33.

Aboard the Tonga
Philippine Sea

Two Japanese crewmen secure the canvass lift harness around the long nose and tail section of the Abyss Glider III. Jonas inspects the mechanical claw now gripping the titanium hook fastened at the end of a seven-mile-long spool of steel cable. Satisfied, he climbs inside the cockpit of the one-man submersible, strapping himself in.

Jason Montgomery hands him a canvas bag, filled with supplies. “I’ll stay in the Tonga bridge by the radio. If you need something, just holler.”

“Contact your uncle aboard the McFarland. Set up a relay so I can speak with him directly.”

“Did you know the most popular name for boats is Obsession?”

“Try to stay focused.” Jonas activates the cockpit, sealing the dark acrylic dome above his head.

John LeBlanc operates the winch, raising the sleek, midnight-green sub off the deck by its harness—

—lowering it into the Pacific.

The pilot controls of the AG III mirror those of the Manta Ray, with the left and right floor pedals operating the wing propulsion units, the joysticks the sub’s pitch and yaw. A third joystick operates the hydrogen burn, a hand control fitted with finger-hole sleeves operates the sub’s robotic arm and claw.

The real difference between the two vessels lies in their hull shape and performance. The Manta Ray is a hydrodynamic winged craft designed to maneuver. The AG III is essentially a one-man, underwater missile built for speed.

Jonas glances at the digital clock: 10:37 a.m. Gotta watch the cable. Don’t descend faster than the slack. He speaks into the radio as divers release the sub from its harness. “Engineer, what’s the fastest your winch can release cable?”

“Twenty feet per second.”

“On my mark, set it on max. Three . . . two . . . one . . .”

The massive spool of cable located in the starboard bow of the tanker rolls to life, each revolution releasing fifty feet of cable into the sea.

Jonas allows the heavy nosecone of his abyssal racer to sink before he starts the twin propellers. The AG III plunges through the depths on a straight, ninety-degree vertical like a falling dart. The sea turns black within the first minute, forcing him to rely strictly on his gauges to determine his path through the void. He can feel the cable’s tug on his robotic claw, the appendage tucked into its telescopic casing along his keel. Fearing he’ll tear the cable loose, he slows his descent, allowing the line to slacken.

Two minutes . . . two thousand feet . . . all sense of direction lost. Abyssal snow races past his cockpit glass like a midnight blizzard.

Three thousand feet . . . four thousand . . .

“AG III, this is Spiderman. You need to slow your approach to the access hole. You’ll tangle our nets.”

“Negative, Spiderman. You can reset your nets after I pass through.”

Jonas checks his trajectory on sonar, verifying he’s still on course.

Five thousand feet . . . six thousand . . . Damn cable’s feeding out too slowly. Current’s dragging the slack. He slows his descent once more, the pull on the robotic appendage becoming too great.

He sees the lights below. Then he sees the hole.

It’s far larger than what he expected, a circular aperture, four hundred feet across. As Jonas moves closer he can see the raised geology around the hole’s immense rim.

Maren didn’t drill this. This is a crater, created long ago. Whatever made this impact must have been huge.

Activating the exterior lights mounted to his wings, he aims the nose of his vessel into the void, racing into hell to find his son.

Panthalassa Sea

David uses the empty plastic bottle to drain the last of the water from the toilet. Although the system is again producing oxygen, the water meter remains on red.

He tosses the bottle and lies down next to Kaylie on the cot. “That’s the last of it.”

“How long do we have? And don’t lie.”

“I closed the vents in the upper level and reset the system on its lowest output. At the most . . . maybe two hours.”

She slides her hand on top of his, tears mixing with the perspiration on her cheeks. “I am so sorry I pushed you into this. It’s all my fault.”

“It was my choice.”

“I love you, David. Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

“There’s something I have to tell you, something I should have confessed long ago.” She sits up, brushing back a strand of brunette hair matted to her neck. “Bin Rashidi didn’t just recruit me as a pilot; he specifically asked me to get close to you.”

David closes his eyes, sealing away his tears. “Why?”

“He needed you to make the dive.”

“So all that flirting on the ride over . . . the morning in the pool?”

“Yes. But things changed once I got to know you. I told him I couldn’t go through with it. I told him I either made the team on my own merits or I’d leave.”

“And the night I spoke with my father? The night I pleaded with you to stay in Dubai?”

“That was my own doing. I wanted us to be together—”

“—but you got greedy. You didn’t trust me.”

“My family’s not rich like yours. My parents are struggling. They needed the money. Bin Rashidi offered me a hundred grand to make the dive; so, of course, I jumped at the chance. I actually believed I could do it, too . . . right up until my first descent. Once Debbie Umel and I entered the Panthalassa, we both knew we could never dive this deep. None of us could.”

David sits up in bed, his back to her.

“You hate me, don’t you. I don’t blame you.”

“I don’t hate you. You were trying to help your family. I was trying to protect you.”

She hugs him from behind, sobbing against his back. “I am so sorry. And I’m so scared.”

He turns around and holds her. “It’s okay.”

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Hell, yes. But I made the dive because I was more scared of losing you. I was afraid you’d end up making the dive with Brian.”

“Brian wouldn’t have made it through the current.” She presses her tear-drenched face to his, kissing him on the lips. “You always make me feel safe. Make me feel safe again.”

He hugs her tightly, feeling her tremble. “You know how we entered that chute to access the Panthalassa? In a little while we’re going to access another chute, a chute with a bright, heavenly light. We’re just going to lay down here next to each other and go to sleep, and then, hand in hand, we’ll pass through the light into another place—a place where we can be together forever.”

He pulls her down onto the bed, Kaylie lying on his chest, the two of them holding one another on their diminishing island of air at the bottom of the sea.

The Abyss Glider drags the steel cable down through the access hole and into the Panthalassa Sea. The water, now registering a balmy fifty-six degrees Fahrenheit, teems with rising particles of hydrothermal flakes.

Maneuvering along the subterranean ceiling, swarms of hungry squid attack clear, gelatinous jelly fish, the creatures obliviously blinking their bioluminescent mating lures like fireflies in estrus. The jellyfish feed on albino mussels and shrimp, crabs and clams, and snakelike creatures with bulging eyes. The crustaceans move through a jungle of tube worms, which grow upside down from the geology in clusters. Mixed within the inverted patches of riftia are dark red palm  worms and accordion-like Jericho worms, the communities all feeding upon bacteria and other micro-organisms. The bacteria, in turn, are feasting off chemosynthetic layers of carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide that has been adhering to the Panthalassa ceiling for the last 250 million years.

Ignoring the abyssal food chain, Jonas powers off his exterior lights and continues his frenetic descent.

Ten thousand feet. The cable feeds cleanly down the chute, the water warming noticeably.

Fifteen thousand feet. Still only halfway there.

“Jonas, can you hear me?” The familiar voice emerges in pieces against the static.

“Mac?”

“I’m . . . pal. Where . . . hell are you?”

“Approaching twenty thousand feet. Mac, can you hear me? Mac?” Jonas reaches for the radio—

—as the three blips appear on sonar right alongside his sub! He turns on his exterior lights, the peripheral beams illuminating the creatures. They are descending with him off his starboard wing, the largest in excess of twenty-five feet. Incredibly, they resemble his sub, their long, pointy mollusk shells shaped almost exactly like the AG III, only ending in the thick tentacles and crushing beak of an enormous cephalopod.

Cameroceras . . . giant orthocones. Are they to be my abyssal escorts, or are they perversely attracted to the sub?

He hears the rushing tide a moment before he enters the Panthalassa current. The Abyss Glider’s cylindrical, dart-shaped girth knifes straight down through the raging river, Jonas adjusting his pitch so that the angle of his sub’s wings offers the least resistance.

The giant orthocones refuse to enter the torrent, retreating back toward the ceiling to feed.

Below, the predators gather, attracted by the loud reverberations of his engines.

The pack of nothosaurs strike before he even emerges from the current, their dragon-like mouths suddenly appearing in his beams. Rows of interlocking, needle-sharp teeth strike at his wings, the creatures darting in and out of the lights like ravenous thirteen-foot seals.

Jonas shuts off the lights, bashing his way past the reptilian fish, nearly lancing one with the bow of his sub as he emerges from the swirling hydrothermal maelstrom into prehistoric hell.

The tropical sea swarms with a gauntlet of Mother Nature’s worst nightmares. The plesiosaurs are the aggressors. Thirty to sixty feet long, their crocodilian bodies are propelled by four immense flippers, their jaws the stuff of drug-induced hallucinations.

A kronosaur soars past his starboard wing, Jonas barely able to lurch the sub away—

—as a giant mosasaur bears down on him from above, chasing him into a swarm of forty-foot Xiphactinus, the giant, piranha-like fish, lightning quick, converging on his submersible as if it were an injured porpoise.

Desperate, Jonas grabs the joystick controlling his hydrogen engine. Pressing the top button, he ignites his tank, the combusting liquid scorching the mosasaur snout, the AG III rocketing away—

—ripping the cable from his robotic claw’s tenuous grip.

“Damn!”

Within seconds he is approaching the bottom. Shutting down the hydrogen burn, he levels out, his sonar searching for Maren’s lab as he approaches the living reef that was once the USS Indianapolis.

For several moments he stares at the ghost ship, transfixed. So that’s how Maren discovered this hell hole. He grabs the radio, praying his proximity to the lab’s fiber optic cables will allow him to communicate with his son. “David, it’s Dad! David, can you hear me?”

Each breath is a panicked rasp, the lab now a steamy vacuum of space, the pony bottle strapped around his nose and mouth long expired of its compressed air.

In his delirium, David hears a voice. Dad?

His scorched lungs ache as he heaves himself over Kaylie, who is curled in a ball, hyperventilating. His eyes bulge, the room spinning loop-de-loops as he claws his way up the ladder and locates the discarded radio transmitter.

“Hhhadd!”

“David? Thank God—”

“Air . . . no air!”

Jonas’s mind races as he tries to recall the schematics of Maren’s lab. Radio’s on, so he’s got power. The life support system converts water to oxygen . . . he’s probably out of water! “David, listen to me! The life support system needs water—”

“Gone!”

Gone? “David, use anything . . . the toilet water, the water heater overflow. Piss in the damn tank if you have to!”

Water heater overflow? Barely conscious, David stumbles down the ladder, crawling his way to the water heater. He can barely control his limbs as he unhinges the side panel—

—revealing a two-gallon, calcium-encrusted drip pan overflowing with water.

Careful! Don’t spill it! He eases the container out of the heating unit, wheezing as he staggers toward the open water tank. Gently, he pours the life-giving fluid into the cache.

Seconds pass. Nothing happens.

No longer able to feel his feet, he drops to his knees and crawls back to Kaylie. Grabbing her wrist, he pulls her convulsing body on top of his, then drags them both to the closest air duct—

—as the life support system kicks in, pumping out a wave of cool, stale air.

Pressing their faces to the grating, they gasp each breath like feeding baby birds.

“David? David, answer me when you can. Kiddo, don’t give up!”

A few more lungfuls and his head clears. He climbs halfway up the ladder and reaches for the radio. “The water heater . . . it worked. But there’s . . . not enough . . . to last.”

“Look out your porthole.”

David hauls his trembling form onto the upper level and gazes out the dense, cylindrical window.

The AG III’s cockpit hovers three feet away.

The sight of his father causes David to weep. “Dad, I’m sorry—”

“I love you, kid. Now listen to me. Shut down all the vents except one. Find a way to encapsulate a smaller breathing space so that you’re not ventilating the entire lab. A little air can go a long way. I lost the tow cable, but I’ll be back real soon. You keep it together. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Fighting to maintain his composure, Jonas banks the sub away from the lab and the remains of an unrecognizable carcass caught beneath the titanium sphere. Pulling back on the joysticks, he aims the Abyss Glider’s long nose on a ninety-degree vertical plane then reignites the hydrogen tank, launching himself toward the volcanic rock ceiling like a Tomahawk cruise missile.

The AG III shudders as it climbs one hundred feet per second.

Dark shadows appear ahead, the stunned creatures snapping wildly as they whip past his cockpit. He veers past the swarm and up through the swirling hydrothermal plume, his mind focusing on the problem at hand.

He debates whether to attempt to locate and retrieve the lost cable.

Realizes it’s an impossible task.

Accepts the reality that he must return to the surface to begin anew.

Keep the cable slack, that’ll allow you to increase your rate of descent. But how the hell do I keep these monsters off of me long enough to attach the cable? Can’t kill them, can’t out-maneuver them in the Glider, and the lights only attract them. What can I use to scare these creatures away?

“Oh, hell.” He grabs the radio. “Mac, can you read me? Mac!”

“. . . read you.”

“Bring the McFarland to me as fast as you can. Monty will give you the coordinates. Then have Nichols wake up sleeping beauty.

“I need our girl to escort me through hell.”