Ahead of them the fin had emerged above the surface once more, and now moved slowly as the shark angled toward the marked channel running in the direction of the Biloxi River.
“It’s twenty to thirty feet deep where the river connects to the bay,” Carolyn said. “If he gets there, it’ll be like trying to find him in the Pascagoula all over again.”
“Carolyn,” the voice said over the radio. “Where?”
She grabbed the mike. “Kevin, it’s a couple hundred yards ahead of us, south of the main channel, moving toward the river.”
Alan looked at the Bertram racing down the channel out to their side.
“I see it,” Kevin said. “I have a rifle if I can get to it before it reaches deeper water.”
* * *
The thick fin began to rise higher. It stopped, edged to one side, rippled backward in the water, and moved in another direction. It came to a halt again, and half of its upper body came up out of the water.
“It’s blocked off,” Alan said.
The spotlight from the Bertram illuminated the shark’s body in a bright, circular beam. The first shots were heard as only light cracks. Tiny sparks of flame jumped from the rifle barrel. The slugs hit in the water around the shark’s head and ricocheted toward the shore.
The next two rapid shots slammed into the shark’s side, and the thick body jerked sideways into the deeper water. The fin turned and came back the same way it had gone, slowing once, then gaining speed again.
“It’s trying to find where it came in,” Carolyn said.
The distance between them and the fin began to narrow. Alan stepped to the rear of the flying bridge, caught the rail and swung down into the fishing cockpit.
In the cabin he gathered the coil of fuse, the box of percussion caps, and several sticks of dynamite, and held them to his chest as he came back out the door, up onto the forward deck, and hurried to the bow. Dropping to his knees, he began to work on the end of a stick with the ice pick.
The shark turned toward shore.
Carolyn spun the wheel that way, then grabbed for the throttles and yanked them back. Alan had to press his hand against the deck to keep from toppling forward.
The Intuitive coasted forward, then jerked to a full stop as Carolyn threw it into reverse. The water bubbling up in a great, violent torrent out to the sides of the props, the boat began to back away from the mudflat it had approached.
A moment later, Carolyn angled the bow off to the side and eased the throttles forward again.
The shark neared the shore and swung back in the direction of the river.
Alan came to his feet. He held two sticks of dynamite crudely tied together with a length of fuse. Two other fuses projected from the ends of the sticks and were twisted together into one cord. He stared at the fin.
Carolyn watched the depth sounder as she eased the wheel to the right. The water beneath the keel began to deepen again and she slowly moved the throttles forward. The Bertram was working its way out of the marked channel ahead of them and slowly making its way in the direction of the fin.
Flashes jumped from the rifle barrel.
The fin suddenly swerved and, racing now, sprays of water beginning to build out to its sides once more, came directly at the Intuitive. Alan watched it narrowing the distance between them. He held two of the matches pressed together between his thumb and forefinger.
A hundred yards.
Ninety yards.
The fin continued straight toward the Intuitive.
Eighty yards.
Seventy yards.
“It’s going to try to come by us!” Carolyn shouted. She looked at the depth sounder, moved her hand toward the throttles, then stopped it as the water began to deepen again.
Ahead of the Intuitive the fin began to sink lower as it sped toward them.
“This is the way it came in!” Carolyn shouted.
Fifty yards.
Alan cupped the small box of matches against his chest to shield it from the wind, held the heads of the two single matches close against the box, and raised the dynamite close to his hand.
Forty yards.
The fin suddenly cut sharply toward shore. It rose rapidly. The eyes came above the surface, the water streaming back under them. Carolyn cut the wheel toward the creature. Fully half of its body was exposed now—and it ground to a sudden stop.
The shark started thrashing, trying to move backward. It bucked violently. Alan struck the matches. They flared brightly and he touched the fire to the fuses.
The shark thrashed its head to the side, tried to turn its long body. Carolyn pulled back on the throttles. Alan lofted the doubled sticks of dynamite into the air.
They arched end over end, landed next to the head, splashing water up across the eye—and exploded in a ball of flame.
The shark’s pectoral fin rolled into the air. The head went over on its side into the water.
Another doubled charge arched through the air.
It landed on a side of the wide head, bounced, came down on the head again, and started to slide toward the water.
The explosion blew skin, eye, and meat high into the air in a gory shower.
CHAPTER 32
The twenty-five-foot shark lay on its side, half submerged in the dark water forty feet from shore. Where its eye and a side of its head had been, a four-foot-wide-by-two-foot-deep crater ran blood down into the brown water, staining it a darker shade in an ever-spreading circle. Behind the carcass, lights along the shore had come on at the sound of the explosions. More than one car had stopped in front of the buildings along Bayview Drive. Two teenage boys walked toward the edge of the water. Carolyn said, “It’s crazy.”
“What?”
“It’s crazy,” she repeated in a low voice. “But at the last, when I could tell it was trying to escape, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for it in a way.”
He slipped his hand around her shoulders. She laid her head against his arm. It had tried to escape, he thought, not just swimming away from the boats, but consciously trying to find a way into the channel leading toward the river. Consciously, he thought again, the same kind of obvious thinking it did when it tried to wear away the grass and mud where Fred and the others had been trapped. He stared at the body, thought a moment more, then shook his head.
He was looking at it, wasn’t he? A white shark. And what else could it have been?
“What?” Carolyn asked, raising her face up toward his.
“It just didn’t act like how I would have thought it would have acted.” He smiled a little at himself. “But what does an expert in growing fingerlings know?”
Carolyn raised her head from his arm, looked at the body for a moment, then reached for the wheel and slowly eased the throttles forward, turning the Intuitive in the direction of the Bertram on its way into the marked channel leading toward the Sound.
Back above the bridges, the first gray light of dawn was beginning to brighten the eastern sky, and soon the wondering was gone from Alan’s mind.
Why not? It was dead.
* * *
Admiral Vandiver sat among the tall cases of equipment in the belly of the C-130 Hercules. Though all the cargo was securely lashed together, it vibrated like a freezing man’s teeth. He frowned at Douglas, sitting against a stack of crates to the side. Douglas looked away. Vandiver leaned his head back against a case, felt his hair start vibrating and, frowning again, sat forward once more. “Real good job here, Douglas.”
Douglas didn’t say anything.
Vandiver waited a moment. “Douglas.”
His nephew’s face came around.
“Douglas, why would a megalodon come all the way from the Pacific to the northern tip of the Gulf of Mexico?”
“Sir?”
“Think about it … thousands of miles, passing dozens of places quite similar, basically the same water temperatures, the same prey, the same everything. To pass all that up almost makes you think it knew where it was headed f
rom the very beginning, doesn’t it? And that doesn’t make any sense, does it?”
Douglas started to remind his uncle that all they knew for certain at the moment was that a large white shark had come into the northern Gulf—not a megalodon—but he didn’t.
“Then I realized it didn’t have to make any sense, Douglas. It doesn’t make any sense that the six-gill came to the Gulf.”
Vandiver paused at the questioning expression on his nephew’s face. “Douglas, when you don’t know something just say so. You haven’t heard of the Pacific six-gill shark?”
“No, sir.”
“Don’t you ever even watch the Discovery Channel?”
Douglas didn’t answer.
Vandiver shook his head in dismay. “Well, Douglas, the six-gill is another of the deep-ocean mysteries throwing marine scientists for a loop now. I mean that’s where all the modern mysteries are coming from—the depths. Why is it that species that for millions of years never rose high enough in the water to even see faintest light are suddenly emerging into shallow waters now? Something is causing it. Pollution? That’s doubtful. The ocean floors aren’t exactly pristine any more, but to say the depths are polluted in the same sense the land masses are isn’t correct. It isn’t even close. Deep-ocean temperatures suddenly rapidly changing? We have no indication of that. Yet, for some reason, deep-sea creatures are coming up all over the world.
“The six-gill isn’t exactly the same kind of case as the megalodon would be, or even the megamouth shark coming up from the depths. Even though no one had ever seen one of the six-gill adults prior to their surfacing, we knew they existed. For years its young came around fish factories along the California coast to feed on what was dumped into the water. A few young six-gills up to eight or nine feet long were caught in some of the deeper bays. But as they aged they moved into deeper and deeper spots until, by the time they were full grown, they were in the deepest trenches—and never rose back into shallow waters again. That’s been true since mankind began. A human had never seen an adult six-gill. Then, in the seventies, the first adult—a sixteen-foot female—was caught by a fishing trawler in relatively shallow water. After that adult six-gills began to be caught in shallower and shallower waters in the Pacific. Then, for some unknown reason, they started migrating, went around the tip of South America and reached the Caribbean a few years ago. Now they’ve moved into the Gulf. One was seen off the Chandeleur Islands last year—they’ve gone as far north as they can. It’s as if that’s where they were headed from the very beginning. As if that is where the megalodon had been headed since the beginning. Why?”
Douglas didn’t speak. The cargo continued to vibrate.
“Why, Douglas? Why the northern Gulf for the six-gill? And, maybe, why the northern Gulf for the megalodon?”
Vandiver stared at the young ensign. “Why, Douglas?”
“Sir, I don’t—”
“Rhetorical question, son.”
Douglas nodded.
“Important question, too, Douglas.”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Make you famous if you can figure out why.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Make me famous, too.”
Douglas nodded. When his uncle continued to stare, Douglas said, “Yes, sir.”
“Want to know what I think?”
Douglas both nodded and said “Yes, sir” this time.
“I think it might have to do with the lower Mississippi River Basin. It’s the most ancient, large drainage system in North America. Been here since way before the last ice ages. Is home to more so-called living fossils than any other place in the world—creatures that have existed unchanged for tens of millions of years. The bowfin, the paddlefish, the sturgeon—I could name a dozen species here now that have been here since creatures first existed in the seas. And, if you remember, when I told you about the artist’s interpretation I told you that megalodons are cartilaginous, therefore their remains waste away and they don’t fossilize like bony animals. So, basically, other than for a couple of full-body impressions in mud that hardened rapidly, only the megalodon’s teeth have ever been found to let us know it ever existed. Guess where a lot of their teeth have been found?”
“The lower Mississippi River Basin, sir?”
“That’s correct, Douglas. Some of it dry land now that used to be ocean. The teeth have been found all over the upper Gulf Coast. An inordinate amount of remains of other prehistoric sea creatures have been, too; some of them among the largest creatures ever to swim the seas. For one, the basilosaurus—the seventy-foot, giant-toothed whale which would give even the megalodon reason for fear. The Louisiana and Mississippi coasts in particular were a major breeding ground of this creature. Their remains were so numerous that early settlers in those states often used the vertebra for foundation supports for cabins. Many think the same area might have been a breeding ground for the megalodons, too.”
Douglas’s eyes tightened. “You mean … you’re saying … you’re suggesting the megalodon is acting like a salmon, coming back to where it was bred?”
“That’s close.”
“But, sir, the, uh … If a megalodon is alive, it wouldn’t have been born in the Gulf. There wouldn’t have been any born there since man was here. It couldn’t be acting like a sal—”
“Douglas, Douglas, Douglas. I said you were close. It doesn’t have to be exactly like a salmon. There are many animals, fish, and birds that instinctively go to a place to breed no matter where they were born. Not like salmon going back to the headwaters of rivers, or geese that migrate back to the specific pond where they were hatched, but creatures that, no matter where they are born or live, go back to a particular place at one time in their lives—like birds instinctively migrating south before snow begins to fall. And not just flocks of birds whose migration might be a sign of herd behavior—following the leader—but individual birds flying to certain places the fall after they are born. That’s an instinct that has to be passed down genetically—the desire or knowledge has to already be present in the bird when it’s born.”
Douglas nodded now. “You’re saying the megalodons went to the deep trenches for some reason. Driven there, maybe. They stayed there until—”
“Correct, Douglas, until something made them move. Like the French explosion in January perhaps. Now they’re returning to a place they once instinctively came to.”
Douglas’s face twisted in thought. “You’re saying they? Something made them move. More than one?”
“There can’t be only one of anything, Douglas.”
CHAPTER 33
Carolyn sat in the Intuitive’s cabin as she spoke on the telephone plugged into the dockside extension. “Did I wake you, Mother?”
“Heavens no, your father got me out of bed when he saw about the shark being killed on the news. We’ve been up ever since. He woke Paul, too.”
“Oh, he shouldn’t have done that.”
“For once I’ll agree with Fred, Carolyn. Paul was so excited. He’s playing out on the dock now. I think he’s thrilled just to be able to be down at the water again.”
“I’ll come on in a minute then. I want to see him. I’m going to take a quick shower first.”
“Baby, why don’t you stay there and get a few hours of sleep? I know you’re dead. He’s fine. He knows you’re okay. If you come over now, you know between his and Fred’s questions you’re not going to get any sleep here.”
“Oh, I’m fine.”
“Throwing dynamite around,” her mother said, and sighed. “If I would have known that I would have had heart failure.”
Carolyn smiled. “I’ll see you in an hour or so, Mother.”
* * *
At Carolyn’s home, her mother looked out the window as she hung up the telephone. Paul was playing on the dock again.
* * *
Sitting in the wicker chair on the patio, Fred raised his gaze from his newspaper when Duchess started barking.
* * *
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Paul pushed the little sailboat he had fashioned from a piece of notebook paper out from the dock and looked over his shoulder at the Labrador at the side of the dock looking down the river.
“It’s gone, Duchess.”
The Labrador kept staring. She started barking again.
“Duchess, be quiet.”
The dog barked faster.
Paul looked down the channel.
“Duchess,” he said. “The shark’s gone.”
Suddenly the Labrador stretched her neck out and looked directly down into the water in front of her forepaws, and barked sharply.
Paul came to his feet. He looked back at the paper sailboat about to move out of his reach and started to lean toward it, but didn’t. Duchess was barking continuously now.
Paul stepped quickly off the dock into the yard and called back to the Labrador. Duchess turned and, looking back over her shoulder toward the river, trotted to him.
Paul stared at the water.
Fred stopped beside him. “Duchess see a snake?” He took a step toward the dock.
“No, Papaw,” Paul said. “Don’t go out there.”
* * *
Carolyn, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve blouse and carrying the clothes she had worn earlier, stepped out of the bath house and walked behind the line of charter fishing boats to the Intuitive.
She fluffed her hair with her free hand as she came up the concrete walkway and hopped down into the fishing cockpit.
“I feel a million percent better,” she said as she stepped inside the cabin.
Alan rubbed the stubble on his cheek with the back of his hand.
A horn sounded outside in the parking area.
Alan stepped from the cabin.
Rayanne sat in her pickup as he walked toward her.
She handed his fresh clothes and a plastic bag containing a toothbrush and razor out through the window. “A mother’s work is never done,” she said. “Wouldn’t it have been simpler for me to have just picked you up and taken you to your apartment?”
Carolyn stepped from the cabin.
“Oh, I see,” Rayanne said.
* * *
“What in the hell are we doing, Douglas?”
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