by Steve Alten
“Oh, sweet Jesus.”
“It gets worse. Mac landed the chopper at Andersen Air Force Base… in the middle of a ceremony honoring the governor. The admiral… well, he was buck naked at the time, sir.”
“Oh my God.”
“Unfortunately, one of the local television crews reporting weather conditions at the airfield got a few choice shots before MPs cleared the area. It’s a shit-storm, sir. Admiral Gordon is flying in personally to oversee the investigation as soon as the weather clears.”
“Where’s Mackreides?”
“He’s being held at Andersen for questioning. Fortunately, the bad weather has kept the media away.”
“Listen carefully, Lebowitz. I want you to go through Mackreides’ personal belongings. Remove anything that might implicate any officer and stow it in my office.”
“Sir, isn’t that considered tampering with evidence?”
“That’s why I’m having you confiscate everything, so no one tampers with it! Danielson out.”
· · ·
Aboard the Sea Cliff
His eyelids were heavy, his brain zapping in and out of consciousness. The voices of the two scientists became dull rhythmic chants, the swaying submersible a hammock.
Jonas laid his head back, slipping into yet another two-to-three minute catnap—each a torturous tease of rest rendering him edgier, his body demanding REM sleep.
Without warning, a rogue undersea wave of turbid water broadsided the Sea Cliff without warning, levitating it fifty feet as it rolled the submersible onto its port side.
Jonas snapped awake, his limbs pumping furiously at the controls even as the two scientists collided in a heap atop the sonar monitor. Sparks greeted the sudden darkness, until the back-up batteries powered on and the sub again found its equilibrium.
“Damn it, Jonas, stay awake!”
“Tell it to my brain, Richard.”
Dr. Shaffer examined the damaged sonar monitor. “Looks like the Flying Squirrel’s flying blind. Now what?”
Dr. Prestis checked his controls, zooming in on the sea floor using the ROV’s forward camera. “We’ve loaded seventy-two pounds of manganese nodules. I say we finish with this patch and call it a day.”
His colleague looked worried. “Washington wants samples from at least three patches.”
“What am I supposed to do, Michael? Without sonar, we could smash the ROV head-first into a black smoker. No, I’m vacuuming up everything I can see, then we’re retrieving the Squirrel… assuming our pilot can stay awake.”
“Jonas!” Shaffer shook him.
Jonas opened his eyes, the geologist’s face blurry. “Where’s Maggie?”
“Who?”
“My wife. I left her on the beach with Bud, just before the wave hit.”
Shaffer glanced at Prestis, shaking his head. “He’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. Maybe we ought to bring the Squirrel back now.”
Jonas leaned out of his seat, supported by his harness, so that his face was inches from the bottom viewport. The Sea Cliff’s exterior lights were focused on the hydrothermal plume, illuminating the swirling layer of soot like a full moon obscured behind clouds. Every so often a break in the murky water appeared, allowing the beacon to illuminate the inky depths of the Devil’s Purgatory.
Jonas followed the ray of light through the parting plume cloud, his eyes detecting movement. There was something circling in the warm layer a hundred and thirty feet below the Sea Cliff—and it appeared to be glowing.
· · ·
Challenger Deep
As it had hours earlier, the current had swept the Megalodon through the trench, guiding it to its prey.
These reverberations were different from the school of cuttlefish, but the light that flickered down from the hydrothermal plume glowed just as brightly, confusing the juvenile predator. Locking onto the Sea Cliff’s churning propeller, the predator abandoned the current and rose, circling just below the plume, her senses gauging the strange creature hovering above the warm layer.
The female hesitated. She needed to feed, but the last foray into the cold had nearly killed her.
The cloud of soot thickened, cloaking the light.
Instinct took over—the creature was escaping.
The Megalodon rose to attack.
8
Aboard the Sea Cliff
JONAS RUBBED HIS EYES, unable to fathom the circling creature—if it was a creature—if he was even awake. He slapped himself across his face, then watched in fascination as the glow rose higher.
His heart pounded as the white haze morphed into a triangular head, and, impossibly large, the widening jaws as big as the door of his garage.
It was a Great White, ghostly pale and twice the size of the Sea Cliff!
Megalodon…
Adrenaline surged through Jonas’s body like a jolt of electric caffeine, igniting every neuron in a flight or fight response dating back to prehistoric man. Lunging for the red EMERGENCY handle, he nearly tore the device from its socket as the Meg’s head continued to rise above the plume, its nocturnal eyes nearly blinded by the Sea Cliff’s light.
Teeth, tongue and gill slits suddenly filled the viewport, the monster’s gullet consuming the brilliant white beacon of the sub’s exterior light—the momentary crunch of fiberglass rendered even more terrifying by the accompanying darkness.
Then they were rising, soaring away from the nightmarish jaws, as the 58,000 pound submersible jettisoned twelve percent of its weight. A dozen five-hundred-pound steel plates rained down on the Megalodon’s snout, glancing off the stunned shark’s pectoral fins before disappearing through the hot mineral clouds below.
Jonas tumbled sideways out of his harness amid voices cursing and alarms beeping and body parts colliding. A vise of purple haze clouded his vision and popped his eardrums.
Must have bit through the back-up battery… took out the pressurization system… that wobble in your ears is the titanium sphere… we’re losing internal pressure… drain every air tank… overcompensate the chamber with pressurized air before we implode!
Fumbling in the darkness, Jonas stood, his hands groping along the curved ceiling, orienting himself. A whimpering body tumbled across his feet as he located the valve. His thoughts were scattered.
Is this another nightmare or is it real?
He wrenched open the valve and cold air tinged with water blasted into the cabin.
Jonas screamed at death, but the implosion never arrived.
Just condensation… not seawater.
The darkness groaned, splattering him with warm droplets of slime. Someone was hemorrhaging; someone else was calling out his name, cursing his existence.
· · ·
Aboard the Tallman
Paul Agricola cursed as the blip fell away from the sonar screen. “What the hell just happened? We were so close, then it retreated.”
“Sir, I’ve got another object on sonar, rising fast.”
“It’s back! Doug, go active on Sea Bat-I. Luis–”
“Sir, it’s not the Meg.”
Heads turned.
“What do you mean it’s not the Meg? Is it another creature? How big is it?”
“Half the size, only it’s not a biologic, it’s a submersible. I can hear the engines. It’s at 28,550 feet and rising very fast.”
Paul Agricola glanced at his friend, Lucas Heitman. The Tallman’s skipper looked pale. “That’s why the Navy’s here. They’re diving the Challenger Deep.”
“Doug, retrieve the Sea Bats. I think it’s time we headed south to flee the storm.”
· · ·
Aboard the Sea Cliff
Eight thousand feet, and they were running out of air.
Jonas couldn’t see the sphere spinning but he felt the effects of the vertigo in his gut. He collapsed to his knees and retched, then gasped, unable to catch his breath. The sphere became his skull, the compressed weight crushing his brain, squeezing his lungs. As he gasped for air in a fetal pos
ition, a bottle rolled against him.
Too solid to be a bottle of water and attached to a piece of rubber… rubber mask?… pony bottle!
Strapping the gift of life to his face, Jonas popped the release and breathed.
· · ·
Aboard the Maxine D
In the swaying fury of the storm, Captain Dick Danielson entered the command center, his mind gripped by the developing consequences of his actions. “What happened down there? Why the emergency ascent?”
“Sir, we don’t know. Commander Taylor hasn’t responded, but they’re coming up very fast… too fast, sir.”
“Alert Dr. Heller and make sure he has the recompression chamber ready. What’s the sub’s surface ETA?”
“Ten minutes.”
“Get a dive team standing by on deck.”
· · ·
Petty Officer Second Class Gustave Maren hooked his harness to the aft rail and held on as the twenty foot swells tossed the Maxine D like an amusement park ride. It had been six weeks since Maren’s secret rendezvous with Benedict Singer, five weeks since the billionaire’s money arrived by wire into his Swiss bank account. The ten thousand was only an advance of course, the real money would come when he delivered the rock.
Not rock. Manganese nodule.
Gustave Maren had little interest in rocks or manganese or anything to do with the ocean, but he took great pride in the fact that his fourteen-year-old son was an expert on all these things. First in his class and an I.Q. that could not be traced to any genetic branch on the Maren family tree.
Gus was doing this for Michael.
Thoughts of money danced in Gustave’s head. Yes, he was doing this for Michael, but the truth was that his son was already receiving offers to attend Ivy League schools. A scholarship meant Gus could save on his only child’s tuition, using the profits from this minor theft to pay off the mortgage, perhaps even buy a new car.
The divers in the wild sea beckoned. The sub was rising. A belch of bubbles and foam and there it was, swaying on the surface like a drunken whale, the divers fighting with Typhoon Marian to capture it.
Harnesses in place, the A frame kicked back, hoisting the Sea Cliff out of the Pacific just as the swirling gray storm clouds opened-up and the drenching began. Danielson appeared on deck, a fool playing to his men, his face ashen. The Sea Cliff’s pilot, Taylor, was well-liked. This accident—or whatever they were witnessing—had been foreseen by everyone.
The captured sub swayed in the grayness of an angry dusk, the ship’s converging deck lights revealing the rain… and one other item.
Trailing the dripping Sea Cliff was a cable, taut with a weight still submerged.
Danielson pounded on Gustave’s rain gear with his open palm. “Once the Sea Cliff is secure, I want your crew to retrieve that ROV! See to it, sailor.”
“Aye, sir.”
Gustave waited for the fiberglass hull to touch down, then he traced the ROV’s cable to its docking station situated in the bow of the Sea Cliff’s sled. Using his flashlight, he located the exterior controls and attempted to reverse the winch, but the power was out.
“Wismer, Beck! We’ll need a portable generator and some cables.” Maren looked up as the sub’s hatch was opened. Seconds later, a body was pulled from the submersible—a white-haired scientist. Dr. Prestis was followed by a corpse, pale except for the dead man’s head wound splattered dark with blood.
The third man out was Taylor. He was rushed with the first man to the infirmary below decks—leaving Gustave and his crew alone to tend to the ROV.
· · ·
Jonas opened his eyes to a bright light that shifted from pupil to pupil, accompanied by waves of needle-like pain in his joints and the condescending voice of Frank Heller.
“Shaffer’s dead. Prestis suffered what appears to be a major stroke about ten minutes ago. Before it hit he told me you lost it down there, that your actions endangered the mission and the crew. He said you put the sub into an emergency ascent which blew out the pressurization system.”
Jonas shook his head, the pain becoming unbearable. “Shark attacked us. Big as a house, ghostly white. Bit the sled.”
“A shark? That’s your excuse? There are no sharks in the trench, Taylor. You imagined it.” He signaled to the two orderlies. “Get him inside the recompression unit.”
· · ·
The rectangular-shaped ROV rose from the sea, weighed down by the collection basket. Gus Maren watched as his crew secured the tethered mini-sub, dragging it up on deck.
“Danielson wants the catch basket hauled below decks to the lab. Beck, you and Wismer get the dolly, O’Brien alert the eggheads. I’ll wait here in case the captain decides to make another cameo.”
Maren waited for his crew to leave before turning his attention to the catch basket. The lid was sealed, the rocks having been collected and stored inside the porous steel bin by way of the interior vacuum assembly.
Lying on the swaying deck, Maren disconnected the vacuum and reached his hand up through the suction tube until his entire arm was inside the hose. He felt a nodule, the hard wet surface covered in slime. As a teen he had used a similar technique to steal sodas out of a vending machine, his crime spree ending when his arm had gotten caught.
He momentarily panicked as the deck shifted and the weight of the basket pinned his wrist inside the housing; mercifully the ship rolled again and he was able to yank the pineapple-size rock free.
He shoved it into his jacket as he crew returned.
· · ·
“A shark?”
Frank Heller nodded at Danielson from behind his desk, his face red with anger. “He swears it was all white and as big as a house.”
“Could this shark have damaged the sub?”
“Wake up, Danielson, there was no shark. Taylor obviously imagined the whole thing. It’s called aberrations of the deep. Prestis said Jonas lost it down there.” Heller unlocked a desk drawer, removed a bottle of whisky and motioned to his friend.
“No. And you shouldn’t either.”
“Don’t pull rank on me now. We should have never allowed him to dive, he wasn’t fit for duty. The two scientists… they were friends. Prestis won’t make it through the night. What do I tell Shaffer’s wife and kids?”
“What about Taylor? How’d he manage to survive?”
“Seems he found a pony bottle before the air ran out.”
“So he caused the accident, but managed to cheat death.”
“I certified him fit for command.”
“You also were an eyewitness to Prestis’s account of what happened down there. What did you call it? Aberrations of the deep? Taylor was trained to handle these things and he failed.”
“We should have sent the back-up pilot.”
“Taylor wouldn’t allow it, he said Royston wasn’t ready. That was his fault, not ours.” Danielson poured himself a shot and drained the liquid neat. “Frank, there will be an investigation. Taylor’s finished as a submersible pilot. He’s Navy, but he’s a flash-in-the-pan, destined for civilian life. You and me—we’re career servicemen, we’ve put in our time. You want to lose everything because some rock star choked under pressure?”
“There’s blood on all our hands, captain.” Heller took a swig of whiskey, then resealed the bottle. “Prestis said he lost it down there. I’ll testify to that. I’ll also state that Taylor said he felt more qualified to handle the dive than his back-up. Will that do it for you?”
“That, and one last detail. Recommend Taylor undergo a three month psychiatric evaluation following his discharge.”
“What for?”
“Credibility. Years from now, when he decides to write a book slamming the Navy, I want to make sure the world knows that Jonas Taylor was deemed a nutcase by the medical establishment.”
· · ·
The Maxine D was underway, her bow rising and falling as it met the onslaught of twenty-five foot waves, the boat racing Typhoon Marian back to Guam.
The seas caused the submersible to teeter, its weight balanced awkwardly on its chassis. Danielson shone his light on the damaged sled, inspecting the back-up batteries and the air tanks.
A fourteen inch section of the reinforced fiberglass housing had been peeled back, leaving a gaping hole.
What the hell could have done that?
He knelt by the assembly, his light revealing a triangular white shape lodged in the tank—an object that clearly didn't belong there. Danielson gripped and twisted it free, sharp serrated edges tearing the flesh of his right palm.
Sweet Jesus…
For a long moment he stared at the object, his bleeding hand cleansed by the rain. Concealing the six inch weapon under his jacket, he walked toward the stern rail.
The ship’s twin propellers churned the dark waters into a trail of foam. Glancing around to make sure no one was watching, Danielson tossed the white Megalodon tooth into the Pacific Ocean, returning it to its rightful owner.
Epilogue
Naval Medical Center
San Diego, California
Two months later…
“THE HEARING WAS A JOKE. My JAG officer essentially told me my career was over, that the best deal I could make was to accept the dishonorable discharge and complete a three month psychiatric evaluation. I actually felt relieved this morning when I got the note that you finally wanted to see me. Guess I was lucky the hospital was in San Diego. At least my wife can visit.”
“And does she?”
“Does she what?”
“Visit you. It’s been a month. Has she been back since the men in the white suits brought you in?”
“She’s been busy. She just started working weekends at a local television station.”
“Which leaves Monday through Friday.”
“What are you implying?” Lying on the leather sofa, Jonas Taylor sat up and gazed at the psychiatrist. The man had his bare feet propped up on the oak desk, the drab white wall at his back harboring framed diplomas and a few naval photos.
