Vengeance from the Deep - Book One: Pliosaur

by Russ Elliott

  Val grabbed her by her ski vest and pulled her up. “Get your face away from there! Didn’t you hear me? There are about a dozen sharks down there. Hey! You shouldn’t even be standing up! Get back over there and sit down. And put that ice pack on your ankle before it gets to be the size of an elephant’s.”

  With a rebellious sneer, Sandy hopped back to the stern, took a seat, and slid the ice chest beneath her foot. “So what else did you see down there? Were there any dead bodies?”

  “No . . . I don’t know,” replied Val, pulling off his fins, still shaken. “I didn’t really get a chance to look inside the ship.”

  Placing the ice bag on her ankle, Sandy looked up. “But Dad, don’t you think we should call someone, like the Coast Guard?”

  Val slid the tank off his back, “Yeah, I’ll call it in right now. But I don’t think South Africa has a Coast Guard. I think those duties are handled by some special branch of the Navy. You just sit tight, and we’ll wait until they get here.”

  ~~~

  John pressed his elbow over the side of the raft and stared across the open sea. His visibility was limited in the drizzling rain. He squinted, then rubbed his eyes and again it was gone. What appeared to be lights from a boat turned out to be only another wave twinkling in the distance.

  Boat, John thought almost with a laugh. He tried to tell himself he was searching for boats to rescue him, but knew he was on the lookout for something else. He looked at the giant tooth beside his boots and then at the chimp who was staring out across the open sea. “Yeah, you know there’s something out there too. Don’t you, girl?”

  John slowly lay back down, and the tension in his neck released. Knowing what was out there made it impossible to sleep, though. The best he could manage was to pass out for brief intervals. It was difficult to determine how long he was out because every time he woke, it was to the same sky and light rain.

  Earlier he saw a row of lights from what appeared to be a cruise ship passing from a few miles away. To the best of his calculations, the ship was northeast of the raft. Maybe he was close to a shipping lane. There was a chance that by morning the current would bring him close enough to be seen in the daylight. John didn’t get his hopes up, though—as far as he could tell, the current was pulling him westward.

  His head throbbed from dehydration. His mind had started playing tricks on him, making time and distance almost impossible to calculate.

  John noticed movement out of the corner of his eye. He froze. At first he thought it was his over-stimulated imagination, but he knew better as an obscure shape grew closer, rippling the smooth black waters.

  The chimp sensed John’s alarm and scooted to his side.

  Drawing closer, a dorsal fin broke the surface. As the shimmering gray back glided past, John realized it was a great white about fourteen feet long. He lay back down on one elbow and rubbed the chimp’s head. “Relax, Crystal, it’s practically a minnow.”

  He watched as the fin made another pass, and in spite of his predicament, he couldn’t help laughing. Who would have ever thought that watching a large great white from a six-foot raft would bring a sense of relief? As the fin continued to circle, John gazed at the passing clouds. With a bizarre sense of safety, he knew that if this great white was still in the area, the eighty-foot monstrosity was not.

  He shook his head and stared blankly into the drizzling rain. “How did I ever let the professor talk me into this?”

  ~~~

  “Just a few more minutes, and we’ll take it off,” said Val, carefully holding the bag of ice on his daughter’s ankle.

  “But it’s so cold . . . can’t we take it off now?”

  Val slowly lifted the bag. “Well, let’s see how it looks.” He rubbed two fingers across her tight, cool skin. “Not bad,” he said. “The swelling doesn’t seem to have gotten any worse.”

  Sandy began to fidget in her seat and excitedly pointed from the stern. “Look, they’re here! I can see them!”

  Val looked back toward the approaching boat. “It’s about time. It’s been over an hour. Another twenty minutes and it’ll be dark.”

  The thirty-eight-foot Naval Patrol vessel pulled alongside the ski boat. A black man in a wet suit tossed Val a line. Val pulled the rope taut as the diver put his hand on the speedboat’s starboard, easing the vessels closer together. Another man dressed in a naval uniform stepped across and boarded the ski boat. He was a stocky blonde in his late forties. His gray eyes were filled with curiosity.

  “Sorry it took us so long. We were only a couple miles away when we received your call. We were helping with cleanup at the Motanza. We would have been here sooner, but on the way we ran into someone with engine trouble. I’m Captain Longland.” He extended his hand.

  “Val Winston, and the one over there with her foot up is my daughter Sandy.”

  “So we hear you’ve come across something quite interesting out here.”

  “Actually, my daughter was the one who came across it, and come across it she did! The impact nearly broke her ankle.” Val glanced at his watch and called back to Sandy. “Time to put the ice back on.” Sandy frowned but reached for the ice bag.

  Val pointed to an area about ten yards off port. “We were going at a pretty good pace when, right over there, she apparently hit the tip of the mast. You can barely see it. It broke her ski in half, but fortunately the ski took most of the force. I grabbed my tank and went down to take a look.

  “It was really strange. A yacht, maybe a thirty-five- or forty-footer on its side, and parallel to its hull was a dead whale shark. I was going to take a closer look until I nearly butted heads with a good-sized bull. I decided that was a good time to get back to the boat. There are at least a dozen sharks around the carcass. Better tell your guys to keep their eyes open down there.”

  The captain stepped closer to Val and lowered his voice. “Did you run across any bodies or human remains?” Sandy craned her neck, trying to listen.

  “No. But like I said, I wasn’t down that long.”

  The captain looked toward the Mazeppa Bay coastline. “That’s peculiar. We didn’t receive any distress calls from this area.” He turned his attention to the patrol boat. He looked at the two divers gearing up at the stern. One man looked Italian, and the other was black, but they both had regulation crew cuts and sleek athletic builds. “Angelo, Marty, apparently there are a number of sharks down there feeding from the carcass. Make sure to take your spear guns.”

  The captain pointed to a spot about twenty yards past the patrol boat. “See? There’s the tip of the mast.” The divers looked toward the white tip. “Try dropping down from there straight to the bottom then approach the ship from the west side. That way you may be able to use the ship to keep you out of view of the sharks. Good luck and be careful.” The two divers gave him the thumbs-up then slipped into the water, being careful not to make a splash.

  As the two figures faded into the depths, Captain Longland approached Sandy. “Now let’s have a look at that ankle, shall we?”

  ~~~

  Beneath the surface, the divers followed the mast until they reached the huge air bubble trapped in the sail, then slowly descended straight down to the ocean floor. Staying close to the bottom, they left the severed mast and swam toward the ship while carefully looking in all directions. They took the yacht’s ID number, then swam over the side rail and reached the tilted deck. Angelo pointed up. There was a long section of the deck where the planks had been torn up. It led to the stairwell, where the top had been completely ripped away. Marty shook his head in disbelief.

  The two divers swam farther up the deck. They examined the jagged shards of wood around the cavity that once was the stairwell, then descended into the ship’s lower level. Angelo entered the hallway. The light from behind suddenly disappeared. He looked back and caught a glimpse of something passing over the stairwell. Judging from the shadow, it looked very large. Quickly he spun around in the hallway and decided to investigate. Marty
followed just behind Angelo’s fins.

  After gliding through the stairwell, Angelo looked across the deck and saw nothing. Staying close to the tilted deck, they swam farther up toward the portside rail. Angelo reached the rail first and looked through. At point-blank range, he found a pair of cold black eyes staring back at him. He pushed back from the rail in terror, bumping into Marty. Their eyes never left the twelve-foot bull shark as it continued its gaze from behind the rail. The shark slowly lifted its nose above the rail curiously, watching the fleeing divers. Then with a sudden lateral movement the creature turned and swam in the opposite direction, joining the feast below.

  From the higher angle, Angelo could see the entire body of the dead whale shark. Its white underbelly ran parallel with the bow of the ship. Just past the flopped-over pectoral fin he saw where the creature’s head had been nearly severed. The massive carcass rocked while dozens of gray tails thrashed in front of the gaping wound.

  Beneath Angelo a large torpedo-shaped shadow crossed the deck. He looked up and ducked. The white underbelly of another bull shark flashed over him and disappeared behind the side rail. Angelo made a pounding gesture over his heart then pointed back to the stairwell.

  Marty quickly nodded.

  The divers descended to the deck. Silver clouds of bubbles rose above the leaning rail and raced toward the surface. Dropping into the dark stairwell, Angelo turned on his dive light. The beam shined through the hallway illuminating the open doors that swung with the flow of the current—a current that seemed mysteriously strong to be flowing through an enclosed ship.

  Marty fell behind Angelo and entered a cabin on their left. Angelo ventured forward and shined his light into a restroom on the right. Inside, a terrycloth robe reached out from a towel rack, waving with the current from a nearby open window. He opened a closet door beside the shower. A stack of white towels dropped out, unfolding as they glided through the water. Pushing the towels aside, he swam back through the doorway. Again he felt the current surge through the hall. Angelo continued to make his way around hovering articles of clothing until he reached a partially opened door at the end of the hall.

  When he reached for the handle, the door blew open from the passing current. Oddly, the cabin was slightly illuminated. A glance to the right revealed why. There was an immense jagged opening which allowed dim light reflecting from the seafloor to enter the room. Swimming closer to the hole, the white underbelly of the whale shark came into view.

  Marty entered the doorway with his spear gun in hand. Through his dive mask Angelo could see the surprise in his eyes when he saw the massive jagged opening.

  Angelo pointed the beam of light toward the ceiling. Light reflected from a long splintered indentation that ran the width of the cabin. Broken light bulbs dangled from wires and swayed with the current. A bull shark poked its head into the opening and turned toward the dive light. The beam fell across the widely spaced black eyes. Angelo backed toward the doorway.

  Marty moved aside, allowing Angelo to exit the cabin first. Once outside the cabin, Marty quickly closed the door behind them and swam back through the hallway, his spear gun trained on the door. Marty turned around, and a flannel shirt wrapped around his face. Pushing the shirt away, he caught his mask and slid it off, his spear gun dropping to the hallway floor. Angelo swam back to Marty and grabbed the shirt. Just as he tossed it aside, the massive head of the bull shark crashed through the cabin door. The shirt rolled across the shark’s back, catching on the speeding dorsal fin.

  Tossing the dive light, Angelo scooped up the spear gun from the floor. He took aim at the fast-approaching head. Click. The spear streaked through the hallway and plunged into the bathroom door, just as it swung open in front of the shark’s head. The door split in half, falling from its hinges as the bull shark burst through it. Angelo reached the stairwell and saw the back of Marty’s fins fluttering above the steps. Marty looked back, motioning for them to surface.

  With an eager thumbs-up, Angelo followed.

  Leaving the stairwell, Angelo saw another large shadow cross the deck—another bull shark passing overhead. Looking down, he saw the thick, gray head of their aggressor rise from the shadowy stairwell. While ascending, Angelo reloaded the spear gun and pointed it toward the stairwell. The shark soared over the deck, adjusting its course to continue the hunt. The thirty-yard gap between the shark and divers was quickly reduced to ten.

  Angelo nervously took aim. He knew that if he missed a second time, there would never be a third. Slowly, he squinted. His finger tightened on the trigger. The spear streaked through the water, glazing the bull’s gills. The creature thrashed for a moment, then arced back around and headed toward the whale carcass. As the fluttering tail sped toward the seafloor, Angelo made for the surface.

  ~~~

  At the waterline Captain Longland helped the divers up the ladder of the patrol boat. Angelo pulled up his mask first. “Sir, he wasn’t exaggerating about the number of sharks down there. They’re everywhere, even inside the ship. We had a couple of close ones!”

  Marty nodded and looked at the captain. “Yeah, it’s just like the gentleman described, Sir. A yacht lying beside a forty-foot whale shark. We didn’t run across any human remains, but if there were any, I’m certain the sharks would’ve finished them off by now.”

  The captain looked at Angelo. “Were you able to find any evidence that might suggest why the ship went down?”

  The two divers looked at each other and chorused, “Oh yeah!”

  Angelo set down his mask. “There was an enormous section of the hull missing. Apparently, something came through the outside wall and floor of the main cabin. It was the strangest thing I’d ever seen.”

  “So what do you think happened?” asked Val from the stern of his speedboat.

  The captain spoke up. “My guess is the whale shark was feeding too close to the surface, and the yacht ran into it, doing enough damage for the vessel to take on water. The whale shark apparently sustained an injury, which drew the sharks in to finish it off. Collisions with whale sharks are quite common in these waters, especially this time of the year.”

  Angelo sat down at the stern. “I don’t know, Captain. That would have to have been some kind of bump. The damage extended all the way up to the ceiling of the cabin . . . and even topside, like something plowed across the deck, and took off the top of the stairwell. But as far as the whale’s concerned, it was difficult to determine the exact wound placement because its head was nearly torn off from the scavenger sharks.”

  Marty slipped off his tank. “He’s right, Captain. The hole in the cabin was massive. It had to be fifteen feet wide. It looked more like it was hit by a torpedo than bumped by a whale. Also, the placement of the damage seemed odd. It was more toward the middle of the hull rather than in the bow where you would expect it to be in a ramming situation. Seemed more like the whale shark ran into the ship rather than vice versa.”

  Val returned to the driver’s seat of the speedboat. He glanced back at his daughter’s swollen ankle and said, “Well, if you gentlemen are finished with us, I’m gonna head in and get Sandy’s ankle looked at.”

  The captain turned and caught the bowline as Val tossed it over. “Appreciate you calling this in and waiting for us to arrive.”

  “Don’t mention it.” Val accelerated the boat and pulled away while Sandy waved enthusiastically.

  The captain turned his attention to the water and contemplated what to do next. Concerned about the divers’ safety, he looked at Angelo and shook his head. “There are too many sharks to go back down tonight. You already checked for survivors. We’ll just mark the spot for now and come back to finish the investigation in the morning.”

  Chapter 15

  AT THE MERCY OF THE SEA

  John sat tattered and dehydrated in the life raft, floating aimlessly beneath a moonlit sky. He reached up and felt the dried blood and scratches crusted on his face. His feet and hands were numb. The knot in the bac
k of his neck burned from the endless hours of holding up his head. But he pushed back the pain. Only the vast expanse of open sea held his attention. Still not a trace of a boat, nothing but blackness divided by a faint horizon line. Was he still in the middle of the ocean or was land less than a mile away, hidden by the night?

  He thought he heard a splash, turned quickly, but saw nothing. He could no longer distinguish reality from his imagination. Every white cap brought a rush of panic until further scrutiny proved it was only the wind. Although John rarely attended church, something deep within his inner being insisted that he pray. And he complied as best he could. His whispers carried off to the heavens on an ocean breeze—a last line of defense against an unseen terror.

  A twinkle of light caught his eye. He turned his gaze to the giant tooth at his feet, moonlight dancing off the white enamel with every wave. “A priceless find.” The words rolled bitterly off cracked lips. The initial magnificence the tooth held when he’d discovered it on the island was long gone. Now it served only as a grim reminder of the prehistoric monstrosity he knew was out there somewhere. Daylight was terrifying enough when he could at least see across the dark waters. But the night was more than his frazzled nerves could stand.

  As the moon drifted behind a cloud, dimming the light, his attention turned inward. The expedition had gone wrong on every level. After narrowly escaping from the island with his life, only to end up crashing at sea, he felt as if he’d been hurled from one nightmare into another. And in this one the odds were definitely not on his side. He reached over and rubbed the head of his sole companion. The small chimpanzee was still staring out into the darkness. Yes, she senses something’s out there, he thought.

  For hours John had stared at the glimmering surface, as if his constant vigil would somehow keep the colossal creature away. The damp air grew cooler. With each gust of wind, the perspiration felt like ice against his skin. Cool, foul liquid swirled around his legs. John dared not to relieve himself overboard, knowing that even the scent of his urine could be detected from below.