by Hugo Navikov
“Wow, Mick, I’ve never heard you like this. What the hell are ‘the consequences of failure’?”
“I hope you won’t feel misled, Sean.”
“Why would I feel misled?”
“Because we misled you. I was given strict instructions—”
“Yeah, yeah, fine—out with it, already.”
Mickey shifted in his comfortable seat, then said as matter-of-factly as he could manage to speak: “One of the papers you signed was a confession.”
“It was? There were a hell of a lot of papers.”
“That was by design, Sean. Bentneus wanted you to skip ahead and just start signing randomly because of how excited you were to get out of that damn place.”
“He called that one right,” Sean said, feeling a little embarrassed to have been so easily manipulated. “But a confession to what?”
Mickey’s mouth moved, but he was obviously hesitant to make any sounds that would answer Sean’s question.
“Jesus, Mick, come on.”
“If you fail to be the one who kills the Gigadon—even if no one kills it or even finds it, you go back to prison.”
“Aw, hell,” Sean said, now watching the freedom of the outdoors with longing instead of simple appreciation, “that’s dirty pool, man.”
“Yeah …” Mickey said.
Sean picked up on the trailing-off of Mickey’s response. “Oh my God, there’s more?”
“The confession that you signed … it, um, God … it was you confessing to escaping the prison and while you were on the lam … gah … molesting a five-year-old girl.”
Sean goggled and silently screamed until his voice could catch up: “What the hell? Why? Why would you let me sign that? Why?!”
“I’m sorry, pal.”
“You’re sorry? Why did he want a confession like that in the first … oh, goddamnit.”
“Yeah.”
“He’s going to punish me for failure by getting me put away for the rest of my life. If I survive to the end of my life, a child molester in prison. You know what I mean—it’ll end a lot earlier. Not that I would want to live very long … Goddamnit, Mick! What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“Sean, chill for a second,” Mickey said, and, despite himself, Sean did. “Listen, nobody has a better chance of getting this thing than you do. There’s two weeks of shopping and outfitting that you get to do to deck the ships out however you want. You can get missiles. You know what it takes to dive to the bottom, and Mister Bentneus is backing you!”
“Okay, true. Yes. I can do this.” He didn’t have a choice, anyway, did he? “I can do this. We can do this. We’ve got the best of everything, right? Best boats for the mission, the submersible made especially to attract—and then escape—dinosaurs, a crew that must be fantastic if they know they’re going to share in the $500 million prize … this is good!”
At the “crew” comment, Sean saw Mickey get that indigestion-type look again. “What? We don’t have a crew? Oh, for the love of God, what are we—?”
“No, we got a crew. Handpicked by Bentneus … so to speak.”
“So what’s the problem? You’re going to be my mission chief, right? I can’t do it without you. I’ll be—”
“No, no, I’m your guy. And we’ve got Holly Patterson as our science chief. Did you ever know Holly?”
“What? I’ve never worked in the field with her, but we’ve exchanged letters and papers. It’ll be amazing to meet her!”
Mickey smiled—he liked Holly a great deal—but here came the thing he didn’t want to say. “There’s a really excellent winch-and-cable crew, too, the best in the business.”
“Is that bad? You look like that’s bad.”
“Slipjack McCracken is the winch boss.”
Nothing. Blankness.
Blackness.
“Jake Bentneus insisted on him. Paid him a pretty penny upfront to get on a boat with you, too.”
“Slipjack? That son of a bitch? Why? Why the hell would Jake want the man who screwed my wife to be on a boat I’m even going to be near?”
“I told you,” Mickey said. “He’s the best in the business.”
Sean put his face in his hands. “This can’t be happening.”
“Besides, he sued your lawyer, Mister Kreide, for slander for insinuating that he was … y’know, doing anything with Kat.”
“That dirty bastard made money off banging my wife?”
“No, Sean, listen: He says he didn’t have an affair with her. He won the lawsuit—against a friggin’ lawyer.”
“Why has no one ever told me this? God, it’s tortured me in there, tortured me …” Fresh out of prison, about to fly overseas to see the dinosaurs that would have made his career and still could if he stayed free, Sean Muir cried anyway. His Kat hadn’t cheated. It was like he had gotten her back.
Of course, Kreide put forth the affair idea because he was trying to establish that Slipjack had motive and opportunity to sabotage the cable, and thus it was completely in Slipjack’s interests to vociferously deny the affair …
But that didn’t matter. He had Kat back. And for his freedom as well as $500 million, he could work with the slimy asshole. He could work, and he could win. The only person better suited for the job than he was the one who had hired him (and that was Bentneus as he was before the, um, incident). He dried his tears, and he and Mickey were laughing together again by the time they got to the airport.
***
Across the Atlantic Ocean, on the same day that Sean Muir was driven out of the gates of prison—that is, the night after the Jake Bentneus broadcast, celebrity angler Jeffrey Plaid walked right by the secretary’s desk and into the office of ROAR! Network’s director of programming and sat himself in one of the plush seats across from her desk.
Sasha Climber was on the phone when her No. 1 star busted in and plopped himself down in front of her, but she smiled when she saw his actually happy grin, so rare in the cutthroat basic cable entertainment environment. “Sorry, Consuela, I have to go—sí, take the baby to el medico if it’s so importante. Yeah, good, right, bye.” She hung up the phone and said with delight, “Jeffrey! How’s the killer-fish business?”
“Getting better every day, love,” he said, and as casually as possible added, “You happen to catch the broadcast last night? Jake Bentneus, or what’s left of him.”
“Oh, Jeff, that’s terrible. But yes, of course, he bought fifteen minutes from us. Great viewership in the framing commercials, too—you bet we’ll be basing some ad rates on those.”
“Good, good. So this challenge … I think I should go for it.”
Sasha thought at first he was joking, but Jeffrey Plaid never joked when it came to exactly the crazy-ass ideas that begged to be joked about. “Are you talking about the ‘challenge’ of diving to the bottom of the ocean and killing dinosaurs?”
“Indeed, I am. Think of how good it’ll be for ROAR! We’ll film the whole thing—if I get this Gigadon bastard, obviously the network gets a nice slice. And even if I just get a Megalodon or Plesiosaurus or whatever the hell is down there, it’ll make for one hell of an episode. Maybe a two-hour special. Maybe an all-day succession of commentary and episodes, like the Super Bowl for the Yanks, eh?”
“That’s stellar and everything, Jeff, but we can’t afford the outlay for a fully equipped research vessel and experimental submersible or the like,” she said. “You must know that. How could we pull this off?”
“Ha! Listen, my dear, I’m Jeffrey Plaid! All I need is something that floats and some big, big hooks. Okay, that’s an exaggeration—I will also need depth charges to heat up the water and such. But I have some friends at the Flash Fishing Research Institute who already have in their possession one of those robots that goes down with cameras and so on. We borrow that, get some swots and boffins to hook up the wires to with computers and the like, use that footage for some underwater prelude before I get my diving piece on, and hook one of those big bastards with our film crew right there
, recording everything! Come on, Cheryl—”
“Sasha.”
“Exactly! So is that a ‘yes’?”
Sasha didn’t say what was in her mind to say. She did say, “How much will this whole thing cost, Jeff? It’s got to be a truly grand amount of money just to fly you and the crew to Guam to register.”
“Indeed! We’re ready to start today! I already got the robot last night, anyway. You’ll get the invoice today or tomorrow, I believe.”
Sasha put her head in her hands.
“But listen—this Bentneus bloke is passionate, Sherry. He doesn’t need someone like me to ‘register’ and all that. No, I recognize that passion—because of my own. I’m sure you’ve picked up on it.”
Sasha groaned.
“So we can hire a big boat and get that fishy codger caught, and POW! the ROAR! Network’s got $20 million to, hell, I don’t know, put on whatever you put on when my program isn’t showing.”
“That’s our cut, out of a billion dollars? Twenty million?”
“Before taxes, natch.”
“He’s not going to pay out to anyone who didn’t follow the rules, Jeff.”
“No, no, no—all that matters to him is that the bugger what chewed him up and spit him out. Kill that bastard and drag it onto the beach, I guarantee you that’s all he cares about. He’s got this whole … I dunno, apparatus in place with the competition and all to get as many people as possible going after his Gigadon. Registration and the week delay in starting is just his nod to fairness and equality or some such bollocks.”
“So how much?”
“The best part is that we won’t leak a frame of footage. People will just know that it happened, that Jeffrey Plaid, the man who eats river beasts for dinner, killed Gigadon.” He watched for a reaction, then added, “I do actually do that, by the way, eat those for dinner. On occasion.”
“Good to know, Jeffrey. Now please tell me what you want from the network to make this happen.”
“That’s the great part, Susan,” he said, and made a “presto” gesture with his fingers. “It won’t cost ROAR! one dollar.”
That perked Sasha up a bit. She didn’t really mind being nice to Jeffrey Plaid—he wasn’t a bad sort, but she wouldn’t make the mistake again of thinking he took into consideration anyone else’s concerns. She sat up straighter and blinked with wide eyes. “No? No money from us at all?”
“No!” he said with a big TV grin, then made an equivocating expression. “I mean, yes, a lot of money, but it would only be a loan. Two million dollars, to be paid back with interest, and that’s on top of the $15-million cut the network gets of the billion.”
“I thought it was $20 million.”
“All right, deal,” Jeffrey said, and before she knew it she was shaking his proffered hand. “This is going to make ratings history, Sasha!”
She smiled falsely at him as he left, then dropped it. He was such an asshole. “Hope you get eaten by a goddamn brontosaurus,” she said quietly and just to herself, but hearing the sentiment out loud still made her very happy.
***
The two million was in Plaid’s expense account by the end of the day. Okay, yes, he had to sign papers saying it was to be considered an advance against future royalties and all that, but it paid for Guam—the closest land to the Marianas Trench—and got him, the team, the robot thing, and a bunch of science types onto a nice boat that they immediately took to what Jeffrey insisted was the best dive location for dinosaurs. They got another boat for an army of video guys, not just cameramen but editors and special graphics people and all that. They’d have so much footage of this adventure, this triumph, that they could run it all day on ROAR! and he could still save the best stuff for a feature film he’d produce with some of that billion dollars he was set to win.
“Okay, Jeff, we’re rolling,” Nigel Tremens, producer of Scary Fish Alive! (ROAR!), said, then played the part of off-screen interviewer. “Jeffrey, this is going to be a groundbreaking expedition, right?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d say that—maybe a water-breaking one,” he said from a seat positioned to show the sheep on the beach, waiting in line to “register.” “But yeah, it really is. That San Diego scientist, the one in gaol for knocking off his wife …”
“Sean Muir?”
“Yeah, that’s the one. He came up with the idea of deep-sea dinosaurs, man-eating dinosaurs, just monsters so voravenous—”
“Voracious? Or ravenous?”
“Exactly. So much of that that they laid in wait for millions of years for mankind to get down there, so the beasts could gobble ’em like a tin of sardines. Then that poor movie fellow, Jack whatever …”
“Jake Bentneus?”
“The very one. He showed the world that these things exist, things bigger than we could’ve ever expected, right down there by the hydrothermal vents. Of course, the biggest of them all, the Gigadon—the same big fish we’re looking to bag on this very mission—made a meal out of him and spat him out. That was his bad luck, but we now have a foolproof plan. I was able to formulate it by taking to heart the lessons learned by the earlier expeditions.”
Jeffrey waited a few seconds, then prompted his producer, “Next question, mate.”
“Oh! Sorry. What, um, is your plan for finding Gigadon? You say it uses some of the research done by Sean Muir and the techniques used by filmmaker Jake Bentneus.”
“Good point. We know now that the dinosaurs are attracted to heat. That’s why they hang out at the bottom of the deepest ocean. Those vents get plenty hot, as I’m sure everyone knows by now. So all we have to do is create a heat source and lead the things up to the surface. I’ll be waiting in the water with my gun filled with explosives-tipped harpoons, and when he comes near enough, I blast him, and the deal is done. We’ll bring it onto shore and present it to Jake Bentneus, collect our reward, and end the day knowing we’ve eliminated the most fearsome predator in the sea.”
“What’s the most dangerous part of this ‘fishing trip,’ as you call it?”
Jeffrey laughed photogenically. “The whole thing’s dangerous. Just taking a boat out onto the ocean like this, even that’s dangerous.”
“Why is that dangerous?”
Jeffrey wrinkled his brow. “Goddamnit, Nigel, stick to the questions on the cards. Who are you all of a sudden, David Frost?”
“Sorry, Jeff.”
Jeffrey smoothed his receding gray hair and took a deep breath. “Okay, let’s go.”
“You were talking about how dangerous this all is.”
“Right, right, yes.” He let Nigel count down and picked up where he left off. “Just taking a boat into the Pacific like this, even that’s dangerous. Sharks and the like, but now we know killer dinosaurs hunt these depths, too. It’s my personal opinion that Malaysia Flight 370, the one that disappeared? It crashed into the water, all right, but no one ever found any wreckage because Gigadon swallowed the whole blasted thing.”
“It seems the obvious answer now, doesn’t it?”
“Well, I wouldn’t say obvious, since I discovered it first. But sure, it makes all kinds of sense in retrospect. You can’t not see it.”
“Indeed. Jeff, what other dangers will you and your crew face out here?”
“Do it again. Leave out the ‘crew’ bit. It’s just confusing to the viewer.”
“Of course, yes.” Nigel cleared his throat. “Indeed … um, Jeff, what other dangers will you be facing out here? Is it fair to say that you will be risking death every second you’re in the water?”
“More than fair, actually. Once Gigadon senses we’re up there—that I’m right there in the water, just filling out a pair of Speedos and holding the instrument of his demise—”
“Hold on one moment, Jeff, excuse me. Won’t the viewer become confused when you’re not wearing a scuba suit in the water in the footage?”
“Oh, no, that won’t happen. I want some drama. I’m gonna refuse the wetsuit because I want to face
the dinosaur one-on-one, mano a mano, tête-à-tête, man against beast—you’re still rolling, right? We can edit around this good part, make it look super-spontaneous but also from my heart?”
“Certainly.”
“Ah, good … man against beast, face-to-face, Coke versus Pepsi, whatever—pick your favorite expression and it will mean ‘strong man versus giant dinosaur.’ Because that’s what we’ve got here happening in just a few minutes. We’re set to drop the robot, the remotely operated video—”
“Vehicle.”
“Nigel, I swear to God, if you interrupt me again, I’m going to throw you overboard and interview myself.” He took his producer’s smile as he nodded to mean all was well between them. “All right, then. We’re set to drop the robot, the remotely operating video vehicle, and we’ve got some juice on it that’ll get it down to the bottom in forty-five minutes. That may sound slow, but the water gets thicker the farther down you go until it’s like molasses. It takes a while even for a specialized remote robot-operated video vehicle to get to the bottom once the water gets extra-sticky like that.
“Nigel, it’s like sending a rocket into space. It has to be covered with shields and the like, then cast them off as space gets safer to fly through. Our robot has the same thing, and it shall throw off its shields very near the bottom. The secret to its speed is the shape of those shields. And the rockets, obviously. But the brilliant part is that the robot will take all this deep-sea footage of dinosaurs and the like and then hit a totally separate set of rockets once it catches sight of Gigadon. This shall make a very hot path for the giant monster to follow, leading right where I want him—in front of my harpoon rifle.”
“That is very exciting. I—” Nigel said, getting cut off by the text notification on his cell phone.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake. How the hell are you getting service out here, anyway?”
“Um, Jeff, we’re less than a kilometer from the shore.”
“Oh, right. Behind you is just open water, so I keep thinking we’re far out to sea. More used to rivers, eh?”
Nigel nodded absently as he read the message, which left him smiling. “Oh, boy.”