As we watched, an eleven-foot bull shark darted in from below like a missile and savagely tore a hunk of blubber from Junior’s gushing belly. The calf cried out again, its almost human-like wail magnified in my headphones. Dozens of sharks were now circling below, hundreds of salmon soaring in and out of the chaos of blood and blubber to snap up morsels.

It was a Miocene feeding frenzy.

Then the second creature arrived, and this one scared the Highlands out of me.

14

“It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

—Lewis Carroll

“Ben, it’ll be focused on the calf’s blood, so move us away slowly. Ben, are you listening?”

Maybe it was the unnervingly quick exodus of the other predators; maybe it was the fear experienced during our confrontation with the eels, but instead of heeding my advice Ben opened the engine up full-throttle.

As I feared, our sudden movement attracted the trailing predator.

Hugging the plateau, Ben raced the sub to the west, and the creature closed the distance from below.

Ming tracked it on her aft camera, the image partially scrambled from the magnetic interference. “Ben, it’s gaining. Do not slow down. Why are you slowing down?”

“Outcroppings. I can’t react that fast.”

“Then move us away from the ridge!” I yelled.

“I can’t. It has the angle. It’ll cut us off. How close is it now?”

“Eighty feet.”

Ming screamed, “It’s coming up beneath us!”

Ben pulled back hard on his joystick, accelerating toward the surface at a steep angle as he ignited the Valkyries. The twin lasers burned through the thick ceiling of vegetation and suddenly we were airborne, soaring high over the algae-infested lake.

I caught a fleeting glimpse of coastal marshlands on our right just before the Barracuda’s keel slapped down hard against the unyielding chaos of roots and sulfur-rich soil carpeting the surface.

With the sub resting on its belly, the lasers burned nothing but air and darkness.

We were marooned.

Before I could contemplate our situation the vegetation mushroomed as the creature’s snout, skull, and upper body breached beneath us.

Purussaurus!

My brain went numb as the forty-ton caiman thrashed and rolled and obliterated the mattress of minerals, churning millions of years of growth into liquefied muck.

Our vessel slipped sideways back into the swamp and found water. Ben slammed his right foot to his pump-jet propulsor controls, sending us into a barrel-rolling descent just as an eight-foot-long lower jaw snapped at our starboard wing, its fangs catching only vegetation.

The Valkyries opened a sizzling path in the olive-green kelp forest as we zigged and zagged our way through an underwater maze of jungle.

Following our trail, the Miocene monster stalked us like a hungry tiger.

Glancing at my sonar screen, I saw where Ben was headed and nodded tersely.

Fifty yards… thirty …