By the time we reached 2,185 feet, the Barracuda had nearly leveled off, the depths sweeping us north in the belly of a seventeen-knot current.
Ming aimed her keel light at the bottom, her underwater camera revealing a smooth, gray bedrock lake floor littered with fossils.
“Captain, slow down. I want to take a look. I want to collect samples.”
“In this current?”
I shook my head. “Just come about and put our bow into the current. Haven’t you ever changed a sail before?”
“Not in a sub, smart-ass.”
Ben executed a bone-jarring turn, the current buffeting our craft until our bow was pointing south, our propulsors neutralizing the force of the water. Maintaining a forward speed of twenty knots, we cruised slowly over the ancient bottom, the treasures of the long-lost Miocene era appearing on our video screen.
For the next half an hour, we worked our way over unrecognizeable shards of bone and rock that were hardly worth the journey — until the remains of an ancient water creature blanched white in our keel lights.
Its backbone stretched before our widening eyes, each form-fitted vertebra as large as a bowling ball. I estimated the spine to be forty feet long, and then I saw the size of its skull and the adrenaline started pumping.
In November of 2008, paleontologists excavating a dried lake bed in Peru had stumbled across the fossilized remains of an undiscovered sea monster that definitely ranked up there as one of Nature’s all-time killers. From the partially preserved skull, teeth, and mandible, they knew the creature had been enormous, as long as sixty feet. The cranium’s curved basin suggested it harbored a spermaceti organ — a series of oil and wax reservoirs separated by connective tissue, theorized to be a resonance chamber used by cetaceans for echolocation.
The owner appeared to be the ancestor of a sperm whale, with one major anatomical difference — the Miocene killer had possessed a lower jaw that was far wider than that of its modern-day cousin, giving it a bite that rivaled Carcharodon megalodon, its chief competitor.
After much debate the excited researchers settled on a name for their mammalian monster: Livyatan melvillei, combining the Hebrew spelling for the biblical Leviathan with the surname of Herman Melville, the author of Moby Dick. It was a fitting title for an ocean predator that had not only owned one of the most vicious bites in history but also the largest teeth, some of which measured fifteen inches.
I had no doubt that the skull and jawbone lying twelve feet beneath our keel belonged to this Miocene monster. But why had these ocean-dwelling whales entered Vostok? Had something enticed them to venture upriver into a saltwater lake? Was it a survival instinct, a search for prey… or something else entirely?
The teeth were enormous, cone-shaped, and twice as long as an ear of corn. Ming quickly located a tooth that had belonged to the beast’s lower jaw and decided she could acquire it using the sub’s claw.
Ben disagreed. “The current will snap the claw like kindling.”
“Nonsense. It will hold.”
“It’s too risky. If it bends you won’t be able to dock the arm. And if you can’t dock it, it will interfere with our ascent. Tell her, Zach.”
But I was no longer listening to them, for the emptiness that had occupied our sonar monitor was no longer empty, the vacuum of space replaced by three distinct blips—
— and they were headed our way.
11
Blee-bloop… blee-bloop… blee-bloop …
It was a freakish sound, almost like a water jug expelling its contents, and when I heard it in my sonar earpiece I nearly passed out from the blood rushing from my head.
Imagine surviving a plane crash, only to find yourself on another commercial jetliner years later hearing the captain announce, “Sorry folks, we just lost one of our engines. Prepare for an emergency landing.” You’d feel your whole body go numb because you know what’s coming, and it’s seriously bad news as you ask yourself, “What the hell am I doing back on a goddamn plane?”
In my case it was a sub, and I knew what was coming because I had heard the blee-bloop sound on sonar in the Sargasso Sea just before I drowned. The Navy guys had named this unknown species “the bloops” because they weren’t whales or sharks or giant squids, and their internal respiratory organs created a bloop sound on sonar. Having survived the encounter, it was my unfortunate fate to discover Nessie to be one of their kind — a predatory fish that had grown very large after becoming trapped in Loch Ness when an aquifer had collapsed, cutting off access to the ocean and her migratory pattern. Thus spawning a legend.
And now we were about to meet her ancient Miocene cousins.
Ben grabbed his headphones. “Where are they?”
“Approaching from the northwest on course two-eight-five. These are big, nasty predators, and we seriously need to leave. Like now!”
“How do you know they’re predators?”
“You read my book. Don’t you hear that bloop sound?”
“No. All I hear is Ming scraping that damn claw along the bottom. Hey, Ming.” He reached over his seat and grabbed her arm, getting her attention. “Zach says we’ve got biologics on sonar.”
“Really? This is incredible. How far away are they? Can we catch up with them? We absolutely need to get them on video.”
“Maybe I’m not explaining this right. These predators are thirty to forty feet long, and they’re stalking us, Ming. Now get that claw docked. Ben, are you driving, or am I?”
“Just tell me a direction.”
I stared at the sonar screen. They’re coming from the northwest. Southeast distances us, only we need to head north to get to the extraction point
The creatures were closing fast, and I couldn’t think.
“Zach?”
“Come about. We’ll let the current take us north. No engines for now; we need to sneak past them. Ming, enough with the damn whale tooth!”
“Give me twenty seconds. I’ve almost got it in the catch basket.”
I turned to Ben for help. “Remember that creature that choked on the croc? You’re about to meet his great-grandkids.”
“To hell with that!” Strapping himself in, Ben turned the sub hard to starboard, spinning the Barracuda’s bow to the north.
Ming swore in Mandarin. “I lost the tooth!”
“Dock that arm and strap in. Zach, you sure about these lights?”
“Yes— no. Wait. Keep them off for now, but be ready to turn them back on. Everyone quiet. Ming?”
“You wanted me to dock the arm; it’s docked.”
I listened on sonar, my eyes following the bloops. We were going to cross paths any second, only there was no way to know if they had heard us turn into the current.
Eight hundred feet…
The respiratory sounds grew louder. There were three of them, an adult and two gurgling offspring.
Four hundred feet…
They were slowing.
They’re unsure. They can’t detect us with the engines off.
The current swept us closer to where the creatures were circling.
Two hundred feet…
Remembering my night-vision goggles, I reached into a cushioned compartment on the right side of my command center and retrieved them. I placed them over my eyes and the blackness was stripped away, replaced by an olive-green world—
— and a serpent-like creature looming before us that was clearly not my Nessie.