birthday-a Luminox Navy SEAL dive watch, the same as her father’s. She pressed a button on the watch and its yellow face glowed to life. The little light seemed like a spotlight in her eyes, and she squinted against it as her eyes adjusted.
While the watch did the job of illuminating the time, it did little to reveal her surroundings. She checked the time-9:30 a.m. Then she saw the date and gasped. It’d been four days…four days since her dive with her father! As her eyes began to water again, she noted a slight glint of light reflecting from the floor. She reached her glowing watch out toward it and saw her camera, now freed from its waterproof casing.
Her dank cubby had stopped moving almost completely, just rising and falling gently. She slid over to the camera and snatched it up. After finding the power button, she turned it on. The view screen blazed to life, causing her to squint again; but while the screen glowed brighter than the pitch-darkness surrounding her; it could only project the light it took in through its lens, which, at the time, was none.
Giona pushed the button on her watch again and held it down, moving the watch face in front of the camera’s lens. The light of the watch magnified through the camera and bloomed from the view screen. For the first time, Giona saw her own body. Then the watch was extinguished, and the light disappeared. She needed more light. Feeling the camera’s solid frame in the dark, Giona realized she held a bright light source in her hands. Snapping a few pictures would reveal everything.
Not bothering to aim, Giona held up the camera and took a photo. The flash exploded into the small dark chamber like an atom bomb. The brightness shot stabs of pain through Giona’s fully dilated eyes. She groaned, and in the resuming dark, now colored by shades of purple dancing in her vision, she lowered the brightness and set the camera to take multiple photos. She hoped the lower light level but would allow her eyes to adjust.
With three quick bursts, she held the button down, unleashing a strobe of light on the small chamber. With each successive barrage, her eyes adjusted. Then she held the button down. The flash burst brilliantly, twice a second for thirty seconds.
Giona took in the space around her. Blue veins pulsed just beneath the pink flesh above, below, and all around her. At one end of the cavity, a large swirl of taut flesh, like a giant, muscled sphincter, emerged from the darkness. She realized that was how she’d entered the chamber.
The full weight of her situation fell on her as she saw the small chamber for the first time, realizing she was trapped in some godforsaken portion of s sea monster’s gullet. She’d either die of starvation or be digested alive. A chill enveloped her body. She pulled her knees to her chest while leaning against one of the soft walls. Having seen enough of her situation, she dropped the camera and longed for the blessed escape of unconsciousness to return.
She didn’t want to be awake when the beast began to digest her.
36
The Titan-Gulf of Maine
“Bloody hell!” Trevor shouted as he stared at the video feed transmitting to the bridge of the Titan from Ray below.
He saw it. He saw her as clearly as every other living soul standing on the bridge. In a brilliant display of light, the silhouette of a young woman pierced the skin of the leviathan just as it seemed Atticus would finish it off. The girl still lived. Atticus’s daughter was still alive, in the belly of the beast. “This can’t be happening.”
Andrea placed her hand on the screen display of Atticus placing his hand against the lexan bubble of the submersible. “She’s alive.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, tracing the wrinkles formed by her wide smile.
O’Shea was equally taken aback. He moved away from the screens, deep in thought, his forehead a crossroads of creases. “A miracle.”
Trevor focused on Atticus’s face, watching his expression morph from despair to hope. Of all the accursed things that could have happened, this was not only the most unlikely, but also the worst. His warrior, his brave hero, had been reduced to a blathering father in the thirty seconds that it took him to register the form of his living daughter inside Kronos.
“Do it, Atticus,” Trevor shouted. “Finish the beast! Finish the activation code! Do it, man!” Trevor shook the screen.
“No!” Trevor bleated as he shoved away from the offensive screen. Atticus wouldn’t act. He had the creature safely at the bottom of the sea. He could finish it without posing a danger to the Titan.
If only his daughter were still dead.
Trevor turned his eyes back to the scene going on below and felt a chill ripple through him. Staring through the central screen and burrowing into his soul were two yellow eyes.
Kronos.
The beast mocked him. Taunted him.
Damn the beast, and damn Atticus!
Trevor slipped back to Remus while the others stared silently at the screen, watching Atticus and Kronos simply sit and gawk at each other. “Are we directly above them?”
Remus pealed his eyes away from the screens. He shook his head slightly, snapped out of his daze, and nodded. Then a smile spread on his face as he read Trevor’s mind.
“Drop a spread of depth charges. Force the beast to the surface. Have a crew take the heli up with a full load of torpedoes, high-yield. Ready the antisub rockets with mortars…and load the 356mm.” Trevor glared at the screens. Atticus had yet to move. “We’re doing this my way now.”
Remus grabbed the captain and two more of the crew, quietly delivering his orders. All three nodded rapidly, mentally preparing for the tasks at hand. As Trevor watched, he couldn’t help but smile. The crew had been trained in the fine art of war as much as how to polish brass. They’d prepared for a moment like this for years. He could see by the sparkle in each man’s eyes that they were ready and eager.
Still, Trevor wished it weren’t necessary, but his hero had betrayed them all. Of course, he blamed himself for the snafu. While there was no way he could have foreseen Giona’s still being alive, it wasn’t wise to allow Atticus access to Ray alone. But the man had seemed such a competent and determined killer, Trevor hadn’t considered the idea that there might be a reason to change his mind.
But there it was.
No matter, Trevor thought. His prize was within reach, and no man, no matter how liked, had ever stood between Trevor Manfred and his goal. If the depth charges didn’t succeed in killing the beast, they would force it to the surface. Trevor would then unleash a barrage of torpedoes from air and from sea, followed by missiles packed with antisubmarine mortars, and if they were really lucky, they’d get off a clean shot with the big gun and fourteen- inch cannon salvaged from a World War II battleship that Trevor had refitted for the Titan. Hidden below decks, the gun had only one barrel instead of three, but it could still sink, and kill, most anything in the ocean.
Remus slid back to Trevor. “The chopper will be in the air in five minutes. The torpedoes are being loaded. The missiles are warming up and the cannon…” Remus smiled. “We’ll take care of that from here.”
Andrea gasped and spun around to find Remus and Trevor speaking in hushed voices, but she had heard them. A single word had trickled through her preoccupied mind and had shaken her out of her emotional stupor. “Did you say cannon?”
Her eyebrows furrowed angrily. She knew they had. As she stalked toward the two men, the rest of the conversation, which she’d heard but not registered, began to penetrate her consciousness.
“Atticus is still down there. His-his daughter is still alive.”
Trevor grinned. “I’m afraid-” Trevor scratched his head through his fluffy white hair, “how can I put this-not for long.”
Andrea couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She knew Trevor was evil. The man reeked of darkness, but she wouldn’t have guessed him capable of this; nor had she ever imagined that the Titan was much more than the world’s largest pleasure yacht. It was, in fact, the world’s most luxurious battleship! “You son of a-”
Remus’s backhand caught her across the cheek, nearly breaking her jaw. She spilled across the bridge, falling into a chair and slumping to the floor. She’d never been hit like that in her life, and while it didn’t hurt as much as
