The Danger

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Kaz knew a lot about sharks. Their cold black eyes, torpedolike bodies, and gaping jaws full of razor-sharp teeth had haunted his dreams as far back as he could remember. His phobia had been cranked higher and tighter over the years by a personal library of books about the notorious sea predators, constantly read and reread. Kaz knew, for example, that all sharks had to swim to survive. There was only one exception to this rule: when an underwater vent created a stream of bubbles that could aerate the gills of a “sleeping” shark.

There were six animals assembled along the path of bubbles, hanging perfectly still. Five were blue sharks, ranging in length from four to seven feet. It was the remaining one, the biggest, that drew his eyes and filled him with unspeakable horror.

Clarence, the eighteen-foot tiger shark of local legend. Two tons of destructive power, with a mouth large enough to swallow a fourteen-year-old hockey player whole.

For weeks, the interns had pondered what had kept this monster in the waters around Saint-Luc while other tigers wandered the oceans. They had questioned what had lured it from the abundant food of the reef down to the empty depths. At last, the mystery was revealed — this vent, this special place.

Yet there was no moment of enlightenment, no finger-snapping understanding. Kaz realized too late that his light had been shining directly into Clarence’s unhooded black eye. The crescent tail moved first — just a twitch. That muscle contraction traveled all the way along the eighteen-foot body. The head swung toward him, giving Kaz a view past the forest of serrated teeth, clear into the predator’s cavernous gullet.

He felt his grip on reality starting to slip away. In that instant, he forgot Marina in the one-atmosphere suit, and a billion dollars in treasure. His universe became, quite simply, the nine feet of water separating him from his ultimate nightmare — to be ripped apart and devoured as prey.

And then the mouth opened like a garage door as the huge shark attacked.

Kaz did the only thing he could think of. He tried to insert himself into the floor of the grotto. To his immense shock and relief, there was a space for him, a fine groove in the rock beneath the silt. He wriggled into it, thinking small.

The flat snout slammed against his hip. Impact. Pain. He waited for the crushing bite, the tearing wrench of the monster’s jaws.

It didn’t come. The sawing teeth could not reach him! He switched off his light and huddled in the tiny niche, smothering in his own bottomless dread.

Go away. His mind could conjure up no other words. Go away, go away, go away. Shaking with hypothermia and fear, he clung to his hiding place with mindless intensity. He didn’t think about the others, the bell, rescue. Here was safe; here was good. That was all that mattered.

Time passed. Seconds? Minutes? There was no clock on his terror.

It happened without warning, not a hiss, not a click. The supply of breathing gas to his Rat Hat simply stopped.

No!!!

His first notion was completely irrational — that Clarence, unable to pry him from the gash in the rock, had bitten through his umbilical in order to draw him out.

Impossible! A shark’s too dumb to come up with a plan like that!

Amazingly, the crisis forced his unreasoning panic to the edges, leaving room for rational thought. This was a diving problem. He was trained for that. Kaz carried a backup tank of heliox for emergencies just like this one. But he would be unable to reach it without coming out of the crack.

With a silent prayer, he switched on his torch. The blue sharks still slumbered in the bubble stream. There was no sign of Clarence.

Water began to dribble into the Rat Hat as the gas remaining in the hose was used up.

Holding his breath, he climbed out of his hiding place and snapped the hose from the bailout bottle to the intake valve on his helmet.

The metallic tang of heliox. But for how long? At this depth and pressure, gas was gone in the blink of an eye. This tank might last an hour on the surface. But here at twenty-two atmospheres — he did the math — less than three minutes. If he couldn’t get to the bell in that time, he would die.

He paddled out of the cave, legs kicking madly. He would have given anything for a pair of flippers. But there was no time to think about that now.

There it was — the bell, glowing like a distant diamond off to his left. He pointed the Rat Hat in its direction and kicked for his life. Maximum speed on minimum heliox — that’s what he needed.

He was breathing too fast, he was sure.

But I can make it!

A dark shape moved in front of the gleaming sphere of the bell. Kaz’s hope disintegrated in a puff of precious gas. Tin Man! Marina Kappas stood in the sand of the shelf between him and his goal.

It all came clear. Marina had cut his umbilical to bring him out of hiding. And now he was swimming right into the clutches of Tin Man’s powerful hydraulics. It was virtual suicide. But he had no choice. He was already running low on gas. All he could do was make for the bell.

And pray.

Another half breath, and the tank went bone-dry. Kaz swallowed hard and stroked on.

Tin Man’s armored limb swung out to meet him. The claw opened, ready to strike.

A wall of water moved, and the tiger shark was upon them, exploding out of the darkness.

Kaz went rigid, and the mechanical pincers missed him by inches. Clarence’s titanic maw yawned open and snapped shut on Tin Man’s aluminum plating. A single jagged tooth found a weak spot in the knee joint. It knifed between two pieces of metal, penetrating the suit’s one-atmosphere seal.

There was a pop, and the weight of seven hundred feet of ocean blasted into Tin Man with the force of a battering ram. Marina never had a chance to scream. She was crushed to death in an instant.

A pectoral fin the size of a car door smacked into the empty tank on Kaz’s back, sending him careening. By the time he’d recovered, his vision was darkening at the edges. He needed to breathe, needed it now. He could already feel himself slipping into a void far darker than the depths.

A thought came to him, one that he assumed would be his last: He had survived Tin Man, had even survived Clarence, only to suffocate just a few feet from the open hatch of the bell.

Something below him in the water was pushing him upward. With a burst of strength that was barely human, Menasce Gérard heaved him in through the work-lock. Limply, Kaz crashed to a pile of wet umbilicals on the curved floor.

Adriana and Dante yanked off his helmet.

Bobby Kaczinski took the sweetest breath he would ever remember.