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  Cate took her hand off the glass.

  “No, it’s meant to be enjoyed, not treated like a pampered pet.” Mironov slid her glass back toward her. “Besides, who was it that said: ‘Eat, drink, for tomorrow we may die’?”

  Cate picked her glass up again. “Corinthians – something about enjoying life before they were going off to fight beasts.”

  “Oh, perfect.” Jack toasted the air.

  “Perfect indeed.” Mironov’s smile widened.

  * * *

  Mironov looked at Cate Granger’s face as she sipped the cognac. She looked pensive and troubled. An unreasonable guilt hung over her because of Vincent Kelly’s death. He saw it as clearly as if it was printed on her blouse.

  He let his eyes travel to Jack Monroe. The man was still besotted with the woman seated next to him. Jack was fiercely intelligent; tough as any Russian Valery had worked with, and strong willed. But his weakness was Cate. If Cate wanted to do something, then more than likely Jack would go along. And if Cate said no, then it would be no for both of them.

  So it was Cate he needed to win over. But he didn’t expect he’d have to work too hard; after all, they had come to him.

  “So, you want to kill it … for good this time.” He put his glass down carefully and looked at each of them. After a few moments, Cate nodded.

  “Good. Tell me how you’ll do this?” He gave them a devilish smirk that was devoid of humor.

  Cate also put her glass down and sat forward to the edge of the couch. “We came here looking for your help.”

  “Oh?” He turned to Sonya.

  Cate exhaled sharply. “Valery, stop playing games; we know you have some sort of plan.” She thumbed over her shoulder to the blank wall. “Those dinosaur shark jaws aren’t just going to wash up on the beach one day, are they?”

  He laughed softly. “Oh no, I intend to go and get them myself.”

  Jack drained his glass of the rich, dark cognac. “The submarine you’re working on with the US military.” He toasted the Russian woman beside Mironov before putting the glass down. “The Sonya, I believe it’s called; you’re going in that, aren’t you?”

  “No.” Mironov waved his hand. “That craft was just a simple prototype I’m working on with the US Navy. Sharing my technology, expertise and funding, as a little gift to keep me in the good books with our host government.”

  He reached for a small remote on the table before them. “Let me show what I was really working on.” He pointed the remote at the wall before them, and it, and all its artworks, slid away to reveal a large screen that immediately lit up.

  Mironov raised his hands theatrically. “Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, the Nautilus.”

  Jack laughed and clapped his hands together once. “I love it already.”

  The first images were of a workshop in which an enormous tube was being worked on. Mironov moved through them, showing the sleek metallic creature being assembled.

  “Magnificent,” Cate breathed.

  Mironov beamed as the submersible took shape in the cascade of images. “Yes, she is a thing of beauty and my pride and joy.”

  “But how did you keep it secret?” Jack asked. “It’s enormous.”

  “The technology was farmed out to various suppliers and manufacturers, with no one organization knowing exactly what it was they were building for me. The more sensitive equipment we designed, built and fitted in my own laboratories and workshops.”

  The next shot showed a craft, roughly 200 feet long, dark gray, and sleek. It had small fins coming from its front section, with the rear tapering to nearly a spike.

  “It almost looks like a living thing,” Cate said.

  Mironov turned back to look at the craft. “The propulsion unit demanded the special design. But you’re right, Cate, she is alive and beautiful.”

  “It looks vastly different to the craft you built for the navy,” Jack observed.

  “Yes, that’s because it is different in design, construction and capability. The Sonya was designed to be a high-speed submersible, primarily used for surveillance, and in the future, possibly stealth attack. But my Nautilus has a different objective – deep-sea exploration.”

  “You adapted the supercavitation? I thought it was still experimental.” Jack’s brows were still knitted.

  Mironov nodded. “Not experimental anymore. Well, not to me anyway. The basic concept of supercavitation was that you create an air bubble around the craft, and fly through this, rather than trying to push through the denser water. The problem with the first generation technology was that as soon as you accelerated, you created wave distortions in the air bubble around the submarine.”

  “I heard about that,” Jack said. “Loses stability.”

  “Loses everything.” Mironov’s mouth quirked up. “Have you ever seen what high-speed air can do to a flag? Now imagine that’s the tail of your submarine – you’d get shaken to pieces – not great when you’re underwater.”

  “So how’d you solve it?” Jack asked.

  “Technology over nature, Jack.” Mironov sat forward, bringing his fingertips together. “We found that early failure was due to a phenomenon called pulsation. When we create an air bubble around an underwater body, the idea is to encase the entire object. However, sometimes the bubble will not remain uniform and expands and contracts, allowing part of the vehicle to get wet.” Mironov held up the remote, and indicated something flowing over its length, making it wobble. “This lack of uniformity grows worse at speed.” He made the rear of the remote twirl. “Eventually it can cause the entire vessel to break apart.”

  He lowered the remote. “We found out through thousands of hours of testing that it was caused by the bubble of air not dissipating behind the vehicle cleanly. It needed to fade out, or at least to get smaller and smaller until it simply turned into micro bubbles.” He pointed to the screen. “And that necessitated an entire rethink on submarine design, which gave us the sleek rear of the submersible.”

  “Wow. Just wow,” Jack said. “And you designed the Nautilus to dive deep?”

  “Oh yes, once we solved the pulsation issue, we worked on the ability to equalize air pressure of the external bubble with water pressure at depths. But, when we stop in those crushing depths, and the bubble dissipates, the hull still needs to be reinforced. But that was standard submersible technology.” He smiled. “And that was something else we improved upon.”

  “All that time, you were always going after it,” Cate said.

  “From even before we met those years ago, Cate. I always believed that those remnant species you so eloquently referred to in your presentation at Stanford still existed somewhere.” Mironov smiled. “You see, there are four places on our planet where there is still some mystery and magic: the inaccessible mountain tops, the deepest jungles, the frozen continents, and then there’s the biggest and most secretive place of all: our ocean trenches.”

  “And now you’re ready.” She lifted her gaze to him.

  Mironov poured them some more of the expensive liquor. “Almost; it just needs one more thing to make it a success.”

  CHAPTER 22

  The shark could sense the tiny beat of life in the bodies of the animals. There were creatures hidden in among the huge pile of strange debris, but it couldn’t yet find them. Their blood was sweet and like that of the great cetaceans – it wanted more.

  It slowed and hung in the water, watching. Its eyes saw clearly in the depths but it was the sense it needed least to find its prey. It glided on, past the mass of wreckage again, knowing they were there, and also knowing it would find them soon. And then it would taste them again.

  CHAPTER 23

  Mironov Enterprises Tower

  “And that is?” Cate lifted her glass, but only held it in her hands, waiting for the Russian to reveal the missing piece to his plan.

  Mironov swirled his own drink, warming the liquid and releasing the heady aromas.

  Jack looked from her to the b
illionaire. “You said you needed one more thing? What would that be?” He pressed.

  Mironov sipped, and then lowered his glass, his light-colored eyes unwavering. “Well, you two, of course.”

  “Oh, of course.” Jack sat back.

  “No way; my submarining days are over.” Cate placed the glass down hard, making it clink on the tabletop.

  Valery’s smile never wavered. “But you said yourself, Vincent wasn’t qualified to make the call on going after the beast. Only people like you and Jack were. And I totally agree with you. I need experts. Even better, experienced experts.” He tilted his thin face. “I either go to war with battle-hardened veterans, or enthusiastic novices. It’ll be the difference between success and failure, life and death.”

  Cate swallowed. She agreed with his logic, and knew if it was anyone else he was pitching for, she’d be right in there, telling them it was the right thing to do. But though her logical brain said it made sense, her primitive brain, as well as her heart, suggested she should run a mile.

  “Life and death,” Mironov continued. “We will go, one way or the other. But with you, my crew and I will have a better chance of surviving.” His expression was deadpan.

  The bastard, she thought. Her heart was hammering and she started to shake her head. Mironov held up a hand.

  “Before you answer, know this; the Nautilus will be faster than any other vessel or creature in the ocean, now or at any time. It has superior maneuverability, visibility, and sensors. And one more thing.” His smile became roguish again. “We’ll be well armed.”

  “Armed?” Jack’s brows went up. “Why?” He shook his head. “No, forget I asked that. I mean, with what?”

  Sonya leaned forward on her knees. “Working with the military has its advantages. A little quid pro quo, you might say. They gave us access to the advanced Mark 48 torpedo plans; they’re the fastest torpedoes ever built. We took them, miniaturized and modified them. The basic torpedo was designed to track and sink deep-diving submarines, and was optimized for high-pressure water – they were ideal. We shrunk them down from nineteen feet to eight, and from 3695 pounds down to 800.”

  She smiled sweetly as if she was talking about fine food on a menu. “They’re now near perfect. They still use sonar bandwidth for targeting and use a wide frequency to give the utmost quality of search, acquisition, and attack effectiveness. We just modified them to ensure they could also home in on organic targets.”

  “Hitting a shark with a torpedo?” Cate snorted. “I don’t care how fast or smart your torpedoes are, they’ll never do it.”

  “Looks like we need a fail-safe.” Mironov rubbed his chin for a moment, and then grinned. He nodded for Sonya to continue. She reached for her glass and sipped her cognac, her eyes still on Cate. She smiled.

  “That’s why we introduced the laser.”

  Jack laughed out loud. “This is too much. A laser? Underwater? Seawater absorbs light. You won’t even give the Megalodon a mild sunburn.”

  “That’s right, Jack. Water absorbs ultraviolet, yellow, red and infrared radiation, and beams, no matter how strong in those spectral regions, can’t be transmitted over any significant distance. Of course, these are the usual spectrums for laser technology.”

  Mironov held up a finger. “But seawater does transmit blue–green light extremely efficiently, only losing a few percent of its original intensity for every few feet it travels.”

  Mironov smiled. “Building an underwater laser is usually prohibitive from a cost perspective, not from a technology perspective. And Mironov Enterprises has billions of capital to invest. And when I’m ready, we can sell it, and double our investment.”

  “You actually created an underwater laser?” Jack gave Cate an incredulous look.

  Mironov’s smile vanished. “We have a 500-kilowatt directed energy beam device that has computer targeting, and can cut through anything that comes within 1000 feet of us.”

  “Holy shit.” Jack sat back.

  Cate rubbed her forehead. “But we have lasers at the university, the energy required for something that powerful and focused must be enormous.”

  “It’s focused enough to slice an apple, or sever a redwood.” Mironov shrugged. “Yes, it’s energy hungry, but I only need to hit something once and the fight will be over.”

  “Like Valery said, we have the technology. But we are not yet ready.” Sonya stared from Jack to Cate.

  “I need you and your expertise; both of you,” Mironov said. “And I know you want me to help you, either to avenge Vincent, save those people trapped on the bottom of the ocean, or simply kill the beast.” He leaned forward. “And I will, I promise you. But there’s a price.”

  “We come?” Cate said, feeling trapped.

  “You want closure? Then this is your chance.” Mironov sat back.

  Cate stared at her glass on the table. “We are at the edge of an abyss and we’re close to being irrevocably lost.”

  Mironov smiled. “The late David Brower; a great environmentalist. I’m sure he would approve of what we do.”

  “I doubt that,” Cate said.

  “Why? We go to fight a killer of man and beast. We either send it back to the abyss, or we end it. There can be nothing in between.”

  “He’s right,” Jack finally said. “It doesn’t belong here in our world, in this time.”

  Cate nodded. “We’ll be saving Samantha; that’s all that matters.”

  Mironov stood. “And she has a limited amount of oxygen and power remaining, I understand. Time is against all of us.”

  “So when do we leave?” Jack asked as he and Cate followed Mironov to their feet.

  “We leave tonight; everything is ready and waiting for us.” Mironov nodded to Sonya, who guided them to the door.

  “We’ll only be gone for a few days, and Valery has taken the liberty of preparing everything you need.”

  As the huge wooden doors closed behind them, Cate turned to look up at Jack. “He always knew we were going to go.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Abyssal Cliff Face, 3233 feet down

  Samantha squeezed her eyes shut as the pops, squeals and tics continued to seep into her consciousness and Alvin’s metal skin fought against the insane pressure that was being applied to every fraction of its exterior.

  She tried to shut it out, but found it impossible. She also tried to avoid looking out over the pitiless void of the trench, which she knew in this area dropped nearly another 20,000 feet before finding who-knows-what at its bottom.

  She kept her eyes shut, also refusing to look through the bubble glass of their cockpit, as she’d seen the massive torpedo shape of the monster shark glide by, from time to time turning side-on to tilt one dinner-plate-sized eye in their direction.

  A while back it had come close enough for Sam to look back into its eye, and her breath had frozen in her throat – the soulless blackness of that orb had matched that of the void below. She bet it saw her as cleanly as she saw it. Did it know it could take them any time it wanted and was just playing with them? Or were they somehow invisible beings encased in the titanium-steel hull of their submersible?

  “Do you think they can still find us?”

  “Huh?” Sam roused herself and finally opened her eyes, even though Andy’s words didn’t register. “What?”

  “I said, do you think they can still find us, now we’re over the side of the trench?” he asked again.

  “Oh, yeah, sure. Alvin’s distress pings can transport for miles, hundreds of miles. If they’re up there, they’ll know where we are.” It probably didn’t matter, she thought. After all, there were very few rescue DSVs in the world that could even get down to them. If they started now, the process of getting approval, transporting it here, and then diving, would take them twenty-four to forty-eight hours. They’d be long dead.

  “But will they bother trying again?” Andy used both hands to rub his head and then temples. “I mean, they just lost one DSV, why would they tr
y and send another?” He unexpectedly grinned, a hint of mania in his eyes. “Hey, what’s the definition of insanity?”

  She knew where he was going. “Yeah, I know; the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.”

  “Albert Einstein said that,” Andy said triumphantly. He turned to stare out through the glass. “So, I gotta think that unless they come up with a different plan, if they try again, big bertha out there is going to fuck up their day all over again.”

  “Einstein also said, “A person who never made a mistake, will never try anything new”.” She also turned to the glass just as the huge shape loomed closer, hung for a second or two, and then glided away, as if it was keeping guard.

  “Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll be working on something new.” She looked at their gauges. The oxygen and energy levels were now down to halfway – probably another eight to ten hours, depending on how quickly they used it up. No, that was wrong; losing Wade had one benefit – they didn’t need to split their resources three ways anymore. And that included air.

  A shitty trade. She closed her eyes again.

  CHAPTER 25

  Grand Hyatt Hotel, 42nd Street and Park Avenue, New York

  A long dark Mercedes pulled up at exactly 7 pm as promised. A driver quickly exited and moved around the hood to open a rear door for Cate and Jack.

  He held up a hand when they went to pick up their single suitcases. “I’ll take the bags.”

  Cate and Jack nodded and climbed inside the plush interior.

  “New leather, wood polish, and a hint of brandy and cigar. Just like home.” Jack jiggled his eyebrows.

  Cate nudged him. “Yeah right; your place is more dirty socks, old pizza, and driftwood.”

  “Close enough.” Jack fished around inside and found a pullout section that held several crystal decanters full of glistening liquors, and a few glasses. He raised a glass toward Cate. “Medicinal purposes?”