Meg: Origins (5 page)

Jonas smiled. “It’s a long ride. I hope you saved your ‘A’ material for the
Devil’s Purgatory
.”

“Now there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Who came up with that name for this stretch of trench?”

“I’m told it originated from one of the scientists aboard the H.M.S.
Challenger
. According to his journal entry, it was in this area that they netted some of the biggest fossilized shark teeth of the entire voyage, including a few that dated back less than ten thousand years.”

“How big were the teeth?”

“Six to seven inches, the edges all serrated. Like a steak knife.”

“What kind of—”

“
Megalodon
. A prehistoric relative of the Great White shark. If you figure an inch of tooth equals ten feet of shark… well, you get the idea.”

“That’s a big-ass shark.”

“Here’s the real scary part: if the teeth were less than ten thousand years old, then that meant some of these sharks had survived the last Ice Age by going deep to inhabit the warm layer heated by the volcanic vents. Lots of heat along the bottom. The hot zone. As in hell.”

“As in devil, I get it. But the term purgatory makes it sound as if the sharks had been stuck down there.”

Jonas points to the temperature gauge, the ocean now registering an icy 42-degrees. “Seventy degree temperatures along the bottom, separated from sun and shallows by six miles of cold. If you lived in an oasis with plenty of food, would you risk crossing the desert to reach another oasis you had no clue even existed?”

Shaffer smiled. “Only if it was Vegas. I’m a bit of a shark myself. Card shark. Plus I love stalking the ladies.
Grrowl
.”

· · ·

Aboard the
Tallman
17 miles north-northeast of Guam

Lucas Heitman unfurled the bathymetric map across the florescent table top. “We’re here, about fifteen miles northeast of Guam. Your monster’s about a half mile ahead of us, cruising in 33,000 feet of water at a steady five knots. We’re pinging at 16 kHz, which is low enough to maintain a read but high enough not to piss it off—at this range.”

“What if I want to tag him?”

“Tag him?”

“Him. Her. It. All I know is that it was sheer luck detecting this shark. I don’t want to risk losing it because of some damn typhoon. Therefore we need to tag it.”

“Okay, it’s time for a reality check: these fifteen-foot seas from that damn typhoon? By tonight they’ll become small mountains. If we don’t head south soon we’ll be caught in its eye, and that’s the last thing we want, trust me. Next reality check: your monster won’t abandon the warmth beneath the hydrothermal plume. That’s a major problem, Paul. The plume is like a raging river of minerals. It will tear the transmitter dart’s assembly from any launch platform you send down there, eliminating any possibility of tagging your shark.”

“Okay, Lucas, so maybe it won’t abandon the warm layer for good, but I bet we could lure it up for a quick shot. Rig the
Sea Bat-II
with the transmitter gun and the remains of the tuna we netted yesterday morning. We bring the
Meg
up with
Sea Bat-I
, then lure it in real close to
Sea Bat-II
and blam—right in the mouth!”

The intensity in Paul’s eyes bordered on manic.

Lucas stared at his friend. “Shoot it in the mouth? Dude, what are we doing? We’re messing with a shark that’s the size of the
Tallman
’s beam. What happens if we lure it away from its habitat and it surfaces? What’s to stop it from following the ROV straight up into the shallows?”

“Can you imagine those headlines? It’d be bigger than the
Alvin
discovering the
Titanic
.”

“Paul, be serious.”

“I’m being serious. And if you had any idea how difficult it’s been to convince my father to keep this little venture of ours going, then you’d be serious about this too. Decent paying jobs outside of inspecting oil pipelines are few and far between, and most of them are going to the more established boats. We need something big like this to put
Tallman
on the map.”

“All I’m asking is that you think this through. You bring this monster up from the depths, pal, and you own it.”

“Don’t tease me.”

“I’m talking about liabilities, Paul.”

“First we tag it, then we figure out the next step. Fair enough?”

“Fine. You have until six tonight to play tag, then we’re heading south.”

“Make it eight.”

“Paul, ever see the movie,
The Perfect Storm
?”

“Okay, okay, six o’clock. Just have both
Sea Bat
s rigged and ready to launch within the hour.”

5

Mariana Trench

THE MARIANA TRENCH REPRESENTS
the subduction zone where the massive Pacific Plate descends under the leading edge of the Eurasian Plate. For billions of years, hydrothermal vent fields have been delivering super-heated 700-degree Fahrenheit water into this 1,550-mile-long, forty-mile-wide gorge. Laden with minerals, the volcanic discharge from these “black smokers” has coalesced about a mile off the bottom, forming a ceiling of soot which effectively insulates and seals off the frigid waters of the abyss. More than sixty feet thick, this hydrothermal plume is further stabilized by the steep walls of a submarine canyon, creating a temperate zone in an unexplored realm located at the bottom of the western Pacific Ocean.

Prior to 1977, scientists were convinced life could not exist in the depths without sunlight. Once they actually investigated their claims aboard the
Alvin
submersible, they were shocked to find a vast food chain, all originating from tube worms—eight-to-ten-foot-long invertebrates that seemed to be feeding off the hydrothermal vents. In fact, the
Riftia pachyptila
actually existed on the bacteria living inside their own bright red nutritional organs. In a symbiotic relationship, the tube worms’ bacteria were feeding off the toxic chemicals spewed into the sea by the hydrothermal vents—a process that became known as chemosynthesis.

In the depths of the Mariana Trench, giant albino crabs and shrimp fed off the tube worms; small fish fed off the crabs and shrimp, and larger fish fed off the smaller fish. Feeding off the larger fish were an exotic array of sea creatures, both modern and prehistoric, that had existed in this isolated temperate zone for hundreds of millions of years. While there were no whales or sea elephants in the Mariana Trench, there were still plenty of prey, all stemming from this ecosystem that flourished in the absence of light.

At the top of this food chain was
Carcharodon megalodon
.

For nearly 30 million years, these monstrous sharks had dominated every ocean, feeding on the high-fat, high-energy yielding content of whales. Everything had changed two million years ago with the arrival of the last Ice Age. Within the span of a hundred thousand years, all but a few of Mother Nature’s apex predators had succumbed to extinction. Some of the creatures inhabited the deeper mid-water regions—an adaptation to being hunted by surface-dwelling Orca. Intelligent mammals, killer whales hunted in packs, targeting lone adults and
Megalodon
nurseries.
Megalodon
s that survived beyond the Ice Age did so in an isolated temperate zone located in the deepest canyon on the planet.

· · ·

The albino shark moved slowly through the pitch-dark canyon. At forty-eight feet and twenty-seven tons, the juvenile
Megalodon
was already equal to her adult male counterparts—all of whom continued to avoid a confrontation with the female, at least until her first fertility cycle.

Warm water streamed into her slack-jawed mouth, held open in a cruel, jagged smile. Just visible above the lower gum line were the twenty-two razor-sharp teeth she used for gripping prey. The upper jaw held twenty-four—far larger, wider weapons designed by nature to puncture bone, sinew and blubber. Behind these front rows of teeth were four or five additional rows, folded back into the gum line like a conveyor belt. Composed of calcified cartilage, these serrated teeth—three to six inches long—were set within a ten-foot jaw that, instead of being fused to the skull, hung loosely beneath the brain case. This adaptation enabled the upper jaw to actually push forward and hyperextend in a gargantuan bite, wide enough to engulf a mini-van from the back end all the way up to the front windshield.

The female glided effortlessly through the tropical void, her massive torpedo-shaped body undulating in slow snake-like movements. As her flank muscles contracted, the
Megalodon
’s caudal fin and aft portion pulled in a powerful rhythmic motion, propelling the shark forward. The immense half-moon shaped tail provided maximum thrust with minimal drag, while the fin’s caudal notch, located in the upper lobe, further streamlined the water flow.

Stabilizing the
Megalodon
’s forward thrust were her broad pectoral fins, which provided lift and balance like the wings of a passenger airliner. Her dorsal fin rose atop her back like a six-foot sail, acting as a rudder. A smaller pair of pelvic fins, a second dorsal, and a tiny anal fin rounded out the complement, everything synchronized and perfected over 400 million years of evolution.

The female inhaled her environment through two grapefruit-size directional nostrils, her brain processing an elixir of chemicals and excretions as traceable as smoke in a kitchen.

Ahead, moving through the canyon as one, were thousands of giant cuttlefish. The female had been tracking the school for weeks.

There had been no urgency to feed. Feeding required hunting, and hunting expended energy.

This morning, however, the female had been forced to expend energy, chasing after the annoying creature whose presence had driven her senses haywire.

Now she had to feed.

· · ·

Although there was no visible light in the trench, the
Meg
could still see, thanks to eyes equipped with a reflective layer behind the retina that offered wisps of nocturnal vision. Normally black, the
Megalodon
of the Mariana Trench had developed blue-gray eyes, a common trait found among albinos. The loss of the species’ lead-gray dorsal pigment had occurred over eons—an adaptation to an existence quarantined in perpetual darkness.

The juvenile female continued on her southwesterly course, navigating around skyscraper-tall black smokers on a swiftly moving current that allowed her to expend little effort. Hunger was a fuel gauge that increased with any energy expenditure. With her core temperature approximating that of her environment, the huntress could go weeks without feeding—provided she remained in the balmy depths in a non-predatory state.

The
Sea Bat
’s sonic acoustics had disrupted the female’s sensory organs, forcing her to attack. A dozen successive rushes had sent the shark up through the hydrothermal ceiling, the sudden shock of 33-degree water chasing her back before she could kill the source of the disturbance.

Now the
Meg
followed a scent trail—excretions from a biologic, casting a signature equaling that of three Blue whales.

With a flick of her massive caudal fin, the hungry female accelerated through the darkness, closing fast on her quarry.

· · ·

In the ocean’s pecking order it is size that matters. The cuttlefish of the Mariana Trench had adapted to their environment by growing large—eighteen to twenty feet from their finned heads to the tips of their eight sucker-covered arms and two feeding tentacles. Three hearts were required to pump their blue-green blood to these ten extremities while fueling a camouflage technique that allowed the squid to alter its skin color. Brilliant neon lights could lure prey or stun an enemy.

Intelligent creatures, the cuttlefish had learned to travel in schools, their perceived size scaring off potential enemies. Upwards of ten thousand cephalopods move as one through the canyon, the school undulating like a quarter-mile-long sea serpent.

The cuttlefish tactic is clever, but it cannot fool the
Megalodon
’s senses. Located along the top and underside of the female’s snout are sensitive receptor cells collectively known as the ampullae of Lorenzini. These deep jelly-filled pores connect to the shark’s brain by a vast tributary of cranial nerves, allowing it to detect the faint voltage gradients and bio-electric fields produced by the cuttlefish as their skin moves through the water. So sensitive are the ampullae of Lorenzini that the
Megalodon
can distinguish each cuttlefish from the moving pack of thousands by each individual’s trio of beating hearts.

· · ·

The female stalked its quarry, moving parallel to the swarm.

Sensing the predator, the cuttlefish increased their speed while simultaneously illuminating their hides in phosphorescent greens and blues. The color pattern was a method of communication among the school as well as a warning to stay away.

The
Megalodon
’s spine arched, forcing her pectoral fins to curl downward. Flushed in full attack mode, the juvenile killer was about to swoop in upon the moving mass of squid when she detected another presence lurking close by—a challenger.