Death in Deep Water

by Paul Kemprecos

  The sharks were all around me, but they veered off rather than come near, which was fine. My fins touched the sandy bottom. A few kicks propelled me toward Stonehenge. I pulled myself into the center circle and looked up. Even if you never get closer to a shark than mako steak in a fish restaurant, you have to admire the beauty of the creatures. With their metallic gunmetal skin they look more like machines than living things.

  I shook my head. Something was going on. After Arnold’s initial arrival, the sharks had settled down. They were acting differently with me. They seemed hyper, wired, disturbed. Some of the smaller fish darted across the tank in short nervous sprints and swam against traffic, confusing the other fish, bumping into them.

  Within seconds, a new pattern evolved. The fish circled just above my head, forming a regular merry-go-round, with me in the middle. I pivoted on my knees and waited for a chance to kick my way to the top of the tank, but there was no break in the silver-finned canopy. Besides, I had other things to worry about.

  A shark around three feet long broke ranks. It raced in and bumped my shoulder with its snout, then shot off and quickly circled the tank. Sharks will graze a target before taking a bite. This guy was gearing up for an attack.

  I tightened my grip on the billy and had it ready when he lunged again. A shark attacking head-on presents an impossible target, but I was lucky. I jabbed with the stick and it caught it behind the gills, deflecting the attack. The shark didn’t like being poked and moved off to regain its courage. I tried to keep it in sight, but it was becoming tougher, because every shark in the tank was moving in a deadly carousel. The small shark angled in for another attack. It was a fatal miscalculation.

  Whitey hadn’t shown the same signs of agitation as the smaller sharks. That lethargy ended when the smaller shark cut in front of Whitey, who reacted like a punchdrunk pug moving on instinct. She clamped her jaws into the shark flesh and shook her head violently. The smaller shark came apart in an explosion of blood and guts. Instantly, two other sharks raced in to get the crumbs, setting off a chain reaction.

  The shark tank went crazy.

  Gray bodies hurled themselves in every direction, jostling, bumping, biting in a mad frenzy. They whirled above me like a flock of frenzied birds. Each slashing attack brought new jets of blood to drive the sharks to even greater levels of fury. This was no place for me, but it was impossible to surface through the cloud of whirling bodies and snapping teeth.

  I moved as close as I could to a Stonehenge megalith and hunched over, turtle fashion, my elbows and knees in the sand.

  Sharks dipped and wheeled. One bumped into my shoulder and ricocheted off.

  Blood pounded in my temples. I wanted to scream.

  Something hard slammed into the top of my head.

  Whitey. I braced myself. The rubber wet suit would be a frail armor against the shark’s razor-sharp teeth. I pulled my elbows and knees close together and curled into a fetal position. I was trying to present as small a target as possible, hoping Whitey would take a bite out of my fin and be happy with it. I closed my eyes and clamped my teeth down on the regulator almost hard enough to chew trough the plastic mouthpiece. The metallic clink of the air valve and the rapid exhalation of bubbles were loud in my ears.

  Something bumped my head again.

  This was it.

  Chapter 13

  Nothing happened.

  I opened my eyes and glanced up, fearfully expecting to see the razor-sharp teeth in Whitey’s half-moon mouth about to clamp onto my head. But I saw only the bottom bars of the shark cage about three feet above me. The door hung open and must have been what bumped me. Uncoiling my legs, I pushed off against the floor of the shark tank and shot through the narrow opening like an arrow. Once inside the cage, I quickly reached down, closed the door and latched it.

  The cage began to rise. None too soon. Bodies bounced off the bars like a stampede of drunks making last call at the ’Hole on a Saturday night. My problems weren’t over. The cage was made to protect a diver from big sharks, not smaller fish like the yard-long one who was trying desperately to get at me. Caught up in the frenzy, he was squeezing between the bars, his eyes wild, his mouth snapping wildly.

  Even a minor shark bite has the potential to kill you. The only variable is the degree of shock.

  My back was to the bars. The shark was halfway into the cage, going for my midsection. I brought the shark billy up, fast, and rammed it down Junior’s throat like a plumber unclogging a toilet. The shark sank his teeth into the wood and jerked his body. He would have wrenched the billy from my hand if the loop hadn’t been secured around my wrist.

  Okay, hotshot, you want the stick, you can have it.

  I shoved the billy so far down his throat the nails on the end must have tickled his tail, and slid the strap off my wrist. Junior backed off and disappeared into the whirling maelstrom, taking the billy with him.

  The cage neared the surface.

  I looked down in amazement. Every fish in the tank had gone insane. The water was clouded with fish blood and bits of flesh. Another few seconds and the cage was clear, swinging off to the side on its boom. As soon as there was solid floor under me I opened the door, dropped onto the walkway, and ripped my face mask off.

  Mike Arnold had the winch control box in his hands. I was shaking, half with terror, half with rage. My legs felt like inner tubes, but I went for him anyhow. I managed a round-house right that would have dislocated his jaw if it had landed solidly. It’s never a good idea to lead with your right hand, and even worse form to try to hit someone while you’re wearing fins and an air tank with hoses dangling from it. I tripped over my fins and fell forward. The blow glanced off Arnold’s cheek. I would have fallen onto my face if Arnold hadn’t grabbed my wrist and steadied me.

  “Hey!” he shouted. “Take it easy!”

  With my left hand I tried to claw out of piece of his throat. It was a clumsy move, and Arnold held that wrist, too. I struggled for a second, but didn’t get anywhere. Arnold was one strong dude. I stopped pulling away and stood there glaring at him until my panting slowed and my breathing became more normal.

  “You can let me go,” I grunted. “I won’t take a swing at you.”

  Arnold had more faith in human nature than I would have in his place. Doubt lingered in his eyes, but he released my wrists.

  “Are you okay?” he said.

  “Sure. I’m just fine. I’ve always wanted to go swimming in the middle of a shark feeding frenzy.”

  I went over to the pool and looked down. Sharks were still swarming. It was hard to see what was happening because the water was so dirty. I couldn’t believe I had escaped with my skin in one piece.

  I turned to Arnold. “What the hell happened?”

  “Jeezus, I don’t know. I swear it. You saw me go in. There was no problem. I admit I wanted to bust your ass, but I never would have sent you down if I knew they’d go crazy.”

  He had a point. The sharks hadn’t bothered him.

  “What did I do that was different from you?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing. One second it was okay, the next, all hell broke loose. I got the cage down to you as fast as I could.” Arnold was stricken. If he were acting, he was doing a good job of it.

  He came over and stared down at the bloody bedlam. His eyes widened in astonishment.

  “Holy shit,” he said. “It’s a goddamn crazy house down there. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Austin will go out of his frigging mind.”

  I peeled off my wet-suit jacket. “I’d love to stick around while you explain it to him, but I’m going to get some dry underwear and take a few hours off. I think I wrenched my shoulder. Any objection?”

  He opened his mouth. Nothing came out.

  “Thanks,” I said. I got out of my wet-suit bottoms and pulled my shorts and jersey onto my soggy skin. Leav
ing Arnold to mop up, I went outside and walked over to the main plaza, where I sat on the edge of the fountain. I was still trembling. I put my head between my knees and took several deep breaths. I was sitting this way when Sally Carlin came by.

  “Soc, are you all right?” she said.

  I sat up and gave my best imitation of a grin.

  “Yeah, thanks. I just went for a swim with Whitey and his friends and the party got a little rough.”

  She looked puzzled. “I don’t understand.”

  Sally was a sweetheart, but I wasn’t in the mood to explain. I jerked my thumb back at the aquarium building. “Ask Mike Arnold. He’ll tell you all about it.”

  I got up and started for the locker room. Realizing I was being a rude jerk, I turned around and said, “I’ll tell you about it later if you’re still interested.” She nodded, her face wreathed in concern.

  The locker room was deserted. I sat on a bench and reviewed the last twenty minutes. Was this another accident like Eddy Byron’s? Suppose it wasn’t an accident? The sharks ignored Mike Arnold. I’m down a few seconds and every shark in the tank starts tying a bib around its neck. I couldn’t figure it. But one thing was deadly certain; it didn’t pay to get careless near some of the full-time inhabitants at Oceanus.

  I wanted to talk to Austin about the attack, but that could wait until Mike gave him the bad news about his sharks. I changed into jeans and T-shirt and went out to my truck. My shoulder felt fine. I just needed an excuse to get away and took advantage of Arnold’s guilt, real or not, for some time off.

  A lone picket was at the gate. It was the goateed man. I stopped the truck and said, “Good morning. Not much business for you today.”

  I guess staffers from Oceanus usually didn’t stop to chat because he smiled and said, “Good morning. A few people still don’t know the park is closed, so we want to be here to show the flag and make our point. We’re not angry at the staff. We know you’re just doing a job. It’s the management and owners we want to reach.”

  “I’m glad you’re not mad at us,” I said. “By the way, where’s the main office of the Sentinels?”

  He laughed. “You’re not talking about Greenpeace. SOS has no formal organization. There are no dues, no big fundraising campaigns or mailing lists.” He tapped his chest. “We like to think that each one of us in SOS carries his own membership right here, in his heart.”

  “No executive director or president?”

  “Oh no, the nearest thing to a leader is Walden Schiller. I guess you could call him our spokesman. Are you interested in joining? You’d be doing yourself and the planet a favor.” He glanced toward the park entrance. “This is not a healthy place to be, my friend.”

  I nodded, put the truck in gear, and headed out toward Route 28. It was nice of the picketer to warn me about Oceanus, but he wasn’t saying anything I didn’t know.

  Chapter 14

  The headline on the SOS flier got right to the point.

  It said: WE ARE AT WAR.

  The copy was equally direct.

  In this war, two sides are fighting, the industrial world and the natural world. The stakes are Mother Earth and the Great Sea that nurtures Her. Casualties mount every day. Japanese whale fleets still murder whales. Hundreds of sea lions are netted or shot. Thousands of dolphins die in tuna nets. But nowhere is the combination of the greed and cynicism that allows this needless destruction more readily apparent than in this country’s aquariums and marine amusement parks, where intelligent and beautiful creatures will die, far from their families, after leading unhappy and unhealthy lives.

  If you agree that no morality in the world can sanction the kidnapping and imprisonment of orcas or dolphins for entertainment and profit, take these three simple steps:

  First, do not patronize marine amusement parks that imprison dolphins or whales or buy any products made by their owners, often large corporations. Second, write or call your representative in Congress to support any law which prohibits the capture, transport, and imprisonment of marine mammals. Third, support the Sentinels of the Sea as it fights against the unholy governmental and corporate coalition that sanctions marine murder. You too can join the battle to save the planet.

  The flier given me by the woman picketer in the tie-dyed shirt had no address. Nor did it ask for contributions the way most environmental organizations did. I took a bite of toasted tuna on an onion roll with melted Muenster cheese and sliced olives. I was back at the boathouse enjoying the comfort of dry underwear. The flier told me very little beyond what I already knew, which wasn’t very much. I picked up the phone and called Shaughnessy to see what he had on SOS.

  “That was an easy one,” Shaughnessy said, “at least up to a point.”

  “Up to what point?”

  “The Sentinels like ink in the papers and coverage on the boob tube when it comes to their protests and such, but they’re a little shy about their personal business. They have no national officers and no official enrollment.”

  “I’m starting from zero, Ed. All I’ve got is a blurb from The New York Times and a promotional flier. Anything you’ve dug up is money in my pocket.”

  “Then here’s a few coins for you to jingle. Have you ever heard of Earth First?”

  “Yeah, I saw a piece on ‘60 Minutes.’ They’re a radical environmental group that raises hell with the logging industry. They go around spiking trees and putting sand in bulldozer gas tanks.”

  “That’s right. They’ve been getting the most press of the environmental groups that got fed up with the process back in the seventies and eighties.”

  “What do they have to do with the Sentinels?”

  “They have a lot in common. Both groups don’t believe in compromise. They say the politicians have been corrupted by the big-money interests, so they take direct action, even if it’s against the law. They call it ‘monkey-wrenching,’ as in throwing a monkey wrench into the works. Some people call them ecological terrorists, and I think they promote the image.”

  “What do the mainstream environmentalist groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club think about monkey-wrenching?”

  “Thumbs down, Soc. They say the stuff the militants do is counterproductive and turns people off who might ordinarily back a cause. The mainstream guys really tear their hair out over SOS. The Sentinels make the other radical groups look like Cub Scout packs.”

  “In what way?”

  “The goals are pretty much the same, but their methods are different. The fringe groups say they’re not terrorists because they only act against inanimate objects. They don’t hurt people. Earth First! May spike a redwood, something that could injure a lumberjack who hits the nail with a power saw, but they do their best to warn them. It’s not the same with the Sentinels. They say flat out some things they do may hurt somebody, but that’s better than hurting the planet.”

  “Depends on your point of view, I suppose. Have they killed anyone?”

  “Not yet. They may have promoted this creepy image just to scare people.”

  “They’re doing a good job with me. What have they done to make the headlines?”

  “Can’t say for sure, Soc. They’re out in the open with the tame stuff, like picketing. But they pull a ‘who, me?’ about the covert action. The Mexican government wants to speak to them about the tuna-fishing boat that went to the bottom shortly after SOS picketed it for catching dolphins in its tuna nets. Iceland would like to ask them questions about a couple of whaleboats that were put out of commission.”

  “That must do wonders for our international relations.”

  “Oh, they’ve been busy in this country, too. Somebody poured powdered abrasive into the canning machinery bearings at a California tuna-packing plant. Thousands of dollars’ worth of damage there. It was an inside job.”

  “Was SOS involved?”

  “The Sentinels den
ied it in public, but their people owned up off the record. Here’s a cute one. They picketed an aquarium in Florida because it took lousy care of its animals. The aquarium got nasty, brought in the law to make some arrests. A few weeks later, more than a hundred thousand dollars in tropical fish died mysteriously. Seems someone put copper sulfate in their tanks. Another inside job. They’re better at infiltrating their targets than the FBI.”

  “Sounds like they’re prejudiced against fish. What kind of membership do they have?”

  “Even SOS can’t answer that question. There are no membership lists. Probably a couple of thousand by best estimates.”

  “Where does Walden Schiller fit into this?”

  “Schiller is usually referred to as a spokesman for the SOS, almost the way the Sinn Fein speaks for the Irish Republican Army. Supposedly he’s detached himself from administration, but those in the know say he sets the long-range policy goals and reviews all covert operations before they go down. The Sentinels have no national officers because the FBI would jump on the leaders if they could prove SOS has been naughty.”

  “Mr. Schiller’s mother didn’t raise a dummy for a son. What’s his background?”

  “He’s forty-one years old, comes from Massachusetts. Old Yankee family. He broke out of the mold, though, skipped Yale to go to California for his education as a marine biologist. He became radicalized out there and joined another environmental group on the Coast. He left them in 1988.”

  “Why did he leave?”

  “He claimed they were going mainstream, so he founded SOS. He’s divorced, one kid. His wife was a Massachusetts woman, and when she moved back home, he decided to spend some time here so he could visit his son and bring his gospel to us unenlightened easterners. He left the West Coast operation in the hands of a lieutenant. He shows up all over the place. He’s picketed as far south as Sea World in Florida, outside the Boston Aquarium, and down in Mystic. His most passionate target these days is Oceanus.”