Meg: Hell's Aquarium (16 page)

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You wouldn’t know?” Monty wiggles his index finger at David. “Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep—”

“What are you doing?”

“That’s my bullshit detector. Your old man did the Mariana Trench more than a few times. That’s thirty-six thousand feet, as deep as it gets. How deep have you gone, Junior? I mean, in a sub.”

“Close to twelve thousand.”

“Twelve hundred, meet twelve thousand. Good thing it’s a long flight, huh?”

“Ignore him, Kaylie. It’s not about how deep you go; it’s about keeping your head, controlling your fear. My first night dive freaked me out, and that was in two hundred feet of water. Piloting a submersible means maintaining your focus. Something you may want to work on, Monty.”

“Good advice, teach. I think we can see where your focus is being maintained. May I?” He plucks a stray hair from the back of David’s head.

“Ow! What the hell?”

“They say intelligent people have more copper and zinc in their hair than the rest of us non-achievers. I’ll get back to you.”

Monty leans back in his seat, reclines the chair to its maximum setting, and closes his eyes.

9.

Tanaka Oceanographic Institute
Monterey, California

From his vantage in the northern bleachers, Brent Nichols can see everything: the two pure-white runts now occupying the shallow medical pool, their much larger siblings circling in the Meg Pen, and, in the deepest part of the man-made channel, an occasional froth of water and thunder of pummeled steel marking the location of the juveniles’ temperamental parent.

For the last two hours, a team of marine biologists and Meg husbandry experts have been monitoring Mary Kate’s and Ashley’s vital signs, the two predators having been moved into the medical pool earlier in the day. Approximately the size of a baseball infield, the medical pool is only fifteen feet deep and has been divided into two rectangular sections barely twice the Megs’ girth. The tight quarters force the pair of twenty-five-foot sharks to swim against an artificially created current, conditioning them for their fifteen-hour trip to Dubai. To reduce the stress induced by having to swim in close quarters, the water in the tank is being filtered with moderate doses of Tricaine Methanesulfonate. Today’s session had been scheduled for three hours, at which time the two runts were to be returned to their half of the Meg Pen and observed.

Belle and Lizzy had forced those plans to be changed.

As a field scientist, Brent Nichols has spent hundreds of hours in the water observing sharks, including bull sharks, a species driven by high levels of testosterone. But even those killers couldn’t hold a candle to the ferocity of the two big Meg juveniles known as the sisters.

Moments after the second runt had been hoisted from its tank, the lead-backed sister, Belle, began ramming the fence that divided the Meg Pen. Fearsome, with no regard to injury, the creature seemed to attack the barrier with a pent-up rage that Brent Nichols had never witnessed in the wild. After fifteen minutes, the powerful blows began tearing the rubberized titanium barrier clear off its reinforced frame, forcing trainers and maintenance crews to hastily winch the fence out of the water or risk losing it altogether.

And yet as ferocious as Bela the Dark was, it was her albino sister, Lizzy, that really spooked Dr. Nichols. For every time Belle ceased her relentless attack on the fence, her counterpart would strike it herself with one solitary resounding blow, as if egging her sibling on. Having observed the ritual for several hours, Dr. Nichols was convinced it was Lizzy who wanted the barrier removed, and the clever predator knew how to get her brutish sibling to carry out the task.

A cooperative, well-defined relationship exists between the two sisters,
Dr. Nichols wrote in his journal.
The albino is the clear instigator, with the darker Meg functioning as her assassin. Even when they swim in formation, it is Lizzy on top, Belle riding below, being towed in her wake.

Dr. Nichols looks up from his notes in time to see Jonas Taylor approaching from the eastern pavilion. “So? Learn much?”

“Enough to fill two legal pads, but merely the tip of the iceberg. I’m disappointed Angel won’t leave the canal. But I’ve made some fascinating observations regarding the two litters of juveniles.”

“Two litters? Sorry, Doc, but these Megs were all birthed live from one litter.”

“They might have been birthed at the same moment in time, Taylor, but these juvenile Megs come from two different litters, fertilized by two different males.”

Jonas feels the blood rush from his face. “Different males? Christ, how many of these monsters are out there? Unless Scarface . . .”

“Scarface?”

“Another male I crossed paths with around the same time Angel returned to the lagoon with that big bull. The two males were Angel’s offspring from her first litter. A field sample taken from Scarface a few years ago matched the DNA of his deceased bigger brother.”

“Let’s be sure. If it wasn’t Scarface, then there could be another adult male out there somewhere. The runt that died last week, Angelica . . . did your biologist perform a necropsy?”

“Yes.”

“Perfect. We’ll compare Angelica’s DNA with the DNA of the two males from Angel’s first litter. If the samples match, the runt’s father was Scarface. If not, there may be another big male out there somewhere. I’ll also need tissue samples from one of the sisters.”

Jonas exhales a groan.

“Is that a problem?”

“Ever pull an alligator’s tooth while it was still conscious? That would be easy compared to this.”

Virgil Carmen brushes strands of black hair from his face as he steadies himself along the Meg Pen rail, his “spearing” arm slightly constricted by the fluorescent orange harness around his waist. Adjusting the ten-foot reach pole, the assistant director of animal husbandry stares at the water while Moretti continues to drag the seventy-five-pound morsel of beef along the surface, hoping to lure one of the sisters topside.

Belle and Lizzy remain wary, circling thirty feet below.

Moretti turns to Jonas and his heavyset companion. “No good, J.T. They’re on to this game. If you really want the sample, I’ll need the
Jellyfish
.”

Virgil screws the back end of a two-inch-diameter, eight-foot-long steel pipe to its mount along the outside of the
Jellyfish
submersible. The business end of the spear—a four-inch-long hollow point—is designed to puncture the Meg’s hide and quickly retract, slicing off and capturing a pencil-thin sample of tissue while simultaneously cauterizing the wound.
Underwater camera’s rolling . . . if I can get a tight shot of Moretti jabbing one of the sisters with this spear . . . that would make Sara happy. Maybe she’d get me a job working for R.A.W. Anything’s better than this deal.

Virgil tests the spring-loaded assembly several times then signals to his boss, who is already inside the acrylic, sphere-shaped vessel.

Moretti returns the thumbs-up and adjusts his headset over his lucky turquoise baseball cap and speaks into his radio. “Ready here, Chris.”

Parked next to the
Jellyfish
, anchored to outriggers in one of four reinforced-concrete, rectangular pits located around the Meg Pen, is the Institute’s 70-ton Link-Belt hydraulic truck crane. Designed for heavy lifting, the truck possesses a three-stage, 109-foot telescopic boom that supports ten lines, each able to lift 14,000 pounds. The boom is connected to a Rotex gear mounted beneath the operator’s cab, enabling the load to be moved left or right as well as up and down.

“Roger that. Stand by, Moretti.” Crane operator Christopher Baird enters the pre-programmed weight of the
Jellyfish
(7,800 pounds) and the maximum height he will be raising the submersible (17 feet), along with the angle of the lift and the radius of the boom into the crane’s on-board computer. The system is designed to warn the operator if the load limitations are exceeded.

Earlier that morning, Baird had engaged three of the ten spools of sixty-five-foot-long, heavy lifting cable to individually transport Mary Kate and Ashley from the Meg Pen into the medical pool, allowing for plenty of backup capacity without overtaxing the truck’s crankshaft, which is needed to torque the load. For the
Jellyfish
, Baird reduces the boom setting to two cables, 28,000 pounds being more than enough torque to lower and raise the submersible into and out of the Meg Pen.

Baird, a former corporal at the Southern State Correctional Facility in Springfield, Vermont, had switched careers four years earlier to get away from the daily stress of working in close contact with “pathological killers.” He often wonders if he has jumped from the frying pan into the fire.

“Buckle up, Moretti, it’s time to take a dip.”

There are two joysticks in the cab, one on either side of Baird’s seat. One controls forward and aft movements, the other left to right. Foot pedals extend and retract the boom while regulating the hydraulic pressure used to move the crane. Baird pulls back on the right joystick, engaging the hydraulic pump—

—raising the
Jellyfish
off the concrete deck. He swings it over the Meg Pen. Seconds later, the acrylic sphere is lowered into the water, the two spools of cable playing out, allowing the tethered submersible to head for the bottom of the tank.

Sensing a disturbance in their domain, Lizzy breaks off her circular swimming pattern to investigate.

Moretti activates the predator prod as he searches the aquarium. The two Megs are huddled together along the far tank wall, remaining a healthy distance from the six steel lances that project from different angles along the submersible’s hull.

Fifteen minutes pass. Still no change.

This is crazy . . . they’re five times faster than the sub and a million times more agile. I could be down here a week and still not come close.
“
Jellyfish
to Base: Virgil, they’re playing cat and mouse. I’m going to shut off the current to the prods and see if that’ll lure them in.”

“Roger that,
Jellyfish
. Be careful.”

Knowing the two Megalodons’ senses can detect the electrical field coming from the predator prods, Moretti shuts down the voltage lever, cutting the current. Though risky, it’s not altogether dangerous, the sheer size of the sub’s spherical hull, too large to be bitten, offering more than ample protection.

Reaching for the “gun” mounted to his dashboard, Moretti slips his index finger inside the trigger mechanism of the tissue sampler and waits.

As anticipated, Bela breaks off first, coming straight at him—

—turning away at the last moment before he can stab the twenty-one-ton fish.

Still cautious, are we?
Moretti glances at his sonar, verifying Lizzy’s position, the albino continuing her slow, steady pattern around the circumference of the Meg Pen.

He watches as the freakish-looking Bela moves through the tank in agitated S patterns as she readies her second bullrush. Arching her back as she turns, the juvenile monster veers straight for the sub.

Moretti maneuvers the
Jellyfish
, changing a direct hit into a harmless deflecting blow, simultaneously pulling the trigger as she passes. The tip of the sampling spear juts out several feet from its spring-loaded assembly, striking the Meg on her left flank in a puff of blood.

“Got you.”

Belle swats the
Jellyfish
hard with her caudal fin—

—as the white glow appears at Moretti’s back! The submersible is smashed from behind, driven forward at heart-stopping speed. The pilot fights to regain controls as he swivels 180 degrees in his pilot’s chair to see—

—Lizzy’s eight-foot-wide, hyperextended mouth open, now pressing against the aft end of the sphere as she plows it ahead toward the far tank window, the two cables feeding out rapidly.

Metal screeches as the lines catch at sixty-five feet, the sudden jolt short-circuiting the predator prod in a shower of sparks. The aquarium’s four-foot-thick, acrylic viewing window looms a mere twenty feet away . . . and Lizzy is still pushing the sub!