Steve Alten - Vostok

The diver held up a plastic card.

STAY CALM, ZACHARY.

The top of my head struck the inside of the container as the pod jettisoned through the sea and a second laminated card appeared before me.

POD WILL DRAIN IN 2 MINUTES. CORE TEMPERATURE DROP NECESSARY TO SHUT DOWN BIOCHIP.

I closed my eyes, comforted by my rescuer’s knowledge of the biochip, my body convulsing in the twenty-nine-degree water.

Two minutes .

120 seconds .

119… 118… 117…

Coherent thought goes hand in hand with core temperature. Stray too high or too low and you start to lose it. You start to die. In a battle of neurological functions, my mind fought to maintain a foothold of sanity as my hypothalamus struggled to control my body’s internal thermostat.

It takes a lot to overcome this almond-sized super-organ, but subfreezing water is its kryptonite, the effects rapid and catastrophic. Within seconds of submerging, my brain had ordered the capillaries in my skin to squeeze out the blood, pushing it inward to help maintain my core temperature, and thereby inflicting horrendous pain upon my pinched extremities in the process. My muscles tightened and contracted as hypothermia swept through my body. For the first minute my muscles fought back using high-speed involuntary contractions, but the heat generated through shivering required more blood, which accelerated the drop in core temperature.

100… 99… 98…

The muscles in my face were fluttering. The diver noticed and clamped his hand over my mouth to keep the regulator in place.

95… 94… 93…

My hypothalamus continued hoarding resources, the organ willing to sacrifice a few pawns and knights to save the king. My thoughts dulled, my mind slipping into a stupor.

90… 85…

23…

My oxygen-starved brain struggled to keep me awake. Urine seeped into the canister, my flooded kidneys overwhelmed by an influx of fluids.

Just a quick nap…

The diver shook me awake .

What was a scuba diver doing in my bathroom stall?

Timpani drums throttled my chest as my heart became arrhythmic and limited the oxygen to my brain. I turned to my right and saw True.

“Relax, lad. Him that’s born to be hanged will never be drowned.”

“You big lummox. I’m not drowning, I’m freezing to death!”

“Aye. But yer not swinging from a rope, are ye?”

Suddenly my skin was on fire .

“True, help me! I’m burning up!”

“Nothing I can do, lad. Yer hypothalamus has blown a fuse. Paradoxical undressing, it’s called. Yer brain’s last-ditch attempt at saving yer arse. Look at ye, yer blue as a fish. Ye haven’t even got a pulse. Yer not alive, but yer not quite dead either. Better pray yer rescuers ken enough tae warm ye slowly, or yer constricted capillaries will reopen all at once and cause a sudden drop in blood pressure that will send yer heart into ventricular fibrillation.”

“True, are you here to take me to heaven?”

“If need be. For now, jist close yer eyes.”

I rode a wave of pain to consciousness but refused to open my eyes, afraid to see what monster was chewing on my extremities.

And then the monster spoke.

“Christ in Heaven, enough with the bloody whimpering. There’s old women in the Inverness Polar Bear Society tha’ jump in Loch Ness every winter’s morn, and ye don’t hear those daft bitches yelping. Open yer eyes.”

I opened them as my father commanded. He was seated beside me, dressed in a wool sweater that matched his hair and beard, and his Gael eyes had fire in them.

“There now, tha’s better. There’s work tae be done if ye want tae see yer family again.”

I sat up, looking around the small infirmary. “Where are we?”

“Aboard Jonas Taylor’s boat, the McFarland . She’s a hopper dredge. Been in these waters since before ye went missing in D.C.”

“I don’t understand. How did Jonas know I’d be in East Antarctica?”

“He didn’t. I contacted yer friend after Doc Stewart let me ken where ye was bein’ held and whit fer.”

“Doc Stewart? You mean the English physician who worked on me back at Groom Lake? Angus, the guy’s MJ-12. He’s one of the bad guys.”

“First, they don’t call themselves MJ-12 anymore, it’s SECOR, short for Security Organization. Second, Stewie’s only part English; his father wore the plaid. And he’s an old friend. We grew up together before he left the Highlands to join the RAF. Caught the UFO fever back in 1980 when he was stationed at a NATO air base in Suffolk — Bentwaters, if memory serves. It was right after Christmas when one of yer alien vessels appeared over Rendlesham Forest, jist east of Ipswich. According to Stewie, a triangular metal object lit up the entire forest with this brilliant white light. Lots of folk saw it, but the RAF made no claims. From tha’ day forward Stewie worked tae get himself involved with the MAJESTIC crowd. I hadnae a clue he was stationed in Dreamland Base ’til he contacted me.

“Stewie told me this Colonel Vacendak is forcing ye tae lead him intae Lake Vostok. Stewie says most of these MJ-SECOR lads are secretly rootin’ fer ye tae succeed in bringing these free energy devices out intae public. The problem is Big Oil and the sociopaths in SECOR like this Colonel Vacendak, who enjoy killing. It’s the crazies tha’ keeps the others in line. They’ll kill my grandson and yer ex without batting an eye.”

I shifted uncomfortably, my skin still burning despite the I.V. drip. “Angus, can Jonas get me into Lake Vostok?”

“Aye. He has subs on board, and they’re equipped with those lasers tha’ melt ice. We rescued ye in one of ’em.”

“We? That was you in the dry suit?”

“Yes, Gertrude. And did ye have tae make such a fuss?”

“You try submerging in subfreezing water for that long and see how you handle it!”

“Stop yer whinin’. I teld ye in my note, we had tae drop yer core temperature tae disable the tracking device Stewie shot intae yer vein. The Colonel’s divers stopped searchin’ for yer body an hour ago. They gotta think yer dead. Tha’s whit we want.”

Angus stood to leave. “Finish yer I.V., then get dressed and find yer way to the pilothouse. Jonas says he needs tae train ye before he’ll give ye one of his subs.”

I had met Jonas Taylor and his friend James Mackreides eight years ago, shortly after my book, The Loch , was published. The Tanaka Oceanographic Institute had offered to host a public signing event at their California facility on the coast of Monterey. Constructed twenty-five years earlier by the late marine biologist Masao Tanaka, the Institute featured a man-made lagoon with an ocean-access canal that intersected one of the largest annual whale migrations on the planet. Designed as a field laboratory, the waterway was originally intended to be a place where pregnant gray whales returning from their feeding grounds in the Bering Sea could birth their calves. Masao was so convinced, his facility would bridge the gap between science and entertainment that he mortgaged his entire family fortune on the endeavor.

Instead, the lagoon would become home to Carcharodon megalodon , the sixty-foot prehistoric cousin of the great white shark.

Like Livyatan melvillei , megalodon was a Miocene monster believed to be extinct. Jonas Taylor had discovered them inhabiting the deep waters of the Mariana Trench while piloting a top-secret dive for the Navy. According to his testimony, “I was staring out the portal at the hydrothermal plume when sonar picked up an immense object rising from below. Suddenly, a ghost-white shark with a head bigger than our three-man sub emerged from the mineral ceiling.”