About the Author
----------------
Steve Alten is the best-selling author of the Meg series. A
native of Philadelphia, he earned a Bachelor's degree from Penn
State, a Masters from the University of Delaware, and a Doctorate
from Temple University. He is the founder and director of
Adopt-An-Author, a free nationwide teen reading program used in
thousands of secondary school classrooms across the country to
excite reluctant readers.
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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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1.
Monterey Peninsula Airport
Monterey, California
Saturday
The black Lexus JX sedan is double-parked outside Gate B, the
vehicle’s driver, Jonas Taylor, eyeballing the airport cop who
has sent him circling the airport four times already. The
sixty-six-year-old paleobiologist glances at his
twenty-four-year-old daughter, Danielle, curled up in the
passenger seat next to him. The model-pretty blonde, who works
part-time for a local NBC-TV affiliate as a news reporter and
weekends emceeing shows at the Tanaka Institute, is staring at
the digital clock on the dashboard, growing impatient. “Almost
four thirty. If his plane doesn’t get here soon, I’ll miss
the evening show.�
“His plane just landed. Relax.� Jonas taps the steering wheel
to an old Neil Diamond tune on the radio. “Anyway, Olivia can
always emcee the show in a pinch.�
“Olivia?� Dani looks at her her as if she just swallowed
turpentine. “Dad, the Saturday night show is my gig. Period.
Now would you please turn off that annoying song.�
“I like Neil Diamond.�
“Who?�
“Come on, I’m not that old.�
“Yeah, you are. Seriously, Dad, I will pay you to let me change
the station.�
“Fine, only no gangster rap.�
“It’s ‘gangsta,’ and get with the times. Ghetto is in.
It’s what we relate to.�
“My mistake. I forgot your mother and I raised you as a poor
black child in a gang-infested neighborhood.�
The airport cop approaches the Lexus. Before he can signal Jonas
to move the car, twenty-year-old David Taylor steps out of the
baggage cl exit, an orange and blue University of Florida
duffle bag slung over one broad shoulder. Jonas’s son is
wearing a gray Gator’s Football tee-shirt, faded jeans, and
sneakers. He is fit and tan, his brown hair long, speckled with
golden highlights from being in the sun, his almond-brown eyes
hidden behind dark sunglasses.
David tosses his duffle in the back seat of the Lexus and climbs
in. “Sorry. Plane was an hour late.�
“No worries. We just got here. Right, Dani?�
“Wrong. You know dad, he had to leave an hour early.� She
allows David to kiss her cheek. “You look good... Jesus, Dad,
drive!�
Jonas pulls into traffic, following the signs leading to Highway
68 West.
“You look like you gained a few pounds. Lifting weights
again?�
“Yes... and no, for the last time, I am not trying out for
football.�
“Sure, I know. I just saw the shirt and thought—�
“It’s just a shirt.�
“—because the coach called our house twice last week. He lost
two wide-outs to injuries in spring training. With your
speed—�
“Dad, enough! My playing days ended in high school.�
“Okay, okay. I just remember my playing days at Penn State...
those were the best of times.�
“Please, that was half a century ago.� Dani ruffles her
her’s thick mane of snowy-white hair. “David, what do you
think of Dad’s new look?�
David smiles. “It’s as white as Angel’s ass. It was still
gray last time I saw you.�
“Comes from working too closely with monsters.�
“I thought you enjoyed working with Angel’s pups?�
Jonas smiles at his daughter. “I was talking about you.�
Dani smacks him playfully across his head. “I told him he
should use that hair stuff that gets rid of the gray.�
“Don’t listen to her, Dad. It makes you look more
intelligent. Sort of like Anderson Cooper, only a lot older.�
“Good. I can use all the help I can get. David... about this
internship—�
“Dad, we talked about this.�
“There are other specialties in marine biology. We just
completed the Manta Ray sale with the Naval Warfare Center,
thanks, in part, to your piloting demo. The Navy knows you’re
the best pilot we have, and the Vice Admiral mentioned they could
use a good trainer.�
“You know I love piloting the subs. I just like working with
the Megs more. There’s something about big predators—�
“You want big predators? San Diego needs a new trainer for
their female orca. I could make a call—�
“Pass.�
“What’s wrong with orcas?�
“Nothing, if you enjoy teaching dog tricks to a whale.
Angel’s pups have special needs.�
“Pups? Christ, you make them sound like a litter of cocker
spaniels. The three runts are already larger than an adult great
white, and the two sisters... you tell him, Dani.�
Dani nods, text messaging on her cell phone. “The sisters are
evil. They’ll be as big and nasty as their mother.�
“Why do you call them ‘the sisters?’ Technically, all five
are sisters.�
“When you see them every day like Dani and I do, you’ll
understand. They may have shared the same womb, but the three
runts look and act nothing like Bela and Lizzy.� Jonas exits
Highway 68, heading south on Highway 1. “How’s Corrine?�
“We broke up.�
Dani looks up. “Seriously? I never liked her.�
“Wait,� Jonas jumps in, “what was wrong with Corrine?�
“She was getting too serious.�
“What’s wrong with serious? Is serious so bad?�
“How’s mom?�
“She’s good. And don’t change the subject.�
“Mom’s stressed out,� Dani says.
“Not PETA again?�
“Worse. A thug off-shoot. They call themselves R.A.W. Stands
for Return Animals to the Wild. Dad had to hire a security
outfit; they were puncturing the staff’s tires. I’m trying to
convince my producer to let me do an exposé. These assholes
don’t give a damn about the Megs. They’re just after the free
publicity.�
David says nothing, preferring to gaze out his passenger window
at the Pacific Ocean peeking through the rolling hillsides.
Jonas weighs the sudden silence. “Go ahead and say it, David.
‘The pen’s too small. The pups are getting too big.’ �
David looks at his her. “What did the State Assembly say?�
“Same as they’ve always said. No more expansion, at least not
along the coast. They offered us six hundred acres in
Bakersfield.�
“Bakersfield? Why not Death Valley?�
“There may be another option. Mac and I have a meeting on
Monday with Emaar Properties out of the United Arab Emirates.
Rumor has it they’re constructing some kind of new
state-of-the-art aquarium and hotel in Dubai.�
“I heard about that. The place is supposed to be incredible,
ten times the size of the Georgia Aquarium. You think they want
one of the pups?�
Jonas nods. “I’d bet the house on it.�
The Lexus heads south on Cabrillo Highway, exiting onto Sand
Dunes Drive. David stares at the ocean, mesmerized by its
cing surf, marveling at the differences between Monterey’s
rough Pacific and Florida’s calmer Atlantic. He has spent the
last three summers interning at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic
Institution in Fort Pierce, completing field work in order to
earn his bachelor’s degree in marine biology. Up ahead he sees
the familiar concrete and steel , the arena’s ocean-access
canal running out to meet the deeper ocean waters like a
submerged pier.
The Tanaka Institute and Lagoon: home to the most dangerous
creatures in the planet’s history.
Built by David’s maternal grandher, Masao Tanaka, more than
thirty-five years ago, the lagoon had originally been designed to
function as a field laboratory to study cetacean behavior. Each
year, tens of thousands of whales migrated south from the Bering
Sea along California’s coast, searching for shallow, protected
harbors in which to birth their calves. The Tanaka Lagoon,
essentially a man-made lake with an ocean-access canal, was
thought to be the perfect birthing place for pregnant females who
were struggling to make it down to Baja.
Masao had mortgaged his family’s future to build the facility,
but when rising costs had depleted those funds, he had been
forced to seek help from the Japanese Marine Science Technology
Center. JAMSTEC was more interested in creating an early-warning,
earthquake detection system off the Japanese coast, and Masao
held the patents on UNIS—a new Unmanned Nautical Information
Submersible. In exchange for funding his whale lagoon, Masao
accepted a high-risk contract with JAMSTEC to deploy twenty-five
UNIS robots seven miles below the Western Pacific along the
seismically active sea floor of the Mariana Trench.
To complete the mission, Masao’s son, D.J., had to escort each
UNIS to the bottom using an Abyss Glider, a one-man, deep-sea
submersible resembling an acrylic torpedo with wings. It would
take months to deploy the robots, but once the system was up and
running the network worked like a charm. And then, one after
another, the drones stopped transmitting data. JAMSTEC froze
funding on the whale lagoon, insisting Masao fix the problem. To
do that required retrieving one of the damaged UNIS robots—a
two-submersible job—but Masao refused to allow his other
pilot—his daughter, Terry—to make the dive with her younger
brother. Instead, he turned to an old friend for help.
Before he became a paleobiologist, Jonas Taylor had been the best
deep-sea submersible pilot ever to wear the N...
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