by JE Gurley
The Russian captain approached them, a broad-shouldered elderly man with a graying beard and intense sea-blue eyes. He shoved a well-worn Nagant M1898 revolver into the waistband of his pants. “I am Captain Anastasiy Berezhnoy,” he said in heavily accented English. “This is my ship, the Prilagat’ Usiliya. Welcome aboard.”
Will saluted him, and then reached out to shake his hand. “Captain Will Cobb, U.S. Navy, of the USS Sunfish. Your arrival was timely, sir.”
Anastasiy frowned. “We intercepted your distress call. I did not reply because, frankly, I was not sure what to make of it.” He rubbed his fingers along his cheek, scratching it lightly with the backs of his fingertips, and nodded. “Tensions are very high between our two countries at present. You have a fleet very near Russian territory. When we detected the nuclear explosion, my trepidation increased. However, in good conscience, I could not ignore a ship in distress. I proceeded cautiously.” He glanced at the receding gap in the ice where the megalodon had died. “I hope that beast is the last one.”
“The captain of the Utah gave his life and the lives of most of his crew to see to it. He wiped out that monster’s brood. God willing, it is the last.”
“Good. I have encountered these creatures before.” He paused. “I wish to see them all dead.”
Asa saw a hard glint in the Russian captain’s eyes similar to the one in Simon’s eye when he spoke about the megalodon. The creatures seemed to touch the lives of everyone who encountered them.
Russians sailors emerged from the superstructure bearing trays of coffee and bottles of vodka.
“My crewmen will escort your men below to change into warm clothing and provide something to warm their bellies.”
Asa eyed the vodka, but didn’t feel much like drinking. His heart was too heavy with grief to celebrate, and his mind had not yet fully grasped the fact that it was all over. He still stood at the edge of a precipice, staring into the black abyss of his life, but now he had the strength to take a step back.
Anastasiy handed glasses of vodka to Will and Asa and kept one for himself. Asa tried to refuse, but Will stopped him with a shake of his head. “Please join me in a toast to lost comrades. I saw what your men did. It was very brave. Your Navy trains its men well.”
The words caught in Asa’s throat, as he said, “One of them wasn’t Navy. He was a chef.”
Anastasiy arched an eyebrow and raised his glass. “Indeed. Then to comrades and chefs.”
Asa could not refuse. He lifted his glass to his lips. “To Simon,” he said as he sipped the liquor. The unfamiliar burn of the strong vodka almost choked him. He caught the Russian captain’s quick grin.
Anastasiy downed his glass in one gulp and smacked his lips. “I will not interrogate you. You are my guests, but I would very much like to know what has happened. Your Navy helicopters will arrive in the area soon, and I will deliver you to them. I fear the story about what has happened here will not reach the public without many layers of truth and half-truths muddling the facts. It would be good to know.”
“It’s a long story,” Will said. “Another round of vodka and some coffee, and I’ll fill you in as best I can.”
Anastasiy smiled. “Come then. I have a better brand of vodka in my quarters. Do either of you play Vint? No? Too bad. It is any easy game. I will teach you as we talk and drink.” He turned to another officer. “Evgeni, please see to the Americans. We owe them much.”
Evgeni Aleyev grinned and handed both Will and Asa cigarettes. “Real American tobacco,” he said. To Asa’s surprise, it was a Pall Mall. He returned the Russian’s smile as he lit their cigarettes. Asa did not join them in the captain’s quarters. The single shot of vodka had warmed his insides, and he did not want to hear the tale told again for their Russian host. He had lived it. He could add nothing of interest. The rest was personal, and he wasn’t quite sure how to deal with that. He leaned against the rail to look back at the ice floe. He could no longer see the hole in the ice or the bloodstains, but he knew they were there, would always be there in his mind. He took a long drag off the cigarette, allowing the familiar taste to fill his mouth and lungs and the nicotine to calm his nerves. He felt like an addict after main-lining heroin. For a moment, he was simply a mechanic taking a break.
24
January 12, 2019, 11:00 a.m. Bachelor Quarters, San Diego Naval Base–
To his surprise, Will did not face a court martial. Instead, the Navy gave him the command of a recently re-commissioned Cyclone-class patrol boat, the USS Haboob. The Haboob was twice the size as the Sunfish with a crew of twenty-four. Levitt joined him as his navigation chief, as did one of the older ensigns from the Utah. He wanted another Mark VI, but the Navy had studied his report and had decided to incorporate a few design changes. Another Mark VI wouldn’t be available for a year.
He had escaped any blame in the nuclear explosion, but the country needed a scapegoat. The Russians demanded one. Captain Prescott offered the obvious choice. He was dead and could not tell his side of the story, and he had been the one to detonate the nuke. The Russians protested, but in the end, accepted the straw villain offered them. Will detested the Navy brass and the politicians for sullying a good man’s name and honor, especially a black man’s, but in the ranks, the real story made the rounds. Prescott would not be forgotten. The conflict created the opportunity for a new era of cooperation between Russia and the United States. Will hoped the politicians didn’t screw it up but suspected they would find a way.
A hastily convened international expedition to the cavern site discovered that the Utah’s blast had resealed the cavern by collapsing the tunnel. Any creatures surviving in the dark depths would remain there. The scientists, crypto-zoologists, marine biologists, and paleo-biologists had only a few hours of video from the SeaFox ROV’s camera to witness the wonders now forever hidden from them and sigh in regret. Will had no such regrets. He hoped the creatures never again saw the light of day.
The scientists did have the algal mat to study, with its mixed habitat of ancient creatures and newcomers. They would make their careful studies, take samples, and eventually find a way to destroy it, thereby erasing all traces of the primeval world impinging on the present.
He had heard from Asa once a few weeks after their rescue. Determined to get his life back on track, he had immediately taken a job on a drill boat in the South Pacific seeking warmer climates. Will doubted he would ever hear from the mechanic again, but he was glad Asa had survived relatively intact. He hoped everything worked out for him. Asa was obstinate, acerbic, and could be an ass at times, but he had kept the Sunfish going. That made him almost crew.
Will awoke some nights in a cold sweat from a nightmare he could thankfully barely recall. He hoped with time, they would fade. Already, it seemed like a bad dream. His mind could barely grasp the reality of giant megalodon. It instead wanted to shunt them into an area of his mind related to fairy tales and make believe. However, they would never completely fade. He would not allow that. He owed it to his dead crew to remember the megalodon feeding frenzy and the part they played in ending it. He prayed they had ended it.
Read on for a free sample of Hell’s Teeth: A Deep Sea Thriller.
CHAPTER 1
Half Moon Bay, Kaikoura Coast, New Zealand. Latitude: 42° 15’ 68” S, Longitude: 173° 48’ 27” E
The northeast wind drove the surf into majestic curves that crashed against the pebble beach. The rocky coast north of the tourist town of Kaikoura on the eastern side of New Zealand’s South Island was a mecca for Southern Hemisphere surfers. The Kermadec Trench, an underwater canyon over a mile deep, lay just off shore.
The area was famous as a home to whales and giant squid. The locals had gone from hunting whales in the 1800s to fishing and now whale conservation as they capitalized on the tourists desire to see the incredible creatures.
Dave Halligan paddled out under the darkening sky of the late afternoon. The three-millimeter-thick, full-body wetsuit kept the worst of the chill at ba
y and the hard exercise of catching waves did the rest. Dave didn’t wear a hood or neoprene booties, preferring to feel the sea in his hair and grip the surfboard with his bare toes. The mountains were so close to the coast, as soon as the sun went behind them, it would get much colder. This would be the last surf of the day. After dark, it was easier to go diving, maybe catch some crayfish, the spiny rock lobster that was the other big attraction along this harsh coastline.
Lying flat, Dave paddled through the swell, thankful the wind had been perfect today, curving the waves into great arcs that provided excellent surfing conditions. Each successful ride filled his soul with a contentment he couldn’t imagine living without.
When the fin broke the water in front of him, Dave nearly fell off his surfboard. Sharks of different kinds were common in these waters, though attacks on surfers were rare. The surfer stared hard at the fin, and then laughed with relief. Just a dolphin. On those few occasions a shark did attack, the shark had mistaken the surfer for a fur seal. The seals lived in colonies along the rocky coast and the hunting sharks would bite the front end of the surfboard. Which, on a seal, would be a killing blow to the head.
A moment later, the dolphin surfaced and puffed saltwater spray from her blowhole before plunging into the dark face of an oncoming wave.
Dave grinned. Dolphins, man. The most perfect creatures in the sea. Smart, playful, and a little bit crazy. Just like surfers. Dropping into the trough between two waves, he sat up and turned his board, ready to paddle like hell to catch the rushing wave. His hands were steady on the front edges of the surfboard, his legs hanging in the water; timing was everything.
As Dave tensed to draw his feet up and go to his knees, prior to standing for the ride, something grey stirred the water under his foot.
“Hey, dolphin buddy,” he said, his focus on the wave building behind him. Now.
Dave moved into a kneeling position, his hands paddling as he caught the sweet spot on the building wave. Once the board caught the wave, he stood up, adjusting his stance and steering the board along the rising wall. The sheer awesomeness of the ride filled him with joy. Dave moved his feet, twisting the surfboard, riding the plane of the wave as it rose over six feet. With both hands outstretched for balance, Dave flew across the surface, his fingers skimming the breaker, creating a boat-like wake and filling the air with a zipping sound.
When the wide-open jaws snapped closed on his arm above the elbow, Dave only felt a sharp jerking sensation. The force of it pulled him off his board and into the turbulent storm of the breaking wave.
He tried to scream as he saw the black emptiness of a shark’s mouth lined with triangular teeth. The water clouded with ink-dark blood and Dave swam for the surface, only then registering that his left arm was gone a few inches below the shoulder.
He screamed with primordial terror and shock, his breath a rising storm of bubbles. The cloud of his own blood, gushing into the cold water, drove the shark into a frenzy. It lunged forward, turning on its back, again baring those unimaginable teeth. The second bite closed around Dave’s midsection. The neoprene wetsuit tore as easily as the warm flesh beneath it and the last of the air in Dave’s lungs bubbled out from his torn lungs.
As the shark dragged him down into the deeper water, the last things Dave saw were more great white sharks, swimming together and tearing apart the remains of the dolphin.
CHAPTER 2
Chatham Rise, South Pacific Ocean, Longitude 44° S, Latitude 176° W
“You remember Pacman?” Casey asked the newest member of his dive team.
“Uhh, yeah. Kinda… I guess?” The boy looked confused.
Casey made a Pacman jaw shape with his hand. “Great Whites, their tails look like Pacman’s mouth. That sharp angle, like a wide open mouth chasing those pills and ghosts.”
“Okay.” The young diver didn’t look sure of where this was going.
“The point is, don’t freak out if you see a shark. There’s plenty of them out there. Most of them are just doing their own thing. They are more interested in fish than in you. Each species has a unique shape to the tail fins. If it ain’t Pacman, it’s probably not going to hurt you.” Casey smiled reassuringly and moved off to check the rest of the expedition’s gear.
At nineteen, Tyler was used to being bullshitted. “Is that true?” he asked Billy, the dive-crew’s second-in-command.
“Aww, yeah,” the lean Samoan said.
“Serious mate, no shit?”
“Way I see it,” Billy paused in his careful coiling of ropes, “Shark comes at you, you get your knife out and stab that fella in the nose.”
Tyler nodded. It was what he had always understood. A shark’s nose was sensitive; a good thump would send one scurrying off in search of easier prey.
“Of course, you have to get close enough to that bloody shark to let you punch him, eh?” Billy grinned, his teeth white against the brown of his skin.
Tyler felt less certain than ever. This far south, the Pacific Ocean was cold and grey. The nearest land was the tiny archipelago of the Chatham Islands, 420 miles off the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. They were halfway there, a small ship alone in a vast desert.
“Go ask those university fellas, eh?” Billy suggested.
Tyler looked up the deck towards the bow of the ship. The addition of a marine biology team to the expedition was a nice treat, especially when it turned out the team included two girls. It was a bit weird to Tyler that one of the girls was in charge. She’d been introduced as Aroha Halligan, Doctor Aroha Halligan. Tyler reckoned that meant she’d paid a lot more attention in school than Tyler ever did.
“Hey, isn’t it bad luck to have women on ships?” Tyler asked.
The Samoan threw back his head and laughed. “Only if they don’t like you, mate.”
Tyler hoped Aroha liked him. With her bleached hair, tanned skin, and fit physique, she didn’t look like a book nerd. Tyler laughed with Billy and helped him stow the ropes in the on-deck cabinet.
*
“I can’t believe they are seriously doing this,” Nari Prasad, the second woman on the science team said to Aroha. In their mid-twenties, they were close in age and freshly graduated with doctorates in their fields of study. For Nari, it was low-oxygen marine environments and for Aroha, it was great white sharks. Though entire libraries of research existed libraries about the most feared of the ocean predators, the Pacific waters off New Zealand’s east coast were a hotspot for the most famous shark species. In these cold southern waters, they had exhibited behavior unseen in other populations and a lot was still unknown about the life cycle of these incredible creatures.
“It’s okay, Nari.” Aroha was focused on the rugged laptop in front of her as the ship rose and fell with the ocean swell.
“Any kind of mineral exploration is going to cause untold devastation to the environment,” Nari continued. “Taking samples is only going to encourage them.”
Nari’s research into the strange habitats found in the deepest parts of the ocean had shown indicators of rich phosphate and more precious mineral deposits in the silt and mud. The mineral prospecting companies jumped on the data as they sought virgin land to exploit for resources and profit.
“They are paying enough for us to conduct research for a year, Nari. Besides, if the mining companies weren’t footing the bill, we would both be sitting on the mainland, marking undergrad papers.”
Nari shuddered; the only thing she loathed more than corporate mining’s disregard for the natural environment was working with students.
“If they so much as knock over a chimney…” Nari warned. The hydrothermal vents provided a unique alien environment for many forms of life in the dark depths and mineral-rich chimneys formed around the hot water rushing out of the earth’s depths.
“Wasn’t it you who told me those chimneys can grow at up to thirty centimeters a day?” Aroha teased her friend.
The Indian scientist bit back her sharp reply as the deck
door opened and Casey, the leader of the commercial diver team, came inside.
“We’re all set,” Casey announced.
Aroha nodded, a blush rising on her neck, as she went back to staring at her computer screen. Two days out of port and she still couldn’t look Casey in the eye. I am never drinking again, Aroha reminded herself.
“I’m heading up to the bridge,” Casey said. His fair hair and unshaven face stood out in high-contrast against the wind-burned tan of his skin. “If you want to come, Doc.”
“Sure,” Nari grinned, “I’ll come. What about you, Doctor Halligan?” she asked.
“No, that’s fine. Go on without me,” Aroha muttered, staring at the weather report on the screen as if her life depended on it.
Nari followed Casey up the internal stairs. The Waitangirua was a commercial diving vessel with a crew of ten and room for supplies, gear storage, and space for two mini-subs on deck.
The ship’s captain, Vincent “Mac” Macquarie, smoked constantly. His fingers were stained with nicotine and calloused from sixty years of hard labor on ships of all sizes and types. Mac glanced at the new arrivals as they emerged from the staircase and smoke jetted from his nostrils.
“What?” he asked, barely moving lips around the flickering tip of his hand-rolled cigarette.
Casey spoke up. “All set, Captain. Just waiting for you to put us on the right spot.”
Mac grunted and jetted smoke again. “Got you right on the money,” he said. A gnarled finger jabbed at the various glowing screens in front of him. “All engines stop,” he ordered.
“All engines stop,” Kelly, the ship’s first mate, replied as she eased the throttle back on the console. The drone of the ship’s engines reduced to an idling purr.
“What’s the depth?” Nari whispered, hardly daring to speak up in front of the gruff captain.
“Four hundred meters. That’s over thirteen hundred feet,” Mac replied. His hearing was sharp as his navigation skills. “Anchor it,” he snarled.
