by Hugo Navikov
“No,” Bentneus wheezed, and despite the breathing machine, the sharpness of his contradiction snapped. “Not a person. Not just any person. You, Doctor Muir.”
Sean’s mouth opened into a smile, and he looked to Mickey and Kreide like, What the hell? Mickey smiled widely and Kreide nodded, indicating that Sean should return his attention to the laptop screen. “Um, Mister Bentneus, you do know that I am four years into a ten-year sentence, right?”
“Hehhhhhhhhh … hehhhhhhhhh … hehhhhhhhhh … Doctor Muir, you are thinking small. You are thinking poor. Let me ask you: Did you do what they all say? Did you murder your wife?”
Sean wasn’t offended. It was a question you asked of someone in prison if you had any doubt or curiosity, or if you maybe just wanted to hear the person admit it out loud. He glanced at his lawyer, who closed his eyes and gave a slight nod.
In other words, Go ahead. They can’t try you twice.
Sean cleared his throat. “In point of fact, I did not. Maybe it was my fault, inadvertently, for not checking every foot of cable for flaws. But it’s a new process, armoring fiber optics and other data lines within an iron cable. And unspooling twenty thousand feet in the workshop—”
“The details aren’t needed, Doctor Muir. I didn’t think you killed anyone. I don’t know if anyone killed your brilliant wife. I think it was a freak accident, and you damn near saved her even still.”
“Thank you, Mister Bentneus.”
“You call me ‘Jake’ now, and I’m gonna call you ‘Sean,’ all right?” His face was pulled into a smile. “I mean, since we’re going to be partners in this undertaking.”
Sean didn’t laugh, surprising himself. “I don’t know much about killing prehistoric sea life, but I can definitely help you with information about what I believe their behavior would be at the bottom. What it would have to be, in fact, if they are descendants of dinosaurs—I mean, marine lizards, but I’m a paleoichthyologist and if I’m not giving a lecture, I exclusively call them ‘dinosaurs.’”
“Hehhhhhhhhh … that’s great, Sean. That information will definitely be needed.” He paused for dramatic effect, and achieved it. “We’re both imprisoned, aren’t we?”
“Ha, yeah, I’d have to agree with that … Jake.”
“But do you know the difference between my prison and yours?”
“Other than the obvious? No.”
“One million dollars put into the right hands can release you from yours.”
Sean looked at his lawyer and said, “What is—?”
Kreide said, “Hear him out, Sean.”
He fixed his eyes back on the laptop.
“Mister Kreide is a good man, Sean. He doesn’t believe you committed murder, or even were responsible through neglect. He is, in many ways, your real advocate inside the courtroom and out.”
“This I know,” Sean said with a smile bigger than the modest one his lawyer allowed himself.
“When I contacted—well, my people contacted—your very busy and very expensive lawyer about getting you out of prison, he didn’t say ‘Impossible!’ or ‘Don’t waste my $400-an-hour time!’ He didn’t even tell his administrative assistant, his paralegal, or his phalanx of subordinate attorneys to take the call. The son of a … gun took the call himself. If I had one finger left, I could count it and have a tally of how many bigshot lawyers would have done that.” He paused to allow a nurse to suction out anything accumulated in his windpipe, then continued as if nothing had happened. “You lose your humiliation reflex in the condition I’m in. Anyway, let me cut to the chase, as all those Hollywood types say. Hehhhhhhhhh …”
Sean smiled. It was a good joke.
“I want you to head up an expedition to Challenger Deep. I want you to direct your crew to find Gigadon however you can. I have given Mister Luch a blank check—a black AMEX, actually—for you to outfit Sea Legs, which I bought for a song after your … forced retirement. This will be the information center of your new expedition. Obviously, I know that much new science and technology is needed for any historic dive.”
Sean waited until it was clear no more was forthcoming before he spoke. “I’m sorry, Jake. I’m not really following you. Are you suggesting that I work with your people through teleconferencing, give them my ideas for a research ship converted into a vessel meant to kill giant prehistoric beasts? I’m very happy to do so, if the warden allows it—”
“Screw the warden.”
“O-kayyy, but if we’re going to set up a VR headset or the like for me to kind of be a part of the actual mission, that will take data lines that I don’t know the prison system will allow.”
“Screw the prison system.”
“Um, Jake, where is this going? I am completely—”
“In over your head? Hehhhhhhhhh …”
“So to speak, yeah. I feel a bit at sea, if we’re going to pun ourselves to death,” he said, acknowledging Bentneus’s wit, “but I really need to know what you’re talking about. What’s the big—I mean, it must be giant—picture here?”
“So what is this grand dream of mine, one that I have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on? Why am I visiting you virtually this morning?”
“Those would be a couple of my questions.”
“I like to build a little suspense. You can take the filmmaker out of Hollywood, but you can’t get Hollywood out of the filmmaker. Hehhhhhhhhh …” His facial servos and rods moved from “smile” back to affectless, and thus serious, expression. “Although I think it should be obvious by now: I want you to help me kill as many dinosaurs as possible. That said, the only one I really care about is Gigadon. He’s not like the others, in addition to his being the size of a goddamn ocean liner.”
Sean felt the icy hatred inside Jake Bentneus as he spoke of the leviathan. This was Moby Dick-–level hatred.
“I want your expertise and my resources to kill that monster. I want you to kill it and bring its head to me where I can see it on the beach outside. We’ll have to set up a goddamn hall of mirrors, but I’ll see that bastard’s dead face.” The manipulators on Bentneus’s own face must not have had a setting for angry sneer, because that was the only possible expression to go with what he had just said.
“As I said, I’m very glad to help, but I don’t know what exactly I—”
“Doctor Muir—Jake—I want you to be on the boat, on the ocean, over the Marianas Trench, and get that goddamn Gigadon’s head.”
“That would be great, but—”
“No ‘but.’ All you have to do is say the word that you’ll do this for me, and you will be driven out of those prison gates in twenty minutes.”
Sean shook his head to release himself from this bizarre dream. Nothing happened. He tried it again while blinking his eyes hard, like he had a piece of grit in them.
Nothing happened.
“How is that even … Oh, wait, is this the ‘million dollars’ thing? Are you serious? You want me to undertake the expedition of a lifetime, see the dinosaurs I’ve talked and dreamed about for fifteen years? Like as a favor to you?”
“And kill them, yes.”
That was unfortunate, but not that unfortunate. “I’m in, Jake. Wow, am I in! I don’t know how long it will take me to find the other ships and crew needed for the—”
“It’s already been seen to. I had a feeling you would be interested in my offer. Have you heard about the reward?”
Once again, Sean looked to Mickey, who was nodding and smiling again—Sean wasn’t sure he had stopped smiling the whole time he’d been in the room—and to his lawyer, who said, “Have you heard about it, Sean?”
“I haven’t heard anything about anything except current research in my field for the last year. I’ve been in solitary, and let me tell you, that is some solitary solitary.”
“Well, I’ll be the first to tell you then,” Bentneus said with what seemed like pleasure. “If you find and kill Gigadon—and bring its head to the beach right outside my window—I will pay you a
billion dollars.”
“Pay a what?”
“One billion dollars, Sean. Think ‘Doctor Evil’–type money here.”
Sean laughed, really laughed hard, and had to take a moment to collect himself. “Okay, that would be … unreal, quite literally … but even a billion dollars won’t mean much to me for six more years. Not that I wouldn’t take it—I’ll take it!—but I’m not sure what I’d do with it during the rest of my time here.”
“Wake up, Sean. You will be leaving this prison in fifteen minutes or so. Take my mission, and it’s for good.”
“Wh—how—wha—”
“Don’t worry about it, Sean. Mister Kreide will fill you in on all the details, all right? And Mister Luch has volunteered to drive you where you need to go. You have thirteen days to get the expedition ready.”
“Wait, I don’t even have the design for D-Plus anymore, let alone your Ocean Victory. It’s going to take months just to get the design and materials together, even if you have Sea Legs and a crew at the ready.”
“Hehhhhhhhhh … what, do you think this all came to me last night? You’ve got your old ship as well as two other badass ships, fully crewed. And a vertical sub based on Ocean Victory, but with the water-cooling and breathing systems I mentioned.”
“Whoa, the Abyssal Zone thing? That’s really real?”
“It was real back in the day … just not a whole lot of call for it. But don’t worry, you’ll get almost two weeks of training.”
That didn’t sound like enough time to learn to breathe water, but he certainly wasn’t going to raise any objection. “Isn’t a bathysphere of half-inch-thick iron almost too heavy to bring up, let alone one filled with water?”
“Hehhhhhhhhhh … this one has a full inch of iron. And your pilot ball will be filled with water, it’s true. But don’t worry about the weight—this sub has magnesium-hot rockets on its bottom. It will shoot you upward, not very fast in that kind of pressure, but definitely upward movement all the way. The best part is this: It will superheat the water behind you all the way up. Where the weapons are. Of course there is, as we said, major weaponry on the sub itself. That might be enough to bag a Megalodon, or at least enough to get him to back off; but the Gigadon weapons are on the ships. Your job, other than running the whole goddamn show, is to lead Gigadon up to where they can end his unnatural existence.”
“So I’m bait.”
“That’s right, chum. Hehhhhhhhhh …”
Groan. But it did make Sean smile. “What about the crew? Will they get a cut of the billion?”
“Of course. I know you were never a treasure hunter—not that kind, anyway—but that’s assumed. Half of the billion will go to the twenty-seven crew members, if you guys end the hell-beast.”
“Good, good.” He wouldn’t have known what to do with a billion dollars, anyway. Now, five hundred million was more reasonable to deal with … He grinned at Bentneus. “I’m in! Where do I sign?”
“Yes, smart. Mister Kreide has prepared all the paperwork for the bounty. And I’ve hired Mister Luch to be your chaperone, if you will, on land and also at sea.”
“Mickey?” His bearded friend smiled and gave him a thumbs-up. “Ha, fantastic! But ‘chaperone’? What does that mean?”
“You have to understand I have quite a bit invested in this operation, not even taking the bounty into consideration. I need to protect that investment, don’t I?”
All at once, it dawned on Sean what the filmmaker was saying. “Ah, got it. The prison’s got to have tabs on me so I don’t take a ship and run off to the Philippines or Indonesia.”
“Not the prison, Sean. Everyone’s palm that needed greasing has been greased. It is I who needs to keep tabs on you. Mister Luch will take good care of you and not let you do anything stupid, and he’s your … shall we say ‘best friend’?”
The two men exchanged another smile. “Nobody except Mister Kreide ever came to visit me in the past year—only lawyers could visit. But I had letters from Mickey every week, some of them sent while he was at sea. That tells you all you need to know.”
“Excellent. Mister Kreide will outfit you with a GPS ankle cuff. Waterproof, obviously. If you do get of a mind to run, it won’t take a whole lot of effort to find you and put you back in solitary for the rest of your sentence and then some. And the only way anyone without the code is going to get you out of that thing is by sawing off your foot.”
“I’m not running anywhere.”
“It’s just a precaution. I believe Mister Kreide has the paperwork, which you will sign and Mister Luch will witness. Five minutes and you’re out, Sean. All the papers and books from your cell have been transferred in file boxes to the trunk of the Humvee. All you need to do is change into the clothes we brought for you, get in that, and go. That’s it. Mister Luch will let you know other details and things you need to know while he’s driving you to the airport.”
“The airport?”
“Doctor Muir, you will be in Guam before the sun sets here. Time to get to work.”
“Well, all right!” Sean said, and gave Bentneus a thumbs-up. “Here’s to Ocean Victory II.”
“Hehhhhhhhhh … hehhhhhhhhh … hehhhhhhhhhh …”
Sean felt like he had missed something important. “Jake?”
“Ocean Victory died with me that day, my friend. No, you’ll be piloting something much better. I call it Ocean Vengeance.”
***
The ride in the Humvee was more comfortable than anything Sean had felt in years, of course. But the best part was spending time with Mickey Luch. They told stories—all of Sean’s were about prison life, but Mickey found it damned interesting, indeed—and the six hours to LAX went by faster to Sean than a jaunt across town. And McDonald’s, McDonald’s from the drive-thru. Kobe beef at the White House couldn’t have tasted better.
On the way, Mickey showed Sean the videos (on a passenger-side 15-inch screen, wow, this thing was “off the chain,” as Sean’s students used to say) of Bentneus’s broadcast and all the footage they had of Gigadon plus some featuring the guppy-size-in-comparison Megalodon. He couldn’t believe his eyes, but perhaps more visceral was that he couldn’t believe his back and his ass, the way they melted into the soft leather seats.
The Humvee belonged to Mickey, making Sean whistle because this was no secondhand automobile. “It’s part of Mister Bentneus’s compensation package. Like you, I get to do things I’d pay to do and cash the hell in!”
“It all seems too good to be true,” Sean said, enjoying the speed of the car and the smell of the air through his open window, like a dog sticking its head out the window of the family car. “All this and I get to see the dinosaurs.”
“Well, bud, it falls to me to give you the caveats and whatnot,” Mickey said, not without a certain note of regret in his voice. “Part of my job in exchange for such nice payment. Not the especially fun part.”
“Oh, hell,” Sean said with a laugh, but it fell away when he saw the real discomfort on Mickey’s face. “Is it that bad?”
Mickey just said, “Remember all those papers you signed?”
“Of course.”
“You notice how none of them was for your release from custody?”
He hadn’t. “I assumed that was in some of the documents somewhere. It was all about the billion dollars and payment, that was what I noticed most of all, right?” He tried a laugh again, but Mickey stayed as serious as a Baptist teacher at a high school dance. “Oh, God, tell me already.”
“You know all them palms Mister Bentneus greased to get you out of there?”
“Yeah … a million dollars’ worth.”
“Actually more, but forget about that. They got greased a couple of ways, man. First, they let you walk right out like you just did.”
“Right … what else could there be?”
“Well, Jake Bentneus is kind of an ‘all or nothing’ kind of guy. People do what he wants on his movie sets—back when he could direct them, you k
now what I mean—because if they screw up, if they bring him a coffee with two Equal instead of one, their ass is out the door along with a big black mark against their getting hired onto any other movies from that studio.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, no kidding. That’s harsh. But I was instructed that I be the one to talk about the consequences of failure.”
Sean’s hands went ice-cold.
“Mister Bentneus didn’t say anything about this, but when we get to Guam, we got to get you registered in the competition.”
“Competition? For what?”
“That billion dollars? Well, last night on TV he offered that up to anyone who can find the Gigadon, kill it, and bring back its head. Registration is tomorrow, and God knows what is going to show up.”
Sean said, “But … including me with access to Jake’s bottomless pockets, there must be no more than five parties in the world who could do a dive like that with only two weeks to prepare. People are going to die trying to get down to the bottom of Challenger Deep.”
“Well, you did say the dinosaurs probably follow the heat vents at twenty thousand feet. We could just do 20,000 feet—that’s way deep, yeah, but not Challenger Deep deep.”
“Yeah, but I doubt there’s anything at 20,000 feet anywhere near the size of this ‘Gigadon’ thing. Maybe size increases proportionally with depth? I never imagined anything like that could survive … hell, anywhere, but down there where there’s so little to eat, how could something get that big? I don’t even have a wild guess about how this thing even exists.” He considered for a moment and added, “Besides that, people are going to die trying to get just to twenty thousand feet if they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“That’s their problem,” Mickey said, which had to be verbatim what Bentneus had said to him. “What we need to do is make sure you get the job done. If a bunch of amateurs get themselves killed, all that does is thin out the field for you.”
