by Steve Alten
Of late, it had been his girlfriend that kept him awake.
Two weeks into the voyage, Jackie had begun experiencing severe bouts of insomnia. Trish had offered her a mild sedative, but the deep sleep gave her horrible nightmares and she stopped taking them.
Ironically, their roles had been reversed when they had met six months before. He had made her the same offer of “therapeutic sex,” only she had turned him down.
“I love you, David, but I think we need to slow things down a bit … at least until I finish school.”
“What about me? I can’t sleep with you up all night pacing the cabin. I need at least six hours of REM sleep or I start dozing off the next day in the Manta.”
“There are plenty of empty cabins aboard the ship—just move into one of them. I won’t be insulted.”
Of course, she had been insulted. Since then, they had barely been intimate. Jackie’s perpetual state of exhaustion left her irritable—her “vampire hours,” Monty called them—causing her to pace the lower deck’s corridors until early morning, when she finally passed out.
David was worried about her, but his first priority was locating the sisters’ remaining pups. A second albino offspring had been hooked in the San Juan Channel off Hadron Island ten days ago. With last night’s kill, there were only two pups left at most—one of Bela’s, one of Lizzy’s.
He entered the pilothouse to find Mo Mallouh seated in the captain’s chair, his gaze shifting from the windshield to the radar screen to the fish finder.
“Morning, Mo. What’s up?”
“I received the location where that charter caught Bela’s second pup from the Coast Guard and loaded it onto your laptop. I thought you should have a look at it before you set out in the Manta.”
“Please don’t tell me the nursery has to be along the north side of Orcas Island. I’ve searched every square foot of sea; it’s all kelp forest and shallows … nothing deeper than ninety feet. Bela and Lizzy would have never chosen these waters to protect their young.”
“I know, I know … but take a look. I have a theory.”
David sat down at the chart table and wiggled the computer’s cursor, causing a map of the San Juan Islands to appear. “Go on.”
“See how the pups appear to stick by their own litter? What if this is just their hunting grounds? What if the nursery is located in the closest deep waters?”
“Which is where?”
“Boundary Pass.”
“Maybe…” David stared at the map. Mallouh’s theory made sense, and he certainly knew these waters better than most, but something felt wrong. “How long will it take you to get us to Boundary Pass?”
“Thirty minutes. The problem is remaining in the shipping lanes. Lots of oil tankers out there.”
Oil tankers? Jesus …
“Mo, where’s Mac?”
“Last time I saw him, he was on deck flushing out the hopper.”
David closed the laptop and headed for the exterior starboard door.
“Wait. Should I take us into the Boundary Pass?”
“Not yet.” Twisting the knob, David pushed the heavy door open with his shoulder, releasing a whistling gust of wind that ruffled the papers tacked to the cork bulletin board. Gripping the rusty steel rail with one hand, the laptop in the other, he descended the three flights of stairs to the main deck.
The sea was gray beneath an overcast sky, a 20-knot wind whipping up whitecaps. He spotted Mac standing by the rail next to the starboard draghead, which was positioned over the side. Seawater shot out of the five-foot-diameter pipe with the force of an open fire hydrant, slowly draining the hopper.
“Works good now,” David shouted.
Mac nodded. “You wouldn’t believe what we found clogging it—an empty sea turtle shell. The draghead must’ve pulled him off the bottom, only the shell got wedged halfway to the hopper. The force must’ve sucked the turtle right out of his home.”
“Which means there’s a buck-naked sea turtle swimming in my hopper.” Cyel Reed joined them, carrying a scooper net attached to a long aluminum reach pole. “The Manta’s charged and ready, except for your port-o-potty. You want that clean—clean it yourself … or else wear diapers.”
“For the last time, I’m not wearing diapers. Mac, can I talk to you a minute?”
“Too much noise out here—let’s go inside.” Mac headed back to the McFarland’s superstructure, David slowing his pace to accommodate his godfather’s hobbling gait.
“Damn arthritis. And this damp weather makes everything worse. You look tired, kid.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Why the hell did Van Sicklen have to eviscerate the dead pup like that?”
“He’s sending a message.”
“To who?”
“To us. You don’t think he knows why we’re here? The sisters butchered his orca, and he’s not about to allow their offspring to turn the Salish Sea into a Megalodon spawning ground.”
Mac’s walkie-talkie squawked to life. “Mac, are you with David?”
“Yes, Trish. What’s wrong?”
“Get down to Jackie’s cabin … fast!”
* * *
Monty was hovering over her upper torso, the former Army medic administering five rapid chest compressions before pausing to allow Trish to blow air into Jackie’s mouth.
“What happened?”
“We don’t know,” Trish said between breaths, pausing while Monty continued CPR. “I came down to check on her.… She wasn’t breathing; no pulse.”
“—two and three and four and go!”
Trish repositioned her mouth over Jackie’s purple lips and tilted her head back to open her airway, giving her two more breaths.
“This is no good; she could have been out an hour before we found her.” Monty dumped the contents of his black leather medical kit on top of the inert woman’s bed. Locating the syringe, he pulled the cap from the four-inch needle and gripped it in his right fist.
Trish’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”
“Throwing a Hail Mary.” Pulling up her T-shirt with his left hand, he plunged the shot of adrenaline next to her exposed left breast between her ribs and into her heart with no hesitation.
The lifeless, pale woman shot up in bed, gasping for air. She looked around the room wildly, then at her rescuers … and finally down at the empty syringe protruding from her chest.
“Ow!”
“That’s a helluva shot, if I say so myself. Hit a rib and you bust the needle right in half.”
“Get it out of me!”
Monty yanked it free.
“Ahh!”
Trish pulled down Jackie’s T-shirt. “What did you take?”
“Was it this?” David held up an empty prescription bottle. “Percocet.”
“How many pills were in there?” Trish demanded.
“I don’t know,” she moaned. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she fell asleep sitting up.
“We need to get her to the nearest medical facility,” Mac said. “I’ll get the chopper started; you and Monty carry her up on deck.”
“I’ve got her.” David handed his laptop to his friend, then cradled Jackie in both arms and carried her out of the cabin, following Mac up two flights of stairs to the helipad.
* * *
The PeaceHealth Peace Island Medical Center was located in Friday Harbor on San Juan Islands. It took longer for Mac to warm up the single-engine Robinson R44 Light Utility marine helicopter than to complete the actual flight.
David stayed with Jackie in the emergency ward while a team of nurses administered an IV along with oxygen via a nasal tube. An intern ushered him out to the waiting room when she started vomiting.
Twenty minutes passed before an ER doctor came out to speak with him. “Mr. Taylor? Dr. Abel Rivas; I’m the attending physician. Do you have any idea how many oxycodone Ms. Buchwald ingested?”
“I don’t know. But the prescription said it was Percocet.”
“Percocet is
one of the brand names for oxycodone, which is a semisynthetic opioid. The drug suppresses the central nervous and respiratory systems. About twenty thousand people die every year from opioid overdose.”
“Geez, Doc, is she going to be okay?”
“We gave her a shot of naloxone, which is a fast-acting oxycodone antagonist. We’re also giving her activated charcoal to prevent further absorption. She threw up, so we’re not going to pump out her stomach, but we are going to move her to the ICU to monitor her closely over the next twenty-four hours. Once we release her, I recommend she seek counseling.”
“Counseling? She’s had bad insomnia, Doc. I really don’t think—”
“Mr. Taylor, no one takes that much oxycodone because they can’t sleep. Today you were lucky; next time who knows.”
* * *
David exited the hospital feeling numb. What could Jackie be going through that she’d want to kill herself? Of all people, how had he missed the signs?
He spotted Mac and Monty seated on a park bench.
“How is she?”
“They’re treating her with a bunch of drugs.”
“Naloxone?”
“Yeah … How do you know?”
Monty smirked. “Think you’re the only person who’s ever been depressed? Naloxone and oxycodone got me through the first six months after the war.”
“Are they keeping her overnight?” Mac asked.
“Yeah. I’m going to stay here with her.”
“I figured you would.” The white-haired Navy vet noticed David staring over his shoulder at their helicopter, which was situated on the manicured lawn adjacent to the visitors’ parking. “What’s wrong?”
“The guy in the white van … I think he’s videotaping us with his iPhone.”
* * *
Jerrod Mahurin had spent the past two summers interning with the Adopt an Orca program in Friday Harbor, the seventeen-year-old local hoping that adding the experience to his resume would help him get accepted into the University of Washington’s marine biology program.
He had been working his usual Saturday shift at his father’s hardware store when Nick Van Sicklen had called.
“Jerrod, a helicopter just set down at the medical center. I need you to get over there and let me know who’s on board when it leaves.”
“I can’t leave the store until six.”
“Mr. Mahurin, if you want that letter of recommendation from me, then I suggest you get your ass over to the Peace Health Center and do as I say.”
“Okay … okay.” Jerrod had hung the BACK IN 20 MINUTES sign on the front door before climbing into the white Mahurin Hardware minivan and driving to the medical center. Spotting the helicopter, he had parked and waited.
* * *
“We’re being set up,” David said, showing Mac and Monty the map on his laptop. “The local paper reported the location of the orca attack off Waldron Island, but that info could have easily been planted by Van Sicklen. Same with the last two nettings. What if they were set up to make it look like they occurred along the east coast of Orcas Island just to occupy us while Van Sicklen’s team continues hunting for the remaining pups at the real nursery?”
“Which is where?” Mac asked.
“The Georgia Strait.”
“How do you know that?”
“I’ve been saying it for a month; the waters around the San Juan Islands are way too shallow to have hidden Bela and Lizzy. The Strait of Juan de Fuca is to the west, but we spent three weeks there and I don’t remember seeing any suspicious charters. That leaves Boundary Pass to the north and Haro Strait to the south—two deep-water channels used by oil tankers. When Kaylie and I were trapped in Maren’s habitat on the bottom of the seafloor, do you remember how you forced the bathyscaphe up to the surface so we could swim free?”
Mac pointed at Monty. “It was your friend’s idea. He had one of the prince’s supertankers pass directly over the sphere. The displacement created a massive suction powerful enough to drag a Los Angeles–class attack sub to the surface.”
Monty nodded. “In physics, we call it the ‘vaginal effect.’”
“Venturi,” Mac snapped.
“My point is that the Meg nursery couldn’t possibly be in either channel—the tanker traffic is way too strong. It would suck the pups right off the bottom.”
“Which leaves the Georgia Strait?”
“Correct.”
“We’re still talking about hundreds of square miles of sea to search. How do we locate the nursery before Van Sicklen kills any more pups?”
“It’s not Van Sicklen; I’m sure he hired someone else to do his dirty work. But I think I have a way that we can quickly pinpoint the location of the nursery. If you or my father have a military connection that could get us access to satellite images taken last night in these waters, we could use them to locate the charter boat that supposedly hooked Bela’s pup off Orcas Island. Rewind the images from there and they’ll lead you back to the actual exchange I’m betting took place in the Georgia Strait between the fishing boat that took credit for hooking Bela’s pup and the vessel that actually netted it. Once we identify that vessel, you’ll be able to use the SAT images to track it back to the nursery.”
Mac smiled. “Pretty sharp, kid. What about our junior spy in the van? Why is he here?”
David glanced at the parking lot. “Van Sicklen’s no dummy. At some point he knows we’ll use the SAT images to identify the real boat. Once that happens, you’d search the Georgia Strait using the chopper to locate the ship hunting the pups and direct the McFarland to the nursery—”
“—unless Van Sicklen knows I’m coming ahead of time,” Mac said, “in which case he’d warn the captain to move the boat to a bogus location, baiting us to waste more time while a third boat is deployed to the real nursery to net the remaining pups.”
“Assuming there are any remaining pups to net,” Monty muttered. “Sorry. Nine and a half weeks … it’s a long time … but a damn good movie. Kim Basinger’s hot.”
David ignored his friend’s gust of bipolarism. “Mac, take my laptop and see if you can access last night’s satellite imagery. Once you have the location of the nursery, text me and I’ll sneak out of the hospital and get to a deserted stretch of coastline where Monty can pick me up in the Manta.”
“Whoa, hold on, Junior. Do you honestly expect me to find my way back to the San Juan Islands all by myself aboard that coffin with wings? It’s been over a year since I even piloted a Manta, and I sucked back then. There’s a better chance of me ending up in Puerto Rico.”
“Monty, you don’t have to do anything. Cyel will program the coordinates into the sub’s GPS; the automatic pilot will do the rest.”
“Better let me program the GPS,” Mac said.
“Why? What’s wrong with Cyel?”
“David, think about it—how did Van Sicklen know we were on San Juan Islands so quickly?”
“You think Cyel Reed told him?”
“Maybe. I’m guessing there’s a tracking device hidden aboard my helicopter, and someone aboard the McFarland had to have put it there. Either way, we have a traitor on board. I’m fairly confident it’s none of us, and I’m willing to give my wife the benefit of the doubt.”
“Which leaves our new captain, our disgruntled engineer—”
“And Jackie, who just tried to off herself.”
“Doesn’t make her a traitor, kid. Until we figure out who it is, I suggest we keep everything on the down-low.… Did I say that right?”
“You said it right, Uncle Mac. It just sounded ugly coming out of your face.”
“Be careful about what comes out of your face, Monty, or that GPS might just beach you on an iceberg in Alaska.”
Strait of Georgia
Salish Sea, British Columbia, Canada
The Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Georgia Strait were created during the last Ice Age when massive glaciers advanced through British Columbia. These excavated canyons eventually
filled with seawater, with any spared land formations becoming islands and islets.
Denman and Hornby were private islands along the east coast of Vancouver Island. Home to about a thousand residents, they had become popular retreats among the rich and famous, so it was no surprise to see the sixty-foot Hatteras sport yacht become a common fixture on the seascape.
The Hot & Spicy was two-thirds bow and one-third flybridge and tuna tower, stacked above a three-seat fishing deck that occupied the stern. Sleek outside, she was all luxury within, the contours of her four staterooms, heads, galley, and dinette decorated in gray leather and teak. Below decks, she harbored two 21.5 kW generators that supplied the electricity needed to run the latest in electronics and AV systems, and her twin engines were capable of cranking out the horsepower necessary to maintain a top speed over 40 knots.
For two months the gray-hulled ship could be seen trolling the Georgia Strait, the size of their lines indicating they were after serious game fish. After about five weeks the yacht settled upon the deep waters between the southeastern tip of Hornby Island and Flora Islet—a moonscape of rock inhabited by hundreds of sea elephants and seals. The mammals barked and belched and dove in and out of the emerald-green waters of the Georgia Strait, but none would venture far from land.
* * *
Ben Smallwood awoke from his afternoon nap at 4:44, a minute before the alarm was set to go off. A framed photo of his wife, Shelly, and their two children greeted him on the teak night table. The yacht had been a gift from Shelly’s family, but it came with one condition attached:
Kill every Megalodon pup in the Salish Sea.
Ben Smallwood had been born and raised in London, earning degrees in engineering and the marine sciences from Imperial College. Six years before, he had traveled to British Columbia to attend a two-week symposium in Vancouver, where he’d met Shelly Shelby, a thirty-year-old Texas native and marine biologist who was in town for the same event. By the third day they had become inseparable, attending lectures by day, the nights reserved for more intimate rendezvous.