White Shark (26 page)

"I'm not," Chase said.
 
"I'm not worried about blue sharks,
either.
 
I just can't help wondering what
the hell else is out there."

"Forget it, Simon," said Tall
Man.
 
He took the rope tied to the cage
and pulled on it, drawing the cage up to the stern of the boat.
 
"Nothing's gonna mess with that
cage."

Chase said, "You're right."
 
He dropped down onto the swimstep, leaned to
the cage and opened the hatch in the top.
 
A blue shark nudged the cage,
then
whirled
away.

As Chase straightened up, put on his mask
and put in his mouthpiece, he heard Max call, "Dad..."

He looked up at the flying bridge.
 
The boy looked small and far away.

"Be careful," Max said.

Chase shot Max a thumbs-up sign, pulled
down his mask, held the plastic sandwich to his chest and stepped through the
hatch into the cold, dark water.

Amanda followed immediately.
 
When Tall Man saw that she was safely inside
the cage and had pulled the hatch closed, he let go of the tether; the cage
drifted back till the rope went taut.
 
He
made sure the knot of the cleat was secure, then tossed a few mackerel overboard
and resumed chumming.

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It took a moment for the bubbles to
dissipate and the water to clear.
 
Chase
glanced at Amanda, saw her adjusting her video camera and gazed out into the
surrounding blue.

A mackerel plopped into the water overhead
and sank in front of the cage, yawing like a leaf.
 
A sea lion swooped around the side of the
cage, snatched the fish in its teeth and hovered for a beat, as if posing for
Amanda's camera.
 
Then it bit down on the
mackerel, blood puffed out from the sides of its mouth and, chewing, it swam away.

Chase looked for the sharks.
 
He saw three, fifty or sixty feet away, at
the limit of his vision:
 
dark shapes
cruising unhurriedly back and forth.
 
It
won't take long, he thought, they're just being cautious; in a minute they'll
get used to us, and they'll come in to feed.

Three more mackerel fell before the cage,
one on each side, one in front.
 
A sea
lion grabbed one; the other two continued to fall.

Two of the three sharks swung around and
swam at the cage, their movements no longer slow and sinuous but quick and
jerky; now they were not cruising, they were hunting.

A mackerel was directly in front of Chase,
no more than three feet away.
 
Like a
fighter plane locked on to a target, one of the sharks closed in on the
mackerel.
 
Its mouth opened; it rolled on
one side; the nictating membrane that protected its eye slid downward...

Suddenly the shark halted; its body arched
.
It turned in a tight circle and fled into the gloom.
 
The mackerel continued to fall, untouched.

Chase looked at Amanda and spread his
hands:
 
what was
that
all about?
 
He knew that
while blue sharks rarely attacked human beings, they were not afraid of humans,
and yet is certainly seemed to Chase that the shark had suddenly panicked when
it had seen him and Amanda.
 
She shrugged
and shook her head.

Chase pushed the plastic sandwich out
through the camera port, squeezed it to force fish juices into the water and
waved it tantalizingly.

A sea lion approached and sniffed it, but
Amanda saw a shark rising from below.
 
It
had caught the scent, was seeking its source.
 
He held the plastic as far as possible from the cage, letting it dangle
from the rope.
 
The shark rose, and
turned, homing.

Come on, baby, Chase murmured in his mind,
come on.

The shark opened its mouth, showing rows
of small white triangles.
 
It was five
feet from the bait, then three...

Chase gripped the rope as tight as he
could,
knowing
he'd have to fight to keep the shark
from tearing the entire rig from him.
 
As
the shark rolled on its side, he could see its eye.

The shark froze, as if it had struck a
wall.
 
Its mouth closed, and with two
thrusts of its powerful tail it disappeared into the deep.

Chase turned to Amanda and gestured upward
with both thumbs.
 
He kicked off the
bottom of the cage, pushed the hatch open and hauled himself out of the water
till his elbows rested on the top of the cage.
 
He removed his mouthpiece and raised his mask.

"What's spooking them?
"
Tall Man asked.
 
He had seen it all from the surface.

"Damned if I know."

Amanda squeezed through the hatch and
joined Chase in the opening.

"I've never seen that in my
life," said Chase.
 
"Blue
sharks are not afraid of people."

"These sure are," Amanda
said.
 
"Did you see the scars on
that last one?"

"No, where?"

"All down one flank.
 
Not mating scars, either, I've seen mating
scars.
 
These weren't
random,
they were five big slashes, all pretty much parallel.
 
And fresh."

"Five?
"
Chase
said.
 
"You're sure?"

"Positive.
 
Why?"

"About a week ago, we saw a big
dolphin with five deep cuts on its tail."

"From what?"

"That's the question."
 
Chase looked up at Tall Man.
 
"What d'you
think
?"

"Give it one more shot," Tall
Man said.
 
He emptied a bucket of chum
into the water, and followed it with a dozen mackerel.
 
"If
that don't
bring ‘em around, nothing will."

They waited for a moment, letting the
blood and guts disperse in the water,
then
dropped
back into the cage.

Clouds of red billowed in the water;
bodies of fish floated down like debris.
 
Through the haze Chase saw two sharks, twenty or thirty feet away, but
by the time he had reached up and secured the hatch above them, they were
gone.
 
He checked his watch, then gripped
the bars and gazed out through the camera port.
 
After five minutes, the blood had
disappeared,
the fish had sunk to the bottom.
 
The
only life Chase saw was the sea lions, which passed by the cage in ones and
twos, playing.

He signaled for Amanda to go up.

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When they had boarded the boat and shucked
their tanks, Chase said to Amanda, "It doesn't make sense; something's
wrong.
 
It's almost as if they're passing
the word:
 
‘Stay away, humans are bad
news.’
 
But that can't be... unless
there's some electromagnetic anomaly in the water that they're all sensing at
once, and it's somehow connected to humans."

"You'd think my sea lions would pick
it up first," Amanda said.
 
"I
don't mean to insult your sharks, but my ladies are a little higher on the
chain of brains."

"Could be," Tall Man said,
"but your sea lions haven't been around here when the bad stuff's been
happening.
 
They haven't had a lesson to
learn yet."

Chase said, "Do you want me to call
them back, bring them aboard?"

"I can, if we're moving on,"
Amanda said.
 
"Otherwise, they'll
come back when they're ready."

"I thought we might try another spot,
just for the—"

"Dad...
"
Max
said from his perch on the flying bridge.
 
"Can I go into the cage?"

"You mean with a tank on?
 
I don't—"

"There're no sharks around."

"Yeah, but I don't think two hundred
feet of water with a five-mile chum slick running is exactly the time to
start—"

"Please
?...
 
Hey, I'd be in a cage.
 
With you."
 
Max smiled, teasing his father as he
pleaded.
 
"What're you worried
about... that we'll get struck by lightning?"

Chase looked to Tall Man for support, then
to Amanda, but neither would come to his rescue.
 
Parenting time, he thought; these decisions
always seem to come when you least expect them.
 
At last, he said, "Okay."

Max didn't have a wet suit so Amanda lent
him hers.
 
It was too big for him,
probably wouldn't keep him warm, but it would prevent him from cutting or
bruising himself in the cage.
 
Chase
rigged a tank for him and, when they were both dressed and ready, ran through
the diving drill with him.

"The
most
important thing," Chase said finally, "is not ever
to—"

"I know:
 
hold my breath.
 
But we won't be down too deep."

"We won't be deep at all, the cage'll
be right on the surface, but you'll still be four or five feet below the
surface.
 
You can get an embolism in two
feet."
 
Chase paused.
 
"Set?"

"Set."

"I'll go first; Tall'll tell you when
to come; Amanda'll give you a hand."
 
Chase glanced prayerfully at the sky,
then
stepped through the hatch into the cage.

A moment later, Max slipped through the
hatch, landing on his feet.
 
He cleared
his mask and purged his regulator.

Chase saw that the boy was slightly
underweighted — the buoyancy of the wet suit tended to lift him off the bottom
of the cage — so he gestured for Max to grip the bars.
 
Max nodded and obeyed, and together they
looked out at the empty sea.

They saw no sharks, no sea lions, nothing
at all.
 
Then Max dropped to his knees,
looked down, tugged at Chase's leg and pointed.
 
Far below them, barely visible, was a single small shark.
 
A sea lion swooped around it,
hassling
it.
 
Max
pressed his face to the bottom of the cage, trying to see
better
.

The animals were just beyond the range of
clear vision.
 
If only they'd come up,
Chase thought, even ten feet, Max could get a good look.
 
Then he remembered the flotation tanks, and
realized that if the animals wouldn't come up to him, he could take the cage
down closer to them.
 
He bent down and
checked the air gauge attached to Max's regulator:
 
two thousand pounds.
 
Plenty.
 
Then he reached up and opened the flood
valves on both flotation tanks.

The cage began to sink.
 
It jerked for a moment,
then
fell smoothly as Tall Man paid out slack from the rope on the boat.
 
When the depth gauge on one of the tanks told
Chase that the top of the cage was fifteen feet below the surface, he shut the
flood valves and opened the two other valves, squirting air into the tanks
until the cage achieved neutral buoyancy.

The shark and the sea lion were clearly
visible now, two dark bodies against a canvas of blue.
 
A few bubbles floated up as the sea lion let
air leak from its mouth.

Then, abruptly, the sea lion broke away from
the shark and shot upward.
 
At first,
Chase thought the animal had tired of the game, or needed to breathe, but there
was something about its movements, an urgency, that told him he was wrong.
 
The sea lion sped past the cage and rushed
toward the boat.
 
As
Chase's eyes followed it upward, he saw the other sea lions — two together, one
alone — swimming at the boat with the same frenzied speed.

For God's sake, Chase thought,
now
what?

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