by Hugo Navikov
“What? What is worth an ‘Oh, boy’ during a hot interview?” He took a drink from his bottle of mineral water.
“Guess who’s just registered over there on the beach?”
“No idea. And I don’t really care, Nigel. Let’s—”
“Gary Lucas.”
“Gah!” Jeffrey choked out as his water went down the wrong tube. “He’s—he called himself a better angler than me! He must really believe it, too, the son of a … We’re going live, right now!” He ripped off his mic and stomped off to “get that goddamned robot in the water! Now!”
More to himself than to Jeffrey, Nigel mumbled, “Going live where, on the ROAR! Network? We aren’t set up for that kind of broadcast—”
Jeffrey rushed back in and got right in Nigel’s face. “You want to keep working for me?”
“Technically, I work for the network. But yes—”
“Jesus, shut up! Get on the line with your superphone and get us a news team from the island. Look! I can see them on the beach, covering this Chinese fire drill of a ‘registration’—get them and their cameras over here! By the time Lucas even gets his boat wet, we’ll already have taken the prize—live on the air!”
“Why don’t we use our video crew? We can upload the video to the ROAR! website.”
Jeffrey let out a roar of his own, a roar of frustration. “The Web?!? Can this piss-pot network’s three bloody servers handle millions logging on to see the greatest feat of angling ever performed?”
Nigel sighed, he hoped not too loudly. “I’ll get in touch with the newspeople.”
“Yeah, you will,” Jeffrey said in an unmistakable bellow of anger. He left the cabin and went to yell at the ROV crew, demanding to know why the ROV wasn’t at the bottom sending back footage yet, apparently forgetting how “sticky” the maple syrup of the ocean depths could be.
He stood on the deck with arms akimbo, watching the swots fumble around with the ROV controls. Nigel would need a few minutes to get a live feed going, so Jeffrey called his own video crew over to film him looking with concern at the ROV feed, explaining what was happening as soon as the scientists—who had no mics on—explained it to him.
When the filming finished, he shook his head in distaste. “Pfft. Gary Lucas, indeed.”
***
In line at Governor Joseph Flores Beach Park, Mickey Luch and Sean Muir were glad they had gotten there a little later than they could have. “I haven’t seen this many people all together who wouldn’t shank me in the liver for a bag of potato chips in years,” Sean said, making Mickey laugh hard. “I mean, any of these guys would shank me for a hundred dollars, forget about a billion, but that’s only if I don’t shank them first.”
“I’m just gonna say it.”
“Say what?”
“Lima Oscar Lima,” Mickey said.
“What in the name of my sweet Aunt Sally are you talking about? ‘L.O.L.’? Is that a code?”
“Oh, hell, sorry. You haven’t been on the Internet lately.”
“Yeah, from February of 2009 to yesterday, more than four years. So no, I haven’t been on the Whiskey-Whiskey-Whiskey of late.”
“Well, they got this thing called ‘the Internet’ on computers now.”
“Har, har. Oh, my sides are aching.”
“It just means ‘Laugh Out Loud.’ It means I found your ‘shanking’ joke pretty damned funny.”
“So … instead of actually laughing, y’know, out loud, you say ‘LOL’?”
“Yeah, TLAs are really popular since texting took off.”
“TLAs?”
“Three-letter acronyms.”
“I can’t believe I’ve been missing all of this uproarious humor since I went away. I might ask the warden to take me back.”
Mickey did laugh out loud this time and said, “Anyway, there’s every kind of person here, isn’t there? I mean, jeez, there’s black people, a gal in a wheelchair, and those have to be Australian or New Zealand, what do you call them … Aboriginals. What, are they gonna catch a giant dinosaur fishing from a canoe?”
“Wow, that was really, really racist.”
“Juliett Kilo, man, just having fun.”
“Nope, not even going to ask what ‘J.K.’ means. But good—if you turned into some kind of psycho while I was gone, I’d have to, y’know …”
“Shank me, got it.” He laughed again and looked at the thirty or so people in front of them and the, at least, hundred behind them, with more hopeful registrants arriving steadily by boat or automobile (which couldn’t park anywhere near the park today).
Despite Mickey’s “J.K.” comment, Sean did notice that people from every category he could imagine were in line: lots of rich white men with amazing pecs and biceps; lots of poor brown men, maybe South Pacific islander fishing crews; lots of working-class commercial fishermen and women—they were good people with infinitely tough jobs, and Sean had always worked well with them; some well-heeled brown people, again men and women, who might have been doing the whole thing as a lark. Or they may have been serious, who knew?
And then there was every kind of Asian one could imagine. That was a racist thing to say, perhaps—more a racial observation than anything malign and racist—but he meant it with respect. The East depended heavily on fishing for sustenance as well as, if they were lucky, some profit. And from his time doing research at sea all over the world, he’d worked hand in glove with researchers (as well as veteran expert fishermen and mariners) from:
Taiwan;
Mainland China, to whom one mentioned Taiwan under threat of all research assistance being cut off immediately;
Japan, who had access to amazing ROV deep-diving robots as well as whale hunters, from whom he’d needed information on hunting big prey, despite wanting to gag from shame every minute he talked to them;
South Korea, who always impressed Sean that so much scientific genius and insight could fit inside a normal-size human skull;
The Philippines, who had everything from junks to advanced research vessels;
and Indonesia (not really East Asian, but whose fishermen knew the waters above the Marianas Trench better than anyone)
By the time Sean and Mickey got to the tables in front, the turnout behind them had swelled to hundreds. How many boats were going to be out there, trying to see—to catch—a sea creature that had been seen once, and that one time was at depths unreachable by almost any sub or ROV in the world? Not to mention that the expedition ended in horror. There were a lot of man-eating fish species and countless other dangerous genera in the waters of the Pacific before any deep-dwelling dinosaurs were even taken into account.
Sean just hoped that not too many entrants into this insane hunt would get themselves killed. He noticed that very specific waivers regarding personal injury, loss of property, and loss of life were part of the paperwork. Sean flipped through it but didn’t have a chance to read much of it before he signed. It didn’t matter, anyway—being killed by any of the creatively dangerous creatures in the sea would be preferable to going back to prison, especially for the rest of his life, especially framed as a child molester.
And he couldn’t just enter, couldn’t just place—he had to win. He had to kill this underwater mountain of death. There was no second place, let alone a ribbon for “Honorable Mention” or “Participant.” He needed to win at any cost … but he had no idea how dear that cost might be.
No sooner had he and Mickey officially signed up for The Bentneus Prize, as it was being called now, than they were to get to the shipyard and get the apparently already tricked-out boats and submersible ready for the most important mission of his life. Of the lives of any people in those lines at the park and the beach. Of Jake Bentneus’s life, from the prison of his hospital room.
He and Mickey were headed for the shuttle stop, where many registrants had parked their vehicles. For one day’s notice, it was quite well organized. And, of course, it was one week’s notice to everyone else; who knew how long th
e filmmaker had been plotting all the details of his revenge?
Before they had taken ten steps away from the registration table, however, a murmur among the registrants in line grew into exclamations in twenty different languages and dialects, then “oohs” and “ahhs” from just about everyone. Even the four Bentneus Prize registrars stood up at their table to see what everyone was making such a fuss about.
The registration table was several hundred feet from the water line, and the prospective registrants stretched all the way to the water line before taking the line 90 degrees to the left and to the right, getting lengthier in each direction. Thus, the registrars were able to see past the mass of humanity only by standing on their chairs as they looked out to sea. First they murmured, then they exclaimed, and then they whispered “ooh” and “aah” themselves.
Sean thought he had seen every flavor of race and economic level already that day, but this sight put that idea to a quick and permanent rest.
It was a submarine. Not a research submersible. Not even a bubble sub. From the dark waters of the South Pacific, a full-size gray lady rose, water streaming down as she broke through the surface. Mickey was equally transfixed, and Sean was glad they were already registered so they could walk down the beach from the park and get an unobstructed view.
From the top hatch of the massive submarine—Mickey said in admiration, “That’s a goddamn Chinese Type 033 Romeo-class submarine, displaces 1,800 tons”—two sailors leaned out and inflated a red rubber lifeboat. Then two men wearing drab gray double-pocketed uniforms and caps, so probably officers, climbed out of the sub and down a ladder connected to the raft.
“You really know your Chinese subs,” Sean said with a laugh.
“I know them well enough to know the 033s have been obsolete for decades and are way beyond their range down here. Hell, I think they’re breaking five different treaties just by popping up off an American-run territory like Guam.”
“I thought submarines could last for months and go anywhere. Not anywhere, but for sure places they aren’t supposed to be. But yeah, stay under a year if they had to.”
“That’s true of modern subs, man, but these dinosaurs—ha—are diesel, not nuclear. No, this ain’t out of China. There’s only one country using those things. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts this is frickin’ North Korea.”
As the raft approached the beach, Sean could see that the two men in gray were accompanied by a sailor in his white work uniform and cap. The sailor operated a small outboard engine that had been handed down to him.
“Holy crap, it is North Korea. What in the holy hell are they doing here? We’re not in their territory, not even close. The whole area, the Marianas Trench, all that is held by the United States. What are they doing here?” Mickey repeated, talking half to Sean and half to himself.
It didn’t take long to figure out that they were there for the same reason everyone else was. The boat came up onto the beach, and the officers—wearing rubber boots so as not to dirty their uniforms—stepped out, somehow with their backs ramrod straight the whole time, and marched all the way up to the people waiting in line to get to the registry tables.
“They’re entering the competition,” Mickey said, his awe renewed. “Now I have literally seen everything. Underwater dinosaurs, a man with no organs, and now North Koreans in a giant submarine signing up for a fishing contest.”
Sean was no less amazed, but said with dawning realization, “I remember reading that North Korea has an annual GDP of twelve billion dollars. That’s less than Vermont. That’s less than Botswana or Mozambique.”
“Okay, hold the phone, Rain Man. How the hell do you know what different countries’ GDPs are? You didn’t even have your smartphone out to cheat.”
“I don’t have a smartphone, genius. And the GDPs of all these countries are from 2011, I think, so two years ago, pretty current.”
“That don’t explain how you know them off the top of your head.”
“It was included in some papers sent to me while I was in solitary. They listed each and every country’s GDP, because they used that information to calculate what percentage each country spent on oceanographic research.”
Mickey scoffed a little, but with a smile said, “I don’t think a country can get more landlocked that Botswana, boss. If North Korea spend twenty-five cents on oceanic research, I’ll eat one of those DPRK assholes’ stupid hats.”
“No, you’re right, but every country was listed anyway. Some were just zero percent.”
“That still doesn’t tell me how the heck you remember all that.”
“You’ve never spent a year in solitary confinement, Mick. There’s time, so much empty time, you could memorize a thousand digits of pi. I lay in my bunk at night and saw if I could get the right amount for the right countries. A hundred nights of that, trying to sleep when you’ve barely moved all day, you remember that information like you remember your first day on the inside. It’s burned into you, and you’ll never fail to recall every detail.”
Mickey was completely silent. What was there he could say?
“Anyway,” Sean said to get them going again, “a country with a GDP half that of our least populated state, they’ll feel a billion dollars coming into their economy. That’s, what? Like adding eight percent to their economy.”
“Which the government would snatch up and spend oppressing its people.”
“Have I ever told you about what I do when I work with Japanese whalers?”
“What?”
“Hold my goddamn nose and get on with it.”
“Yeah,” Mickey said with a nod. “Besides, we’re assuming the government wants to compete. Maybe this is like Red October, with a rogue crew or whatever stealing the submarine to defect?”
“Look at those two jerks—they march to the head of the line and loudly claim that a sovereign nation must come before any individuals. And look, they’re getting what they want, too. Of course, they might have sidearms to, um, assist with compliance.”
“Sounds like a North Korean operation to me.”
“Sound like the Wild West to me.” Sean looked back out to sea, at the menacing steel vessel. “You have a smartphone, right?”
“Don’t leave home without it!”
“Would you check out the operating depth of whatever sub you said this was?”
Mickey pulled out his phone and dutifully started tapping. “Yeah, prepare to be unimpressed: the whole Romeo class—of which the 033 was sold to North Korea for scrap, but they got running again somehow—is rated as having a normal operational depth of about a thousand feet. Its maximum tops out—or bottoms out, I guess—at about 1,600 feet.”
“That’s less than Kat’s first test dive back in the day, and that’s their maximum? Are the North Koreans suicidal?”
“I would think so.”
“Nice,” Sean said with a smirk. “I mean, they obviously know the operating limitations of their own submarine.”
“Again, I would think so.”
“Then what could they be doing? You can’t launch submersibles from a sealed submarine, unless you’re going to shoot them out of the torpedo tubes. That wouldn’t make any sense, anyway. It would destroy whatever electronics you had in the projectile submersible.”
The two humorless North Korean officers took the copy of their completed paperwork and marched back down to the beach where their rubber boat and equally humorless sailor awaited them. They launched and were back inside the submarine within minutes. Then the enormous iron hulk pulled out to sea and disappeared under the glassy water.
Mickey and Sean exchanged flabbergasted looks with everyone around them. They headed back to the shuttle stop, but not before taking in the crowd waiting in line, perhaps five hundred entrants still waiting to sign up. Some looked like they didn’t have a plugged nickel but were entering the chase anyway. The sea around Marianas Trench was going to be filled with God knew what kind of boats, ships, and at least one Communist coun
try’s jalopy submarine.
A billion dollars was worth it. Even if some didn’t have the chance of a slug making it through the salt flats of Utah, there was still some chance, some ray of good luck that could shine down on those who had lived all their lives in shadow.
A billion dollars was worth doing it. It was worth doing anything.
***
Jeffrey Plaid had been training his whole life for this moment. Well, not “training” so much as “being on telly holding a scary fish,” but that counted. Both required being on a boat. Both were dangerous—he had never had any mishaps himself, except for that time he got a nasty bruise from being hit right smack dab in the middle of his left pectoral by a fish jumping out of the river.
Man, that hurt. Let that swine Gary Lucas laugh all he wanted—it was an injury, taken in the line of duty. Since then, Jeffrey knew pain. He was like one of the historical fisherman, perhaps of cod, suffering through all kinds of weather (for him shooting his show in the States, usually sunny or a bit overcast, but the point remained). Like the mariners who were responsible for half the wonder of fish ‘n’ chips, depending on that next catch for their livelihood or to avoid having to run a repeat, Jeffrey Plaid had suffered just as they did, that is, if any of them had been struck in the middle of the left pectoral, just above the nipple, by a fish assassin leaving its entire world behind to take out the best angler in the world.
Only, that best angler was even more great now. Now he had robots.
“Did it dive?” Jeffrey shouted from where he was reading his magazine. “We have video or what all?”
“Affirmative. We have an uplink!” Nigel shouted back.
“Wha?”
Sigh. “Yes. The video is coming in.” The team on the deck watched the monitors with excitement. “It’s tossed off the shields, and we can see the light from the hydrothermal vents. You should come see this.”
Jeffrey, clad in only his red custom Speedo, walked out to where the monitors and swots were. He squinted and said, “Not much to look at, eh?”
