December 7, 1941: Five Japanese two-man mini-subs speed toward the mouth of Pearl Harbor. Four mini-subs are sunk or captured. The fate of the fifth is unknown.Late at night, nearly three quarters of a century later: Marine biologist Jack Ferrell sails into a mysterious fog off Kauai’s Na Pali coast and discovers the sunken mini-sub. But in a depression in the coral lies a greater mystery: a human skull the size of a grapefruit.
Through a colleague, he learns the skull is from an extinct species of child-sized human beings who lived 12,000 years ago on the remote Indonesian island of Flores. But this skull is no fossil -- the creature it came from died recently.
In search of answers, Jack joins a select team of scientists who plunge into a subterranean world deep within the rugged mountains of the mystical Na Pali coast. What should have been a routine scientific excursion becomes a deadly encounter with the unknown and a race against time as the expedition battles the elements, personal fears, and even one of their own to unearth the key to the origin of the skull and the surprising truth behind one of Hawaii’s famous legends, the Menehune.
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EXCERPT:
Jack Ferrell straightened in the seat at the helm of his sixty-foot catamaran Pono and squinted at the fog that shouldn’t have been there.
Amid a seemingly impenetrable mist hugging the water a hundred yards ahead of him, an unearthly glow lit up the darkness.
He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and peered into the night. Normally finely honed, his senses were dulled by lack of sleep and the monotony of sailing miles of flat, open sea.
A frown knitted his thick black eyebrows together, wrinkling his swarthy skin. The phenomenon had to be a figment of his imagination.
No way could this be happening!
His mind searched for answers to the enigma. Red tides, bioluminescent organisms in the ocean. He’d read about milky seas and their incandescence, and the marine bacteria believed to cause them. He’d even seen photographs of them taken from outer space. But he’d never witnessed the phenomena first hand, or anything like them.
They might account for the strange glow, but not the unearthly fog.
Dense fog banks don’t form in Hawaii. And they certainly don’t glow in the dark.
He checked his GPS and mentally noted the coordinates. No one who hadn’t seen the bizarre mist would believe him.
Did he believe it himself?
He could’ve sworn the fogbank hadn’t been there a minute ago. But he had been staring at the heavens, searching the stars in the night sky the way he did whenever he was at sea. Even so, such a glow would surely not have gone unnoticed by his watchful eyes.
Befitting a marine biologist and an adventurer, his curiosity would not let him pass up the unknown. He adjusted his course and headed Pono directly for the center of the ghostly apparition.
The dense cloud closed in around Pono’s twin hulls, leaving the deck slick with moisture, and the rigging dripping wet. At once, the air became quite cool -- at least thirty degrees colder than the night air he’d been sailing in only minutes before.
Immediately, goose bumps rose on his bare arms and the breeze that filled Pono’s sail died.
The boat drifted.
He leaned over the side and peered at the unusually calm water, searching for the source of the light. No squid or any of the other creatures of the sea known to possess bioluminescent qualities.
It seemed the fog itself glowed.
He stood up and stared into the haunting gloom. What he saw defied scientific explanation.
Suddenly, a shrill noise jarred his thoughts.
What ...?
Again he narrowed his eyes and stared intensely into the mist, not sure what he heard. It sounded far off, muffled by the heavy dampness blanketing the water.
Then he heard it again.
A woman’s scream.
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