Deep Fathom

Circling around the bend, David spotted his quarry. He smiled. So the bastard hadn’t escaped the blast unharmed.

Under an arch of stone, Jack’s darkened sub limped and teetered, clearly compromised. David watched as the desperate man fought to get his sub moving, sand and silt choking up, but with no success. His sub continued to founder.

Like a fledgling with an injured wing.

“Having problems?” he radioed over.

“Go f**k yourself!”

David grinned. He lowered the Perseus, adjusting his lights to illuminate the interior of the other sub’s dome.

Inside, he saw Jack struggling.

Excited, David lifted his sub and angled over his enemy. As he glided under the arch, he adjusted the Perseus’s lights, keeping the focus on his trapped enemy. It gave him a thrill to see Jack fighting frantically for his life. As David passed directly over the damaged sub, the two adversaries faced each other.

Jack glanced up at him, while David grinned down.

That close, David saw no fear in Jack’s eyes, only satisfaction. Jack lifted a hand and flipped him off—then the Nautilus blasted straight up.

Caught off guard, David couldn’t get out of the way in time. The two vessels collided. David’s chin cracked against the pod. He bit the tip of his tongue. Stars flared across his vision; blood filled his mouth.

For a moment Jack’s dome ground against David’s nose cone. Both men lay within an arm’s reach of the other, yet remained untouchable.

Jack grinned up at him. “Time to even the odds, you bastard.”

David glanced to his sonar array. He suddenly understood the trap—but a fraction too late.

The top of the Perseus struck the stone arch overhead. David swore a litany of curses. With a screech of titanium, the torpedo array struck the unyielding rock. One of the minitorpedoes ignited, shooting down the canyon and exploding against a distant cliff face. The remainder of the array broke off and tumbled away.

His trap sprung, Jack’s sub sank away. “As you said…adios!” The Nautilus dove forward, aiming for the sheltering cloud cast up by the stray torpedo’s explosion.

Spitting blood, David flicked a switch. “No you don’t, ass**le.”

9:04 A.M., Nautilus

Jack’s grin disappeared as the Nautilus suddenly lurched under him. He jerked hard in his harness as the sub’s progress was halted in mid-dive.

Twisting around, he saw the Perseus had latched onto his sub’s frame with a single manipulator arm, its pincers clamped tight. David was not letting him run. The titanium arm tugged; metal screeched.

Warning lights flashed red across Jack’s computer screen. He was snagged and trapped. Caught from behind, his own sub’s manipulator arms could not fight back.

Titanium continued to protest as the pincers on David’s sub crushed and tore. The computer flickered. The carbon dioxide scrubbers went silent. David had clamped the main power line. This was not good.

Thinking fast, he dove toward the bottom, taking on ballast, dragging the Navy’s sub behind him, meanwhile beginning to circle during the descent. Flashing on his xenon headlight, Jack aimed at the mangled torpedo array on the seabed floor. His lights dimmed as the Nautilus’s power line was crimped. He ignored it, concentrating on his goal.

When he was close enough, Jack reached to the controls for his own sub’s manipulator arms. He extended the right arm and grabbed one of the discarded torpedoes resting on the seabed.

By now David realized the danger. The Nautilus was jostled as David shook the vessel.

Rattled, Jack bobbled and dropped the torpedo, but he deftly snatched it back up with his other manipulator arm. Before he lost it again, Jack wound back the arm and whipped it forward, lobbing the torpedo against the base of the stone arch.

The blast blew out the support. The stone arch broke, falling toward them.

As Jack had hoped, David was not willing to risk his own skin. He freed the Nautilus, spinning away. But Jack spun the other way and grabbed the Perseus’s back frame, turning the tables, catching the shark by its tail.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked.

Overhead, the main section fell toward them.

“Let me go! You’ll kill us both!”

“Both? I don’t think so.”

Smaller boulders landed around them, blasting craters in the silt. Jack monitored both his sonar and the tumble of rock. Using his other manipulator arm, he tore at the Perseus’s main thruster assembly, damaging the propellers, then released his pincers and backed at full throttle.

David’s sub lurched, trying to crawl from under the fall of rock, but it was no use. Boulders crashed deep into the silt.

As Jack watched, a small burst of bubbles exploded from around the Perseus. He initially thought the sub had imploded, but as the bubbles cleared, a small pod of acrylic shot out from the external titanium frame. Spangler had employed his sub’s emergency escape mechanism. The ejected glass “lifeboat” blasted away from its heavier external shell. The abandoned section was immediately pounded flat by tons of rock.

The bastard was escaping!

Jack scowled, climbing with his thrusters above the spreading silk cloud.

Under positive buoyancy, the lifeboat and its single passenger rose rapidly. A tiny red emergency light on its tail winked mockingly back at him. In his heavier sub, Jack had no hope of catching it.

He followed the escape pod’s course with his xenon light as it cleared the canyon walls and climbed into the open sea.

Jaw muscles tense, Jack gripped his controls, unsure about what to do—then a flurry of movement to the side caught his eye.

A large creature stretched from a rocky den, reaching for the escaping glass bubble. The explosions, the threat to its territory, must have drawn it.

Jack touched his throat mike. “David, I think you’re about to be dinner.”

9:17 A.M.

David frowned at Jack’s radioed message. What was he talking about? What harm could he do? Jack’s sub could never catch him. Though his own lifeboat bore no weapons and had no maneuverability, it did have speed. The sleek torpedo of acrylic was light and extremely buoyant.

David tapped in a code on his computer, preparing to patch through to the sea base. He would order the anthropologist killed, slowly. Rolfe was a skilled “interviewer.” He had loosened many a stubborn tongue. David would make sure her cries and pleadings were dispatched to Jack before she was killed.

As he typed in the final connection, the life pod was jolted, tossing David onto his side. He searched the water around him but saw nothing in the weak glow of the blinking emergency beacon in the stern. He rose up on an elbow. Then the lifeboat was jarred again, and suddenly dragged straight down. David’s head struck the thick acrylic.