Meg: Hell's Aquarium (56 page)

Jonas stands on the upper deck of the trawler, using a grappling pole to retrieve the end of the rescue cable. He drags the line aft, where the Abyss Glider sits poised before the trawler’s slanted stern. Crawling under the sub’s narrow bow, he re-secures the titanium hook to the claw of the Glider’s robotic appendage. Tests the grip several times. Satisfied, he signals to the crewman standing by the supertanker’s bow rail. Climbing inside the
AG III
’s cockpit, he seals the hatch, his heart pounding.

The crewman signals to John LeBlanc, who restarts the winch, allowing the spool to unravel its length of cable, feeding the slack into the sea.

The weight of the falling cable pulls the Glider bow-first down the stern ramp.

Jonas powers up the sub, careful to avoid the plunging steel cable. He descends quickly to two hundred feet then heads east to intercept the hopper dredger. The big ship has moved to within a half-mile of the
Tonga
, its twin propellers shut down, allowing the boat to drift.

The Abyss Glider circles beneath the hopper dredger’s ominous set of steel doors. Jonas activates his radio. “Mac, I’m in position. Are you ready?”

James Mackreides stands on the
McFarland’s
bow deck, seeking cover from a torrent of waves and high arcing splashes blasting out of the ship’s flooded hold. “Your girl just woke up, and she’s mighty pissed. Nichols wants you to circle beneath the keel until Angel locks on to you. He’ll take it from there.”

“Thanks. And Mac . . . thanks for being there for me all these years. I love you like a brother. Just wanted you to know that.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Jonas can hear the deep booming reverberations in the water. “You’d better release Angel before she tears apart the hopper.”

“Jonas—”

“Let her go, Mac. Please.”

Cursing aloud, Mac swaps his radio transmitter for the walkie-talkie. “Open the hopper doors. Let her go.”

With a groan of metal, the two steel doors located along the ship’s keel slowly swing open, venting the hopper to the sea.

For the last eighty-six hours, Angel has been kept in sleep mode, an autonomous state that has allowed the Meg to swim and breathe while her senses have remained in hibernation. Having been forcibly awakened, the seventy-four-foot, fifty-one-ton predator becomes disoriented and enraged, her steel confines emitting electrical impulses that scramble her senses. Unable to acquire her bearings, she flips over and over, slapping at the walls of her cage with her caudal fin, ramming the hopper with her head—even after the doors have been opened.

She finally manages to swim free, more by accident than intent. Dazed, she moves away from the boat’s keel, circling in tight figure-eights as she attempts to re orient herself. Functioning like a built-in GPS system, the Meg’s ampullae of Lorenzini registers the Earth’s geomagnetic field, lifting the veil of fog from her brain—

—engaging the rest of her sensory array.

It has been nearly two weeks since the Megalodon last fed. Suddenly obsessed with hunger, Angel’s senses lock in on the closest prey in her new territory. Her olfactory center inhales what her brain translates to be the pungent scent of blood. Her lateral line registers the animal’s wounded vibrations. Her eyes adjust to the light as they catch movement somewhere below . . .

His head laid back on the pilot seat, Jonas stares up through the cockpit glass, watching and waiting while the Meg’s senses scan her new environment.
Come on down, Angel. I’m right here . . . find me!

As if she can hear him, the predator suddenly breaks off her pattern and descends, launching her attack.

Jonas dives the
AG III
, accelerating to twenty-five knots as he adjusts his course to the west, angling his steep descent toward the access hole. His heart is racing, but it is not from a primordial fear of being eaten.

I’ve been gone too long . . . almost an hour. At this speed, it’ll take me another twenty minutes at best to get back to David, and that’s assuming everything goes perfect.
He turns around to check on Angel, the monster closing the gap to just under two hundred feet.
That a girl, stay with me.

The blue water turns black, the depths cloaking the sunlight, forcing Jonas to rely on his instruments. Down he soars, passing the first mile, the pale beast in his wake keeping pace, her senses locked onto him now, refusing to allow him to escape.

Another two minutes and the Philippine Sea floor blooms on sonar, the crater-like hole revealing itself in his night glass.

Jonas circles the aperture once, allowing Angel to move to within a hundred feet of his vessel before he jams both pedals to the floor, plunging the Abyss Glider down the crater’s throat.

Come on, Alice . . . follow me down the rabbit’s hole and I’ll treat you to some crumpets.

Angel slows, suddenly wary. Her back arches as she circles the crater’s perimeter, her senses awash in the stream of minerals flowing out of the aperture. The warmth entices, the scent of prey teases her appetite, yet still she will not enter the void—put off by a distant memory.

Jonas descends through the tunnel of volcanic rock, his exterior lights illuminating outcrops of basalt carpeted with colorful sponges. It is not until he emerges from the chute into the Panthalassa Sea that he realizes Angel is no longer behind him. For several moments he hovers by the subterranean ceiling, watching his sonar . . . waiting.

“Aw, hell.”

Maneuvering the two joysticks, he guides the sub slowly back up the chute. He slows two hundred feet below the exit point, dousing his lights. Through the night glass he can see the Meg circling the crater, waiting in ambush.

She won’t enter the hole . . . she’s waiting for me to emerge. How do I entice her down?

He flashes his exterior lights on and off repeatedly, but gets no response.

An albino sea scorpion the size of a small child propels itself from its rocky perch, landing on his cockpit, nearly giving him a heart attack. Reflexively, he jams his right hand against the control panel, striking the switch that changes the
AG III
’s sonar from passive to active.

PING! PING . . . PING . . . PING . . . PING
. . .

The reverberations echo up through the funnel of rock, causing the Megalodon’s lateral line to buzz like a tuning fork. Shaking her mammoth head to and fro, Angel enters the hole, charging like a mad bull.

Caught off-guard, Jonas executes a hasty 180-degree turn. The point of his lance-shaped bow scrapes the rocky cliff face—

—wedging him in.

He steels a quick glance above his head. Angel’s jaws are already widening, the Meg nearly on top of him!

Jonas jams his left foot down on the pedal and holds it there, sending his sub spinning clockwise until the torque wrenches him free. He dives the sub—

—as Angel’s jaws slam shut inches from his port-side wing! Her right jowl presses against his cockpit, her gray-blue pupil rolled back, revealing a bloodshot sclera.

The Glider strikes the far wall. Pinned in by the Meg’s enormous head, Jonas can only accelerate down the chute, Angel’s mouth opening and closing as she blindly searches for him. Jonas adjusts his speed on the fly, fighting to keep his vessel behind the crook of that wicked smile, rolling and maneuvering the sub’s angle of descent to keep his wings free of her jaws as the shark drives him laterally, inching him toward the far wall—

—and then they’re free!

Monster and machine shoot out of the hole into the Panthalassa Sea, the open water allowing Jonas to veer ahead and out of harm’s way. He distances himself from the Meg—

—leading his abusive escort into the depths to rescue his son.

35.

Tanaka Oceanographic Institute
Monterey, California

Virgil Carmen drags the lifelike anthropomorphic doll, known as Bobby Baitman, across the arena to the western bleachers and the ocean-access canal. Running alongside the canal’s southern wall is a twenty-two-foot-high chain link fence. He keys open the gate, gaining access to a rusted catwalk that dates back to Masao Tanaka’s original whale lagoon design.

The catwalk runs the length of the southern canal wall, situated six feet above the top of the concrete barrier. The tide is high, submerging the catwalk about a hundred yards past the short stretch of private beach. Two hundred yards beyond that point is the yacht.