Meg: Hell's Aquarium (38 page)

Western Pacific Ocean
227 nautical miles from Guam

The Antonov An-124 Ruslan aircraft soars 42,000 feet above the Pacific, the ocean below obscured by heavy thunderstorms that rock the immense transport plane.

David Taylor, strapped in one of the eighty-eight seats situated behind the open cockpit, feels air sick. “This blows. I assumed we’d at least be flying out on the prince’s private luxury jet, not the Arabian version of a C-5.”

“Russian version, actually,” says Monty, feeding from a bag of peanuts. “Bigger, too. A gift to the king. Speaking of kings, did you know in ancient England a commoner couldn’t have sex or make a baby unless he had consent from the king. Once you had consent, you had to hang a sign from your door that said
Fornication Under Consent of the King
. Get it? F.U.C.K. So now you know where that noun came from. Or is it a verb?”

“I’m about to use it as an adjective. Where do you come up with all this trivial bullshit?”

“It’s trivia, actually, and before I enlisted, it was sort of my thing. I used to compete in high school and college. No one in our squadron could touch me. Ever since I had my brains scrambled, it just pops out sometimes. Like hurricanes.”

“What about them?” David holds on as the plane drops and rises again.

“Did you know that in ten minutes a hurricane releases more energy than all the nuclear weapons stockpiled in the world. Don’t mess with Mother Nature. When it comes to an arms race, the bitch has us beat.”

“That’s . . . great. I’ve gotta walk around before I puke.”

Monty unhooks his seat belt and follows David back to the immense cargo area. “Interesting that I’m perfectly fine up here, but in the depths—”

“What is all this stuff?” David is dwarfed by a dozen cargo containers marked in Arabic.

Monty reads the invoice. “Whale meat—3,150 kilograms of it—about seven thousand pounds. Plus seventeen barrels of innards. Everything frozen. Either this is bait, or bin Rashidi’s got his crew on the worst sushi diet I’ve ever seen.”

“What the hell are we hunting?”

“We? What’s this ‘we’ stuff? You got a mouse in your pocket or something? Did you know it’s illegal to catch mice in Cleveland without a hunting license?”

“Tell me again why you’re here?”

“I’m your conscience, Pinocchio. I’m the guy who gets to call your father after you and Princess Kaylie fail to surface. ‘Hello, Dr. Taylor? You don’t know me but I used to share a trailer with your son . . . yes, sir, fine boy . . . good head on his shoulders. Too bad the little head got in the way. Had a perfectly fine job in Dubai, only he decided he had to save Princess Kaylie from the clutches of the bad crown prince and his evil dragon, which he intended to capture for the Dubai Aquarium, by the way . . . until it ate him.”

“Oh yeah? Well, did you know there’s no ‘I’ in the word team!”

David heads back to his seat, leaving Monty laughing in hysterics.

24.

Philippine Sea
Western Pacific Ocean

The Boeing CH-47 Chinook twin-engine heavy-lift helicopter slows to sixty knots as the expedition’s two ships come into view on the horizon.

The larger of the two vessels is a Malacca-max VLCC (very large crude carrier) designed with a draft shallow enough for it to navigate the Straits of Malacca, the preferred route between the Persian Gulf and Asia. Refitted and renamed the
Tonga,
the Japanese supertanker is crimson-red below the waterline and gray with red trim above, a floating steel island that spans 1,100 feet in length, its beam 196 feet wide, displacing 300,000 tons. The deck, flat and open, is so large it could hold three football fields; the superstructure rising out of the stern is twelve stories high. Despite ten-foot seas, the
Tonga
sits low in the water, undisturbed.

Dwarfed by the supertanker is the expedition’s second vessel, the
Dubai Land I
, sister ship to the 196-foot, 280-ton fishing trawler David had worked on weeks earlier. Maneuvering back and forth along the
Tonga’s
port-side flank, the trawler is using the tanker’s hulking presence as a wave barrier, lessening the effects of the hostile sea.

The Chinook descends, its twin rotors beating a path through the storm. Hovering above the
Tonga’s
deck, the chopper’s winch lowers a payload—the first of a dozen containers to be transported from the crown prince’s cargo plane. Steel kisses steel, creating an electrical discharge that momentarily scatters the tanker’s crew. Regaining their nerve, they quickly release the container’s clamps, freeing the chopper, which lands thirty yards astern.

David and Monty exit the aircraft, each man carrying a duffle bag. They instinctively duck as the he licop ter takes off, heading back to Guam’s Air Force base for another load.

A cold, driving rain beats against David’s face, drenching his clothes. He waves at the Asian crew securing the container, but gets no response. “Now what?” he yells above the wind.

Monty points to the stern.

Fighting the weather, they head for the shelter of the towering superstructure.

They are greeted by an American in his early forties, his bulbous head bearing a receding brown hairline, his neck, back, and arms matted with hair. The accent is pure New York. “Welcome aboard the
Tonga
, gentlemen. We’ve been expecting you. Nick Cato, Deck Officer. Rough weather coming out of Guam?”

David nods. “And I thought the plane ride over was bad.”

“We get hit by a typhoon and this’ll seem like a day on the lake. I’ll speak to the captain about letting you ride out the storm aboard the
Tonga
. . . give you fellas a chance to get your sea legs. The rest of the sub pilots are all aboard the trawler.”

David glances out the steel hatch’s porthole, wondering if Kaylie is on board the trawler—

—or miles below the raging sea.

Nick Cato leads them up five flights of winding stairs to the bridge, a wide expanse of steel surrounded by large bay windows. Computerized instrument panels set on evergreen counter tops frame the command center.

Seated in his command chair, sipping a mug of hot coffee is the ship’s captain.

Timon Singh is just under six feet, with short, dark curly hair, bushy brows, and a large Roman nose that matches his rugby player physique. Half white, half Indian, his complexion is bronze, his accent British. He is dressed in khaki trousers and a leather jacket, his expression almost bored as he glances at David, a worn toothpick dangling from his mouth.

“So you’re the prized submersible pilot we’ve all been waiting for?”

“David Taylor.” He offers his hand—

—the captain ignores it. “Ever been aboard a supertanker?”

“No. Must be a bitch to drive.”

“Drive?” Captain Singh snorts a laugh. “Everything’s run by computers. We plot our course and set our speed based on sea conditions. Takes us two hours just to reach our top cruising speed of sixteen knots. If you want to make a turn, you plan it hours ahead. If you want to stop you need a good five kilometers of sea in front of your bow, maybe half that as we’re presently loaded down with ballast.”

“And what ballast is that?”

“Who are you?”

“Jason Montgomery, part-time pilot, full-time dishwasher. What ballast are you hauling?”

“Seawater. The Arabs had the Japs sterilize the crude holds and re-divide ‘em into rubber-lined saltwater tanks, each area rigged with saline and temperature controls. All for a bunch of sea creatures that have yet to make an appearance.”

“Not true, Captain.” A short, heavily-muscled Filipino enters the bridge, dressed in a yellow oil slicker. “Richard Hibpshman, marine biologist, University of Washington. I run the gut shop.”

“Gut shop?”

“The lab. But gut shop is more accurate. My job is to analyze the stomach content of anything hauled out of the depths that dies, hoping to find clues that tell us what else is down there. And the captain’s wrong; the Japanese lured up a
Dunkleosteus
last month—”

“—which was shipped straight to Dubai,” responds Timon Singh, spitting out his toothpick. “The only fish that made it onboard have been those big ray fins, and they croak within hours.”

“Ray fins?”

“Leeds’ fish.
Leedsichthys
. Giant filter feeders, about the size of a blue whale. We’ve netted four so far, the last one early this morning. It lasted almost twelve hours, twice as long as any of the others, so that’s encouraging. I’m about to start the necropsy. Care to join me?”

“Hell, yes!”

“Not me,” Monty says, waving them off. “Captain, is there someplace aboard this floating continent where a man can stretch out with a cold Heineken?”

“Mr. Cato, take our friend down to the rec room and see that he’s properly inebriated.”

“Yes, sir.”

David follows the Filipino scientist down the infrastructure’s stairwell, two levels below the main deck.

“Glad you’re aboard, David. I’m a big fan of the Institute. Drove down the coast to see a few shows back when you first reopened. Not too many people to talk to aboard the tanker. Deck officers stay to themselves. Rest of the crew’s Japanese and I don’t speak the language.”

Richard unlatches a sealed watertight door. “Through here.”

A blast of noise and steam greets David as they enter the engine room. Richard leads him around a maze of heavy machinery to another watertight door marked RESTRICTED in English and Japanese. “Ready?”

David nods.

The hatch opens, releasing a blast of cold salty air. David follows the scientist out onto a catwalk that leads them into the very bowels of the ship. The immense space, originally designed to hold three million barrels of crude oil, has been divided into five large holding pens situated four stories beneath the main deck, each containing a simplified filtration system. The tanks are accessible from the main catwalk by a circular stairwell that leads down to a porous steel deck.

“Our specimen’s in Pen 4.”

Richard leads him to the next stairwell then down two flights to Pen 4’s deck, a reinforced grating that extends over one-third of the tank’s eight-hundred-square-foot surface area. A series of steel cables attached to pulleys along the underside of the main deck overhead drop down from the ceiling and disappear underwater. Richard opens a control panel situated along a vertical support beam and activates a switch.

The cable retracts, hauling a cargo net from out of the water, dragging with it an enormous fish.

The dead
Leedsichthys
rises tail-first, its half-moon-shaped caudal fin mottled brownish gray. It flops to one side as its long streamlined body follows.

Forty feet . . . fifty . . . and still the behemoth continues to rise. Huge, flipper-like pectoral fins appear, finally, the grouper-like head, as big as a garbage truck. The eighty-seven-foot behemoth sways in the dripping net just above the deck.

“Mind your feet.” Richard presses another button, activating a motor that rolls the deck upon which they are standing forward on tracts, repositioning Pen 5’s deck so that Pen 4’s tank is almost completely covered.

“That should give us some work space.” David stands back as Richard lowers the pulley cables, allowing the cargo net to unfurl, depositing the dead Leeds’ fish onto the porous floor before them.

“Leeds-ick-thees is right. This thing stinks.” David covers his mouth against the overpowering stench.

“We’ll need breathers and tools. And you’ll need a slicker and boots. Come with me.”

David follows him down another catwalk to the gut shop. The room is a community shower room converted into a lab. Two steel tables have been anchored to the tile floor. Rows of lockers hold various cutting tools, equipment, rubber aprons, and clothing.

Ten minutes later, dressed in a slicker, boots, gloves, and air mask, David begins gutting the fifty-ton bony fish with a chainsaw.