Meg: Hell's Aquarium, page 20
“Don’t bother me, I’m operating!” His face pressed against the viewfinder, Brent Nichols remotely manipulates the buzz saw, completing a transverse incision, which connects the first two parallel cuts. Switching to a robotic forceps, he carefully grips the edge of the excised skin and pulls the six-inch-thick flap towards the Megalodon’s snout, Dr. Selby assists with a second clamp, rolling back the fifty-two-inch-long, ninety-pound section of skin and muscle. Armed with a scalpel, Dr. Nichols shears away the remaining connective tissue as he exposes a smooth layer of underlying cartilage.
“Dr. Selby, secure the skin flap while I slice through her skull.”
It takes the biologist another few minutes to surgically remove the two-inch-thick section of cartilage. Adjusting his camera angle, Nichols pans out, revealing the inner workings of the creature’s brain.
“Magnificent . . .”
Unlike a human brain, the Megalodon’s brain is long and thin, spread out across the cranial cavity like an inverted Y, the extensions reaching out to the nostrils and olfactory bulbs, as well as a labyrinth of nerve cells located in the snout.
Dr. Nichols stares at the anatomical design in awe.
Stelzer nudges him. “They’re running out of anesthetic.”
“Right.” Switching controls, he manipulates the robotic appendage gripping the neural implant, positioning the device so that it rests atop the brain’s Y junction. One eighteen-inch-long, wire-thin electrode at a time, he begins connecting the device to various surfaces of the predator’s brain.
Fran Rizzuto and Virgil Carmen stare at the empty slurry bucket.
“That’s not good.”
“No shit. Keep pumping water.” Fran speaks into her radio, “Jonas, how much longer?”
“Stand by, Fran.” The packet of screwdrivers, attached to the fishing line, is being pushed inland by the current. Jonas swims out to it, tearing it from its barbed hook—
—slicing open his right thumb in the process. He curses as blood trickles from the open wound. Pinching the cut, he kicks hard against the incoming tide just to get back to the base of the tail.
Mac’s voice chirps over his ear piece. “Jonas, did you get the screwdrivers?”
“I got them, and a nasty cut from your damn hook.”
“Thank me later. I just got off the radio with the guys who tag great whites in Baja. They advise that you line up the faceplate then drill four pilot holes with the quarter-inch bit. Use the bolts and nuts in your tool bag. They say it’s far less invasive than a screw.”
“Okay. Thanks.” Jonas reaches into his tool bag. Retrieving a bit, he locks it in the drill. Lining up the faceplate, he drills a quarter-inch hole through the secondary dorsal fin, his eyes never leaving Angel’s tail.
No movement.
Breathing a sigh of relief, he quickly drills two more holes, then slowly removes the screw twisted into the flesh and re-drills that hole as well. Feeling into the tool bag, he locates four ten-inch plastic bolts and four matching nuts. One by one, he inserts the bolts and tightens the nuts down against the opposite side of the fin by hand.
Brent Nichols wipes sweat from his forehead as he sits back, admiring his handy work. “All electrodes connected. Preparing to close. Wish we could test this thing first. We always tested them with the hammerheads and nurse sharks.”
“Brent, this isn’t a frickin’ nurse shark! We’ve got divers in the water—”
“Okay, okay. Ready with the clamp.” Using the forceps, he assists Dr. Stelzer in adhering the severed section of upper skull in place with glue. Satisfied the cartilage will hold and mend, the two marine biologists proceed to roll the heavy section of skin back in place. Dr. Nichols then begins the arduous task of suturing the incisions—
—while Jonathan Stelzer injects the surgical area with a combination of anti-inflammatories and antibiotics.
Ed Hendricks is positioned above the surgical chamber. Fascination quells fear as he witnesses a robotic appendage stitch a bleeding flap of skin using a fourteen-inch titanium needle, the sutures made from Megalodon intestine taken from Angelica’s remains.
“Ed, how much longer?”
“I don’t know, Frannie. They’re suturing the incisions now. Five, maybe six minutes. Plus another two to flood the chamber and release the device. Carlos, what’s happening at your end?”
Perspiration pours down Carlos Salinas’s face, creating a small pool inside his face mask as he keeps the saltwater feeder tube in place between Angel’s slack jaws. “Man, it’s been at least fifteen minutes since I saw white stuff coming out of the monster’s gills.”
“Any sign she’s coming out of it?”
“How the hell should I know? Do I look like a vet?”
“Check her eyes.”
“Her eyes. Yeah.” Leaving the tube wedged between two lower teeth, Carlos swims forward to check on the Meg’s left eye.
The blue-gray pupil has rolled back in place—
—staring at him!
Carlos’s voice deserts him as his throat constricts in primal fear. His limbs refuse to move though his mind is screaming at them to do so.
Angel sees what appears in her blurred vision as a juvenile sea elephant. She continues to breathe water without exerting herself, the veil cloaking her senses slowly clearing, yet not quite enough to awaken her muscles.
The realization that he is still alive breaks Carlos’s momentary paralysis. He kicks his fins, propelling himself past the Megalodon’s open mouth to the steel door in seconds flat—
—his wake causing the saltwater hose to slip from out of Angel’s mouth.
Forgetting to remove his BCD vest and air tank, Carlos forces his way through the shoulder-width hole, wheezing breaths from his mask as he attempts to shout a warning to Ed Hendricks. “She’s . . . awake! Get out . . . she’s—”
“What did you say?” Hendricks looks up in time to see Carlos disappearing through a slime-covered hole in the door. His heart racing, the diver abandons his post and swims like mad for the barrier.
With the jet stream no longer delivering water into Angel’s mouth, the Megalodon’s gills stop fluttering. Seconds pass without a breath, triggering an internal alarm. The creature’s core temperature suddenly jumps, releasing a burst of adrenaline that causes the thick red muscles running the length of her back to spasm—
—tossing Jonas from his mount as he finishes tightening the antenna’s last bolt.
“She’s awake! Carlos, Ed, get the hell out of there!”
Jonas swims for the surface only to be swatted aside by the thirty-foot caudal fin.
The Megalodon propels itself forward, ramming a mouthful of seawater into her gills—
—just as Ed Hendricks reaches the door.
The diver can feel the gargantuan presence bearing down on him. In a state of panic, he tries to ram his shoulders and air tank through a steel hole that is far too small. He kicks and squirms, the slick algae allowing him to twist his way through to his waist—
—just as Angel’s snout bashes into the barrier, her front row of teeth clamping down upon the base of his air tank and through both his legs. The punctured gas cylinder explodes—
—propelling him through the hole and out the other side in a burst of air bubbles and blood.
Forty feet from the surface, Carlos’s eardrums register the disturbance. He turns, long enough to see his friend sinking toward the bottom in a cloud of blood. Instinct blotting out fear, he releases air from his BCD vest, and plunges after his friend’s body. He grabs Ed’s arm, still full of life, over-inflates his vest, and rockets to the surface.
Angel shakes her mammoth head, the collision with the steel barrier causing her numbed ampullae of Lorenzini to tingle. For several moments she hovers by the door, her nostrils still registering acidic scents from the anesthetic, unaware that the remains of Ed Hendricks’s severed legs are caught in her upper front teeth like a pair of human cigars.
Blood rises from the amputated appendages, inhaled by her nostrils like smoke. The scent revives the Meg. Banking slowly along the steel doors she turns, heading back toward the canal entrance—
—her lateral line detecting an intruder.
Mac cranks the speed boat in tight circles as he yells frantically into his face mask, “Jonas, where the hell are you? Jonas—”
“Forty feet beneath you! Stop moving the damn boat!”
“I have to move the boat! Drop your weight belt and get the hell up here. Your girl’s awake!”
Jonas releases his weight belt, kicking hard for the surface.
Angel rises directly beneath him like an ivory dirigible.
“Mac, she’s coming up right behind me! There’s no way I can get in the boat that quick!”
“Don’t! Grab the rope!” Mac tosses the water ski rope behind the boat. “Say when!”
Jonas kicks for the red and white wooden handle bobbing above his head along the surface . . . grabs it!
“Go!”
Mac jams the throttle down, the bow kicking out of the water as the 250-horsepower engine launches the speed boat ahead, nearly yanking Jonas’s arms out of their sockets as he’s dragged across the surface like a human torpedo.
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.”
