The boat jumped in the water and raced for the pass.
CHAPTER 29
Nathan stood at the pay telephone. Nettie stood beside him, looking back toward the Sound.
“Coast Guard,” he repeated to the information operator, and then spelled it out, trying to sound as Southern as he could. “C-o-a-s-t g-u-a-r-d. Two words. Starts with a C.”
* * *
The hundred-fifty-horsepower Mercury roared. Howard waved his “madman stopper” over his head. Peter stood with his hands on the back of the front seats. The ski boat bounced across the water into Biloxi Bay and past the wide, rounded concrete pier fronting the Marine Education Center to their left.
“Where in hell did it go?” Howard asked.
“I’d just as soon we didn’t know,” the redhead said and looked back at the blond. She nodded.
“There!” Peter yelled. He pointed ahead of them to the Highway 90 bridge running across the bay to Ocean Springs. Near the center of the bridge, the thick fin, barely perceptible in the bright moonlight, moved slowly along the base of the pilings coming down from the high, arched section over the boat channel.
Howard jammed the throttle forward and Peter had to grab the back of the seats to keep from falling.
They quickly closed the distance. The fin kept moving slowly, angling in and out of the pilings. Part of the nose surfaced. Howard raised the long barrel of the revolver over the windshield as the nose moved back under the water.
“Wait’ll we get closer,” Peter said. “You want to hit him good.”
“Wherever a slug from this hits him, it’ll be good,” Howard said.
The fin sank beneath the water.
“Son of a bitch!” Howard said. They were only a hundred feet away now and he eased back on the ski boat’s throttle. The boat slowed. Car lights flashed over their heads from vehicles turning onto the bridge in the direction of Ocean Springs. Small waves slapped gently against the boat’s hull.
“There,” Peter said. “There!”
A hundred feet ahead of them the tip of the fin broke the surface of the water and moved slowly into the marked channel under the bridge. Howard eased the throttle forward. Peter smiled and nodded. The nose broke the surface.
Howard fired, the weapon recoiling in his hand and the sound of the shot deafening. The shark abruptly submerged, leaving the water swirling.
“Hit him right in the head!” Howard yelled.
The boat sped toward the channel.
The wide head exploded up through the surface. The mouth gaped toward them. The body rose ten feet into the air. Howard’s eyes widened. “Holy Christ!” Peter said. The body fell forward, splashing big waves out to its sides. And the fin sped out from under the bridge toward them.
Howard dropped the revolver and spun the wheel around, hitting the throttle. The boat jumped forward. The blond and the redhead stared back over their shoulders in shock. “You didn’t hit him in the head,” Peter said in a voice barely audible over the roar of the motor. “You didn’t even see his head.”
Spray began to rise to each side of the fin.
Howard glanced back over his shoulder, then ahead of him, and then back across his shoulder again. The spray was rising ten feet into the air now. The fin had already cut the distance in half. Howard jerked the wheel to the right and guided the boat directly toward the pier sticking out from the Scott Marine Education Center. The gap between the boat and the pier quickly narrowed. The gap between the boat and the fin narrowed even quicker. The redhead started climbing over the windshield toward the bow. Peter leaned forward over the seat and caught her around the waist, pulling her backward. She screamed. The blond fought past him toward the front seats.
“Look out!” Howard yelled.
He jerked the throttle back at the last moment. Too late. The boat coasted rapidly in on its bow wave into the side of the pier. There was a loud crashing sound. The front of the boat caved backward. The blond shot forward as though fired out of a cannon. Peter and the redhead, his arms still holding her waist, tumbled through the air toward the pier. Howard slid face first through the windshield into the concrete and rebounded off of it back toward the wheel. Stunned, he came awkwardly to his feet, took two long steps on the boat, and hurdled up onto the pier, wobbled backward at its edge, and dove between Peter and the red-head. The blond scurried past them on all fours.
Behind them, the shark rose out of the water and came down hard on the boat, smashing it beneath the water.
* * *
Up and down the Sound, the radios of the charter boats and pleasure craft alike received the Coast Guard broadcast of the shark having been spotted moving in the direction of Biloxi Bay by an older couple out floundering. Carolyn swung the Intuitive around to the right and opened the throttles as much as she could without coming to a speed that might pull the section of meat from the big hook trailing the boat. Small waves beginning to build out to the sides of the craft’s bow, they moved in the direction of the channel passing behind Deer Island toward the bay.
CHAPTER 30
Alan and Carolyn stared at the flotsam drifting out from the Education Center’s pier. The crushed bow of the submerged ski boat bobbed next to the seawall. At the rear of the pier, four figures hobbled slowly in the direction of the brightly lit casinos rising high into the air a few hundred feet in front of them.
“Looks like Mr. Boom-boom is in for the night,” Alan said.
Carolyn lifted the mike from in front of her. “Coast Guard, this is the charter fishing boat Intuitive.”
“This is Coast Guard Station Gulfport. Go ahead, Captain.”
“There’s a small boat wrecked on the Scott Education Center pier at Point Cadet. Its four passengers are moving on foot in the direction of the casinos. I don’t know if there are any injuries.”
The Coast Guard responded by saying they would contact the Biloxi Police and signed off.
As Carolyn replaced the mike she glanced at the four figures again, then turned the Intuitive’s wheel toward the Highway 90 bridge and looked over her shoulder at the long line stretching taut in the water behind them.
* * *
Vandiver cradled the telephone receiver against his shoulder as he buttoned his shirt. “The artist’s interpretation is what I started thinking about, Douglas—drawing the megalodon’s head blunter than a white’s is only an artist’s interpretation. And what was that interpretation based on? A megalodon is cartilaginous. Cartilage doesn’t fossilize, it wastes away—nothing is left from which to interpret. There maybe were a few places where silt formed around a megalodon’s body and hardened and left a rough imprint of what it looked like. But that’s nothing. Think of the dinosaurs. They did at least leave fossilized skeletons—and there’s been many a dinosaur interpretation changed after subsequent finds of new bones. But there’s no bones to find of a megalodon.
“And the brown coloring.… An artist’s conception is all that is too. Hell, nobody really knows what color the megalodon was—it could have been pink. An artist’s conception, that’s all any of it is. All a guess. The megalodon could look exactly like the white of today, at least enough where that marine biologist in Mississippi couldn’t tell the difference; perhaps enough alike that nobody can tell the difference. Why not, it’s the direct great-grandfather of the white?
“We’re going to go look for ourselves. You get out to Andrews and find a flight where we can hitch a ride. You know how we have been catching hell about spending taxpayers’ money by using service flights rather than traveling commercial. But we haven’t got time to waste with a commercial flight, so find somebody already going that way. If you can’t find somebody already going that way, then give them a reason why they should—and I want to take off within the hour.”
“Sir?”
“Yes.”
“Sir, remember the length of the trench I saw? You said yourself that based on the size of the tooth the megalodon had to be at least forty feet in length. The white in Mississ
ippi is only twenty-five. They said they saw it up close. I don’t see how they could have been that far off in their estimate.”
“I’ve thought about that, too. Why did I say it had to be at least forty feet? Because I used shark teeth of today for a comparison. Who’s to say that the megalodon doesn’t have teeth twice the size of a similar-length shark of today?”
“Then a megalodon wouldn’t look like a white, sir.”
“Teeth wouldn’t.”
“The depression I found in the Keys, sir. Its length—over fifty feet?”
“Did you see him lying there, Douglas, or where he had been lying? Hell, how do you know he didn’t scoot up the trench so that it looks like he is longer than he really is? He had to settle there, slide into it, come out of it, that would have stretched it some.”
There was no response, and Vandiver waited a moment. Then he frowned. “Douglas, son, I don’t know. Okay? You sound just like your mother in an argument; she has to have every damn thing hammered out in concrete before she’ll believe it. But bear with me, please. And have that flight ready for takeoff within the hour.”
* * *
The Intuitive passed under the Highway 90 bridge. Ahead was the old abandoned bridge that once served the traffic between Biloxi and Ocean Springs. Beyond the abandoned bridge was the third bridge crossing the bay, the railway bridge with its open span angling up toward the sky. Ahead of the bridges the moonlight cast the water in an almost daylike brilliance. Alan looked over his shoulder at the running lights of a Bertram entering the bay and cruising past the Education Center.
Carolyn lifted the mike to her mouth. “Kevin.”
The voice came back almost immediately. “Yeah, Carolyn.”
“Did you see the flotsam?”
“Yeah, what happened?”
“Our friends with the dynamite on the river today—looks like they finally had enough beer. I’m pulling up the channel toward the river.”
“Roger, Carolyn, I’ll pull straight across toward Ocean Springs.”
The Intuitive passed underneath the railway bridge.
Ahead of them on the shore off to the left, the big double doors at the rear of the building housing American Aquaculture, Inc. stood open. Bright light from inside the spacious rear half of the building shone out toward the water.
* * *
Ho, his long hair hanging down his back, his hands in the pockets of his lab coat, grinned as he stared at the half-dozen mature redfish females circling the sides of the fingerling tank. Flown by private jet into the Gulfport/Biloxi Regional Airport two hours before, the fish were obviously no worse for the long trip from Los Angeles, having taken quickly to their new surroundings and eagerly gone after the food pellets he had dropped into the tank. “Chang know beauties when he see them,” Ho said, speaking to himself. Then he directed his words to the fish. “You see soon that you have good job here—all benefits free. And…”—he held up a slim finger to make his point—“you never be eaten here.”
He turned and walked toward a narrow three-foot-long aquarium sitting in a wheelbarrow by the wide, double doors leading out to the bay. In the water behind the glass a thin rubber hose bubbled oxygen to an eighteen-inch red-fish slowly moving its fins.
“You have been good, fruitful mother,” Ho said. “Now you go back to your life.” Stepping around to the rear of the wheelbarrow, he lifted the hose from the aquarium, then caught the wheelbarrow’s long wooden handles and tilted its legs up from the floor.
A moment later he passed out the doors toward the waters of the bay glistening in the bright moonlight.
He stood a few seconds at the edge of the shore staring at the charter boat moving along the channel toward the Biloxi River. Then he lifted a square piece of foam rubber from out of the wheelbarrow and dipped the piece into the bay water at his feet. Next he slipped the section into the aquarium, slid it under the fish, gently wrapped the soft rubber around the fish’s body, and lifted the water-soaked section and the fish out of the aquarium to his chest. The fish wiggled, twisted.…
“Now, now. Be good woman for moment longer.” The fish wiggled again. Water running down the front of his lab coat from the lively bundle, Ho stepped into the bay and waded out from the shore. “Now, now,” he was saying as he went farther and farther, the water climbing up his legs.
Soon, he was up to his thighs in the warm water. He took two more steps and, up to his hips now, gently lowered the foam rubber into the water and opened it.
The redfish moved a few inches. Its fins fanned slowly.
“Go ahead,” Ho said. “Find friends, and have good life.”
With a sudden swipe of its tail, the fish shot forward a couple of feet in the water, slowed a moment, then dove out of sight.
Ho grinned.
The sudden great splash off to his left was as loud as a truckload of lumber falling into the water. He jerked his head toward the sound.
The great shark’s back was above the surface, the water line running along under its dark eyes. Ho screamed and stumbled backward, sitting into the water and flailing his arms to regain his feet. The shark shot forward, ground to a sudden stop, twisted its body, swiped its tail hard to the side, and moved forward again. Ho regained his footing and moved backward rapidly. His heel caught on a pipe lying on the bottom and again he sprawled backward, fought his way up, and came to his feet.
More than half of the shark’s thick body was now above the waterline. The charred section of its wide head contrasted vividly with the rest of its gray color. Dark red blood seeped from a hole in its nose. The pectoral fins, sticking rigidly out into the water, splashed like giant boat paddles as the creature rocked from side to side—and scooted forward again.
Ho screamed and kicked his knees toward the shore. The shark, now squirming frenetically, flicking its tail back and forth rapidly, could move forward no more. Blood pumped from the hole in its nose.
* * *
Alan and Carolyn had heard Ho’s high-pitched scream even over the loud hum of the Intuitive’s engines. Alan had quickly pulled in the line trailing behind them. Now, white waves rolling out to the sides of its bow, the boat sped toward the great shark writhing on the submerged mudflat forty feet from the bank. Carolyn opened the cabinetlike doors of the locker built into the bulkhead under the steering wheel. She pulled out a revolver wrapped in an oilcloth. Alan took it from her and unwrapped it—a thirty-eight-caliber Smith & Wesson with its lead slugs shaved flat at the end. Deadly to a man or a five-or six-foot shark, but next to useless against the twenty-five-foot monster ahead of them. He remembered. “Where are some matches?”
Carolyn looked at him.
“The dynamite, Carolyn—matches, where are they?”
“In the drawer by the stove.”
He turned, caught the top of the ladder, and swung down into the fishing cockpit. A moment later he lifted the heavy cardboard box up onto the sink in the cabin and ripped it open. Seconds later he was twisting the tip of an ice pick around inside the end of a stick of the explosive. He grabbed for the box of percussion caps.
* * *
Carolyn looked at the depth sounder, grabbed for the throttles, and jerked them back and put the engines out of gear. The Intuitive’s bow rose on its own wave and plowed into the soft mud, shuddering to a stop, throwing her into the wheel and Alan, coming around the cabin with a double handful of the sticks of dynamite, hard against the rail. He regained his balance and rushed around the Zodiac inflatable on the forward deck to the bow.
Fifty feet away, the shark, its wide head charred and blood pumping from its nose, began to slide backward into deeper water.
Alan quickly struck a match and touched it to the fuse protruding from one of the sticks. The fuse smoked. He drew his hand back over his shoulder and whipped his arm forward.
The stick tumbled slowly end over end as it arched through the air and splashed into the water a few feet out in front of the shark’s head.
Seconds passed.
A muffled thump, the water boiled and foamed, and the shark reared its head and splashed back down into the water.
A second fuse smoked. Alan watched it as it slowly turned brown. He kept waiting.
“Alan.”
He suddenly raised his arm and whipped the stick forward. It flew across the water with less of an arch than the first one, hit the shark in front of the dorsal fin, bounced into the air and off to the far side of the thick body—and exploded in a ball of fire and a crescendo of noise.
The shark’s head jerked violently away from the explosion. Its mouth gaped wide. The wave of the blast slammed a hard wall of hot air back against Alan. He held the match to another fuse.
With a great shudder of its body, the shark slid backward fully into the deeper water and submerged except for its thick fin. The fin leaned sharply to the side, the great body flipped around in the water, throwing a wave out toward the Intuitive, and the creature raced away from the boat.
Alan stared helplessly, then threw the stick as far after the shark as he could. It hit in the water and went under.
The Intuitive’s engines roared in reverse. The water foamed around the props. Carolyn jerked the throttles back and jammed them forward again. The boat’s stern pulled down in the water. A great dark cloud of silt spread out to the sides of the boat.
A hundred feet behind the racing fin the dynamite exploded with a muffled thump and the water boiled.
Carolyn jerked the throttles back again and then forward once more. Smoke poured from behind the boat. There was a loud sucking sound. The bow moved backward a foot—and then broke loose from the mud’s grip.
The Intuitive shot backward, its blunt stern pushing a wall of water before it. A hundred yards away now, the fin began to drop lower and lower in the water—and disappeared.
CHAPTER 31
The Intuitive moved slowly, Carolyn keeping her eyes glued to the depth sounder as she weaved her way around the mudflats.
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