Weston Ochse - Age of Blood

They swam to the tactical underwater vehicle that Holmes had lowered on his own line. Laws powered it up and cycled it through its checks until he was sure it was ready to go. While he cycled through the setup and sonar, Holmes established coms. The mission plan was to move outward in a concentric circle while Yank and Walker held on to either side, ready to defend or attack if necessary. Holmes was a free floater and would move diagonally behind the Big Wheel–sized underwater craft and ensure that nothing came up behind them.

The light of the TUV gave them nearly five meters’ visibility. But their true vision came from the sonar, which could read seventy meters and showed depth, direction, and relevant size on a five-inch circular green display.

They’d landed fifty meters due east from where Emily Withers was taken. They began their concentric circles moving outward at a patient clip. Single fish appeared as yellow dots. Small groups of fish appeared as orange clumps. Large fish were shown in red. Here and there an occasional orange clump flashed to red, demonstrating a merging of fish schools. One came right toward them. Laws communicated this to the team just as the school of fish approached, then split, swimming madly away. To Laws they appeared to be nothing more than a thousand or so ten-inch blacklip dragonets, orange with black dorsal fins.

Then came a fish that was chasing them, a smooth hammerhead shark, eager to continue its mobile buffet. But when it saw Triple Six, its eyes on the end of the hammers grew wide, and it spun around, disappearing first from sight, then the sonar screen. The hammerhead was about four feet, hardly a danger to the team. If it had been in a hunting party with a dozen or so, they might have become aggressive enough to attack.

The water suddenly cooled. Laws checked the depth and saw that they’d found a drop-off of more than thirty meters. Half a minute later a single orange and red dot began to move toward them from west and down. Laws communicated this to the others, noting that it was now solidly red. He stopped the TUV, pointing it toward the oncoming sea creature. About the time he noticed that there were no other fish around, not even small ones on the screen, it began to come into focus.

Swimming as if it owned the ocean, an oarfish appeared whose body seemed to flap like a riffle of fabric. It saw them, acknowledged them, then swam around them. It became obvious that this fish, easily ten meters long, couldn’t grab a person. Even though it was as long as two Cadillacs end-to-end, its mouth was barely large enough for a human hand. Doing mental math, Laws suspected one would have to be five times the size of this one for it to have a mouth and jaw long enough to grab a person. And he doubted one that size existed.

Although…

The fish turned and went back the way it came.

Laws moved the TUV after it, if only to see if it might lead them to more oarfish, perhaps even larger ones.

They’d traveled about two minutes when a red blob invaded the right edge of the sonar. It moved quickly toward them. Laws had to stop and turn to face it. When he did, the spotlight captured a giant bullet-shaped head, easily the size of a Fiat 500, hurtling through the water toward the smaller oarfish. Long tentacles trailed behind the giant Humboldt squid, as did two clublike appendages.

It was clear the oarfish couldn’t match it with speed, and it had no way to defend itself; even so, it turned toward the squid. For a moment, the oarfish was straight as an arrow and it appeared that the squid would impale itself on the creature. But at the last second, the squid’s bullet-shaped body rose, exposing the two clublike appendages, which shot out and grabbed the oarfish, drawing it to the nest of tentacles. The squid’s giant parrot-like beak descended from the body and began to rip free great pieces of meat from the length of its prey.

The water was suddenly filled with blood and pieces of floating fish meat. Remembering the shark, Laws reversed the engine of the TUV and backed away. He was perhaps ten meters back when the first of many orange dots crept on to the screen and began moving toward the red blob that was the feasting squid. The only thing worse than being in the middle of a pack of hyena feasting on the Serengeti Plain would be to be in the middle of an ocean with blood in the water and a hundred sharks eager to feed.

“Chief—we’ve got to go!” he shouted into his mask.

He punched the power on the TUV to full, and swung around. Soon they were moving at max speed, still pathetically slow compared with how fast a shark could move. Walker, Yank, and Holmes were kicking madly with their fins, giving the TUV an extra couple of knots. Still, the inevitable happened as a cluster of sharks spotted them and gave chase.

Laws elbowed Walker and pointed behind them. Walker kept kicking, but turned, brought his spear gun to bear, and fired.

Laws spared a glance. The shot had missed.

While Walker reloaded, Yank turned and fired.

This one got the lead shark through the head.

Holmes fired and skewered another shark.

Soon, there was more blood in the water and no matter how intent the sharks had been to chase down Triple Six, they couldn’t fight a million years of evolution screaming at them to eat the weak.

As Triple Six disappeared into the dark water of the Sea of Cortez, the hammerheads fed on their own.

A fifty-four-foot fishing yacht waited for them when they bobbed to the surface. They boarded, dragged the TUV with them, then began removing their scuba gear. The stern deck was lit by a pair of lights from the cockpit, which could be reached by ladder over a bunkroom with two long benches and a bar at the back. Meanwhile, a tall African American with a close-cropped, dyed-yellow Afro brought out a six-pack of Corona. He wore UDT shorts, flip-flops, and a shirt that said I’d Rather Be Fishing . He had a soul patch beneath his lower lip in the shape of a diamond.

When he passed the beers out, Holmes said, “Thanks, J.J.”

“No problem at all. Glad you had the time to come down and do some fishing.”

“Except it’s not your kind of fishing,” Walker said, standing with his wetsuit peeled down to his waist. He drank deeply from his bottle.

“You don’t know what kind of fishing I do down here,” J.J. said. “I could be doing anything.”

“Knowing you, I bet you spend most of your time fishing for mermaids,” Laws said good-naturedly.

“I do spend a considerable time in search of Mrs. Jones number five. I keep doing interviews, but still not hiring.”

“Interviews.” Laws snorted. “Good one. Here, let me introduce someone to you. Petty Officer First Class Jack Walker and Petty Officer Second Class Shonn Yankowski, meet Lieutenant Commander Jingo Jones, BUD/S Class 231.”

“Retired,” J.J. added. “You can call me J.J., just don’t call me Jingo.”

“J-I-N-G-O and Jingo was his name-o,” Laws said, as if on cue.

“Need I say more?” J.J. looked pained as he took a sip of his own beer.

Walker stuck out his hand. “Call me Jack.”

“You can call me Yank, then,” the newest SEAL added.

Triple Six finished unsuiting, then climbed into shorts and T-shirts from their dry bags, which J.J. had retrieved for them. When the scuba gear was stored and Holmes had reported in to Billings, they sat around relieving the stress from the mission.

“So, what brings your spooky selves down here?” J.J. asked.

Walker and Yank glanced at each other.

Laws stared at Holmes, deferring to him.

Holmes leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring into the beer bottle. “How much do you know about my team?”