Sharkman

by Steve Alten

  I had never met head coach Bradford Flaig, but he seemed like he was in a foul mood as he wheeled a cart holding a television and DVD player across the sideline to the home bleachers. I was surprised when he gestured me over, handing me the plug end of an extension cord.

  “You my new manager?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Well . . . make yourself useful anyway. See if you can find an electrical outlet.”

  Wheeling down the sideline, I quickly located the removable disk covering the floor outlet that was used to power the game clock.

  I plugged in the cord and returned to Coach Flaig, who had powered up the unit and was advancing the game footage using a remote. “You’re Kwan, right?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You look like you have some size to you. Did you play any ball before . . . you know.”

  “I was our starting point guard. I was second team all-conference last year as a sophomore.”

  “We could have used you.” He gestured to the screen. “Our first scrimmage. Got our asses kicked. Want to sit in on the film session?”

  “Sure.”

  Coach Flaig blew his whistle. “All right, ladies, balls in the rack and have a seat.”

  I rolled backward, parking to one side of the stands as fifteen bodies stormed up the bleachers like a herd of buffalo.

  “Yo, Coach, why’s he here?”

  It was Ley, and the douche bag was pointing at me.

  “I invited Kwan to sit in on practice. That okay with you, superstar?”

  Ley ignored the coach’s sarcasm. “Sure, Coach. Just don’t piss him off.”

  The team cracked up, guys pounding knuckles and slapping palms. The jock world lives by the law of the jungle—the strong always picking on the weak. Back in San Diego, I had fought my way from being locker room prey to earning a place at the table, and there was nothing better than being one of the predators—one of the guys.

  There was nothing worse than being the team meal and Stephen Ley clearly had a boner for me.

  “All right, knock it off. We open against West Boca in two weeks; play the way you played Saturday against Seminole Ridge and we’ll be lucky to finish the season at .500.”

  Coach Flaig started the DVD. “Defense. We opened in man-to-man, hoping to put pressure on their guards. They must have run this same high screen and roll twenty times, and twenty times our guards were late contesting their three. Stephen, that’s your man setting the pick. What’s missing here?”

  “Looks like Jerome, Coach. Yo, ’Rome, I told you all game, you got to fight your way around the screen. Same for Michael Jay and Rusty. You guys got lit up.”

  “Shut up, Ley.”

  “Stephen’s right. Seminole’s backcourt scored forty-one points—including seven treys. Who can tell me why?”

  Heads dropped, except for Stephen Ley’s—the “emperor” proud in his royal clothes—only I could see that he was naked.

  “Ley didn’t hedge the screener,” I heard myself saying.

  Heads turned. Was the crippled antelope really challenging the lion?

  “Explain it to him, Kwan,” Coach Flaig barked.

  I rolled out from the shadows of the bleachers, my heart pounding as I pointed to the frozen image of the screen and roll. “The defender guarding the guy setting the screen has to hedge . . . he has to jump out on the opposite side of the pick, forcing the ball handler to go wide. That buys the defending guard an extra second or two to fight through the screen, catch his man, and defend the shot.”

  “Owned,” yelled Jerome. “Yo, Ley, why you making us look so bad?”

  “And you never called out the picks,” chimed in Rusty.

  “Shut up, scrub.” He turned to me, his eyes full of venom. “Who the fu—”

  Coach Flaig blew his whistle, cutting him off. “We win as a team, we lose as a team, and we play help defense as a team. Everybody has to talk. Bigs have to hedge. Guards have to fight over the screen. Get it now, because we’re gonna drill the screen and roll all afternoon until you do. Everyone on the baseline for suicides.”

  Groans and moans as the team stomped down the bleachers, a few sneakers kicking at my chair.

  Coach Flaig smiled at me. “I’m still looking for a team manager. You up for it?”

  “No, thanks, Coach. I already volunteered for another program.”

  I rolled out of the gym as the whistle blew, sending the team sprinting from the end line to the foul line and back, to half court and back . . . to the opposite foul line and back—and finally from end line to end line and back.

  Suicides. Pounding hearts and burning lungs and quads drenched in lactic acid.

  I hated suicides—all basketball players do, yet I would have traded my right arm to be able to run them again.

  8

  Wednesday. I woke up, excited to begin my internship with Anya at the facility in Miami.

  First, I had to survive the wrath of Stephen Ley.

  The basketball star was pissed off, and he was letting everyone know it on Facebook and Twitter. Heading to first period, I could feel the stares and hear the whispers from the other students—herds of strangers, pointing at the “dead man rolling.”

  High school’s like that. Students move in groups. There’s protection among your own kind, a feeling that you belong. Doors open, you get invited to parties . . . what counts is you’re not one of the losers who stay at home on Saturday nights, you’re not the slowest camper—the one who gets eaten by the bear.

  Back in San Diego I had been a jock, at the top of the pecking order. Here in Delray Beach, I was the Asian freak in the wheelchair—a cripple’s version of The Scarlet Letter.

  I hated that book.

  Ley struck right before first period biology, assaulting me outside the classroom with a shaken can of soda, taking photos of my stained pants with his iPhone to create a new album of embarrassing photos. Anya stepped in to defend me—only making it worse.

  “Why do you have to pick on Kwan, Stephen? What did he ever do to you?”

  “For your information, Anya, his gook relatives killed my uncle’s wife’s brother in Vietnam. What’s it to you anyway? Unless you like him. You do! Hey guys, Anya has a new boyfriend—Kwan the Cripple.”

  “Stop it!”

  “Go on, Anya, give your boyfriend a lap dance.” He pushed Anya onto my Coke-drenched lap, her sudden weight displacement nearly tossing me sideways.

  “He’s not my boyfriend, now stop it. Ugh, you stained my skirt, you asshole!”

  Mr. Hock stepped out into the hallway. “Anya? What’s going on out here?”

  Ley grinned. “It’s Kwan, Mr. Hock. He got excited over Anya sitting in his lap and had an accident.”

  The rest of the class laughed. Anya stormed off to clean her skirt in the bathroom—and suddenly I didn’t give a damn about the internship or school . . . or life.

  Bill Raby was waiting for me curbside when the seventh period bell mercifully ended my day. A small crowd of Ley disciples recorded my chair being loaded aboard the van. I didn’t even bother to turn away from their cell phones, having already disappeared.

  “Miami, eh?”

  “Just take me home, Bill.”

  “Can’t do that. Work order says I have to take you to Miami and pick you up at eight.”

  “Take me home, I don’t feel well.”

  “If you don’t feel well then I’m supposed to take you to the doctor.”

  “Listen, asshole, I don’t want to see the doctor, I just want to go home and lie down.”

  “I could lay you down on the gurney.”

  “Are you hard of hearing or just stupid? I just want to go home.”

  Forty-five minutes later we arrived in Miami.

  * * *

  The Aquatic Neurological & Genetics E
ngineering Lab—ANGEL for short—was located on Virginia Key, which is a small island situated in Biscayne Bay that harbors the Miami Sea Aquarium. I would learn that the sea aquarium leased their unused land to the genetics lab and shared its water purification plant, which fed both facilities’ salt water tanks.

  Bill had to cross over the Rickenbacker Causeway twice before he found the lab’s unmarked dirt road entrance. He cursed the entire bumpy half mile before we reached a steel gate securing a twenty-foot-high perimeter fence capped with barbed wire. A security camera was mounted atop a light pole, a two-way speaker attached to a post.

  “Hey kid, where they got you working—Folsom prison?”

  “Dude, just roll down your window and press the intercom.”

  Bill shrugged and complied. “Afternoon, eh. I’m delivering Kwan Wilson, your new intern.”

  After an annoying minute the gate buzzed, then swung slowly inward on its hinges.

  Bill drove onto a recently tarred two-lane road which curved to the right around a privacy shrub that concealed the facility from the causeway. “Nice view, eh . . . for a dump.”

  He was right. Spoiling the sparkling turquoise-blue horizon that was Biscayne Bay was a two-story rectangular brown brick building that looked like it had been built back in the 1950s. To the left of the structure were four double-wide trailers, their rusted steel bottoms resting on cinder blocks. The back end of the trailers lined up along a weed-infested stretch of fencing that separated the lab from the aquarium’s water treatment plant before cutting west across a barren stretch of beach, enclosing the six-acre facility.

  Making his way down a cement sidewalk that separated the building from the trailers was a stocky man in his early thirties. He had short brown curls for hair, a high forehead, and pale skin that probably burned easily in the sun. He was at least four inches shy of six feet, but he had thick wrists to go along with a barrel chest and looked like he played football.

  Make that rugby. The accent was Australian, his vocabulary heavy in “strine”—Aussie slang.

  “G’ Day. Name’s Joe Botchin, I’m the head duffer around here, and the unofficial lord of the manor.” He poked his ten gallon head inside Bill’s window to have a look at me. “So you’re the new Jackaroo. Not sure we’re fully wheelchair accessible, but we’ll make do. You got here ahead of the two Sheilas, but no worries, I’ll give you the five quid tour. Well, come on then, Shark Bait, let’s get going.”

  Bill opened the panel door and lowered me to the asphalt. We agreed that I’d be picked up at eight; then I followed Joe down the cracked sidewalk.

  “How hurt are you, Wilson?”

  “I’m paralyzed from the waist down.”

  “The old fella, too?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Kwan junior. Your thingo. Can you crack a fat or no?”

  I gritted my teeth. Why did people always want to know about my penis? “No, dude. I can’t ‘crack a fat’ if that’s what I think it means.”

  “Don’t get cranky, Shark Bait. I’m only asking because we’ve had some success with repairing rat spinal cords using the stemmies. We’re not there yet, mind you, but we’re doing cutting-edge stuff here.”

  My adrenaline started pumping. “What exactly are you doing?”

  “Best I let the geniuses explain that. But I’ll show you the beauties makin’ it all possible.”

  The path led behind the building to a pavilion overlooking a circular concrete canal that was situated twenty feet below the ground. The channel was wide enough to accommodate a pickup truck and was a tenth of a mile around, and it was filled three-quarters high with seawater.

  I pressed my wheelchair sideways against the five-foot-high guardrail and peered below at the olive-green water. Swimming lazily just below the surface were sharks. Lots of them.

  “What kind of sharks are they?”

  “By last count, we’ve got thirteen different species. That Sourpuss, she’s a lemon. Devo’s a thresher, you can tell by his tail.”

  “Devo?”

  “As in ‘whip it—whip it good.’ It’s an old song—never mind. Anyway, that dorsal there belongs to our mako; that one with the bite mark is a blue, and the critters camped out in groups along the bottom are nursies.”

  “Wow, what’s this big one swimming along the surface?”

  “That’s Maxie. She’s a tiger. Twelve and a half feet from her snout to the tip of her upper lobe. Big fish, but she’s a pussycat compared to Taurus. Here he comes, zigging back and forth like he owns the place. Taurus is a bull shark—eight feet and six hundred pounds I’m guessing. He was patrolling the shallows along Miami Beach when my boys netted him. Put up quite a fight. Taurus is scheduled for this afternoon’s get. Been watching him all day, workin’ out how I’m gonna get him into the paddock.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The paddock? Follow me.” Joe led me around to the area of the canal closest to the building where a secondary channel ran from the main pen into the ugly brick building. “The paddock loops into the main tank. My job is to herd our volunteer through the gate without lettin’ anyone else inside. Last month one of the dogfish squeezed into the paddock with Maxie and Maxie didn’t take well to it—meanin’ she bit her tail off and ate what was left. Doc Becker was as cross as a cut snake, but what was I supposed to do? Rover darted in underneath Maxie—ain’t nuthing to be done about it, right? Besides, we already tested Rover’s stemmies, which was as useless as your . . . well, never mind. Anyway, that’s the paddock.”

  “Any great whites?”

  “Whites? Nah. Pen’s too small. Besides, the whites tend to die in captivity. Taurus is mean enough. Lots of testosterone in the bulls. Hopefully, that’s a good thing.”

  “It hasn’t worked out too well for you.”

  We turned as Li-ling entered the pavilion area, followed by Anya.

  Joe greeted her with his own rendition of the Troggs’ “Wild Thing.” “Li-ling . . . you make my heart sing. You please my ding-a-ling—”

  “You can please your own ding-a-ling.”

  “Ah, come on, my little Asian delight. You love me. Admit it.”

  “Mr. Botchin!”

  “Crikey . . .”

  Emerging from the back of the building was a short woman in her midfifties, her strawberry-blonde hair wrapped in a tight bun. She wore a white lab coat and a nasty look on her petite face, and I had no doubt she was in charge.

  “Dr. Becker . . . I was just—”

  “I’m well aware of what you were just doing. Let me remind you that my interns are not here to entertain you in any capacity, is that clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Where is Mr. Roig?”

  “I sent him to fetch a hunk of tuna for our friend. Are you ready for him?”

  “I was ready for him ten minutes ago. Li-ling and Anya, I need you in the lab.” She turned to face me. “You’re Kwan?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you have a signed release form for me?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I reached inside the Doors backpack and located the six-page legal form, handing it to her.

  She methodically checked to make sure each page had been initialed, then pocketed the release. “We’ll talk later. For now, keep an eye on ‘Wrangler Joe’ here, then join us in the lab.” She held the steel security door open for Anya and Li-ling, allowing it to slam shut behind her.

  Joe wiped sweat beads from his heavy brow. “That was Dr. Barbara Becker, the boss lady.”

  “Is she always this angry?”

  “Only when the Jackaroos from the Pentagon crawl up her freckle. We don’t talk about it, but the military’s taken a keen interest in our work of late.”

  “Why would they care about a shark stem cell program?”

  “You don’t really get what these stemmies do, do
you? Imagine a billion microscopic cells injected into your blood stream, programmed by nature to fix everything that ain’t working. Shark stem cells have a special gift—they have these little doovalackys in them that hate cancer. A stem cell sees a cancer cell and it gives it a gobful. Blasts the bloody cancer into scar tissue—splat.”

  “I still don’t get—”

  “Nuclear war, Shark Bait. Let’s suppose Iran develops the bomb and they give it to Hamas or Hezbollah or one of them other terrorist groups who delivers a suitcase nuke into Israel. The Israelis launch a counterstrike . . . who knows what will happen. But it’ll be bad. Purple Rain bad.”

  “The radioactive fallout will cause widespread cancer, only—”

  “Only the doc’s working on a potential serum that not only cures the Big C, it boosts the immune system so you never get it in the first place. Just because you nuke Iran doesn’t mean all that oil has to go to waste.”

  “I get it. The Pentagon wants to inoculate our soldiers just in case we have to nuke Iran.”

  “Or use the technology to barter for a peace treaty in the aftermath . . . at least that’s what the doc’s trying to convince herself of every time she accepts one of those six-figure Black Ops deposits that keep the lights on.”

  “What lights? This place is a dump.”

  “Sure it is.” Joe turned and waved at an approaching golf cart. “About bloody time.”

  The driver, a Hispanic dude a few years older than me skidded into a parking place by the edge of the canal. “Sorry. Sea aquarium left me with the frozen chum. I had to warm it. Who’s this?”

  “Johnny Roig, say hello to Wilson Kahn.”

  “Actually, it’s Kwan Wilson.”

  “That’s what I said.” Joe popped open a fifty-gallon ice chest strapped to the back of the golf cart, then used a steel hook to pull out the severed head of a tuna, which still must have weighed a good thirty pounds. The Australian expertly threaded a nylon rope through the fish’s mouth, then held up the dripping mess and took a whiff. “Smells like a Sheila I once dated back in high school. Come to think of it, it kind of looks like her, too. Johnny boy, get your reach pole and man the paddock gate. Juan, park yourself over there and yell out when you see Taurus swimming toward us. Big brown fin with a—”