Meg: Hell's Aquarium (51 page)

David guides the Manta Ray around the starboard flank, circling the destroyer’s sixty-six-foot-wide beam where he is confronted by the three main battery turrets, now aimed at the sea floor. Encrusted almost beyond recognition by barnacles, the weapons have become a refuge for some of the smaller inhabitants of the abyss.

The Manta Ray’s lights settle on an insignia: CA-35.

“Jesus, Kaylie . . . it’s the
Indianapolis
!”

Commissioned in November of 1932, the
USS Indianapolis
saw its first combat in the South Pacific two months after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. As the flag ship for the 5
^th
Fleet, the destroyer earned ten battle stars for combat in Iwo Jima, the U.S. assault on the Mariana Islands, and the pre-invasion bombardment of Okinawa.

In July of 1945, the cruiser returned to the Mare Island Navy Yard in California to transport a top-secret cargo to the South Pacific—the uranium needed to complete the atomic bombs designated for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On July 16, the ship arrived at Tinian Island in the Marianas to deliver its payload.

Two weeks later, on July 30, 1945, at 12:14 a.m., the
Indianapolis
was torpedoed in the Philippine Sea by a Japanese submarine. The ship sank in twelve minutes, taking with it three hundred of its crew. The remaining nine hundred men would spend four harrowing days at sea without food or water, floating in shark-infested waters, devoured from below while waiting to be rescued.

Of the 1,196 men who were on board the
Indianapolis
that fateful morning, only three hundred and sixteen would survive.

David stares in awe at the ghostly wreck. “I read about the
Indianapolis
back in high school. The survivors say she went down bow-first. She probably weighed twenty million pounds when she struck the Philippine Sea floor doing thirty to forty knots. Her bow must have punched a hole right through the bottom like a giant anvil, only she kept on going . . . straight through to the Panthalassa Sea until she finally struck bottom one last time. No wonder they never found her.”

“Maren obviously did,” Kaylie says. “Maybe he was searching for the wreckage when he stumbled across that hole. His discovery of the Panthalassa was probably just an accident.”

“Makes sense.”

The blood rushes from Kaylie’s face as she presses the headphones tighter to her ears. “The mosasaur, it’s heading straight for us!”

David stamps both feet down on the propeller pedals—

—the starboard shaft long gone, the port-side propeller sending them hurtling toward the
Indianapolis’s
upright deck—

—and a dark passage that once served as the ship’s aircraft hangar.

David regains control, but instead of veering away he slips the Manta Ray inside the barnacle-encrusted rectangular opening.

Wa
—
boom!

Just missing the sub, the mosasaur’s massive skull collides with the steel housing, sending thunderous sound waves reverberating through the hull. Too large to follow, the predator swims back and forth in front of the opening as it waits impatiently for its quarry to emerge.

From inside the hangar, David and Kaylie watch their would-be killer standing sentry.

“David, if we make a run for it—”

“We’ll never make it. The starboard prop is shot, and the wings are no longer hydrodynamic. Best speed we could muster . . . maybe fifteen knots.”

“What about the escape pod?”

“Bad idea. There’s too many things out there that want to eat us. Even if we managed to make it to the access hole alive, there’s no way to steer the pod. We could pin ourselves against the Panthalassa’s rocky ceiling and be stuck there until our air ran out, a commodity that’s already getting thin.” He points to a CO
₂
gauge. “The scrubbers are shot.”

She stares at the gauge, her limbs trembling. “How long?”

“Maybe twenty minutes, another ten if you add the pony bottles.” He forces a teary-eyed smile. “I didn’t want to say anything. I just thought we’d sort of fall asleep.”

“No! This isn’t over yet.” She fumbles for Maren’s charts and scans the map. “If the hole’s directly above this ship, then wouldn’t Maren’s lab be close by as well?”

“I suppose. I hadn’t thought of that.”

“You could use the deepwater dock to repair the prop. Maybe we can load up on air, or clean out the scrubbers!”

“Give me that map.” David checks their coordinates against the highlighted insignia that marks the lab’s location. “It’s close . . . about two hundred yards to the north.” He looks up as the dark shadow swims by the narrow aircraft hangar opening. “Next problem: How do we get past our hungry friend?”

“Let’s look around. Maybe there’s another way we can slip out?”

David rotates the Manta Ray, using its exterior lights to explore the interior of the
Indianapolis
.

The chamber is dark, its rusted confines covered in mineral rock, teeming with colonies of albino mussels and ghostly-white, foot-long clams, blind eelpout fish, spindly sea scorpions, and an uncountable number of crustaceans and trilobites. All feeding off a sheer vertical face of steel, coated in three generations of hardened minerals spewed from hydrothermal vents.

Rising up from the ship’s buried bow is a perpetual stream of heated mineral water, clouded with heavy doses of methane and salt.

“Kaylie, this is a brine pool.”

“How do you know?”

He releases his hands from the joysticks, the Manta Ray rising. “See? The water’s so salty it’s floating the sub.”

“David—” She points to something massive, moving along one of the far walls.

He turns the sub, aiming its lights.

It’s a turtle—the biggest turtle he has ever seen! Sixteen feet from its small, narrow head to its pointy tail, with a shell as large as a Volkswagen Beetle, the creature easily weighs over twelve thousand pounds. Moving along the wall, it is casually plucking lobsters from their rocky perches using its sharp, hooked beak.

“
Archelon ischyros
. . . breathing like a fish. Look, there’s two more.” Pushing the left foot pedal down, he maneuvers the submersible forward, aiming for the nearest turtle—

—bumping into it, chasing it across the chamber.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Offering the mosasaur an alternative meal.” David swerves after the turtle, prodding it toward the exit.

Spooked by the sub’s bright lights, the turtle swims toward the hangar opening—

—only to execute a quick about-face as it detects the mosasaur.

David rams the turtle again along its soft, leather-like underbelly, driving it back outside the aircraft hangar.

The mosasaur snaps at the turtle, which paddles away quickly, escaping into the darkness.

The mosasaur swims after it.

David waits thirty seconds before guiding the crippled submersible out of the
Indianapolis
, keeping it close to the sea floor as he heads north.

“One hundred fifty yards . . . one hundred . . . David, slow down or you’ll pass it.”

“I haven’t passed anything! Are you activating the docking doors?”

“Do you see me pushing this thing?” She listens on sonar. “It’s working. I can hear the doors opening.”

“Are you sure? Where’s the hangar lights?”

“I don’t know. Maybe Maren’s saving on bulbs. Come about! Make your course one-seven-zero, and slow down!”

David whips the submersible around, heading south—

—the silhouette of the spherical lab situated between several hydrothermal chimneys thirty yards ahead.

The cockpit spins in his head, the carbon dioxide levels approaching critical levels. Shaking off the dizzy spell, he guides the Manta Ray beneath the lab and up into the dark recesses of its open deepwater dock.

Kaylie activates the controls once more, closing the doors—

—as something else shoots up inside the chamber  with them, bashing the tiny submersible sideways!

The cockpit spins, the chamber walls shaking, the sub’s exterior lights spinning—

—the twin beams catching glimpses of the giant archelon turtle, the beast in panic mode as it attempts to swim within the tight confines of the deepwater dock!

The titanium doors seal beneath them.

The generators kick in, slowly draining the chamber.

Trapped, the prehistoric turtle goes berserk, flipping the Manta Ray onto its side, bashing its head against the spherical bottom of the sealed lab. Clawing at the walls, it slashes deep gashes across the polished titanium alloy—

—alerting the mosasaur, the enraged creature now circling outside the lab!

WHOMP!

The ovoid chamber dents inward as the monster strikes the docking station’s elevated flat bottom.

Seawater continues to drain, the interior pressure equalizing, causing the turtle’s limbs and head to swell—

—until they burst like ripe melons! Innards splatter across the oval walls. The docking station rumbles, the intense water pressure threatening its structural integrity.

Wasting no time, David activates the cockpit, starting the excruciating process of unsealing the dome. He and Kaylie gather up pony bottles of air, bottled water, and food, shoving the supplies inside a canvass backpack. The cockpit pops open. The pressure throttles their ear drums and sinus passages, causing their noses to bleed—an ironic defense against the assault waged by the dead turtle’s overwhelming stench.

Kaylie rolls out of the cockpit, sliding down the damaged starboard wing. Sliding in turtle slime, she drags herself up the titanium ladder, David right behind her. His eyes are bulging, the walls wobbling in and out as if he’s on a bad acid trip, the pressure in his head threatening to implode his skull. Climbing the ladder behind Kaylie, he reaches up and helps her crank open the hatch’s rusted hand wheel as the entire chamber shakes.

With every last ounce of strength, David bears down on the hatch, wrenching it open. The pressure differential inside vacuums Kaylie head-first into the lab, David grabbing hold of her ankle with one hand, the inside of the hatch with the other, slamming the titanium lid shut behind them milliseconds before the screeching titanium walls buckle and bow inward beneath fourteen thousand pounds per square inch of water pressure—

Wa . . . BOOM!

The air space inside the docking station is inhaled in an instantaneous, voluminous gulp, collapsing the chamber’s thick titanium shell.

No longer supported from below, the 94,000-pound spherical laboratory drops through the wreckage—

—crushing the mosasaur’s skull, pinning the dead monster against the sea floor like a bowling ball dropped on the head of a python.

31.

Aboard the Tonga
Philippine Sea, Western Pacific

Jason Montgomery crosses the vast deck of the super tanker, heading for the contingent of Japanese crewmen that have gathered around the opening in the deck, where a fifty-foot crane is lowering a twoton hunk of thawed whale blubber into the bowels of the transport ship, releasing it above one of the holding pens below.

The water froths as the two captured ichthyosaurs tear apart the offering.

Monty watches a few minutes longer then heads for the tanker’s infrastructure. He ascends the stairwell to the bridge, greeted by Deck Officer Nick Cato, who is working at a computer station, the man’s thick brown eyebrows knitted in concentration.

“Mr. Montgomery. Back again to use the radio?”

“My cousin . . . she’s been ill.”

Cato looks up from the terminal. “I thought it was your grandmother?”

“My cousin, Patty, she’s been like a grandmother to me. Worried sick about her.” He looks around, the bridge deserted. “Heard a rumor the
Tonga’s
leaving for Dubai.”

“You heard right. Bin Rashidi wants his new fish delivered while they’re fresh. We’ll be replaced by our sister ship, the
Mogamigawa
. She’s even larger than the
Tonga
. Bin Rashidi says he needs her to capture his biggest prize, assuming he ever finds it.”

“I’ve got a suggestion,” offers Captain Singh, entering the bridge. “Tell him to drive the
Mogamigawa
back and forth over his hole until he sucks his monster out.”