Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

RETURN OF THE MONSTER

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 41

CHAPTER 42

CHAPTER 43

CHAPTER 44

CHAPTER 45

EPILOGUE

AUTHORS NOTES:

“… combines the terror of Benchley’s JAWS with the primordial horror of Alten’s MEG in an adventure that is the best of both.”

—Matthew Summers, Smash Dragons Book Reviews.

FATHOMLESS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Thank you to my test pilots – Matthew Summers, genre expert, and ex-Coastie, Paul Scott – good insights, gentlemen. And also a big shout-out to my editor, Amanda ‘AJ’ Spedding – my wizard who turns lead into gold!

DEDICATION:

To the men and women of the Coast Guard – alert, responsive, adaptive, and always there – thank you. Semper Paratus.

“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant,

and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

—Isoroku Yamamoto

Body of water found beneath Canada is larger than all the Great Lakes combined.

Huge reserves of the oldest water on Earth are locked deep within the planet's crust and could be home to new forms of life, according to scientists. Geologists have revealed they have found water that is up to 2.7 billion years old in sites all over the world. They now estimate that there could be around 2.5 million cubic miles of this water buried beneath the ground.

RICHARD GRAY, DAILY MAIL UK. Dec 2014

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

THE LEGEND OF BAD WATER

Baranof Island, Southern Wilderness, Gulf of Alaska, 1952

Jim Granger stood on the rock ledge and looked out over the glacier valley that would feed into the bay miles to the west. It was October, and though the magnificent blue water from Indigo Lake sparkled from the autumn sunlight, after dark it would be bitterly cold, and deadly. He needed to be back at the camp long before then.

He turned to scan the rock face – about fifty feet further along the narrow ledge he perched upon, there was a crack in the stone that displayed nothing but a dark void, a cave entrance, the cave entrance he hoped.

It had taken him months, no, years to find his way here. Ages ago he had done some field work for a mining company, and had developed a relationship with some of the local native Nantouk people.

The Nantouk were an old race and had lived in the Alaskan territory for over ten thousand years. They were still distrustful of strangers, as first contact with Europeans hadn’t gone well – in the 1700s they had met and traded with both Russian and Spanish explorers – epidemics of smallpox and other infectious diseases quickly followed, near decimating the people. Then came the hunters, traders, land grabbers, and finally the miners, of which he was one.