by Steve Alten
Distant screams caused him to turn. He saw the tanker’s bow point straight into the air, towering six hundred feet above the sea. And then its twelve-story superstructure disappeared below the surface, drawing the rest of the eleven-hundred-foot-long ship with it.
* * *
Fiesal bin Rashidi quickly realized he had made a fatal mistake in not removing his shoes, dress shirt, and pants before leaping overboard. Not only were his clothes weighing him down, they were entangled around his limbs, restricting his movements. After only a dozen strokes he could barely keep his head above water.
He felt the Tonga grab hold of him as it began to sink. For an exhausting twenty seconds he fought back, his arms flailing at the surface to keep his face clear of the sea.
And then the ship went down, and he knew his life was over, the weight displacement dragging him under with a sudden ferocity that was terrifying. Water shot up into his nostrils, forcing him to pinch his nose. Within seconds his ears were popping, his head feeling as if it were in a vise, about to explode.
For a glorious second Fiesal actually thought it had exploded and that he had passed, his soul rising from the depths into heaven. And then he was out of the water, only he wasn’t dead … he was sitting on a small island, bouncing along the waves.
Looking behind him, he thought he saw Jackie Buchwald and that maybe he really was dead. And then he was back in the water, a Coast Guard cutter close by, a motorized raft bearing down on him, filled with passengers from the Tonga.
* * *
David dove the Manta after the sinking tanker, but by now the ship’s bow was seven hundred feet below the surface. Dozens of bodies were caught in its wake, chasing after the Tonga until they too disappeared into the darkness.
San Francisco Medical Center
San Francisco, California
The man was lost.
For the entirety of his adult existence he had been the master of his domain—a domain defined by the sea. He had joined the Navy immediately after graduating from Penn State University with the goal of becoming a SEAL, but the results on an aptitude test had convinced his commanding officer that the cocky twenty-two-year-old possessed the traits that would make for an outstanding Argonaut candidate.
Submersibles were a relatively new field at the time. The Alvin had recently returned from expeditions at the bottom of the Atlantic, presenting discoveries that had shocked the scientific world—entire communities of life living in darkness, having sprouted from chemicals gushing out of hydrothermal vents. The scalding 700-degree-Fahrenheit elixir of chemicals and minerals served as the bottom of a chemosynthetic-based food chain … a primordial soup that may just have seeded life on our planet.
The Navy hadn’t been interested in discovering exotic new life-forms; it had invested in a small fleet of submersibles specifically designed for rescue and salvage missions, and needed pilots with ice water in their veins. Over the next eight years, Commander Jonas Taylor had established himself as the military’s most dependable deep-sea Argonaut, meeting his future wife, reporter Maggie Cobbs, in the process.
And then disaster had struck.
Jonas had been training for a top-secret series of dives seven miles down in the Mariana Trench. On his fourth descent in a week, the exhausted submersible pilot had panicked, racing the three-man craft too quickly to the surface. Pipes had burst, causing pressurization problems that led to the deaths of the two scientists on board. Jonas had survived—barely—only to learn his commanding officer blamed him for the incident. “Despite the fact that we had a competent backup pilot aboard the surface ship, Commander Taylor insisted upon making the last dive himself. Completing the descent, he experienced what our chief medical officer described as an ‘aberration of the deep.’ Taylor lost it down there, and his actions ended up costing the lives of two good men.”
Jonas’s testimony had described a different story:
“The Sea Cliff was hovering about ten meters above the hydrothermal plume. Dr. Prestis was working the drone’s vacuum and the soothing vibrations of the motor were putting me to sleep. I must’ve drifted off because the next thing I knew the sonar was beeping—an immense object rising directly beneath us. Suddenly a ghost-white shark with a head bigger than our three-man sub emerged from the mineral ceiling, its gullet filling my keel portal.”
The physician on duty had ordered Jonas to complete a ninety-day evaluation in a mental ward, after which he had received a dishonorable discharge—a parting gift from his commanding officer, who intended to deflect his own culpability for ordering the exhausted pilot to make the dive.
With his naval career over, Jonas had set out to prove the albino monster he had encountered was not a product of his imagination. Five years later he had graduated from the Scripps Institution with a doctorate degree in paleobiology. A published book followed, theorizing how ancient sea creatures living in isolated extremes could evolve in order to survive extinction.
Colleagues had panned his work, squelching his new career. Meanwhile, on the home front, Maggie had been secretly having an affair with his millionaire friend, Bud Harris.
While Jonas had been struggling to reinvent himself, world-renowned cetacean biologist Masao Tanaka had been completing construction of a new aquatic facility on the coast of Monterey, California. The Tanaka Oceanographic Institute was essentially a man-made lagoon with an ocean-access canal that intersected one of the largest annual whale migrations on the planet. Designed as a field laboratory, the waterway had been intended to be a place where pregnant gray whales, returning from their feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, could birth their calves. Masao had been so convinced his facility would bridge the gap between science and entertainment that he had mortgaged his entire family fortune on the endeavor.
Rising construction costs had forced the cetacean biologist to accept a contract with the Japan Marine Science and Technology Center—JAMSTEC. The mission: to anchor sensory drones along the seafloor of the Mariana Trench, creating an early-warning earthquake detection system. To complete the array, D.J. Tanaka, Masao’s son, had to escort each drone to the bottom using an Abyss Glider, a torpedo-shaped one-man submersible.
When several of the drones had stopped transmitting data, Masao had needed a second diver to help D.J. retrieve one of the damaged aquabots in order to diagnose the problem.
He had sent his daughter, Terry, to recruit Jonas Taylor.
Jonas had accepted the offer, desiring only to recover an unfossilized white Megalodon tooth photographed in the wreckage—the evidence he needed to prove the monstrous sharks still existed.
The dive had ended badly, Jonas and D.J. coming face-to-face with not one, but two Megs. The first had been a forty-five-foot male that had become entangled in the surface ship’s cable; the second had been its sixty-foot mate, a pregnant female that was accidentally lured out of the trench and into surface waters teeming with food.
The Tanaka Institute had taken on the task of capturing the creature; Jonas and Masao determined to quarantine the monster inside the whale lagoon. JAMSTEC had agreed to refit the canal entrance with King Kong–size steel doors to keep their would-be attraction from escaping.
The hunt had lasted a month, culminating in an act that would haunt Jonas’s dreams over the next thirty years. All had not been lost—the Megalodon’s surviving pup was captured and raised in Masao’s cetacean facility—and a monster shark cottage industry had been born.
Angel: The Angel of Death
Two shows daily. Always your money’s worth!
Jonas had married Terry Tanaka. Angel had grown into a seventy-four-foot albino nightmare that drew crowds from across the world, earning the Tanaka-Taylor family hundreds of millions of dollars. She had also managed to escape twice, birth two litters of pups, and devour no less than a dozen humans—five of them in her own lagoon.
Births and deaths, lawsuits, and around-the-clock stress. Jonas and Terry’s daughter, Danielle, had nearly died as “Megalodon Bait” on
a South Pacific–based reality show, while son, David—who seemed to have experienced more lives than a cat—had attempted suicide after he witnessed his first love, Kaylie, die the most gruesome death imaginable, literally having been eaten alive before his eyes.
The accumulated stress had taken a toll on his wife. Terry had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, and while the meds and natural extracts had kept the symptoms manageable, the recent voyage to the Antarctic to save her son was manifesting itself in severe stomach pains.
Jonas had taken her for a battery of tests, all while attempting to convince her—and himself—that it was just an ulcer. “The doc will prescribe meds, you’ll feel like your old self, and then we’re off to Boca Raton to meet with a Realtor and start our new life together.”
They had been summoned to the medical center that afternoon. Dani, who was in her second year of medical school at University of California San Francisco, had insisted on coming with them for support. Terry had not wanted her to miss class, but Jonas was relieved she was there. The three had been waiting in the exam room for nearly twenty minutes when Terry’s physician, Dr. Katherine Simmons, entered … followed by a male colleague.
“Terry, this is Dr. Ethan Brennan. He’ll be a consultant on your case.”
“What kind of specialist are you?” Dani asked.
“I’m an oncologist.”
Gravity in the small room seemed to increase. Jonas felt Terry squeeze his hand as the cancer doctor rendered his wife’s verdict, his cadence calm but direct.
“All right, so this is melanoma. Melanoma is the one skin cancer that can spread to all our other organs. It’s gone away from the original site, which was your cheek, and moved into your liver. There are nodules in your right lung and also the peritoneum, the lining that covers the abdominal cavity. It may have been there for a few weeks or a few months, but like all cancers, it reaches a critical stage where we start to see symptoms.”
“What stage is this?” Jonas asked, praying for a low number.
“This is stage four.”
Jonas felt his body sink as if the physician’s words had punched him in the gut.
“There are a couple of things I think need to be done, and quickly. My recommendation is that we try to find a clinical trial. And the reason I say that is because standard therapies for melanoma are not very good. The success rate with chemo is only about fifteen percent. However, there are a lot of new and exciting drugs that are now being studied for melanoma. I’ve made a few calls to UCLA. Katherine, you had mentioned you have a colleague at Penn?”
“Yes, we’ll try there as well.”
“How long, Dr. Brennan?” Terry’s question seemed to draw Jonas back into his body.
“It’s hard to say. Everyone is different.”
“How long?”
“Three months.”
* * *
Danielle walked her parents to their car. “Listen to me—this is a speed bump, not a wall. I’m going to see my adviser the moment I get back to school. He’ll get me a list of every clinical trial in the United States. We’ll get you through this.”
“Thank you, Dani.”
Danielle hugged her mother, registering the weakness in her upper torso.
Jonas opened the car door for his wife, then hugged his daughter. “Thanks, kiddo.”
“Stay positive. And no stress.”
“Drive carefully.” He climbed inside the Lexus, only to see Terry staring at her iPhone in disbelief. “What?”
He took the device from her trembling hands and enlarged the image on the screen.
Miocene Whale Sinks Tanker
Outside Tanaka Institute
Forty-eight dead; Liopleurodon escapes
“Jesus…” He handed back her phone and removed his own from his jacket pocket. “Call David; make sure he’s all right.”
“Who are you calling?”
“Tom Cubit.”
“Why do you need to speak with our attorney? This is Paul Agricola and the crown prince’s problem, not ours.”
“You’re right—what was I thinking.”
She reached out and held his wrist. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Jonas exhaled. “That sleazeball prince never signed the contract with Paul.”
“Then he still owns the institute.”
“Technically his partner, Fiesal bin Rashidi, owns it. We’ve been waiting for the crown prince to fly in from Dubai to sign off on the deal.… He arrived last night. Tommy sent his paralegal to his hotel this morning with the final purchase agreement. The prince’s attorney said he was in meetings, but she’d have him sign everything this afternoon before the press conference.”
“The press conference on board the tanker that just sank?”
“I know what you’re thinking. In a worst-case scenario, we’ll simply sell the institute directly to Agricola Industries.”
“He won’t sign without immunity from this accident.”
“What’s the difference? We had nothing to do with the Tonga.”
“Jonas, you know how these class-action lawsuits go—the attorneys sue everyone. We also helped capture the Livyatan melvillei. And if the Liopleurodon remains in coastal waters and adds a bather or two to its menu, you can bet we’ll be blamed for that as well.”
Jonas laid his head back and laughed, tears of frustration pouring from his eyes. For the past thirty-plus years he had been riding this same roller coaster day in and day out; always worried about someone getting hurt around these creatures … the liabilities … the toll it took on his family.
Hearing his wife’s prognosis … the stress had finally broken him.
Terry wrapped her arms around her man and hugged him. She had always been the strong one.… Even when the oncologist had given her a death sentence, she was there to console Jonas and Dani. If this was to be her final chapter, so be it … she would face it on her terms—protecting her family, seeing to it they were well equipped to go on without her until the moment her soul finally shed the garment of flesh that now caused her so much pain and her soul could pass on in peace.
Tanaka Oceanographic Institute
Monterey, California
It was dark by the time David had secured Manta-7 in its berth, the sub’s fuel cell indicator blinking red. Popping open the Lexan top, he inhaled the cool fresh air before unbuckling his harness.
Monty reached down to help Jackie out of the cockpit. “Ms. Buchwald … nice to see you again. Good Lord, what is that stench? Smells like something up and died in there.”
“Yes, that would have been me.”
“In that case, welcome back.”
David climbed out of the sub, waving off James Gelet, who was filming. “Don’t, man. A lot of people drowned out there. The tanker literally dragged them down into the canyon with it as they tried to swim ashore.”
“Gonna be a lot of floaters,” Monty said. “You’d better shut the canal doors, or the tide’ll bring them right into the lagoon. Am I right, Cyel, or am I right?”
“Don’t get used to it, Cuckoo’s Nest. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” The engineer stepped down into the cockpit, trailing a long power cord. He opened a compartment on the center console and connected the charger to the fuel cell outlet. “Why’s the damn carpet all wet? And who hurled all over my sonar? I’m sure as shit not cleaning this up.”
“Relax, old man, I’ll do it tomorrow.”
“It’s my fault,” Jackie said. “I drowned. David brought me back … he saved my life.” She turned to him, her hair entangled, her clothing still wet. “Is there someplace we can talk in private?”
“Sure.” He led her through the work area and grabbed an old hooded sweatshirt hanging on a hook, handing it to Jackie, who was shivering.
“Thanks.” She removed her wet top and handed it to him, leaving on her bra. He admired her body as she pulled the sweatshirt over her head, recalling their first night together aboard the Mogamigawa.
H
e had been in the throes of a night terror when she had knocked on his cabin door, wearing only a loose-fitting, gray sleeping shirt offering tantalizing hints of her naked breasts pressing beneath the thin cotton fabric.
“What are you doing here?”
“My cabin’s next door; you were screaming.”
“Bad dream.” He sat on the edge of the bed, shivering.
She searched through a pile of clothing, pulling out a clean shirt. “Put this on.”
He pulled off the wet T-shirt, revealing an athlete’s muscular upper torso … and the thick three-inch red scars embedded along the palm-side of each wrist. He re-dressed quickly, covering the evidence of his attempted suicide with the wet T-shirt.
“David, there’s no need to be embarrassed. It’s just a scar.”
“It’s a little more than a scar, don’t you think?”
“Only if you continue to dwell upon it. Give yourself a break.”
“You sound like my shrink.”
“Been there, done that. Antidepressants … alcohol therapy. You’d be amazed how normal you are compared to the rest of us. Back at Brown, all I cared about was filling out my resume—scared to death I wouldn’t be able to find a job after graduating. I spent three years as a professional dancer while I was an undergrad, just in case the whole marine biology deal fell through. I think the crown prince chose me more for my legs than my grade point average.” She stood on her toes, her leg muscles flexing as she assumed a ballet pose, her raised arms causing her shirt to ride up her hips, revealing a flash of her shaved vagina.
David’s heart pounded in his chest, the blood rushing to his groin.
“So, what was it about?”
“What was what about?”
“The nightmare. Do you get them often?”
“Yeah.”
“I know a cure; guaranteed to get you seven hours of sleep a night.”
“I don’t like sleeping pills—they make me feel weird.”
“Who said anything about a pill? I was talking about sex.” In one motion, she pulled the gray shirt over her head, revealing her naked body.