Deep Fathom

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, spi

“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 di

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 co

“What the fu—” Words died in his mouth as he glanced past his toes. In the light of the red beacon, he spotted a large di

A giant squid!

He had read the report of Jack’s battle with the same monster. He pressed his palms against the glass, panic setting in. He had no weapons. He searched the sea around him. Strobed in the red light, other tentacles and arms flailed, descending on its trapped prey.

The pod was flipped around roughly. David rolled and found a huge black eye staring at him.

A small gasp choked out of him.

The eye disappeared as the pod spun in the monster’s grip. David braced himself. All around was a blur of tentacles.

Staring past his toes, David suddenly sensed danger above his head. He jerked around — and screamed.

An arm’s length away a huge maw opened, lined by razor-sharp beaks, large enough to bite the slender pod in half. Still crying out in horror, he was drawn head first into the hungry creature’s mouth. It gnawed on the glass end, grinding its surface with its viselike beak.

David retreated, cramming himself into the stern half of the lifeboat. As he did, his elbow struck the communication system.

His eyes flicked to its palm-size screen. He still had communications! He could call in a rescue. Perhaps the bulletproof glass would resist the creature long enough. Or maybe the squid would tire of its stubborn prey and simply let him go.

Clinging to this small hope, he forced down his panic, told himself to stay focused, in charge.

Elbowing his way forward, David reached the transmitter. As he called up topside, a horrible noise echoed through the pod.

— crack—

He stared overhead. Tiny cracks skittered across the glass. Oh. God…no… He remembered the way Dr. Cortez had died, crushed, his skull imploding.

The monster continued to gnaw. The threadlike stress cracks spiderwebbed around him. At these immense pressures, implosion was imminent.

David clenched his fists as his hopes bled away. He was left with only one desire: revenge.

His boss, Nicolas Ruzickov, ever paranoid, had built in a fail-safe system in case the pillar site were ever compromised. The CIA director had not wanted the power here falling into foreign hands. “Better no one get it than lose it to another,” Ruzickov had explained.

David called up a special screen and typed in a coded sequence. His finger hovered above the Enter key.

He looked up. The beast’s maw continued to grind against the glass. More cracks.

Monster or pressure…which death was worse?

He tapped the final key.

FAIL-SAFE ACTIVATED blinked for a brief second.

Then the lifeboat collapsed, crushing the life out of him in a heartbeat.

Sitting beside her captor, Karen knew time was ru

As she sat with her hands clutched in her lap, Lieutenant Rolfe leaned over the radio. A call had been wired down from topside. Though he whispered, she managed to make out two words: “evacuation” and “fail-safe.”

Straining, she tried to eavesdrop on more of the conversation.

Finally, the lieutenant hung up the receiver and turned to her. “They’re sending down the Argus. We’re leaving immediately.”

Karen noted the man refused to make eye contact. He was lying — he might be leaving, but she wouldn’t be.

Feigning acquiescence, she stood and stretched. “It’s about time.”

The lieutenant got to his feet, too. Karen saw his left hand drift to the knife strapped to his thigh. No bullets. Not at these pressures.

Turning, she hurriedly crossed toward the ladder that led down to the docking bay. She mounted it first, keeping an eye on her adversary.

He nodded for her to climb down, hand leaving the hilt of his knife.

Karen quickly calculated. She’d been taught the safety systems as soon as she boarded here. Everything was automated. For her plan to work, she had to time this perfectly. She moved slowly down the ladder, a rung at a time. Rolfe followed, keeping close, as usual.