Meg: Hell's Aquarium (40 page)

“How deep are we talking?”

“The access point begins at 8,726 feet. The hole drops another 125 feet straight down through volcanic rock before emptying into the Panthalassa.”

“And how far down is the Panthalassa
’s
sea floor?”

“Sonar fixes the bottom right around 31,500 feet. None of us have gone deeper than 14,000 feet.”

“Who captured the Dunk?”

“The Japanese. They lowered a bait box down through the hole, kept it along the bottom for weeks before the Dunk swam by. Took them six hours to tease it out. Have you seen it?”

“It’s incredible.”

“I heard about what happened earlier. I didn’t know the lab guy; they’ve kept us pilots away from the tanker for the most part. His death—it must have been horrible.”

“As shark attacks go this one was about as freaky as it gets.”

“Did you know the Leeds’ fish was ours? Debbie and I lured it out late last night. It was our first catch. Had it lived we would have split a bonus of a hundred grand.”

“It was an amazing catch. A fish as big as a whale.”

There’s a knock on the door, then someone keys in.

Debbie Umel enters. “Sorry to interrupt, guys. David’s wanted in the skipper’s cabin.”

Brian Suits greets him like an old friend. “David! So we finally got you out here. Come inside. You know Mr. bin Rashidi. Have you met Dr. Al Hashemi? He’s the director of the aquarium.”

“Hey.” David shakes the offered hand then turns to the petite brunette in her early thirties, seated next to bin Rashidi. “David Taylor.”

“Yes, I know.”

Brian introduces her. “This is Allison Petrucci, a former colleague of Dr. Maren. You know the name?”

“Yeah. He was the asshole who tried to kill my father.”

Allison forces a smile, though her eyes shoot daggers. “A brilliant asshole, actually. And it was your father who killed Michael, though, he probably deserved it. His ego had been running unchecked for years. He thought he was infallible. And what about you? Do you also think you’re Teflon . . . like your father?”

Brian steps in between them. “Easy now, kids, we’re all after the same thing. David, have a seat. There’s a few things we’d like to discuss.”

Ibrahim Al Hashemi unrolls a chart, spreading it out over a desktop before David. It’s a bathymetric map of the Philippine Sea plate, the Parece Vela Basin to the southeast heavily detailed in Arabic. “Fifteen years ago, Dr. Maren initiated a comprehensive study of the Parece Vela Basin, after discovering basalt dredges dating back to the Early Cretaceous period, approximately 150 million years ago. While most of Dr. Maren’s work was destroyed—”

“—after your father sunk his yacht,” Allison injects.

Bin Rashidi grabs her wrist, applying a vise-like grip. “I’m not paying you for commentary.”

The intensity of her expression melts. She swallows hard.

Al Hashemi continues. “As I was saying, most of Dr. Maren’s work was lost. However, the surviving journals clearly identify the existence of prehistoric life forms that have survived two hundred feet beneath the Parece Vela Basin, inhabiting an ancient sea that has been isolated from the Pacific for hundreds of millions of years.”

David studies the chart. “I saw the Dunk. What other species are we talking about?”

“Kronosaurus. Thalassomedon. Shonisaurus sikanniensis. Mosasaurus.
And the biggest prize—
Liopleurodon.
There are others, of course, all part of a deepwater food web, but these are the specific species we’ve targeted for this expedition.”

“What’s the water temperature like down there?”

“Six degrees Celsius. About forty-two degrees Fahrenheit.”

“It’s too cold. You’re in the wrong place.”

Bin Rashidi’s black eyes meet Al Hashemi’s. “As I have been stating.”

“David, what is your reasoning—”

“Hot versus cold. Hydrothermal vents versus cold seeps. The entire Philippine Sea Plate’s loaded with vents and seeps, which means the food chain in this ancient sea of yours must be thriving off of them, too. Fish prefer cold seeps.
Dunkleosteus
and
Leedsichthys
are both fish; so is that
Helicoprion
shark.
Shonisaurus sikanniensis
was a massive
Ichthyosaurus
—I suppose you might find them down there as well—but these other monsters were all marine reptiles at one time, which means they’d need warmer waters to maintain their body temperatures.”

“Your father found Megalodons in the Mariana Trench, inhabiting warm waters created by hydrothermal plumes.”

“The Megs are an exception. They may be fish but their enormous size makes them warm blooded. Like I said, find the hydrothermal vent fields and you’ll find the rest of your critters. Of course, that’s easier said than done when you’re working with a five-thousand-square-mile subterranean sea.”

Bin Rashidi tugs at his goatee, looking at Allison. “Tell him.”

“There’s another way.” Allison leans forward. “Michael spent sixteen years and most of his family’s fortune exploring the Panthalassa. The hole beneath us is only one of nearly a dozen he had drilled at great expense. Most of these access points yielded nothing. Three, however, tapped into thriving food chains, including the one below us. Michael equipped each of the three with a small abyssal lab that was anchored to the bottom by cables and weights. He called them his ‘creature blinds.’ ”

“Show him the schematics.”

Brian Suits hands her a poster tube from which she removes a set of plans.

“The lab is a forty-seven-ton sphere, approximately thirty feet in diameter, situated on a four-legged, oval-shaped platform. The sphere is the actual habitat, its titanium hull designed to withstand pressures far exceeding those of the Mariana Trench. The platform situated below the sphere is what makes the design so unique. It contains a series of pressurized locks which function as a deepwater docking station.”

David’s eyebrows rise. “What kind of sub was Maren deepwater docking?”

“It was a one-man sub, but one of your Manta Rays should be able to squeeze inside the hangar without a problem.”

“Whoa. You want me to deepwater dock a Manta Ray in this hunk of metal? At 31,000 feet!”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Ibrahim Al Hashemi assures him. “Maren used the blind on many occasions.”

“Yeah, maybe a decade ago. That tin ball’s probably a barnacle-laden rust bucket by now.”

“Not true,” Brian Suits replies. “We sent the barracuda, one of Maren’s remotely operated submersibles, down to inspect the sphere months ago. The hull’s intact. We’ve spent the last six weeks using the barracuda to remove barnacles from the hangar doors. The system’s completely operational: the ROV was able to enter, dock, and depart without a hitch.”

“So why do you need me?”

“Inside the lab are Maren’s charts of the Panthalassa, including the coordinates for the other blinds—the two access holes that will lead us to the other inhabited sections of the sea,” Ibrahim replies. “That information is priceless.”

“Define priceless.”

“A quarter of a million dollars,” bin Rashidi answers, “with more coming as these sea monsters are captured. Add another fifty thousand for your capture of the
Helicoprion
shark.”

“Wasn’t my capture. Besides, that money should go to the biologist’s family. As for the dive, the risk is enormous. My life’s worth a shit-load more than $250,000.”

Brian rolls up the plans. “There’s risk, and there’s calculated risk. Your father’s firm designed the Manta Rays to exceed these depths. You either trust the design or you don’t. The deepwater dock works. You’re being paid extraordinarily well to make one dive in depths your father exceeded with an even smaller submersible.”

“If it’s so easy, Captain, then you do it. Or don’t you have the balls?”

“What I don’t have, hotshot, is your experience. You’re our best pilot. But if you pass up the offer, rest assure I’ll take it.”

“What else is down there, besides enough pressure to implode a walnut?”

Ibrahim Al Hashemi answers for Brian. “The Panthalassa currents are admittedly swift. We had trouble maneuvering the ROV below twenty-two thousand feet. Of course, the Manta Ray is much heavier than the barracuda.”

“Handling the Manta Ray in bad currents is like flying a kite in a tropical storm,” David says. “If I did decide to go, I’d need a good co-pilot . . . someone who can handle the stress.”

“We lost Peter,” Brian says. “Kaylie’s the next best sonar tech on the team.”

“I don’t want Kaylie. Give me the old fart.”

“Rick? He’s not half the sonar operator Kaylie is.”

“I don’t care about sonar. I care about my co-pilot losing it six miles down. Rick used to be a smuggler, he’s used to working under pressure. Now tell me what else is down there. You’re not offering me this much money to deal with currents.”

Ibrahim turns to bin Rashidi, who nods. “We suspect there may be sea creatures present in the deeper waters. Large ones.”

“By large ones, I assume you mean bigger than the Dunk?”

“We can’t be sure. It could be more Leeds’ fish. Or something else. We attempted to lure them up with bait boxes, but failed. It seems they prefer their food . . . alive.”

“Enough.” Bin Rashidi leans in close. “We’re offering you a small ransom to perform a deepwater dive that six months ago you would have done for free. You’re ten years younger than your father was when he first conquered the Mariana Trench for the Navy. Still, at your age, you probably have more experience, not to mention a better sub. The question is whether you possess your father’s guts.”

The Arab leans back. “Or perhaps the prodigal son prefers to remain in his famous father’s shadow forever?”

25.

Big Sur Valley, California

Endless night. Endless worries.

The dimly lit tarmac races beneath the Lexus’s front bumper, its right headlamp inches from the Pacific Coast Highway’s galvanized steel beam. The guardrail is all that separates the twisting, two-lane mountain passage from a thousand-foot plunge into the unforgiving ocean, lashing its perpetual fury upon the rocky escarpments below.

Slow down, Jonas. Life’s too precious . . .

But he doesn’t slow down, even when the fog thickens, concealing the yellow road sign ahead.

Slow down, J.T., you’re moving too fast . . .

He sees the break in the guardrail up ahead, knows it to be an open shoulder designed to allow southbound tourists an area to pull over and photograph the scenic Santa Lucia view below.

He takes the hairpin left turn too fast—

—the Lexus’s right front bumper striking the continuing guardrail doing seventy miles an hour—

—his life moving in surreal motion . . .

The vehicle flips and becomes airborne and suddenly he is upside-down, his world frighteningly silent as the retreating highway is replaced by a view of the cliff he has never seen before, nor will he ever see again, the car hurtling in slow motion toward the pounding surf below—

—the rocks reaching up to snuff out his existence.

One dumb mistake . . . one fatal slip . . . one momentary lapse and now his life is over.

Way to go, asshole. You really screwed up this time.

The resounding impact shatters the night air like crashing cymbals in his brain . . .

Jonas opens his eyes. His chest is heaving, his face bathed in sweat. Somehow he has survived the crash, which means he must be lying in a hospital bed, crippled beyond all recognition.

The room is gray with morning, its silence mocking him.

He is in his own bedroom. Intact. But how?

A giddy wave of relief washes over him.
A dream . . . it was only a dream.

Terry reaches out for him. “You okay?”

He sits up in bed, his head actually buzzing from the emotional rush as his mind replays the nightmare over and over again, the images still so vivid. “I dreamt that I was about to die—that I did die. I felt the impact. It was so real.”

“Angel?”

“No. I was in a car crash, not far from our house, out on Highway 1. It was a foggy night. I was driving way too fast. My front end hit the guardrail and my car flipped over the ledge.”