“Trust me, Ben, you don’t want to know.”
Ben quickly closed the distance to the plateau so that the sub’s starboard tailfin was within six feet of the rock face. Keeping our speed at fifteen knots, he ascended the Barracuda steadily from its eight-hundred-foot depth, his voice grumbling in our headphones. “I took this mission hoping to find fifteen-million-year-old mollusks, not thirty-foot lake carnivores.”
“The thirty-footer is a vegan. It’s the second creature we have to worry about.” My eyes remained focused on the second blip on the monitor, still rising beneath us.
Ben would not let up. “You’re assuming it’s a predator. Tell me why.”
“It moves like a carnivore. I think it’s been stalking us. It’s also fifty to sixty feet long, which renders it a threat.”
“Another eel?”
“No, Ming. Eels prefer the cold. This creature was warming itself in the vent field like a reptile raising its body heat in the sun.”
Ben veered us away from an outcropping of rock. “Bastard, you know what this is. He knows, Ming.”
I ignored him, my attention focused on the second blip, which had suddenly increased its speed. “It’s making its run. Okay, the first blip is grazing beneath the surface about a thousand feet to the west. Ben, you need to circle it without spooking it.”
“What the hell for?”
“There’s an old saying: when a hungry bear chases you through the woods, you don’t need to be faster than the bear to survive—”
“—you just have to be faster than the next guy. Doc, I like the way you think.” Ben accelerated after the first blip as the second blip accelerated after us.
We were two hundred feet below the surface, kelp whipping past our acrylic glass dome, when we heard a distinct cry over sonar.
“What the hell was that?”
“That, Ben, was the other guy. Come to course three-zero-three. Range to target is 260 feet.”
He accelerated.
Three minutes later we sighted the first blip. It was moving through kelp ninety feet below the algae-covered surface. An adult female, she was thirty-two feet from her snout to her whale-like fluke, her bulbous body weighing well over ten tons. Her calf was a third her girth, its bulk partially obscured in a cloud of its own blood.
“It appears to be a giant manatee.”
“Same family, Ming. Essentially, it really is a Miocene species of sea cow.”
“Look at those sharks circling below. All that blood in the water is like a dinner bell.”
“The mother is trying to push her calf back to the ridge.”
“She’ll never make it,” I muttered.
As we watched, an eleven-foot bull shark darted in from below like a missile and savagely tore a hunk of blubber from Junior’s gushing belly. The calf cried out again, its almost human-like wail magnified in my headphones. Dozens of sharks were now circling below, hundreds of salmon soaring in and out of the chaos of blood and blubber to snap up morsels.
It was a Miocene feeding frenzy.
Then the second creature arrived, and this one scared the Highlands out of me.
14
“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”
“Ben, it’ll be focused on the calf’s blood, so move us away slowly. Ben, are you listening?”
Maybe it was the unnervingly quick exodus of the other predators; maybe it was the fear experienced during our confrontation with the eels, but instead of heeding my advice Ben opened the engine up full-throttle.
As I feared, our sudden movement attracted the trailing predator.
Hugging the plateau, Ben raced the sub to the west, and the creature closed the distance from below.
Ming tracked it on her aft camera, the image partially scrambled from the magnetic interference. “Ben, it’s gaining. Do not slow down. Why are you slowing down?”
“Outcroppings. I can’t react that fast.”
“Then move us away from the ridge!” I yelled.
“I can’t. It has the angle. It’ll cut us off. How close is it now?”
“Eighty feet.”
Ming screamed, “It’s coming up beneath us!”
Ben pulled back hard on his joystick, accelerating toward the surface at a steep angle as he ignited the Valkyries. The twin lasers burned through the thick ceiling of vegetation and suddenly we were airborne, soaring high over the algae-infested lake.
I caught a fleeting glimpse of coastal marshlands on our right just before the Barracuda’s keel slapped down hard against the unyielding chaos of roots and sulfur-rich soil carpeting the surface.
With the sub resting on its belly, the lasers burned nothing but air and darkness.
We were marooned.
Before I could contemplate our situation the vegetation mushroomed as the creature’s snout, skull, and upper body breached beneath us.
Purussaurus!
My brain went numb as the forty-ton caiman thrashed and rolled and obliterated the mattress of minerals, churning millions of years of growth into liquefied muck.
Our vessel slipped sideways back into the swamp and found water. Ben slammed his right foot to his pump-jet propulsor controls, sending us into a barrel-rolling descent just as an eight-foot-long lower jaw snapped at our starboard wing, its fangs catching only vegetation.
The Valkyries opened a sizzling path in the olive-green kelp forest as we zigged and zagged our way through an underwater maze of jungle.
Following our trail, the Miocene monster stalked us like a hungry tiger.
Glancing at my sonar screen, I saw where Ben was headed and nodded tersely.
Fifty yards… thirty …
The giant caiman’s frightening head, as big as a tractor trailer, closed on our aft monitor.
Twenty yards… ten…!
We swerved to starboard, and the creature turned with us, its head rolling sideways as its jaws widened—
Crunch!
The Purussaurus engulfed the dead juvenile sea cow, along with the two whitetip sharks that were feeding upon its gushing remains. The giant croc slowed to swallow its meal, circling its kill zone lest another challenger enter.
Ben laid back in his seat, sweat pouring down his face. “Take over, Zach. Shut down the lasers. Keep us heading west. Ming… I deserve a bonus.”
The Chinese beauty leaned over her console and kissed his forehead.
I engaged the controls and shut down the Valkyries, my eyes catching the air supply gauge as it inched below seven hours.
We were down to five hours and twenty-two minutes when Ming and I heard the faint sound of rushing water over our headphones. Sonar tracked the sound to the west where a channel of current appeared to be rushing inland. The surface above us had no vegetation, the waves far too violent to allow anything to accumulate.
I roused Ben from his sleep. “We found something, a channel running inland. If the river cuts across the plateau it could empty into the northern basin.”
“What happens if it strands us in the shallows and we beach? You want to be the one who gets out and pushes?”
Ming interjected, her tone soothing. “Ben, we have followed the plateau for twenty miles. From the satellite images we know the rise is at least thirty miles wide. Perhaps there is another inlet somewhere, but if we do not begin crossing the plateau soon we will run out of air.”
The pilot nodded. “I’ll take the conn. Zach on sonar. Once we move into the channel, I want you to go active to gauge the depth. If it seems deep enough we’ll give it a shot. If not, we head back and continue the search. Agreed?”