by Rick Chesler
Mick eyed the mechanical appendage doubtfully. “That little arm’s not going to be able to do squat to fix that mangled pipe.” He called the shots the way he saw them, and by now Coco was used to his directness and even appreciated it, especially during situations like these.
“I know. But I think I see something in it. If we can grab it, maybe it’ll give us a clue as to what happened.”
Mick eyeballed the grab-arm controls. “I’m game if you are.” He tested the joystick that moved the arm, extending it, rotating it left and right, pressing the button that pinched the claws together.
Coco edged the sub in closer to the pipe, aware of the deep chasm yawning below her. When she was about three feet away she gave the throttle a touch of reverse to counteract her forward momentum, then paused, her hands frozen over the controls while she watched the pipe to see if the sub was drifting relative to it.
“That’s it, you got it.” Mick swung the grab-arm out towards the pipe. The mini-sub held position while Coco glanced down and around at their surroundings.
“Grab the prize.”
“This is a heck of a first date, trying to win you something in a claw-grabber game.”
Coco cracked a huge smile. “You sure know how to make a girl happy. Hold on, little bit of a current.” She adjusted the sub’s position with a burst of throttle, and Mick started with the grab-arm again. The claw extended into the jagged rip in the pipe, and closed around the white object.
“Got it, pulling back in three...two...one...”
Suddenly the sub was yanked to the left, rotating about the grab arm’s claw which was still pinched around the object.
“Let go, let go!” No sooner had she uttered the words than the sub’s motion stopped as the manipulator claw wrenched the object free from the inside of the shredded pipe.
“Got it! Reeling it back in...” Mick hit the button on the grab-arm joystick that retracted the arm. As it drew nearer the sub Coco let out an involuntary gasp.
“My god!”
Mick hadn’t yet taken the time to actually focus on the object he had extracted, so focused was he on working the manipulator.
“What’s up?”
“It...it can’t be!”
“What can’t be?” The claw hung up again just inside the edge of the opening. Mick tried a different combination of button pushes, and freed the object from the wreckage of the pipe. Still clutched in the mechanical claw, he retracted the arm again, this time pulling the object through the rip in the pipe.
“Big shark tooth...” was all she could bring herself to mutter. But in her mind ran that other word, the one she’d thought of on her ill-fated dive yesterday: megalodon.
Mick brought the grab-arm all the way into the sub and folded it back in to its resting position, the tooth grasped firmly in the machine’s grip. That done, he finally got the chance to get a good look at what he had retrieved.
“Holy crap! Look at that thing! It’s got to be six inches long.”
Coco said nothing, staring at the tooth as though it were a terrible omen, while Mick continued to marvel at it.
“It’ll make one hell of a necklace, right? Hey, what kind do you think it’s from anyway, White Pointer? Sorry, that’s what we call them down under. Great White?”
Coco still stared entranced at the pointed tooth.
“Coco? You okay?”
”It’s not from a White.”
“Aren’t they the biggest? This is the biggest shark tooth I’ve ever seen, that’s for sure, except for those fossilized dinosaur ones...”
That triggered it for Coco. “The megalodons.”
“What?” Mick stared out into the gloom while he waited for her reply.
“Carcharadon megalodon. It’s one of those dinosaur sharks you’re talking about.”
“Oh, right. So what’s this one from?”
Coco turned away from her view of the tooth to look at Mick. “As crazy as it sounds, it’s the right size and shape for a megalodon.”
Mick appeared confused, furrowing his brow and gnawing on his lower lip. “But it’s not fossilized. It’s white.”
Coco turned to stare at the tooth again. “I know, Mick. That’s what worries me.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Hold on, let’s make the radio call to Topside.”
Mick picked up the transmitter. “Triton-1 to Topside, you copy?”
The reply was near-instant. Mick didn’t recognize the voice. “Copy that, Triton-1, go ahead, over.”
“Intake pipe is mangled up good. It’s got big tears in it.”
A slight pause, followed by, “Tears from what?”
Mick looked at Coco, who shrugged. “We don’t know, but we’ve got video to show you once we—“
Coco’s shrill scream cut the conversation short.
Chapter 9
The colossal fish moved gracefully up from the dark depths of the submarine canyon.
Mick put a hand on Coco’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Coco. It’s a Great White. We’re done here, no reason to stick around.”
She dumped some of the sub’s ballast along with a burst of vertical thrusters to initiate a rapid ascent. Her movements were hyper-fast, almost panicked, and Mick glanced over at the ruined intake pipe as their craft rose past it, almost hitting it.
“Coco, it’s okay. Relax. Whites don’t—“
“It’s not a White!’
Mick sat in the co-pilot seat in stunned silence. He looked down at the approaching animal, and was surprised to see it much closer now, swimming in lazy-looking circles that nonetheless took it ever higher very quickly. Still, Mick had seen Whites before, diving in Australia back home, and this sure looked like one. The pointed snout, the stiff dorsal and pectoral fins, the uniquely jagged line demarcating the white underbelly from the dark dorsal surface. How could it not be a White? He voiced this question to Coco as she pulled the sub out of a semi-spin she’d created with her frantic maneuvering.
“Look at our sonar, Mick! That shark is still one hundred fifty feet away.”
Mick felt the blood drain from his face as he riveted his gaze to the instrument’s display. She was reading it accurately. He turned his head back to the shark, and sucked in his breath. It was impossibly big for a shark so far away. A large Great White was about twenty feet long. One hundred fifty feet away...this thing had to be three times that size! He shuddered involuntarily at the realization before turning back to Coco, still raising the sub.
“You’re right. You’re also the marine biologist, so lay it out for me.”
Coco was getting a little tired of being reminded about her occupation lately. It seemed like suddenly she’d gone from being a glorified tour guide, to the only one who knew anything at all about what was happening to this place.
“I know it sounds crazy, but...” She broke off as she piloted the submersible around a coral outcropping. Then she stared down at the shark, still rising lazily.
“But what?” Mick prompted.
“The only thing I’ve ever heard about that it could be is a Carcharadon megalodon.”
The sub mechanic glanced down at the gigantic shark. “A what?”
“A megalodon. It’s an extinct, prehistoric shark from the dinosaur days.”
“If it’s extinct, how is it swimming up after us right now?”
Coco shook her head. “No idea.”
“What else could it be then? Maybe you’re wrong.”
“It’s either a freakishly large Great White, much huger than any previously seen, or else it’s a megalodon, somehow still alive, still extant. There’s nothing else it could be. Even supersized, it doesn’t look like a tiger shark, or a mako, or a bull shark, am I right?”
Mick stared down at the creature again. “Nope, it doesn’t. It looks exactly like a super-sized White.”
“It’s got the predation patterns of a White, too. Look at it circling like that. Classic white shark behavior. Hey—get some shots of it, will you!”
Mick scrambled for the video camera. In all the excitement, it hadn’t even occurred to him to shoot some footage. He aimed the device’s lens down through the transparent floor of the sub at the moving leviathan below. He began to narrate.
“Too bad there’s nothing to give it some scale, but this is what our sub pilot Coco Keahi thinks may be a megalodon shark.” He panned out to show the sonar reading, then went back to the shark.
“Sonar has it at 150 feet below us. As you can see, an ordinary Great White would not appear so large from this distance. We estimate this fish to be at least sixty feet in length.”
He recorded for a few more seconds, and then shut the camera off. “Is that tooth we grabbed the right size for a megalodon?”
She looked away from the controls long enough to meet his gaze, and nod solemnly.
“No idea how I’m going to explain this to James.”
#
James White was at the sub dock to greet them upon return. “Well?” he asked the second that Mick pushed up the dome hatch. “What’s it look like?”
Mick shook his head, and jumped onto the dock, then reached a hand out to pull Coco up. “It’s been pulverized by something. Several large tears in it for a few feet just above the intake. No wonder you’re not getting any water pressure. Here, take a look.” He handed White the camera with a shot of the damaged pipe on screen. The hotel developer narrowed his eyes as he took in the details of the disconcerting image.
“Doesn’t look like you’d be able to fix that,” he admitted.
Coco agreed. “Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple obstruction.”
White looked up from the camera at her. “What’s your opinion on how this happened?”
Coco hesitated while she gauged the expression of her boss. He seemed irritated, sure, but not like he was totally shutting himself off to being open. She decided to tell him her wild theory.
“I think an animal did it, sir.” Best to ease into it, though. The sound of sea birds calling rent the air as he seemed to judge her response.
“What kind of animal? The same mysterious one that supposedly wrecked the sub yesterday, I suppose?”
Coco nodded matter-of-factly. “I believe so, Mr. White. Come here, take a look at this.” She turned, and walked alongside the sub’s manipulator arm, the six-inch white tooth still clutched firmly in its claw. She knelt and released it from the grabber, then handed it point first to White, whose eyes widened as he took it, and turned it over in his hands.
“Is this some kind of joke?” He directed his angry stare in turn to Coco and Mick, both of whom shook their heads but said nothing. “Because if it is,” White went on, “it’s not funny at all. In fact, you may as well tell me now: is this a hoax?” He thrust the giant tooth out in front of him. “I’m telling you, if I find out later it is, then you’re both fired, mark my words.”
The aggressiveness triggered Coco to assert her own position more forcefully. “We extracted this tooth from inside the pipe, Mr. White. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a shark tooth, specifically one that is much larger than any currently known living species.”
“I don’t have time for games. Just tell me what the hell you think it is,” White spat.
“I think it’s a living relative of Carcharadon or perhaps Carcharacles megalodon, an extinct prehistoric shark about three times larger than the modern day Great White.” She paused to gauge White’s reaction.
He handed the tooth back to her. “Maybe you can use this on one of your eco lectures. I’ve got to get back to fixing the damned pipe. We’ve got guests down there now who are not accustomed to five star tropical hotels without air conditioning.”
He opened the camera and removed its memory card, then handed the camera back to Mick. “I’ll take this to the engineers so we can figure out what to do about it.” Mick nodded, and White walked away.
He called out over his shoulder, “Make sure that sub is ready for more dives!”
#
Inside his private Triton office, James White loaded the camera’s memory card into his desktop computer. He called up the images and video on his jumbo monitor, scowling at a couple of faux-glamour shots Mick took of Coco goofing around on the pier before the sub dive. He was somewhat surprised those two clowns had been able to bring back footage of the pipe; he knew Coco wasn’t trained for that deep of a dive. Probably not the most prudent thing in the world to send her down there, but they had a situation on their hands, and that was her job. The psych tests they did on her during the interview process indicated she was highly adaptive, after all. And let’s face it, if it actually happened to be true that she did encounter some sort of humongous sea creature down there, and that’s why the sub was damaged...well then, she wasn’t such a bad sub pilot at all, now was she?
He opened the last video, the one of the shark, and watched it, his face souring further with each turn the great fish took toward the surface. He deleted the shark video and everything else except for the shots of the intake pipe.
Then he ejected the memory card, and headed over to the engineering building.
Chapter 10
“It’s fucking hot in here, Stanley!”
Priscilla Doherty, wife of Stanley Doherty, owner of one of the NBA’s most celebrated teams, fanned herself with a room service menu while she lay in bed.
“Relax, I’ll see if I can find a thermostat control somewhere.” He looked around their suite. “I guess it won’t be on that wall,” he joked, pointing to the floor-to-ceiling acrylic window looking out on the reef.
“Seriously, Stan! I wanted to go to Bora Bora, and the over-water bungalows. You said this place would be amazing. I guess it is if you’re looking for an underwater sauna.”
“Oh, c’mon, look at that! It’s pretty damn amazing don’t you think?” He swept an arm out the window, where a school of fish suddenly darted out of view.
“You want to know what I think? I think they’re still working the kinks out of this place, Stan. I don’t know why we had to be in the first group of guests. Let someone else be the guinea pigs, I say. All those accident liability waivers we had to sign...”
Stanley gave up looking around for a thermostat, and instead picked up the room phone. “All right, all right, I’ll call the front desk.” Priscilla sighed heavily while he held the receiver to his ear. She listened to the one-way conversation while fanning herself at an ever-increasing pace.
“Yes, hello, this is Stanley Doherty. My wife and I are in the Manta Ray Suite, and it’s awfully hot in here. I wonder if you could be so kind as to tell me where the thermostat is, or if you can adjust it from your end.”
“You’re too damned polite, Stan,” his wife heckled him from the bed. He swatted the air in her direction, and furrowed his brow. He nodded and said “uh-huh,” and “I see,” “Okay...” a few times before hanging up.
“What’d they say?” Priscilla peered at him over the top of her makeshift fan.
He took a deep breath before answering. “She told me there’s a problem with the hotel’s air conditioning right now—the entire hotel, not just our suite—but that it should be fixed soon.”
Priscilla let the menu drop to cover her naked breasts. “Oh, great! ‘Soon’! How soon is ‘soon’?”
“I didn’t ask. They’re working on it, that’s all she meant.”
“Well, you should ask, Stanley!”
“She said that it’s a little cooler in the common areas of the hotel. Why don’t we go out and try the restaurant, get some lunch?”
“Are you even hungry?”
“I could eat, yeah.”
She glanced at part of the menu she’d been fanning herself with, and appeared less than enthusiastic. He added, “If it’s still too hot when we go to the restaurant, we’ll take the tram back up to the beach, and get something to eat up there, how’s that? She said they have topside bures they could put us in if we don’t want to stay here while they’re fixing the problem.”
>
She snapped her head up. “I thought you said she said it would be fixed soon?”
“That’s what she said.”
“Well, if she’s offering alternative accommodations already, how confident could she be that they’ll have it fixed anytime soon?”
“I really don’t know, honey. I’m just telling you what she said. You want to go eat?”
Chapter 11
Al Johnson screwed up his features into a visage of extreme distaste as he viewed the video White played of the SWAC intake pipe. He wagged his head slowly from side to side.
“Not good, James. Not good at all.”
The room of marine engineers was silent, a huddle of pen-twirling, tablet-pecking geeks who knew their work was more than cut out for them.
“Can you please elaborate?” White watched as Johnson backed up the video to a frame of interest and froze it there. He pointed with the tip of a pen to an area on screen.
“You see this here?”
White nodded.
“This is not fixable. Way too many holes; the whole thing is mangled beyond repair. The entire lower section of pipe—at least twenty feet of it—will have to be cut off and a new section welded on. Major job.”
“You’re positive that’s the only solution?”
Al looked at White with the same expression he reserved for kids with learning disabilities. “Yes, I’m positive, James.” Then he looked around the table, addressing his engineers. “Do any of you hold a different opinion?”
None of them said anything.
“All right!” White yelled. “I believe you. So tell me about this process. How long will it take?”
Again the room was silent. White glanced at his Rolex.
“Days to weeks, rather than hours to days,” Al said flatly.