Meg Page 5

  Six hundred feet of deck rose before him like a steel mountain―the Tonga listing at forty degrees as it slipped backwards into the Pacific. Water was pouring over the top of the Lio tank, the structure looming over him sixty feet up the slanted incline―

  ―its anchored base squealing in protest as it pulled away from the deck.

  Move!

  Lee Shone waded through the torrent as fast as his legs could carry him, his eyes never leaving the glass edifice barreling at him until he cleared the flood zone. He heard the crash of Lexan glass meeting aluminum bleachers a second before a wave of water and shrapnel blasted him from behind and sent him hurtling face-first against the rail. The action star held on until gray sky and blue sea returned.

  “Ugh … gad almighty, whit’s next then?”

  He turned to see the answer slithering his way, its crocodilian jaws snapping at him.

  Without looking, Lee Shone climbed over the rail and leaped seventy feet into the Pacific.

  * * *

  Stamping down on both foot pedals, David wrenched the joystick hard to starboard, the Manta’s port wing just clearing the closing jaws of the Miocene whale.

  “It doesn’t like the pinging … switch it!”

  “Switch what?”

  “The sonar!” David leaned across the center console, only to be flung back in his bucket seat by the harness.

  Jackie reached for the sonar, shutting it off.

  “No, don’t shut it off―switch it from active to passive and tell me where he is.”

  She complied, pulling the headphones over her ears to hear a clickety-click sound amid the thunder of protesting steel. “Behind us … he’s turning … sounds like he’s heading deep.”

  “Keep listening.” Pulling back on the joystick, David headed for the surface, keeping the sinking tanker off his starboard wing.

  David leveled out the sub at thirty feet as the ocean became a deep blue tapestry of churning legs and arms and fresh bodies raining down randomly from above, each muted splash accompanied by a sinkhole of air.

  A human torpedo shot past the Manta’s left wing, the bearded man’s eyes wide as he took in the dark blurred shadow of their vessel.

  “Guy’s pretty deep; I’d better help him up.” David was about to loop beneath the terrified jumper when an immense object splashed down directly ahead of the sub in an eruption of churning brown limbs and receding bubbles.

  The Liopleurodon righted itself and swam straight for Lee Shone, its jaws opening―

  Whomp!

  The Manta’s left wing struck the Lio in its chest, stunning the pliosaur and pile-driving it twenty feet before it twisted away. With two rapid lunges of its forelimbs, it darted toward the depths and disappeared.

  * * *

  It was rare that Lee Shone tasted defeat, but the fighter knew it was over. His chest burned, his legs felt like lead, and he was no longer rising. With his last ounce of strength, he reached his hand futilely for a surface still thirty feet above his head.

  And then miraculously he was rising! With a whoosh, he broke the surface to find himself straddling a dark object, his arms wrapped around a plastic bubble … and there were people in it.

  The sub carried him east to one of the walls of the canal that led inside the Tanaka lagoon. He pulled himself out of the water onto the top of the concrete barrier, the low tide exposing a footpath which led into the empty arena.

  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 1,100-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 vice, 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 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.

  CHAPTER 2

  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 which 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; they had invested in a small fleet of submersibles specifically designed for rescue and salvage missions, and they 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 back-up 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 fo
r 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 Institute 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, his wife, 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 which 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 Japanese Marine Science Technology Center. 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 which had become entangled in the surface ship’s cable; the second had been its sixty-foot mate, a pregnant female which 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 74-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. Their 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 UCSF, 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.

  “Alright, 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 advisor 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’s 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 sleaze-ball 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. His attorney said he was in meetings, but s
he’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 rollercoaster 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.”