by Rick Chesler
Caesar was much too light...so light...it should have been a huge effort for Coco’s 115 pounds to wrest the man’s body out of the water.
She pulled hard with one last burst of energy in case she was about to encounter resistance. Caesar came free of the water...
...but it wasn’t really Caesar...it was just his head. She was holding it clenched in one hand by the hair, like a terrorist in a beheading video. A cornucopia of fluids drained from the open neck into the surrounding water.
Coco made eye contact with Caesar’s head, and he blinked at her once.
She screamed, a guttural, feral cry that would haunt those who heard it for the rest of their lives, which in some cases would not be long. Coco let herself fall backwards, toward the tower entrance. Anything to be moving away from this horror.
The megalodon had worked itself into a frenzy with the introduction of Caesar’s entire blood volume into the water. She shoved herself backwards on elbows and heels, mind whitewashed with abject terror. She saw the megalodon’s throat muscles expanding and contracting. It was eating…swallowing Caesar’s headless body as it retreated outside the tunnel onto the reef.
Then hands were pulling Coco to her feet, voices shouting but still indistinct. She was in a disorienting haze of adrenaline, fear, and revulsion. The sheer force the shark was capable of stunned her to the very core of her being. That a mere fish could possess such raw power, such overpowering muscle, was not something she had even come close to comprehending prior to this experience. Sure, she’d read the textbooks, done the lab work, seen normal sharks firsthand many, many times. But none of that stood as any kind of realistic reference point for what she had just witnessed. It both frightened and motivated her; lives were very much in danger including her own, yet at the same time she knew she was witnessing something nature had never intended for human eyes. This fish was a dinosaur, and it killed like one.
White’s take-charge voice broke Coco out of her shark-induced reverie.
“Nothing we can do for him now. You tried. Control Room’s in here. Let’s go.”
Coco collected her wits about her by taking a couple of full breaths and examining her surroundings. While it was true the shark couldn’t reach them right here inside the tower, when she looked back at the entrance to the tunnel she’d been tossed through by the creature, she saw one of the steel pressure doors slam shut, walling them off inside the vertically oriented structure.
Their available space had been reduced yet again by the simple-minded predator—a dumb yet finely tuned beast honed over eons’ worth of evolutionary processes to kill whatever it had to in order to survive, to keep swimming, keep eating, keep reproducing. To a megalodon, Coco knew, everything looked like a nail from the point of view of a hammer.
And right now...she was one of those nails.
Coco fell into line once again with the group as they filed through a narrow hallway with plastic strip doors at both ends. Realizing she was bringing up the rear while White was at the head of the line as usual, and that the going was slower than usual after what they’d been through, Coco picked up the radio from her belt, hoping its claim of “water resistant” by the manufacturer would hold true.
She quickly removed the battery compartment cover, exposing the missing battery White had taken from her. Then she plucked the spare battery from her pocket and inserted it into the radio. By the time she reached the end of the hallway, she had put the cover back on and clipped the unit back to her belt, exactly as it had been before. Only now it had power.
She just had to find the right time to use it.
Chapter 35
It was easy for Mick to identify the sections of the hotel that had been flooded or destroyed. They were blacked out. Not only were there no exterior reef lights on in these sections, but the interior was darkened as well. As he skirted the hotel’s ruined lobby tower, it became clear to him just how severe the damage to the underwater facility was. He mentally chided himself for not noticing it on the way out to the pod, even though he’d been singularly focused on that objective, and hadn’t looked closely at the hotel.
But now...Mick shook his head in awe of the transformation the luxury attraction had undergone in such a short time. The once grand lobby, decimated...just a water-filled space, open to the ocean with a steel pressure door walling off the rest of the hotel. He watched as a stingray swam over a plush red couch as if seeking a good spot to settle down. Then he saw something that had the impact of an unexpected punch to the gut: a body floating in mid-water beneath a chandelier. He didn’t recognize the woman, but she had obviously been a guest, her long hair splayed out in the currents, designer dress doing the same. The expression on her face was one of horror frozen in time—eyes wide open, mouth pulled back in a painful grimace.
Mick gripped the steering joystick, and brought the sub in a wide arc around the lobby. He was not as skilled at Coco at driving the vehicle—his job was to fix and maintain them, not to operate them—and so he kept a wide, safe berth from the structure. He knew, though, that when it came to burning a hole through this place, he was going to have to perform maneuvers that required some real finesse. He could only hope he was up to the task when the time came.
He continued to trace the contour of the underwater structure while casting his gaze inside for signs of activity. He skirted along the straightaway where the pods were housed, clenching his teeth as he passed the empty space where the jettisoned pod had been, now being claimed by the sea. A parade of four lobsters walked head-to-tail across the sandy seafloor where the pod had been, as if reasserting dominance over their domain.
He continued on, casting nervous glances off to his left and the edge of the reef, wary that the megalodon would choose to make itself known now that he was down here alone. After passing the remainder of the row of pods, he reached a dark section and double-checked that all of the sub’s external lights were on. He found one that hadn’t been activated, and flipped it on. Then he worried that maybe all these lights would attract the big shark and reached out to turn it off again, but stopped himself. He told himself he was being silly, and focused on his piloting, taking the sub past the end of the row of suites to where the tunnel branched out into three short tunnels that ran into the tower, one to each of its three floors.
The sub’s spotlights illuminated a scene of devastation Mick was not prepared for. At first the tubes looked normal—clear tubes, clear water...but it was the steel plate in front of the middle tunnel that alerted him to the problem. Another pressure door had been activated. He looked back to the tunnels, and then he noticed it: there were particles floating through the tubes—nothing really unusual, just the same debris and particulate matter that floated in the seawater all around him—but that was just it. There was water flowing through the connecting tunnels!
A chill ran through him as he processed the destruction. Somehow the tunnel had been broken. Not somehow, he corrected himself, for there was only one thing around here that could do that kind of damage. The megalodon had smashed through the tunnel. He twisted his body in the seat to get a good look all around the sub, as if the patrolling dino-shark would pop out of the darkness and suck the entire mini-sub down its ravenous gullet at any moment. But there was only the mute testimony to the megalodon’s passing: the ruined hotel. He traced along the tunnel with his gaze, and saw another pressure door at the end of the room suites. The gravity of what this meant hit him hard.
Whoever was in that surviving tower now was stuck in there. Panic gripped him as he realized something else—what if someone had been trapped in the tunnel when it flooded, like the train tunnel? He shone the spotlight slowly along its length, half-expecting to recoil in horror at any second with the sighting of a body, but by the time his light beam played on the pressure door guarding the pod suites, he had still found no bodies floating in the tube.
He willed himself to stick to the job at hand. What was he looking for?
Need a contained area, f
looded or unflooded, but near to a working pressure door if it’s unflooded, so that Coco can scuba dive out of it and get to land. It occurred to him that he was only going to be able to save one person using the sub in that manner, since the other six divers had already been killed in the pod. But if he could only save one person, he was glad it would be Coco, and at least land-based divers would then be able to penetrate the hotel in order to effect a rescue.
Now that he’d traversed the length of the hotel, he felt like he’d seen enough to call it an assessment, and was now ready for the next phase of his plan. Time to make contact with Coco. Since so many parts of the hotel were now sectioned off and compartmentalized, he couldn’t just drill a hole anywhere and tell her to come meet him there. She might not be able to reach it. He had to make contact with her and find out her location.
Mick picked up the sub’s radio transmitter, and called Coco’s name into it.
#
“Where’s Michaelson?” White demanded of Dan Wang, the only technician apparently manning a massive circular array of controls. With Caesar gone, White feared that Wang might be the only technical person in here with them.
“He’s not in here,” Wang said. White was painfully aware that although competent, Wang had not been involved in the design of the hotel as Michaelson had, but was brought on to operate it after it was built because he had experience with commercial diving systems as well as a small, single-room underwater hotel in Key Largo, Florida.
“So where is he?”
“On dry land. He took the last train out—the last working train,” he corrected himself, before adding, “Not because he was scared or anything, just because that’s when his sleep shift is.”
White gave an exasperated gesture. “So he’s still asleep in his bure, right when we need him most?” It did seem impossible anyone could sleep through so much commotion and chaos.
Wang shrugged. “I haven’t needed to contact him. Handling things on my own so far, but—“
At that moment, White’s radio crackled with Mick’s voice, a static-ridden, underwater-to-underwater connection traveling from sub to hotel. “Triton-1 to Coco, Triton-1 to Coco, do you read, over?”
White snatched up his comm unit from his belt, and barked into it. “This is James, Mick. What are you doing?”
There was a slight hesitation, one which Coco thought—or liked to think, at any rate— was due to his surprise at White answering the radio call instead of Coco. Would be he pick up on the fact that something was amiss in the group dynamic? She wasn’t about to bet her life on it. Mick worked for White, after all, and it wasn’t that unusual for someone other than the person called to respond to a radio call. The normal channels were open.
Mick came back, “On my way out there, passing the hotel now, just checking in, over.”
“We’ve got a situation here, Mick,” White returned. “But it’s nothing you can help with at the moment, so—“
The technician interrupted White, tapping his shoulder. “There is something he can do,” Wang said, pointing over to his console. “I’ve lost intercom link with Topside. You could get him to go back to the island and wake Michaelson’s ass up, and tell him to work on the comm problem.”
White nodded to his tech and responded, “I’ll tell him.”
He told Mick to go rouse Michaelson, or find him wherever he was, then signed off, and turned to look at the rest of the group.
Most of them were gazing uneasily out the windows, looking for stirrings of the megalodon. Coco met his gaze, and then looked away. White then stepped over to Wang, and the two huddled in quiet conference, no doubt discussing the unpleasant cost of failure for various scenarios.
Coco walked slowly around the edge of the room, ostensibly to survey the reef outside, checking for the megalodon in a more professional and thorough fashion than the guests, but in actuality pursuing quite a different purpose.
#
Mick eyeballed the sub’s instrument console. Battery power, oxygen level, everything looked A-okay. Then his radio squawked, and he felt his pulse quicken as Coco’s voice filled the cabin of her submersible. Her words were quiet, and he had to turn the volume up high to make them out clearly.
“...got my own radio. Can you hear me, Mick?”
Mick gripped the transmitter while he held the craft in a hover just outside the reach of the hotel’s reef lights. “I hear you Coco!” Then he noticed that she was coming through on a different channel than the standard one. The sub radio had scanned the available frequencies, and detected a transmission. He wondered if she was worried about White hearing what she said. Mick knew that the walkie-talkies like the one he carried when topside would not be set to scan.
“I hear you, Coco. What’s the situation?” Mick figured that was ambivalent enough of a question, and if there was someone listening in, Coco would let him know.
She replied once again with a lowered voice. “Mick, Mr. White took the battery out of my radio—said he didn’t want me calling Topside anymore—but I found a spare. I can only talk a few seconds more without him seeing. We are trapped in the west tower, Main Control Room, over.”
Mick replied immediately, understanding there was no time to squander. “Copy that. I came back down in the sub to see if I can get you out of there.”
“Get me out of here? How the Hell are you going to do that?”
“Do you have access to scuba gear?”
“Negative. It’s in the lobby, which is now flooded and behind a pressure door. Or floating out along the reef somewhere. Let me know if you come across it.”
Mick’s fist pounded the sub’s console in frustration as he watched a small school of baitfish pass close by outside. Coco continued before he could formulate a response.
“Doesn’t matter anyway, because the airlock is sealed off, even the escape pods—if I were crazy enough to try using one of those after what happened— are sealed off. We’re trapped in the west tower, Mick. But at least we have air...for now. The megalodon’s been on a rampage.”
Mick shook his head even though the fishes outside his window were the only ones who could see the gesture. “It would matter if you had access to your gear, because I fitted an acetylene torch to the grab-arm today, and I’m pretty sure I could use it to burn a hole through the hotel.”
This time when Coco transmitted he heard White’s voice calling her name in the background, sounding angry. “Burn a hole through and then what—flood the last remaining place in the hotel with air we can get to?!”
Mick exhaled heavily, swinging the fist holding the transmitter in mid-air, like he was punching an invisible opponent. She was right. What in the Hell was he thinking? Punch through the hotel like John fucking Wayne and the cavalry coming to the rescue? Ridiculous. And yet, what other choice did she have? He talked into the transmitter again.
“I was thinking that I meet you in a small area that’s easily sealed off, maybe by a pressure door after you leave, or just a small little room, and then you have your scuba gear on when I cut the hole. When the place floods, you swim out, hold onto the sub like a remora, and I tow you back to the beach.”
In spite of the situation, Coco’s laughter bubbled through his radio speaker. It was music to his ears. “Remora, ha! Don’t I wish? I’ve got no scuba stuff, though, Mick. Maybe—gotta go!” He heard White’s voice permeating the connection again.
“I’ll stick around. Call me when safe, out!”
He listened for a response, but none came. Mick put the transmitter down, and surveyed his surroundings outside the sub. He looked up at the tower, all three stories of it, and mostly still lit, with the exception of the dive shop on the bottom floor. He had to scout it out in more detail, find a suitable site to burn through it.
His course of action decided, Mick activated the sub’s thrusters, and banked into a turn around the tower.
Chapter 36
The Saudi sheik, a composed man of fifty-some-odd years of age decked out in full
robes and headgear, had up until now remained quiet, his wife by his side even more so. Now, however, standing in the tower’s control room while James White conferred with his lone surviving technician, the guests’ legs sopping wet, with even the knowledgeable marine biologist standing around wondering what to do, he decided to make his voice heard. The billionaire cleared his throat forcefully and turned to White, interrupting his conversation.
“Excuse me, Mr, White.”
White continued speaking to the tech in hushed tones. “Mr. White! You will answer me when I speak to you!” The sheik raised his voice to a near yell that startled the property developer and the technician, both of whom bumped heads when they turned to look up at the angry Arab. White rubbed his temple while glaring at the tech for a second before addressing his irate client.
“Forgive me for not hearing you sooner, Abdullah bin Antoun, but I am in the middle of discussing possible solutions to our problems. Is there something I can do for you?”
The Saudi’s gaze was stern as his wife stood by his side. “Yes, Mr. White, there is. I have been most patient with you and your staff up to now, and that patience has not been rewarded. Things continue to worsen as time goes by. I demand that you tell me right now what you are doing to get us out of this hotel. When can we leave?”
A rumbling of agreement rippled through the room as the other guests crowded in to hear the exchange.
White snorted derisively, and swept a hand toward the dark sea beyond the tower glass. “If you’ve figured out how to walk through walls and breathe underwater, Abdullah, by all means, let us know. In the meantime, I’m working on a solution that actually obeys the known laws of physics, if that’s okay with Your Highness.”
White assumed a look of smug satisfaction as he looked over at the guests in turn, but none of them looked happy or impressed. In fact, they were beginning to look downright hostile toward White. But compared to the Sheik, they were compliant.