MEG: The Trench

RETIRED NAVY DEEP-SEA PILOT Barry Leace wiped the sweat from his palms as he checked the depth indicator of the Proteus. Thirty-four thousand, seven hundred and eighteen feet. Nearly seven miles of water above their heads, sixteen thousand pounds per square inch of water pressure surrounding them.

Just stop thinking about it…

Barry glanced around the tight quarters of the four-man submersible. Racks of computer monitors, electronics, and a bewildering jungle of wires filled the pressurized hull. The watertight coffin barely had room for its crew.

Below the navigation console, team leader Ellis Richards and his assistant, Linda Heron, stared out through tiny portholes in the floor of the Proteus’s bow.

to an eccentric billionaire to help keep the institute afloat, but it doesn't come without a price. Drawn into a web of deceit and lies, plagued by nightmares of his own death, Taylor must once again face frightening monsters of unimaginable power

Deep in debt, Taylor has turned to an eccentric billionaire to help keep the institute afloat, but it doesn't come without a price. Drawn into a web of deceit and lies, plagued by nightmares of his own death, Taylor must once again face frightening monsters of unimaginable power.

Only this time, it's

offspring at the Tanaka Institute.

Deep in debt, Taylor has turned to an eccentric billionaire to help keep the institute afloat, but it doesn't come without a price. Drawn into a web of deceit and lies, plagued by nightmares of his own death, Taylor must once again face frightening monsters of unimaginable power

SADIA KLEFFNER WALKED OVER to the bay windows of the executive office and yanked open the venetian blinds, revealing the lake-size aquarium shimmering three stories below. She turned back into the room and, for a long moment, stared at her employer.

“Professor Taylor, are you all right?”

Jonas looked up from his work. “Yes. Why?”

“You have dark circles beneath your eyes.”

“I’m just tired. Do me a favor and page Mac for me, I need to speak with him right away.”

“Okay, boss.” His secretary pulled the double doors closed behind her.

*

James “Mac” Mackreides burst in unannounced ten minutes later. At just under six feet four, Mac had the square-cut jaw, regulation crew cut, and muscular upper body that gave the impression this fifty-one-year-old ex-Navy sailor was still on active

staring at him. The LEXAN began bending.

Jonas recalled the words of the facility’s engineer. Bending is normal. Flexible plates actually become stronger as they bend. If the window does shatter, the doors in the outer corridor will automatically seal.

Angel pressed the side of her massive head against the window. The cataract-gray eye focused on him.

Jonas felt an exquisite eeriness. Only six inches of LEXAN separated him from death. What if the engineer had been wrong? After all, the tank was originally designed to harbor whales.

The Meg turned and disappeared into the lagoon, heading straight for the canal.

Jonas released his breath, his limbs shaking. He leaned back against the wall, out of sight, trying to fathom what had just taken place.

“Doc, are you there?”

“Yeah, Manny. Christ, I see what you mean about our girl being a bit wound up.”

stairwell emptied into a subterranean semicircular corridor that ran along the southern circumference of the enormous tank. Eerie reflections of blue-green light illuminated an otherwise dark passage. Jonas moved slowly to the source of the light, turning to face the fifteen-foot-high, six-inch-thick LEXAN bay aquarium windows.

He was now thirty feet below the surface, staring into the crystal-blue waters of the man-made lagoon. Jonas looked up, reading a newly erected sign above his head: “DANGER. NO MOVEMENT WHILE MEGALODON IS PRESENT.”

He pressed his palm against the LEXAN glass. Its cold surface reverberated from the underwater acoustics being pumped into the tank, calling the beast to its meal. Drops of crimson blood from the dangling carcass dispersed along the surface of water above his head.

Jonas gripped the rail.

*

Deep within the farthest confines of the ocean-access canal, a pure white triangular head the size of a small house continued its side-to-side mantra of movement, rubbing its conical snout raw against the porous gateway of steel. As the inflowing current of water from the Pacific passed through the pores of the gateway, the to-and-fro movements of the creature’s head siphoned the scents of the sea into its nasal capsule. Miles away, pods of whales were migrating north along the California coastline. The seventy-two-foot prehistoric female great white could smell their sweet, pungent scents.

The deep bass of the underwater acoustics intensified, stimulating the highly sensitive cells running along the creature’s lateral line. The reverberations meant food. The female turned away from the gate, remaining deep to avoid the electrical field being discharged from an array of pipes extending out along the upper inner-portion of the seawall, all that prevented the sixty-two-thousand-pound behemoth from simply leaping sideways out of the canal.

*

had paid theater-ticket money to catch a glimpse of. The moment they had waited for would soon be upon them. Breakfast was being served.

Jonas followed the arena’s circular walkway until he came to the concrete platform supporting the steel winch. He glanced up to see his assistant, Manny Vazquez, swing the raw carcass carefully into position above the tranquil blue water.

Below the concrete platform was a steel door marked “AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” Jonas noticed that the steel safeguard protecting the locking mechanism had been partially pried back. Damn kids… He made a mental note to have it repaired, then unlocked the door and entered the dank stairwell, slamming the door closed behind him.

Jonas inhaled the familiar cool dampness, taking a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He descended the two flights of stairs slowly, the voodoo-like drumbeats growing fainter as he moved deeper into the bowels of the facility.

offered by Masao Tanaka, an old friend and mentor. The founder of the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute had not been interested in megalodons or Jonas’s theories about the creature’s possible existence. Masao was building an artificial lagoon off the Monterey coast, a man-made habitat in which to study whales. To finance the project, he had entered into a joint-venture agreement with the Japanese government to deploy an array of seismic detection robots, called Unmanned Nautical Information Submersibles—UNIS—along the floor of the Mariana Trench. Something had gone wrong with several of the devices, and Masao needed Jonas’s assistance in order to retrieve one of the instruments. At first, the former deep-sea pilot had refused, unable to face his fear. But with his first marriage falling apart and his career in disarray, the thought of redemption became too seductive to pass up.

And then there was Terry.

Masao Tanaka’s only daughter was as beautiful as she was rebellious. If Jonas would not accompan

Disregarding protocol, he had jettisoned the vessel’s ballast and raced the sub back to the surface, the rapid rise causing a malfunction in the pressurization system. Both scientists aboard the sub had died, and Jonas’s career as an argonaut was over. Or so he had thought.

Over the next seven years, Jonas became obsessed with proving to the world that the creature really existed. Returning to school, he earned advanced degrees in paleobiology while his first wife supported them. Research over the mysterious disappearance of the megalodon species soon led to a controversial theory and several publications. Jonas surmised that many of the prehistoric Great White sharks had migrated to the warmer abyssal waters of the Mariana Trench in order to avoid the cold surface temperatures brought about by the last Ice Age. Despite the scientific basis for his conclusions, his research was dismissed by colleagues as utter fantasy, his papers banned from many institutions.

Four years later, the opportunity to return to the Mariana Trench was