Zoya shook her head. “The station was half funded with American money.”
Nami looked around. “But there’s no English anywhere here.”
“Staffed by Russians, built with American money. Dirty money. CIA money.”
Nami had heard some pretty crazy conspiracy theories, but this one was perhaps the oddest. “Why would they do that then send us in here to help?”
Zoya shrugged though. “Right hand not knowing what left hand does? Or…”
Nami waited for the woman to continue. When she didn’t Nami prompted, “Or?”
“They need something from here. I do not see any soldiers, but soldiers came, no?”
The syntax was a little weird but Nami got it. “Yes, the soldiers came, but left fairly shortly thereafter.”
“To the bottom level? Level 1, east side, southern most room?”
Yep that sounded about right. Nami nodded.
“They came for it then. That is why they were sent. They have come to pilfer, not save.”
Nami chuckled. “Come on. We saved you. We are getting out of here.”
Zoya cocked her head, frowning. “And no sabotage, no ‘accidents’ on the way here?”
That made Nami frown. “My parachutes didn’t open.”
Zoya nodded her head very sagely. “That is how it starts.”
* * *
Nick went around to the recovering SEALs. Most had good color and were sitting up by now. Only the few that had breached dry suits were still flat out under warming blankets.
Shaking hands, taking pats on the back, Nick felt like he was giving his very own USO tour. One of the men, he thought his name was Ajax told Nick that he thought he’d deserved an Oscar nomination for his role in T Minus Two Hours. Which, you know, Nick wasn’t going to argue with. It probably had been his best chance at the statue, but the Academy didn’t agree, so what were you supposed to do?
Too bad, he’d loved the script. The real time premise where he needed to rescue the First Lady from extremist kidnappers, only to find she had orchestrated the entire thing herself to get back at her cheating Presidential husband. Come on, there was action, pathos, surprise, remorse. He’d done it all.
Yet when those five names were read in February, his was not on the list.
His wife at the time had of course said, “Told you so.”
Such was life. At the least there hadn’t been any sharks during the award ceremony. At least not the fishy kind.
“I think we should get back to the security room,” Tonaka said next to him.
“Sure, once we get these guys warmed up,” Nick replied. His calf wound had gone from migraine throbbing to a mild ache. Good thing it had only been a baby shark. He could almost walk without a limp now.
“No, I think now,” Tonoka stated.
Nick turned to the robotic expert. “Why?”
“Can you not feel it?” Tonaka asked.
Nick stopped, listening, trying it figure out what Tonaka meant.
“No, sorry.”
Tonaka put Nick’s hand against the wall. There was a slight vibration. Like someone or something banging on the metal.
“Yah, let’s get out of here,” Nick stated rousting the men up.
Whatever was out there, Nick didn’t want to be around to see it break through the walls.
* * *
Dillon stopped. There it was again. A loud bang. Way louder than the wrench had been. It didn’t seem like a human could make that loud a sound.
“Quax?”
The robot shook his head. “It is too far away for me to determine.”
There was just one more pressure door to seal. And unfortunately it was down the corridor with the banging.
“We could just head back,” Quax said.
No one would blame him, but when the water came rushing through the security room and it was this door that failed, Dillon would never be able to look anyone else in the eye.
“No. We’ve got to finish what we started.”
“I was afraid you were going to say that…” Quax’s tail was up, waving back and forth over his head. A sure sign the robot was agitated.
Dillon crept down the hallway, taking it one step at a time. Each time the bang occurred, Dillon felt ready to jump out of his skin. The last time it had only been a deranged Russian. Only. Was this another saboteur?
Was this a shark trying to get in? Although Dillon had never seen behavior like this from a shark. Except if they were starved. Then they would do anything to try to get to food.
How long had the sharks gone without feeding? The station had gone down three days ago, that long without food might convince a shark or two to try and break into their current sardine can.
The banging got faster, so close together that it was no longer one solitary sound, but a set of reverberations. BANG. Bang. BANG. Bang. The sound was getting under his skin.
He looked to Quax. A long frown drew the robot’s silver lips down.
“Still nothing?”
“Sorry.”
The robot had nothing to be sorry about. The pressure door was only about a hundred feet away, however that sound was coming from about forty feet away.
“I will go,” Quax said.
Dillon shook his head. “We will do it together.”
Quax knelt over and Dillon climbed on his back.
“One. Two. Three.”
* * *
Tonaka stopped. The sound had stopped. Abruptly. It was almost worse this way. The noise had become a companion, keeping time as they moved the SEALs down the hall.
He, Callum, and Nick were walking, allowing the QXs to carry the injured SEALs. Some had objected, but not for long. They were all too weak from their ordeal.
“Maybe next time they will listen,” Callum whispered and was translated by the nearest QX.
“Listen to what?” Lopez asked from beside the biologist.
Callum shrugged. “I tried to warn them that sharks are unpredictable and to wait before they went down below decks.”
The man rubbed his hands together. “I gotta say, I am hoping these sharks are as cutthroat as you say. I mean, I’ve been here a whole ten minutes and nada. Not a shark in sight.”
Tonaka felt the man should be grateful to be able to say such a thing. Tonaka had no desire to see another shark if at all possible.
Nick stepped forward to open the hatch, but couldn’t budge the metal.
“It is locked.”
“That can’t be,” Tonaka stated. “We left it open. Shut but not locked.”
Nick shrugged. “I’m telling you that hatch is locked. Tight.”
Tonaka waved a QX forward. The robot heaved, but could not open it either.
“Someone locked it behind us,” Nick stated the obvious.
“So we’ve got a saboteur too?” Lopez asked. After Nick nodded the soldier clapped his hands together. “Awesome! Like I say, there’s always a mole. Always!”
* * *
Zoya tended to her old friend Pietrov’s arm wound. There was a perfect pattern of shark teeth that went straight through his Russian Navy tattoo. He had taken her under his wing long ago.
One of the few men who had ever tried to help her career.
She wouldn’t be here without him. Which under these new circumstances might not be such a good thing.
“Nyet,” Pietrov said, pushing her hand away. “Help the others.”
Zoya gently nudged his hand away. “I have helped them. It is your turn now.”
“I want not special treatments,” Pietrov stated.
“You are getting none, old man, now be quiet. And let me finish this,” Zoya urged.
With a snort Pietrov looked away from her. “How many survived?”
Zoya looked down. She’d seen the number but that didn’t mean that she wanted to share it. “Enough.”
The old man frowned. He’d been in the Navy for long enough to know a stall when he heard one. “But at least you, my daisy, survived.”
Pietrov jutted a chin out, “Looks like things are not doing so well?”
Zoya didn’t bother to try to lie to him. “No.”
“Then you best get over there and leave an old man to lick his wounds.”
With all the emergency warning lights going off about now, that was probably the best idea.
She rose but Pietrov caught her arm. “It wasn’t your fault,” he tried to reassure her, but how could he?
Zoya was the station’s safety officer. It had been her job to stop exactly what happened from happening.
All of this was her fault. All of it.
* * *
Nami’s eyes were glued to the screen. Zoya had come up behind her to watch Dillon and Quax’s progress. They had been so close to finishing their task but something had stopped them. They were feet away from the door yet Dillon and Quax were at a dead stop.
Red warning lights flashed all over the security control board, but not being able to read Russian made it kind of hard for Nami to do anything about it. Even Zoya seemed confused by the magnitude and number of errors she was reading. And she was Russian.
Worse, Callum and his entire team were stuck behind a locked door.
Nami looked to the other screens. All four levels below them were flooded. Sharks were swimming everywhere. Like everywhere. Even the smaller sharks were hiding out as the larger sharks went on a rampage. Hopped up on hormones and hungry, the larger sharks were eating everything in their path. Including parts of the station in some cases. Metal apparently was on the menu.
“Oh no,” Zoya breathed out. Nami rushed over to see what the problem was. “Someone has rerouted the CO2 back into the station.”
Nami watched the gauges. Zoya was correct. The carbon dioxide levels were rising. Not fast and not much, but enough to kill them all.
“We’ve only got about an hour more before we all get very sleepy,” Zoya stated. “And then it is over.”
“We can’t reverse it?” Nami asked.
Zoya shook her head. “The controls are down on level one.”
Ugh, weren’t they all?
“How is this person doing this? If the saboteur is down there, why aren’t the sharks attacking him?”
Zoya looked around her and then spoke at barely an audible whisper. “There were fail safes installed. Only the highest officers know of such an existence.”
“So the saboteur can move around freely while we suffocate up here?” Shalie asked.
“It is not my doing,” Zoya said, “But yes. Remember, I too choke with you.”
“You’re right,” Nami said. The Russian was in the same boat, or in this case station, with them all.
Zoya nodded to the screen. “What is wrong with the boy and the robot?”
“I don’t know,” Nami stated.
Zoya clicked a few buttons. “They are on the other side of the feed coolers… And refrigeration is down, no?”
It was always so hard to decide how to answer questions like that. “All high-draw functions like cooling and heating are down,” Shalie stated.
“So the fish, the fish is getting smelly. I think the sharks are trying to break into the freezers.”
Nami watched as Dillon leaned over Quax. They’d had one false start when the banging stopped, but now that it started again, they had reorganized.
How Nami wanted him to just come back, but that pressure door was super important.
She could read Dillon’s lips as he counted down and then Quax leapt forward, running past the reverberating metal. Unfortunately that metal didn’t hold as it split at the seams, water rushing in, slamming Quax to the wall.
Dillon barely held on for his life.
* * *
Cold seawater splashed Dillon’s face, threatening to drown him. If he didn’t have Quax, well, he didn’t want to think about that. The robot pushed off the wall, using his jet propulsion driving them back up the hallway as the first shark sloshed into the hallway.
Right now it was only knee high water so the large Greenland shark lay there on his belly, flailing his open mouth side-to-side. Teeth clanged against Quax’s metal frame, however the shark was unable to gain purchase.
Fighting back the panic, Dillon glanced over his shoulder. They only had a couple dozen yards to get behind the hatch. It wasn’t a very sturdy hatch and probably wouldn’t keep the Greenland out for long, but long enough to get the heck out of here.
But water was gushing in from the breach, lifting the Greenland higher and higher. Soon it would be able to swim, then it would be over. He’d seen what one did to those three SEALs.
As the shark snapped and lunged, Quax threw them backwards. Dillon hit the wall so hard that the wind was knocked out of him. He saw stars dancing above Quax’s head. The hallway spun. Dillon clutched Quax even though he was having a hard time telling what was up and what was down.
His BFF didn’t fail him though. Now that they were out of range for the shark’s teeth, at least for the moment, Quax got them going down the hall, leaping over the hatch’s lip. Spinning on a dime.
The water had risen enough to lift the Greenland off the floor. It tilted his head, realized his prey was escaping and with its powerful tail surged forward.
Quax barely slammed the hatch closed in time. The shark rammed the door. Dillon could feel the reverberations all the way up his arms and he was on Quax’s back. The robot spun the wheel closed, then threw the bar to lock the door.
The shark pounded again and again against the metal. Luckily it was slightly thicker than the seals in the wall. But not that much more. The hatch wouldn’t hold up to that kind of punishment for very long.
“Let’s go!” Dillon yelled.
You didn’t have to tell Quax twice as the robot turned on his heel and flat out ran in the other direction, taking long strides, impossibly long strides down the hallway. There were just four or five turns and they would be back at the security station.
The sound of the shark’s attack rang through the halls. A harbinger of what was to come.
CHAPTER 13
Nick stepped back as the QXs tried to get the hatch open. It was still a no go.
Snap, and the wheel broke off. Which wasn’t good. Now there was no way to open the door.
“We could blow it,” Ajax said.
“Or,” Lopez retorted, “We just go around.”
He rolled his eyes like he was working with teenagers.
Tonaka turned to a QX. “You’ve the schematics, don’t you?”
The QX brought the floor plans up on a monitor in his chest. That was new. Tonaka touched the screen and moved the image around until he found what he was looking for.
“Here. We backtrack to the last junction then take a left, this passage will bring us around to the security office. This door will take us too long even if we try to have the QX burn our way through the door.”
Sounded good to Nick. He hated just standing around waiting for a shark to find them.
“Then let’s hit the pavement,” Lopez announced, heading off in the direction the good doctor indicated.
Most of the men were able to move out on their own. Only one man, Troy was still being carried by the QXs, so they made good time. Finding the hallway and heading down it. They came to another hatch, which opened easily.
Okay, this was going better.
When the metal door swung open, it didn’t reveal a hallway but rather a glass tube. Nick froze. He’d been in plenty of these before and it seldom went well.
“Maybe we should head back and blow the door after all,” Nick commented.
Tonaka and Callum nodded in agreement.
Lopez however rushed out into the tube, looking up, spinning around. “This is freaking amazing.”
Nick tried to wave him in, “Yes, but dangerous, come on…”
Before Lopez could respond a huge, and Nick meant huge, shark cr
uised up to the tube. The thing had to be at the least ten times the size of the Greenland sharks who weren’t slouches in the size department.
The big black eye that rolled towards them was larger than a bowling ball. How could this be?
* * *
Callum couldn’t believe the sight before his eyes. The size, the shape the color? It couldn’t be.
Then the giant shark flicked its tail and was gone into the darkness.
Lopez turned. “What the hell?”
“Megalodon,” Callum answered. ‘That was a Megalodon.”
“Superb!” Lopez shouted still standing in the glass tube.
Tonaka turned to him. “I thought them extinct?”
Callum could only nod. They were, by like millennia. “They must have… They must have cloned them somehow.”
“Even better!” Lopez exclaimed. “Little Ricky is never going to believe this. We really should sell tickets to this.”
Callum’s lips tugged down. “Yah, we already tried that. Not a good idea.”
“Let’s get a move on,” Nassar stated, stepping into the tube.
“I wouldn’t,” Callum said. “That tube is not meant to sustain a Megalodon’s crushing force.”
Nassar frowned. “Well, looks like he’s gone and this is the fastest way back to the security hub.”
Callum caught Nassar’s eye. “You didn’t believe me earlier today. Can you believe me now?”
Nassar’s jaw set. Callum had seen it before. Someone who thought they knew better than Callum. He knew that Nassar was going to go into the tube before the Captain even did.
“Move out,” Nassar barked.
The SEALs moved as one. The QX with Troy followed along. Callum wanted to reach out and pull them all back by their collars but he couldn’t.
All he could do was stand there by the hatch, waiting, knowing what was eventually going to come.
Or maybe not. Lopez trotted to the end of the tube, opening the opposite hatch.
Then Callum saw it. Just a flicker at the edge of his vision. The Megalodon swimming straight for the tube. It was a beast and knew it. That glass tube was about as difficult to bite through as a plastic bag would be to Callum.
As the giant, prehistoric beast approached, he opened his jaws wide, wide enough to go around the whole tube.
Apex Predator Thriller Series Collection (Including the blockbuster new shark park thriller, Salechii) Page 42
