“No, smaller signature.” He listened and calibrated his sonar scope. “Maybe six feet long, moving fast, bearing forty-five degrees… still at a distance of five hundred feet.” He listened some more. “Closing.”

Greg leant back, trying to see over Jack and Yegor’s shoulders. “Which way?” he whispered to Abby.

Cate turned to see Abby holding up her hands, pointing.

“Zero degrees is dead ahead.” She swiveled. “One-eighty is behind, ninety degrees was right-side starboard, and two-seventy degrees left was port side. Okay? And everything else is varying degrees on that. You get it?”

“I think so. That way?” Greg pointed out into the darkness, between the front and the right side starboard.

Abby nodded. “Bingo.”

“Only a hundred feet out now – I think is coming in for a look at us.” Dmitry looked up and out the front window.

“Too small to worry us,” Jack said. “Turning three degrees to face it. Yegor, switch off the spot and window lights and we’ll see if we can draw it in close for a look-see.”

Yegor flicked switches and immediately the blinding spotlight followed by the ring of halogen lights surrounding the convex window went out.

The sonar pinged, and something else ticked softly above them as the group sat and waited. Cate saw that Dmitry sat hunched over his sonar, his face ghoulishly lit by the phosphor green of his screen as he calmly read out data.

“Fifty feet, thirty, twenty, ten…” he looked up. “It’s here.”

“Lights up,” Jack said.

The big fish was framed in the glaring lights outside the window. The skin of the creature was pink and wrinkled, like that of a newborn baby. It had a shark-like shape but an elongated, flattened snout above protruding jaws that were filled with nail-like teeth.

“Now that is one ugly mother,” Greg said

“Yech; looks sorta boneless… ancient,” Abby said.

The thing swam more like a snake than a shark, its long sinuous body sliding up and over the underwater cliff.

“Looks ancient, because it is.” Greg leaned towards Abby, looking delighted for the opportunity to impress her with his knowledge. “Been around for over one hundred and twenty million years. But if we went deep diving to about three hundred feet into one of the Atlantic sea canyons, we might just run across one today. It’s called a goblin shark.” He looked back at the sinuous shark’s face. “For a very obvious reason; it’s damn ugly.”

“Incoming!” Dmitry’s yell made them all cringe.

In the glare of the halogen light ring, the goblin shark was struck by something fast, and big enough to completely block the window. Once their vision cleared, they were left with a maelstrom of flesh fragments, blood, and the remaining front third of the goblin shark, severed from the rest of its body.