MEG: Nightstalkers (36 page)

“He was close, but he’s falling behind again in this current. And stop calling it
my
whale.”

“You got me into this mess, that makes it your whale. As for this current, I think we may be in a bottleneck.”

“Are ye sure?”

“Look for yourself. The shaft is widening; our angle of descent is easing as well. Oh Christ, hold on!”

Jonas pulled back on his joystick as the passage suddenly leveled out, opening to a vast chasm. The flat ceiling of ice above their heads spanned beyond the scope of their field of vision, the depths of this claustrophobic passage less than seventy feet.

Zachary checked a fluctuation on his salinity meter. “Jonas, this is meltwater. We’re no longer in the Weddell Sea.”

“Then where are we?”

“I can’t be sure, but I think we’re beneath the glacier that feeds intae the Ronne Ice Shelf. Glaciers float along subglacial rivers as they migrate tae the sea. The ice cap is above us, the geology of West Antarctica below us.”

“In other words, we’re between a rock and a hard place. Now how do we get out of here?”

“I assume we exit the same way we came in.”

Jonas glanced at the blip chasing after them on sonar. “Somehow I doubt your whale’s going to allow us to double back.”

For the next twenty minutes they trekked north through the subglacial river in silence, the blip on their sonar screens gradually closing the gap. To Jonas, it was like piloting through a dark, underground tunnel, the Manta’s headlights illuminating a brown vortex of emptiness, the only evidence of movement coming from the peripheral glow reflecting off the ceiling, which rolled past them like a conveyor belt.

Several times Jonas caught himself drifting off.

The third time his feet eased off the accelerators.

His eyes flashed open as the sub was nudged from behind by the
Livyatan melvillei
. Stamping down on both pedals, he reopened the gap to thirty feet.

“Damn it, Zach. What kind of co-pilot are you?”

“Ye’re blaming me because ye fell asleep?”

“I’m blaming you for being stuck two miles beneath the Antarctic ice, being chased by a fucking whale.”

“If ye recall, I was the one who warned ye not tae ping these creatures.”

“And if you recall, I came to this godforsaken continent to find my son, not to … ah, never mind. Start pinging again; see if you can find a way out of this river.”

Zach pinged their new surroundings, watching the acoustic reflections ripple outward across his sonar monitor. “Jonas, don’t get yer boxers all in a knot, but this passage narrows significantly in less than three kilometers.”

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning in less than three kilometers we’ll hit a wall of ice.”

“Brilliant.” Jonas veered to starboard as the whale attempted to bite the sub’s port wing. “The passage can’t just dead-end. Where’s that subglacial lake your whale was supposedly inhabiting?”

“Lake Ellsworth … right.” Zach scanned his GPS system. “Crap. We’re too deep tae get a signal.”

“Then take a guess!”

“Okay, I’m guessing we’re too far west. Can ye head east?”

“Not without being eaten.”

“One kilometer until impact. Jonas, ignite the
Valkyries
!”

Feeling for the control switch his engineer had duct-taped to the side of his console, Jonas powered up the lasers, the sudden heat and bright light chasing the whale from his port flank. He attempted to alter his course—only to see a wall of ice looming ahead.

Both men let out a yell, Zach covering his face—

The sub shook beneath them like a truck passing over train tracks, the Manta’s twin lasers transforming the gauntlet of ice into a melting stream of slush and water.

Shocked to still be alive, Jonas reduced the sub’s speed, allowing the lasers more contact time to clear the way, easing the rough ride to a mild turbulence.

A quick glance at the rear camera screen confirmed they had left the Miocene sperm whale behind.

Jonas flipped the monitor the middle finger. “Screw you,
Brute
.”

“Unfortunately Jonas, I think we’re the ones that are screwed. I have no clue where we are or how tae get back.”

“No problem, we’ll just go up.”

Zachary grabbed the joystick. “Don’t! Those
Valkyries
aren’t rockets. Ye’ll stall us and we’ll become stuck inside the glacier.”

As if in response, the sub jammed against a rough patch of ice before lurching ahead another six feet, only to stall and lunge forward once more.

Jonas turned to Zach, who shook his head. “The propulsion units are churning slush.”

“What were they churning when they managed to take us all the way to Lake Vostok in your imaginary reality?”

“That was different. We were moving through subglacial rivers, not solid ice.”

The Manta stalled again. The whirring sound of propellers spinning against air caused both men to look at one another, their situation dire.

Thirty seconds passed.

Another two minutes.

Jonas eased up on his foot pedals, afraid he would burn out the engines.

With a sudden lurch, the propulsion units caught melt water. The Manta shot forward, chunks of ice bashing the exterior of the cockpit—parting to reveal a dark void.

The stunned pilots let out a yell as the sub plunged twenty feet, free-falling nose-first through the air before plunging into a pitch-black alien sea.

Zachary turned to Jonas, his face pale. “Congratulations, Magellan. Looks like ye found Lake Ellswood.”

Vancouver Island, British Columbia
Salish Sea

Tim Rehm methodically arranged his video equipment on the wooden deck of the jetty. He attached a small video camera to a fifteen-foot reach pole, allowing him to film underwater from the safety of the dock. While it gave Tim real-time images that were displayed on his laptop, it did not have a night setting like his larger handheld unit.

The buoy-cam had a nocturnal setting, but the weather was picking up, creating a three-foot chop that rendered the device useless. That left the remote camera he would strap to Tania’s left wrist and his larger handheld underwater camera, which he could also use for surface shots.

He glanced at Tania, who was in her wet suit, seated in a lotus position. Preparing her lungs for her free dive, she was inhaling deep breaths through her nose, her abdomen ballooning outward with each steady inward gust before exhaling through her mouth.

Tania had spent most of the afternoon trying to convince Tim to join her underwater, even if it was only to film her from beneath the pier. She assured him the remains of the dead humpback had been removed by the resort’s gardener, but that wasn’t quite enough to change his mind.

Then why was he wearing his wet suit?

Growing up on the New Jersey shore, Tim Rehm felt as at home in the water as Tania. He had been SCUBA diving since middle school and had encountered his share of sharks in the wild, but had never purposely put himself in harm’s way just for a quick thrill. His first experience cage-diving with great whites hadn’t been planned—he and Tania were attending a coaching clinic in San Francisco when his adventurous assistant convinced him to spend his one free day watching her cage-dive off the California coast.

The next morning at 5:40 a.m., Tim found himself reluctantly boarding a dive boat at the Emeryville Marina in San Francisco Bay. Tania and her fellow adrenaline junkies had paid eight hundred dollars to spend the day cage-diving, Tim coughing up half that fee just to watch the action from the safety of the boat.

The dive site was the Farallon Islands, a protected marine sanctuary located twenty-seven miles off the coast of San Francisco. Nicknamed “the Devil’s Teeth” by sailors, the waters off these craggy islands were home to whales, seals, and seabirds and—from late summer through the end of November—a population of great white sharks that migrated annually across the Pacific from Hawaii.

An overpowering stench of sea lion excrement greeted them as their boat circled the rocky landmasses. The captain dropped anchor near Southeast Island, a place he proclaimed to be “a prime feeding spot.” He described the Farallon community of great whites as fourteen- to twenty-foot adults, the females easily distinguished from their male counterparts by their larger, bulkier girths.

Four hours passed before the first shark was sighted—a surface kill sixty yards away that sent seal blood spurting into the gull-infested air. The first four divers—Tania among them—quickly scrambled into the submerged cage, where they remained for nearly an hour without a single encounter.

And so it went for the rest of the afternoon. Being a protected wildlife preserve prevented the crew from using chum, forcing them to rely on fake rubber seals to attract the sharks, which the crew futilely dragged along the surface.

Excluding an occasional splash in the distance, the sharks stayed away.

By day’s end the passengers were cold and grumpy, ready to head in. The captain offered discounts on a future excursion, and then asked any observing passengers if they wanted to give the cage a final shot in exchange for their vouchers.

Tim found himself donning a wet suit to join Tania on the last dive of the day.

Following the captain’s instructions, he laid down on his belly along the bottom of the cage, the air line connected to his face mask a preferred alternative to wearing a bulky SCUBA tank. The water was a frigid fifty-four-degrees and murky, the sea seemingly void of life.

A half hour passed. And then, incredibly, a large female rose majestically out of the mist directly beneath them to investigate the cage. The twenty-foot great white was as wide as Tim’s Buick Regal and probably outweighed the car by a good three hundred pounds. It circled the two humans for fifteen minutes, its aura overwhelming, its demeanor non-threatening.

As darkness arrived the female moved off, disappearing into the murk with a final wave of its caudal fin—the predator’s appearance having forever altered the destinies of its two transformed onlookers.

*   *   *

Tim Rehm stared at the sea, its surface glittering with the golden reflections of the setting sun. He and Tania had bonded over their experience in the Farallons, each together and separately pursuing similar encounters with the sea’s apex predators. With his career limiting his free time, Tim still managed to fit in three to four cage-dives a year off the Jersey shore. Two summers ago, he had joined Tania for a cage-dive in Isla Guadalupe, a great white hot spot located a hundred and sixty miles off the coast of Baja, California.

Tania had gone a different route. Accepting an offer of early retirement, she had moved to Vancouver Island to commune with killer whales during the winter months, spending her summers in Mexico where she worked for Big Animals Expeditions, a company specializing in open water encounters with great whites.

Now she was attempting the ultimate big animal encounter … and despite his fear, Tim found himself keeping his options open.

Exhaling briskly, Tania stood up and offered him her left wrist to mount the remote camera. “Not too tight, I don’t want to cut off the circulation. The girls will be able to detect a throbbing pulse.”

“The girls?” Tim strapped the camera to her forearm. “You make it sound like you’re spending the evening with your Mahjong group.”

“Attitude is everything during these wildlife encounters. If you’re calm, the sharks feel no threat. So? Have you decided?”

“For now, I’ll remain on the jetty … which is where you promised to stay until you got a good bead on these two …
girls
. What time did you say they’ve been showing up?”

“Right around dusk. I think they may be feeding off Hornby Island.”

The two divers wrapped themselves in their winter coats and sat on the bench, waiting for the sun to go down. As they watched, the sky over Texada Island turned bright crimson, fading to violet as the landmass gradually disappeared along the horizon.

Tania gripped his arm, nodding to their left.

Tim Rehm’s eyes widened. The albino Megalodon was spy-hopping thirty feet from the jetty, its triangular head poised above the waterline just below its gills slits, its gray-blue eye watching them.

Reaching slowly for his handheld camera, Tim adjusted the night lens and began filming.

“Hi there, beautiful. I have something for you.” Reaching into an ice chest with her gloved right hand, Tania removed a hunk of salmon by its tail. Whirling her arm, she flung the fish at the Meg, who caught it in its mouth.

“Tim, did you get that?!”

“Got it.”

“What did I tell you? These sharks aren’t monsters, they were raised in captivity.” Reaching for her swim fins, she slipped them on over her rubber boots.

“Tania, wait. Where’s Bela?”

“I don’t see her. Can you find her on the underwater camcorder?”

Grabbing his reach pole, he powered on the camera and slid it into the water, the herky-jerky live images playing on his laptop. He scanned the area around the jetty, but could not find the dark-backed Megalodon.

Tania spit into her face mask. “Anything?”

“No, but visibility’s only about ten to fifteen feet without a night-vision lens. Plus she’s mostly black.”

“Her head’s white, so is her belly. You should be able to see that. If you can’t then she’s not around, which means now is the best time for me to get in the water with my girl Lizzy.”

Using her rubber dive gloves, Tania grabbed another fish and tossed it high in the air at the albino shark. The Meg snapped at it but missed, the effort revealing a band of thick gums and razor-sharp triangular teeth.

Tania sat on the edge of the dock. She positioned her mask over her eyes and nose, allowing the snorkel to dangle by her mouth. “Hand me another fish.”

He reached into the chest and removed a twenty pound chunk of salmon, its severed insides dangling.

Tania took it from him and tossed it in the water about fifteen feet from where she was sitting. “Come and get it, sweetheart.”

Lizzy’s left eye followed the splash. As if beckoned, the Megalodon’s head slid beneath the dark waters and disappeared.