There was blood in the water. They dove down and followed the others north.
CHAPTER 16
THE Expedition had docked at a crowded San Francisco marina and the team was waiting for Lisa Barton to return. It would be a while.
The previous day, Lisa had researched the unusual fat S-shaped teeth using the available resources and come up empty. Sharks and anglers had been the most obvious source of the teeth, but Lisa found nothing establishing a direct link between either. Almost every species of shark has teeth that are fundamentally triangular in shape. The teeth can vary in width, some narrow and pointy, others fat and wide, but every single known species, from tigers to hammerheads to great whites to makos, possesses teeth that are in one way or another triangular. Wondering if perhaps an extinct shark species had reappeared, Lisa also checked fossil records. But from sand sharks to cow sharks, among many others, they all possessed the same triangular shape.
Anglers had been the next suspect. Anglers were vicious, roundish fish, about the size of a baby’s fist. But across the board, anglers had teeth that were slightly curved, like a tiger’s fangs. Nothing like fat, stumpy S-shapes, either.
With nowhere else to go, Lisa thought of Mike Cohen, an old friend she’d gotten to know at various oceanic nutrition conferences over the years. Cohen was the number three expert in the world on the arcane subject of animal teeth analysis and was based at the biosciences and bioengineering department at UC Berkeley. Starting today, Cohen’s department was hosting a weeklong conference at which Cohen himself was a featured speaker, but he’d still agreed to meet with her.
Before she’d left, Jason had insisted on attending the meeting, but in yet another fight, Lisa had flat-out refused. Michael Cohen was her contact, and she wouldn’t have Jason second-guessing her in front of an important colleague.
Jason had work to do anyway. While the others did chores on the boat, he spent the first part of the morning on Phil’s computer in the tiny living room below deck, writing notes and continuing with his outline. He hoped the latter would eventually become the basis for a formal report to the Species Council, the twelve-person committee in Washington, D.C., that determined what was a new species and what was not.
By late morning, thin cumulus clouds had rolled in above the marina, and everyone except Craig was on deck. In loose-fitting black sweats and a white tank top, Jason was tapping away on Phil’s laptop when Darryl sat next to him. “Craig still on that phone call?”
“I think so.”
“He’s been on for more than an hour, you know.”
Jason looked up. “I didn’t realize that.”
A nod. “I wonder what’s so damn important.”
“Let me tell you, then.” Summers walked up on deck, a strange look on his heavily stubbled face: fatigued and concerned, too.
Darryl’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up, Craig?”
“What’s up is we’ve got a major problem in the Pacific Ocean with GDV-4. Phil, I’m expecting an e-mail on it, about ninety pages. Can you print it for me?”
As Phil trotted off, Jason was mystified. “A major problem with GDV-4 in the Pacific?”
“Yeah. And that’s not all. I think GDV-4’s affecting this species of yours—maybe catastrophically.”
“What?”
“Jason, I don’t think these rays are from Mexico, Hawaii, the Marquesas, or anywhere else.” Craig gave him a measured look. “I don’t think they’re surface animals at all.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Every known species of manta lives exclusively at or near the surface. “Craig, that’s not possib—”
“It is possible. I’ll prove it—all of it.” He eyed him ominously. “Jason, I think this species of yours is from the depths.”
CHAPTER 17
CRAIG EXHALED, gathering his thoughts. Jason, Monique, and Darryl had just fired fifty questions at him and were waiting for answers. Standing in front of the three-person inquisition, he was ready.
“The first thing you should know is that a number of critical beliefs we had about GDV-4 are apparently… all wrong.”
Jason looked at him blankly. “You’re joking.”
“This is straight from Tom York, the head of the Woods Hole Oceanic Virus Group and the number one expert on GDV-4 in the world. Turns out his group’s been running tests in every major ocean on the globe for more than a year. They officially released their findings two hours ago.” Another exhale. “Here’s the deal. GDV-4 isn’t a surface virus at all. It spread to the surface, it was discovered at the surface, but it originated in the depths. And we’re talking the real depths. Ten, twenty, thirty thousand feet down. That’s why I think your species is from there, Jason.”
Darryl was flabbergasted. “GDV-4 originated there?”
“And it’s spreading like wildfire. This thing’s algae-based, guys.”
“Holy cow.”
Phil returned, handing Craig ninety sheets of tiny print. “What’s the significance of it being algae-based?”
“Phil, algae are near the very bottom of the food chain so a virus that infects algae has the potential to destroy entire oceans.” Craig nodded to the others. “It gets worse. They’re now saying GDV-4 is considerably more devastating than AIDS. Not only does it attack immune systems, it also causes severe brain damage, destroys the musculoskeletal system, and spreads with extraordinary speed within the body. And it is everywhere. York’s guys have found it in every ocean on Earth. Lisa was onto something with her plankton findings. Plankton are surface organisms, but somehow they detected GDV-4 rising up from below and adapted preemptively to fight off an attack.”
Jason shook his head. “Craig, is York sure about all this? I mean, how could GDV-4 have spread this far this fast? Especially before anybody even knew it?”
“Because viruses can hide, Jason. They can hide for decades.”
The public knew nothing about GDV-4 and that wouldn’t change anytime soon. It usually happens that way. The bottom line is that major news organizations become interested in viruses only when they caused human deaths, preferably on a large scale. The mad cow virus in Europe, for example, decimated European cattle herds for years but only garnered real attention after people began dying from it.
The long and storied history of viruses hiding from the public has been well documented. None is more infamous than AIDS. AIDS didn’t become part of the international consciousness until the mid-eighties but had existed much earlier. And not just in remote jungles in Africa, but in major American cities. In New York, a sailor died in 1959 of what medical records at the time called “complications caused by immune deficiency and pneumonia.” Blood samples analyzed decades later tested positive for HIV and AIDS.
Craig continued soberly. “We have unambiguous proof GDV-4’s been in the Pacific for a very long time. I assume you’ve all heard of that terramouth specimen that turned up in 1976?”
It was a famous discovery from back before any of them even knew what marine biology was. In November 1976, a naval research vessel, the AFB-14, was conducting experiments offshore of Oahu, sending probes to the ocean floor fifteen thousand feet below to perform sediment analysis. But when the AFB-14 retrieved the probes, something came up with them and it wasn’t sediment. It was the corpse of a giant fish no one had ever seen before: a previously unknown shark species, a strange-looking animal with dark brown skin, a massive mouth, unusually shaped teeth, and a weight of two tons. Dubbed terramouth, it was an astonishing find. It proved what many in the seagoing community had assumed for years: that there were entire species living in the depths that man knew absolutely nothing about. And these weren’t small animals, but enormous ones, and they hadn’t evolved recently, but had always been there. Fossil analysis determined that terramouth had been evolving for as long as some of the oldest sharks. It had been in the depths for more than 450 million years, but before 1976, man had no clue it even existed.