“You’re starting to sound like Oscar Wright.”
“Never compare me to him,” the marine biologist cautioned.
“Then quit obsessing. At least he had the common sense to know when he was outmatched. I’m not asking you to abandon the plan, just reconsider it. Regroup, get the Simon fixed properly at dry dock and make another voyage.”
“By then the specimen may be gone for good. We have to seize it while we have the chance.” She nodded toward the sonar equipment. “Have you been watching things?”
“All night,” he said. “I didn’t get a wink of sleep.” There were half a dozen dots on the green viewfinder. Bart pointed out one of them, isolated from the others. The Aurora had kept pace with the Leviathan so they didn’t lose it. “If anything happens to you, I’m responsible. My ship, my liability.”
“Don’t worry, you’ve been absolved of all accountability. If anything goes south, it’s my head on the chopping block.”
“I don’t mean losing your job. You almost died down there. Hasn’t that sunk in? Do you want that thing to finish the job?” Bart was flabbergasted by her gall. There was a difference between courage and stupidity, and she appeared to have the two mixed.
“Get in touch if anything changes. And don’t forget to drop the nets.”
Kelly left the pilothouse before Bart could dissuade her. She instructed an intern to fetch the bait while she crossed the weather deck to a pile of chain stored beside the anchor box. She dragged a length of it to the Simon, where it attached to the submersible’s stern with a quick-release carabineer.
The intern returned with a wheelbarrow carrying the fresh sailfish carcass that had been ripped apart by the Leviathan. The remaining piece weighed sixty pounds and had been stored in the galley’s meat locker.
She connected the other end of the chain with a grappling hook, spiked it through the marlin’s meatiest part. The bait had been drained of blood and replaced with liquid tranquilizer. After calculating the amount of sedative needed to quell an animal the Leviathan’s size, Kelly figured she required five deciliters of heavy narcotic. With a syringe she injected a large dose of detomidine into the meat.
The marine biologist wanted nothing left to chance, yet she was aware most of what she hoped to accomplish that day relied on sheer luck.
* * * * *
Rafe and Evan finished the Simon ahead of schedule, half past noon. Kelly joined them for a final inspection, scrutinizing every nick and dent on the hull. The submersible was only as strong as its weakest point, and she wanted to be certain those points had been reinforced.
Satisfied with the exterior, she went inside to test the electronics. Rafe informed her that fundamental systems were working. Navigation was functional, as were the depth gauge and speedometer; however, the sonar and radio were beyond repair.
Evan fashioned what was left of the steel arm into a defense mechanism. The Simon was helpless in the water, and the researchers needed someway to protect themselves. The ranger had soldered a long spike to the end of the arm. While it wasn’t perfect, the makeshift weapon was better than nothing.
Twenty minutes later Bart came down to the weather deck to see them off. The trawling nets had been deployed to either side of the research vessel. Chainmail meshes that weighed two tons apiece, they stretched to a maximum depth of four hundred feet. “I still don’t like this,” he told Kelly. “Especially since we can’t keep in communication.”
“We’ll be fine.” She followed Evan up the side of the submersible. “I have a timer on me,” she told the captain. “If we’re not back in an hour, wait longer. We’ll try to be back before then.”
Bart said, “The animal’s about a half-mile to the east. The continental shelf drops off around here, so be careful.” Kelly made a mental note. Before she closed the hatch, she waved to Rafe. “See ya later, alligator.”
The Jamaican smiled. “After while, crocodile.”
Using the Yumbo crane, Rafe relocated the Simon to the edge of the rear platform. All crewmembers were on deck to watch the mini-sub sink below the ocean. Within minutes the submersible was gone from view. And the researchers were on their own.
* * * * *
It seemed impossible to get more isolated than being on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Kelly Andrews found a way though, cut off from the Aurora. That sense of loneliness settled heavy in her heart as she watched her friends and colleagues vanish from view.
“How’s it looking back there?” she asked Evan.
The ranger was on his stomach, peering out the mended back viewport. The cracks in the Plexiglas had been filled with sealant, which gave it the appearance of a splintered spiderweb. It was Evan’s responsibility to make sure the Leviathan took the dosed marlin bait. “We’re good to go.”
He estimated how fast the creature might be able to swim. Its sheer size and weight was a hindrance for high speeds; he guessed it could move upward of twenty knots. As the Simon maxed out at fifteen, it was essential to stay a safe distance from the beast at all times.
“Keep your eyes peeled,” Kelly said. Today the water was clearer. Not by much, but enough to double yesterday’s visibility. Throughout the night the Aurora had followed the Leviathan fifty-three miles north from where Oscar Wright had rescued them.
Her darting eyes scanned the surroundings. Every movement and flicker of fish caught her attention. The Leviathan had to be close. After piloting the Simon for ten minutes, she figured they had traveled at least half a mile. She slowed the thrusters, and the submersible hovered near the ocean bottom. “Anything?” she asked.
“Negative.” From the corner of his eye Evan saw an undefined silhouette on the edge of his sight. When he turned directly toward it, he saw nothing except an immense blue screen.
The sea was wet as wet could be, the sands were dry as dry.
A fragment of poetry occurred to him, something he’d read as a child. He couldn’t remember the author — Ogden Nash perhaps, or Lewis Carroll?
He switched to periphery vision again. Sometimes that worked better than viewing the object head on, like spotting a faint star in the winter sky: look too close and it vanishes. “Fifteen degrees to your left,” he said.
As Kelly closed in with the mini-sub, the mass became more pronounced.
There was no mistaking the Leviathan.
The animal scoured the seafloor, pushing through the sand with its elongated snout, billows of silt blossoming up to hide the creature in a translucent haze. The giant crocodile unearthed a large stone, a piece of dead brain coral the size of a football. It gingerly grasped the object in its muzzle and swallowed the rock with a backward tilt of its head.
Evan turned for a better view. “Just like a bird,” he whispered.
Being a reptile — one of the last holdouts from the prehistoric era — the Leviathan shared many traits with modern avians, a common ancestor in the evolutionary chain. Similar to birds, the creature needed to consume stones on occasion. These gastroliths aided in digestion since the body couldn’t absorb them. They served to grind up large chunks of food that were swallowed whole.
Seeing this animal behave in such an ordinary manner made the researchers ecstatic. Every shred of evidence was important and cemented their soon-to-be-legendary reputations.
“You think it’s hungry?” Evan asked. He realized how inane the question sounded aloud. Of course a creature that large was hungry. It was always famished.
“We’ll find out.” Kelly moved the Simon toward the creature, the lump of marlin dangling twenty feet below the submersible. She steered the mini-sub near the beast and allowed the meat to suspend several yards away. The quick-release mechanism on the carabineer would untether the meat from the Simon at the slightest pull. After it was consumed, the tranquilizer should take effect within ten minutes.
The animal hunted for more gastroliths, oblivious to the meat hanging overhead. “No dice,” Evan said. He strained to see the creature from the rear viewport beca
use there were no portholes on the submarine’s keel. “Jiggle it a bit like a fishing lure.”
Kelly jerked the mini-sub about, which in turn bobbed the meat. Perhaps the creature had poor vision and saw movement better than stationary objects. The Leviathan’s gaze peered up at the marlin through a milky, nictitating eyelid. The animal stopped, perfectly motionless.
Then it struck.
Its snout went from the sand to take the bait. There was a brief tug before the chain uncoupled and dropped to the seabed. The croc tore the meat free, ingested it in a single gulp.
“How will we know if the sedative works?” Evan asked.
“Give it a little time.”
Kelly used the digital camera to snap several shots of the Leviathan eating while Evan checked the monitors. “Depth is steady at one hundred and seventy meters. Ambient temperature’s sixty-four degrees.”
After five minutes Kelly said, “Let’s move on to the next phase.” The Leviathan didn’t move much at present, twitched sporadically and appeared to be asleep.
The Simon dipped lower, parallel to the seafloor but hovering above the sediment. Kelly glanced at her watch. Twenty-three minutes had passed since they left the Aurora. She had to act now. Kelly activated the bright, underwater halogen lamps. Two hundred volts flared at once, enough to scare away any animal in the vicinity.
Any animal but the Leviathan. The creature opened one eye then the other, intrigued by the sudden illumination. Evan was the first to become aware of the creature’s deceit. Its apparent slumber had been a ruse. The creature was wide-awake when it sprang upon the submersible.
Kelly veered the mini-sub sharply left, taking defensive measures to escape the beast’s jaws. “Hold on,” she said and revved the thrusters to full power. The Simon shot through the water on a southeasterly route.
The Leviathan stayed close behind. Adrenaline coursed through its body, expediting the drugs in its veins. The thrill of the chase was on.
“Is it still following us?” Kelly called over her shoulder.
“It’s right on our ass.”
With an added blast of energy, the creature gained on the submersible. Evan wondered if Kelly had used an adequate amount of detomidine; if not, their lives were in peril.
Rushing along the seafloor, the Simon approached a wall of black. Impenetrable onyx met them at fifty meters. It was already dark here, and for a moment Kelly was baffled by what she saw. Then she remembered the captain’s caveat: The continental shelf drops off around here somewhere, so be careful. The researchers had found the boundary of the North American landmass, their submarine teetering on the edge of the abyssal plain.
The ground gave way beneath them, a gaping chasm waiting to swallow them as hungrily as the monster that pursued them. “Hold on to something,” she said and took the Simon into a hard nosedive. The vessel rushed into the heart of the void, their hunter close behind.
“Five hundred meters,” Evan read from the monitors. “Six hundred . . . Seven . . . What’s this sub rated for?”
“Two thousand meters,” Kelly lied. The Simon was safest under a depth of fifteen hundred meters. And with the integrity of the hull previously compromised, it was wise to keep the submersible under a thousand meters. As Kelly Andrews hadn’t crafted a career by following rules or conventional wisdom, she’d be damned to start now.
From sea level the North American mass slopes into the Atlantic approximately two hundred and fifty miles off shore. At the rim of the tectonic plates, it drops off precipitously to the true ocean bottom one and a half miles below. Some cracks went deeper still, into the earth’s mantle itself where magma heated the water in boiling pockets and methane beds seeped poison.
The darkness here was absolute. In the midst of it, Kelly was aware it became blacker in gradient degrees and reminded her of walking through a dense fogbank. “A thousand meters,” Evan said. He added, “I’m not really in love with this idea.”
The marine biologist would never admit to the inherent flaws of her plan, no matter how much they unsettled her. “Tell me when the sedative kicks in.”
Evan looked wide-eyed out the viewport. All he saw was teeth.
“Unless you wanna be its next meal, step on it.” He checked the gauges again. “Twelve hundred meters. Water temperature’s fifty-four and dropping.”
The Simon sped along at top pace . . . swerving to the right . . . to the left . . . up and down. Despite Kelly’s countermeasures, the Leviathan stayed close on the submersible. Its agility in the water would’ve otherwise amazed the researchers had the creature not been trying to devour them. “Seventeen hundred meters; water at forty-nine degrees.”
Finally the submersible began increasing distance against the crocodile. “I think it’s slowing down,” Evan said with a smile.
The plan was working. If they forced the cold-blooded Leviathan into frigid water, its metabolism, heart rate and respiration would decelerate. “Eighteen hundred and counting,” he called.
The creature still gave chase, though not as aggressively. “At least the Simon’s holding up well,” Kelly said.
In counterpoint to this observation, the front window fractured in a broken zigzag. She’d pushed the submersible beyond its limits, and it was starting to break down. The scientists could spend no more than ten minutes at this depth, the equivalent of twenty atmospheres crushing the mini-sub from all sides.
“Twenty-two hundred meters. Temperature is forty-two,” Evan said. Pressure cracks spread in the Plexiglas and the hull groaned. “Twenty-four hundred meters. We’re in too deep.”
“Almost there,” she told him. The bottom had to be somewhere near. Eight thousand feet below the waves, the submersible rocketed toward the seafloor. “How far back is it?”
Evan checked again. The Leviathan maintained its pursuit. “Ten yards maybe.” The blackness was complete, and he could hardly discern the creature. Inside the sub all color had drained; the only illumination refracted from the halogen lights. At two thousand, seven hundred and four meters, the Simon finally reached its destination.
The seafloor suddenly appeared at once from the darkness. “We’ve hit the wall. Hold on.” Her knee-jerk reaction took the mini-sub out of a dive. Evan cursed as she straightened the Simon. “What’s the temp?” she asked.
He checked the gauges. “Thirty-five degrees, just above freezing. It shouldn’t take long now.”
They had twenty-three minutes left before Bart expected them at the surface; it would take half that time to make it topside at maximum speed. Kelly did the crude mathematics in her head. They were eighty-one hundred feet below sea level and roughly a mile east of the research vessel. Her calculations had to be perfect. She worked backward to ascertain what velocity and direction was required to return to the ship. If she were incorrect by even a fraction, they would overshoot the Aurora and likely succumb to the Leviathan.
As the creature continued toward them, its ferocity further lessened. Kelly figured at least another five minutes at the bottom. The Leviathan’s internal temperature needed time to acclimate to the ambient water. Any creature with chilled blood in its system couldn’t exhibit a high level of exertion.
The low, steady moans from the mini-sub frightened Evan. He imagined the hull buckling, collapsing unto itself like a dead star, crushing them inside and drowning them both. Whether the Leviathan ate them or the Simon failed, their deaths would be quick, a small point of solace.
No longer did Kelly have to evade the beast, because it lagged behind them at a safe distance. The submersible’s engine overheated and had turned the confined space into a sweatbox. Perspiration dripped down her forehead and into her eyes. She worked through the discomfort.
Evan’s damp shirt clung to his clammy flesh. “Ease up a bit. We don’t wanna lose it.” It was easy for the crocodile to disappear in the darkness, so the ranger needed to keep a look out.
The researchers led the Leviathan around the seafloor for several minutes. Evan was surprised
that it still stalked the submersible. Usually a predator lost interest in prey once it realized the quarry wasn’t weak or injured.
Kelly looked at her watch. They had to start back.
She took the mini-sub into a gradual ascent, following the rudimentary course in her head toward the Aurora. A thirty-degree upward slope would take the craft where it needed to be. Water bubbled through the larger fissures of the Plexiglas.
“Twenty-two hundred meters . . . twenty-one hundred . . . two thousand . . . ” Evan tracked their progress on the monitor while also spying on the Leviathan. He noticed as the water temperature increased, so too did the creature’s energy. “We need to reach the top before its blood warms again.” Kelly quickened the pace, matching the monster’s renewed zeal. If the beast sobered up as the sedative wore off, they’d have to deal with one angry, hungry reptile.
The Simon continued toward the surface: fifteen hundred meters, twelve hundred, one thousand, eight hundred . . .
“We may pull this off,” Evan said.
“I won’t be happy ‘til it’s aboard the Aurora.”
At six hundred feet, Kelly started searching. At five hundred she began to panic because she didn’t see her target. The water itself became brighter — not by much, though colors were bleeding back into the submersible. Signs of life reappeared as well, unlike the barren wasteland at the ocean bottom.
Evan said, “I don’t see it.”
It had to be close.
The Leviathan gained on them, now thirty feet behind the sub. Both scientists frantically scanned the surroundings. It wouldn’t be easy to spot, yet Kelly would recognize it immediately.
“Off starboard, is that it?” Evan asked.
“Good eye,” she said. The submarine veered to the right.
At a depth of four hundred feet, she came across the bottom edge of the Aurora’s trawling net. It shimmered in the ocean current like a billowing flag. The mesh itself stretched the entire length of the research vessel, a hundred and sixty feet, with fortified webbing interlocked in a grid pattern.
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