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THE TRENCH
By Steve Alten KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
Copyright © 1999Steve Alten
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7860-1804-8
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Deep Pressures
Mariana Trench 12 degrees North Latitude 144 degrees East Longitude
March 22, 2001
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.
"See those animals with the furry green pelt?" Linda asked. "Those are Pompeii worms, capable of withstanding temperature variations from twenty-two degrees all the way to eighty-one degrees Celsius. The hydrothermal vents supply sulfur for bacteria to live off, which in turn are digested by the tube worms—"
"Linda—"
"—which are a source of food to all sorts of bizarre-looking life-forms."
"Linda, enough with the goddamn biology lesson," Ellis said.
"Sorry." Embarrassed, the petite geologist turned back to the porthole, cupping her hands around her eyes to eliminate glare.
Smiling to himself, the sub's fourth crewman, Khali Habash, looked down from his control console at Linda. The girl loved to talk, especially when she was nervous, a quality the Arab never hesitated to exploit.
Khali's real name was Arie Levy, a Jew born and raised in Syria. It had been nearly ten years since the day Arie had been recruited by MOSSAD, Israel's covert intelligence agency. Since that time he had led a double life, spending half his time in Israel with his wife and three children, traveling around the Arab world and Russia the rest of the time, posing as a plasma physicist. It had taken four hard years of sacrifice for the agent to infiltrate Benedict Singer's organization, but here he was, seven miles beneath the Pacific, about to learn secrets that could change humanity forever.
Arie checked the external temperature gauge.
"Hey, Linda, can you believe the water's seventy-eight degrees?"
The girl perked up again. "Incredible, isn't it? We call it hydrothermal megaplumes. The hot mineral water pumping out of these black smokers is seven hundred degrees. As it rises, it warms the freezing seawater column until it reaches neutral buoyancy at about twelve hundred feet above the floor of the Trench. Ocean currents then spread the plume laterally. The floating layer of soot from the minerals creates a ceiling that acts like insulation, sealing a tropical layer of water along the bottom of the gorge."
"The layer never cools?"
"Never. These hydrothermal vents are 'chronic' plumes. They've been active since the Cretaceous period."
Ellis Richards checked his watch again. As the project's team leader, he was perpetually worried about falling behind schedule. "Christ, three hours and it seems like we've barely made any headway. Linda, is it just me, or does it seem like this pilot has no idea what he's doing?"
Barry Leace ignored the insult. He checked his sonar and cursed under his breath. They had moved too far ahead of the Benthos, Geo-Tech Industries' (GTI) mobile deep-sea lab community and submarine docking station. The billion-dollar mother ship resembled a domed sports arena, with a false flat surface for an underbelly, dangling three mammoth shock absorbers for legs. Hovering just above the turbulent seafloor in neutral buoyancy, the 46,000-square-foot titanium structure reminded Leace of a monstrous man-o'-war as it followed them north through the most hostile environment on the planet.
Barry Leace had served on three different submarines during his tenure in the Navy. He had long ago become accustomed to living in claustrophobic quarters beneath the waves. Not everyone could make it as a submariner. One had to be in tip-top mental and psychological shape, able to perform while knowing that drowning in darkness within a steel ship hundreds of fathoms below the surface was just an accident away.
Barry had that fortitude, that mental toughness, proving it time and again during his twenty-six years of service. That's why he was so surprised at how easily his psyche was unraveling within the Mariana Trench. Confidence that had been nurtured through thousands of hours of submarine duty had suddenly dissipated the moment the Proteus cleared its abyssal docking bay aboard the Benthos.
Truth be known, it wasn't the depths that unnerved him. Four years earlier, through man's intervention, Carcharodon megalodon, a prehistoric sixty-foot species of Great White shark, had risen from this very trench to wreak havoc. Although the albino nightmare had eventually been destroyed, and its surviving offspring captured, at least a dozen people had died within its seven-foot jaws. Where there was one creature, there might be more. Despite all of Geo-Tech's precautions and technical innovations, the submersible pilot was still a bundle of nerves.
Barry pulled back on the throttle controls, slowing the main propulsion engine. He had no desire to get too far ahead of their abyssal escort.
"What is it now, Captain?" Ellis asked. "Why are we slowing?"
"Temperature's rising again. We must be approaching another series of hydrothermal vents. The last thing I want is to collide with one of those black smokers."
The team leader squeezed his eyes shut in frustration. "Goddamn it—"
Barry pressed his face against the porthole, eluding Ellis's tirade.
The submersible's lights illuminated a petrified forest of sulfur and mineral deposits, the towering stacks rising thirty feet or more from the bottom. Dark billowing clouds of superheated, mineral-rich water gushed from the mouths of the bizarre chimneys.
Arie watched Ellis Richards move menacingly toward the pilot's navigational console. "Captain, let's get something straight. I'm in charge of this mission, not you. My orders are for us to cover no less than twenty miles a day, something we'll never come close to at this snail's pace."
"Better safe than sorry, Mr. Richards. I don't want to get too far ahead of the Benthos, at least not until I get a feel for this sub."
"A feel for ... I thought you were an experienced pilot?"
"I am," Barry said. "That's why I'm slowing down."
Linda looked up from her porthole. "Exactly how far ahead of the Benthos are we, Captain?"
"Just over six kilometers."
"Six kilometers, that's all? Benedict Singer's going to flip." Ellis Richards looked like he was about to have an aneurysm. "Look, Captain, the Prometheus and Epimetheus are expected to arrive topside early next week. Neither submersible can even begin its work until we complete ours."
"I know that."
"You should. GTI's paying you a king's ransom to pilot the Proteus. We can't keep waiting for the Benthos to play catch-up every time we go out. We'll add another thirty days or more to our timetable, which is completely unacceptable."
"So is dying, Mr. Richards. My job is to keep us alive in this hellhole, not take chances so you can earn your bonus for coming in ahead of schedule."
The team leader stared at him. "You're scared, aren't you, Captain?"
(Continues...)
Excerpted from THE TRENCH by Steve Alten. Copyright © 1999 by Steve Alten. Excerpted by permission of KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP..
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