Extinct (29 page)

Alvin looked toward the trees down the beach. He shut his eyes and dreamed.

His wife frowned. “We better take the children back to the boat,” she said.

He nodded and peered through the trees again.

“Alvin.”

He brought his gaze back to the children. “Come on,” he said in an unusually gruff voice. “We’re going to find another place.” He looked back at the trees.

“Alvin.”

His wife wasn’t looking at him this time. She was looking out over the water. A hundred feet from the beach an empty windsurfer’s board, its sail leaned over in the water, ran up a wave and slid down its near side.

CHAPTER 35

The C-130 Hercules swung down through the light clouds above the Mississippi Sound and circled to make its landing approach across Biloxi to Keesler Air Force Base. Inside the big plane, Vandiver sat on the small box at the center of the otherwise empty cargo bay. He glanced at his watch. A smile of anticipation crossed his face. Douglas didn’t like that.

He
hoped
all they were going to see was a white shark—after the locals hooked it. And they might never do that, he knew—what if it had gone back into the Gulf on its way to another area?

Would his uncle want to rent a boat and chase after it? he wondered. And what would they be chasing? Finally he asked. “Sir?”

“Yes.”

“Sir, I know you said the length of the depression in the Keys could be due partly to the shark entering and leaving—not really representative of how long the shark was.”

“Yes, Douglas, it didn’t settle down onto the bottom like a helicopter.” He used a motion of his hand laid out flat like an airplane to show the shark gliding into the sand.

“Yes, sir. I know you also said that the submarine soundings that indicated something fifty feet or longer might have appeared that way to you because you weren’t as familiar as the technicians with interpreting the soundings.”

“Yes.”

“But, sir, I
personally saw
the slashes in the doctors’ boat. I could put my arm down through some of them. Chief Petty Officer Rhiner said the tooth would have fallen through them if he would have let go of it when he held it over them.”

Vandiver didn’t say anything and Douglas added, “So, sir, even if it turns out that megalodons did have larger teeth than comparable-sized Whites of today, and it turns out that the twenty-five-foot shark the people here think is a white is the megalodon that lost the tooth, there’s still going to be something else, there’s going to be another megalodon with it, isn’t there? One bigger.”

“Yes, if they stuck together all the way here.”

“They did at least as far as the Keys, didn’t they, sir? The one that lost the tooth, and the one that made the slashes in the hull.”

“Yes, Douglas, it appears they did.”

*   *   *

Behind the
Intuitive
a hundred seagulls squawked and circled over the half-submerged buoy cast in the shadows of the dark clouds overhead. A pair of pelicans flew right at the gulls as if oblivious to their presence, and Carolyn watched the two big prehistoric-looking birds, waiting for a collision. The gulls parted, the pelicans swooped past and on toward Biloxi, and the gulls formed over the buoy again.

Paul saw the first fins. “Hammerheads,” he said.

Carolyn looked at the oblong-shaped head that gave the sharks their name as one nosed almost out of the water to bite at the ropes lashing the net to the buoy. The second fin disappeared under the water. Two more fins cut through the water a hundred feet behind the boat as they came toward the net.

*   *   *

Vandiver walked down the ramp formed by the door hanging to the tarmac at the rear of the Hercules. A bob truck already half full of crates, two forklifts and several airmen in fatigues waited to unload the cargo. They came to attention and saluted when they saw his uniform.

He returned their salute and looked around for a ride.

Finally his eyes settled on one of the forklifts.

*   *   *

Alvin guided the Gulfstar from the flying bridge.

“I want to go over there,” the little blond-haired girl said. She pointed out toward nothing but water.

“It’s shallow over there,” he said.

“I want to go over there, too,” her brother said.

“Alvin,” his wife said, “this yacht isn’t
only
for our pleasure.”

Alvin frowned and turned the wheel sharply to the right.

The children smiled.

*   *   *

“General,” the lieutenant said, “Admiral Vandiver, U.S. Navy, here to see you.”

A puzzled expression on his face, the commanding general of Keesler came to his feet behind his desk. “Show him right in, Lieutenant.”

As Vandiver and Douglas came through the door, the general politely smiled his greeting. “Admiral.”

“General,” Vandiver said in return.

“Office of Naval Intelligence?” the general questioned.

Vandiver nodded and gestured with his chin at his nephew. “My aide, Ensign Douglas Williams.”

“Welcome to Keesler, Ensign.”

“Yes, sir,” Douglas said, and tried to come to attention as best he could with Vandiver’s two bags of luggage in his hands and a hanging bag draped across his shoulder. He carried his clothes in the small satchel he had tucked under his arm.

Vandiver moved to one of the two straightback chairs in front of the desk. Douglas remained standing, still holding the luggage off the floor. The general slowly settled into his chair behind the desk. He didn’t say anything. With the Director of Naval Intelligence suddenly arriving at the base without any advance notice, something big had to be up, he knew. If it was something the Director could openly discuss, he would say so. If it wasn’t, there was no use in asking.

Vandiver, for his part, didn’t volunteer anything, only asked for a car for transportation and said he would have it back soon. He didn’t say when
soon
was, and the general didn’t expect him to.

*   *   *

As Vandiver and Douglas walked toward the car brought to the front of the headquarters building for them, the general ran over what he knew in his mind. The Director of Naval Intelligence, not only flying in unannounced with an aide, but in a C-130 that used as a flimsy excuse for its stopping here a single box of cargo … It was something
big.
He wondered what was in those two large suitcases the aide had never let out of his hands.

*   *   *

“Sir, you didn’t mention anything about the shark to the general,” Douglas said after he had slammed the trunk lid closed over the luggage and opened the car’s passenger-side door for his uncle. “It’s not like we’re doing anything wrong.”

“No, it isn’t. Maybe I’ve been in intelligence too long, Douglas, but that’s my motto: the less anyone knows about what you’re doing, the more avenues you’ll have to do it. You should think about that.”

Douglas did, but the statement wasn’t any clearer after considerably longer thought.

*   *   *

Vandiver had Douglas stop the car at the first service station they came to. Douglas waited for his instructions.

“The shark, Douglas. Ask them the latest news on the shark.”

“You mean if it’s attacked any more victims, been seen again? Maybe how they’re hunting it?”

“Very good, Douglas.”

*   *   *

Douglas was inside the station for such a brief time that it surprised Vandiver when he walked back outside and hurried toward the car.

“It’s dead, sir. They killed it in Back Bay. It’s lying there close to the shore where everybody can see it.”

“Back Bay? Where’s that?”

“Oops, sir,” Douglas said, and hurried back into the station.

*   *   *

Fifteen minutes later, the car was parked on a weed-grown, graveled area at the front of an abandoned fish-processing plant. Vandiver and Douglas stood at the rear of the building looking out across Back Bay—and seeing nothing but empty water leading all the way toward the bridges and Biloxi Bay.

Vandiver’s eyes slowly came around to his nephew’s.

“Sir, I’m certain I obtained the directions correctly. It’s supposed to be right out there. Forty feet…”

As his uncle continued to stare at him, his voice trailed off, “… from shore.”

*   *   *

Ten minutes later, Douglas hurried back out of a convenience store. He handed his uncle a map he had drawn on a paper bag. He pointed to an X he had marked next to the sketch he had made of the shoreline of Back Bay. He touched his ballpoint pen to the X.

“Sir, we were right here. It’s simply not there anymore.”

“Get directions to the Coast Guard Station. I know there’s one in Gulfport.”

*   *   *

The curly-haired boy lowered the binoculars he had been using to look out over the side of the Gulfstar’s flying bridge. “I saw a whale,” he said, looking back at his stepfather.

“Yeah,” Alvin said.

“Alvin,” his wife said, “you
could
sound more enthused.”

“If he really saw a whale, I would be.”

“I did,” the boy said.

“Yeah, and you saw an alligator last year in a cotton field in the Delta.”

“Alvin,” his wife said, “imagination is good in a child.”

The boy frowned at his mother now. “I did see a whale,” he said. “Right over there.”

“I saw it, too,” his twin sister said. She was sitting down with her back against the inside of the bridge as she brushed her long blond hair.

Alvin didn’t make the effort to respond.

“Maybe they did,” his wife said.

“There aren’t any whales in the Chandeleur Islands.”

“You a marine expert?” his wife asked.

“No, I’m not. I’m not an astronaut either, but I know the moon isn’t made of green cheese.”

“Well, I want to see for myself,” his wife said, and folded her arms in front of her chest. They all three stared at him now.

“Which way?” he asked.

The boy and girl pointed to opposite sides of the boat. When the girl saw where her brother pointed, she changed her finger back in that direction.

Alvin rolled his eyes.

“Alvin,”
his wife said.

He turned the wheel in the direction the boy had indicated.

The little girl smiled.

The boy picked up the binoculars and began scanning the water.

*   *   *

“Alan,” Ho called as he came down the hallway.

“In my office, Ho. You finally get your nap out?”

When the Asian stepped into the office, he couldn’t have looked any more nervous if he had just been attacked by the white again.

“Alan, shark’s been moved.”

“Uh-huh, I know. Are you feeling all right?”

“Man that live across street from where you kill it cut this from mouth.” Ho lifted the big tooth in his hand.

Alan stared. Any marine biologist, any marine scientist of any kind would have immediately recognized what the tooth had come from.

“It not possible,” Ho said.

Alan kept staring. He would have known it was a joke, either being performed by Ho or by the man who gave the tooth to Ho, except for Ho’s nervousness—and part of the bloody gum still attached to the base of the tooth.

“Megalodon,” Ho said.

I knew there was something,
Alan thought.
Why didn’t I examine it? If I had examined the teeth I would have …

And then another sudden thought. He reached for the telephone. “They’re taking it out to dispose of it.”

He quickly punched in the number of the marine operator.

It took a couple of minutes for the call to be connected. All that time, he stared at the tooth, an off-white or light beige, with its body thicker than a white shark tooth of the same size.

“Go ahead, sir,”
the operator said.

“Carolyn, where are you?”

There was a moment of silence.
“A few miles south of Horn island. Is there something wrong?”

“Are you still pulling the shark?”

“Yes.”

“Turn around and bring it back. Don’t cut it loose whatever you do. You’re towing the find of this century—a megalodon.”

“I didn’t read you clearly, Alan—what did you say?”

“You’re towing a prehistoric shark—thought to be extinct for millions of years. I’m on my way out there.”

*   *   *

The brown car sped west on Highway 90 toward Gulfport. Douglas drove. Vandiver looked past him toward the dark water of the Mississippi Sound out to their side.

“Douglas, you notice the Sound?”

Douglas glanced out his window. “Yes, sir.”

“The water, Douglas, it’s silty. I didn’t even think about that.” Vandiver looked farther out over the water toward the tops of the trees rising above the barrier islands in the distance. “The islands keep the outflow from tributaries along the coast from mixing freely with the Gulf water. That keeps the Sound silty. I wonder…”

Douglas looked at him. “Sir?”

“I told you that one of the things puzzling me was why the megalodon would pass up so many similar places, and then come into the Gulf. Then, in particular, stop here—if that’s what the white is. It’s easy to see now.”

Douglas looked out his window.

“The silted water, Douglas. I imagine three or four feet under it and you couldn’t see a thing. It’d almost be black.”

His nephew looked back at him as Vandiver said, “Maybe the megalodon was simply roaming, happened onto this place. Maybe he likes the dark—it reminds him of the dark where he came from.”

As Douglas looked out his window again, Vandiver added, “Or maybe he’s just that smart—knows he can’t be seen here.”

Douglas looked back across the seat again.

“Keep your eyes on the road, Douglas.”

CHAPTER 36

Alan slipped inside the small Robinson R-22 two-seater helicopter and pulled his door shut. The pilot looked across the seats as he started the engine.

“I’ve pulled a banner asking a woman to marry a man waiting outside her door,” he said. “I delivered a guy once who stepped out into his girlfriend’s front yard with an engagement ring. But I believe dropping you in the Gulf is going to be one that can’t be beat. You are going to propose to her, aren’t you?”