by Steve Alten
The other killer wasn’t interested in style points. Rising straight out of the sea with its ghost-white belly to the yacht, it took the entire second seal in its mouth and simply crushed it behind nine tons per square inch of bite-force—half that of its parent, but more than enough to blast mammalian bone and blubber into a crimson piñata, the remains of which trickled down its quivering gullet.
It wasn’t until the boat passed the second beast that Keith Amato realized it possessed a dark back.
Clever fish … they were swimming in tandem.…
The pilot blasted the horn twice and then grabbed the handset to the squawk box. “Surface sighting—two Meg juvies to starboard. Stand by, I’m coming about!”
He was about to execute a hundred-eighty-degree turn to starboard when the pilothouse door was wrenched open and Ben Smallwood rushed in.
“We’ve got company.”
“I know … both remaining pups—”
“No … listen.” He held open the door.
At first Keith Amato thought it was thunder, until he heard the distinct beating of a helicopter’s rotors. “Coast Guard?”
“No, it’s Mackreides. Which means the McFarland is close by; which means David Taylor is probably already in the Manta looking for a way to lure those Megs beneath the hopper so they can capture them.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“The crew is baiting the trawl net. Once it’s deployed, I want you to sweep them up and drown them. This ends tonight.”
* * *
“Ugh … dude, what did you eat?”
“Bratwurst and onions. And don’t blame me; you’re the one who told me to use the porta-potty.”
David blasted the air vents on high. “I’m surfacing and you’re gonna clean that—”
“C-1 to M-7, come in.”
David reached for his headphones. “Manta here; go ahead, Mac.”
“I’ve located the yacht … uploading her coordinates now.”
David checked the GPS. “Latitude: 49.5172 degrees north; longitude: 124.5767 degrees west … got it. Where’s the McFarland?”
“Twenty minutes out.”
“We’ll be there in half that time.”
“That may not be soon enough. It looks like they’re getting ready to deploy a trawl net. Get here as quickly as you can, I’ll do my best to buy you time. Mac out.”
David pressed both feet to the thruster pedals, pushing the submersible’s speed up to 43 knots. The debris was blinding, forcing him to rely solely on their active sonar to avoid striking one of the hundreds of rock formations lying in clusters on the strait.
Monty’s complexion was as white as a sheet. He let out a scream as David swerved around an islet that suddenly bloomed out of the blizzard.
“Slow down! You can’t rescue them if we’re dead.”
“Okay … okay.” He reduced the sub’s speed to 30 knots.
“So what’s the game plan?”
“The game plan is to get them close to the McFarland’s keel and then pop open the dredge door, sucking them up into the hopper.”
“Which means we’re bait?”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
“How about we call this off and open a pet store?”
David was about to reply when another islet appeared on their sonar screen. He checked the coordinates on his GPS. “That’s it … that’s Flora.” Pulling back on the joystick, he ascended to the surface.
Dark waves rolled over the cockpit glass; intra-cloud lightning illuminated the heavens. There were no ships in sight.
“M-7 to C-1; Mac, where the hell are you?”
“Engaged in battle. Where the hell are you?”
“I’m here … Flora Islet.”
“You must be on the east end. Circle around, kid. You’re missing out on all the fun.”
Remaining on the surface, David accelerated to the north. As they circled around the one-mile-diameter moonscape of rock, lights appeared to the southwest.
The yacht was heading toward the islet, its stern lit up by Mac’s helicopter. The former Navy pilot was hovering over the ship, his landing gear within a few feet of the transom, his overhead rotors blasting the crew, preventing them from deploying their trawl net.
“Way to go, Mac!”
“Junior—”
“How close is the McFarland?”
“Eight minutes.”
“David!” Monty pointed to the sonar, where a large object was rising beneath them.
“Oh, shit.” He jammed both foot pedals to the floor and wrenched the joystick hard to port, sending the Manta into a steep vertical dive—
—as a black-and-white blur torpedoed past them.
Rocketing toward the seafloor, he pulled the sub out of its nosedive and leveled out at a depth of two hundred thirty feet, his head on a swivel. “Do you see them?”
“I see them both.” Monty pointed.
“Oh … wow.”
The juvenile Megalodons were circling the sub, swimming in tandem. Bela’s offspring was on top, her dark pectoral fins aligned with her albino cousin’s head, the top of which was pressed against her belly, the two sharks moving effortlessly and as one.
“How did they learn to … you think from watching their mothers do it?”
David nodded. “It’s a defensive posture; to another predator they appear much larger. What’s interesting is that Lizzy was always on top … she was the instigator to Bela’s enforcer. The cousins reversed it.”
“Maybe the albino’s the enforcer in this generation of monsters?”
“I don’t think so. Both Megs are clones of their mothers; aggression and intellect are genetic traits.”
“I’m no expert, but they seem agitated.”
Noticing the downward angle of both pairs of pectoral fins, David switched the sonar from active to passive, shutting off the acoustic pings.
As he watched, the creatures’ pectoral fins lost some of their downward rigidity.
“Monty, if you blur your eyes, what do they look like to you?”
“They look like a fat shark. Oh wait—they look like an orca. You don’t really think they did that on purpose?”
“Lizzy was clever … she could reason.”
“Then why was she always on top? The top dog does more work; the bottom shark gets a free ride.”
“Think about it. The sisters were born in captivity … they shared a tank with three rival stepsisters, and all five of them feared Angel … an albino. In the Meg Pen, it made much more sense to have Lizzy on top, projecting her dominance. But these juvies … they’ve had to survive in the wild, where being an albino is a distinct disadvantage—which is why the dark-backed Meg is on top.”
“So, what happens now?”
“Now, we lead them away from that yacht.” Reaching for the sonar controls, he flipped the toggle switch from passive to active.
Ping … ping … ping …
As David watched, the Megs’ pectoral fins pointed down, their backs arching—the telltale signs of a pending attack.
Anticipating their angle, he accelerated to the south.
“Watch it—they split up!”
“Huh?” He spun around to see the fifteen-foot albino closing fast, with no sign of the dark Meg. Dumbass … she’s leading you into an ambush!
Pulling back on the joystick, David shot straight up to the surface as Bela’s offspring charged at them from the east.
“Watch out for the yacht!”
“Shit!” Yanking back hard on the joystick, he inverted the sub, executing a two-hundred-seventy-degree loop, the belly of the Manta’s sphere-shaped Lexan cockpit grazing the yacht’s keel.
Whomp …
Whomp …
“What was that?”
David leveled off, his heart racing. “Sounded like the cousins’ heads just smacked into the bottom of the boat.”
“Here’s hoping they knocked themselves out.” Monty flipped the sonar switch back to passive.
“Do that, and we’re blind.”
“Not quite.” He pointed to the surface a hundred twenty feet above their heads, now glistening like liquid silver. The clouds had parted, revealing the full moon, the lunar light casting cobalt-blue curtains into the depths.
The silhouette of Bela’s offspring was circling ten feet below the swells with agitated sweeps of her caudal fin, waiting for her albino cousin, who appeared to be spy-hopping, her two-ton girth vertical in the water, the shark visible from her gills down to her swishing tail.
David tapped the controls on his headset. “Mac, where are you?”
“Hovering about two hundred feet over Lizzy’s pup. Damn thing’s staring at the moon. But she’d better move, because the yacht’s circling back, and they just released the trawl net.”
“Damn.” David flipped the sonar back to active, the first series of pings painting the two Megalodons on the surface—
—along with the yacht, which was on an intercept course a hundred yards to the east.
* * *
Ben Smallwood stood in the bow of the Hot & Spicy, his left hand gripping the polished aluminum rail, his right holding the night-vision binoculars to his face. He wasn’t sure which Megalodon was spy-hopping; he only cared that its attention was focused on something other than the yacht.
He reached for the walkie-talkie hanging from his belt. “Stay on this course, Captain. We’ll either scoop this bitch up in the trawl or slice her to ribbons.”
* * *
David pulled back on the joystick, racing the Manta toward the two Megs as he attempted to draw the sharks away from the surface.
Bela’s offspring broke first, descending on an intercept course, its freakish white head—luminescent in the moonlight—appearing disembodied from the rest of its dark hide.
Keeping his left foot down, David pulled up on the right thruster as he jammed the joystick to the three o’clock position—
—the Manta pulling a full G as he executed a wing-over-wing starboard roll that left the charging Meg snapping at empty sea—and caused Monty to vomit the remains of his lunch across the sonar display.
“Jesus, dude!”
“Urp … not my fault—”
“Wipe it off, I can’t see.”
Using his sleeve, Monty smeared the screen clean. “Good as new … Watch it, she’s right behind us!”
David accelerated, distancing them from the aggressive shark. “Where’s Lizzy’s pup? I can’t see her.”
“Still at the surface … and here comes the yacht. I think it’s going to hit her—”
David circled back in time to see the albino shark barely slip out of range of the keel’s churning propeller—only to witness the juvenile female suddenly yanked sideways as she was swept up into the trailing net.
* * *
Ben Smallwood knew they had landed the fifth pup the moment he heard the steel cable snap to attention around the two winches, tightening the noose around the neck of the trawl.
“We got her, boys! Draw her in close so I can put a bullet in her brain.”
Two of the crew reversed the winches, retracting the lines of steel cable connected to the trailing net.
* * *
David punched the leather padding by his left shoulder, pissed off at himself. Lizzy’s offspring was entangled sideways in the net and was thrashing wildly, unable to channel enough water into her mouth to breathe. It was just a matter of minutes before the albino creature drowned.
To make things worse, Bela’s offspring was circling the net. Refusing to abandon her companion, she was quickly moving into range of their hunters’ weapons.
They’ll die together, just as their mothers did, only months ago.…
He saw the blip appear on the sonar array a second before Mo Mallouh’s voice shouted out over the radio, “McFarland to Manta—get deep!”
David slammed the joystick down as he punched both feet to the pedals, sending the submersible on a steep dive beneath the McFarland’s massive bulb-shaped keel—
—the hopper-dredge passing over them as it crossed through the yacht’s wake, its bow towering over the Hot & Spicy’s transom as it snagged the two lengths of steel cable, snapping them in half a split-second before the trawl’s winches were wrenched free of the stern, ripping open large sections in the wooden deck.
As the commercial vessel plowed through the gap, Trish Mackreides opened the keel doors, the suction inhaling the sea, the trawl net, and the albino Megalodon into its vacant hopper.
West Boca Medical Center
Boca Raton, Florida
Jonas Taylor balled his fists, wondering how many of the male nurse’s teeth he could knock out with one punch.
Their night together had begun at 6:50 p.m., when the thirtyish physician-wannabe had declared, “Sir, have you seen your wife’s CT scan? She shouldn’t be here—she should be in hospice.”
Hearing these words, Terry had panicked. “No hospice … I don’t want to go to hospice!”
“Baby, don’t listen to that bedpan scrubber, he has no idea about Maharaj’s protocol. Wait here while I set him straight.”
Jonas had stalked the man down the corridor. “Hey, asshole—where do you get off saying something like that in front of my wife?”
“Sir, she’s dying.”
“We’re all dying, douche bag. My wife is scared enough without her overhearing you tell me she needs to be in hospice. Next time you see her, you’d better be all warm fuzzies or they’ll be prepping you for surgery to remove my foot from your ass, you got me, Sunshine?”
An ER doctor overheard the conversation and quickly stepped between them, pulling Jonas aside. “My apologies, Mr. Taylor. And you’re a hundred percent right—that nurse overstepped his boundaries. Let’s talk about how we can help your wife.”
“Thank you.”
“I’ve summoned a thoracic surgeon to look at your wife’s last CT scan, but he’s in surgery. While we’re waiting, we’re going to start her on a strong antibiotic, as well as a machine that will help clear her lung. She’s not going to like it, but she needs to leave it in.”
The machine connected to a mouthpiece that blasted air into Terry’s mouth and down her esophagus into her lungs every twenty seconds with the force of a leaf-blower.
Unable to speak, she beckoned to Jonas for pen and paper to communicate. She wrote “This is torture! How much longer?” as her cheeks rippled away from her teeth.
The first two hours were as hard for Jonas to watch as they were for Terry to endure. By 11 p.m. she was drifting in and out of sleep, each violent expulsion of oxygen threatening to jar her awake.
At midnight, Jonas learned the thoracic specialist would not arrive until 7 a.m.
At 4:15 a.m. an orderly arrived with a tray of food, oblivious to the device in his wife’s mouth.
At 7:44 a.m. a man in green scrubs entered her room. “Mr. Taylor? Jason Bradley—I’m the thoracic surgeon. May I speak with you in private?”
Jonas offered Terry a thumbs-up and followed the physician outside.
“Mr. Taylor, I read your wife’s X-rays, and I don’t think much Ensure had been aspirated. There’s a large tumor in your wife’s stomach pushing against her left lung, and that is most likely the reason she’s struggling to catch her breath. The hospital wants to admit her; they’re waiting for a room to open in the ICU.”
“Admit her? No, no, no—we just want to get her stabilized and out of here as quickly as possible.” Jonas explained Dr. Maharaj’s white cell therapy protocol.
“If you want her stabilized, the ICU’s still the best place for her.”
“Fine … okay. But can you take that tube out of her mouth? She’s had it in for twelve straight hours—she can’t handle it anymore.”
Soon, Dr. Bradley reentered the private room and removed the device from Terry’s mouth, instructing the male nurse to place a far more humane oxygen tube in her nostrils.
Relieved, Terry laid her head back aga
inst the pillow, her breathing shallow.
Jonas ran his palm gently over her forehead, brushing back strands of her silky black hair. “You did it, babe. Your lung is clear. Rest easy and we’ll get you out of here.”
The male nurse jumped in. “Excuse me, Mr. Taylor, but your wife isn’t going anywhere. She’s being moved into the ICU.” He pointed to the digital display on the oxygen device. “And if her breathing capacity drops below ninety percent, I’m putting the mask back on.”
As Jonas watched, Terry’s numbers dipped to 88 percent.
“I’m sorry, but the mask goes back on—”
Jonas balled both fists. “She’s exhausted—give her a chance.” He turned back to Terry and took her hand. “We’ve been through a lot worse than this—just breathe nice and easy. That’s it … much better.”
Terry’s numbers rose to 92 percent.
“Good job. See that, Meg-bait? Sometimes you just need to give the patient a chance.”
The nurse left.
Terry squeezed her husband’s hand.
Jonas leaned over and kissed her, then took out his iPhone and called Dr. Maharaj.
“Hey, Doc. Rough night, but she’s breathing better.”
“Are they giving her nutrition?”
“I don’t know. She’s got an IV going but—”
“Jonas, you must insist they get Terry a nutritionist and start feeding her intravenously right away, or she could go into renal failure.”
Jonas forced a smile for Terry before chasing after the male nurse who was going off-duty. “My wife needs a nutritionist. How do we get her one?”
“The ICU physician has to see her first; that’s why we’re admitting her.”
“Then what?”
“That’s not for me to say.”
Aboard the Hopper-Dredge McFarland
Strait of Georgia, Salish Sea
For David Taylor, seconds seemed like minutes as he kept the Manta along the starboard side of the McFarland, waiting for the hopper-dredge’s speed to drop under 5 knots so that Cyel Reed could deploy the submersible’s docking platform. Two more excruciating minutes passed before the rubberized triangular object appeared along the starboard rail, beginning its fifty-foot descent.