Meg: Hell's Aquarium (31 page)

Angel’s eyes roll back in her head, momentarily blinding her as she bites down on empty sea. Detecting the boat, she levels out to give chase, her muscles, still feeling the affects of the anesthetic, struggling to move.

Jonas rolls onto his back, propping his feet and fins in the air as he’s whipped and bounced over the speed boat’s wake doing thirty knots.

Mac glances over his shoulder, relieved to see that his friend is still there, the Meg still back at the canal doors. He throttles down, afraid of going too fast lest he lose Jonas. “Hold on, pal, we’ll be on dry land in a second.”

Jonas grits his teeth as the boat races into the lagoon, then veers for the floating ramp—

—driving straight over the angled Astroturf surface, its fiberglass hull skidding across the concrete deck.

Jonas’s butt slides across the ramp at fifteen knots. Releasing the rope, he curls himself up in a ball and rolls to a dead stop in front of a concession stand. For a long moment he just lies on the blessed dry deck, analyzing his injuries.
Scuffed elbows . . . knee hurts like hell . . . not too bad
. “Mac?”

Mac sits up in the speedboat’s bow. The two men look at one another and suddenly convulse in wild laughter, the joy of still being alive making them giddy. “J.T., we have got to stop doing this shit.”

“Agreed. Maybe we can sell Amway?”

“I was actually thinking about opening a strip club for seniors.”

“Early bird specials. I like it.”

“Jonas? It’s Fran—”

“Fran, we’re okay—”

“We need an ambulance—make it a chopper! Ed lost both legs. He’s bleeding out. We’ll be at the dock in two minutes!”

Jonas sits up. The dive boat races past the canal as a white dorsal fin slips beneath the waves.
I hate you, Angel . . . I really hate you.

19.

Jebel Ali Wildlife Sanctuary
Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Persian Gulf

The shadow moves through a black sea illuminated olive-green by the night vision glass.

“There!” Kaylie Szeifert points out the Manta Ray’s cockpit to starboard. “Bring us in closer so I can shoot the net.”

“I can’t see it.” Sean Dustman, seated to Kaylie’s left behind the primary control station jams his left foot too hard on the port-side propeller, sending the submersible into a dizzying clockwise barrel roll.

Registering the current, the 530-pound green sea turtle flaps its forward flippers and disappears into the darkness.

Brian Suit’s voice crackles over the radio. “Two minute warning, Sub One. Your score stands at minus twenty-five.”

Kaylie grabs the dashboard as Dustman overcompensates with the starboard prop, spinning them upside down. “Sean, give me the damn controls!”

“Just do your job, and I’ll do mine!”

Her eyes search the sonar array as she listens to the pinging sea over her headphones. For the last week the submersible pilot candidates have been prowling the Persian Gulf’s coastal waters at night, netting sea turtles, each captured specimen worth positive points, each missed opportunity penalized. Tonight is the last round of open water training before tomorrow’s cuts, and Kaylie’s rank is a dismal eleventh, a good forty points below the final position of the eight candidates who will be selected to go on the mission.

Sean Dustman ranks a well-deserved seventeenth.

“Found him! Come about to course two-seven-zero, depth seventy feet.”

Dustman launches the Manta Ray into a rapid, dizzying descent, dropping them a hundred feet below the turtle and two hundred feet to the west.

“You overshot! Sean, watch the reef! Pull up!”

“I got it! I got it!” The former Naval officer pulls back on both joysticks and levels out, barely avoiding a head-on collision with a bed of coral.

The radio crackles. “Alright you two, time’s up. Surface and dock, and do not dive anywhere near the Irani an oil tanker. Its mass will suck you right off the bottom into its keel. Szeifert?”

“Yes, sir. Understood.” She tracks the massive object moving due east on her sonar, losing herself in a cacophony of sound coming from the tanker’s twin screws.

Minutes later, they are being hauled out of the water up the slanted stern ramp of the
Dubai Land II
, a 196-foot, 280-ton fishing trawler. Deck lights blot out the night sky, replaced by three Arab technicians, who secure the Manta Ray onto its motorized chassis.

The cockpit hatch unlocks then is raised, releasing a spray of seawater outside the seal. Kaylie climbs out, her skin-tight wetsuit drawing looks from the other pilots and crewmen as she heads forward, her anger seething. She crosses the main deck, passing beneath the enormous canary-yellow stern gantry and the twenty-thousand-gallon acrylic tank holding nine recently captured sea turtles. The animals will be taken back to the aquarium to be part of an outdoor exhibit.

Kaylie locates Brian Suits on the upper deck as he exits the wheel house.

“Sir, may I speak with you?”

“Can it wait, Szeifert? I’m in the middle of tallying scores.”

“Now, sir. Please.”

He sees the rage in her eyes. “Two minutes.”

“Respectfully, sir, my scores are not reflective of my abilities. I’ve been consistently paired with the lower third of the class, most of whom barely know port from starboard. I was lucky to survive my last dive, let alone score any points.”

“Candidate pairings were randomly selected, Szeifert. You know that.”

“Yes, sir, with the objective of determining the top thirty percent of the class. Piloting? Okay, I admit I need some work, but when it comes to co-piloting and running sonar, only Peter Geier’s logged better scores. Individually, I’m easily in the top five, but these random pairings have consistently placed me with pilots who have no idea what they’re doing, or have attitudes about taking directions from a woman. They’ve killed my overall score.”

“Maybe that’s true, but tonight’s our last night of trials. What would you suggest I do?”

“Give me one last chance at making the grade, one last run with a decent pilot.”

“With who? Every other candidate has completed their scores. None of the top eight would dare jeopardize their position to accommodate your request.”

She scans the deck. Spots David standing alone in the bow by the anchor windlass. “Give me one run with David. Let me show you what I can do.”

“David’s a trainer.”

“And I’m your best co-pilot. Let me prove it.”

The former Psy Ops officer stares at the passing Iranian oil tanker, thinking. After a minute he takes batteries out of his radio. “Mr. Bellin, are any of the Manta Rays recharged?”

“No, sir. But Sub Two’s got enough juice for a twenty minute run.”

Kaylie’s eyebrows raise, her expression pleading.

“Grab Taylor. I want you in the water in four minutes.”

“Yes, sir!”

“You’ve barely spoken to me in a week, and now you want me to pilot your sub?”

“David, I’m sorry if I misled you. I honestly like you. It was just getting too hot and heavy.”

“Yeah . . . I’m not feeling it. Maybe tomorrow.”

She chases after him. “You want me to beg?”

“Might help.”

“Then I’m begging.”

“Still not feeling it.”

She balls her fists, grinding her teeth. “What is it you want from me? Sex?”

He turns to face her. “No, Kaylie. I just don’t want to feel like a piece of meat. If you want my help then ask me. As a friend.”

She softens. “You’re right. I’m sorry. If I came across as one of those shallow women who bat their eyes in order to get favors, then I apologize. So, now I’m asking you, David, as my friend, would you please pilot for me?”

“Yes.”

She smiles, tears in her eyes. “Thank you.”

“And as a friend, if you still want sex—”

He winces as she punches him on the shoulder.

David adjusts his harness as the cockpit clamps shut in a watertight seal. “How many points are you behind?”

“By my calculations, we need to net two turtles.”

“Two turtles in twenty minutes? Geez, I hope you brought bait.”

One of the technicians knocks on the acrylic glass above his head. David gives the thumbs-up as the Manta Ray is slid backward on its sled down the stern ramp and into the velvety black sea.

He wastes no time in distancing the sub from the massive trawler, allowing Kaylie to get a clear sonar reading. “Bearing?”

“We lost a green turtle in deep water, about a mile out, bearing zero-zero-six. If you can level out at one hundred seventy feet, I can get a better reading. Just watch the currents.”

David surface dives the sub, reaching the desired depth in seconds as he races along the deserted Dubai coastline. Covering fifty square miles, the Jebel Ali Marine Wildlife Sanctuary extends several miles offshore, encompassing a rich coral reef-based ecosystem, home to hawksbill turtles and their larger endangered cousins, the green sea turtle.

The olive-brown underworld races by, the sub’s ride level and smooth. David glances at Kaylie, who is smiling. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Come on.”

“I was just thinking that it’s actually fun being in one of these things when the pilot knows what the hell he’s doing. And don’t you dare show off.” She presses her headphones tighter to her ears. “Got something! Bearing two-two-three, eighty yards ahead, sixty feet and ascending.”

David slows the submersible, adjusts his course, then rises at a forty-five-degree angle. “Port or starboard shot?”

“Port.” Kaylie leans forward, her hand on the knob of a control labeled n-port.

“Eighty feet . . . seventy . . . there she is—a big fat greenie. Nail her!”

Kaylie pulls the control knob—

—ejecting a series of orange softball-size buoys, the  pressurized spheres instantly inflating, scooping the 670-pound turtle up within its net, floating it to the surface.

David circles the amphibious reptile as it rises against its will. The four-foot carapace is more dark brown than green, identifying it as a mature adult.

Kaylie grabs the radio. “Sub Two pick-up, on my bearing.”

“Pick-up on the way. Nicely done. You still have nine minutes.”

David descends again. Kaylie listens on sonar, the Gulf traffic polluting the pinging sounds reflecting off objects in the water. “Ugh! It’s no use, I can’t hear a thing.”

“Hang on, hang on. Where’s the bottom?”

“Two hundred eighty feet.”

“It’s too deep here, too much boat traffic. Let’s hit the shallows.” David jams both feet to the floor, rocketing the sub to the south at thirty knots.

“One fifty . . . ninety-five . . . seventy-five feet . . . David, this is good. Can you shutdown the engines, let her drift so I can hear?”

David powers off the sub, the neutrally buoyant craft drifting fifty feet below the surface. An easterly current catches the Manta Ray’s wingspan, gently swaying the sub, pulling it parallel to shore.

Kaylie lays her head back in the darkness, the quiet helping to soothe her overwrought nerves. This last week of training has been twenty-hour days—physically exerting, mentally exhausting. The competition has been fierce, and she has never felt more alone.

She snakes her left hand over the console dividing the cockpit, resting her fingers over David’s right hand. “You’re a great pilot. Better than Suits. Better than any of us. You should be one of the eight going on this mission.”

“Can’t. I sort of promised my father that I’d go back to Gainesville. You know, finish up school.”

“Well, whatever happens . . . thanks.”

Several minutes pass in silence.

“Kaylie, say things don’t work out for you in Dubai. Would you ever want to work at the Tanaka Institute?”

“I’m flattered. But honestly, those Megs scare the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, they’re great.”

“No. I mean they really scare the hell out of me. I’d rather work with river leeches.”

“This is your two-minute warning,” Brian Suits announces over the radio. “By the way, that was a nice catch, Szeifert. Nearly seven hundred pounds. Wish you had more time.”

Kaylie turns the radio off. “Screw it. I’ll go back to Graham Hawkes and the job at the aquarium. It paid the bills, most months. What about you? I mean, after you graduate?”