Subterrestrial (17 page)

Butler turned away and stared at the satellite images of oceanic salinity. Already the specific gravities in the coastal regions affected by the surge of Arctic water had risen to near-normal levels and the temperature was within a tenth of a degree of seasonal averages. He knew exactly what that meant and understood that his day of reckoning would soon be at hand.

Combined, all of the oceans formed a relatively constant volume of water. While their levels rose and fell as a result of the forces exerted upon them by both the sun and the moon, their combined volume never actually changed. The tides were essentially just water sloshing around as the seas bulged in response to varying levels of gravitational pull. The strength of those forces cycled every twenty-four hours and the rate of their cycles remained largely constant, which meant that regardless of the extremes of high and low tides, the sea level invariably returned to a state of constancy. Such would undoubtedly be the case here, as well.

When the TBM punched through that fault line, it was as though it had pulled the plug on the bottom of the ocean. The sudden downward acceleration of all of that water, coupled with the increase in current through the narrow earthen passageways, caused the water to race outward at a phenomenal rate. In a closed system beholden to external forces, however, that meant the water would eventually lose its inertia and gravity would intercede to restore some semblance of normalcy. A new global sea level would be established, one that differed from the old—if only in a matter of inches—by the amount of seawater that remained underground.

In layman’s terms, all of the water initially forced through the tunnels could only travel so far before it had to come back, which made this the worst possible time for the monitor to his right to light up and the alarm to sound.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but he already knew the answer.

Wiley just stared at him with that infuriating blank expression.

“I’m going already.”

Butler grabbed his jacket and gloves and ran through the adjoining Quonset huts, dressing as he ran. The red lights indicated that Pump 4 had just gone offline, which, in turn, increased the burden on the other three, although he was confident they could handle it. He engineered redundant measures into every project, but that didn’t mean they’d be able to withstand the strain indefinitely.

He’d never seen a unit fail like this, though. Each industrial pump was designed for a flow rate of 2,750 gallons per minute and incorporated a fan-driven evaporation unit, which propelled the water more than five hundred feet out over the sea. Between the four units, they were able to drain the equivalent of an Olympic-size pool every sixty seconds, but they’d only been running at half that volume. With a 25 percent reduction in output and the promise of returning water, however, things were about to get a whole lot tighter than he would have liked.

Butler tugged down his hood and charged out into the elements. The wind staggered him and stole the breath from his lips. It was impossible to tell if it was snowing or if the gusts were just recycling the accumulation. Another twenty strides and he could see the flumes of water projecting out over the bay. Each dispersal unit looked like a cement mixer attached to a hose, which connected it to the back of the fourth building. The shape served to funnel the water into a single pressurized stream that expanded outward into an evaporative mist that turned to snow. Only three of the flumes were visible.

His first thought was that either the evaporation unit or the pipe must have frozen, which would have caused the pump to automatically power down to prevent burning out the motor. At least that’s what he hoped had happened. The farther from the unit itself, the easier the fix. The pressure gauge mounted to the back of the building indicated a complete absence of flow, but he could tell by the relative lack of accumulation on the hose that the heater was still working. The problem had to be inside, presumably with the pump itself.

A crust of ice had formed on the fur fringe of his hood and his tracks were already gone by the time he reached the door. He reminded himself that after this job, he’d be able to write his own ticket. The next assignment he took would be someplace warm like Dubai. That was where the real money was. You didn’t create an oasis in the middle of the desert without a team of brilliant engineers.

The racket inside the hut was noticeably quieter, although the ground still vibrated hard enough to make his teeth chatter. He’d performed a visual inspection of each of the pumps upon returning from the subterranean levels, but according to the logs, they hadn’t been inspected since. While that wasn’t his fault, it was definitely his responsibility. With Martin’s team still in the field and their remaining manpower on the mainland, it appeared as though he was going to have to run the whole blasted installation by himself.

Pump 4 sat dark and silent in the corner. Butler smelled burned oil and fried electrical circuits and detected the slightest hint of smoke near the ceiling. He didn’t have to see the tripped breakers to know that the pump was shot. He did, however, need to figure out why. If there had been a problem with the design of the pump itself, then he had a huge problem on his hands.

The pressure gauges on the wall all read exactly as he expected and the pistons appeared to be in decent repair. The problem had to be somewhere in the intake system, but the pipes appeared patent, at least up there. He followed them across the room to the hole, climbed inside the elevator cage, and went straight to the control console. The motor whirred as it started its descent. He had to stand on the opposite side of the cab to clearly see the water pipes. Each of the four was separated from the others by structural girders and held in place by steel brackets. The corresponding number was printed in blue every ten vertical feet. He watched them pass until something caught his eye and he hurriedly stopped the elevator.

He had to crane his neck to see it, but there it was, clear as day: a rupture in the pipe. The edges were sharp and protruded outward like the skin of a baked potato. The water had still been flowing at sufficiently high pressure when the integrity was compromised. What in the world could have caused—?

There was another puncture maybe five feet below it. And another still below that.

He turned around and saw matching holes drilled into the basalt by the pressurized water.

The pump must have burned itself out trying to compensate for the diminishing water pressure. It had happened so fast, though. Unless all of the punctures occurred at the same time, the fail-safes should have been triggered long before the alarms sounded.

A thud overhead and the entire cab shook.

He grabbed the rail and tried to look upward, but the lights shined directly into his eyes.

A section of the rock must have been weakened by the water and broken from the wall. He needed to patch it before it started a domino effect. This whole thing was getting worse and worse with each passing—

Clack
.

He looked up at the roof. It sounded like a pebble had struck the metal, only he hadn’t heard it ping off down the chute.

Clack. Clack-clack
.

He whirled to his right. The sounds came from overhead, near the gate. He’d been so preoccupied he’d forgotten to secure the latch.

Clack
.

Butler watched helplessly as the gate slowly opened.

“What the—?”

A shadow passed through the gap with such speed that he barely had time to turn away. He lunged for the controls and slapped the button to make it go.

Searing pain in his back.

His screams echoed through the shaft until they abruptly ceased.

The motor continued to whine as the elevator descended into the earth.

Below Speranza Station

Bering Sea

Ten Miles Northwest of Wales, Alaska

65°47′ N, 169°01′ W

“We have to get out of here.” Calder frantically wiped the blood from her face as though it were acid. “Dear Lord, we have to—”

“Shh!”

Mitchell squeezed her hand to silence her. He heard something, at the very edge of perception, but, for the life of him, he couldn’t hear it well enough to identify it. The glowworms overhead made a constant crackling sound. Cave crickets chirped from somewhere off to his left through the trees, which hoarded impenetrable shadows animated by the swaying of the violet strands on a breeze only they could feel. Droplets of Duan’s blood dripped from the tips of the leaves with a gentle tapping sound.

Plat
.

Plat-plat
.

Plat
.

The branches had stilled, leaving no indication as to where whatever attacked Duan had gone. They couldn’t just abandon him, especially if he had somehow survived and was in desperate need of their help, but there was so much blood . . . so much . . .

Calder drew a shuddering inhalation and blew it out slowly. She held up her hands as though to physically stabilize herself.

“We need to approach this logically,” she whispered. “We’re obviously dealing with a predatory species. What we don’t know is whether it attacked out of fear or in response to its internal feeding mechanism. For all we know, we could have startled it and it responded to the unexpected intrusion in its habitat in an instinctively aggressive manner. I mean, it can’t have ever seen a human being down here before.”

“But it has to have been feeding on something.”

“And if it sees us as food rather than as a threat, it could be hunting us at this very moment.”

Mitchell restlessly scanned the surrounding foliage for any sign of movement, although for as quickly as it had attacked, he knew that if he saw anything, it was likely already too late.

“We have to go after Duan.”

“That could be exactly what it wants us to do,” Calder said. “We have no idea which predatory model it follows. Sharks like the great white stalk their prey, waiting for their opportunity to attack. For all we know, it could have been circling us from the moment we stepped off the elevator. They wait for the right moment, then cause as much physical damage as possible and simply wait for their prey to bleed to death. Or it could be more like the broadnose sevengill shark, which lies in wait until its prey gets close enough to it before attacking.”

“That sounds marginally more attractive.”

“They’re also one of the few species of shark that hunts in groups.”

The way she said it made the goosebumps rise on the backs of his arms. Until that moment he hadn’t considered the possibility that there could be more than one.

“We know that it took a bite out of Duan before it attacked,” Mitchell said.

“We can’t afford to make any assumptions,” Calder said. “That could have been something else entirely.”

“There’s a pleasant thought.”

“If it was, we could merely be dealing with an opportunistic predator attracted to the scent of blood, in which case, we’d likely be safe from a subsequent attack. If it were the same animal, though . . .”

“We could be dealing with something like the great white shark.” He looked down at the sheer volume of blood soaking into the ground around his feet. “Either way, standing here in a puddle of it can’t possibly be our best course of action. We can’t just abandon Duan, though. Not without at least trying to help him first.”

“That could be precisely what this predator expects us to do.”

“What do you propose then? Just stand here until it comes back for us?”

“Which could be exactly what—”

“It expects us to do. I get it. You’re not being very helpful.”

“Without any sort of familiarity with its food web, I can’t begin to speculate as to its behavior. Applying the Lotka-Volterra predator-prey model—”

“You really think now’s the time for a lecture?”

“We either rationalize our way through this or we’re dead. There’s a reason this species has been able to survive down here and, in case you didn’t notice, not a whole lot of others did.”

Mitchell gestured for her to proceed, but to do so in a hurry.

Plat
.

Plat-plat
.

“Lotka-Volterra suggests that the size of the predator population is dictated by the size of the prey population, but considering we’ve yet to see anything larger than a crab and the rate of predation is directly proportional to the incidence of physical interaction, the traditional equations fall apart. There’s either no predation or the predator has consumed all prey species, neither of which forms a stable model. Any assumptions we make would be inherently flawed.”

Mitchell’s skin crawled. Whether real or imagined, he felt the weight of unseen eyes upon him. It was all he could do to resist the overwhelming urge to run.

“What do you propose then? The longer we stand here—”

“Our behavior needs to remain unpredictable. If there is something hunting us, then we can’t replicate the behavioral patterns of its traditional prey, whatever that might be. We need to keep it off balance, cause it to hesitate to attack.”

“Then what’s the last thing it would expect us to do?”

“The last thing any apex predator would expect.” Her eyes locked onto his. “We hunt it.”

She stared off into the forest, in the direction they’d last seen it heading. Her hands shook when she brushed aside the leaves upon which Duan’s blood had started to congeal. She cringed as she knelt in the warm mud and crawled forward through the weeds.

Mitchell turned in a circle, sweeping his light across the surrounding vegetation. The cavern walls were maybe a hundred feet away in every direction, although he could barely see them through the trees. For all he knew, they could be riddled with passages leading in hundreds of directions, or they could be smooth stone and he and Calder were trapped in a dead end, in which case they were about to find out how this animal reacted to being cornered.

“Here,” Calder whispered.

Mitchell cast one final glance around him before crouching amid the ferns and leaning over her shoulder.

Calder’s beam spotlighted a section of trampled earth. The flattened weeds and detritus were damp with blood and already attempting to stand again. The print was poorly defined and vaguely resembled the splayed hoof print of a large deer, until Calder carefully brushed aside the weeds to reveal the faint impression in the mud underneath.