by Steve Alten
Terry’s vital signs went into free-fall, plunging to zero―
“Time of death … 6:52 a.m.”
―and then she took a breath.
CHAPTER 16
Aboard the Hopper-Dredge McFarland
Strait of Juan de Fuca, Pacific Ocean
JAMES MACKREIDES TRUDGED UP the three flights of steel stairs leading to the pilothouse, each push off generating a stabbing pain in his knees. Three months on the McFarland were eleven weeks too many for the former Navy chopper pilot’s arthritis. Having to deal with the fallout from last night’s activities on two hours of sleep only compounded his misery.
Reaching the rusted steel door, he twisted the knob and put his shoulder to it, fighting the pressure differential caused by the wind.
Mo Mallouh was in the pilot’s chair, watching the fish finder. Mac’s wife, Trish was seated on the vinyl sofa next to Jacqueline. Both women glared at him.
Uh-oh … they’ve formed a coalition.
“You’re firing me?” Jackie said, beating him to the punch. “I’m the one who stopped Cyel from frying your fish.”
“And then you walked away. If Monty hadn’t been there, the Meg would be dead.”
“I made a mistake … I was confused. But I knew Monty was there.”
“They were both keeping an eye on Cyel,” Trish said, playing the part of her legal counsel.
“It doesn’t matter. After last night, I don’t trust you around the Meg. If I see you anywhere near that tank, we’ll put you ashore.”
“And who’s going to take care of it?”
“Monty and I can handle it.”
Trish rolled her eyes.
“It’s not brain surgery. We toss in a few salmon every hour and pump in fresh water a coupla times a day, no big deal.”
Jackie turned to Trish. “He thinks he’s taking care of a goldfish.”
“The Meg’s in shock, Mac. Listen to your marine biologist.”
Jackie nodded. “The hopper’s metal walls are sending the albino’s ampullae of Lorenzini into a 24/7 spin-cycle. The only reason it isn’t dead from bashing its head against the side of the tank is because I’ve been adding and regulating animal tranquilizer in its water supply. Remove me from the equation and Monty has a better chance of getting into Harvard than that fish has of making it back to Monterey alive.”
Defeated, Mac stared out of the pilothouse window. Looking aft, he noticed the superyacht had halved its distance to the McFarland. “Mr. Mallouh, why have you allowed that yacht to gain on us?”
“It’s not my choice; they’re a lot faster than this bucket of bolts.”
“Cyel called them,” Trish said. “He told them you were putting him ashore on Vancouver Island. I think they intend to pick him up.”
“Damn it, I don’t want that yacht anywhere near us. Mr. Mallouh, can you get them on the radio?”
“I can try.” Returning to his chair, he reached for the radio receiver. “This is the United States’ hopper-dredge, McFarland, attempting to speak with the owner of the sports yacht, Hot & Spicy. Come in, Hot & Spicy.”
The static was followed a moment later by a man’s voice. “This is Brian Smallwood of the Hot & Spicy. Go ahead, McFarland.”
Mac took the radio handset from Mo. “This is James Mackreides aboard the McFarland. State your intentions Mr. Smallwood.”
“We received a distress call from a passenger aboard your vessel who claimed your crew was planning on casting him adrift in a lifeboat. This is incredibly dangerous. As you’re well aware, Bela’s offspring is in the area, last detected beneath your keel.”
“The Meg left us over an hour ago. As for Mr. Reed, if you want him you can have him, after all―you bought him. We’ll cut our engines and allow you to close to within a hundred yards of our ship. You can fetch him from our lifeboat in your Zodiac.”
Mac handed the radio receiver to his pilot. “Cut the engines and allow them to rid us of Mr. Reed.”
“I’d be careful,” Jackie said. “While I was in the hospital, one of the nurses told me her nephew had spent four weeks aboard the Hot & Spicy. Word is, Smallwood only gets to keep the yacht if all six of the pups are killed.”
* * *
Cyel Reed stood by the starboard rail, the morning sun blinding as it reflected off the dark blue surface. The shoreline of Vancouver Island beckoned to the north; the gray-hulled superyacht now less than a quarter of a mile to the southeast.
Suspended along the opposite side of the starboard rail was a wooden lifeboat, its paint worn with age.
Mac stood close by, his binoculars aimed at the yacht. He watched as a third crewman climbed over the transom to join the other two men waiting in the motorized inflatable raft.
“Is that him?” Mac nudged the engineer in the small of his back with the business end of his 12-gauge shotgun.
Cyel squinted in the direction of the craft now making its way to the McFarland. “I never met Smallwood. All of my dealings were with Nick Van Sicklen.”
Mac spoke into his walkie-talkie. “Mr. Mallouh, any sign of Bela’s offspring?”
“Perimeter is still clear.”
“All right, Cyel. Over the side with you, your elevator awaits.”
“Come on, Mackreides, we’ve known each other twenty years. Confine me to quarters for the duration of the voyage if it makes you feel better, but don’t leave me in Canada with these yokels.”
“Should have thought about that before you spent the yokel’s money. Now get off of my boat.”
“Asshole.” Swinging his right leg over the rail, Cyel climbed down into the lifeboat. He held on as Monty engaged the winch, lowering the boat along the starboard side of the McFarland. “Screw you and the Taylors, Mackreides! I’ll be back in California in time to dance on Terry’s grave.”
Monty watched as his uncle’s face became a mask of rage. In one motion Mac flipped the locks on both winches, sending the lifeboat free-falling the last twenty-six feet into the sea.
The plunge separated Cyel from his seat, the impact slamming him backwards against the hard, wooden bench seat. He sat up painfully, waiting for the motorized raft to reach him.
* * *
The Raja binoculata, known more commonly as “big skates,” were four-to-seven-feet-long, weighing upwards of two hundred pounds. Numbering in the hundreds, the school of rays had been buried beneath the sediment, feeding on worms and mollusks when the lifeboat had splashed down on the surface almost directly overhead. The sudden explosion of sound startled the creatures, chasing them from their feeding grounds in an avalanche of flapping wings.
Two miles to the south, Bela’s remaining pup had been stalking a six-foot thresher shark when the sensory cells located along the predator’s flanks began vibrating. These fluid-filled subcutaneous canals, known as the lateral line, contained tiny hair-like features designed to detect frequencies and fluctuations in the water over great distances.
The impulses racing through the Megalodon’s nervous system to its brain identified the source of the disturbance seconds before its ampullae of Lorenzini alerted it that the thresher shark had already diverted to the north to intercept the skates.
Bad move.
Ingrained in the Megalodon’s DNA was 30 million years of aggressive behavior honed from the species’ dominance as an apex predator. As if that were not enough, Bela’s lone surviving offspring was a genetic clone of its mother―a hyperactive female with a nasty disposition. As far as the Meg was concerned, every territory had its own rules come feeding time, and the thresher shark had just violated the number one law of the jungle … among predators, the biggest and meanest always eat first.
Whipping its caudal fin at a frenzied pace, the juvenile killer quickly closed the distance between itself and the thresher shark.
Sensing the fifteen-foot Megalodon, the smaller hunter darted left then right along the bottom, attempting to avoid its larger adversary―
Chomp!
The thresher spasmed in
pain. Attempting to swim faster, it wiggled its tail harder―unaware that its caudal fin, clear up to its pectoral fins, had been bitten off and were now in the Megalodon’s mouth.
A paralyzing numbness swept past the thresher’s gill slits, forcing it to expand its jaws open and closed to inhale more water. A moment later it toppled forward, a crimson cloud of blood pouring from the back of its severed body as it nose-dived snout-first to the sandy bottom like a downed fighter jet.
The Meg continued on its northwesterly trek, the skates’ migration once more bringing it in close proximity to the strange creature which had consumed its cousin. It did not sense the presence of the lifeboat until it was practically upon it, its attention focused on the challenger moving along the surface on an intercept course with its intended meal.
* * *
Brian Smallwood sat in the bow of the inflatable motorized raft, commonly known as a Zodiac. Using his binoculars, he bypassed the boisterous engineer who he could see ranting from inside the still-tethered life boat.
Smallwood didn’t care what happened to Cyel Reed; however, in failing to kill the last of Lizzy’s pups, the engineer had unwittingly presented his team with a second, less-costly alternative.
Smallwood’s primary responsibility during this exercise in justice was simply to keep the raft aligned with the aerial drone that was currently flying three hundred feet directly above their heads. The quadcopter’s control box was down to 22% and there were no spare batteries to be had. If the signal strength fell below 15% they might not be able to initiate the signal for the small craft to drop its three-pound payload into the McFarland’s hopper.
Seated behind Smallwood was Thomas Moore, the only member of the yacht’s crew with any real experience flying drones. Using his boss’s body to shield the control box in his lap from the McFarland’s onlookers, he focused his attention on the live video shot of the Zodiac being transmitted from the quadcopter’s onboard gimbal-mounted camera.
The inflatable had moved beyond the video’s frame, the drone struggling to keep pace.
Damn headwinds …
Thomas turned around to face his cousin. Charlie Moore was seated on the last bench, his right hand gripping the tiller of the outboard motor. “Cut your speed. The drone can’t keep up.”
“Cut my speed? Dude, we’re barely moving as it is.”
“I’m dealing with twenty-mile-an-hour wind gusts and my controller’s battery has dipped below 19% … just do it.”
* * *
The sudden shadow of movement across the fish finder caught Mo Mallouh’s attention. He stared at the blip until it disappeared behind a screen covered in electronic snow.
“What is it?” Jackie asked.
“I don’t know. I think it was the other Meg, only something’s interfering with the fish finder.”
Trish tried her walkie-talkie. “Mac, are you―”
The sonic squeal of electronic interference forced her to power it off.
* * *
The high-pitched whine of the Zodiac’s outboard engine was reduced by half as the raft slowed beneath them.
Charlie Moore’s peripheral vision caught movement. Turning to his left, he glanced overboard―shocked to see hundreds of skates soaring past the inflatable just below the surface. “Look at all the rays! They’re passing beneath us like bats outta hell.”
Brian Smallwood ignored the crewman as he attempted to calculate the distance between the raft and the McFarland. “Thomas, how much longer?”
“Wind finally let up; I’ve got the drone hovering two hundred feet above the McFarland’s superstructure. Now I just need to locate the damn hopper.”
“Two hundred feet’s way too high; if you miss the hopper there’s a chance you could accidentally hit someone with this stuff.”
* * *
Monty had been watching the approaching Zodiac through his binoculars when the raft’s bow wake all but disappeared. “That’s weird … they’re slowing down.”
Mac was about to respond when something large passed beneath the lifeboat, snagging on one of the thick ropes keeping it tethered to the McFarland. For several seconds the wooden craft was dragged sideways until the tension became too great, causing the lifeboat to flip.
* * *
“Whoa!” Brian Smallwood saw the lifeboat toss their would-be-passenger overboard. Using his binoculars, he searched for the Tanaka Institute’s engineer―
―while in the seat directly behind him, his drone operator struggled to operate the camera’s zoom button. The video finally jumped revealing an attractive woman standing on the McFarland’s deck―and she appeared to be pointing up in the sky at the drone.
Thomas widened the frame and found himself looking down on an older man―and the business end of a 12-gauge shotgun.
“Crap, we’ve been―”
And then the world went topsy-turvy as an unseen force struck the inflatable’s bow, sling-shotting Thomas Moore and his cousin, Charlie, through a cloudburst of blood before depositing them into the sea.
* * *
Mac’s first shot had missed. The second shattered the aerial drone like it was skeet, the impact sending fiberglass shrapnel raining upon them―
―along with a softball-sized object which struck the edge of the wading pool Monty and David had stocked with live salmon. The contents of the small balloon splattered open, a third of its pink residue adhering to the outside of the curved aluminum structure, the rest of the powdery substance spilling inside the pool, bubbling as it spread across the surface of the water.
“What the hell is that?”
“I don’t know,” Jackie said. Covering her nose and mouth, she moved closer to inspect the inside of the pool.
The water was frothing, churned by the salmon which were under obvious duress. Several fish flung themselves out of the container where they flopped on deck, their mouths sucking in air until they ceased moving, blood and fish guts leaking from their gills and mouth.
“It’s some kind of acid … very concentrated.”
“Jackie, if this had gotten inside the tank―”
“The Meg would have ingested it, its internal organs eventually bleeding out.”
“And what if that pouch had struck one of us?”
“Second and third degree burns at a minimum … blindness, I suppose if it got in your eye. A direct hit … who knows? This Smallwood is either very desperate or very dangerous.”
“Not anymore.”
They turned to find Monty standing by the starboard rail, pale and shaken. “Smallwood’s dead … I saw the whole thing. One second he was sitting in the front of the inflatable; the next he exploded, like he had stepped on an I.E.D.”
Mac and Jackie scanned the Salish Sea.
“Monty, the Zodiac … where did it go?”
“The Meg got it. You know, the dark one―Bela’s kid. That bitch is as mean and nasty as her mother.”
Jackie turned to Mac. “Cyel?”
Mac hurried to the starboard launch and looked below. Cyel had righted the lifeboat, but the craft was filled with water. The disgruntled engineer remained inside the flooded craft, yelling at someone who was swimming toward the boat.
“No! You’re leading it right to me!”
A gray dorsal fin trailed the swimmer, its pale white head zigging and zagging just below the surface.
* * *
Charlie Moore swam with a desperation born from having witnessed Brian Smallwood’s gruesome demise. He knew the Megalodon had been after the Zodiac and not those on board, but now all bets were off. Having struck the inflatable, the shark’s forward inertia had propelled it up and over the raft’s bow, its open mouth reflexively clamping down on Smallwood with the force of a pickup truck striking a pedestrian, bursting the man’s internal organs like a ripe tomato, even as its 3,000-pound girth flipped the boat engine-over-bow, sending Charlie flying over his cousin and through the air.
He had surfaced to screams. Thomas was attempting to tread
water twenty feet away, his legs churning the blue sea crimson as he kicked at a massive pale head that insisted upon rising directly beneath him.
The Meg drove its snout straight into his cousin’s ravaged belly, snorting gouts of blood deep into its nostrils like a coke addict.
Fighting the urge to puke, Charlie turned and swam. He heard Cyel Reed yelling at him and adjusted his course.
“No! You’re leading it right to me!”
Three more strokes and his knees collided with the side of the swamped lifeboat. He attempted to climb in―
―only Reed pushed him back out again just as the Meg veered off, its lead-gray tail slapping at the surface, the upper lobe cracking across the back of Charlie Moore’s skull like a rubber mallet, knocking him woozy.
He must have gone under because he heard gunfire as his head broke the surface. The hull of the McFarland spun sideways in his vision―blotted out a moment later by the rubber sole of a shoe which stepped on his forehead with a dull thud.
He sank beneath the swamped boat which rolled upside down, depositing Cyel overboard.
The engineer panicked and swam toward the McFarland.
Charlie stayed with the boat, kicking his way onto its curved bottom, hitching a ride as it rose beneath him like a giant turtle. He sucked in a deep breath of air as it broke the surface, spreading his limbs out wide as he hugged the bottom, desperate to stabilize the craft.
He heard people yelling and raised his head.
The life ring had been tied to three different lengths of rope in order to be long enough to reach the sea from the deck of the McFarland. Cyel had grabbed it and was being dragged through the water to the starboard side of the ship.
An experienced bass fisherman, Charlie held his breath and waited.
They just turned him into top water bait.
* * *
The Meg rose through azure curtains of sunlight, its back arched, its tail thrashing back and forth in short powerful bursts, its senses locked onto its prey―
―which abruptly disappeared.