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.”

His wife sits up next to him. “What else?”

“As I was falling, I said to myself, ‘you really screwed up this time.’ I remember thinking it aloud, as clear as I’m speaking with you. What does it mean?”

“Jonas, you went to bed last night worried sick about the Meg Pen, wondering if the tank would flood before you made the necessary repairs. Your subconscious mind is telling you something.”

“That I screwed up?”

“Or a major crash is just around the bend.” She touches his cheek. “Maybe it’s time to cash in our chips and get out.”

“What? Suicide?”

She smacks him playfully in the head. “The Institute! Maybe it’s time we retired. You know . . . get away from the stress.”

“What do you expect me to do? Play golf? I suck at golf. Golf gives me stress.”

“Monsters give me stress. After twenty-five years I’ve had enough. You promised me we’d travel one day, that we’d take a cruise to Alaska.”

“So we’ll plan a vacation. Doesn’t mean we have to retire.”

“Your subconscious mind says otherwise.”

“Maybe I just need to get the brakes fixed on the Lexus?”

“You think it’s a joke? Jonas, last night I was watching The Tonight Show, that damn R.A.W. group hired Lana Wood as their spokeswoman.”

“Who’s Lana Wood?”

“An actress. She was a Bond girl back when your hair was brown. Anyway, she showed footage of the Jellyfish shocking Belle and Lizzy the night they attacked the runt.”

“What! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You had enough on your mind.”

“Where the hell did they get the footage? I’ve got to call Tommy.” He grabs the phone off his night table—

Terry takes it from him. “Jonas, just listen. We have enough money put away to take care of our children and our grandchildren. The stress of running the Institute, dealing with R.A.W. on a daily basis, with Angel—it’s taking away what little time we have left. If one day we’re blessed with grand-babies, I’d like to be around to enjoy them. Both of us.”

Slow down. Life’s too precious.

He hugs her to his chest, stroking her long, silky onyx hair. “Okay, granny, tell me what you want me to do.”

“Release Angel? Were you standing too close to the microwave or something?” Mac stares at Jonas from across the booth, bits of his partially chewed sandwich spewing from his open mouth. “Seriously, J.T, are you insane?”

“A little louder next time. I don’t think the waitress heard you.” Jonas leans forward, speaking in a hushed tone. “Think it through. Even if we manage to repair the Meg Pen, Bela and Lizzy are growing way out of control. Now imagine them in five years when they’ve reached Angel’s size.”

“But releasing Angel?”

“Which poison is more lethal, releasing Angel to the wild or the sisters?”

“That’s like asking me if I’d prefer to be hung or shot in the head. Either way I’m still a dead man.”

“Hear me out. We don’t just open the canal doors and release her with some parting gifts. We transport Angel by boat to the Western Pacific then use the neural implant to send her deep. Once she’s back in the Mariana Trench—”

“Gee, that’s a real Hallmark moment, except for one thing, dickhead . . . what happens if she doesn’t stay there?”

“We use the GPS system to track her. If she moves near a coastline, we alert the authorities. But she won’t. We can use the implant to keep her away from the shallows and the whale migrations. So she kills an occasional gray or humpback. It’s a big ocean—”

“—and she’s a big fish . . . with big teeth.”

“What’s the alternative, Mac? If we do nothing, in a day or a week or a month, Bela will crash through the Meg Pen glass and flood the Institute, killing herself and Lizzy in the process while causing God knows how many millions of dollars in damage.”

“Or here’s another option: I take a harpoon gun and shove it in Angel’s neuro-implant, and we turn the lagoon over to the two sisters. After we seal off the canal.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, but I don’t feel good about it.”

“Think of Angel as Old Yeller. Old Yeller was sick, a danger to the family, so Paw went out with the shotgun and BAM! Right between the eyes.”

“I visited Ed Hendricks a few days ago in the hospital. I asked him if he thought we should kill Angel. Know what he said?”

“Let me guess, he said we should cut off her two pectoral fins and he’d eat them.”

“He said she never should have been penned in the first place.”

“Wow. Good for Ed. I guess having your legs bitten off makes one more spiritual. Be sure and share his sentiments with the families of the victims Angel devoured in McCovey Cove a few years ago.”

“I don’t want to kill her, Mac.”

“And what if she’s pregnant?”

“I’m not God. If Nature intended these creatures to breed, who am I to stop them?”

“Tell you what, you take Terry on a week’s vacation and when you come back—”

“Mac . . .”

His friend shakes his head, giving in. “By boat, huh?”

“Yes. And this stays between us. Someone is Stelzer’s department’s been feeding R.A.W. our footage. The last thing we need now is the public getting wind of our little plan.”

“About that plan . . . what kind of boat can hold a fifty-one-ton, seventy-four-foot monster?”

Jonas smiles. “I’m going to show you.”

Aboard the Dubai Land I
Philippine Sea, Western Pacific

Thunder rattles the gray dawn like a noisy upstairs neighbor, the baritone reverberations echoing across the dark surface, foretelling another rough day at sea for the ships’ two crews.

David Taylor lies in the lower bunk of the cabin formerly occupied by Peter Geier. He has barely slept, his mind restlessly debating bin Rashidi’s offer. He mentally rehearses the dive. Imagines the disorienting steep-angled descent as he spirals into endless blackness, the remotely operated barracuda leading the way, serving as a visual compass. Even in the swift Manta Ray the voyage to reach purgatory will take almost ninety minutes, assuming conditions are stable. Once they reach Maren’s lab, the robot will be used to trigger the docking procedure. Leading to the most harrowing part of the mission.

At 31,500 feet, the weight of the ocean approaches an unforgiving fourteen thousand pounds per square inch. Fish do not register the pressures of the abyss because the water moves through them, but anything possessing an air bladder—human, habitat, or sub—will implode instantaneously should its protective hull be compromised.

To avoid this, engineers attempting to reach the ocean’s deepest realms have always employed a spherical design so that pressures are distributed evenly across the hull. David has faith in his father’s submersible—the cockpit/emergency pod being an acrylic bathyscaphe. What worries him is the deepwater dock. An oval design is far less stable than a sphere, and the thought of the docking station collapsing upon his vessel is causing him serious trepidation.

Incredible water pressure. Dangerous currents. Faulty docking designs. And potential encounters with nightmarish predators. His father was right; it was a suicide mission, and no amount of money could persuade him to go—

—except there is another factor at play . . . he’s in love.

David knows that if he doesn’t go, Brian Suits will, and the captain will recruit Kaylie as his co-pilot. While David respects Suits as a commander, the war veteran lacks experience piloting submersibles, having logged less than one hundred hours aboard the Manta Ray. More important, the man has never dived beyond the shallows of the Persian Gulf.

David had selected Rick Magers over Kaylie as his co-pilot because of his feelings for the girl. Diving the abyss required complete concentration and he knew their on-again, off-again relationship could be a distraction. As his godfather, Mac, has told him on numerous occasions, “you don’t shit where you eat, and you don’t face death with a hard pecker.”

He could have requested Brian Suits at sonar, but he has seen too many military-types lose it in deepwater dives. The thought of having to manhandle the former soldier as he’s experiencing a claustrophobic meltdown six miles below the surface is too daunting a task to even consider.

David glances at the wall clock: 6:35 a.m.

With or without you, they leave in an hour. Dad dived the Mariana Trench in a one-man Abyss Glider. At least I wouldn’t be alone.

He also ran into Angel’s mom . . .

Asshole. You should’ve listened to your father and gone to football camp.

Lying in bed, he can hear the Japanese crewmen working on the upper deck above his head, untying the trawler’s lines from the tanker. His presence had been a topic of conversation among the men in the galley last night, the deck hands speaking in hushed tones about his Asian/Caucasian features. A few of the men had made loud references in Japanese, baiting him to see if he spoke their language.

He had not let on, taking the lessons his maternal grandfather had taught him about combat to heart.

Masao Tanaka had studied Samurai strategy as written by the legendary Japanese warrior, Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi had written his Go Rin No Sho (The Book of Five Rings) while living in a cave in the mountains of Kyushu in 1645. The Kendo master had penned the manuscript a few weeks before his death, intending it to be the ultimate guide to sword fighting. Hundreds of years after his death, the book was considered to be the most perceptive psychological guide to strategy, battle, and business ever conceived.

How would Musashi advise me?

He closes his eyes, hearing his grandfather’s raspy voice quoting the combat master: There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. There is also timing in the Void. Before entering in battle, distinguish between gain and loss in worldly manners while perceiving those things which cannot be seen . . .

David opens his eyes, the restlessness gone.

Twenty-four years ago, Masao’s son, D.J., had rushed into the Void, cocky and head-strong, only to be devoured by it. David’s father had survived the abyss and its terrors four years later because his mission had been pure—to rescue his mother.

If my motive remains pure and I’m prepared, then I can enter the Void and return, triumphant. That means I can’t do this for the money. It must only be to prevent Kaylie from making the dive.

His thoughts are dashed by the sudden knock on his cabin door. He rolls out of bed and answers.

It’s Kaylie.

“Brian told me everything. Are you actually considering making the dive?”

“Yes.”

“Then you’re taking me as your co-pilot.”

“This isn’t about money, Kaylie.”

“Then what’s it about? I hope it’s not some kind of macho way of protecting me.”

“Actually, I’m protecting me.”

“By taking Rick? I’ve gone deeper than he has and I’m a better sonar operator on my worst day than he’ll ever be.”

“I can’t dive with you, Kaylie . . . not this deep. I need to remain focused.”

“You’ll focus better with a competent co-pilot.”

“Rick’s focused.”

“Rick’s off the wagon. He drinks before every dive. I’ve smelled it on his breath. As for protecting me, if you can’t trust yourself with me when there’s really something at stake, then what kind of future do we have together? Unless you’re telling me what we have is only sex?”

“I didn’t say that—”

“Good. Then I’m going. See you up on deck.”

He watches her go, wondering how Miyamoto Musashi would fare against a woman.

No wonder the guy wrote his book in a cave.

David emerges on deck forty minutes later, having eaten breakfast and purged his jittery bowels. The wind has picked up, gusts blowing in from the northwest at thirty knots. Six-foot swells rock the trawler, urging him to make haste and get the Manta Ray beneath the waves before he loses what’s left of his meal.

Brian Suits climbs down from the wheel house to escort him to the sub. “Big day. You ready?”

“I’m getting there. Why did you tell her?”

“Because it’s important for all of us that you succeed. Kaylie’s selection as co-pilot would never have been an issue if you two weren’t involved.”

“Maybe you told her because you were afraid I might have chosen you?”

Brian’s eyes flash a warning. “Listen, sport, keep it in your pants and you’ll be fine.”

“You listen, asshole. That deepwater dock had better be as stable as you say, or I’ll be bringing back holy hell.”

The war vet grins. “So you’re a tough guy now?”

“No. I’m just the cocky college student hired to make a dive we both know you don’t have the balls to even attempt. But hey, if I’m wrong, you can replace me right now. Am I wrong?”

Brian matches his glare. “We need the charts. You’re more qualified than I am. It’s your dive.”

“Yeah, that’s what I thought. All talk, no Kokoro—no spirit. No matter what happens to me, just remember which one of us is the hawk and who’s the pheasant . . . sir.”

David stares him down, saying nothing, waiting for a parry he knows won’t come.

Brian nods, breaking eye contact. “Make your dive.”

David leaves him standing there, smiling to himself as he mentally wipes Brian Suits’s blood from his sword. Crossing the deck, he heads aft to the Manta Ray, the sub poised on its dolly just above the stern ramp. Kaylie is already inside the cockpit, dressed in jeans and her heavy cotton hooded sweatshirt. Brian leans in to offer her some last minute instructions while David stretches his quads.

The other pilots join him. Debbie Umel gives him a quick hug, Marcus Slabine a knuckle-punch. “Glad it’s you, dude, and not me.”

Jeff Hoch offers up a prayer. “Please, Lord, we ask that you escort our companions to the depths and see to their safe return.”

“Thanks, Minister.”

Dr. Gotto hands him a brown paper bag. “Made this myself. Thought it might come in handy.”

David opens the bag, removing a flexible plastic six-inch tube attached to a capped sixteen-ounce bottle.

“It’s a portable urinal,” Gotto says with a wink. “Hope it’s the right size.”

“Extra large. Thanks, Doc. This may actually come in handy. Did you make one for my co-pilot?”

“She’s already wearing hers. Good luck, kid.”

Rick Magers approaches, the old man looking peeved. “I have something for you, too.” He holds up his middle finger.

“Yeah, thanks.” Dropping to the deck, David does a quick set of push-ups, stretches his lower back, quads, and calves, then climbs inside the open cockpit.

Kaylie smiles at him. “Did you want to get in a quick run? I can wait.”

“It’s a long dive.”

“Ninety-six minutes to the lab, if we stay on schedule.” She points to a new relay switch, which has been rigged to her side of the command center. “This device sends a signal from the sub’s antenna to the docking station so that we can activate the docking doors, just in case we lose the barracuda.”

“It better work. Or we could end up stuck in that hangar.”

“I brought along plenty of bottled water, plus snacks. Want an Imodium chewable?”

“Already did three of them. My intestine’s clean. Sphincter’s sealed tight. Ready to go down, baby?”

She pouts her lips. “Focus on your job and you might get lucky later . . . maybe.”

“I hear that.” He seals the cockpit, waits for the green light then gives a thumbs-up to the pit crew. The four men, tethered to the trawler, walk the submersible on its dolly and cable down the stern ramp. The incoming swells rise to catch the Manta Ray as they guide it into the chilly Pacific.

Waves wash over the neutrally buoyant submersible. David secures his harness and powers on the twin propulsion units. Dipping the starboard wing, he maneuvers the sub into a shallow dive, moving them beyond the trawler’s rudder and dormant pitch propeller, diving them into the blue void.

Circling below in forty feet of water is a five-foot-long, torpedo-shaped drone, its contours and steel fins resembling that of a large barracuda. Armed with sonar and an infrared beacon attached to a small video camera, the vehicle is being remotely operated by Brian Suits, who is stationed in the wheel house with Fiesal bin Rashidi and Ibrahim Al Hashemi.

As the Manta Ray moves closer, the barracuda descends, leading them into the depths.

“You don’t have to spiral down,” Kaylie says. “Just maintain a sixty-degree down angle. I’ll tell you when to change course.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Missed me, didn’t you?”

“Only the sex.”

“You lie.”

David accelerates, his harness all that keeps him pinned in his seat against the sub’s steep angle of descent. The blue void deepens to violet as the submersible leaves the mesopelagic shallows.

One thousand feet . . . sixteen hundred . . .

The sun’s light fades into curtains of gray, extinguishing into black.

David glances at his gauges. The water temperature has dropped to 52°F, the pressure slipping past 720 psi, increasing 14.7 pounds per square inch for every 33 feet of depth.

He smiles as the dark void suddenly comes alive with thousands of twinkling lights.

They have entered another universe—the bathypelagic zone, or mid-water region—home to the largest ecosystem on the planet. Encompassing upwards of ten million species, these bathypelagic life forms have adapted to an eternity of living in darkness by evolving large, bulbous eyes that can pick up slivers of light. And by creating their own.

Bioluminescence in living organisms is generated through a chemical reaction, in this case a light-producing luciferin and its catalyst, a luciferase. Fueled by the release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the luciferase causes the luciferin to oxidize, creating a bioluminescent light.

Luminous lights zap on and off as the sub and its two passengers race toward the abyss, each color as brilliant as the LED lights on the command center.

David switches on his exterior lights and is immediately blinded by a blizzard of marine snow—organic particles floating from the shallows on their way to the bottom. He douses the lights, relying on the cockpit’s night glass and instruments.

His eyes return to the depth gauge as it passes 5,300 feet. One mile down. Five more to go . . .

The Manta Ray’s wingspan creaks beneath 2,400 pounds per square inch of pressure. David tries to be casual as he wipes a bead of sweat from his brow. “Angel’s mother’s skin was bioluminescent at night. Angel too, but it faded over the years. Must be related to diet, don’t you think?”

“I think you’re nervous. When’s the last time you went this deep?”

“High School. I snuck the sub out into Monterey Bay while my parents were in Hawaii and my sister was making out with her boyfriend.”

“Be honest. What would you do if you saw something big glowing in the Panthalassa?”

“If I saw something big, you wouldn’t be doing your job.”

“Speaking of which, it’s time to change course. Come to two-seven-zero and flatten your angle of descent to fifty-five degrees. In about ten minutes we’ll be coming to the spider web.”

“What’s that?”

“Fishing nets. An array of them. They’re anchored along the bottom around the access hole, splayed at different angles using buoys. Each net is rigged to the tanker by cable. This is important, so don’t forget it: You can only get in and out of the access hole by following course two-seven-zero along a fifty-five-degree plane. If we get chased out of the Panthalassa you have to follow that escape route or we’ll get netted like a tuna.”

“Ever happen to you and Debbie?”

“Our first week, on my fourth dive. We were circling in twelve thousand feet of water, and suddenly this huge object pops up on sonar about two hundred yards behind us. I freaked, thinking it was a Meg, and Debbie–she nearly sent us flying bow-first into the ceiling. Finally, she managed to hit the chute—that’s what we call the hole—only she headed topside on a straight vertical, completely forgot about the spider web. Next thing I know we’re being hauled upside-down to the surface in one of the cargo nets. Nothing you can do at that point but wait out the ride.”

“What was the object on sonar?”

“Turned out to be a Leeds’ fish, as gentle as a lamb. Like I said, it was only my fourth dive. I can handle things now.” She points ahead. “There. See the red warning lights? That’s the netting. There’s the barracuda. Follow it in. It’ll lead us right to the hole.”

She flips the radio toggle switch. “Spiderman—Delta team, come in.”

“Delta team—Spiderman, we see you. Tell your hotshot pilot to slow to five knots before your wake tangles our nets. I would hate to torpedo you.”

“That you, James?”

“None other, sweet pants.”

“James Vidal, meet David Taylor, my pilot for the day. David, James is our point man, an extra pair of eyes and ears.”

“The bonus baby. About time. Maybe now we’ll finally see some action.”

David adjusts his headset. “James, where are you?”

“Sea floor, two o’clock.”

David powers on his exterior lights, illuminating the gray-brown loops of the cargo nets, which are suspended 150 feet off the silty bottom by partially inflated, orange flotation buoys. Hovering along the bottom, barely visible through an entanglement of cargo nets, is the Shinkai 6500 submersible. The twenty-five-ton vessel’s rectangular shell is situated around a protective, pressurized titanium sphere with an internal diameter of six and a half feet. Owned and operated by JAMSTEC, the Japanese submersible is stark-white with yellow fins, and is equipped with two manipulator arms, thrusters, search lights, digital video and still cameras, sample baskets, and an observational sonar.

“I’ve got a visual on you, James. Nice sub . . . if you like turtles.”

“Hey, I’m just the combat engineer. Been doing it for Uncle Sam since ‘98. Suits recruited me for his hunting expedition after my second tour of duty in Iraq’s lovely Al Anbar Province with the 3rd Infantry. And I thought those Bradley’s were tight. Love to trade these mechanical  arms for a 25mm cannon, though I’m not sure I  need one. Been here ten days and all I’ve seen so far are a bunch of over-grown tuna. So get your bonus baby ass down in that hole and net us some real monsters, pronto. My boys and I need the extra money.”

Following the barracuda, David guides the Manta Ray through the labyrinth of nets—

—as the chute comes into view.

It is the diameter of a cul-de-sac in a residential neighborhood—a black, seemingly bottomless pit set along the flat, barren sea floor. Silt is being sucked down the hole’s throat, softening its rocky edges, giving it the appearance of being perfectly round.

“Jee . . . zus. How did Maren find this thing? Did he just drill it himself?”

“No one knows.” Kaylie switches her headset back to sonar, her expression suddenly more serious. “There’s a strong downward current. Take it slow.”

David enters the passage dead-center, the sub’s exterior beacons showing faint hints of jagged escarpments. The beams barely illuminate the darkness, as if the aperture was a celestial black hole, its gravitational density inhaling all light. Through the claustrophobic funnel of volcanic rock they descend, moving through the vertical on a spiraling downward plane, their speed steady at five knots, the pitch enveloping them from behind, until the hole reopens to an ancient void—

—the Panthalassa Sea.