Meg: Hell's Aquarium (37 page)

Monty collapses to his knees, sweat pouring down his face. “What just happened?”

David approaches the tank, pointing to the small octagon-shaped devices, each the size of a man’s fist, spaced at ten-foot intervals along the inside of the aquarium’s bay windows. “They’re impact sensors. Designed to keep the Dunk from shattering the glass.”

“The Dunk? You mean that prehistoric fish on display back at the hotel?”

“
Dunkleosteus
. King of the Devonian seas.”

“I thought those things went extinct?”

“They did . . . about 300 million years ago.”

“Three hundred fifty-five million years, to be exact.” The crown prince enters the viewing gallery, followed by Barbara Becker and two security guards, the bulges beneath their dark suits revealing automatic weapons. “Mr. Montgomery, when you were reviewing the aquarium’s schematics, didn’t you notice the array of security cameras hidden in every ceiling?”

“You know, I may have missed that. I speak Arabic; I don’t read it all that well.”

“I admire resourcefulness, but breaking and entering is still a punishable crime in my country. David, it’s good to see you again. What do you think of our first resident species?”

“Honestly, I’m blown away.”

“I’m glad you like it. What I enjoy most . . . is watching it hunt live prey. So? Which one of you would like to go for a swim?”

The two security guards step forward, causing beads of sweat to burst out across David’s flesh.

The crown prince smiles. “Just having some fun. Dr. Becker, if you would?”

Barbara Becker speaks into her radio. “Feed T-1.”

A few moments pass, allowing David’s pulse to settle. The
Dunkleosteus
lurks in the shadows, moving slowly along the bottom like a caged tiger—

—until something splashes down into the tank, directly above their heads.

The six-hundred-pound green sea turtle rights itself then splays itself against the bay window, the claws of its flipper-like legs scratching the acrylic surface as it paddles along the face of the tank in a panic.

The disturbance alerts the Dunk. Its back arches, its smallish pectoral fins going rigid, pointing downward as it swims in a tight figure-eight pattern.

Monty whispers to David, “So much for saving the turtles.”

“Shh.”

The Dunk rises away from the bottom and circles past the bay window, offering its human guests a close up view of its armored plating and gill slits. Conditioned by the electrical shock, it does not attack, using its approach to coax the turtle away from the window.

Fearful of the large predator, the turtle darts for a cluster of rocks looming in the shadows along the bottom.

The monster races in from behind its prey, snatching the turtle within its powerful jaws—

—
craaaaaack !

Even underwater and behind the thick acrylic glass, the sound is unmistakable. The
Dunkleosteus
’s bony blades crush the turtle’s thick shell like a nutcracker popping open a walnut. David watches, breathless, as the monster gulps down the dead turtle’s remains, its silver belly quivering with the effort.

Dr. Becker grips David’s forearm. “Watch.”

The agitated Dunk swims back and forth several times then suddenly convulses, regurgitating the sharp fragments of turtle shell in a burst of cloudy brown vomit.

Dr. Becker leans in to David. “Incredible, isn’t it?”

“It that all it eats? Turtles?”

“We’ve tried other fish, but it prefers slower moving prey. Dunks are not the swiftest of hunters, and their senses are lacking compared to sharks. But they’ll eat anything that moves and regurgitate the bones later. We attached a force-plate to the underside of one of the turtle’s shells a few days ago; the Dunk’s jaws registered 8,560 pounds per square inch of force. Pound for pound, that’s greater than those of your Megalodon.”

“Pretty impressive. Just remember, to Angel, the Dunk’s still a single serving meal.” David turns back to the crown prince. “The Mariana Trench?”

“No. The Dunk was lured up from the depths at a specific location in the Philippine Sea. While I cannot go into details at this time, suffice it to say there are other sea monsters lurking down there as well—exotic creatures the likes of which man has never seen. Join us, David. Help us capture these amazing animals and I’ll make you rich beyond your wildest dreams.”

“You have your pilots, you don’t need me.”

“Our pilots are good, but they’ve had a few . . . challenges.”

The
Dunkleosteus
passes slowly before the glass, its lidless nocturnal eyeball cold and soulless, its mouth revealing shards of brown turtle meat caught between its hellish incisors.

David closes his eyes, trying to imagine what it would be like piloting one of the Manta Rays in an enclosed alien sea, surrounded by blackness, squeezed beneath sixteen thousand pounds per square inch of water pressure as he uses his sub to lure history’s most frightening creations out of their abyssal purgatory and into a net.

“My father was right. It’s a suicide mission.”

“Ms. Szeifert would disagree. She’s in the Philippine Sea, hunting these creatures even as we speak. I hear she misses you terribly, but is doing her best to persevere. You have good taste; that one is a pearl of great price, something to be treasured. If she’d have me, I’d make her one of my wives.”

David’s blood pressure soars, every muscle in his body trembling, saturated with adrenaline. “Are you baiting me?”

“I’m offering you a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Ms. Szeifert seized the moment. When will you?”

“Alright, Your Highness. I’ll stock your aquarium. But you and your goons leave Kaylie alone. Is that clear? From now on, she works strictly with me.”

The crown prince smiles. “As you wish. I’ve taken the liberty of packing your belongings. My private jet leaves within the hour.”

“What about Monty?”

“Mr. Montgomery may accompany you as a deckhand. If he wishes to join you, he must pack his own things. And if he desires to remain on board the ship, he’ll learn to clean up his mess, or he’ll find himself sleeping in the fish chute.”

23.

Tanaka Oceanographic Institute
Monterey, California

The two juvenile Megalodons circle their rectangular habitat in tandem—Lizzy in the dominant top position, the darker Bela below, her head just behind her sibling’s pelvic girdle so that the trough created by her sister’s moving mass tows her around the tank effortlessly.

Peter Carlisle, the Institute’s twenty-six-year-old director of education, watches the two forty-six-foot hunters circle the tank from behind a concrete pillar in the Meg Pen gallery. Obsessed with sharks from the moment he was traumatized by the movie
Jaws
at the age of four, Peter has made a career of studying them. After completing his bachelor’s degree in marine biology, he went on to earn his master’s degree at nearby Moss Landing Marine labs while completing an exhaustive research project tracking Leopard Sharks in the Elkhorn Slough, one of the largest tracks of tidal salt marsh in California.

For the Berkeley grad student, his summer job at the Tanaka Institute serves as a summer job and part of his research. Peter’s dissertation deals with the trophic interactions of pelagic sharks like the great white—specifically, how the predators interact with other species in their respective food webs and chains.

Observing Belle and Lizzy has been an education unto itself. By virtue of cooperative behavior, the two sisters have eliminated the other three siblings within their food web, as well as any outside intruders entering their habitat.

As noted in Peter’s dissertation, the juvenile’s bizarre behavior is continuing to evolve into new forms of dominance—this time extending outside of their tank. Over the last several weeks, the sisters have been increasingly engaging in a behavior known as spy-hopping, the act of keeping their heads vertically above the surface to observe activity outside of their liquid domain. Four days ago, Lizzy had put the fear of God into several maintenance men working on the outer deck when they turned to discover the twenty-one-ton albino staring at them from the edge of the Meg Pen pool. From that moment on, if a staff member ventured too close to the tank’s guardrail, the two Megalodons would work themselves into a frenzy, splashing the intruder with great swaths of their tails. After witnessing the behavior, Dr. Stelzer had instituted a new rule: No one was allowed within twenty feet of the aquarium’s surface area.

An extension of that rule now applied to the gallery crowd. The heavily layered acrylic bay window was two-way, allowing the Megs to observe the thousands of visitors peering at them on a daily basis. The maturing juveniles were clearly growing agitated by the presence of the humans, leading Dr. Stelzer to stretch police tape from one end of the gallery to the other, preventing guests from coming within fifteen feet of the towering acrylic glass. As an added precaution, the lights in the gallery were extinguished, the rows of seats kept in the shadows.

Peter checks his watch as the gallery’s ushers open the corridor doors for the next show. “Good evening, folks, welcome to the Meg Pen viewing gallery. Please fill in every seat as the show is sold out. No one is permitted near the bay windows or beyond the police tape, and flash photography is strictly forbidden.”

Fifteen-year-old Connor Booth files in with his youth group buddies, his heart pounding in his throat. This is the teen’s fourth trip to the Meg Pen. His first visit eight months ago was so frightening that he had decided to give up surfing altogether.

It is the presence of the police tape that has Connor nervous, the barrier adding an additional risk to the wager he has made with his friends. Turning to his right he sees Dave Lounsbury take his place only three seats away, the youth director’s attention momentarily occupied with his four-year-old son.

“So? You going to do it?” Chessa Manion, the “decided” red-head with the big green eyes and alluring smile, nudges him from the seat to his left.

“Can’t. Lounsbury’s too close.”

“Switch seats with me. Hurry up!” She climbs over him, allowing him to slide into her chair. “Let me know when you’re ready and I’ll block his view.”

Connor’s rival, Ryan Wrightsman, smacks the back of his head from his seat one row back. “No balls.”

“Ignore him.” Chessa rests one hand on his knee, using the other to ready her cell phone camera. “All you need is one good shot.”

“I can’t do it when they pass the window. If I do it so close I’m busted. I have to do it on the approach.”

“As long as I get it on my camera phone, you win.”

Connor removes his key chain and a small cylinder—a diode-pumped solid-state green laser pointer. He tests the pointer on the floor as the two truck-size behemoths pass by the three-story window before him, eliciting
oohs
and
aahs
from the crowd.

Peter Carlisle begins his presentation, the gallery’s speakers positioned along the back wall, away from the tank. “Born in captivity with three smaller siblings, Belle and Lizzy weighed twenty-seven hundred pounds at birth, making them larger as newborns than ninety percent of the world’s adult great white sharks. The sisters are now five years old and still considered juveniles. They won’t reach adulthood for another four to six years, at which point they’ll be as long as their seventy-four-foot mother, Angel, though nowhere near as heavy.”

Connor watches the two Megs disappear into the far end of the tank. He has memorized their swimming pattern, knows exactly when and where the two predators will cross the aquarium again before circling into view. Readying the laser pen, he nudges Chessa. The girl leans forward, concealing the device from their youth leader, her own heart beating rapidly—

—as first Lizzy, then Belle, appear in the distance, zagging across the center of the tank along the bottom, ninety feet behind the glass.

Connor activates the pointer, shooting a pencil-thin, lime-green 300 mW laser beam through the bay window and into the aquarium’s depths—

—the light striking Belle harmlessly by her left nostril, the Meg oblivious—

—until she continues swimming through the infrared beam and the bright laser pierces her sensitive left eye, damaging her retina while igniting every predatory reflex in the animal’s nervous system.

His back to the tank, it is not the laser that alerts Peter Carlisle but the crowd’s sudden reaction. Turning, he sees Belle race away from her sibling, gathering speed as she alters her course—

—charging the bay window!

“Oh, Jesus—”

The crowd screams, most of the patrons frozen on their feet as the enraged 42,000-pound goliath rams the glass with the impact of a sledgehammer meeting a bullet-proof windshield. The force of the blow shatters the first three layers of acrylic and lifts the 150-ton bay window from its frame as the concussion wave spreads outward in every direction.

The resounding wallop crushes the cartilage in the Megalodon’s snout, the thundering sound wave rumbling through the facility like a magnitude 6.0 earthquake.

“Easy! Stay calm! Exit in an orderly manner! You, stop pushing! Security, grab that guy!”

Peter Carlisle turns his back on the chaos and places his hand against the aquarium’s damaged window, feeling its dying reverberations through his skin. The impact zone is a twelve foot crater of shattered acrylic, radiating outward into a network of tributaries that create a latticework of cracks across the entire gallery window.

A five-inch lower tooth remains embedded in the glass, its point buried an inch deep, a finger-like piece of pink gum flapping from its severed root.

The window is damaged beyond repair, yet still intact. All that separates the lower level of the Tanaka Institute from being invaded by sixty million gallons of seawater is a scant four-inch-thin, circular section of acrylic.

The last of the panicked crowd pushes its way out of the exits, leaving Peter and two security guards alone in the gallery. “Seal all doors. The gallery is officially closed . . . forever.”