Extinct (30 page)

Alan looked across the seats. “That might not be a bad idea,” he said.

The pilot stared back at him for a moment. A small smile crossed the man’s face. “You’re getting ready to drop in the water and climb up on her boat—and you haven’t made up your mind for certain yet?” He shook his head and smiled again.

A few seconds later, its engine roaring and its rotor blades revolving at top speed, the helicopter lifted off the ground and tilted toward the Sound.

*   *   *

“Atten-hut!”

The seaman working at the bow of the Boston Whaler setting in its berth off to the side of the Coast Guard Station had seen Admiral Vandiver’s uniform when he stepped from the car.

Douglas came out the driver’s door and nodded his greeting toward the seaman and a seaman apprentice standing at attention in front of the Whaler. Both of the men wore the dark-blue pants and short-sleeve shirt that comprised the unit’s summer uniform. “Where’s the station commander?” Vandiver asked. “At ease. The station commander?”

“Acting commander is inside, sir,” the seaman said, trotting toward the blocky two-story stucco and brick building to the car’s far side. As Vandiver and Douglas followed him, he hurried under an overhang made by the building’s second level projecting out over the ground floor and opened a door tucked back in the shadows.

“Up the stairs to your right, sir,” he said as Vandiver and Douglas moved past him.

Bos’n Mate Third Class Beverly Cowart, wearing the same working blue uniform as the seamen, snapped to her feet behind her desk when Vandiver came out of the stairwell and walked toward her office.

“At ease,” he said, and didn’t waste any time with formalities. “The white shark that was killed in Back Bay last night—where is it?”

“Sir, it’s being taken by a civilian boat into the Gulf for disposal.”

“Disposal!”
Even with all his years of training in the intelligence field he couldn’t keep the word from having come out at a half roar. The woman, her eyes widened, stared back at him. He forced his voice lower. “You know the name of the boat?”

“No, sir, but the station commander does. He’s at home sleeping right—”

“Wake him up!”

*   *   *

The helicopter hovered twenty feet in the air out to the side of the
Intuitive.
The pilot looked at Carolyn and Paul staring up at the craft from the flying bridge and Sheriff Stark looking up from the fishing cockpit. Alan’s gaze was on the long shadowy shapes darting around the form of the megalodon’s body, suspended in the net a few feet below the surface of the clear Gulf water. He stuck his legs outside the door and, turning and catching hold of the bottom of the seat, lowered his feet to the landing skid.

“Ready?” the pilot asked.

Alan nodded.

“Wait until I tell you ‘Okay’ before you jump,” the pilot said. “This wind is pretty stiff. Blow me off a little bit and you’ll be landing in the water.” He looked back at the sharks. “Might not get a chance to make that proposal if you do that.” Keeping his gaze fixed on the bridge behind him, he moved his control sticks, sliding the helicopter to the side and as far out toward the front of the boat as he could and still be over the deck.

After motioning with his hand for Carolyn and Paul to crouch down, he began to lower the craft, having some difficulty in keeping it in place against the stiff breeze.

“Get ready,” he shouted toward the open door.

Alan let go of the fuselage, grabbed quickly for the skid under his feet, and swung down to dangle below the craft, his shoes a few feet above the
Intuitive
’s bow and slightly out to its side.

The helicopter moved to the left again and down a couple of feet more.

“Now!”
the pilot shouted.

Alan released the skid, hit just ahead of the Zodiac inflatable tied to the forward deck, and went to his knees. A moment later he hurried down the rail toward the flying bridge.

Paul, a big smile across his face, met him at the side of the cabin. “Wow, Mr. Alan,” he said.

Alan patted him on the shoulder and moved into the fishing cockpit.

“What in the hell is a megalodon?” Stark asked.

“It’s what’s in that net,” Alan answered. For a moment he stood staring at the buoy and the ropes lashed around it securing it to the net. A small, tattered piece of the net boiled to the top of the water, then sunk from sight. There had to be at least twenty sharks around the carcass, hammerheads, white-tip sand sharks, and bull sharks, swarming around the buoy, diving under the water and coming up fighting for the chunks of flesh they were tearing from the body. “We have to drive them away,” Alan said. He stepped inside the cabin.

The cardboard box wasn’t there.

“Where’s the dynamite?”

“Carolyn asked Fairley to offload it,” Stark said.

Alan closed his eyes.

“Did she do something wrong?” Paul asked.

Alan shook his head no, and walked from the cabin. A moment later he stepped up beside Carolyn at the flying bridge.

“A megalodon?” she said.

“I don’t know how, but it is.” He looked back at the buoy, then raised his face in the direction of Biloxi. They weren’t even to the barrier islands yet.

“If we don’t get rid of the sharks somehow, we’re not going to have anything left by the time we get to shore.”

“We can shoot them,” Paul said, and knelt to open the cabinetlike doors of the storage space under the steering wheel. It contained a flashlight and extra batteries, an emergency position indication radio beacon, and the thirty-eight-caliber revolver Carolyn had handed Alan when they were chasing the shark in the bay.

Stark nodded. “Fresh blood
might
draw them off.” He took the revolver from Paul and turned toward the fishing cockpit. In the distance, the helicopter was already beginning to move out of sight.

Alan turned his face toward the radio as it crackled and a voice came over its speaker: “Intuitive.
The charter fishing boat
Intuitive.
This is Coast Guard Station Gulfport. Please come in, Captain.
”

Carolyn reached for the mike.

“This is the
Intuitive.
”

“Stand by for Admiral…”
There was a moment of silence.

“… for Admiral Vandiver,”
the female voice said.

“Intuitive,
this is Admiral Vandiver. Are you towing the … white shark?
”

Carolyn looked at Alan. “Yes.”

“Don’t attempt disposal until I’m able to get to you to examine the carcass. This is on Naval Authority. I…”
There was another moment of silence.
“Ma’am, whom am I speaking with, please?”

“Carolyn Haines.”

“Ms. Haines, this might be important. Could you hold your position until I can get there?”

“We’re already on our way back.”

“Back? You said you hadn’t disposed of it yet.”

“We haven’t.”

“Yes, Captain, well, I’m coming that way anyway. Keep coming and I’ll meet you.”

“We have some sharks going after the carcass,” she said.

“Damn. Can you go faster or something?”

“Not unless we take a chance of the tow breaking loose.”

“Do whatever you can until I get there.”

A loud crack came from the fishing cockpit as Stark fired the first shot.

Carolyn gave the Admiral her position and replaced the mike on its hook on the radio.

“He knows what it is,” she said. “How?”

*   *   *

Vandiver hurried from the building. Bos’n’s Mate Third Class Beverly Cowart, carrying an M-16 rifle, trotted along behind him. Across the pavement, all the berths were empty except for the twenty-two-foot Boston Whaler.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Cowart said. “Everything is out on patrol. If you want me to call in a forty-one…”

Vandiver shook his head as he stepped into the Whaler. “We’ll be there before they could get back here.”

Cowart slipped on a bright orange life preserver and handed one each to Vandiver and Douglas. Vandiver laid his on the seat and Douglas followed suit. Cowart looked out toward the Sound. It only showed choppy waves, but she knew with the wind as high as it was that the open water beyond the barrier islands would be much worse. “It’s going to be a rough ride, sir. You might want to put that on.”

Vandiver stared at her.

She turned the ignition key and the seamen pitched the lines inside the boat. Douglas began winding them into proper coils in the bottom of the craft.

The Whaler started backing from its slip.

“Wait!”
Vandiver yelled, startling everybody.

He stared at the large shark tooth lying on a cardboard box impregnated with a shiny, wax-paper-looking substance.

“Dynamite the sheriff confiscated,” Cowart said when she was able to regain her composure.

“No, the tooth,” Vandiver said, stepping over the Whaler’s windshield onto the bow and hopping up onto the slip. He stared down at the tooth.

The seamen looked at the other Coast Guardsman and then at Vandiver.

“Sir, it’s from a big shark killed over in Back Bay last night. A guy cut a couple of teeth out of it. I collect … you know, sir, knickknacks. I paid twenty dollars for it.”

Vandiver slowly lifted the tooth in front of him. It was an off-white or a light beige in color, its body was rounded more than normal, and it still had some of the gum tissue clinging to its base.

“Sir,” Douglas said, “it’s shaped just like—”

Vandiver shut him off with a sudden shake of his head and a stare. He slowly laid the tooth back on the box marked
RED DIAMOND BRAND, DITCHING DYNAMITE,
50%
STRENGTH.

“Did you see the shark?” he asked the seaman.

“Yes, sir, before I came on duty.”

“It looked the exact same, didn’t it?”

“Sir?” the seaman questioned.

“Sir…,” Douglas started.

Vandiver stared again. Then he motioned with his head for Douglas to follow him, and walked away from the seamen.

Twenty feet from the boat he stopped and turned back to face his nephew. “What, Douglas?”

Douglas swallowed hard. “Sir, this tooth is the same size as one from a white that’s twenty-five feet. If the one that lost the tooth in the Keys came here, too … We have to tell them. It could kill somebody else if—”

“You doubted that I was going to inform them, Douglas?”

“Well, no, sir, I guess you were, uh…”

“But if you don’t mind, Douglas, let me do it in my own way. We start yelling
megalodon
and what happens?” He stared at his nephew as he waited.

“I don’t know, sir.”

“The sharks cut the tow loose and the megalodon sinks to the bottom … maybe they finish devouring the body before we can get somebody down to attach some cables to it and bring it back up. And then let’s say the other megalodon is either not in the area or, if it is, leaves without anybody ever seeing it and goes back to where it came from. And even if it is seen, all we’re going to have is a sighting of a bigger world-record white. Here we are, talking about a shark extinct for over a million years, a shark that looks exactly like a white, and no proof to show it isn’t.”

“The tooth, sir.”

“Didn’t I get a tooth from the Keys? We know now it was deposited there at most only months ago. What good has it done? Who’s going to say it came from a living megalodon?”

“But we have eyewitnesses to where this one came from.”

“Eyewitnesses, Douglas? Some character saying he cut the teeth out of this particular shark … some people saying they saw him do it? An inquiry then, and somebody suggests maybe there’s a fraud being perpetrated, says that some character heard about the giant shark and wanted to become famous, so he rushes a couple megalodon teeth over here to say he cut them out of the mouth.”

“Sir, with all proper respect … that doesn’t make—”

“Sense, Douglas? There’s only one thing that makes sense, only one thing that
guarantees
there won’t be any doubt. We get to the megalodon that boat’s towing and get it back here … safe and sound where it can be examined by any scientists the world over … anybody that’s not going to want to believe it until they see it for themselves.”

“But, sir, you are going to tell them … something—warn them.”

“Douglas.”

His uncle’s stare kept Douglas from asking anything more.

Vandiver walked to the Whaler and Cowart and the seamen and the apprentice, all of them obviously nervous at how he was acting. He stopped in front of the seaman who had seen the shark himself.

“Son,” he said, “I have reason to believe that there might be another white out there. Maybe an even bigger one.”

The seaman’s brow wrinkled.

“Yes,” Vandiver said, “bigger. I want you to get the word out to vessels in the area, the local sheriffs, whomever you would normally notify, and tell them of the possibility…” He looked back at Douglas standing behind him. “… of the
likelihood
that there is a serious danger out there. Maybe anywhere along the coast.”

The seaman nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, and started for the building.

*   *   *

Sheriff Stark fired the revolver.

A hammerhead twisted off in the water and disappeared below the surface. A few seconds later it appeared twenty-feet farther back behind the buoy, splashed its tail and disappeared again.

Two fins turned in its direction and swam back toward the spot, sinking beneath the surface. Two more long, shadowy shapes rushed under the water toward the stricken hammerhead.

The first shark that had appeared high enough at the surface for Stark to wound had been a five-foot bull shark. It had rolled off bleeding behind the buoy, too, and had pulled some of the others after it. But those leaving the net had more than been replaced by the new ones that had arrived, cutting swiftly across the water toward the buoy from all directions.

Stark fired again, and only nicked the top edge of a fin that had flashed quickly above the water.