MEG: Nightstalkers (13 page)

The Save-Our-Sharks society was established to stop the senseless slaughter of sharks by fishermen supplying Asia with fins for their soup. Sharks had the right to exist and served to keep the entire ocean ecosystem in balance. Like most conservation groups, S.O.S. lacked funding and publicity. A nonviolent faction of scientists and activists, they had come to San Juan Island seeking to turn the media’s exposure of the Megalodon attacks into a rallying cry for their own movement. Marching on Friday Harbor, two dozen members of S.O.S. staged a peaceful protest before a small army of field reporters and their camera crews.

Opposing the group were the locals whose livelihoods depended on tourism and the islands’ water-based activities—fishing charters, dive boats, whale-watching tours, kayaking, and Jet Ski rentals. For twenty minutes they threatened to toss members of S.O.S. into the sun-soaked bay waters until the police arrived to separate the two groups. Film crews desperate for any new angle on the story remained on the scene—until word spread that one of the local charter boat captains and his guests had encountered a Megalodon and were en route to Friday Harbor to hold a press conference that would “shock the world.”

*   *   *

Paul Agricola believed in karma.

Thirty-five years ago, the only son of Canadian venture capitalist Peter Agricola was in the Philippine Sea aboard his father’s 275-foot research vessel, the
Tallman.
The marine biologist and his team had been commissioned to gather data on NW Rota-1, a deep submarine volcano that towered twelve stories off the bottom of the sea floor in the Mariana Trench.

To explore the deepest location on the planet required special equipment. Fastened to the
Tallman
’s keel like a twelve-foot remora was a gondola-shaped device that housed a Multi Beam Echo Sounder (MBES), its dual frequency deepwater sonar pings designed for mapping the abyss. Paul Agricola’s biggest challenge in collecting data on a geological feature located 36,000 feet below the surface was the dense hydrothermal plume which coagulated a mile above the bottom of the Mariana Trench like a swirling ceiling of soot. The mineral layer effectively sealed in the heat percolating from the seven-hundred-degree Fahrenheit waters spewing from thousands of hydrothermal vents, but it also played havoc with the Echo Sounder’s sonar signal.

Paul’s solution was to deploy the Sea Bat, a winged, remotely-operated vehicle. Tethered to the MBES, the Sea Bat worked like a charm, flying below the plume like an underwater kite, using its on-board sonar to relay signals back to the
Tallman
that identified every object within its acoustic perimeter.

For three months the
Tallman
had circled the area above the undersea volcano, gathering water samples while imaging a thriving chemosynthetic ecosystem spawned by the hydrothermal vents. Having completed its mission, Paul’s crew were set to retrieve the Sea Bat when a very large marine animal, estimated to be over fifty feet long, suddenly appeared in the sonar array’s field of vision.

There was no doubt the blip was a biologic. The question:
what was it?

The extreme depth eliminated any possibility of the species being a sperm whale, while the creature’s weight—approximated at twenty-five tons—ruled out a giant squid. The consensus among the three oceanographers onboard was that it was most likely a very large whale shark.

Paul Agricola had a different theory. He believed the creature to be
Carcharodon megalodon
, a sixty-foot prehistoric species of great white shark whose extinction two million years ago had remained an unresolved mystery in the paleo-world. Furthermore, Paul intended to prove the creature was a Meg by using the Sea Bat’s electronic signals to bait it to the surface.

For days the crew of the
Tallman
tried, but the predator, while interested, refused to rise above the warmth of the hydrothermal plume. And then another object appeared on sonar—this one a submersible.

The USS
Sea Cliff
was completing its third and final dive in the Challenger Deep, the deepest part of the Mariana Trench. The mission was top-secret, the three man vessel containing two scientists and the United States Navy’s top submersible pilot—a thirty-year-old commander by the name of Jonas Taylor.

Exhausted from his third dive in eight days, Jonas was struggling to maintain the
Sea Cliff
’s position just above the hydrothermal plume when a strange glow appeared to be circling below the mineral clouds directly beneath the sub. A skipped heartbeat later a monstrous albino head rose majestically from out of the plume, its eight-foot-wide jaws hyperextending open to take a bite.

It was Paul Agricola’s actions that had led the Megalodon to the
Sea Cliff
, forcing Jonas Taylor to execute an emergency ascent that had killed the two scientists on board. Dishonorably discharged, his career over, Jonas would return to the Mariana Trench seven years later—this time as a marine biologist intent on clearing his name.

As for the marine biologist who had actually discovered a Megalodon alive in the abyss, Paul Agricola was forced to take a vow of silence by his father, who feared his son’s involvement with the U.S. Navy could lead to lawsuits against Agricola Industries by the dead scientists’ families. Seven years later, Jonas Taylor’s exploits in the trench would cause the disillusioned Canadian scientist to hang up his lab coat and move to San Juan Island to live off his father’s hush money.

Thirty-five years ago Paul had missed his opportunity to land “the big one.”

Late last night, the charter boat captain had caught a beauty.

Paul Agricola’s guest was a retiring executive from BP oil—a personal friend of his father. The
Tallman-II
had picked him up in Vancouver yesterday afternoon, along with one of his local vice presidents and two female “escorts” in their late twenties. The plan was to spend the day sport fishing in waters not affected by the quarantine—although most of the action had taken place in the yacht’s private cabins.

The fish had been hooked last night while en route to San Juan Island. Unaware his guests had been troll fishing in quarantined waters, Paul wanted to cut the line, but the oil executive had insisted on hauling in the catch so he could mount it in his game room. And so, under cover of darkness they had dropped the nets and dragged the fish on board.

The moment Paul saw the six-foot shark he knew it was Bela’s offspring.

*   *   *

By the time the
Tallman-II
cruised into Friday Harbor, the docks by the yacht’s assigned berth were swarming with news crews and locals. Thrashing in a net along the starboard side of the sixty-foot boat was a shark, its weight estimated by the fishermen in attendance at three hundred pounds.

Paul Agricola waited in the bridge while his crew secured the
Tallman-II
within its berth, mentally rehearsing the speech that would begin his long-overdue fifteen minutes of fame.

Upwards of a thousand people were standing on the wharf in front of the bow of the docked yacht, Terry and Jonas among them. They couldn’t see beyond the wall of reporters and film crews, nor could they identify the game fish splashing about inside the net.

They were about to leave when the yacht’s captain climbed down from his bridge, armed with a bullhorn. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Paul Agricola and I’m the captain and owner of this yacht. Last night, while returning from a fishing trip outside the quarantined zone, we hooked a species of fish that has no business being in our waters … a predator whose presence proves that we’ve been lied to by the authorities and the man responsible for the two monsters that killed Captain Lebowitz and those two young women … God rest their souls.”

Jonas pulled down the brim of his hat, his heart pounding rapidly in his chest.

“Before I became a fisherman, I was a marine biologist and a damn good one at that. I know why Bela and Lizzy came to these waters … they came here to give birth!”

The blood rushed from Jonas’s face. He could feel Terry staring at him, her words lost in the din of the shouting crowd.

Paul Agricola raised his hand for quiet. When none came, he blasted the crowd with the shrill sound of his megaphone. “Shut your yaps and I’ll show you. Behold … one of Bela’s pups!”

Two deckhands leaned out over the starboard rail to steady the net now rising out of the water. A winch secured to a rope separated the catch from the net, revealing a six-foot shark with an albino head, dangling over the deck by its tail.

The crowd’s reaction was eventually quelled by the S.O.S. leader, whose retort was amplified by his followers. “It’s a great white … let it go!”

Paul Agricola responded with a megaphone screech that quieted the crowd. “It is
not
a great white! I checked its teeth. Meg teeth have a raised chevron on the back.”

A CNN reporter called out, “How could Bela have had babies? There were no male Megs at the Tanaka Institute. Was this an immaculate conception, captain?”

Paul waited until the laughter and catcalls subsided. “For your information, more than five hundred different animal species reproduce without sex. Female greenflies birth exact replicas of themselves; same with the whiptail lizard. Hammerhead sharks have given birth in captivity to genetic clones of the mother. I have a friend … a fellow colleague who told me that he performed genetic tests on Angel’s offspring six months ago; the results showed the three runts were Angel’s genetic clones, indicating her eggs had been self-fertilized in her womb. Bring in an expert and have him perform a DNA test on this shark and if this female isn’t a genetic match of Bela, I’ll sell my yacht and give the money to Captain Lebowitz’s family.”

The crowd reacted, field reporters shouting over one another to be heard.

The shark arched its back, its upper band of pink gums exposed as it began suffocating. Paul signaled for his men to lower it back into the water.

“Jonas!” Terry grabbed his face between her palms to get her husband’s attention. “Is this true?”

He nodded, his eyes focused on the baby Meg as it was lowered back into the bay.

The bay …

Sweet Jesus.

He grabbed Terry by the elbow and dragged her through the crowd, clearing a path with his cast.

“Jonas—stop!”

People were looking at him now; they had heard his name. A hand reached out and plucked the hat from his head. A pair of fishermen, both bearded and beer-bellied pushed through the throng and grabbed him.

“Here he is, the sum bitch that caused all the problems!”

The mob pressed in, the scent of body odor and alcohol filling Jonas’s lungs as he was physically separated from Terry behind a tidal surge of prodding flesh and sweaty T-shirts, the locals driving him back toward the news crews.

Microphones were shoved in his face; artificial lights blinded his eyes. The shouts were deafening, the chaos igniting his primordial instinct to survive. He swung his cast and connected with a few heads, but he was a lost soul fighting an army … and suddenly he was underwater.

*   *   *

The ghost-white dorsal fin cut across the brilliant blue shallows of Friday Harbor, blending in with the sailboats docked like sardines around the perimeter of the Yacht Club. Moving in formation beneath Lizzy’s pectoral fins was her darker sister, Bela, the two creatures swimming in a symbiotic defensive posture forged from having spent four years living in a tank where they perpetually sensed the presence of Angel, their overbearing mother.

The Megalodon siblings had homed in on the vibrations of Bela’s distressed offspring when the yacht had traveled southwest past Shaw Island. Entering the bay, the sisters’ sensory array had lost the female pup’s distress signals when it had been hauled onto the boat.

When Paul Agricola had returned the juvenile Meg back into the water, he had forgotten that the shark needed to swim to breathe. This had been achieved en route to San Juan Island by the yacht’s forward motion. With the boat docked, the shark quickly became entangled in the net and was unable to force water into its mouth to engage its gills.

The suffocating newborn thrashed along the side of the boat, its rapid heartbeats and desperate flailing actions immediately detected by sensory cells embedded in the lateral lines located along the sisters’ flanks.

Bela shot past her sibling, homing in on the yacht and her dying offspring. With her belly pressed against the muddy bottom, she approached the net cautiously, her forty-six-foot girth barely squeezing between the starboard side of the yacht and the maze of pilings supporting the wooden pier.

The Meg nudged its dead pup with her snout, her left pectoral fin slipping beneath the
Tallman-II
’s keel, the right coming to rest between two pilings.

Sharks do not have a reverse gear. Wedged in too tightly to turn around, Bela was stuck.

With their attention focused on Jonas Taylor, the members of the media and the riled up locals never noticed the dark sickle-shaped caudal fin slapping at the back of the yacht. It wasn’t until the
Tallman-II
began rolling to port that Paul Agricola and his crew suddenly realized they had an uninvited guest.

The water frothed as the twenty-one-ton Megalodon panicked like an angry bull stuck in its paddock. Repeatedly bashing her ivory-colored head from side to side, Bela dislodged a row of pilings, collapsing a city block-size section of Friday’s Wharf.

One moment Jonas was being jostled by the crowd, the next he was sliding on his back amid an entanglement of bodies and camera equipment. A shock of cold whitewater blasted him in the face, then his feet struck something solid and he was driven underwater through a maelstrom of human shrapnel and splintered boardwalk until his body was pinned against the muddy bottom.

Bela twisted so that her tail now occupied the real estate vacated by the fallen pilings. Squeezing her head beneath the
Tallman-II
’s keel, she whipped her caudal fin into a frenzy as she lifted the yacht’s bow onto her back.