by Steve Alten
Mac quickly led his group behind the medical pool as the swell rolled over the northern lagoon wall and rail and flooded the deck, washing over the Meg Pen.
Jonas grabbed Terry and lifted her as high as he could as the chest-high wave drove him backwards into the grandstand.
As the backwash rolled back into the lagoon, a bizarre gargled chirping sound cut through the din of the crowd.
Zach pointed. The juvenile Liopleurodon was sprawled out on the flooded deck, calling for its mother.
“Oh, geez, we need to move!” Carrying his wife, Jonas led the others into the northern bleachers as the thirty-foot-long crocodilian head rose out of the lagoon, its lower front fangs dripping water and blood from Bela’s impaled hide, its upper torso sliding halfway out of the lagoon onto the flooded concrete deck, crushing the guard rail and knocking the crane sideways against the Marieke.
The crowd seated in the northern bleacher’s lower seats rose as one and rushed to the nearest exits.
Terry looked around, frantic. “Where’s David?”
Soaked from head to toe, David had his back to the Meg Pen’s rail and was looking up at the reptilian nightmare.
The slime-coated monster stared at him, sea water oozing out its gills. Hissing phlegm, it shifted it weight over its forelimbs and lurched at David—
—only to be forced back into the lagoon by Bela. The Meg had a hold of the pliosaur’s left hindquarters and was shaking her head like a dog in a tug-o-war, her five-inch serrated teeth sawing through muscle and sinew, her powerful jaws snapping bone.
Spinning around underwater, the Lio bit the Megalodon on the left side of its head, its dagger-sharp teeth raking Bela’s left eye clear to her nostril, forcing the shark to release her grip on its broken limb.
The wounded predators retreated, the Lio circling beneath the Marieke’s keel, remaining close to the lagoon’s northern wall, the Megalodon seeking refuge in the canal.
David saw the McFarland moving into position outside the canal’s sealed doors. Sprinting across the arena, he made his way to the steel security fence guarding the canal’s paved maintenance walkway. Punching in his security code, he unlocked the gate and raced along the narrow path. Bela moved slowly through the waterway on his left, the wounded Meg watching him with her remaining good eye.
Back on the north deck, Fiesal bin Rashidi ordered his guards and Bradley Watson to lift the stranded Lio pup over the Meg Pen’s rail and back into its tank. The juvenile pliosaur squawked and snapped at the men, who finally managed to secure a canvas drop cloth over its head before they carried it through an open gate and tossed it back into the tank.
Jonas pulled Mac aside. “Contact the McFarland’s skipper and have him move the hopper-dredge. Then have Hendricks open the canal doors.”
Mac tried his radio, getting only static. “Too late. Bin Rashidi must have changed the frequencies.”
Zachary pushed his way into the conversation. “Did David tell ye about his latest night terrors?”
“Zach, can this wait—”
“He dreamt this very scenario! I think he’s going tae try tae use the Manta tae save Bela.”
“Oh, shit.” Jonas and Mac left the bleachers, both men hobbling as they tried to keep up with Zach.
Jonas grabbed Mac’s arm, pointing to the Marieke. “I know a better way to save Bela.”
Mac smiled. “Get in the cargo net.”
Jonas secured his waist inside one of the net’s thick loops and held onto the pulley’s large hook as Mac climbed inside the crane’s cab. Backing it away from the hopper-dredge, he raised the net, lifting Jonas forty feet in the air before swinging him over the ship’s main deck.
Jonas climbed down, quickly getting his bearings. He was standing in the stern, the hopper taking up most of the mid-deck, the bridge and its hopper controls towering before him. As he hurried past the tank Lizzy’s head rose out of the water, the albino shark watching him.
“Give me a minute, girl.”
Reaching the ship’s infrastructure, he started the four-story climb along the outer stairwell to reach the bridge.
* * *
The last scarlet speck of sunset had disappeared on the western horizon by the time David reached the end of the canal. The tide was out, the top eight feet of the steel doors poking free above the surface. The McFarland was stationed directly outside the gate, the ship’s stern resting within three feet of the metal barrier, preventing it from opening.
Bela was spy-hopping close by, the left side of her head streaked with blood, her eye hanging from its socket.
“Jesus, girl, it looks like you got into a fight with Freddy Kruger. Stay here, we’re going to deal with that bitch one way or the other.”
Stepping carefully out onto the top of the right door, David jumped into the ocean. Swimming against the incoming swells, he located the steel ladder embedded along the ship’s starboard flank and began climbing.
* * *
Jonas was winded by the time he reached the bridge. Pushing his way inside the control room, he confronted Paul Agricola and two members of his crew.
“Jonas Taylor—right on time. Our ship’s captain and my engineer have volunteered to serve as witnesses.” He pointed to several thick contracts laid out on a map table.
“I’m not here for that. The Lio’s on the rampage; people’s lives are in danger.” He scanned the ship’s command center, searching for the controls to the hopper-dredge.
Paul moved to a panel located next to a spiral stairwell running to the deck below. “Looking for this? Forget it. Lizzy’s not going anywhere until you sign off on our deal.”
“You’re too late. I sold the institute last week to the Crown Prince and his cousin. Guess you’ll have to negotiate a new deal with them.”
Paul’s expression soured, but he recovered quickly. “No matter. I still have a few bartering chips left.”
Jonas moved toward the control panel as Paul reached behind his back and greeted him with the business end of a 9 mm Glock.
“Come on, Paul. Are you really going to murder me in front of two eyewitnesses?”
“No, but I will shoot you in the knees. Now leave my vessel and have the Crown Prince contact me with an offer for the sisters or I’ll bash the Marieke through those pathetically thin canal doors and release all his sea monsters back into the wild.”
* * *
It was dark by the time David pulled himself over the McFarland’s starboard rail. He quickly made his way past the hopper to the ship’s infrastructure. Ducking inside the stairwell, he descended into the bowels of the ship, then raced down a steel passage to the submersible hangar.
Manta-Three was perched on its launch pad, the two Valkyrie lasers still strapped to its wings.
Damn it, Cyel! You were supposed to remove that luggage rack last week.
Moving to the hangar’s control panel, he set the automatic timer to flood and open the chamber in three minutes. Returning to the sub, he popped the cockpit, climbed into the port seat and sealed himself inside.
* * *
Jonas felt the heat rushing to his face, his heart pounding rapidly as his blood pressure soared. “You pompous ass. My son’s out there, he’s going to try to kill the Lio using one of the Mantas. At least allow me to contact the McFarland to prevent him from—”
“No. First you’ll speak with the Crown Prince. You can radio the McFarland after he and I negotiate a—”
Paul Agricola suddenly flopped onto the floor, saliva drooling from his mouth, the gun falling from his twitching hand.
Mac ascended the spiral stairwell, brandishing a taser, the two prongs protruding from Agricola’s back trailing wires. “Yak, yak, yak. All this guy does is give speeches.”
“Thanks, Mac. As always, your timing is impeccable.” Moving to the control panel, Jonas opened the hopper’s hangar doors.
* * *
The Liopleurodon registered the vibrations overhead. Circling back toward the sound, it charged the
hangar doors just as Lizzy shot through the opening—the pliosaur’s open jaws biting down hard on the Megalodon at the base of her caudal fin.
* * *
The hangar doors opened.
David accelerated the Manta into the Pacific. Passing beneath the McFarland’s keel, he surfaced on the port side of the ship and headed south a hundred yards before circling back. Descending to forty feet, he raced toward the canal wall and pulled back hard on the joystick.
The sub launched out of the water and cleared the wall by mere inches before landing in the canal.
There was no sign of Bela.
A yellow light blinked on his console—the Manta’s batteries were running low. Cursing aloud, David followed the channel into the lagoon, the arena’s lights turning the dark waters an azure blue.
That’s when he saw Bela. The dark overlord of the Tanaka lagoon was circling over Lizzy, her sibling wiggling along the bottom of the tank trailing a stream of blood—the albino predator missing her entire tail!
Before he could react, the Liopleurodon bull-rushed Bela, the pliosaur’s monstrous jaws clamping down over her head.
Bela convulsed in spasms as she attempted to roll herself free. But the Lio was far too big and now it had both leverage and the Megalodon’s jaws under control.
Blind with rage, David powered on the Valkyrie lasers and accelerated at the beast.
Seeing the familiar sub and its two glowing red-hot eyes, the Lio released Bela and circled back beneath the Marieke’s keel.
“You can run, bitch, but you can’t hide!” David went after the creature as the yellow warning light abruptly changed to red, the sub stalling out.
Powering off the lasers chased the blinking red battery light back to yellow. Stamping down upon both foot pedals, David accelerated away from the charging creature, its enormous skull blooming on his left, its snapping jaws just missing his portside wing.
Limbs shaking, David accelerated the sluggish sub into the southern end of the tank, realizing the additional weight of the two lasers made it impossible for him to leap over the high guard rail surrounding the lagoon; the dying battery giving him barely enough power to make it back to the canal.
Remembering the sub’s hydrogen fuel tank, he checked the gauge.
Seventy-two percent … that’s about an eight-second burn. Leap out of the lagoon using an eight-second hydrogen burn and you’ll end up buried nose-first in the seventh row of the bleachers, killing yourself and God knows how many innocent people.
No choice. Pray there’s enough juice left in the batteries to get back to the canal, then use the burn to vault the wall.…
Executing a tight 180-degree turn along the southern end of the lagoon, he headed back toward the center of the tank—shocked to find the Lio blocking his path, the monster’s nightmarish jaws now hyperextended wide to engulf him in one hellacious bite!
Fuck it …
Twisting the dial to the hydrogen tank, David ignited the fuel using his right hand even as his left searched blindly for the power switch to the Valkyrie lasers.
What happened next happened in the blink of an eye.
David’s head was flung backward into the seat cushion as the Manta shot through the pliosaur’s dark gullet like a missile, the twin lasers scorching the Lio’s gills and throat, the sub shuddering as the pink flames burned through the creature’s digestive tract, the hydrogen burn propelling the vessel deeper, refusing to allow it to stall as the Valkyries melted tissue and internal organs like fat off a hot barbeque spit.
David held on in the chaos and screamed—a scream he had bellowed a hundred times before from the depths of his darkest nightmare—a scream that ended with brilliant blue water and laughter as the Manta escaped the Liopleurodon’s internal anatomy by opening up a second anus.
The azure waters quickly turned into a lake of spreading crimson as the dead pliosaur bled out across the lagoon.
Powering off the lasers, David directed the submersible to the bottom of the northern end of the tank.
Lizzy lay on her side along the bottom. Unable to swim, the dying albino predator eyed David as she gasped her last breaths. Bela’s lifeless body rested beneath her—the Meg siblings inseparable in life, together in death.
EPILOGUE
It had taken two divers, a crane operator, and a driver operating a flatbed truck four hours to remove the two Megalodon carcasses from the bottom of the Tanaka Lagoon. Conversely, it had taken several days for the McFarland to haul the eviscerated Liopleurodon’s remains out to the Farallon Islands and its great white shark population, and another thirty hours of vacuuming the ravaged pliosaur’s residual body parts into the ship’s hopper in order to ready the tank for its new occupant.
The Miocene whale known as Brutus did not take well to its new habitat. By day it remained on the bottom of the canal, seeking refuge from the sun’s ultraviolet rays; by night it rammed the lagoon’s northern wall with its formidable head as it attempted to get to the Lio pup.
* * *
Jacqueline Buchwald escorted her boyfriend through the institute’s exhibit hall and down a corridor that led to the aquarium gallery, a three-story-high underwater viewing area that ran along the entire width of the Meg Pen.
The brilliant aqua-blue backdrop illuminated the dark promenade, the brown and white specked baby Lio moving back and forth along the tank’s thick Lexan glass.
Seated in the fifth row were Fiesal bin Rashidi and his cousin, the Crown Prince.
The prince gave him a weak smile. “Sit down please, David, we have a few things to discuss. Fiesal?”
Fiesal bin Rashidi stared at the pliosaur, refusing to look at the minority partner he now referred to as “the cocky American son-of-a-bitch that killed my dinosaur.”
“The Crown Prince and I are returning to Dubai. We’re taking the pup with us.”
“Why?”
“Three reasons. First, because the infant’s nerves are frayed from that damn whale pounding its head on the lagoon wall. Second, because we can’t give away tickets, let alone sell an arena seat so that people can stare at an empty lagoon. Finally, because I hate living here as much as I despise working with the cocky American son-of-a-bitch that killed my dinosaur.”
“That would be four reasons, wouldn’t it?”
“David!”
He glanced at Jackie, who was burning holes into his skull with her glare.
Burning holes …
He smiled to himself.
David smiled a lot lately. Killing the Liopleurodon seemed to have lightened a burden on his soul. He slept through the night and spent his days meeting with his new agent, fielding offers from television and movie producers pitching him everything from lucrative cameo appearances and new reality series concepts to optioning his life story.
The freestyle living caused a rift between himself and Jackie, who was struggling to care for a prehistoric animal that refused to eat. They had signed a month-to-month lease on a two-bedroom condo in Monterey, but the couple had not slept together in over a week.
Bin Rashidi stood up to leave. “Forgive me, Your Highness, but I am in no mood to deal with this spoiled child’s lack of respect. Perhaps Mr. Taylor will fare better with the institute’s new owner.”
“Wait … you sold the institute? To who?”
“To me.” Paul Agricola moved out from the shadows of the promenade. “I bought the institute and the prince’s remaining Manta sub. Now you and I need to talk.”
“Forget it.” He turned to Jackie. “Are you going to Dubai?”
“I think we both know the answer to that question.”
“I’ll miss you.”
She kissed him on the lips and smiled. “You’ll get over it.”
He watched her follow the Crown Prince and Fiesal bin Rashidi out of the gallery, then headed for the parking lot exit, Paul Agricola cutting him off.
“Give me two minutes, David. If you don’t like what I have to say, I’ll hand you a check for your sh
are of the stock and we’ll be through.”
“Talk.”
“I’m tagging Brutus and releasing him. That should please the animal rights groups you pissed off when you killed the Lio. We’ll announce it was your decision.”
“There’s no ‘we’ in this equation, douche bag. You pulled a gun on my old man.”
“That was a simple misunderstanding.”
“We’re done here.”
“Do you know where I found the sisters, David? They were in the Salish Sea, guarding their surviving pups.”
“The sisters had pups?”
“Your parents never told you? Each pup is a genetic clone of Lizzy and Bela. We can catch them, David. We can turn the Agricola Entertainment Center into a thriving Megalodon exhibit.”
David stared at the Lio. The creature was destined to spend the rest of its life in an aquarium. And now Paul Agricola wanted to do the same with Lizzy and Bela’s pups.
“I think I’ll take the money. Make the check out to my middle name—cash.”
David headed for the exit.
“I sold the idea of capturing the pups to the Discovery Channel as a new reality show.”
“Good luck with that.” David continued walking.
“You’re not saving them by allowing them to live in the wild. You’re actually condemning them. With the sisters gone the orca pods will return. They’ll slaughter the pups, you can count on it. Help me save them and I’ll up your share of the institute to twenty percent.”
“Thirty.”
“Twenty-five, and we’ll hire you a beautiful secretary.”
“No. Maybe. But only if we keep my grandfather’s name on the marquee.”
“Absolutely not. The Agricola Entertainment Center was the name stipulated by our board of directors.”
“My grandfather sacrificed everything he had to build this place. He lost his son, D.J., to one of the Megs. The Tanaka name remains; that’s a deal breaker.” David headed for the exit.
“Wait.” Paul Agricola’s face turned red. “We put my family’s name on the institute, but the lagoon remains under the Tanaka name. That’s as far as I go, take it or leave it.”