by Steve Alten
Morning sunlight streamed through the wooden shutters, illuminating the familiar bedroom as Jonas came out of the night terror. He turned and kissed Terry’s hand.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
He nodded, struggling to find his voice.
“Was it the same dream? The one where you’re back in the Trench?”
“Yes.” Jonas lay back in bed, allowing his wife to use his chest as a pillow. He stroked her long silky black hair, then let his hand drift down the small of her back to her smooth bare behind.
“It isn’t getting better,” she said. “You should see Dr. Wishnov before you give me a heart attack.”
“Post Traumatic Stress Disorder—I already know what he’ll tell me. He’ll tell me to quit the Institute.”
“Maybe you should. Four years studying that monster is enough to give anyone nightmares, especially after all you’ve been through.”
The ring of the phone made them both jump. They smiled at each other. “Guess we’re both a little on edge,” Jonas said.
She rolled over and snuggled naked against him. “Don’t answer it.”
Jonas pulled her close, nuzzling her neck as he ran his hands across her breasts.
The phone continued ringing.
“Goddamn it.” Jonas grabbed the receiver. “Yes?”
“Doc, it’s Manny. Sorry to bother you, but I think you ought to get back to the lagoon.”
The tone of his assistant’s voice caused Jonas to sit up. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s Angel. Something’s wrong with her. You’d better get down here.”
Jonas felt his heart pounding in his throat. “Give me twenty minutes.” He hung up, then slipped out of bed to get dressed.
“Jonas, what is it?”
He turned to his wife. “Manny says something’s wrong with the female. I have to go—”
“Hon, take it easy. Maybe you should eat something, you look as pale as a ghost.” To her surprise, he stopped getting dressed and sat down on the edge of the bed to hug her.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you, too. Jonas, tell me what’s wrong? I can feel your arms trembling.”
“I don’t know. I think I just had déjà vu, like my absolute worst nightmare is about to become real.”
*
It had been eleven years since Jonas Taylor had first encountered Carcharodon megalodon, the fiercest predator ever to have lived. He had been nearly seven miles down in the Mariana Trench, the deepest and most unexplored location on the planet, piloting the Navy’s three-man submersible, the Seacliff. On the last of the top-secret dives, the exhausted argonaut had been staring into the pitch-black waters below when the unearthly white glow had appeared. Mesmerized by what he first took to be an aberration, he quickly found his thoughts turning to fear as the sixty-foot Great White shark’s luminescent torpedo-shaped head began rising at them from the depths, the demonic smile opening to reveal seven-inch teeth.
A primordial panic had seized him, changing his life forever. Disregarding protocol, he had jettisoned the vessel’s ballast and raced the sub back to the surface, the rapid rise causing a malfunction in the pressurization system. Both scientists aboard the sub had died, and Jonas’s career as an argonaut was over. Or so he had thought.
Over the next seven years, Jonas became obsessed with proving to the world that the creature really existed. Returning to school, he earned advanced degrees in paleobiology while his first wife supported them. Research over the mysterious disappearance of the megalodon species soon led to a controversial theory and several publications. Jonas surmised that many of the prehistoric Great White sharks had migrated to the warmer abyssal waters of the Mariana Trench in order to avoid the cold surface temperatures brought about by the last Ice Age. Despite the scientific basis for his conclusions, his research was dismissed by colleagues as utter fantasy, his papers banned from many institutions.
Four years later, the opportunity to return to the Mariana Trench was offered by Masao Tanaka, an old friend and mentor. The founder of the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute had not been interested in megalodons or Jonas’s theories about the creature’s possible existence. Masao was building an artificial lagoon off the Monterey coast, a man-made habitat in which to study whales. To finance the project, he had entered into a joint-venture agreement with the Japanese government to deploy an array of seismic detection robots, called Unmanned Nautical Information Submersibles—UNIS—along the floor of the Mariana Trench. Something had gone wrong with several of the devices, and Masao needed Jonas’s assistance in order to retrieve one of the instruments. At first, the former deep-sea pilot had refused, unable to face his fear. But with his first marriage falling apart and his career in disarray, the thought of redemption became too seductive to pass up.
And then there was Terry.
Masao Tanaka’s only daughter was as beautiful as she was rebellious. If Jonas would not accompany her brother on the mission, she would go in his place.
And so Jonas had returned to the gorge, this time descending in a one-man submersible. Once more, fate would deem that he cross paths with one of nature’s most prolific killing machines. Tanaka’s son died within one of the creatures’ jaws, while another, a huge pregnant female, managed to rise from its purgatory in the depths. In the end, Jonas had been forced to kill the very creature he had wanted to save, his heroics becoming the stuff of legend. Once the target of ridicule and scorn among his peers, the paleontologist suddenly had his career vindicated, and literally overnight became an international celebrity: The man who cut the Meg’s heart out. Talk shows, television specials, reporters—it seemed everyone wanted a piece of him—as well as a peek at the female Megalodon pup that had been captured within the Tanaka lagoon.
He and Terry had wed. Masao Tanaka made his new son-in-law a partner at the Institute, and a year later, the most popular live exhibit in the world had opened for business in Monterey.
But fame is fleeting, and celebrity, with all its perks, also makes one an easy target. Eight months after the lagoon had opened, Jonas and the Tanaka Institute found themselves defendants in a $200 million class-action lawsuit, filed by grieving relatives of those who had perished within the jaws of the Megalodon. Terry was four months pregnant when the trial began, a media frenzy rivaling that of the O.J. Simpson hearings:
“Would you explain to the court, Professor Taylor, why you risked so much to capture a creature we’ve heard described as the most dangerous predator of all time?”
“We had the means to contain the Megalodon and study it.”
“Tell us, Professor, when you had actually succeeded in sedating and capturing the monster in your cargo net, did you ever consider killing it?”
“No. We had it under control. There was no reason—”
“No reason? Isn’t it more accurate to say that you and the Tanaka Institute simply made a business decision not to kill it? Money, Professor, it was all about money, wasn’t it? You decided not to slay the goose when you had ample opportunity to do so, only because you wanted its golden eggs. In the end, your greed cost innocent people their lives. And now, the offspring of the creature that violently slaughtered my clients’ loved ones is reaping millions of dollars in profits for the Tanaka Institute. Is that your idea of justice, Professor?”
In the end, the jury had awarded damages exceeding everyone’s expectations. When the courts refused their appeals, the Tanaka Institute had been forced into bankruptcy. Then, out of the blue, the Japanese Marine Science Technology Center—JAMSTEC—which had first lured Masao Tanaka into the Mariana Trench, offered the Institute a way out of their financial fix. Concerned about the rise in seismic activity along the Philippine and Pacific tectonic plates, the Japanese once again gave the Tanaka Institute an opportunity to deploy an entire array of UNIS robots along the Mariana Trench floor. The contract was lucrative, but the dangers of returning to the abyss forced Masao Tanaka to seek the help of billionaire energy
mogul Benedict Singer, who was in the midst of constructing his own fleet of deep-sea submersibles to explore the world’s trenches. A partnership was formed and Masao was forced to give up controlling interest of his beloved Institute in order to fulfill the JAMSTEC contract and keep the doors of his attraction open.
*
Jonas drove past the giant billboard advertisement of the Meg: “SEE ANGEL—NATURE’S MOST PROLIFIC KILLING MACHINE. THREE SHOWS DAILY.” He turned down the employee access road, waved to the guard, then pulled into his parking spot.
The haunting sound of baritone drums began pounding from the loudspeakers of the outdoor arena. He checked his watch and saw that the ten o’clock show was moments away from starting.
Viewed from above, the man-made Tanaka lagoon appeared as an oval lake surrounded by a concrete arena, which ran along the shoreline of the Pacific ocean. Connecting this enormous aquarium to the sea was an eighty-foot-deep, thousand-foot-long channel at the midpoint of the lagoon’s western wall. Consisting of two concrete sea walls running parallel to each other, the canal was cut off from the ocean by a set of mammoth double doors of reinforced steel, which prevented the lagoon’s star attraction from escaping.
As Jonas entered the ten-thousand-seat stadium, a hush fell over the impatient capacity crowd. All eyes, all camera lenses, turned to focus on the south side of the aquarium where a five-hundred-pound headless carcass of beef was now being attached to a thick chain dangling from an enormous A-frame. Somewhere deep within the three-quarter-mile lagoon, still remaining out of sight, lurked Angel, the monster they had paid theater-ticket money to catch a glimpse of. The moment they had waited for would soon be upon them. Breakfast was being served.
Jonas followed the arena’s circular walkway until he came to the concrete platform supporting the steel winch. He glanced up to see his assistant, Manny Vazquez, swing the raw carcass carefully into position above the tranquil blue water.
Below the concrete platform was a steel door marked “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” Jonas noticed that the steel safeguard protecting the locking mechanism had been partially pried back. Damn kids… He made a mental note to have it repaired, then unlocked the door and entered the dank stairwell, slamming the door closed behind him.
Jonas inhaled the familiar cool dampness, taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He descended the two flights of stairs slowly, the voodoo-like drumbeats growing fainter as he moved deeper into the bowels of the facility.
The stairwell emptied into a subterranean semicircular corridor that ran along the southern circumference of the enormous tank. Eerie reflections of blue-green light illuminated an otherwise dark passage. Jonas moved slowly to the source of the light, turning to face the fifteen-foot-high, six-inch-thick LEXAN bay aquarium windows.
He was now thirty feet below the surface, staring into the crystal-blue waters of the man-made lagoon. Jonas looked up, reading a newly erected sign above his head: “DANGER. NO MOVEMENT WHILE MEGALODON IS PRESENT.”
He pressed his palm against the LEXAN glass. Its cold surface reverberated from the underwater acoustics being pumped into the tank, calling the beast to its meal. Drops of crimson blood from the dangling carcass dispersed along the surface of water above his head.
Jonas gripped the rail.
*
Deep within the farthest confines of the ocean-access canal, a pure white triangular head the size of a small house continued its side-to-side mantra of movement, rubbing its conical snout raw against the porous gateway of steel. As the inflowing current of water from the Pacific passed through the pores of the gateway, the to-and-fro movements of the creature’s head siphoned the scents of the sea into its nasal capsule. Miles away, pods of whales were migrating north along the California coastline. The seventy-two-foot prehistoric female great white could smell their sweet, pungent scents.
The deep bass of the underwater acoustics intensified, stimulating the highly sensitive cells running along the creature’s lateral line. The reverberations meant food. The female turned away from the gate, remaining deep to avoid the electrical field being discharged from an array of pipes extending out along the upper inner-portion of the seawall, all that prevented the sixty-two-thousand-pound behemoth from simply leaping sideways out of the canal.
*
A great roar rose from the crowd as a prodigious wake accelerated into the lagoon. Ten thousand hearts fluttered as the seven-foot ivory dorsal fin appeared, cutting across the azure surface. The moving girth of the submerged leviathan sent fourteen-foot waves crashing over the eastern seawall of the tank.
The fin disappeared as the fish descended to circle below.
The audience breathed a collective sigh.
“Ladies and gentlemen, say hello to Angel, our own white Angel of Death!”
With a whoosh, the beast suddenly exploded from the tank. Murderous jaws stretched a full ten feet, rows of six-to-nine-inch teeth hyperextending away from its mouth in slow motion, sending screams rippling through the crowd. For a heart-stopping moment, its upper torso remained suspended out of the water, defying gravity, as the monster shark latched onto the entire carcass in one horrific bite.
The A-frame groaned, bending as the creature twisted from side to side in exaggerated throes of its humongous head, attempting to free its meal from the steel clamp. Mountains of frothy pink waves slammed against the Plexiglas shielding the spectators. And then the carcass tore free, the steel support snapping back into place as the ghostly prehistoric predator claimed its prize.
The crowd swooned as the pale monstrosity slipped back into its tank and submerged. The cleanly picked clamp continued to dance at the end of the swinging chain, the steel girders of the A-frame reverberating like a giant tuning fork from the force of the attack.
Through the myriad of bubbles and swirling shards of beef, Jonas stared at the creature’s ghastly alabaster belly as it chewed its food, the violent muscular contraction from its jaws sending great ripples gyrating down its underside and gills.
Waves created by the feeding behemoth pounded the glass, causing the sheet of LEXAN to rattle in its frame. Jonas stared in awe at the female’s girth, which had surpassed even that of its deceased parent. Angel’s lifelong existence in highly oxygenated surface waters had obviously had an impact on her size, as well as her ravenous appetite. Like her parent, her entire hide was luminescent white, a genetic adaptation the shark’s ancestors had acquired to lure prey in the perpetually dark waters of the Mariana Trench.
Jonas remained motionless, staring at his waking nightmare. The soulless gray eye rolled back into place as it ravaged its last bite.
A red phone on the wall rang. Jonas reached for it.
Detecting movement, the Megalodon arched its back. Sculling forward, it pushed its snout against the LEXAN glass as if looking in.
Jonas froze. He had never seen the female so agitated.
“Hello? Doc, are you there?”
Sweat trickled down Jonas’s armpit as Angel continued pressing against the underwater bay windows, staring at him. The LEXAN began bending.
Jonas recalled the words of the facility’s engineer. Bending is normal. Flexible plates actually become stronger as they bend. If the window does shatter, the doors in the outer corridor will automatically seal.
Angel pressed the side of her massive head against the window. The cataract-gray eye focused on him.
Jonas felt an exquisite eeriness. Only six inches of LEXAN separated him from death. What if the engineer had been wrong? After all, the tank was originally designed to harbor whales.
The Meg turned and disappeared into the lagoon, heading straight for the canal.
Jonas released his breath, his limbs shaking. He leaned back against the wall, out of sight, trying to fathom what had just taken place.
“Doc, are you there?”
“Yeah, Manny. Christ, I see what you mean about our girl being a bit wound up.”
“Better join us in the contro
l room, boss. You’re gonna want to see this.”
Jonas exited the underwater viewing area, heading across the open-air arena to the administrative wing. Not bothering to wait for the elevator, he dashed up the three flights of stairs two steps at a time, pushing through the double doors of the lagoon’s master control room.
Manny Vazquez was standing over two technicians seated by a computerized control board. From here, operators could oversee the lagoon’s environment, electronics, security, and sound system. Six closed-circuit television monitors were mounted above the board.
Manny pointed to an underwater image appearing on one of the monitors. Jonas could see the outline of the giant steel double doors that secured the canal from the Pacific.
“What am I looking at?”
“Keep watching.”
Jonas stared at the monitor. A minute passed, and then a white blur shot past the camera, accelerating toward the gateway faster than a tractor trailer, moving at more than one hundred feet per second. The head of the leviathan slammed into the sealed double doors, causing the televised image to shake violently.
“Oh, Jesus—she’s attacking the gate.”
Manny nodded. “No doubt about it, Doc. That fish of yours wants out.”
Preparations
Tanaka Institute
SADIA KLEFFNER WALKED OVER to the bay windows of the executive office and yanked open the venetian blinds, revealing the lake-size aquarium shimmering three stories below. She turned back into the room and, for a long moment, stared at her employer.
“Professor Taylor, are you all right?”
Jonas looked up from his work. “Yes. Why?”
“You have dark circles beneath your eyes.”
“I’m just tired. Do me a favor and page Mac for me, I need to speak with him right away.”
“Okay, boss.” His secretary pulled the double doors closed behind her.
*
James “Mac” Mackreides burst in unannounced ten minutes later. At just under six feet four, Mac had the square-cut jaw, regulation crew cut, and muscular upper body that gave the impression this fifty-one-year-old ex-Navy sailor was still on active duty. Ironically, it was only after being kicked out of the service that the maverick helicopter pilot had decided to work out and shave on a regular basis.
