The MEG

by Steve Alten

  “How are we set for fuel?”

  “Another fifteen minutes and we’ll have to turn back.”

  Jonas refocused his ITT Night Mariner Gen III binoculars on the Pacific. The bifocal night glasses penetrated the darkness by improving light amplification, turning the black sea a pale shade of gray.

  In the back seat, Maggie had drifted off to sleep. Terry watched her as she quietly unzipped her backpack. From a hidden compartment she removed a 20 mm explosive bullet. Gently popping open the high-powered rifle, she swapped the lethal bullet for the tracking device.

  Jonas spotted another pod of whales. “Mac, eleven o’clock. Looks like humpbacks. Let’s follow them a while, then we’ll turn back.”

  “You’re the boss.” Mac changed course to intercept the pod.

  Jonas was growing worried. With each hour that passed, the search perimeter extended an additional ten miles. Soon there would simply be too much ocean to cover, even with their sophisticated tracking equipment.

  Exhausted, the former submersible pilot felt himself becoming mesmerized by the moonlight dancing across the ocean, barely noticing the white blur streak across his peripheral vision. The moon had illuminated something below the surface. For a moment it had seemed to glow.

  “See something, J.T.?”

  “Huh? No … I don’t know—maybe.” He focused the night glasses on the whale pod, locating three spouts. “I can make out two bulls, a cow and her calf … no, make that two cows, five whales total. Get us on top of them, Mac.”

  The helicopter hovered above the pod, keeping pace as the whales changed direction, turning north.

  Jonas searched the sea to the left and right of the fleeing mammals; his heart suddenly jumping in his chest, “There!”

  Behind the pod, a white glow appeared, streaking beneath the surface like a giant luminescent torpedo.

  Terry leaned forward, staring at the infrared imager’s monitor. “What is it? Is it the Meg?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “What’s she doing?” Maggie asked, fixing the camera to her shoulder.

  Jonas looked at Mac. “I think she’s stalking the calf.”

  *

  One hundred feet below the dark Pacific, a deadly game of cat and mouse was taking place. The humpbacks had detected the hunter’s presence miles back, the mammals altering their course repeatedly to avoid a confrontation. As the albino predator closed to intercept, the two cows moved to surround the calf, the larger bulls taking positions at the front and rear of the pod.

  The Megalodon slowed, circling to the right of her quarry, sizing up her prey while marking the position of the calf. Faster than the whales, the female darted in and out, testing the reaction time of the two bulls.

  As the shark crossed in front of the lead male, the forty-ton bull broke from the group and made a run at her. Although the humpback whale possessed baleen instead of teeth, it was still quite dangerous, able to ram the female with its enormous head. The male humpback’s charge was sudden, but the Meg was far too quick, accelerating away from the cetacean before circling back to taunt the bulls again.

  *

  “What do you see?”

  Jonas was peering through the night glasses. “Looks like the lead bull is chasing the Megalodon away from the pod.”

  “Wait a minute, did you say the whale’s chasing the Meg?” Maggie chuckled. “I thought this Megalodon of yours was supposed to be fearsome?”

  “Sure, you can say that now,” said Mac. “Try hanging from a buoy, you’ll change your tune real fast.”

  Jonas turned to Terry. “You ready with that tracking dart?”

  She nodded.

  *

  Once more the pod altered its course, heading southeast in yet another attempt to evade the relentless hunter. The Megalodon compensated, selecting an alternative approach, this time targeting the massive bull guarding the rear. This angle presented a different problem for the shark, which instinctively feared the humpback’s powerful fluke.

  The Megalodon remained parallel with the bull, darting closer, pulling away, trying to entice it to leave the pod and attack. The female grew bolder with each foray, snapping at the humpback, once even biting at its enormous right pectoral fin.

  The bull finally turned upon the Meg, chasing it from the rest of the pod. Only this time the female retreated to the rear, doubling the bull’s distance from the safety of the pack.

  As the male humpback turned to rejoin the others, the albino hunter circled back with a frightening burst of speed and launched her 62,000 pounds at the retreating humpback’s exposed flank. Her upper jaw hypertended away from her skull, her teeth sinking deep into the whale’s lower belly close to the base of its fluke, the Megalodon holding on, shaking her head like a pit-bull.

  The bull spasmed, the pain paralyzing. Writhing in agony, its wild contortions only served to aid the Meg’s serrated teeth, which sawed cleanly through the humpback’s gushing grooves. An agonizing, high-pitched moan reverberated from the bleeding rorqual as the albino predator shook itself loose, gnashing upon a thousand pound mouthful of blubber.

  *

  “What the hell was that noise?” yelled Mac.

  “I can’t be sure,” said Jonas, the night glasses pressed against his eyes, “but I think the Meg just attacked one of the bulls.”

  “The pod’s moving off.”

  “Forget the pod, Mac. Stay with the wounded bull.”

  *

  Hot blood gushed from the gaping wound as the crippled humpback feebly attempted to propel itself forward with its massive lateral flippers.

  The Megalodon circled below its struggling prey, allowing it to settle before launching its second attack—this one even more devastating than the first.

  Seizing the baleen-fringed edges of the dying creature’s mouth within its six-and-a-half inch fangs, the Meg ripped and tore apart an entire section of the humpback’s throat, whipping its enormous head to and fro until a long strip of grooved hide and blubber peeled away from the mammal’s belly like husk from a ripe ear of corn.

  Helpless and in agony, the tortured humpback slapped its fluke repeatedly along the bloody surface as it wailed a death song of warning to its fleeing pod.

  The Megalodon circled below the whale, waiting for it to die.

  That’s when the female’s lateral line detected the heavy vibrations coming from the surface.

  *

  Maggie aimed her camera out her portside window. “Jonas, can you describe what’s happening down there for my viewers?”

  “Hard to tell, there’s so much blood in the water. What’s your thermal imager picking up, Mac?”

  “Just a lake of hot blood. It’s pooling along the surface so fast, it’s camouflaging everything.”

  “Bring us in closer,” Maggie yelled over her headphones.

  Mac descended to fifty feet. “How’s that?”

  Maggie focused through her viewfinder. “I still don’t see the Meg, just that damn whale.”

  Terry aimed the barrel of her rifle out the open section on the starboard side of the cockpit. She stood in her seat, looking down through the night scope. She could just make out the Megalodon’s white hide, circling below the dying whale. Her finger slipped around the trigger. She took a breath … this is for you, D.J.—

  —as the blur suddenly disappeared. “Damn fish … it just went deep again. Mac, we need to be lower.”

  Mac adjusted the airship’s altitude, dropping another twenty feet.

  Jonas’s heart raced. “Something’s not right. She wouldn’t just go deep, not with her kill so close.”

  “Probably scared her off,” said Maggie, shifting sides of the cramped backseat, dropping to one knee beneath Terry’s gun. “Oh yeah, that’s much better. God, look at that whale bleed. Now if only the guest of honor wasn’t such a wimp.”

  Jonas felt sweat pouring down his face. “She has to sense the chopper’s vibrations. I wonder if she perceives us as a threat? Mac, I’ve got
a bad feeling about this. Take us higher.”

  “Higher? But I—”

  “Dammit, Mac, higher—now!”

  The sea exploded in a bloody froth as the Megalodon launched its girth out of the water at its challenger. The conical snout struck the helicopter’s undercarriage, shattering the thermal imager, the midair collision sending the chopper caroming sideways.

  Jonas’s cockpit door popped open, his right foot losing its grip on the floorboard as the G-force of the copter’s roll pushed him out, the seat belt all that was preventing him from falling into the gaping mouth.

  Maggie and Terry wrestled for position, the blonde reporter attempting to keep her camera steady, the Asian beauty fighting to aim the rifle, her index finger inadvertently pulling the gun’s trigger too soon.

  The 20 mm shell just missed the Meg’s left pectoral fin, exploding as it struck the surface below.

  The cabin spun, Mac yelling, “Come on!” as he clutched his control stick with both hands, the ocean racing at him in his peripheral vision as he fought a thirty-degree down angle, the airship and albino monster falling toward the water at the same rate.

  A thunderous wallop blasted a hole in the sea as the sixty thousand pound behemoth plunged sideways into the Pacific.

  Mac felt his rotors catch air. He pulled the chopper out of its dive as a wall of water smashed into the open right side of the cockpit, drenching the cabin and its stunned occupants.

  Maggie screamed, believing they had crash-landed—until she realized the helicopter was climbing.

  Mac groaned with relief. “God-damn, Jonas, I think I just shit my pants.”

  Jonas fought to catch his breath. His limbs quivered, his voice abandoning him. After a good minute, he forced the words out of his parched throat. “She’s ... she’s a lot bigger than I thought.”

  Terry gritted her teeth, saying nothing.

  Maggie stared at her. “What was that explosion?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “Bullshit!”

  Jonas reached back and grabbed Terry’s backpack. A quick search revealed two more 20mm explosive shells. “Nice.”

  Mac wiped seawater from his fuel gauge. “We’re low on fuel. I’ll radio the Kiku to rendezvous. Hopefully we won’t have to ditch.”

  The three passengers looked at him, the blood rushing from their faces.

  Mac smiled to himself, not bothering to mention his reserve tank.

  Hawaii

  Pearl Harbor, Oahu

  THE KIKU WAS BERTHED next to the USS John Hancock, the 563-foot Spruance class destroyer that had arrived in port earlier that morning. Under pressure from animal rights activists, Commander McGovern had personally arranged the docking space for Masao Tanaka’s vessel, while he secretly recruited a makeshift crew to report to Pearl Harbor for a “special assignment.”

  These actions were precipitated by Maggie’s helicopter footage of the Meg attack, which had aired nine days earlier on her network in San Diego and its NBC affiliates. The ratings were through the roof—unfortunately for the budding blonde media star, the first sighting had been the last.

  A break had come four days earlier when a Coast Guard chopper spotted a Gray whale carcass floating thirty-seven miles west of the island of Oahu. The Kiku had spent the next seventy-two hours patrolling the area, but there were no other sightings or kills.

  *

  Captain Barre stood on the Kiku’s stern deck, overseeing the installation of a harpoon gun behind the ship’s massive A-frame. Jonas was with Mac, who was repairing a bad set of batteries on the Abyss Glider-I. The sub was a smaller, sleeker version of the deep-sea craft Jonas had piloted in the Mariana Trench. Designed for speed, the one-man vessel weighed a mere 462 pounds, with the majority of that weight located in the instrument panels in the Lexan nose cone.

  “The AG-I was a prototype,” Mac explained. “It was only designed for depths up to two thousand meters. This hull’s made of pure aluminum oxide, extremely sturdy, but positively buoyant. She can move faster, turn on a dime, and has enough thrust to leap ten feet straight out of the sea.”

  Jonas inspected a small tank anchored by the vessel’s tail fin. “It would take a rocket to out-jump the Meg.”

  “Actually, it has one. That auxiliary tank you’re looking at is filled with hydrogen. Look inside the nose cone; see that lockbox on the left side of the pilot’s control console? Inside that box you’ll find a lever. Turn it a half-click counterclockwise, then pull it toward you, and it’ll ignite the fuel.”

  “How long of a burn?”

  “Fifteen seconds, maybe twenty. Enough to free you if you ever got stuck in a fishing net or kelp forest where using the prop would just get you tangled worse. Once the sub’s freed, she’ll float topside, just like her deep water sister.”

  “Hey, Jonas—check this out.” DeMarco was standing by the portside rail, pointing at two tugboats pushing an antiquated nuclear submarine into an empty berth. A dozen crewmen stood on the sub’s deck, proudly standing by with ropes to tie the ship off.

  Jonas stared at the insignia SSN-571 as if seeing a ghost. “Son of a bitch, that’s the Nautilus. I thought they put her out to pasture in Groton?”

  Mac nodded. “It’s McGovern. He’s in way over his head, fighting a losing publicity battle with the animal rights lovers. Bottom line: If you’re ordered to kill a fish, kill it with a legend. The public loves the Nautilus. McGovern had her refit for one last sail into the sunset. His orders are to make sure your shark stays clear of the Hawaiian islands.”

  *

  On September 30, 1954, the Nautilus became the United States Navy’s first commissioned nuclear powered ship. The submarine would shatter all submerged speed and distance records and became the first vessel to travel beneath the ice floe to reach the geographic North Pole. After serving the navy for a quarter of a century, the famous submarine was eventually decommissioned, but only after having logged nearly a half million miles at sea.

  As Jonas watched, two officers showed themselves in the sub’s conning tower. “Holy shit. It’s Danielson. Can you believe this?”

  “My former CO? Yeah pal, I already knew. A friend stationed on Guam told me Danielson volunteered when he heard you were involved. In fact, it was his suggestion to McGovern to use that old tin can to go after the shark.”

  As the Nautilus passed the Kiku, United States Navy Captain (Ret.) Richard Danielson squinted in the sunlight, stealing a glance at Mac and the former deep-sea pilot.

  “Hi, Dick, how’s it hanging?” muttered Mac, a smile plastered on his face.

  “He probably heard you.”

  “Danielson can kiss my big hairy ass. The guy not only destroyed your career, he locked you up in a loony bin for three months. He should be publicly apologizing to you, not leading a mission. This is strictly damage control.”

  “Somehow I don’t think Danielson volunteered so he could apologize to me in person. Megalodon or not, the guy blames me for killing two men and tarnishing his record.”

  “J.T., no living person on this planet would have done any different than you if they had seen what we saw coming at us in that chopper. And I told that to Heller.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Heller’s an asshole. If I had served with him in combat, he’d have been a casualty of friendly fire.” Mac looked toward the stern. “When’s that big net of yours due to arrive?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “Good. Hey, you should’ve heard the old man ripping Terry a new one this morning. He wanted her put ashore and she flatly told him no. I think she feels bad about what happened.”

  “She’s a hellcat.”

  “Speaking of which, what’s going on with you and the old lady? I saw you two eating breakfast together.”

  “I don’t know, Mac. I know she cheated on me but there’s a part of me that still loves her.”

  “Yeah, and we know which part that is. Remember, this is the same woman who refused to visit you during y
our stay at the mental hospital. Let her go, move on. Let this prick Harris deal with her. Trust me, he’ll be bankrupt within a year.”

  Jonas stared at the horizon, a line of storm clouds building in the distance. “Looks bad. What do you think?”

  “No hunting by chopper tonight, I’d say.”

  Jonas nodded. “Hope the Meg agrees with you.”

  *

  Frank Heller stood on the pier, watching two crewmen secure the submarine’s thick white bow lines, carefully lining the slack up along the deck of the Nautilus. Moments later, Captain Richard Danielson emerged from the forward section of the hull. He waved at Heller, slapping the “571” painted in white along the black conning tower before heading down the gangway.

  The two men embraced. “Well Frank, what do you think of my new command?”

  Heller shook his head. “I’m just amazed this old barge still floats. Why the hell would McGovern assign a decommissioned sub to hunt down this shark?”

  Danielson led him across the open gangway. “My idea. McGovern’s in a tough position. The negative publicity’s killing him. But the Nautilus, she’s a different story. The public loves this old boat. She’s like an aging war hero, going out with one last victory. McGovern went crazy for the idea.”

  “I don’t like it. You have no concept of what you’re dealing with, Richard.”

  “I read the reports. One tube in the water and this overgrown shark is fish food.”

  Frank was about to respond when he saw a tall officer exit the sub, a big smile planted on his face.

  “Denny?”

  “Hey, big brother.” Chief Engineer Dennis Heller came bounding down the ramp and bear-hugged Frank.

  “Denny, what in the hell are you doing aboard this rusty tin can?”

  Dennis glanced at Danielson. “I’m due to retire this year. Turns out I’m thirty hours shy on active duty. I figured, why not serve them aboard the Nautilus with my first CO. Besides, shore leave in Honolulu beats the hell out of Bayonne, New Jersey.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Chief,” interrupted Danielson, “but all shore leaves are cancelled until we fry this Megala … whatever Taylor calls it. By the way, Frank, I saw him on-board your boat this afternoon. Honestly, I can’t stomach the man.”