Meg: Hell's Aquarium (30 page)

Fran Rizzuto and Virgil Carmen stare at the empty slurry bucket.

“That’s not good.”

“No shit. Keep pumping water.” Fran speaks into her radio, “Jonas, how much longer?”

“Stand by, Fran.” The packet of screwdrivers, attached to the fishing line, is being pushed inland by the current. Jonas swims out to it, tearing it from its barbed hook—

—slicing open his right thumb in the process. He curses as blood trickles from the open wound. Pinching the cut, he kicks hard against the incoming tide just to get back to the base of the tail.

Mac’s voice chirps over his ear piece. “Jonas, did you get the screwdrivers?”

“I got them, and a nasty cut from your damn hook.”

“Thank me later. I just got off the radio with the guys who tag great whites in Baja. They advise that you line up the faceplate then drill four pilot holes with the quarter-inch bit. Use the bolts and nuts in your tool bag. They say it’s far less invasive than a screw.”

“Okay. Thanks.” Jonas reaches into his tool bag. Retrieving a bit, he locks it in the drill. Lining up the faceplate, he drills a quarter-inch hole through the secondary dorsal fin, his eyes never leaving Angel’s tail.

No movement.

Breathing a sigh of relief, he quickly drills two more holes, then slowly removes the screw twisted into the flesh and re-drills that hole as well. Feeling into the tool bag, he locates four ten-inch plastic bolts and four matching nuts. One by one, he inserts the bolts and tightens the nuts down against the opposite side of the fin by hand.

Brent Nichols wipes sweat from his forehead as he sits back, admiring his handy work. “All electrodes connected. Preparing to close. Wish we could test this thing first. We always tested them with the hammerheads and nurse sharks.”

“Brent, this isn’t a frickin’ nurse shark! We’ve got divers in the water—”

“Okay, okay. Ready with the clamp.” Using the forceps, he assists Dr. Stelzer in adhering the severed section of upper skull in place with glue. Satisfied the cartilage will hold and mend, the two marine biologists proceed to roll the heavy section of skin back in place. Dr. Nichols then begins the arduous task of suturing the incisions—

—while Jonathan Stelzer injects the surgical area with a combination of anti-inflammatories and antibiotics.

Ed Hendricks is positioned above the surgical chamber. Fascination quells fear as he witnesses a robotic appendage stitch a bleeding flap of skin using a fourteen-inch titanium needle, the sutures made from Megalodon intestine taken from Angelica’s remains.

“Ed, how much longer?”

“I don’t know, Frannie. They’re suturing the incisions now. Five, maybe six minutes. Plus another two to flood the chamber and release the device. Carlos, what’s happening at your end?”

Perspiration pours down Carlos Salinas’s face, creating a small pool inside his face mask as he keeps the saltwater feeder tube in place between Angel’s slack jaws. “Man, it’s been at least fifteen minutes since I saw white stuff coming out of the monster’s gills.”

“Any sign she’s coming out of it?”

“How the hell should I know? Do I look like a vet?”

“Check her eyes.”

“Her eyes. Yeah.” Leaving the tube wedged between two lower teeth, Carlos swims forward to check on the Meg’s left eye.

The blue-gray pupil has rolled back in place—

—staring at him!

Carlos’s voice deserts him as his throat constricts in primal fear. His limbs refuse to move though his mind is screaming at them to do so.

Angel sees what appears in her blurred vision as a juvenile sea elephant. She continues to breathe water without exerting herself, the veil cloaking her senses slowly clearing, yet not quite enough to awaken her muscles.

The realization that he is still alive breaks Carlos’s momentary paralysis. He kicks his fins, propelling himself past the Megalodon’s open mouth to the steel door in seconds flat—

—his wake causing the saltwater hose to slip from out of Angel’s mouth.

Forgetting to remove his BCD vest and air tank, Carlos forces his way through the shoulder-width hole, wheezing breaths from his mask as he attempts to shout a warning to Ed Hendricks. “She’s . . . awake! Get out . . . she’s—”

“What did you say?” Hendricks looks up in time to see Carlos disappearing through a slime-covered hole in the door. His heart racing, the diver abandons his post and swims like mad for the barrier.

With the jet stream no longer delivering water into Angel’s mouth, the Megalodon’s gills stop fluttering. Seconds pass without a breath, triggering an internal alarm. The creature’s core temperature suddenly jumps, releasing a burst of adrenaline that causes the thick red muscles running the length of her back to spasm—

—tossing Jonas from his mount as he finishes tightening the antenna’s last bolt.

“She’s awake! Carlos, Ed, get the hell out of there!”

Jonas swims for the surface only to be swatted aside by the thirty-foot caudal fin.

The Megalodon propels itself forward, ramming a mouthful of seawater into her gills—

—just as Ed Hendricks reaches the door.

The diver can feel the gargantuan presence bearing down on him. In a state of panic, he tries to ram his shoulders and air tank through a steel hole that is far too small. He kicks and squirms, the slick algae allowing him to twist his way through to his waist—

—just as Angel’s snout bashes into the barrier, her front row of teeth clamping down upon the base of his air tank and through both his legs. The punctured gas cylinder explodes—

—propelling him through the hole and out the other side in a burst of air bubbles and blood.

Forty feet from the surface, Carlos’s eardrums register the disturbance. He turns, long enough to see his friend sinking toward the bottom in a cloud of blood. Instinct blotting out fear, he releases air from his BCD vest, and plunges after his friend’s body. He grabs Ed’s arm, still full of life, over-inflates his vest, and rockets to the surface.

Angel shakes her mammoth head, the collision with the steel barrier causing her numbed ampullae of Lorenzini to tingle. For several moments she hovers by the door, her nostrils still registering acidic scents from the anesthetic, unaware that the remains of Ed Hendricks’s severed legs are caught in her upper front teeth like a pair of human cigars.

Blood rises from the amputated appendages, inhaled by her nostrils like smoke. The scent revives the Meg. Banking slowly along the steel doors she turns, heading back toward the canal entrance—

—her lateral line detecting an intruder.

Mac cranks the speed boat in tight circles as he yells frantically into his face mask, “Jonas, where the hell are you? Jonas—”

“Forty feet beneath you! Stop moving the damn boat!”

“I have to move the boat! Drop your weight belt and get the hell up here. Your girl’s awake!”

Jonas releases his weight belt, kicking hard for the surface.

Angel rises directly beneath him like an ivory dirigible.

“Mac, she’s coming up right behind me! There’s no way I can get in the boat that quick!”

“Don’t! Grab the rope!” Mac tosses the water ski rope behind the boat. “Say when!”

Jonas kicks for the red and white wooden handle bobbing above his head along the surface . . . grabs it!

“Go!”

Mac jams the throttle down, the bow kicking out of the water as the 250-horsepower engine launches the speed boat ahead, nearly yanking Jonas’s arms out of their sockets as he’s dragged across the surface like a human torpedo.