White Shark (27 page)

"I guess they've had enough,"
Tall Man said as he watched the sea lions struggle onto the swimstep.
 
They were barking, shoving one another,
desperate to get aboard.

"No," Amanda said, alarmed.
 
"Something's frightened them.
 
Something's out there."

"Like what?"
 
Tall Man looked overboard.
 
He could barely see the cage, for as it had
sunk it had drifted into the shade of the boat.
 
Holding the rope, he walked from one side of the boat to the other,
then
returned to the stern.
 
"Nothing," he said.
 
"I can't see anything out there."

"It's there, though," Amanda said.
 
"Something...
somewhere."

"Then whatever it is has gotta be
deep.
 
Either that, or... shit!"

"What?

"Under the
boat."
 
He pulled on the rope.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

The cage shuddered as the rope tugged
it.
 
Chase reached to turn the air
valves.

A shadow passed overhead, so huge that it
cast the entire cage in darkness.
 
Chase
started, and looked up.
 
A flash of
sunlight blinded him for a moment, disorienting him; by the time his eyes had
adjusted, he was unsure of the direction the shadow had been traveling.
 
He turned.

Ten feet away, emerging from the shade of
the boat, swimming at the cage with a mighty gracefulness that Chase had once
admired but now found horrid, was the great white shark.
 
It did not slow or hesitate.
 
Its eyes rolled backward in their sockets;
its mouth opened; its gums rotated forward; serrated white triangles stood
erect.
 
It bit down on the cage.

Reflexively, Chase ducked and flung
himself on top of Max.
 
The boy turned
his head, his eyes widened in shock.

There was the sound of teeth scraping on
metal, then a crunching of metal collapsing, then a sudden his of air and an
explosion of bubbles.

The cage yawed crazily, swinging under the
boat and slamming against the keel, and Chase knew instantly what had
happened.
 
The shark had destroyed one of
the flotation tanks.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

"Goddamn you!
"
Tall Man shouted.
 
The sinews in
his arms and shoulders stood out like wires as he strained at the rope.
 
He had seen the shark only a second before it
had struck, charging out from beneath the boat like a gray torpedo.

Amanda reached over, grabbed the rope and
helped him pull.
 
"I thought sharks
never—"

"Yeah," Tall Man said.
 
"But guess what:
 
this one did."

"Why?"

"Christ knows."

They could hear the cage thumping against
the keel, could feel the impact through their feet.

"Can you put the rope on the winch?
"
Amanda asked.

"I don't dare.
 
The bastard weighs better’n a ton; the weight
could tear the rope away from the cage."

"What do we
do?
 
We have to—"

"If he comes out from under the boat,
I'll shoot the son of a bitch," Tall Man said.
 
"Till then, let's just pray he goes
away."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Chase and Max huddled in the far corner of
the cage, holding each other, holding the bars, as the cage swung wildly
beneath the boat.

The shark had locked its jaws, and it
twisted and thrashed its massive body as if trying to beat the cage to pieces.

Chase saw bubbles flowing from Max's
regulator in a continuous stream.
 
The
boy was hyperventilating.
 
He made Max
look at him, pointed to his own regulator, then to Max's, and gestured for Max
to slow his breathing.
 
Terrified, Max
nodded.

Suddenly the shark released the cage, and
the cage swung downward, hanging askew.
 
Chase saw the sharks' wide white belly slipping slowly before his eyes
as the animal let itself fall.
 
There
were five parallel slash marks in the flesh forward of the genital slit.

*
         
*
         
*
         
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*

"Pull!
"
Tall
Man said.
 
He and Amanda brought the rope
in hand-over-hand.
 
Looking overboard,
they could see the top of the cage as it cleared the bottom of the boat.
 
The shark was a gray form, hovering nearly
motionless beneath the cage.
 
Tall Man
dropped down onto the swimstep and held the rope out over the stern.
 
"Another five feet and we've got—"

"No!
"
Amanda
screamed, pointing.

There was a flash of a scythelike tail, a
rush of water, and the conical head of the shark broke the surface.
 
The mouth barely opened; it struck the
swimstep, skidded, and fastened on the rope.
 
With a single shake of its head, the shark tore the rope from Tall Man's
hand and sheared it from the cage.
 
Tall
Man fell backward into the stern.

The shark swam away; the cage began to
fall.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Chase lurched to his feet, grabbed the air
valve on the intact flotation tank and twisted it all the way on.
 
There was a hiss of air, and the cage's
descent slowed.
 
But it was still
falling.

Chase inflated his buoyancy vest and
Max's, hoping that removing their weight and adding buoyancy would stop the
cage, make it neutral, until Tall Man could lower a rope to them.

The cage continued to fall.
 
Chase looked at
the
 
depth
gauge on the tank:
 
the needle passed thirty feet, then
thirty-five, forty...

He looked quickly in every direction.
 
The shark had vanished.

Fifty feet...

Chase knew he had no
choice,
they could not ride the cage to the bottom.
 
They would both run out of air, probably before they reached the bottom,
certainly before Tall Man could reach them.

He pulled Max to his feet and pushed open
the hatch.
 
He put his hands on Max's
shoulders and looked into the boy's eyes, willing him to recall the lessons he
had learned, praying that the boy had listened.
 
He took his mouthpiece out and shouted the word, "Remember!"

Max understood.

Sixty feet...

Chase propelled Max up through the hatch
and followed immediately.
 
He took the
boy's hand, and faced him so he could monitor Max's breathing.

They were rising too fast, faster than
their own bubbles; the air in their vests was expanding, seeking the surface,
dragging them upward.
 
They
had
to slow down; if they kept rising at
this pace, they were risking a ruptured lung or an embolism or the bends.

Chase vented the vests, and they
slowed.
 
Now their bubbles were preceding
them.
 
Good.

Chase looked at his depth gauge:
 
forty feet... thirty-five
...
  
He didn't look
down,
he kept his eyes on Max's face.
 
He
didn’t see the shark rising beneath them.

Twenty feet... fifteen...

Suddenly there was a splash above them,
and
a roil
of water, and Tall Man swam down at them,
carrying a speargun.

Now Chase did look down, and he saw,
rising like a missile through the gloom, the yawning mouth and prolapsed jaw of
the great white shark.

Tall Man pulled the trigger.
 
There was a puff of bubbles from the
carbon-dioxide propellant, and the spear shot from the gun.
 
It struck the shark in the roof of the mouth,
and stuck.
 
The shark hesitated, shaking
its head to rid itself of the annoyance.
 
It bit down, bending the spear, crushing it.

Chase broke through the surface, pulled
Max after him and shoved him onto the swimstep.
 
Amanda grabbed Max and hauled him into the boat as Chase swung his legs
up, rolled onto the swimstep and reached down for Tall Man's hand.

But Tall Man stayed just beneath the
surface, watching.
 
At last, he kicked
upward and, in a single motion, flung himself onto the swimstep.

Chase shrugged himself out of his harness,
dropped his tank on the deck and crawled forward to Max, who lay on his side as
Amanda helped him out of his tank.
 
"Are you okay?
"
Chase asked.

Max's eyes were closed.
 
He nodded, managed a faint smile and said,
"Jeez..."

"You did great... you followed the
rules... you didn't panic.
 
You did
great!
"
 
Chase felt guilty and stupid and relieved and
proud; he wanted to express all those feelings, but he didn't know how, so he
simply took one of Max's hands in his, rubbed it and said, "What a hell of
an initiation to open-water diving."
 
He saw Tall Man walking forward, toward the cabin, and said, "Hey,
Tall... thanks.
 
I wasn't looking, I
didn't see it coming."

"I know," Tall Man said.
 
"I thought I better give the bastard
something else to chew on other than you.
 
That was our shark, y’know.
 
She's
still got the tag in her."

"I've never
seen
behavior like that, never
heard
of it.
 
She was berserk!
 
It's weird, like the blue sharks, only
opposite:
 
the white was nuts with
aggression instead of fear."
 
Chase
paused.
 
"But whatever's causing
this behavior, it's the same creature:
 
there were five slashed were five slashes on that white shark's
belly."

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

They raised the anchor, turned to the
west, heading for home.
 
Chase stood at
the wheel on the flying bridge; Max lay on a towel behind him, warming himself
in the high afternoon sun.
 
Amanda was
feeding the sea lions.
 
When she had
settled them in the stern, she climbed the ladder to the bridge.

The low silhouette of
Osprey
Island
was just coming into view when Tall Man appeared at the foot of the ladder and
said to Amanda, "Your pilot's on the radio; he's got whales."

"How far
away?"

"Not far, couple miles to the
east."

Amanda hesitated.
 
She looked at her watch, at the sea lions,
then at Chase.

Chase said to Max, "How do you
feel?"

"Fine," Max replied.
 
"I'm fine.
 
Let's go; I've never seen whales."

Chase turned to Amanda.
 
"It's up to you," he said.
 
"Do you think the sea lions will
work?"

'Sure, till they're tired, then they'll
stop."

"They're not spooked?"

"No, I don't think so.
 
If they see the white shark, they'll get out
of the water, just like before.
 
Besides,
sharks usually stay away from pods of big, healthy whales."

"Uh-huh," Chase said.
 
He swung the wheel to the left and headed
east.
 
"I wasn't thinking only about
the white shark."