Gutierrez finally spoke. “Really, Maria? Now is not the time for that.”
Kevin, however, didn’t dismiss her concerns right away. He looked right at her, waiting to see if she thought whatever she’d seen was really important right now. Gutierrez had done this before, acting like anything out of her mouth was inconsequential. Maria wasn’t even sure if he knew he was doing it. She’d seen him do it with Boleau as well. And with any woman, really. But Kevin wouldn’t. Just because he was a man didn’t mean he didn’t have intimate knowledge of what it was like to be treated like his opinion didn’t matter based on his gender.
Maria was grateful for that, but in this particular instance she had to second guess herself. They were in a pretty damn tense and important situation right now. Some odd behavior on the part of the sharks could probably wait. Even if the way so many of them had made a beeline for just the one Zodiac had tripped all the warning signals in her head, she couldn’t let that be a factor at the moment. Once they managed to stop Mercer and Murphy, then they would be able to turn their full scientific attention to the sharks’ weird schooling behavior.
Maria shook her head. Kevin responded with a barely perceptible nod. She loved him for that. If she had decided the sharks were a pressing concern, he would have listened.
The Tetsuo Maru had started to cross the border into El Bajo Marine Protected Area at this point, and the Cameron was now fast approaching it from the side. As speedy as they were moving, though, the two Zodiacs were quicker. “Cindy, give us a report,” Maria said into her walkie-talkie. “What’s happening out there?”
“They’re still outpacing us, but I don’t know how long it would take them to put that bomb on the hull and get to a safe distance. We might be able to stop this.”
As Kevin went back to yelling into the radio, now speaking completely in English as his limited Japanese was no longer enough to suitably warn Ito of what danger they were in, Maria lowered the walkie-talkie and thought about this. If this had really been Murphy and Mercer’s plan all along, it was a stupid one. Cindy was right. They could reach the other Zodiac before Mercer had finished setting the bomb up, a process that would have been even harder considering the Tetsuo Maru was still moving at a speed that would challenge the Zodiac’s tiny engine just to keep steady alongside it. Either the couple really were that dumb or else there was more to this plan than anyone else was seeing.
“Come on, you idiots,” Maria muttered to herself. “You know we can stop you. Why would…”
A thought suddenly occurred to her. No. That couldn’t be it. They wouldn’t. Would they? It hadn’t seemed to Maria that they were really so ruthless as to do something like that, but then she also hadn’t thought they were the kind to use bombs to get a simple environmental point across either.
“Shit,” she said, much louder this time.
Kevin stopped his frantic pleas to the Tetsuo Maru. The ship was slowing down, so maybe what he’d been saying was starting to get through to them. Of course, that also made them easier targets for the two maniacs in their raft.
“What is it?” Kevin asked.
Maria didn’t answer him, instead turning to talk to Gutierrez. “Where the hell is Monica right now?”
“There was a crash in one of the labs like something had fallen over,” Gutierrez said. “She went to go check on it. Why?”
Maria spoke into her walkie again. “Boleau, can you hear me?”
There was a pause before Boleau answered. “Yeah, what is it?”
“Are you anywhere near the engines?”
“Close enough. Why?”
“Get out of there. Get out of there now!”
Cindy’s voice came through now. “Mercer has something else in her hands. It looks like… she has a walkie-talkie after all.”
It wasn’t a walkie-talkie, Maria realized. It was a remote.
“Monica, get away from the engines!” Maria screamed. It was loud enough that Boleau probably would have heard her even without the walkie-talkie. She didn’t have any time to respond, however, because right then a sudden boom rocked the entire Cameron.
Those bastards.
“Holy shit, what was that?” Gutierrez asked. The Cameron suddenly slowed and both the Zodiacs continued zooming on toward the Tetsuo Maru without them. Maria didn’t wait around long enough to answer. She ran out of the bridge and down the steep steps to below deck. Immediately at the bottom of the ladder was one of the small, cramped labs with multiple specimen tanks full of water. One had come loose and fell to the floor, leaving it soaked in salt water. That, however, didn’t concern Maria just now. She was much more worried about the acrid scent of smoke in the air.
Monica was on the floor near the nearest door to the engine compartment, coughing as something thick and black wafted through the air. Maria stopped only long enough to stoop and make sure she was okay, no broken bones or abrasions or anything that suggested she’d been near the engine. Once she was satisfied, she continued on through the door, hoping against hope that she was wrong about what had just happened.
She wasn’t wrong. The explosion had been small and controlled, only slightly scorching the walls and not doing any structural damage to the trimaran’s hull. But the engines were devastated. Mercer had blown them up.
8
There wasn’t any time to inspect the damage, and yet paradoxically they couldn’t do anything else other than stand on the bridge and watch the rest of this morbid show play out.
Monica, once she’d stopped hacking up her lungs, had rooted around in their equipment and found another pair of binoculars. The two sets made their rounds between Maria, Kevin, Monica, and Gutierrez, each of them taking a few moments to see what was happening with the Zodiacs before passing them on to the next person. Gary and Vandergraf declined their turns. They were too busy watching the crew yell and scream and cry, all of it getting captured in Gary’s camera.
Maria had yelled into her walkie to tell Cindy what had happened. Kevin had resumed his frantic warnings to the Tetsuo Maru. Cindy had stayed silent, although Maria hoped that was because they were too busy dealing with Mercer and Murphy and not because something was wrong with the signal. The Tetsuo Maru, however, had finally responded, even if it was just, according to Kevin, the Japanese version of saying they didn’t believe him and he should fuck off. Despite that, the Tetsuo Maru had come to a full stop on the wrong side of El Bajo’s border and a number of people could be seen on the deck staring down at the two approaching Zodiacs.
“What the hell are they doing?” Gutierrez asked. “When someone says there’s a bomb approaching, you’d think they would, I don’t know, at least grab some guns and fire some warning shots.”
“They probably don’t have a lot of guns onboard,” Maria said.
“Harpoons then,” Gutierrez said.
Kevin shook his head. “They’re so used to people like us that don’t actually resort to violence, they don’t believe anyone associated with us would do such a thing. They just think it’s the next level of scare tactics.”
“Well they’re sure as hell about to be scared, all right,” Maria said. She happened to be holding the binoculars right as Murphy pulled up next to the ship. As he tried to keep the Zodiac in place, Mercer immediately got to work attaching the bomb to the hull. Kevin relayed all of this to the Tetsuo Maru, and finally several of the crewmen on the deck pulled out harpoon guns and aimed them at the raft below them.
“Oh God,” Monica said, handing her binoculars next to Gutierrez. “Oh God, I can’t watch this.”
Maria would have agreed that this was about to become a bloodbath, but Mercer appeared to realize what was going on and interrupted what she was doing long enough to reach back down into her pack in the raft. When she came back up she had a hand gun. She fired several shots into the air, aiming more in the crewmen’s general direction rather than actually trying to hit any of them. They all scattered, only one of them managing to fire a harpoon before he ducked away. The
harpoon went wild, ironically coming closer to hitting the Gutsdorfs as they tried to get within grabbing distance of the other Zodiac. Mercer handed the gun to Murphy, who pointed it at the Gutsdorfs and appeared to be shouting something at them. Both of the Gutsdorfs held up their hands where Murphy could see them while Mercer continued her work with the bomb.
“Seriously?” Gutierrez asked. “They seriously had a gun on them the whole time and none of us knew?”
Maria just gave an exasperated shrug. It wasn’t like she’d ever had cause to frisk all the volunteers before a voyage before. “Kevin, you need to tell them they need to prepare some life rafts. The Gutsdorfs aren’t going to be able to stop this. And then get on the channel for the Mexican Navy. We’re probably going to need rescue operations.”
“And they’re going to need to arrest the shit out of Murphy and Mercer,” Monica added.
“That too,” Maria said, although she had to wonder if that would happen. So far those two had thought to disable their engines, had come armed, and apparently knew how to rig up bombs. None of that implied that they were doing any of this on impulse. They’d planned it, or if they really were as dumb as they had looked and it hadn’t just been an act, then someone else had planned it for them. And with that level of planning there had to be an option for escape somewhere.
“Cindy, if you can hear this, get the hell out of there,” Maria said into the walkie. “Not only do you not want to get shot, but unless you’ve spent some time in a bomb squad I doubt you’ll be able to disarm it.” Maria didn’t think Mercer would have a bomb sophisticated enough that it would automatically explode if either of the Gutsdorfs messed with it, yet she wasn’t going to underestimate them again.
Gutierrez had her binoculars by this time. “They’re breaking off. Looks like they’re trying to get their distance. And Mercer looks done.”
Maria took the binoculars back from him. The Gutsdorfs were heading back to the Cameron as fast as their little raft could go. Mercer and Murphy were also putting some distance between themselves and their handiwork, although they were pointedly going in an entirely different direction than the Cameron. They couldn’t possibly get far. The Zodiacs were great for going ashore somewhere remote or moving quickly, but they didn’t carry that much fuel and Maria doubted that Mercer had any extra in her bag of tricks. The nearest land was Isla Partida, and after some quick calculating, Maria figured that if they made a beeline right for it they would come up just short enough for it to be a problem. However, they weren’t even going in that direction. Instead they were heading deeper into the Sea of Cortez.
Whether they noticed it or not, they were also heading right for the enormous school of sharks. Maria didn’t have any time to comment on that, though. That was when the bomb went off.
There was enough distance between the Cameron and the Tetsuo Maru that the explosion didn’t sound terribly loud in Maria’s ears. The flash, however, was bright enough that Maria had to look away for a second before putting her eyes back to the binoculars and trying to survey the damage. There was still too much smoke coming from where the bomb had been for her to see exactly how big of a hole it had made, but it was enough that the Tetsuo Maru immediately started to sink nose first.
“My God,” Monica whispered. The entire rest of the bridge was quiet. Maria felt like they should be doing something, anything, and yet the Cameron could do nothing more than float along aimlessly as the current slowly took it in the direction of El Bajo. Maria looked around, hoping someone else might have an idea, but everyone was too stunned to even move. Even Vandergraf, previously looking like he was having the time of his life, now looked pale.
“Boss?” Gary asked quietly. “Should I, uh, stop filming? This doesn’t feel right.”
Vandergraf took a moment to think it over before he shook his head. “No. Keep filming. We’ll need the evidence.”
Maria turned to Kevin. “Honey? What should we do?”
“I… I’m clueless,” he said. “This is so very far outside of my typical marine biology experience.”
Maria took a deep breath. “Okay.” Another breath. Time to take charge then. “Okay. Keep trying to reach the Navy. They shouldn’t be too far from here by now, right?” She didn’t stop to find out the answer. “Gutierrez and Boleau, get to the engines and see if there’s anything you can do with them. Anything at all. Find us paddles if you have to.”
The Cameron rocked beneath them as they were hit by a wave from the explosion. Several more dorsal fins popped up on the surface. The explosion had probably disturbed them right when a large number of people from the Tetsuo Maru were about to go in the water.
“What are you going to do while we’re busting our ass?” Gutierrez asked. He tried to sound stand-offish even though Maria thought she heard a note of relief in his voice that someone was telling him what to do.
“I’m going to see what we can do about rescue,” she said. “Gary, Vandergraf, you’re following me.”
Gary started to object. “We can probably get better shots of those two that did this if we—”
“Stop arguing and do what I say,” she said. She left the bridge without looking behind her to make sure they followed.
She still had the binoculars with her when she came out on the deck. The Cameron had drifted enough at an angle that she was still able to get a good view of the Tetsuo Maru even from the back, and she looked that direction just long enough to confirm that there were people getting into life rafts and dropping them in the ocean. She couldn’t exactly judge the speed that the ship was sinking, but she didn’t think any of it would still be above the water two minutes from now. Not all the crew would make it into life rafts. What she needed to do was figure out how to keep the hammerheads from savaging those who went into the drink.
They had one more spare life raft, but unlike the Zodiacs it was designed purely for emergencies and didn’t have their engines. It was better than nothing, and she immediately started inflating it. While she was doing this, she spoke to the Gutsdorfs. “Cindy, please tell me you guys are out there making a rescue effort.”
“We’ve already got one guy out of the ocean. At most we can hold three or four more.”
“Good. Keep those prods ready. The sharks are—”
“Holy hell,” Gary said from behind her. Maria looked over her shoulder to see both him and Vandergraf staring gape-jawed out at the sea. Maria glanced in that direction, figuring they were just speechless at the sight of their first shipwreck, then did a double take. They weren’t watching the Tetsuo Maru at all, as it was no longer the most spectacular sight in front of them.
Between them and the Tetsuo Maru, the ocean practically boiled with hammerhead dorsal fins. Had anyone else ever told her about this sight she would have thought they were exaggerating, but boiled was truly the only word that seemed to fit. The waters roiled and tossed at the sheer number of sharks. There were hundreds of them, all at the surface, probably more than had ever been at El Bajo prior to them being fished to near extinction. One or two even breached and flung themselves temporarily into the air, which was a practically unheard of behavior in this species.
“Oh my God, Maria are you seeing this?” Cindy asked.
“Move!” Maria said. “Get everyone you can out of the water right now. I don’t know what this is, but you…”
She stopped mid-sentence. There was something else out there. Something huge.
Even with all the other sharks disturbing the water, she could still see the shadowy outline of something as it passed beneath the Cameron. From its size, her first thought was that it had to be some kind of whale. Her best guess was that it was somewhere between twenty-five and thirty feet long, making it longer than even a great white shark would have been. It couldn’t have been a whale, though, given the activity of the hammerheads. Any nearby whales would be running for the hills.
She wondered for a moment if this was exactly the reason all those whales had been beaching this morning, al
though she didn’t have the time to give it any further thought. As it got further away, Maria lost sight of the massive shape, yet she was still able to follow it by the way all the other sharks seemed to part ahead of it like a mass of people scrambling to let a dictator through lest he take undue notice of them.
Then something came up through the water. A dorsal fin, probably about as tall as Maria herself.
This was most definitely not a whale.
Suddenly the raft sitting on the deck next to Maria didn’t feel like it would make a lick of difference.
“Oh God, the sharks are getting some of the fishers…” Cindy said. As horrible as that image was, Maria felt like they all had to move it they wanted to avoid one that was much worse.
“Cindy, get back to the Cameron now!” she screamed into the walkie-talkie.
“But there’s still people in the water…”
“Something else is out there, and it’s heading right for…” Maria stopped. She was going to say that it was heading for the Gutsdorfs and their measly attempt at a rescue operation. No sooner did she say it, though, that the fin made an abrupt turn and the vanished below the surface again. Instead of heading for the middle of the mass of hammerheads, it had looked like it was heading for the outer edge. Maria followed the last trajectory she had seen it on and found Mercer and Murphy, still moving away and apparently unaware of the bizarre carnage they’d left in their wake.
Maria would wonder later if, had the two traitors had their walkie-talkies with them, she would have warned them. She wanted to think of herself as a good enough person that she would have tried, but in the moment with so much chaos to blame on them she couldn’t be certain. It was a moot point, though. There was no way to communicate with them. All she could do was stand on the deck and watch what was simultaneously the most majestic yet most horrific sight she had ever seen in her life.
The speed with which the giant form reached the Zodiac was remarkable. No sooner had it disappeared below the water than it came up again. And it didn’t just come up to show its dorsal fin. It rose straight up out of the water head first as though in that brief period of time it had dived deep and then rocketed back up, surfacing directly underneath the Zodiac. The whole thing happened so fast that Maria was unable to get the binoculars to her face to see any details, although she had a clear vision in her mind of the startled and uncomprehending expressions on Mercer and Murphy’s faces. In the first few milliseconds, all Maria could see of the creature was a wall of water rising up with it. The Zodiac was launched into the air where it comically seemed to hang for an unusual amount of time, the air in it and its shape causing it to drift back down to the water slowly like a parachute. Mercer and Murphy weren’t so lucky. The two of them flew in the air, with Murphy actually pinwheeling his arms as though he thought that would give him better balance or maybe even help him fly. Mercer was ejected to the side and hit the water almost immediately. Ironically, despite all the sharks milling about, that was probably what saved her life.
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