Sharkman

by Steve Alten

  Was there a future with Anya? Who could tell? We were both smart and science oriented . . . maybe we’d both get into the same university . . . major in the same field. And sex wasn’t necessarily out of the picture. Even if I couldn’t feel them, I had gotten spontaneous erections on occasion, and my body was still producing little Kwan juniors, so children weren’t out of the question either . . .

  Stop!

  I had spoken to the most beautiful girl in the world for three whole minutes and in my mind’s eye I was already marrying her. Ass-wipe . . . at least give her a chance to get to know you before you start picking out baby names . . .

  And then I had an idea!

  Retrieving my cell phone, I called the principal. “Dr. Lockhart, it’s Kwan. Sir, I changed my mind; I’d really love to be involved in that shark stem cell research program.”

  “Fantastic. I’ll call Dr. Becker this afternoon and get back with you tomorrow.”

  And so ended my first day back in the real world—an exhausting, emotional day that had begun eight months earlier when a momentary lapse in judgment had cast me down a path I could never have imagined.

  A path that was even now intersecting with yet another life-and-death moment taking place below the sea, nine hundred nautical miles to the east . . .

  6

  The Atlantic Ocean, seventy-two miles northeast of Puerto Rico

  The steel beast was as long as a football field and weighed six thousand tons. It had been moving at a steady thirty knots over the last twelve hours—a top speed usually reserved only for its younger siblings.

  The US Navy had inactivated the USS Philadelphia (SSN-690) on June 10, 2010, after thirty-three years of exceptional service, decommissioning the Los Angeles Class attack sub a short time later.

  How was it then that she was racing west across the Atlantic Ocean?

  Captain Matthew Cubit dwelled on this very thought for at least the hundredth time as he coughed into his handkerchief. For a long moment he stared at the Rorschach pattern of blood staining the linen before he continued his inventory of the crew.

  Pale, sweaty faces. Feverish eyes. Brave men who would never leave their posts, yet not a man among them who didn’t regret their decision to accept the covert mission and the raise in pay grade that came with it.

  The two-month Black Ops mission to the Persian Gulf had gone according to plan, culminating in the successful midnight extraction of six private militia commandos off the coast of Iran aboard a motorized raft. There had been a harrowing game of cat and mouse with an Iranian cutter, but in the end the Philadelphia had made it through the Strait of Hormuz and out of harm’s way to begin its twenty-three-day journey back to the United States.

  A week out from their rendezvous site, the Chief of the Boat fell ill. Soon other enlisted men began reporting to sickbay, all signs pointing to radiation sickness.

  The nuclear reactor had checked out. That left the mysterious object stowed in the crate in the torpedo room as the suspected cause—the contents of which were being protected around the clock by the six well-armed militia men.

  Rather than risk a confrontation, the captain had sent a transmission to Admiral Wilson that the Philadelphia would arrive a full day ahead of schedule.

  In the interim, the COB had died.

  “Captain, we’ve arrived at the designated coordinates. Sir?”

  Cubit wiped sweat from his forehead. “All stop. Dive Officer, take us to periscope depth.”

  “Aye, sir. One hundred feet . . . eighty feet . . . sixty feet—all stop.”

  Moving to the periscope, the Officer of the Deck pressed his eyes to the rubber housing, giving the horizon three quick sweeps. “No close contacts, skipper.”

  Captain Cubit reached for the internal microphone. “Radio, Conn. Anything on the VLF?”

  “Conn, Radio, transmission coming in now, sir.”

  “On my way. OOD, you have the Conn.”

  “Aye, sir, I have the Conn.”

  The naval commander made his way aft down tight passageways, registering the silent stares of his crew as he approached the communications shack.

  The radio officer handed his captain the message transmitted over the Very Low Frequency bandwidth, watching Cubit’s face as he read the message. From the skipper’s dour expression, he could tell this was clearly not the information his commanding officer was expecting.

  Commander Roy Katzen arrived, the second-in-command clearly agitated. “Two more dead, another dozen too ill to report for duty. Is that the destroyer’s coordinates?”

  Cubit handed his XO the message. “Admiral Wilson didn’t dispatch a destroyer. We’re to rendezvous with a Canadian trawler in thirty-six hours.”

  Katzen shook his head. “In thirty-six hours we could all be dead. We need to make port in Puerto Rico and get this entire crew to a hospital.”

  “The admiral’s aware of the situation.”

  “With all due respect, sir, Wilson’s way out of bounds on this one. This mission should have been red-flagged the moment he chose to refit the Philadelphia instead of using an active boat and a Navy SEAL team. I don’t know what’s in that crate, but I didn’t spend fifteen years in the navy so I could end up in a cancer ward.”

  “Agreed. Assemble an armed detail and meet me in the torpedo room in five minutes.”

  “Aye, sir!”

  Located in the lower level of the forward compartment, the torpedo room housed the equipment used to quickly lift and load torpedoes into the sub’s four forward tubes. Deck-mounted racks held stacks of Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Sealed shelves contained an assortment of mines.

  For the last twenty-two days, the torpedo room had been commandeered by the six members of Black Widow, an international private assault force. The men were on six-hour shifts guarding a four-by-three-foot crate adorned with Arabic letters and a nuclear radiation symbol—the mission’s prized bounty.

  While the Black Widows were equipped with lead-lined commando suits and iodine pills, the Philadelphia’s crewmen remained exposed to radiation. To protect his men, Cubit had ordered the torpedo room sealed for the duration of the voyage, but radiation was still seeping through the sub.

  Five minutes after rising to periscope depth, a six-man detail entered the chamber in fire-retardant suits to complete a scheduled systems check. Two techs worked together to perform a diagnostics test on the loader, both men anxious to vacate the toxic area.

  “I’m telling you, Artie, my balls are aching.”

  “Maybe you ought to give the Penthouse magazines a rest.”

  “I’m talkin’ about cancer. Whatever’s in that crate is giving off heat.” The technician purposely raised his voice, “And these hired jack-offs pretending to be SEALs know it.”

  One of the “hired jack-offs” had been pushed too far. The Scottish commando—a man named Lars—unsheathed his knife as he slowly circled the two crewmen. “Tell ye what, lad. How ’bout I give the short and curlies a bit of a trim, then feed ’em to ye.”

  The other submariners quickly closed ranks behind their threatened crewmen while the other members of Black Widow fingered the triggers of their assault weapons.

  Captain Cubit entered the torpedo room moments later, quickly sizing things up. “Back off, mister. And sheathe that weapon.”

  Lars turned to a Syrian named Mahdi, the militia’s squad leader. The freedom fighter approached Cubit. “It has been a long mission, friend. We’re all on the same team—let us finish this as professionals.”

  “I don’t know what team you’re on, friend, but the men on my team are pissing blood. There’s a salvage ship due to arrive in thirty-six hours. Grab a few life rafts, rations, and whatever’s in that container—you and your men are vacating this boat now.”

  Mahdi smiled. “Admiral Wilson is in charge; we only take orde
rs from him.”

  Commander Katzen entered the chamber, accompanied by eight armed crewmen—a Mexican standoff.

  Cubit stepped between the warring parties. “Lower your weapons; there’s already been enough loss of life on this mission. Mahdi?”

  The Syrian commando nodded to his men.

  Cubit removed his cap, wiping sweat with his free hand. “You Black Widow boys are tough, I’ll give you that. Wilson must have paid your team a king’s ransom to infiltrate Iran’s heavy water reactor to obtain that uranium.”

  Mahdi grinned. “More than you and your entire crew will see in a lifetime, captain.”

  “Good for you. Payable on delivery, I imagine.”

  “The only way to ensure the mission’s success.”

  Cubit smiled, his hand casually removing a metal object hidden in the brim of his cap. “If I were you, next time I’d ask for an advance.”

  Mahdi’s expression went blank as a bloody third eye suddenly materialized above the bridge of his nose—a charred hole in Cubit’s cap revealing the presence of his hidden pistol.

  The corpse collapsed as Commander Katzen’s men wounded and disarmed the private militia before they could get off a shot.

  Lars was lying on his chest, bleeding badly from a belly wound. As two crewmen rolled him over, he pulled the pin on the grenade he had removed from his belt and tossed it across the deck with his last dying breath.

  Captain Cubit’s eyes followed the grenade as it skipped between his XO’s feet, rolled beneath a steel rack of torpedoes . . . and settled by the starboard hull.

  “Oh dear Lord—”

  Wa-Boom!

  The explosion rained a lethal dose of hot shrapnel upon the shocked crewmen a microsecond before the blast tore a hole in the ship, unleashing the sea.

  The wounded beast swallowed the Atlantic, its steel plates groaning as it sunk to the bottom of the ocean.

  7

  I woke up the next morning to find a gray-haired woman in a yellow-flowered dress searching through my dresser drawers.

  “Hey, sunshine . . . can I help you?”

  The gray-haired woman turned briefly to make eye contact then continued emptying my drawers. “I’m Dr. Beverly Chertok, your new mental health counselor.”

  “I didn’t know shrinks were allowed to just come in and search through your stuff.”

  “When a patient tells his home nurse he’s thinking about killing himself, you do what you have to do.”

  “It was a joke.”

  “Is this a joke, too?” She held up the bottle of Oxycodone.

  “My doctor prescribed them after I fell and bruised my ribs. I need them for pain.”

  “Did you need them for pain when you OD’d back in San Diego?”

  “Different time, different place. I’m not suicidal, Dr. Chertok.”

  “How would you feel if I prescribed an antidepressant?”

  “You mean one of those serotonin neurotransmitter inhibitors that can cause suicidal thoughts as a side effect? No, thanks. But if you want to write me a script for medical marijuana, my grandmother has a great brownie recipe.”

  She smiled, defrosting her cold introduction. “How was your first day of school?”

  “I survived. Now do you think you could leave so I can get dressed?”

  “Sure, as soon as the nurse checks you for bed sores. I’m going to confiscate the Oxycodone, just to be on the safe side.” She opened my bedroom door and instructed the home nurse who had ratted me out to come in and do her duty.

  “Good luck in school, Mr. Wilson. I’ll be back to check on you in a few weeks.”

  Sun Jung entered my bedroom after the nurse had left. “Oxycodone, huh?”

  “It was for my ribs.”

  “You lying, Kwan—I can see it in your eyes. Don’t ever lie to me again. You understand my English?”

  “I understand. I also understand why you look at me sometimes with shark eyes.”

  “What you mean . . . shark eyes?”

  “Sharks have eyes that are cold and uncaring. Do you ever regret taking me in, Sun Jung? Do you ever wish I was living someplace else . . . that you were on your own without having to take care of the grandson who killed your daughter? Answer my question, Sun Jung, and don’t lie—do you hate me sometimes?”

  Her eyes teared up. “I don’t hate you, Kwan.”

  “It’s okay if you do. Sometimes I hate myself.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “But you can’t bring yourself to hug me?”

  For an awkward moment she just stared at the wall, her silence a clear reply to my question.

  “Get dressed, Kwan. The van will be here soon.”

  And that’s how my second day of school began.

  Bill Raby picked me up at seven thirty. We arrived at Seacrest High ten minutes later. While I waited for Bill to set the lift in place, I saw Anya climb out of a silver 2014 E-Class Mercedes-Benz. The driver was Anya’s father—a slender Indian man with short jet-black hair and a kind face.

  Last night, I had googled Florida Atlantic University’s staff directory. Tanish Patel was a professor of economics. Before taking a teaching position at FAU, Dr. Patel had worked for the World Bank and the Council of Foreign Relations—a think tank whose members read like a who’s who of former world leaders, bankers, and corporations.

  Anya’s old man was the academic version of the Admiral—except he had a heart.

  I wheeled over to Principal Lockhart, who was greeting students as they entered from the school parking lot.

  “Good morning, Kwan. I spoke with Dr. Becker, the director of the aquatic research center in Miami. She’s willing to bring you in as a volunteer.”

  “Awesome.”

  The internship’s every Monday and Wednesday from three to eight o’clock in the evening and every other Saturday from ten a.m. to four in the afternoon.” He reached into his sports jacket pocket and removed a thick white envelope. “This is a standard release all student interns have to sign; parents and guardians, too. Bring it with you tomorrow afternoon. One thing—Dr. Becker said you’d have to arrange your own transportation to the facility.”

  My pulse quickened with the bad news. “Why do I need my own transportation? Why can’t I just ride down with Anya and Li-ling?”

  “The lab’s van isn’t wheelchair accessible.”

  “I can manage. If the driver can help me up—”

  “Kwan, the center’s not insured to transport you. Is there any way your service can drive you?”

  “I guess it’s up to the insurance company. I can ask my grandmother to make a few calls.”

  “Do that and let me know.” He paused to listen as the school bell sounded. “Better get to your homeroom, you don’t want to be marked late.”

  My homeroom was on the first floor, the classroom packed with forty-two students whose last names began with W thru Z. I settled into a tight parking spot and texted Sun Jung, who called the insurance company.

  I left early to get to my first period science class. I was already parked along the outside row when Anya entered. She looked amazing in her black tunic and faded jeans. She offered me a wave and a smile. I waved back, pretending not to notice Stephen Ley, who was pulling on the corners of his eyes as he cracked a joke with his friends—imitating me peeing in my pants.

  Jesse Gordon came in late, earning Mr. Hock’s wrath.

  Second period English.

  Third period history.

  Fourth period econ. Jesse Gordon stopped me outside of class to remind me about band practice on Saturday at his house. He said he’d text me a song list, and did I like Elvis Costello?

  I told him I did.

  I received my grandmother’s text by fifth period lunch—the insurance company had denied her request.

&nb
sp; I sat alone, feeling dejected, the insurance company’s decision sending my plan to get to know Anya spiraling into the toilet. I wondered if my confrontation with Sun Jung earlier this morning had affected her attitude with the insurance company representative. Funny how they’d pay a shrink to see me if I threatened to off myself, but if I needed transportation to do something positive with my life . . . hey, wait!

  It took me ten minutes to track down Beverly Chertok’s office number, another five to get her on the phone to plead my case.

  By seventh period history, my psychiatrist had texted me back with good news—she had received approval from the insurance company, convincing the rep that the trips to Miami were a necessary part of her recommended therapy.

  Sometimes when you look back on stuff in your life you realize that it was dumb luck which kept you progressing down a certain path. Miss a three-point shot during tryouts and you could get cut from the team; sink the same shot and your dreams get to live another day. A million random moments, a million chance meetings—a million possible different outcomes.

  Or maybe, as Rachel Solomon would say, all roads still lead to one destiny.

  The call from my driver came with the final bell. One of Bill’s autistic riders had suffered a seizure and had fallen from his wheelchair, striking his head on a steel guardrail. Bill was en route to the hospital—“I’ll only be about an hour late, eh?”

  My reply was cut off by the first cold, heavy droplets of rain. Within thirty seconds the deluge was in full force, chasing me back inside the high school.

  Being confined to a wheelchair limits one’s options. Like it or not, I was stranded until my driver arrived. The only question now was where to wait—the cafeteria or gym?

  Ah . . . sweet destiny, always pretending to be random.

  Lured by the sound of bouncing basketballs, I found my way to the gym—my heart pounding like it used to do just before practice.

  Warming up at both ends of the court were the fifteen members of Seacrest’s men’s varsity. Six wore their reversible jerseys in white, the rest in green. They were clowning around and a few were slap-fighting, led by their six-foot-seven-inch cocaptain and starting power forward—Stephen Ley.