Meg: Hell's Aquarium (28 page)

Becker signals to an assistant, who activates the motorized cart. The device starts up, retracting cable as it drags the ten-thousand-pound juvenile Meg along its circular route at two knots.

One of the institute’s scientists, an intimidating man with a braided goatee, approaches David. “Steve Ake-hurst. We worked together a few years back.”

“I remember. What happened?”

“Bad luck is what happened. Belle and Lizzy forced us to transport the runts before they became acclimated to swimming in tight quarters. Six hours into the ride Mary Kate’s vitals bottomed out, Ashley’s an hour later. We shot ‘em up with enough adrenaline to jump-start a truck, but their swimming remained erratic. At one point I had to climb inside the MLST with Ashley and jam a water jet into her mouth just to keep her breathing.”

Barbara Becker shouts into her walkie-talkie, “Is she responding?”

“Gills are moving, but not on their own. Vitals haven’t changed. Pulse still hovering around twenty beats a minute. No movement from her caudal fin. She’s dying.”

“Increase the speed to five knots.” Dr. Becker turns to David and Dr. Akehurst. “If you two have any bright ideas, now would be the time to share them.”

“We can’t give her any more meds or she’ll O.D.,” Akehurst says. “Only thing you can do is keep water circulating through her gills and hope she comes out of it.”

“Mr. Taylor?”

“Shock her system.”

“How?”

“Defibrillators. As many as you can get. We put her in the ER pool, then flip her over on her back, inducing sleep. Then we shock the shit out of her until the arrhythmia’s terminated and her body reestablishes its natural pacemaker.”

“Akehurst?”

“It’s never been done, but with two of them in shock its worth a try, at least on one of them.”

Dr. Becker takes out her cell phone. “This is Becker. Contact the medical center. I need as many defibrillators as they have loaded into an ambulance, along with a tech who knows what the hell he’s doing. Bring them to T-2’s upper deck ASAP!”

The listless, five-ton albino shark is dragged into the shallow medical pool located at the far end of the aquarium. Six scuba divers emerge from the tank with her, quickly detaching the harness cables, then re-hooking the left cables to the right side of the harness.

“Go!”

The cable retracts, the harness twisting, flipping the juvenile predator onto her back with a walloping splash. She sinks, belly up, to the bottom of the twelve-foot pool as divers and medical staff set into motion around her like a pit crew.

The medical pool is drained so that Ashley’s belly remains above the waterline.

A padded rubber hose is placed carefully into the Meg’s open mouth, sending a stream of foamy salt water gushing into her orifice and out her gill slits, allowing her to breathe.

Six pairs of defibrillator paddles are laid in place along the creature’s chest cavity just above the pectoral fins and weighted down by dive belts. Wires from the paddles stretch across the deck to emergency carts stacked with the defibrillator power packs.

Miguel Maximiliano Franco, a cardiologist from Argentina, finishes charging the devices. “This has to be done simultaneously. I need four more hands.”

Dr. Becker turns to David. “You and Dr. Akehurst, give Dr. Franco a hand. Michael, I want you monitoring the Meg’s vitals. Everyone else, clear the pool. Make sure no one’s standing in water.”

The divers exit the ER pool, retreating to a dry landing.

Dr. Franco assigns David and Dr. Akehurst two defibrillator power switches, taking the last two himself. “Alright, gentlemen, I’m going to say: ‘One, two, three.’ On ‘three’ we flip the switch. Everyone clear?”

“Flip it on three. Got it.”

“Divers clear. Personnel clear.” The Medical tech looks at Dr. Becker, who nods. “Here we go. One . . . two . . . three!”

Waves of electricity jolt the ten-thousand-pound creature, sending ripples down its stark white abdomen, causing its pectoral fins and tail to jump as the paddles leapfrog off its chest.

“Got a beat . . . shit. Lost it! Hit her again on my count. One . . . two . . . three.”

The Megalodon spasms, her tail curling up reflexively.

“Got a beat . . . pulse is stronger, but it’s still fading to 123 . . . 117 . . . 113. We’ve got to roll her back over.”

“Flood the medical pool!” Dr. Becker orders.

The pumps kick in, raising the water level, the Megalodon with it. Divers jump back into the pool, positioning themselves along the deck-side of the unconscious predator, close to her left pectoral fin. As the harness cables snap to attention, the men push, their combined efforts succeeding in rolling the twenty-five-foot shark right-side up.

Ashley greets her rescuers with a slap of her caudal fin.

“Ninety-three . . . ninety-four . . . pulse holding steady.” Michael Eason sits on the edge of the deck close to the Meg’s gray-blue eye. “Her eye just rolled forward; I think she’s coming out of it!”

David high-five’s Dr. Akehurst then turns to the ER pool, his smile instantly fading. “Look out!”

Her central nervous system coursing with adrenaline, Ashley lurches her enormous head sideways, her telltale snout rising in a primordial bite reflex—

—snatching the nearest prey—Michael Eason—who is frozen like a deer in headlights, the scream caught in his throat as the Meg’s teeth sink deeper into his chest cavity, puncturing his lungs. His ribcage splits into bone fragments, his spinal column pulverized.

A fountain of blood spouts out of the dead man’s mouth—

—scattering the divers as they scramble out of the medical pool for safety.

Still gripping her squirming prey in her mouth, Ashley whips her tail, sending great arching swashes of water in every direction, the action propelling her girth over the edge of the shallow med pool and into the main aquarium.

The juvenile hunter circles underwater, becoming acquainted with the confines of her new home, oblivious to the shrieks and catcalls of her human audience. Every pass or two she shakes the bleeding corpse in her jaws like a dog shakes an old towel. Finally, she bites down through the yielding flesh and swallows Michael Eason’s torso, the arms and legs falling away.

Barbara Becker collapses to her knees on the wet deck tiles, her chest convulsing in sobs. Her staff—in shock themselves—leave her alone, until one brave soul approaches with a walkie-talkie.

“Dr. Becker, are you there? Dr. Becker, it’s Dr. Jivani in T-10.”

She takes the communication device, fighting to regain her composure. “Go ahead, Karim.”

“I’m sorry, Dr. Becker. We tried everything. The Megalodon pup . . . it’s dead.”

18.

Tanaka Oceanographic Institute
Monterey, California

The morning is overcast and gray, the air a chilly fifty-six degrees. Virgil Carmen stands just inside the open cabin in the stern of the forty-two-foot dive boat, trying not to appear nervous to the two men in wetsuits who are checking their scuba equipment on the tank racks.

Fran Rizzuto is with the boat captain in the flybridge, her walkie-talkie positioned on her jacket close to her right shoulder, her cell phone in her left breast pocket. The boat is moving south along the coast at fifteen knots, the empty arena on the eastern horizon, the rectangular outline of barbed wire that marks the canal just coming into view.

“Easy, Captain, nice and easy. Let’s not agitate her any more than we have to.”

The captain pulls back on the twin throttles, dropping his speed to three knots as he approaches the canal.

Virgil covers his nose as plumes of blue exhaust kick up from the twin 385-horsepower Cat engines. Swells lift and drop the boat, pushing them ever closer to the barbed wire coil barrier less than ninety feet away.

The captain reverses his engines, backing them toward the gated underwater entrance.

Beyond the barbed wire, a resounding
slap
echoes across the surface—a warning from the agitated predator’s caudal fin.

Virgil’s heart races. Sweat pours down both sides of his face.

Sixty feet . . . fifty. Jesus, that’s enough!

“Weigh anchor.” Fran’s voice startles him. He watches as the anchor line feeds out over the side, securing their position just outside the submerged steel doors.

The engines are silenced. Waves lap at the swaying fiberglass hull.

A deep
boom,
like distant thunder, rattles his bones.

The two divers look at one another. Ed Hendricks smiles nervously at his companion, Carlos Salinas. “She’s just letting us know we’re uninvited guests.”

“I hope she doesn’t like Mexican food.”

Fran climbs down from the flybridge. “You boys ready? Let’s check your communicators.”

The two men secure their full-face dive masks to their heads. “Testing. Can you read us?”

Fran adjusts the volume on the walkie-talkie. “Loud and clear. Virgil, start the pump.”

Bolted to the floor of the dive cabin is a hydraulic pump with an eight-inch intake hose and matching outflow, all connected to a seventy-five-pound slurry feed bucket. Virgil slips a gas mask over his face as  he empties a fifty-pound bag of Finquel MS-222 into the bucket. He adds water to the white powdery anesthetic, mixes the elixir with an oar, then starts the machine.

The two divers secure their air tanks and buoyancy control vests, adjust their weight belts, then carry their fins down to the swim platform. Sitting on the edge, they slip their feet into their fins, the rolling Pacific rocking them from side to side.

Fran unwinds slack from the rubber outflow hose and walks it out to the divers. With a thumbs-up, the two men ease themselves into the water and submerge, dragging the length of hose with them.

Ed Hendricks, big and muscular, sucks in shallow breaths as he kicks toward the steel barrier looming thirty feet ahead. Married, with a teenage daughter getting ready to graduate from high school, Hendricks is an experienced diver who has open dived with great whites off the coast of South Africa. He has never feared the water
. . .
until now.

The two divers level out at sixty feet then slowly begin swimming to the barrier, their hearts racing faster as the doors loom into view. Twenty feet away, Hendricks can see through the array of pores ventilating the face of the algae-covered steel, the Pacific blue peeking through—

—suddenly brightening to an ivory white.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!” Carlos’s voice rattles in his ears as Angel rises into view from behind the massive barrier, her presence causing both divers to hover in their tracks.

“Ed . . . I can’t do this!”

“Stay calm.”

“I can’t!”

“Carlos, she can feel your pulse racing. She can sense everything. Slow and easy movements. Pass me the hose, I’ll do the dirty work. Frannie, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Ed.”

“Start the anesthetic.”

A twenty-second delay, then the hose jumps to life, becoming rigid as a milky-white substance pours out from its open end.

Securing the hose beneath his right armpit, gripping it tightly with both hands, Ed swims to the door, aiming for a line of holes close to Angel’s mouth.

Whump!

The resounding wallop seems to penetrate his bones. Hendricks kicks harder, his muscles like lead as he reaches the door, its surface slick with seaweed. Each vent hole varies in size, from basketball-size pores to the occasional oval hole, large enough for a man’s shoulders to squeeze through.

Avoiding the larger holes, he peeks through a smaller orifice—

—as a white blur bashes against the steel facing to his left, an SUV-size snout momentarily widening the six-inch gap between the two sealed doors.

The brain-rattling impact nearly sends Hendricks into shock. In a state of panic, he releases the hose and swims away—

—colliding with Carlos. “Easy, amigo.”

“D—Damn, she’s big.”

Carlos pulls up slack on the hose until he retrieves its gushing end. “We’ll do this together, okay?”

“Okay.”

They swim the hose back to the door, shoving the free end into one of the holes.

Angel presses her snout against the enclosure, the seventy-four-foot shark enraged at the presence of the two seal-like creatures. Moving back and forth along the door, the caged animal rubs her nose raw against the algae-coated steel panels—

—her nostrils suddenly inhaling an alien, pungent scent. Her movements slow, her jaws going slack as the incoming current pushes a steady stream of the alluring chemical into her open mouth.

The pounding slows, then stops.

Angel hovers in sixty feet of water, her snout pressed against the doors. Her caudal fin slows, churning the sea in long, heavy strokes.

Then the tail stops moving, and the big female sinks.

The two divers descend with her, relocating the hose as they follow her to the bottom. She lands upright on her pectoral fins, her head remaining poised against the steel door eighty-seven feet below the surface, her lighter tail reaching up into the shallows at a thirty-degree angle.

“She’s out! Stand by!” Ed locates the nearest large oval pore and peeks in at the sleeping behemoth. His confidence returning, he unhooks his BCD vest and pushes it through the hole, following his air tank inside the canal.