Generations

by Steve Alten

  Shelly’s father, Heath, had flown in with his daughter on his private jet. The former associate vice president of operations at Enron Corporation was an avid fisherman and had chartered the forty-eight-foot fishing vessel Bite Me-2 for the week, hoping to land a prize halibut to adorn the office of his new summer getaway in Prince Rupert Sound.

  With the weekend upon them, Shelly Shelby had invited Ben to join her aboard the boat. They had flown to Vancouver Island Friday night and met her father for dinner at an upscale seaside restaurant in Victoria.

  “Daddy, this is my friend, Ben Smallwood.”

  “Smallwood? Well, son, if I feel the boat rocking later, we may just have to change your name to Driftwood.”

  Two hours and five shots later, the two men were the best of friends.

  It took most of Saturday for the crew of the Bite Me-2 to hook Shelby his halibut. They had been cruising the Swiftsure Bank on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island between Port Renfrew and Sombrio Beach when the fishing rod’s heavy Dacron line suddenly spun out on its reel.

  Ben had done his best to stay out of the rain and the way of the first mate, who had quickly secured the billionaire into the deck-mounted chair. As the captain put the boat in reverse, the boisterous Texan was handed the rod and had begun taking up the slack on the six-hundred-pound fish.

  “Christ, he’s strong.”

  “She. We hooked you a big female. Just bring her in nice and easy.”

  Ben had feared Shelby might have a stroke as he watched the fifty-three-year-old’s face turn from red to purple, the veins in his neck popping out like rope. “She’s coming up a bit—I can feel her weakening.”

  The first mate stood ready with a gaff. “Keep the end of the rod in that steel swivel, Mr. S. Let the chair do the heavy lifting.”

  “Hey, Smallwood, make yourself useful and get Shelly’s camera.”

  Ben had headed inside and made his way forward to the cabin where his girlfriend was sleeping. Locating the Nikon carrying case, he’d removed the camera.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Your dad hooked a huge fish; come take a look.”

  “I’m sick. Tell them to take me back to the dock.”

  Ben had emerged in the stern as a cloudburst of rain began to pelt the deck, the splatter of a trillion droplets cloaking all other sound. Using his T-shirt, he’d wiped condensation from the camera’s lens and snapped several shots as the big Texan wrapped the crook of his arms around the rod.

  Water had poured off the soaked bill of Heath Shelby’s 49ers football cap. The man’s arms were burning with lactic acid, his back and legs trembling from muscular exhaustion. Still he had refused to give an inch, knowing his daughter’s new boyfriend was watching.

  Locking down the tackle, he had straightened his legs and leaned back, drawing in line with his entire body—

  —unaware that two hundred feet below and a quarter of a mile away, a far larger predator had entered the arena and was homing in on his would-be trophy.

  The first mate patted Shelby on the back. “Stay with it; I’m going to get the bigger net.”

  “You do that, Gilligan. Smallwood, you getting this?”

  “Yes—” Ben watched as Shelby fell back in the chair, the tension on the pole gone.

  “No … no!”

  “Did you lose him?”

  “Shut up.” Gripping the pole with his left hand and arm, he’d reeled in line rapidly with his right. “There you are … I can feel you. You’re running to the boat, aren’t you? Dumb bitch, I got you now! You’re not getting away this—”

  Ben had blinked. One moment Shelby had been there, the next he was gone—flying through the air and over the transom into the sea, along with the chair and the wood planks it had been bolted to.

  In a state of shock, his mind unable to respond to what his eyes had just witnessed, the Englishman had walked around the hole in the deck and stood in the downpour by the back of the boat in a rain-muted white noise, the empty expanse of sea mocking him.

  His eye had caught movement and the lens followed, the whirring clicks catching an impossibly large white dorsal fin just as it disappeared beneath the gray-blue waters … and then was gone.

  They had searched all evening, the Coast Guard joining them, along with a dozen local crafts. Shelly had been inconsolable. Ben had stayed with her in her father’s hotel room until Tuesday, when her cousin, Mark, announced that the search for his uncle was over.

  Ben had kept the roll of film, waiting until he had returned to London before having it developed. Most of the shots of the water had been blurry, but in one he could see what appeared to be the upper half of a ghost-white caudal fin slapping the surface.

  The story had broken on BBC One two nights later. Angel, the Megalodon shark raised in captivity that had broken free of her pen seventeen years earlier, had returned to the Tanaka Lagoon … along with a sixty-one-foot, sixty-seven-thousand-pound male. From the vicious bite scars along Angel’s pectoral fins, the two brutes had mated—an event the larger female was apparently none too happy about, as the dead male’s remains had been found bleeding out at the bottom of the canal.

  The results of a necropsy on the male a week later had revealed the contents of its stomach, which included a baseball, a six-hundred-twenty-five-pound halibut … and the remains of Heath Shelby.

  * * *

  Kill every Megalodon pup in the Salish Sea.…

  Ben’s first move was to seek help from one of the locals. Nick Van Sicklen had led the public outcry six months earlier when Lizzy and Bela had escaped from the Tanaka Institute and invaded the Salish Sea, wiping out an entire pod of orca. The director of the Adopt an Orca foundation informed him that a diver had been attacked by what he first thought were six small great whites—three albinos and three sharing Bela’s bizarre pigment pattern. One of the dark-backed pups had been netted and killed by Paul Agricola, a retired marine biologist, leaving five Megalodon offspring to terrorize the Salish Sea. It was Agricola who had used his company’s hopper-dredge, the Marieke, to capture Lizzy and return her to the institute.

  Anthony Marcinkowski had been first mate aboard the Marieke; for $2,000 a week he agreed to carry out similar duties aboard the Englishman’s yacht. Unfortunately, every island in the Salish Sea looked alike to the former paramedic; but he did manage to isolate their search for the Meg nursery to the Georgia Strait.

  The yacht’s fish finder had given them their first glimpse of their prey when one of the pups passed beneath the boat in the waters off Texada, an island just northeast of Hornby. Sonar had painted a predator that was thirteen-to-fifteen-feet in length, weighing an estimated thirty-five hundred pounds. If this was a Meg pup, then the sharks had doubled in size and tripled their girth over that of their seven-foot sibling that Paul Agricola had netted and accidentally drowned six months earlier.

  That presented a problem—these juvenile killers were far too large to bring in on a rod and reel. Rigging a trawl net was a possibility; but the Megs seemed to prefer the deep. Enticing one to the surface without the sea drone Anthony Marcinkowski’s former employer had used to bait Lizzy would be a challenge, and chumming in the Salish Sea was illegal. They would have to hook something on the order of a halibut as bait and drag it ahead of the open mouth of the trawl if they had any hope of netting one of these killers.

  Nick Van Sicklen, a valuable ally, had introduced Ben to a commercial fisherman who sold him a used trawl and set of winches. The director of the Adopt an Orca program also arranged to have a number of charter boat captains on standby so that, when a pup was captured, it could be hauled off to another area in order to keep the actual location of the Meg nursery from the local media—and Jonas Taylor’s expedition.

  They had been searching the Georgia Strait for several weeks, focusing on the local seal population, when they had their first surface encounter—a midnight banquet in the waters off Flora Islet, the pups’ albino hides appearing bioluminescent in the luna
r light.

  That the sharks were nocturnal hunters was not unexpected; after all, the subspecies of Megalodon inhabiting the Mariana Trench lived in perpetual darkness. What Ben had not considered was the effect of the moon’s phases on the creatures’ feeding schedule. Lunar light gave the hunters a decided advantage, in that it reflected off bait fish as they surfaced to feed. With the juvenile Megs, the full moon appeared to send them into an absolute feeding frenzy.

  Releasing the trawl, the crew of the Hot & Spicy attempted to sweep the pups up into the heavy nylon trap. On the third pass they succeeded in netting one of Lizzy’s albino offspring—along with a half-eaten sea lion and three adult seals.

  Ben contacted Nick Van Sicklen, who quickly tracked a resident pod of orca congregating in the waters off the San Juan Islands. The two boats rendezvoused a half-mile northeast of Hadron Island just before dawn. As the sunrise blistered the horizon gold, the net holding Lizzy’s thrashing offspring was raised halfway out of the sea, affording one of the crew armed with a chainsaw an angle to cut off the Meg’s right pectoral fin. The bleeding animal was then released to the circling pod of killer whales, the bulls taking turns eviscerating the shark as they fought to claim its liver—

  —the entire scene filmed by Nick Van Sicklen on his iPhone.

  The second Meg was netted twenty-nine nights later.

  A heavy rain and six-foot seas rocked the yacht beyond the point of nausea, while the full moon remained concealed behind dense storm clouds.

  The weather let up at 4:20 a.m.; the skies cleared an hour later. With dawn approaching and both the full moon and their opportunities waning, two crewmen were set ashore on Flora Islet with clubs and burlap bags. Ten minutes later the trawl was baited with a freshly killed pair of sea lions. By 5 a.m. the bleeding carcasses had attracted a pup, which refused to enter the open net … until a second Meg appeared on the yacht’s fish finder. Realizing it was about to lose its meal, the first juvenile—another albino—darted inside the trap and was captured.

  Three 12-gauge shots to the brain killed the beast. An eight-inch barbed hook was then hammered with a rubber mallet into place beneath the lower jaw. The rod and reel were passed off to another charter boat, which towed the dead “game fish” into the shallows between Stuart, Waldron, and the west coast of Orcas Island. Two local news teams arrived just in time to film the catch as it was hauled in. According to several unidentified eyewitnesses, the monster had gone berserk, forcing the crew to kill it.

  Few who saw the ghostly two-ton, fourteen-and-a-half-foot albino beast hanging from a construction crane thought to protest.

  By now, the crew of the Hot & Spicy had the routine down pat—so much so that Ben ordered the yacht anchored off Vancouver Island, giving his men three weeks of paid leave while they waited for the arrival of the next full moon.

  It was then that the Shelby family’s personal mission of revenge turned into an international game of dead pool.

  It began when officials on San Juan Islands confirmed a report from a local diver stating that he had counted six Megalodon offspring—three from each deceased “sister”—when he had been attacked in the shallows off Orcas Island. Since then, one of Bela’s pups had been killed, and two of Lizzy’s … and suddenly the hot topic of conversation was which sister—the cunning albino or the dark-backed brute—possessed the best traits to allow its pup to be the last shark swimming.

  Odds were posted, Las Vegas covering the action. Within a week boating traffic in the Salish Sea doubled.

  Thankfully, most of it was confined to the San Juan Islands, where the three Megs had supposedly been captured. A local expert was needed to handle interview requests, and Nick Van Sicklen stepped into the limelight to preach about the “evil trio” still stalking the Salish Sea. The press ate it up, and soon there were rumors of Van Sicklen running for mayor.

  Realizing that things could easily get out of hand, Ben met with his crew before weighing anchor, reminding them that they had signed nondisclosure agreements and that wagering in the Dead Pool would not be tolerated.

  Ben might have been worried, but last night’s netting, kill, and staged capture had played out with military precision. With the Dead Pool tied at two, the next pup captured would win it … or lose it, depending upon the wager.

  Then Nick Van Sicklen took things too far. Before a crowd of reporters, the amped-up orca advocate had taken out a chainsaw and proceeded to eviscerate the dead juvenile’s belly, hoping to produce human remains. Instead, he galvanized a public backlash, led by protests from animal rights groups, who demanded that the Executive Council of British Columbia take action against those who were hunting a protected species.

  * * *

  It was five-thirty in the afternoon by the time Ben Smallwood entered the pilothouse. Keith Amato was on duty, the yacht’s copilot occupying the captain’s chair, his attention focused on the fish finder.

  “Are you tracking one of the remaining pups?”

  “No, boss. Something a lot bigger.”

  Ben joined him at the monitor, the sonar “painting” an object tracking slowly along the seafloor, moving south by southeast at 3 knots. “Twenty-five feet, weighing nine thousand pounds. It’s either a juvenile orca or a young humpback.”

  “It’s not a whale. I’ve been matching its course and speed for forty-three minutes and it hasn’t come up for air. It’s gotta be a whale shark.”

  Ben shook his head. “Whale sharks prefer the tropics. These waters are way too cold.”

  “It’s rare, but it happens. A few years ago, a dead female washed ashore not too far south of here in Lincoln Beach. Not sure how it died.”

  “Maybe it was assassinated.” Ben reached for the cell phone vibrating in his front pocket. He read the text message out loud. “The pigeon is still in its coop.”

  “You raise pigeons?”

  “It’s code, Mr. Amato. It means the competition is still stuck in the starting gate. If you need me, I’ll be in the galley. And stop shadowing that whale shark. It may not have any teeth, but its size could be keeping the Meg pups away.”

  PeaceHealth Peace Island Medical Center

  San Juan Islands, Salish Sea

  Jackie certainly looked better. The color had returned to her complexion and she had regained her appetite.

  David sat in a cushioned chair next to her bed, watching her devour a cheeseburger. “I’m glad to see you’re eating.”

  She nodded, her mouth full. “Thanks for smuggling this in, babe. I needed it.”

  “Like you needed the opioids?”

  “Percocet. And I told you, I only took them because I’ve been having problems falling asleep.”

  “Jackie, you’re talking to the reigning champion of insomnia; it comes from harboring fears that lead to nightmares and a whole lot worse. So why don’t you quit lying and tell me the truth.”

  She crumpled up the remains of the burger in its foil wrap and threw it at him. “Now I’m a liar?”

  He was about to respond when his cell phone started chiming “Pop Goes the Weasel.” He glanced at the text message: “False Bay. Fifteen minutes.”

  He replied, “Okay,” and then tossed the rolled-up sandwich in the wastepaper basket. “I gotta go.”

  “You’re leaving me to meet Monty?”

  “Who said that?”

  “I know his ringtone, David.”

  “Jackie—and I can’t believe this is coming from me—but you need counseling. The guy I was seeing back in Monterey wasn’t bad—I can get you his number.”

  “David, don’t go!” She lunged forward to grab his wrist, pulling her IV out in the process, the blood drizzling from her vein.

  “Damn it, Jackie.” He reached for a wad of paper napkins and pressed them to the back of her hand.

  “Ow.”

  “Keep pressure on that,” he said as he pressed the nurse’s call button. “We need help; she pulled out her IV.”

  Leaning forward, she kissed him on the c
heek, tears in her eyes. “I’ll tell you, then you can go.”

  He nodded as the door opened and a Jamaican nurse entered. “What a mess; now why would you want ta do a t’ing like dis?”

  “It was an accident.”

  Pursing her lips as if saying “Accident my ass,” the nurse donned a pair of latex gloves, snapping each finger in place. She cleaned and dressed the wound, then selected a fresh vein on the back of Jackie’s other hand. Using an alcohol swab, she sterilized the area and slid the needle into the blood vessel.

  “Ow again.”

  She disposed of the needle and collected the trash. “The doctor will be in ta see you soon; try not to pull this one out.”

  Jackie waited for the door to click shut behind the nurse. “David—”

  “Jackie, I already know.”

  Her hands started shaking. “You do?”

  “You put a tracking device on board Mac’s chopper.”

  “What? Why would I do that?”

  “To give Van Sicklen a heads-up when we realized the Meg nursery is in the Georgia Strait.”

  “David … no. God, is that what you think? I’d never turn against you—you saved my life.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “It’s my fault the Tonga sunk. I’m to blame for all those people dying.”

  David felt the blood rush from his face. “What are you talking about? It was the melvillei.”

  “The whale was drugged until I shot it with a tracking device. The harpoon must have pierced its skull and struck a sensitive part of its brain. The next thing I know, it went berserk.”

  “Even if that’s true, it wasn’t your fault, it was an accident.”

  “David, I was the marine biologist in charge. It was my job to keep that monster from destroying the ship. I not only failed—it was my actions that caused it to flip out. What do you think a jury is going to decide? What will a judge rule? You can bet the prosecutors will go for criminal negligence. I’m not some rich CEO; they’ll give me jail time. Then there’s the civil lawsuits. Think we have much of a future together with that mess hanging over my head? Face it, David, I’m toxic.”