by Greig Beck
Cate held up her hand. “It’s okay, forget it, I’m sorry.” She was actually relieved. She had no intention of going out in a small boat, in the darkest of nights, in an area haunted by tales of giant sharks. She just needed to see if the men were telling the truth, or just playing games with the American fly-in. Looks like she had her answer.
Cate reached for her beer. “I want to thank you all for talking to me. The next round is on me.” She raised her glass. “Cheers!”
* * *
Once the topic turned away from monster sharks, the night became less awkward and more fun, and the drunker the Fingal Bay mob got, the louder they grew. She left when Jock started to doze in his chair, and Johnson asked her to dance. She had learned a lot, but still had no serious information. Stories, even extremely credible ones, were not worth the breeze they were written on.
She walked back along the beach. The moonless night was as dark as she expected but the stars were bright, and the lights from the cottages on the shore were warm and inviting. A few locals milled about, but the only sounds came from the soft shushing of the small surf on the silken sand.
She came to the spit, stretching out to Shark Island. There were no lights on the dark mound, and the sliver of white sand was only a dozen feet wide as the tide had come in a lot from when she had departed for the bar hours earlier.
She started to turn back to the guesthouse but stopped after taking only a few steps. She was wide awake, with specialized film in her camera, on a moonless night, in a place where there were said to be sightings of a Megalodon shark, at exactly the time it was supposed to surface – or rise from the deepest wells of hell, as Jock would say.
She stared out at the island; it rose about 200 feet from the water and was half a mile around. “Nothing gonna sink that baby,” she whispered. “Do it.” She turned back to the sand spit, ready to go but instead just staring, as her feet refused to obey.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Dry sand all the way.”
She felt her heart beating in her chest as the old ghosts tried to return.
“Bullshit.” She started out.
It took her twenty minutes to cross the stretch of sand, and she walked around the island’s shoreline to the farthest edge closest to the deeper channel. She found a comfortable perch and eased herself down, camera in her lap, and gazed out over the dark and glistening blanket of the ocean.
Cate let her mind wander, allowing it to take her back to the hidden cave in Alaska where her grandfather had vanished three-quarters of a century ago. And where she, Jack, Valery Mironov and their crew had encountered a living Carcharodon Megalodon, a creature from another time. A wave of nausea pulsed through her as she remembered the horror of being in that black water with the monstrous beast. The Megalodon was like a force of nature, merciless, terrifying, and unstoppable.
They’d allowed it to escape, and when trying to rectify their mistake, they had pursued it across the ocean. Many lives had been lost, including some very close friends’, before they’d killed it. Or so she hoped.
As an evolutionary biologist, she looked for remnant species, living fossils, and evolution’s throwbacks. If you find one, the odds are in your favor that you’ll find more. Ever since her encounter with the dinosaur shark, she had been obsessively looking for evidence of more sharks. And the more she studied the creature, the more she believed that the great beasts might never have really left them at all.
She smiled wryly. She should just be happy that the beasts stayed wherever they were hiding given the death and destruction a single one had caused. Cate tried to refocus on the water.
But you try and come back into our world, then something’s gotta give, she whispered. And it isn’t going to be us.
She lifted the camera and used light-enhance to swing across the ocean’s surface. The green glowing images picked up nothing – no wave, no surge wash, and certainly no eight-foot fin. She switched to thermal, and slowly moved the lens across the surface. Once again, there was nothing but the comforting blackness of the heatless surface of the ocean.
Cate lowered the camera to her lap, and continued to watch a little longer. It was still warm, and she felt the weight of jet lag pulling at her eyelids. Perhaps she dozed, or just went into a trance for a while, but she jolted alert when a small wave splashed her feet. There was a cooler wind blowing, and the tide had obviously come in another few feet since she had been sitting on the end of the small island. Her ass hurt and she checked her watch – midnight now – she’d been sitting here nearly two hours.
She got to her feet, and took one last look around. “You get to keep your secrets for a little while longer, I guess.” She turned and headed back around the island’s rocky edge, forced to track higher than before as the tide had rolled in.
When she reached the step-off point, she stopped, frowned, and swung one way, then the other. There was no spit of sand.
“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me.”
The tide had risen to the point of swallowing the half-mile sandspit. She groaned, and pulled out her camera, changed to light-enhance and played it over the dark stretch of water between her and the beach.
There.
There were a few glimpses of white just below the surface. The sandspit was still there, she just needed to walk at its center to find the shallow bits. Or, she could wait for the tide to turn. Cate checked her watch again – it’d be hours. Dammit, I’m not staying here tonight.
C’mon, Granger, grow a pair. She stepped off the rocks and her foot immediately sunk down to her knee. Shit.
She swallowed and started to walk carefully, arms out, a little like a tightrope walker. From time to time she lifted the camera to her face, and scanned for the shallow areas of the spit. She knew that on one side was the bay, a gently sloping sandy bottom that only dropped to about fifty feet. But on the open side was the channel, which immediately dropped away to around 200 feet. Plenty of room for …
Stop it, she hissed to herself.
Cate refused to look toward the dark water to her right side as she started to wade toward what she hoped was the knee-deep water of the spit.
She staggered, putting one foot onto a slope of sand and feeling it slide under her foot – down the right-side slope to the deep water.
“No, no, no.” She eased back up onto the hidden spit, and to what she hoped was its center.
The wind chill blew her hair and dried the perspiration running down her cheeks. Weird; it was cold now, but she was sweating like a jogger.
She was halfway along, and could see the lights of Mrs. Mathews’ cottage. Nearly there, she thought, focusing on those friendly, safe lights. She staggered again as her foot slid down the side of the spit. Beside her, in the dark water of the channel, something surged.
Fuck, she powered back up and over toward the bay side, and slid down the opposite slope. She edged back to what she thought was the center, but now the water came to her thighs. This was called Shark Island, and even if it wasn’t a goddamn Megalodon, then it could be any other type of man-eater out there that might find her legs an appealing midnight snack.
The surge came again, and she spun and lifted the camera, switching rapidly from night vision to thermal. There was a flash of red heat, some fifty feet out, that quickly sunk deeper below the surface.
That was it; she started to run, plowing through the water, fear making her feel like she needed to urinate.
The spit shallowed, and then shallowed some more, and in another minute she was sprinting up onto dry sand, where she collapsed and sat looking back to the dark water.
“Jesus.” She chuckled. “I must be goddam insane.”
After another minute she got to her feet. She had one more thing she needed to see tomorrow morning, and then she was flying out that evening. Suddenly she missed being home.
Cate lifted the camera and scanned the water – there was nothing there. Probably never was, she reassured herself.
CHAPTER 4
Twenty minutes after Mitch’s call, Scott Markesan was on deck and receiving his final instructions. They’d managed to get the pulser up to 220 feet – that was good. But after that it had stopped dead and sonar scans detected a large mass hooked up on it – and that was bad.
If the mass turned out to be something that could be disengaged then he would try and free it. But if not, then they had the choice of dragging the pulser and whatever was hooked up on it all the way back home – losing exploration time and money – or they could just cut loose the entire multimillion-dollar piece of machinery so they could immediately rerig and continue their exploration mapping.
Scott knew the answer to that – they were already running against time and politics, and if they had to drag the snagged device back to shore, unhook it and then rerig, it’d cost weeks. By then, the political environment could have changed and they might not be allowed to continue with their seismic blasting. Added to that, it was his job to keep the devices working once in the drink, and not just jockey the whole lot back – he’d get it in the neck for sure.
Scott had several deckhands help him with his kit, and there was a lot of it. Diving to anything below 200 feet meant hypoxic breathing gas became necessary to avoid oxygen toxicity. So he’d need a third air tank that contained trimix to be used once he was at depths. As its name suggested “trimix” was a mixture of three gases – nitrogen, oxygen and helium – and allowed divers to go down deeper and stay there longer.
Scott checked his wrist-mounted dive light – perfect. The squat device threw out 700 lumens, and allowed him to work hands free when down in dark water. Next was the extra thick wetsuit, with the half inch neoprene over the torso and extremities, but less so over the joints and hands for dexterity. The thickness was great for retaining heat, but it was buoyant, so that meant extra weight belts. On deck, he felt the squares of lead on his belt dragging him down, but he’d be fine in the water.
Scott looked up at the seismic blaster’s lead line; the cable was still piano-wire tight, even though the ship had stopped dead in the ocean. They had already attached his cable rider; it was a small device that he’d hang onto to take him down quickly, like a flying fox line runner. He’d be down 220 feet in a minute. He’d budgeted to give himself fifteen minutes to work – within that time he’d be able to assess what the problem or damage was, and then, if need be, he could plan further dives with any other equipment he may need. The rest of the time was for the ascent, which would need to be ponderously slow to avoid time in the decompression chamber.
He was handed his full-face diving mask. He nodded his thanks, sucked in one last deep breath and then pulled it over his head. The mask was bulky, but underwater it came into its own. It had twin LED lights at each temple, built-in communication with the ship, and it kept his entire face warm – a bonus in cold water.
“Come in, Mitch.” Scott checked his comms.
“Right here, buddy, and I have eyes on you.”
Scott briefly turned to give a thumbs-up to the bridge, and then nodded to the deckhands, who did one last check on his seals, tanks and airflow. It always felt like he was preparing for a spacewalk.
“Good to go, Scotty,” one of them said and slapped him on the shoulder. The man stood back and shook his head. “Don’t fancy your job.”
Scott grinned. “But sure breaks up the boredom.”
It was still early afternoon, with a cloudless, azure sky. On deck it was seventy-eight degrees, and Scott was already perspiring heavily in the wetsuit. But the ocean, even though quite calm, was a deep, dark blue. The surface temperatures at this latitude would be warm, but once you hit about 200 feet, you dropped below the thermal layer and hit the ice cold of the depths. Even with all his insulation, he was gonna feel that bone-numbing chill right through the rubber.
And then there was the darkness. Scott checked his wrist light again. The big lamp would shoot a tunnel of light for 100 feet. On his other wrist was a depth gauge and wristwatch. No more excuses, it was time to go.
The dinghy was lowered over the side with Scott and two deckhands onboard. The deckhands’ job was to wait at the surface, and haul his freezing body in when he came back up. But he’d be thankful for it, as the possibility of him even making it to the cargo door under his own strength after the dive, with fingers that’d be as cold and bloodless as ten white slugs, was unthinkable.
They powered to where the cable entered the water, and then slowed so Scott could reach up and grab it. He felt the tension, the weight. Even with the boat stopped, it was unnaturally tight as if something wasn’t just hooked up on it, but was actually pulling against it. He plucked at it, and then jerked on it, hard. There was definitely weight on the cable. It moved in the water, making the water drops zing from the wire.
Scott turned to grin. “Hey, maybe we’ve hooked Moby Dick.”
The deckhands looked briefly at each other. One frowned. “Your dick?”
“Huh?” Scott realized the mask had muffled his speech. “Not my dick, Moby Dick, the great white … ah, forget it.”
Neither still seemed to get the joke, but one nodded to him. “Good luck.” It sounded like a death sentence.
Scott attached the cable runner and edged over the side. Though he wore thick neoprene he felt the chill – or was that just nerves, he wondered. His risk radar was twitching, and he didn’t know why.
He clung to the side of the dinghy and checked his kit at his belt – various knives and cutting instruments, as well as a small portable welder. He reached up to switch on his helmet lamps, and faced down into the dark water.
“Okay, commencing descent.”
“Roger that, Scott. You stay warm, you hear?” Mitch seemed to grin through his words.
Scott sucked in a breath and angled down. He let his body sink a few feet before reaching out for the cable. It was easy to see in the dark blue water, speckled with tiny organic snow-like plankton and other species of organic debris that made up the krill population.
The waters here were filled with life, and normally there’d be whales in proximity. But there’d be none today because, though no one would admit it, when they were seismic blasting, the whales made themselves scarce. The good news was they usually came back.
He reached for the attached cable runner, and still felt the tension. He switched it on and let it gently glide him down along the cable, scattering the tiny krill as he went. In no time, the pressure went up, and the light went down. Years of experience told him when it was time to change over gas mixtures. He checked his depth gauge – 120 feet – he knew it, the light had faded now to murky twilight.
“I’m at 120 feet, nothing visible. Switching the mix,” he said.
“Roger that,” Mitch responded.
He paused to hang in the water, adjust to the pressure, and switch over to his trimix. He flicked on his wrist lamp. The pipe of brilliant white light made a corridor out into the dark water.
“Continuing down.”
He swam on, feeling the cable tension as he went – still stiff as a tightrope walker, but it wasn’t rock steady, there was some movement. Perhaps there was a current down deeper that was washing across it, and whatever they had hooked up was swinging in the breeze, so to speak.
On he went, 150 feet, 160, 170. He paused again, feeling his neck prickle. The water was night-black now. He’d dived in dark, deep water before, and dived at night. It was always a little creepy not being able to see what was out there, but for some reason, today, something primal in his gut made him feel tiny and exposed like never before.
Scott looked over his shoulder, and then up at the surface. There it was, the halo of light. At depths like this, a diver could look upward to see the entire hemisphere of the sky compressed into a circle over their head – a phenomenon called “Snell’s Window”, caused by the bending of light as it enters water. He suddenly longed to be up there in that well-li
t world and not down here, alone, in the cold and dark.
“Toughen up, Scotty boy,” he whispered.
“Say again, Scott?” Mitch asked.
“Just sayin’, I’m nearly there, buddy boy.” Scott grinned behind his mask, bolstering himself with a shot of bravado.
He followed the cable, closing on the pulser, but still feeling steel vibrate as he reached to within thirty feet of where the silver torpedo-shaped device should be. It was odd as there was no discernible current he could detect.
Wait, no, there it was. He felt a strong rush of water toward him. The cable yawed hard to the left.
What the hell was going on? He held on tight to the jerking cable and stared down to where it descended into the darkness.
The cable went slack. Then it started to sag in his hands as if it was reeling in toward him. Whatever was on the line was coming up – at him.
Scott saw it.
He screamed, fogging his mask.
CHAPTER 5
Fingal Bay, Port Stephens, eastern coast of Australia
Cate slept restlessly. She tossed and turned and thought about deep water, and things that saw her, without her seeing them.
She sat up in bed and stuck her tongue out, feeling thirsty and a little bit foggy after all last night’s beer. She’d heard that most Australian beers had a higher percentage of alcohol. She believed it now, and was paying for it.
She chuckled. “Yep, it’s always that last one that does it.”
She rubbed her face and checked the bedside clock – 9 am. Hopefully Mrs. Mathews still had breakfast on downstairs. She quickly threw on a t-shirt, shorts and canvas deck shoes and headed down.
The smells of coffee and bacon were like manna from heaven.
“Good morning, dear.” Mrs. Mathews looked seaside healthy, and in far better shape than Cate felt.
“Did you have a good night?”
Cate nodded. “Was great, thank you, Angela. But somebody forgot to tell me that your Aussie beer has a kick.”