Callum stepped back and closed the hatch. There was nothing he could do now.
* * *
Nassar watched in horror as he saw row upon row of glistening white teeth come at that tube. “Run!”
But it was too late. Most of the forward men made it to the hatch, however the robot with Troy were right in the path of the shark. Its huge mouth wrapped around the tube and then with a loud crunch, bit down on the glass.
It shattered into a million pieces and despite the fact that the robot tried to leap out of the way, both it and Troy were swallowed whole.
The tube tipped downward as water rushed into the structure. Nassar tried to run, but the footing was treacherous at best. He fell to his hands and knees, trying to crawl the last few feet. The man behind him started slipping back.
He had to eschew his own hold to grab the man’s arm before he slid back into the ocean. By now the Megalodon had swum away, but Nassar was certain it would be back to pick up the rest of its reward.
“Captain!” Lopez yelled, holding out a long piece of pipe. “Chain up!”
Nassar looked behind him. The other three men, the last of his team, linked up. He put his hand out, grabbing the pipe.
“We’ve got you, we’ve got you!” Lopez yelled. Nassar could see behind the corporal that the rest of the men were hanging onto Lopez and pulling them all forward.
It all may have worked if the Megalodon with its huge eye and even larger mouth hadn’t circled back around.
Pull as they might, the other men couldn’t pull faster than the Megalodon could attack. It opened those impossible jaws and swam right up to the chain of men. It swallowed the last man, then the next and went for the third without even gulping.
Nassar tried to pull his man to safety, but the Megalodon bit down. His man screamed, then went limp in Nassar’s hands. A final, pained exhale. The rest of the men tugged him to the hatch, Nassar still hanging on to his man’s hands. Unfortunately there was only half of a body attached.
“Get back!” Callum yelled. Swarms of smaller sharks, what once would have been considered large sharks in their own right, swam up from the depths coming to scavenge what the Megalodon hadn’t grabbed for itself.
Nassar let go of the body weighing him down and was dragged clear of the fray by his men.
Behind him over a dozen sharks snapped and leapt, grabbing any and all remains. The water didn’t have time to go red. The sharks made sure of that.
* * *
Tonaka looked on with great sadness. So much death. Again. For no reason other than man’s perpetual need to best one another.
“Probably should have grabbed some explosives from them before they headed over,” Nick stated.
The action star was not wrong. As bad as the SEALs had been hit, the survivors were on the other side of the gap, whereas Tonaka’s team was stuck in a dead end.
“We better get those QXs to work,” Callum said.
Tonaka turned to Callum. “How?”
“We’ve got to get through that door the hard way,” Callum stated.
“And that would be?”
“Elbow grease,” Callum said as he walked off.
Tonaka looked to Nick.
The movie star shrugged. “I think he means by pulling the hatch apart at the seams.”
Brutal but effective. It would not be quick, but they had seen what thinking only of quick got you. Straight into the belly of a Megalodon.
Tonaka spun the hatch closed and followed the other men and his QXs. By the time he arrived, Callum was already checking the metal seams. “I think it might be faster to go around the hatch and breach here.”
Giving an absent nod, Tonaka stared into the empty hallway. The seam that Callum pointed out was as good as any other. No, what Tonaka’s mind was working on was the pressure per square inch the Megalodon could create versus the structural integrity of the entire station. Tonaka wasn’t sure if even the pressure doors could stand up to a concerted Megalodon attack.
He could remember how the ancient shark had snapped that tube in half.
If that Megalodon decided to crack open this station, there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.
* * *
The room was unnaturally quiet, but Zoya wasn’t about to break the silence. Not after what had happened. The teenage girl, Nami leaned over, putting her forehead on her arms, sobbing quietly.
And they had seen only a fraction of the destruction that Zoya had seen, but then again, she was Russian. She was used to tragedy. She did not expect the big Hollywood happy ending. Zoya knew suffering and how to survive past it until the next suffering.
Such was life.
A young boy bounded into the room along with his robot. Dillon perhaps.
“Hey!” he called out, panting, soaking wet, dripping in their doorway. “What happened?”
Nami jumped up from her chair and raced into his arms, burying her face in his chest.
“Is it Dad?”
Nami shook her head. “No, but we lost another four SEALs.”
“Oh no…
“To a Megalodon,” Zoya added. These Americans liked to try and sugarcoat their bad news.
Dillon’s eyes dilated. It was his robot that answered though. “Then none of us are safe.”
Zoya nodded. The Megalodon had been Putin’s idea, of course. He wanted the largest shark in the world, ever. And like most things Putin wanted, he got it. The Megalodon’s pen had been created out of icebergs with only a small gate, too small for the Megalodon to escape. The icebergs were arranged so that they formed a point at the bottom of the pen, again supposedly trapping the Megalodon inside the confinement. It had grown up there.
She could only imagine with all of the explosions and structural damage to the station, that one of those icebergs slipped out of place, releasing the Megalodon into the inner pens.
This could only end in tragedy. Well beyond a few SEALs death.
“Okay, okay, okay,” Dillon said. “We’ve got to figure a way out of here.”
Zoya sat down. She had worked so hard to save so few of her comrades, Pietrov. And now to die such a death?
* * *
“You have any ideas?” Nami asked because she had been racking her brain since they had gotten here and had come up empty.
“No, but come on, there’s got to be a way off this station.”
Zoya shook her head. “We were meant to be isolated. With our vehicles disabled, beyond the damaged submersible that is ruined, we have no other transportation.”
Nami hated to admit it, but Zoya was right. They had been transmitting an SOS since they arrived, but so far no takers. Didn’t the Russians have whaling ships in the area? Wasn’t there anyone in the Arctic Sea to hear their cries for help?
Apparently not, since they hadn’t heard a peep out of a single boat or government. They were stranded. That was for sure.
Dillon wasn’t giving up though. “Wasn’t the point of us hurrying out here was to get here before the Russian rescue squad?”
Zoya nodded. “However there is an Arctic storm over northern Russia. Nothing is making it from there any time soon.”
Dillon’s face fell.
Nami hated to see him like that. “So our priority has to be to figure out how to stay alive until someone can get out here.”
“For no one to come?” Dillon responded, obviously dejected.
* * *
Nami squeezed Dillon around the waist. “We’re still alive. It looked this dim at Salechii, perhaps even worse.”
Dillon looked down at her, his eyes clouded over. Nami had gotten past the fear and even the anger at herself for coming along. Now she just hurt. Her heart ached for her boyfriend.
She hugged him again. “You need to look deep, Dillon.”
He cocked his head, clearly not understanding what she meant. “You’ve got to find the Dillon that lived before Salechii. It was his hope and optimism that got us out alive.”
Dillon brushed her
hair back. “I’m not sure if I can,” he responded.
“I know you can,” Nami said and meant it. She’d seen him shift into the negative after Salechii then watched him shift back after Quax was returned to them. Now the pendulum had swung the other way. She didn’t blame him. This was awful. No doubt about it, however they had come so far. They had to make it.
She was not going to let the sharks win. That was just wrong.
Not even to a Megalodon. Effer.
Dillon hugged her back. “I think with you, I can do just about anything.”
Nami tilted her head up and kissed Dillon. It was a warm kiss. A kiss of mutual affection and love. She adored the fact he hadn’t pushed her. They were on the same wavelength. Nami had seen what sex could do to a relationship before the couple was ready for it. Can you say train wreck?
Just because the kiss wasn’t passionate, didn’t mean it was short.
“Jeez,” a voice called from behind them. “Get a room!” Then a laugh as they broke off the kiss. “Or never mind, keep going, I’m good.”
That had to be Lopez. She hadn’t met him yet, although she felt like she knew him already.
“If you want my opinion?” Lopez continued. “I say we sink the station!”
* * *
Nick couldn’t have heard correctly as they entered the security station. “You want to do what?"
Lopez couldn’t have just said he wanted to blow up the station, could he?
The man swung around, an easy, casual grin on his face. “Take the station down.” As voices rose in opposition, Lopez put his hands up, signaling for everyone to pipe down. “Come on, our biggest problem is the sharks are all right up in our grill. If we take the station down, we take the fences away and voila! Shark freedom! Like Sting says, set ‘em free, set ‘em free.”
Nick frowned. Actually the entire room frowned. He could swear if metal could frown, it was frowning at Lopez. The guy seemed so sure of himself, not like he had just forwarded the most ludicrous idea in the history of ideas. And this guy wanted to give him script ideas? No thank you.
Callum is the one that stepped forward, Quax translating for him. The biologist was being exceptionally patient with the man. “Yes, the sharks might be gone, but what of us? No shelter. Nowhere to wait for any improbable rescue?”
Lopez chuckled, waving off Callum’s concerns. “Please, once we are rid of the sharks and up top we can use the flotsam from the station and build a shelter. At that point it is just cold weather survival. We can make it days even if that storm does hit us head on.”
This silenced the entire room. Nick was pretty sure no one knew what to say in reply to such a crazy idea.
Nami stepped forward. Always the reasonable one. He couldn’t be more proud of his daughter. Where did she get such a good head on her shoulders? It certainly wasn’t from him and definitely not her mother.
Or for that matter her maternal grandmother.
“Why don’t we just do that now?” Nami asked. “If it is so easy, why not just go up top and wait it out? Not worry about the flooding?”
Lopez shook his head. “We don’t have the supplies. We need the station to blow apart to give us the raw materials to repurpose to a shelter up there. Either that or we need to start hacking away now…”
The corporal turned, looking everyone in the eye before he spoke. “I’m not talking about blowing the place up all willy-nilly. A controlled blast to make the most of the wreckage. Easy. Peasy.”
Nothing about that sounded easy or very peasy to Nick.
It was Zoya that stepped up and stared Lopez down. “We are not sinking the station. And that is final.”
Lopez raised his hands in apparent defeat. “Hey, just spitballing here. You don’t have to go all Rocky 4 on me.”
Zoya, her hair, still streaked with blood, spoke, calmly and coolly like she’d done this all before. Her posture was of authority, yet she didn’t seem overbearing, at the least.
“We must gather all the supplies and attempt to move to the outer most edge of the station where the Megalodon cannot reach us,” Zoya said.
That sounded a whole lot more reasonable to Nick.
There was a general murmuring of agreement in the room. No one was too into Lopez’s idea.
Not by a long shot.
“We will take what we can carry,” Zoya said just as a loud bang, shook the entire room.
Nick grabbed for the desk to keep himself upright.
“That couldn’t be….” Nick didn’t want to finish his sentence about the possibility that a jumbo archaic shark was banging at the door. “Could it?”
He looked to Tonaka who snapped his finger, calling over a QX. “I think it most definitely is.”
The Megalodon then.
“I suggest we retreat to this other room. It is the most defensible,” Tonaka said, calling over another QX for Nick.
Dear God, were they running for their lives again?
As the shark’s teeth ripped through the metal, apparently so.
CHAPTER 14
Dillon grabbed Nami and basically threw her at Quax. He trusted his best friend to catch her.
People from the back of the room, mostly Russian survivors scrambled to get out of the way as water shot through the rips in the metal. That was only the beginning and they all knew it.
The security office was situated on the inside of the station. An easy mark for the Megalodon. The shark charged again, its jaw span a good twenty feet. It grabbed hold of the metal this time, twisting its head, shredding the metal.
In one bite, the Megalodon had breached the wall. That took some serious power. And serious concentration. Clearly this wasn’t some random attack. The shark must have tracked them through their vibrations. This shark knew what it was doing. That was for sure.
Water poured in, lifting people off their feet, sloshing them out of the room. Chaos reigned. Everyone fought to get their footing. To get far away from the huge shark.
Dillon didn’t blame them.
For an ancient shark, it was ripping through their modern defenses pretty darn well.
“Here!” Nami yelled, offering her hand.
Dillon swung himself up onto the back of Quax as the Megalodon let go, although Dillon was certain he was not done with them.
“Hurry!” Dillon screamed at the remaining survivors. Zoya was helping the last injured man out when the Megalodon attacked, it mouth wide open, bursting through the weakened metal, grabbing the man. Zoya tried to hold on but was getting pulled into the water with the man.
“Let go!” Dillon yelled, but the woman wouldn’t
Nami’s dad urged his QX into the water, grabbing Zoya around the waist, pulling her away. Once she let go of the man, he disappeared into the churn of water.
“No!” Zoya screamed.
* * *
Nami fought to keep her head above water. She was out in the hallway which had already flooded, she was riding the tidal wave of the icy ocean water. Sputtering, Nami was pretty sure she was taking in more water than oxygen.
“I’ve got you,” a voice said from behind her. She knew it wasn’t Callum since it was in English and two arms wrapped around her waist.
She twisted to see who was helping her. Turned out it was the man who wanted to sink the station. Lopez.
“Don’t fight it,” he warned. “Stop fighting it.”
It took a moment for her to realize what he wanted. It sounded crazy but his tone was confident.
He nodded as she stopped her flailing. “Now blow out air five times fast then take in a nice big gulp of air.”
How he could be so calm in the face of the rapid water and foamy spray, Nami didn’t know, but she followed his instructions to the letter.
“We’re going down. Hold your breath,” Lopez said just before he tugged them down.
It took them going past several other hallways for her to realize what he was doing. By not fighting the tide, they were being carried away by it. To safety.
Finally they caught up with the front of the wave. They were in only two feet of water now.
“This way,” Lopez instructed, urging Nami down a side hallway and into the first door that was open. They splashed their way in. Lopez closed the hatch but did not lock it.
“That was…” Nami had to pant for a moment. “Brilliant.”
“Yes, well I’ve cave surfed before, so this was a piece of cake,” Lopez stated.
Nami was not quite sure when he was joking or not.
A knock came at the door.
Lopez looked to her. “They haven’t learned how to knock yet, have they?”
Nami shook her head and Lopez opened the hatch.
“Bro!” Ajax said, looking for all the world like a drowned rat. Lopez hugged the man and encouraged the few men in the hallway into the room.
They were all SEALs.
“Where are the rest?” Nami asked.
A tall man turned to her, it was Nassar. “We couldn’t see. We dove under the wave front and lost sight of the rest.”
Nami wanted to snap at the man. He was a trained military man, shouldn’t he had stayed and tried to save the rest? But then she stopped, remembering Zoya’s words. Maybe the Russian woman was correct. Maybe she couldn’t even trust her own government.
After a round of back patting, Lopez smiled that broad smile of his. Did he not realize the danger they were still in? The Megalodon was hungry and wasn’t going to stop until they were all part of its meal.
“Okay, so are you guys going to let me kill the Megalodon or what?”
“Kill it?” Nami asked. She wasn’t opposed to it. She just couldn’t see how it could be done. “How are you going to kill it?”
“Oh please,” Lopez said shaking his head at her. “I’ve known how I wanted to kill that thing since I saw it in the tube.”
“Then get to it,” Nami said.
They could still hear metal tearing and screams from down the hallway.
“Your sharkie dude isn’t going to get bent out of shape?”
“If he does,” Nami said. “I’ll take the heat.”
Lopez nodded. “I’m holding you to that, Chica. Now I just need to get to the submersible bay.”
Nassar stepped forward. “There are going to be smaller sharks swimming the hallways now. You are going to need backup.”
Apex Predator Thriller Series Collection (Including the blockbuster new shark park thriller, Salechii) Page 43