White Shark (39 page)

Franks paused; Chase and Tall Man stared at each
other.

"The answers are there," Franks said,
"if you know what to look for.
 
I
stopped searching for Kruger long ago.
 
All the evidence pointed to his having died.
 
An uncle had brought me to
America
and put
me to work in his chemical business; I built a new life, I had a son — Rudi —
and I prospered."

"But I never forgot.
 
A part of my mind was always looking for
clues, hints that Kruger or Guenther had survived.
 
And then I saw a newspaper item about a
National Geographic
photographer
disappearing from a research vessel near
Block Island
."

"We heard about that," Chase said.

"The story said that a bronze box the size of a
big casket had fallen overboard and disappeared... a box the researchers had
brought up from the wreck of a submarine in the Kristof Trench... a German
U-boat."

"You said Guenther's programming hadn't been
finished, there was one step to go.
 
What
was that?"

"Kruger's ambition was to create a truly
amphibious killer," Franks said.
 
"A half-human weapon that could survive equally well in air or
water, could go back and forth between the two.
 
He conditioned Guenther to breathe water,
then
taught him how to drain his lungs and breathe air.
 
What he had not had time to teach him was how
to reverse the process when he wanted to return to the
water.
 
Once on land, Guenther would become what is
called an obligate air-breather.
 
He
would be trapped there.
 
So, you see, it
is very urgent that we destroy him before—"

"Christ!
"
Chase
said suddenly, and stood up.
 
"Puckett didn't tell you?
 
The thing's
already been
ashore!
 
It killed a dog in Waterboro."
 
He turned to Tall Man and said, "Get on
the horn to Rollie Gibson, he keeps the radio in his office tuned to
sixteen.
 
Tell him what the thing is, and
it may be loose in town, or maybe in the woods."

Tall Man climbed the steps to the wheelhouse while
Chase opened the door and went out onto the stern.
 
He ordered Rudi to cut away the baits and
Puckett to start the engine,
then
he returned to the
cabin.

"This thing is partly human," he said to
Franks, "or used to be.
 
So it
should be able to be killed like a human being, right?"

"I wish I knew for certain," Franks
said.
 
"Kruger altered the central
nervous system, so he — it — lives on a very primitive level.
 
I would say he would be as hard to kill as a
big shark... which reminds me, Mr. Chase, I never told you his code name.
 
The Nazis referred to it as
Der Weisse Hai
... ‘The
White Shark’."

Tall Man returned from the wheelhouse.
 
"I couldn’t get through on the
radio," he said, "But it doesn't matter, Rollie'll be on the case by
now... we're too late."

"What d’you mean?
"
Chase
said.

"The radio's like a friggin’ Chinese fire drill,
everybody yakking.
 
Some kid was killed
over on Winter Point.
 
His buddy swears
the kid was killed by a yeti."

"A yeti?
"
Franks
said.

"The Abominable Snowman,
"
 
Chase
turned to Tall Man.
 
"Let's go."
 
He started for the door.
 
"The Mako can get us to town in—"

"Simon... the thing may not be in town."

"What d’you mean?
"
Chase
said.

"The kid, the survivor, said he saw it dive into
the water and start swimming eastward."

"Eastward?
 
What's to the east of Winter Point?
 
There's no land out there except... oh my God."
 
The only land to the east of Winter
Point
 
was
Osprey
Island
.
 
"Call Amanda on twenty-seven, tell her
to take the kids and—"

"I tried," Tall Man said.
 
"There was no answer."

43

"Cool," said
Elizabeth
.

"Awesome," said Max.

The children stood on the rocks seaward of the sea
lion pool, watching Mrs. Bixler's vintage speedboat zoon out of its cove and
approach in a high-speed turn.
 
As the
boat banked, the late-day sun glittered on the polished mahogany hull and the
stainless-steel fittings; it looked like a fantasy spaceship.

Max loved the boat, had begged Mrs. Bixler to let him
drive it.
 
"Not till you get to be
my age," she had said with a smile.
 
"Only an old fool like me drives an old boat like this one."

Amanda stood behind them; behind her, the sea lions
rocked back and forth on their flippers, barking for their supper.

In the shed ten yards beyond the pool, a voice came
over the speaker of the VHF radio.
 
"Osprey Base, Osprey Base, Osprey Base
...
Osprey
Mako calling Osprey Base... come in, Osprey Base."

The voice echoed off the cement walls, unheard.

Mrs. Bixler was wearing an orange life jacket,
sunglasses and a baseball cap turned backward so the bill would shelter her
hairdo from the wind.
 
She slowed the
boat as she neared the rocks, and the roar of the big GM V-8 engine lowered to
a growl.
 
She picked up an ancient
megaphone from the seat beside her and called through it, "I'm going to
town for Bingo; probably spend the night with Sarah.
 
I'll get hold of the police when I get to
shore, make sure Simon reported in.
 
They
probably already sent a backup boat.
 
I'll
call you if there's any news."

Amanda and the children waved.
 
Mrs. Bixler pushed the throttle forward, and,
like a racehorse suddenly given its head, the boat leaped forward, banked
around the point and headed west toward the mainland.

In the shed, the voice said again, "Osprey Base,
Osprey Base...
come
in, Osprey Base..."

"Time to feed the girls," Amanda said, and
she stepped back toward the pool.
 
"Then we'll go up to the house and I'll fix us some
supper."
 
She took
Elizabeth
's hand, faced her and said,
"I'm glad your mom said you could spend the night."

Elizabeth
nodded and said, "Me too."

Max stayed out on the rocks, looking out to sea.
 
"I wonder where Dad is," he
said.
 
"It's getting late."

"On his way home."
 
Amanda hoped
her voice carried more conviction than she felt.
 
"We'll set places for him and
Tall."

They fed the sea lions, returned the leftover fish to
the refrigerator and stowed the plastic balls, rings, triangles and other
training tools in the shed.
 
As she
pulled the door closed behind her, she felt a faint vibration in the air,
similar to that of a voice.
 
She looked
around, but couldn't locate the source, so she shut the door.

The sound was muffled now, nearly inaudible:
 
" Osprey Base, this is Osprey Mako...
come
in, Osprey Base..."

When they reached the top of the hill, Max looked down
and saw the heron standing in its tidal pool.
 
"I should go feed Chief Joseph," he said.

"Tall will do it," Amanda said.

"But he may not get in till late.
 
I can—"

"No," she said curtly, and she realized she
was nervous... not afraid, for there was nothing to be afraid of, but
apprehensive, anxious... but about what?
 
She didn't know.
 
She smiled at
Max and softened her voice.
 
"Tall
likes to do it, it's his ritual."

They continued on toward the little house where Amanda
lived.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Mrs. Bixler was perched on the back of the front seat
of the boat, steering with her bare feet.
 
The sea was oil calm, and the planing boat left a blade-straight wake in
the flat water.
 
She felt young and free
and happy.
 
This was her favorite
pastime, her favorite time of day, cruising into the setting sun.
 
Already the water tower and white houses of
the borough were turning pink; soon they would turn blue-gray; by the time she
reached shore, they would be the flat gray that was the harbinger of night.

Something in the water ahead caught her eye.
 
She dropped her feet from the wheel, stood in
the seat and held the wheel with one hand.

A dorsal fin, tall and perfectly triangular zigzagged
through the water; behind it, a scythelike tail slashed back and forth.

A shark?
 
What was a
shark doing around here this late in the day?
 
A big shark, too, probably fifteen feet long.

She turned the boat and followed the fin.
 
The shark seemed to be behaving
erratically.
 
Though she was hardly an
expert, she knew enough from listening to know that this shark wasn't just
traveling; it was feeding, or about to.
 
It was hunting.

As she drew near, she saw a glint of metal behind the
dorsal fin:
 
a tag.
 
One of the Institute's
tags.
 
This was Simon's great
white shark.

At the approach of the boat, the shark submerged and
disappeared.
 
Mrs. Bixler waited for a
moment, but the shark did not surface again, and so she turned back toward
shore.

She couldn't wait to tell Simon; he
be
fascinated — excited, even thrilled — to know that his shark had shown up
again.
 
Now that he had recovered the
sensor head, he could locate the shark and...

Something else in the water, dead
ahead.
 
A man.
 
Swimming.
 
At least, it looked like a man, though it was
bigger than any man she had ever seen, and it was swimming like a porpoise,
arching his broad back out of water and kicking with his feet together.

The damn fool, she thought.
 
Swimming out here, at
twilight.

She realized that the man was what the shark was
hunting.

She accelerated toward the man, praying she could
reach him before the shark did, praying she'd be strong enough to haul him
aboard, praying...

Suddenly he was gone, too.
 
Submerged, just like the shark.
 
She stopped the boat and looked around,
waiting for him to come up.
 
He'd have to
surface, he'd have to.
 
He'd have to
breathe.

Unless the shark had already gotten
him.
 
Or he had already drowned.
 
What could she do then?

The man didn't reappear, and fear seized Mrs.
Bixler.
 
It was a vague but profound
terror of something she couldn't identify.

She put the boat in gear, jammed the throttle forward
and aimed the bow of the boat toward the mainland.

44

It filled its lungs and dived.
 
When the motor noise had receded, it turned
and searched the darkness for the shark.

The cells of its brain were recovering like explosions
of sparks, and with each explosion it knew more and more about itself.

And so it was not afraid; it was galvanized.
 
It felt not threatened, but challenged.
 
This was what it had been created for,
programmed for — to fight, and to kill.

It knew its limits and its strengths.
 
In the water, it was vulnerable only on the
surface.
 
Underwater, it had no equal.