Meg: Hell's Aquarium (8 page)

Angelica thrashes in the cargo net, thirty feet above the Meg Pen. Fran, now wearing a safety harness, climbs the steep steps built inside the right column of the crane, each powerful thrash of the Megalodon’s torso threatening to toss the native New Yorker into the aquarium. Taking no chances, she clips her harness onto one of the numerous eye-bolts fastened beneath the crane’s steel expanse beam.

Dr. Stelzer hands her the first reach pole. Leaning out, she stabs the syringe into Angelica’s flank just below the gill slits, injecting the elixir directly into the wounded creature’s blood stream. She passes the reach pole back to Dr. Stelzer, who exchanges the used syringe for a new one.

On the opposite side of the tank, the tethered
Jelly-fish
is raised out of the water by a winch and crane built into the back end of a truck.

Two more injections and Angelica calms down. Fran turns to Dr. Stelzer. “She’s good to go. I suggest we wait until the X-rays before we inject her again.”

David joins Dr. Stelzer and Mac. “What started all this? Were they fighting over food?”

“We’ll have to look at the videotape. But no, we weren’t feeding them. The sisters suddenly swarmed Angelica without any—”

Fran screams.

David, Mac, and Dr. Stelzer turn in time to see Belle leap out of the aquarium, her open mouth hyperextended a split second before her jaws slam shut around Angelica’s exposed abdomen! For several frozen seconds the 42,000-pound monster simply hangs vertically, suspended above the water by its teeth, while the semi-tranquilized Angelica spasms in the cargo net, blood gushing from her mortal wounds directly into Belle’s open mouth.

The knife-sharp serrated edges of the dark-backed Megalodon’s teeth rip through the thick hide and crush the organs of her prey before falling back into the aquarium’s illuminated azure waters—

—Angelica’s innards pouring from the ten-foot-wide gaping hole in her belly like an exploding piñata.

3.

Tanaka Oceanographic Institute
Monterey, California

Monday

David steps off the elevator, entering the third floor administrative wing of the Institute, when he runs into the office manager—a petite blue-eyed blonde in her early forties.

Patricia Mackreides greets David with a hug. “Thanks for looking out for Mac.”

“Not a problem. Guy’s been looking out for me since I was in diapers.”

The mention of diapers causes Trish to tear-up and blush.

“Hey? You okay?”

She beams a smile. “Don’t tell Mac.”

“Tell Mac what?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Holy shit!”

“Shh!”

“Is it Mac’s? Kidding . . . I’m just . . . oh, man, you have got to videotape the moment you tell him. Does anyone else know?”

“No. I just found out this morning.”

“Trish, this is so cool. When are you going to tell him?”

“Tonight.” She glances over at the conference room as the double doors are closed. “You’d better get inside before they start. And not a word about this to anyone.”

“I promise.” He gives her a gentle hug, then crosses the corridor and enters the chamber.

The room is packed with the Institute’s department heads and key staff, everyone seated around on immense mahogany table. Joining them are Thomas Cubit, senior partner with the law offices of Cubit and Cubit, and Kayla Cicala, the company’s publicist. David finds a seat along the perimeter of the room, bypassing the empty chair at the head of the conference table reserved for his mother.

Jonas taps his water glass with his wedding ring, signaling for quiet. “Let’s get started. Quick update: Terry’s with Dani. The doctor says she’ll be fine. She should be coming home within the next few days.”

Several staff members applaud.

“That, unfortunately, is the extent of the good news. The bad news, well, bad doesn’t begin to describe it. As you know, Jason Francis, one of our winners in the Feed Angel contest, died tragically during Saturday night’s performance. Kayla?”

Kayla Cicala holds up a press release. “We’re placing full-page ads in all the local papers, extending our condolences to the victim’s family. Terry has asked the Francises’s lawyer for permission to meet with the family. I’ve already fielded offers to discuss what happened in public with the four major network morning shows—”

“—which you’ll graciously decline.” Thomas Cubit, a forty-seven-year-old, Irish-Catholic attorney from Philadelphia, refers to notes on his legal pad. “No one is to address the media. No one is to make any statements unless I approve them first. The Francis family wasted no time in hiring a big legal firm out of San Francisco, and they don’t need any more bullets in their chambers. In addition to the Taylors, they’ll want depositions from Mac, Ted Badaut, Dr. Stelzer, and . . . who is Andrew Murch?”

“He was the second contest winner,” Jonas answers, “the one who survived. Tom, how liable are we?”

“We have a signed, binding waiver but they have fifteen thousand witnesses to make a case of severe negligence. The game plan at this juncture is for everyone to stay away from the media while we settle out of court as quickly as possible. At the same time, you need to shut things down until you can make the changes necessary to prevent this type of accident from happening again.”

“That’s right. Accident . . . it was an accident, not negligence.” Ted Badaut, the French-Portuguese Meg handler is racked with emotion and more than a little defensive. “Jonas, I have always fed Angel the same way, every day, for the last four years. This is not my fault, nothing like this has ever happened.”

“Ted, calm down—”

“What am I supposed to say to these lawyers? They will try to blame me for this boy’s death.”

“No one’s accusing you. Mr. Cubit and his staff will prepare you for the deposition and be with you the entire time. We’re a family. We stick together.”

“And what are we supposed to say to the press when they ask us about Angelica?” Virgil Carmen, the Institute’s assistant director of husbandry, stands up at the back of the room to be heard. “Do we tell them the Meg Pen is too small for five maturing adolescents? That we’ve been warning you for months now that the two sisters were getting testy?”

Jonas feels the weight of the room suddenly squeezing in on him. “What would you have us do, Virgil? Sell one of the pups to an aquarium that’s even smaller than the Meg Pen? Or maybe we should release Angelica into the lagoon like some of those wacko bloggers suggested, allowing Angel to play a quick game of cat and mouse for the cameras? I suppose we could always allow the PETA radicals to have their way and release the three runts into the Monterey Bay Sanctuary. That might work. Or better yet, why not free the sisters? That would spice things up real good.”

Jonas glances at his son. “Your warnings were on the money. No one ever disagreed with you. We just didn’t have a feasible option on the table . . . and we still don’t, although I’m working on one as we speak. For now, if someone in the media asks, you tell them to direct their barbs at me. Got it?”

Virgil nods, his anger subsiding.

Tom Cubit clears his throat. “With all due respect to the dead fish, the more immediate concern is to the family of the deceased human and the viewing public that we hope will continue to keep this institute in business.”

“No worries there,” says Christopher Eckardt, the aquarium’s director of sales and marketing. “Since the Saturday show, our phones have been ringing off the hook. The website’s jammed, too. Everyone wants tickets. You could raise prices sixty percent and you’d still have lines just to get into the nose-bleed section . . . sorry, no pun intended.”

“Safety’s the main concern,” Jonas says. “Do we build a plexiglass retaining wall around the main tank? Do we close the lower bowl? How do we prevent Angel from going berserk again?”

“It was the drums.”

All eyes turn to David, who is leaning back in his chair against the far wall. “The underwater acoustics irritated her. She didn’t enter the lagoon to feed; she came in to show you who’s boss.”

Side discussions break out, the staff’s reaction mixed.

Jonas taps his glass again for quiet. “David, Angel was conditioned to respond to those acoustics. I trained her myself. If we can’t regulate her feeding times, she’ll remain in the canal underwater and we’ll have no show.”

“Then use a different stimulus. Re-train her.”

Teddy Badault shakes his head emphatically. “She’s too set in her ways. She is too old to learn anything new.”

“That’s ridiculous,” David retorts. “Two summers ago I worked with a guy in Gainesville who specializes in shark behavior. He told me the Navy recruited him to train sharks as stealth spies in order to follow enemy vessels. Angel’s smarter than any of the sharks he worked with, and just as capable.”

“I agree.” Jonas nods. “Call him. He’s hired.”

“We don’t need him. He taught me everything I need to know. I can set up a light grid along the canal doors and—”

“No. Let the experts handle this.”

“He’s never worked with Angel or her pups. I have!”

“Dropping a side of beef into a tank is far different than what your friend will be doing.”

“What do you think I’ve been doing at the University of Florida? Grooming seals? I’m a marine biologist—”

“Not yet, you’re not!”

The conference room quiets, the staff uncomfortable, caught in the middle of this sudden battle of wills.

Jonas stares down his son. “Don’t fight me on this, David. I still call the shots around here. Make the call.”

“Fine.” David stands to leave. “You know something? Maybe Ted’s right. Maybe Angel is too old and set in her ways to learn something new. But she’s not the only one.”

The angry twenty-year-old stalks out of the conference room—

—passing Sadia Kleffner, Jonas’s long-time assistant. “Jonas, sorry to interrupt, but your guests have arrived. Mac took them downstairs to the main gallery.”

The Meg Pen’s massive main gallery features an underwater viewing window that reaches three stories high and runs the entire width of the aquarium. Visitors can stroll the promenade, or just sit back and relax in one of two thousand cushioned chairs that make up row after row of theater-style seating surrounding the subterranean arena housing Angel’s voracious offspring.

There are ten members of the Dubai entourage: four businessmen wearing the traditional, ankle-length white
dishdasha
and matching
gutra
head cloth; a fifth in a gray suit and tie that matches his neatly-trimmed beard; four armed security guards in black suits; and a videographer equipped with an expensive high-definition camera and tripod. The men stand before the viewing window of the 60-million-gallon tank, pointing and rattling off exclamations in Arabic as Belle and Lizzy swim past the four-foot-thick acrylic glass, each sister the size of a double-decker bus.

Mac intercepts Jonas, pulling him aside. “What do you know about Dubai?”

“It’s part of the United Arab Emirates, and it has lots of oil. What else should I know?”

“Some basics wouldn’t hurt.”

“Okay, give me the basics.”

“First, unlike the rest of the greedy wackos in the Middle East, the UAE’s royals actually invest oil profits back into their country’s infrastructure. Dubai’s the largest emirate—a modern metropolis that is spending billions to create a thriving entertainment industry.”

“Mac, I already know those basics. Tell me who the players are.”

“See the short Arab in the white pajamas, standing next to the guy in the suit?”

Jonas glances over Mac’s shoulder at the stout man with the thick, black goatee and uni-brow, his eyes cold and black, like a shark’s. “The guy with the big Joe Torre nose?”

“Bingo. His name’s Fiesal bin Rashidi. He’s first cousin to the crown prince. Big-time billionaire, the prince. Word is bin Rashidi’s behind this whole trip. The taller guy is Abdullah something-or-other. He’s the CEO of Emaar Properties, the construction firm that partnered with the Dubai government to build the world’s tallest tower, the most expensive hotel, the largest marina—”

“He’s the Donald Trump of Dubai. Got it.”