesh was relentless enough.
The Porcupines proved more effective than the torpedoes, but even with their overlapping fields of fire, there were far more sharks than mines. A series of explosions ripped the depths, churning the water. In the spotlights, the water was red with megalodon blood.
Slowly, the concentrated firepower began to whittle down the number of megalodon sharks, but not quickly enough. The blood in the water had driven them insane. Drawn by the vibrations of the drillship as it launched the torpedoes, the megalodon began attacking the pontoons as it had the submarine. The hollow structures rang like bells from a drowned church. Unlike the hull of the Utah, designed to handle the extreme pressure of the deep, the pontoons were relatively fragile. A continuous assault would sink the drillship. It was
time for the Sunfish to join the fray.
“Take us in to the drillship. Prepare for a depth charge run.” He quickly estimated the safest distance from the pontoons he could drop his depth charges without damaging the drillship. “Keep us twenty yards away as we circle the drillship. Gunners, fire at any target that presents itself.”
The twin thrusters of the Sunfish roared to life, and she shot like a dart toward the Vanguard. He wasn’t sure how much damage he could do to the megalodon, but he could draw attention away from the Utah and the drillship, giving them a fighting chance at survival. The Sunfish was a fast boat, designed for speed, maneuverability, and lightning-fast attacks. She might not outrun the sharks in a flat out race, but she could run rings around them.
In spite of the mines and torpedoes, the sonar screen was alive with active pings. At least twenty of the megalodon had survived the conflict. Some of the Porcupines had not yet exploded, and both the Utah and the drillship were still firing torpedoes. He would not risk straying too far from the drillship.
“Fire!” he yelled and watched two depth charges soar through the air before lancing into the water. Seconds later, they exploded at a depth of fifty feet. The .50 caliber machineguns and the 25mm miniguns fired streaks of tracer bullets into the water amid a sea of shark fins. Will’s heart thundered in his chest. This was his first real combat experience. The quick fight in which he had lost two men had been spontaneous, a reaction to events. This was deliberate, calculated. He could not afford to err.
“Again!” he yelled.
Apone spun the boat in a tight turn, reversed direction, and made another pass. This time, two of the megalodon rose to the surface and converged on the ship as if challenging it. The gun crews concentrated on the nearer creature, pouring streams of bullets into its head and sides. Its blind eyes betrayed no emotion, no sense of fear or realization of what was happening to it. One moment it was attacking, and the next it died less than twenty yards from its goal.
