20
Aboard The Neptune
34 Nautical Miles Northeast of Palau
268 Nautical Miles Southwest of The Mariana Trench
"Dad, you can give me all the advice you want, just don't be upset if I ignore it." Danielle Taylor defiantly zips up her wetsuit. "I'm eighteen now. I'm old enough to vote, old enough to make my own decisions, old enough to finally live my life and make my own mistakes."
Jonas follows her as she collects her scuba gear. "You may be eighteen, but you're still my daughter, and I forbid you to do this."
She turns on him. "What're you going to do? Ground me? Lock me in your cabin for the rest of the voyage? I'm not a kid anymore."
"Then stop acting like one. Use some common sense. What you're about to do is dangerous. Wild animals are unpredictable. What're you trying to prove?"
"Nothing. Can't you just accept the fact that I'm my own person? It's my life. I've earned the right to make my own decisions and take my own risks."
"Dani, I'm not the enemy. I'm a lot older than you, more experienced at these sort of things. Trust me, you're not ready for this."
"How old was Andrew Fox when his father first took him diving in a shark cage? How old were you when you decided to become a deep-sea submersible pilot?"
"That was different. I didn't just jump into a sub and descend. The Navy trained me."
"And the Daredevils are training me."
Fergie signals her from the lifeboat. "Dani, come on."
"I know it's hard, Dad, but you can't control the world. Learn to let go." She hugs him. "Hey, I'm about to be a star. Be happy for me."
Jonas watches her go, wondering what happened to the little fair-haired girl who used to bounce on his knee.
* * * * *
The juvenile male Sperm whales have been frolicking among the females for hours, swimming in tight clusters as they rub their bodies against one another.
Now, as the setting sun ignites the western horizon in a blaze of oranges and reds, the mammals' activity slows and the sexes segregate themselves once more, the females huddling around the calves, the bachelors moving off into groups of four or five.
Approaching quietly from the east are two vessels, a wooden rowboat containing the four members of the Mako team, and a Zodiac, carrying Andrew Fox and two of his film crew.
Fergie brings the lead boat to within twenty feet of a half-dozen brownish-gray females. "Okay, here's the drill. We'll spend a half hour just moving in and about the females, lettin' them get used to us. Don't fret about the ju-vee males, they won't bother us this late in the day."
"What about the old bull?" Doc Shinto asks.
"Him we have to watch for. Can't miss him, his head's as big as a building, full of scars and silvery-gray. Our lookouts say he went deep to feed about ten minutes ago, which buys maybe forty minutes. Since he's already had his way with the ladies, he'll probably just doze off after surfacing. Let's do twenty minutes in the water, then meet back at the boat. We'll wait until after dark before we do the deed."
The Makos nod.
"Doc, hand me the bag."
Shinto passes Fergie a plastic trash bag stuffed with nylon rope.
"I rigged this while we were back in Port Darwin. Fit it to the museum's whale they have on display. The noose should fit nicely around the whale's peduncle."
Jennie shakes her head. "No offense, Fergie, but we're not exactly dealing with plastic models here. You honestly expect us to lasso one of these animals? Look at them, they're rolling like logs."
"Lasso? Of course not. Once it gets dark, these animals will be off to sleep. Sperm whales sleep vertically underwater with their heads up. As soon as they're in la-la land, we'll target one of the females, set the noose around her tail, then tie the free end to the bow of the boat. Should make for one helluva Nantucket sleigh ride."
* * * * *
Dani slips nervously over the side into the sea, her mouth so dry she cannot spit. Giving up, she dunks the mask into the ocean, then fixes it over her face.
Fergie floats beside her, waiting patiently. Strapped to the top of his head is an underwater camera. "Doc and Jennie went left, we'll go right. You ready to pop your cherry?"
"I'm a little scared."
"You'll be fine. Here, turn me on." He ducks, allowing her to flip the toggle switch on the camera assembly.
From the second boat, Andrew Fox gives them a thumbs up.
Fergie positions his regulator in his mouth and releases air from his buoyancy control vest. Dani follows his lead, then, hand in hand, the two Daredevils sink into the darkening blue void.
Three-foot-long tissue-thin pieces of whale skin float like algae in the water—chafing from a day's worth of body rubbing. Stringy white clusters of goo—ejaculation from the excited juvenile males—swirl in the sea like bizarre spiderwebs.
Fergie leads Dani down to a forty-foot depth. They head west, approaching a cluster of females rolling ten feet beneath the surface. Each whale is no less than thirty feet, weighing in at fifteen tons. Dani squeezes Fergie's hand as they move closer, then she points.
Playing among the adults is a ten-foot calf, the newborn's flank still ringed with vertical creases from have been curled within its mother's womb.
The curious two-thousand-pound infant sees the two humans and squirms free of the adults to investigate.
Dani's eyes widen as the animal accelerates straight for them. Fergie slides in front of her, absorbing the brunt of the blow as the newborn playfully nudges them with its head, pile-driving them backward through the water.
The calf's mother quickly intervenes, prodding the infant back to the group.
A single downward stroke of the adult's powerful fluke sends Dani and Fergie rushing to the surface on a cushion of water.
Fergie spits out his regulator, pulling Dani by his side. "You okay?"
Dani clears water from her mask. "Oh my God, that was so cool. Let's do it again!"
"Easy, girl, once is once, twice gets the momma whale peeved." He points west, the last violet rays of daylight disappearing quickly. "C'mon, let's head back to the boat and get ready for some real fun."
* * * * *
A full moon rises, igniting the depths in its pale yellow lunar light. Twinkling stars ascend from the abyss to greet it—luminescent creatures whose nightly pilgrimage represents the largest migration of life on the planet.
Andrew Fox hovers in eighty feet of silky gray water, his underwater camera aimed below at a thin trail of rising air bubbles. Somewhere in these depths, ascending from its three-thousand-foot feast, is the king of the sea, the enormous adult bull Sperm whale.
Andrew's eyes widen as the colossal gray head appears majestically from out of the murk, followed by its impossibly large undulating girth.
The bull rises surreally, and then it is upon him, filling his entire screen—a sixty-foot, eighty-five-thousand-pound predator, expelling its last few seconds of air as it drives itself toward the surface to breathe.
An awestruck Andrew Fox is towed upward within its powerful wake, and then the filmmaker's skin crawls beneath his wetsuit as he sees blood gushing from a jagged bite would where the bull's right pectoral fin used to be. Before he can react, the male's powerful fluke swishes by, its turbulence flipping him upside down.
Once more, the photographer finds himself staring into the abyss, the intense pressure squeezing his ears. Before he can right himself, he sees something else rising from below—a glint of metal, coming from a narrow, silvery object. Aiming his camera, he follows the dart-like life-form as it moves past him after the whale.
What is that thing? A barracuda?
Andrew zooms in on the object as it soars past him toward the surface. He looks below one last time—
—and then he sees the glow . . .
* * * * *
The sleeping pod of Sperm whales hover motionlessly in sixty feet of water, their bodies vertical, their heads pointed upward at the surface.
Fergie floats within an arm's reach of the selected cow's motionless fluke. He waits until the cameraman, Stuart Starr, signals, then motions to his three teammates.
Doc, Jennie, and Dani widen the nylon noose, then ascend slowly, threading the whale's tail carefully through the rope.
Fergie hovers by the base of the peduncle, drawing the noose tighter so that it cannot slip off. Feeding out line, Fergie swims back toward the rowboat, followed by his three teammates and the cameraman.
Stuart Starr climbs aboard first. The Daredevils wait for him to get settled n the stern, then they climb in, one by one, trying hard to pretend the camera is not there. Doc and Jennie find seats in the middle of the lifeboat, Dani and Fergie riding shotgun. The Australian secures the free end of the rope through the brass bow ring, he and his mates giggling like school children.
"The noose'll tighten the moment the female wakes up and swims. I left us fifty meters of slack. Should be an amazing ride."
Having stopped filming, Stuart Starr communicates with the second boat using his two-way radio. "Understood. Fergie, don't stampede them yet, we're still waiting for Andrew to return."
* * * * *
A motionless Andrew Fox watches breathlessly as the glow gradually illuminates brighter in the lunar light. The son of legendary shark expert Rodney Fox has spent a lifetime filming Great Whites. He has photographed them at night and in murky waters, while in shark cages and in open ocean. He is always wary, but has never been scared.
Now, as the sixty-foot albino ancestor of the Great White ascends beneath him and sheer terror paralyzes his muscles, he wonders if this is how his father felt moments before nearly being ripped in two by his own worst nightmare.
Despite his fear, Andrew continues filming, knowing all too well that the electronic impulses discharged by the device in his hands will most likely lead to his own hideous death.
* * * * *
Back of board the Neptune, Jonas Taylor feigns interest for the camera as Charlotte Lockhart continues reading from the TelePrompTer.
" . . .the largest predator in the sea, the Sperm whale is equipped with eighteen to twenty-five comical teeth in each side of its lower jaw—"
"Cut!" Susan Ferraris bites her lower lip until it bleeds. "Charlotte, darling, that's conical, not comical. Con-ick-cal. Okay, dear? Let's try it again."
"Roll tape."
"Speed."
Charlotte licks her lips. Resets. "The largest—"
"Shit!"
Susan slams her clipboard to the deck. "Somebody is just begging me to commit murder."
Her assistant signals from behind one of the side monitors. "Susan, Erik, you have to see this, come quick!"
A crowd gathers. The director and producer push their way through to oohs and aahs. "My God, is that thing real?"
Jonas cuts through the crew. Sees the image. Feels the blood drain from his cheeks.
The devil's face appears first, its right eye and nostril ringed by a series of gruesome scars that extend down to the upper jaw line and an exposed section of gum. The deformed mouth twitches as it opens, revealing rows of six inch teeth.
The creature's pigmentless hide glows luminescent-white in the moonlight as it ascends past the camera, the undertow of its wake spinning the cameraman around as if he is caught in a washing machine. A wing-like pectoral fin momentarily blots out the view, and then the image refocuses, zooming in on a mutilated alabaster dorsal fin, the back end of which has clearly been bitten off.
The final image—a twin set of claspers and a thrashing caudal fin.
A dozen thoughts scream into Jonas's mind at once, entwined by a dozen commands. Help Andrew . . . it's a male . . . Terry was right . . . the Venice shark tooth festival . . . the male Meg tooth . . . Erik set you up . . . find a weapon . . . how did it get here . . . locate a boat—
"—save my daughter!"
Jonas races across the main deck to where Team Hammerhead waits. The cargo net is in place over the side, a Zodiac already in the water, tied off below.
Mia Durante looks up. Sees the expression on his face. Says nothing as she follows him over the rail and down the cargo net to the motorized raft.
* * * * *
Buzzing clicks of echolocation from the surfacing bull fill the sea, alerting the sleeping whales. Shaking off their slumber, they race for the surface, the cows surrounding the calves, the juvenile males circling the females, as the mammals organize a mass exodus.
The adult female harnessed to the Daredevils' boat awakens with a start. As she thrashes toward the surface, the noose tightens around the base of her peduncle and pulls tight.
Registering the sudden tug, the cow panics.
* * * * *
"Say again?" Stuart Starr presses the radio tighter to his ears, unable to hear over the din of helicopter blades pounding over their heads. "A meg-ala what?"
Dani turns, staring at the cameraman—
—as the nylon line suddenly jerks taut, sending the rowboat shooting through the sea at twenty knots.
"Whoa-ho!" Fergie grabs Dani around the waist and holds on as the wooden vessel bounds across the wave tops like a bucking bronco.
Dani ducks her head, showered by heavy spray. She turns and yells back to Stuart Starr. "Did you say Megalodon," but the cameraman cannot hear her over her shouting teammates, the Coelacanth 's helicopter, and the wind in his ears.
Looking back, she sees the dorsal fin.
* * * * *
The male Megalodon, surviving the "runt" of Angel's first litter, avoids the cluster of whales, its senses targeting the lone female, which has separated from the group and is racing away from the pods, remaining close to the surface.
The Meg goes after her, its mangled scythe-shaped dorsal fin whistling as it cuts the night.
Within seconds, the hunter detects another creature, trailing in the whale's wake.
Smaller. More vulnerable.
The Megalodon alters its course, mistaking the lifeboat for a calf.
* * * * *
Dani screams. "It's gaining on us, do something!"
Fergie holds on as the boat bashes bow-first into a six-foot swell. "It's after the lifeboat. Maybe we're better off in the water? It'll pass us. The chopper could pick us up."
"Bullshit," says Jennie, staring at the fin. "That chopper's here for one reason, to film our deaths. I'll take my chances in the boat."
* * * * *
The panicked cow has towed the lifeboat a good two miles. Exhausted, sensing the larger Meg closing along the surface, the whale goes deep.
* * * * *
The rowboat skims over another swell, then suddenly plows bow-first, straight into the dark Pacific.
Dani sees an explosion of lights, and then somehow she is underwater, being dragged into the suffocating depths. The boat groans in her ears as her shattered mind screams at her to let go.
Releasing her grip, she tumbles free, then kicks to the surface for what seems like an eternity. Her head pops free and she gasps several breaths.
And then she freezes.
The white wake rolls toward her, moving just below the surface like a submarine, and before she can scream, before she can command her frozen muscles to move, the monster is upon her, gliding beneath her. Her bare feet touch its ivory back and she jerks them away, tucking her knees to her chest as a mangled dorsal fin slices by, nearly colliding with her face. Caught in the creature's current, she is dragged several yards, spinning around and around until she rolls away from the submerging white beast and sinks.
Dani resurfaces, panting, and then she hears a scream, the worst scream she has ever heard, a man's scream, and it is so horrible, so inhuman, that it actually curdles her blood, but what is worse, what is worse, what is so much worse, is that the scream suddenly stops.
So scared is Dani Taylor that she cannot find her voice to answer the scream, and that is a good thing, because a thrashing ivory tail suddenly appears, whipping past her face as it slaps at the sea before disappearing beneath a wave, leaving her in deafening silence that becomes a roar of rotor blades.
Looking up, she sees a light and the outline of the Coelacanth 's two-man chopper, its thundering blades causing the water to reverberate beneath her.
"Help me! Help—"
The airship remains thirty feet directly overhead. She sees someone hanging out the side of the craft . . . a large man holding a camera.
You bastard! Help me!"
A swell rolls over her head and Dani screams into the night, screams at the cursed helicopter, screams even louder as a pair of hands lifts her out of the water and drags her backward into the Zodiac, and she keeps on screaming until she smells her father's aftershave and feels his arms tightening around her.
"Daddy?"
"It's okay." Jonas wraps a blanket around her shoulders as Mia slows the Zodiac, allowing Stuart Starr to grab hold. Jonas hauls the frightened cameraman up by his wetsuit as Jennie Arnos climbs aboard from the opposite side of the raft.
The helicopter pilot redirects the beacon of light, blinding them.
Jonas shouts to Mia above the din of the noise. "Get us away from those assholes before they get us killed."
"Wait!" Dani is frantic. "Where's Fergie?"
"Where's Doc?"
Mia pushes down on the throttle, accelerating in a widening circle as five pairs of eyes desperately search the sea.
"Shh! Listen!"
A man's voice calls out from the darkness, barely audible over the booming helicopter rotors.
Jonas points. "There! Two o'clock."
Beyond a rolling swell they see someone waving frantically, as a tall sliver of dorsal fin bears down upon him thirty yards away.
"Hold on!" Mia slams down the throttle, the rubber raft leaping ahead, bounding over wave tops.
Jonas straddles the starboard side of the boat, bracing himself in a prone position, his legs straddling the raft, his right arm reaching out into the blinding spray.
Faster, Mia, much faster—
The man is swimming now, kicking like a demon, the Megalodon's snout rising clear out of the water right behind him.
Jonas sees the upper jaw jut forward. We're too late . . . oh, Jesus, Mia, don't try it, don't—
Jonas snags the offered forearm in his right hand, his fingers tightening like steel clamps against the man's cold rubber skin, his own elbow straining beneath the unbearable weight that threatens to yank him over the side—
—as a cavern filled with teeth reach out for him and Jonas bellows a cry into the creature's mouth, the Megalodon's rancid breath gagging him as he shuts his eyes to die.
Mia veers the Zodiac hard to port, so hard that Jonas and the man he is somehow still holding onto are nearly tossed inside that cavernous gullet.
But Dani is gripping her father's left leg and Stuart and Jennie are holding Dani, and now the Zodiac is racing across the ocean, leaving the monster in its wake.
Jonas rolls Wayne Ferguson into the boat, the two men hyperventilating.
Unable to find his voice, the Australian simply nods at Jonas before Dani embraces him.
The survivors remain silent. The Zodiac's high-pitched whine rattles their ears, the wind buffets their faces. Fear tightens their guts, acid reflux rising in their throats.
Mia searches the horizon. "Where the hell's the Neptune ?"
Jonas is more focused on the expanse of sea behind them. It missed its last surface attack, it won't be fooled again. "This isn't over, Mia. It'll come up beneath us. You need to keep zigzagging."
"What?"
"Zigzag!" Jonas grabs the wheel, sending the Zodiac veering hard to port.
"Yo, what are you—"
The sea erupts to their right as the gargantuan beast explodes into the night, three-quarters of its twisting upper torso clearing the surface, its ferocious jaws snapping at air.
Dani and Jennie scream. Fergie falls backward against Stuart Starr, both men trembling.
Mia stares wide-eyed at Jonas, clearly out of her element. "Okay, you drive."
Jonas takes the controls as the creature disappears in the Zodiac's wake. Think, Taylor. You can't outrun it and you won't be able to outmaneuver it much longer. He scans the dark horizon, all sense of direction gone. The Neptune was south of the lifeboat, but which direction's south? He glances skyward at the stars, then snaps out of it. Dammit, pay attention, you should be counting the seconds between surface attacks.
"Hold on!" Jonas veers hard to starboard, altering their course.
The Meg's scarred dorsal fin surfaces ahead to their left, then disappears.
Mia looks at him, amazed. "How did you—"
"I've played this cat and mouse game before."
"How does it turn out?"
"You don't want to know."
The pounding of rotors reappear as the helicopter soars past them.
* * * * *
Allison Petrucci drops the chopper to twenty feet and hovers, waiting for the Zodiac to reach them.
Michael Maren taps her on the shoulder. "Perfect. Hold it here." Looking into his viewfinder, he pans down on the approaching craft. Smile for the camera, Taylor. Smile before you die.
Maren contemplates the shot, then slides back into the co-pilot's seat, placing the laptop on his thighs.
* * * * *
Mia grinds her teeth. "Look at these assholes."
"That thumping sound'll lead the Meg right to us." Jonas veers away from the hovering chopper, cursing to himself as the airship stays with him. Watching the waves, he counts to himself, estimating the big male's rate of descent and closing speed, when he notices a glint of metal, coming from a dart-shaped object that is trailing just beneath the surface along the starboard side of the boat.
Before he can get a better view, the object disappears.
* * * * *
The three jet skis converge upon the Zodiac, Michael Coffey taking the lead, Evan Stewart and Dee Hatcher on his flank. The Daredevil trio races directly for the Zodiac, then closing to within one hundred yards, they veer to the south, signaling for Jonas to follow.
Mia points to the three jet skiers. "Jonas, follow the Daredevils, they'll lead us back to the Neptune !"
Jonas changes course, keeping his bow in the jet skier's wake.
Dani and Mia cheer as the Neptune appears on the horizon.
Jonas looks back. The dorsal fin has abandoned them to circle the dying Sperm whale.
* * * * *
The gray-headed bull swims on its side, languishing in a pool of its own blood.
Michael Maren stares at his display monitor, cursing the dying beast's existence as he works the laptop's joystick.
"Michael, should I follow the Zodiac or stay with the Meg? Michael?"
Maren slams his laptop shut. "Just take us back to the Coelacanth."
* * * * *
The three jet skiers are already on board by the time Jonas docks the Zodiac alongside the Spanish galleon. He ties the raft's bowline to the bottom rung of the cargo net while the others ascend to rousing applause.
Fergie motions for quiet. "Knock it off, you bloody mongrels. I said stop!" He stares at the smiling crewmen, shaking his head. "Doc's dead. Hope you got your bloody shot."
Expressions drop, replaced by heavy silence.
"Where's Hollander?"
Captain Robertson steps forward. "He's locked in his stateroom with Susan and a team of editors. They're already uploading footage."
"And Andrew?"
"He's in sick bay. He'll be all right, just some nasty abrasions."
"Take us to the nearest port, Captain. This voyage is officially over."
"Can't do that, Taylor. I've been ordered to stay within two clicks of the dead whale."