He was sure from the moment they fled that the two men, somewhere in the sea ahead of him, were returning to their home. That thought pulled him through the water with as much force as his undulating body. Home! Was it his home? Were they his kind, his people? And if indeed they were the same race as he then why was the smaller one still bleeding? Why had the wound not closed?
The blood-scent in the water was a road map for Mark to follow. In the calmness of the ocean at this depth, although it extended rapidly in all directions, the strength of it hung in the water like a neon arrow. The sea water that Mark pulled in and out of his chest passed through both his smell and taste senses, and the information he gleaned spoke volumes. When the trail funneled from the surf to a direct path westward and on to the open sea, the wound was still wide and the man was losing blood at a great rate. At some point, a few hours into their retreat, the two had obviously stopped and bound the wound. This he knew by the concentration in one spot and then its diminution to a much fainter scent from that point on. But still he bled? Something was different about them but so much more was the same… Mark swam on.
Elizabeth stood by the open door to the patio and pool and stared. She had returned to her apartment late last night after driving back from the symphony fundraiser in San Diego. It had been so late that she hadn’t checked her messages, only climbed under cool fresh sheets after showering. She had slept through the night. The bright sunlight and gentle breeze from the ocean that fluffed the curtains and washed over her had woken her. Taking her favorite big cup, the Limoges one covered with paintings of robins on branches and little colored bugs, she filled it with coffee. Treating herself with extra cream and two sugars, she walked out onto her deck. Standing there in the warm sun, the wind playing with the silk of her nightgown, she hummed a piece of the beautiful Barber she had heard the night before. She read through the entire newspaper and refilled the robin cup before picking up the phone and calling in for a message she knew was there by the beeping dial tone.
The fragile cup shattered when it hit the edge of the wrought iron table as she ran to her bedroom to get dressed. She had called him once from the apartment before going down to the garage, but when the message started she hung up and left. Two more times the message started when she called from her car—on what seemed an endless drive up the coast to the turn off to his house. The gate she opened with her beeper dragged irritatingly, and she smacked the passenger mirror when she squeezed through a second too soon. Nothing appeared wrong from the front of the house, and she parked by the gray pot that held one of the six orange trees that lined the walkway. Everything seemed right, but everything was so wrong! She felt sick and could feel Mark wasn’t there when she let herself in with her key.
“Mark!”
The sound of her voice fell at her feet, and she knew no one would pick it up. But she tried again.
“Mark!”
The panic that had electrified her was strangely fading. The sound of his voice on her phone had removed her heart from her body. He was leaving and taking it with him. She couldn’t live without it! She had to stop him!
That was how she left her home less than an hour ago and drove with the damn ocean teasing her to the left the entire way. Now in the house, his house, she knew he was gone and the panic was going and nothing was to be left but an echo of her heartbeat. Everything she saw and touched as she walked through the living room, past the large kitchen, and toward the backyard, she filed away in the place her heart had been. His jacket. The picture of them taken in Arrowhead. His chair. The light switch he had touched. Him…everywhere.
She stopped before going outside. Looking out from the coolness of the dark, she could see it was all wrong. The wind had scattered papers like a few days before. The towel on the deck, still circled with a damp ring, was very wrong. The beautiful sparkling diamonds weren’t gems at all but ugly pieces of broken glass. It was all wrong.
She held the familiar curved brass in her hand, his again, before turning the handle and stepping out into the cool warmth. Violence still hung in the air. She wasn’t afraid as she stepped over the broken glass and past the drying towel. She stopped by the flagstone wall. The sea was calm and beautiful under the cloudless sky. Beautiful and mean. He was somewhere out there and she knew it. Somewhere she could never go. She felt the edge of the top stone pressing against her waist. His again. She couldn’t go any farther. She turned slowly against that edge and leaned back. She looked at the strange shape of the bench floating where the breeze had pushed it against the far side of the pool.
She looked down at the small piece of white that called to her eyes in the sun. She picked it up. Soft fabric and different than any she had ever seen. Maybe his? She didn’t know. She opened it where it had been folded over and saw the small dark stain. Very familiar. It was a bit of dried blood. So it was not his. Not important.
She must wait for him. He said he would return, and he always did what he said he would do. He had given his word. His word. But what if he could not return? What if the sea had taken Mark never to give him up again? Then it would be time for regrets. All the times she had stopped herself from voicing her heart. The poems she composed but never wrote. These would be the regrets. But most of all she wished she had told him how much her life meant through him. But now she would wait. She would wait for her heart.
As the sun was setting, Mark was forced by the radical change in the trail’s direction to drop to a much deeper level where the sun, even at midday height, could not shed its light. His eyes adjusted and, because of what he had learned from his testing at the lab, they immediately picked up the electric output of the various kinds of microscopic sea life. It was much more sophisticated, Jason had said, but very similar to night-vision binoculars. The outline of the sea floor started to come into view. At this depth, very little plant life was evident. Some of the bracken types of sea urchins were attached to the rock surfaces of this underwater mountain range.
Even with the two zigzagging along the midpoint and lateral line of the mountains, they maintained a consistent westerly course. Mark had explored these ranges numerous times over the years, and the familiar terrain added to his confusion. If they were headed to their home and they were taking the shortest route—Mark assumed the severity of the man’s wound and amount of blood that he was losing would force them to do so—why had he never detected so much as a hint of their presence before? Mark continued to breathe in the sea at maximum capacity. Their speed over the two days had not diminished to any great extent. None of his sea friends could have maintained such a pace. The difference, Elizabeth had said, was that he did not just extract oxygen from the water to feed his muscles as did the fish, but his system had some way of drawing pure energy from the sea itself.
She came into his thoughts many times over the hours he had been following the men. He had gone over the message he had left on her phone several times. He had said so little. If he could, he would have told her more. She would know what he knew about the men on his deck. All he had left her with was that he would return. He could not have told her where he was going or even what direction he would be traveling. He did not know that himself, and even now the direction could change at any time. He had not told her about the attempt on his life. If more than these two men wanted him dead then perhaps he would not return to her. Long ago, he had tried to return to the sea and leave her and his other friends, but he could not. He recalled walking back to where she had watched him dive into the surf. The tear had still been on her cheek when he said he had not learned enough yet. Now here he was leaving her in order to learn. He could only hope—hope she would understand whatever happened. He hoped she would continue to help the world with her work at AORI. He hoped she would not be alone.
This chase that had begun as a sprint continued past its first full day without abating, and then into its second and third. Somewhere high above where Mark swam, the sun was rising
into the fourth day since he had left the message for Elizabeth. Where he was now, time was measured by knowing the pressure of the tides and some sense in his body that was logging the change in magnetic pulls from north to south. Some time ago, they had passed under the river within the sea that ran warmer to the north and now the direction had slowly drifted south. Several times, Mark had made mental notes to report things he had seen for the first time to Elizabeth and his friends at the lab. Things of nature, like the plants Mark had witnessed growing at a depth where they should not have been able to survive or the almost pure mineral out-flow from the active volcano he had just passed at a depth of over three miles. He must also tell Jason of the faint electronic signal he detected from the twisted metal wreck on the ocean floor he swam by two days ago. After each of these discoveries, he also knew the information might die with him in secret.
On the sixth day, Mark started to close the gap between himself and those he pursued. The scent was stronger and they seemed to be following the ocean floor, which was several thousand feet under the surface now. Sea life was rare at this depth, although he felt none of the pressure that kept all mammals above him. Though they had slowed, he did not slacken his own pace. He wanted not to overtake them but rather get close enough to follow them to their destination. As midday approached, the sea floor started to slope ever upward, and he tracked their fresh sign around the boulders and hillsides as it now slowed considerably and wove its way through the more plentiful plant life. Mark slowed his own speed and was reading not just direction from the blood trail but the exact condition of the wounded man and precisely how many minutes it had been since he had passed. He knew the extremely stressed condition the bleeding man was in. The blood sign carried none of its former richness. Other signals indicated the shutting down of some internal organs.
As he rounded the outcropping of jagged rocks at the foot of a small hill, he pulled up suddenly. There was a pooling of information in this one spot. He swam to the largest of the stones and placed his hand on it. The younger one had leaned against it for awhile. They had stopped here for the first time since the chase had begun. He could detect the scent of the tunic, and it was the same as the one that had held his arms by the pool. He knew it was the wounded one. He also knew immediately that the body temperature of the wounded man had dropped considerably. The larger one had not rested but had moved in small circles a few yards ahead. Mark was very intrigued by how much sharper his senses had become since beginning the chase. Was it the extent he had pushed his body that sharpened them or these waters he had never been in before? Whatever it was, he could sense the vast difference in the signs of the two men. In fact, everything in him now had a greater clarity than before. His mind computed the input he received and knew they had stopped only for a short time. Then they had moved on but at a much slower speed, with the larger man swimming some distance ahead of the other.
Mark waited a few minutes himself. Not because he needed rest. He was waiting for one of those reasons he did not consciously understand. He was listening to and following a faint inner voice that was telling him to proceed slowly and expect anything. In fact, he felt stronger than he had in a long time. He had not pushed himself this hard in years and was encouraged to note that his strength seemed to increase with the stress.
When he finally knew it was right, he rose and gently pushed against the soft sand of the ocean floor. The small cloud swirled around his feet and settled back almost immediately. He rounded the base of the hill for about thirty feet, but he stopped almost instantly and dropped back behind a rock. From where he was concealed, he could see the two men. They had traveled not more than two hundred yards from where they had first stopped and the younger of the two was lying on the sand floor with his back against a large boulder. The larger man swam in small slow arcs in front of his wounded comrade. From where Mark lay, it appeared the smaller man could go no farther. He knew now would be the time to confront them and get some answers to the thousands of questions he had for them. He felt that with only one to pose him any real danger, he could avoid the knife blade so he decided to take the chance.
After the thought came to him to approach them, he stopped once again. The larger man had moved to his friend and appeared to put the thumb of his right hand to his partner’s mouth. The younger man violently pushed the hand away and, with one more attempt being thwarted, the larger man hovered above his friend for a second, turned in the water, and with a push swam away. Everything these two did left only questions and no answers. What had the larger man just tried to do and why was he now leaving this dying man after carrying him for so long? Mark stayed where he was and watched the larger assailant swim until he was completely out of view. Knowing he could follow the disappearing killer anywhere now, he let him move out of sight.
He waited until all signals told him it was safe to move then he rose up and over the rock. At that moment, to his left where vision started, which was about one hundred and twenty yards, he saw the whitish-gray outline of what he knew to be a white shark. He knew also that the course the large fish had taken was dictated by the blood scent of the young man being carried by the slight current. The slow lateral movement belied the speed at which the shark was moving. It covered one hundred yards in just a few seconds and started its final attacking approach at about the last twenty yards.
Mark had seen this action numerous times. Once they experienced the blood in the water and identified its source, it was only seconds before they made their final move. He marveled at their lack of caution when attacking, which came from centuries of absolute mastery of their environment. Mark had seen them take seals, fish, and once a sea otter—although he had never seen one eat an otter once it had killed it. He had also watched many eat shell fish from the sea floor so he knew the immobility of the man and him being on the sandy floor of the ocean would not deter this great predator.
Mark had only a second now to plan his action and, although he did not know exactly what he would do, he instantly shot forward to intersect the hunter. The white had just dropped to the ocean floor, and the sand was billowing in the wake of his great bulk racing for the kill. Mark hit the fish just as the large jaw was opening, and the flesh rolled back to expose rows of triangular teeth. He did not strike the shark as dolphins sometimes did, but he came from behind and stayed to the right. The moment was timed perfectly and, with the eyes of the great white closed over, he did not see Mark approach. At impact, he jammed his right hand deep into the front-most gill slit on the shark’s right side. The speed he had generated and his hand penetrating the fish’s body completely deflected the shark from its trajectory. As quickly as he hit it, Mark reached his other hand as far as he could over the top of the great beast’s head and found the gill slits on the left.
The fish was massive. Mark’s reach from fingertip to fingertip was easily over six feet, but with both hands firmly imbedded in the slits and gripping the inner cartilage-like flesh, his face was pressed on the sandpaper-rough skin on the back of the shark’s head. It was at least twenty-five to thirty feet in length and, based on his knowledge of small orcas and basking sharks, he knew this killing machine weighed 4500 pounds.
The shark’s instinctual reaction when Mark grabbed it was to arc its body to the left and then turn to face its attacker. Mark used that movement and the moment to swing his leg over its back. His left foot just clipped the front dorsal fin and, thankfully, found the left pectoral fin. He hooked his toe next to the large dot on the shark’s side. All this happened before man or fish could think, and from then on it was a battle of pure muscle and will. Essentially, all Mark had to do, or in fact all he could do, was hang on.
The giant fish, however, was doing everything! It could not know that the mystery thing that had attacked it had no intention of doing it any real harm. It employed every tactic that was in its genetic arsenal. One second it would be spinning at such a speed that Mark could feel the blood in his body bein
g redistributed by the force. The next second all would change, and over two tons of pure muscle would be charged with spasms as it attempted to throw its rider loose so it could turn its knife-like rows of teeth on it.
Mark re-tightened his grip and held his face tight to that hard, slate-blue skin. He knew the strength of the big shark, but he also knew where his hands were and why. With a hand in the front gill slit on either side of its head, Mark had closed off the two openings the shark used to funnel water and life-giving oxygen to itself. Mark also pressed, with all his strength, along the remaining four slits. He was in effect strangling the large fish. Choking it. He had, actually, no intention of killing the beast, but as far as the shark was concerned it was a fight to the death.
The sandy ocean floor was being stirred into an underwater dust storm. Clouds would follow where the big tail and fin would thrust, and all that could be seen at times were flashes of blue-gray, pieces of seaweed, the tan of Mark’s body, and glimpses of his yellow trunks. Although the action had started violently, in less than six or seven minutes, Mark could feel the starving muscles he was clinging to start to weaken. The fish would roll but not spin. It would sink for a moment to deeper water then as fast as possible race back into the cloud of sand. In a short time, Mark could raise his head from the hard back of the fish and look at the pale glassy eye on its right side.
The shark stopped its fight all together and began to sink to the ocean floor. It drifted down and started to list to its left side. Mark maintained his blockage of the slits until he felt most of the shark’s muscles finally release.
By this time the battle had carried them over a hundred yards away from where it began. As the fish came to rest on the sand, Mark released his hold and slid off the white’s back. He stood on the sandy floor and gripped the portal fin that, only moments before, had been his lifeline. He began to push the semi-conscious shark forward. The deadly mouth was now slack. Life-giving, oxygen-rich ocean water began to flow over the gill membranes and life started to return to the fish. Mark walked the huge thing along the sand and could soon feel its energy returning. In a short time it was able to begin a slow sideways undulation, and when Mark felt sure it would not stop and sink again, remain motionless and die, he let go and the sleepy giant began to retreat from the battlefield on its own.
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