“We didn’t kill that thing, did we?”
“No.” Breathing heavily, Kurt Hicks looked up at Gilroy. “But something else sure as hell did. We gotta tell somebody about this.” He blew out a deep breath. “Call the Coast Guard.”
CHAPTER 23
“A new species—you’re sure that’s what it is?”
Jason nodded to his cell phone as he and Craig followed a uniformed coast-guard officer down an ugly, brown-tiled hallway. “Absolutely sure, Harry. The analysis of the teeth confirmed it. It’s a new species.”
Ackerman’s voice remained calm and matter-of-fact. “That’s fantastic. As we agreed, you and your team will have another year on your contracts. Do you think you’re close to finding it?”
“We’re certainly trying to.”
“Well . . . do it, then.”
Jason paused. “I said we’re trying, Harry.”
An exhale. “Sorry, Jason. I’m dealing with . . . some financial issues with some of my companies. It’s been stressful.”
“No problem.” Jason could picture the man rubbing his forehead in the office of his gigantic mansion. “OK, Harry, so I’ll talk to you—”
“I have some other questions, if you don’t mind.”
Jason followed Craig and the officer into another hallway. “Shoot.”
“You said the teeth didn’t come from barracudas, anglers, gars, and—what other fish again?”
A pause. “I honestly don’t remember.” Jason didn’t realize he’d mentioned the fish that the teeth hadn’t come from. “You’d have to ask Lisa for further details on that.” He looked up as the officer reached a door. “Harry, I’m sorry, but we’re kind of in the middle of something here. Can I get back to you?”
“Oh. Not necessary. But anything you need on this, just let me know.”
The line cut out, and Jason hung up. “Sorry about that, Officer Bell.”
In a crisp navy uniform that made Jason feel underdressed, Officer Gavin Bell nodded. “No problem.” The guy had a crew cut and was the size of an NFL linebacker. “Anyway, here it is.”
They entered a windowless white chamber that looked like an examining room in a doctor’s office. But the room wasn’t a doctor’s. It belonged to the Monterey Coast Guard. And the specimen on the silver operating table wasn’t a person. It was a dead dolphin the guard had picked up from three fishermen earlier in the day.
It wasn’t standard practice for the coast guard to alert ichthyologists of such finds. The day before, Jason and his team had bumped into a coast-guard trawler on the ocean, and the two boats had gotten to talking. Monique explained to the “Coasties,” as the officers were known, that they were tracking a new species and Darryl and Craig had invited the men aboard for drinks. As employees of the federal government, the Coasties politely declined this offer, but clearly appreciated the gesture. As it happened, they had a chance to repay it. Earlier in the day, a freshly killed dolphin had turned up in the exact area that Jason and company had tracked their new species to.
“You guys all set in here?”
Jason turned. “We are. Thank you very much, Officer Bell. We owe you one here.”
“You don’t owe us squat.” Bell smiled at Summers, who was wearing khakis four sizes too big for him. “Nobody ever offers us beers.”
As the officer left, Jason started thinking about Lisa and didn’t know why. It wasn’t like him to think about her at all, much less during business. Was their relationship changing? She’d once despised him, but he suddenly couldn’t help but wonder if something more amicable might be brewing.
He turned back to the examining table. He was glad she didn’t have to see this. “Jesus.” What was lying there was truly gruesome: the corpse of a bottlenose dolphin. Jason guessed it had weighed 650 pounds. This was a guess because only the body’s top half was there. The lower half had been bitten off. Bitten off clean. No shark had done it. No shark alive possessed a mouth big enough or jaws strong enough to sever a dolphin in half.
Craig shook his head, eyeing the once-lively eyes, now sealed closed in death. He pivoted, leaned into the bloody red stump, and studied what looked like . . . vertical lines, from whatever had severed the body. He tried to count them. This wasn’t easy, but there appeared to be a dozen, each as wide as a human hand. They were teeth marks. Made by much larger versions of the fat S-shaped canines they’d found earlier, perhaps the size of champagne bottles. He took a few steps and studied the carcass from another angle. It was covered with smaller bites, gaping red chunks the size of footballs. Craig couldn’t believe what he was seeing. This was proof, and it was unambiguous. “My God, Jason, these rays are predators.”
Jason felt numb. “So . . . they’ve been feeding on dolphins all this time?”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t heard what the USDS has been saying?” The USDS is the United States Dolphin Society, a conservation group out of Monterey that monitors the migratory habits of bottlenoses in the Northern Pacific.
“No. What have they been saying?”
“That California’s bottlenose population has been swimming south to Brazil and Chile for two years. York says to escape GDV-4. So these rays can’t be feeding on dolphins, at least not regularly.”
“So what are they eating, then?”
“I have no idea. I’m just wondering why they didn’t eat this.”
“What do you mean?”
“Why didn’t the rays eat this dolphin? They attacked it, they killed it, why didn’t they eat it?”
Jason shook his head.
“Wait a second. . . .” Summers’s eyes sharpened. “I bet this animal has GDV-4.”
“You think?. . . .” Jason picked up a wall phone without a dialing mechanism. “Gavin, did your lab people do any tests on this specimen?” He hung up and Bell instantly brought in a manila file and left.
Summers tore into it and pointed. “Look . . . ‘tested positive for GDV-4’ . . . ‘only recently entered the bloodstream’ . . . Sounds like a mild case.”
Jason read the words himself. “So they detected a mild case in a living animal.”
“And they caught a dolphin. They caught and killed a frickin’ dolphin. How is that possible?”
Jason looked at the ceiling, clueless. Slow-swimming rays didn’t possess the physical equipment to catch speedy dolphins. The land equivalent was like a turtle catching a cheetah. It wasn’t possible. And yet it had happened. How? He considered it for several silent moments. And then the answer hit him.
“There’s only one way—there’s only one possible way.”
“What?”
“They must have outsmarted it.”
Craig absorbed this. The rays were more than just predators. Somehow they’d outsmarted what many believed to be the most intelligent wild animal on the planet. “How on God’s earth did they outsmart a dolphin?”
Jason looked up at the ceiling again. “I know. My God, I think I know.”
CHAPTER 24
“WE NEED to find a brain, a physical brain.”
It was night, and Craig and Jason had just returned to the boat. The Monterey marina was deserted now except for a lone patrolling security guard. Beneath the pale yellow light from the dock’s streetlamps, everyone was on the rear deck, dressed casually, seated on the built-ins or freestanding chairs. The others had just finished a dinner of burgers, grilled chicken, and sides.
As Craig went below deck to change out of his khakis, Lisa shook her head at Jason, not getting the logic. “You’ve seen millions of manta brains, haven’t you?”
“Manta brains, yes. But these animals are not manta rays, Lisa. They’ve got to be much smarter than that.”
“Meaning they’ll have larger brains?”
“I don’t know. That’s why I want to see one.”
Monique nodded. “That’s a fascinating idea, Jason. But how would we do it? It’s clear now that these rays are hiding, and we ha
ven’t even seen one yet.”
“Not a living one anyway.”
A pause. “Are you saying we can find dead one?”
“Yes.”
Lisa turned to Jason skeptically. “How the hell are we going to do that?”
As Craig emerged from below deck in a white terry robe, Jason smiled at Lisa Barton, for the first time noticing what she was wearing: tight jeans and a yellow shirt with a lower-than-average neckline. Her head was jutted forward, and the chip on her shoulder was almost as big as the quarter moon hanging over the docks.
“I like that optimistic nature of yours, Lisa. It’s kind of sweet.”
She reddened slightly, suddenly aware that she was leaning forward. She didn’t know why she’d worn her sexy jeans tonight.
Jason smiled, more to himself, happy he could stick her a little. “Tell her how we’re going to find a dead one, Craig.”
Craig took a step forward. “GDV-4.”
She turned. “What?”
“We know GDV-4’s been forcing these rays out of the depths, right?”
“Right.”
“But it must have killed a bunch of them, too.”
“OK, so . . .”
“So maybe we can find a dead one.”
“How do you figure that? You know how quickly the ocean’s food chain works, Craig. We wouldn’t find more than a skeleton.”
Normally, when an animal dies at sea, its entire body—skin, muscle, fat, liver, brain, even eyeballs—is eaten and digested with great efficiency. The feast takes place in three phases. First, the largest of the scavengers eats large chunks of meat and muscle. Second, smaller animals eat the bulk of the insides, including the major internal organs. Finally, the vermin, the tiniest of the flesh eaters, pick the bones clean. Nothing is left to waste, and within forty-eight hours, skeletons are all that remains.
Monique’s eyes shifted to Craig. “I don’t get that logic either.”
“Let me explain it, then. This isn’t just a normal dead body. If GDV-4 did actually kill it, then nothing will even touch it, much less eat it. The virus would actually serve the beneficial purpose of preserving the body.”
Monique smiled. “That’s very clever. You think it will work?”
“Jason figures there’s gotta be at least one body down there, and I’m inclined to agree.”
Darryl turned. “How deep are we talking, Craig?”
“A couple thousand feet.”
“A couple thousand? How are we gonna get to that? Will Ackerman pay for that?” The cost of renting the necessary equipment could easily be ten times their combined salaries.
“I get the feeling Ackerman’s financial situation is getting worse, so I’d prefer not to lean on him here.” Jason shrugged. “We might not need to.”
“You know someone who’s got the equipment?”
“I’ve got to check. What’s up with the kelp trail, Darryl?”
“We can’t find it.”
The starkness of the answer knocked a blank stare onto Jason’s face. “We’ve got to find it. If we don’t . . . we could be in real trouble.”
“Then we’re in real trouble,” Lisa said.
“What? Why do you say that?”
“Because the kelp trail’s probably gone, Jason.”
“Why would it be gone?”
“Because these rays have got to be finished teething by now.”
“Why? Mantas teethe for—”
“We’re not dealing with manta rays here; you just said it. These rays are predators, and predators grow teeth much faster.”
“How much faster?”
“Typically, with barracudas and sharks, lower-central canines peek out within hours of birth, upper centrals within weeks, first primary molars, maybe two months. I’d say all the primary teeth are generally present within four months tops.”
“But these rays have been teething on kelp for almost five.”
“Exactly my point. A very long time for a predator. I think the dolphin you and Craig just saw confirmed it: these things have real teeth now; they’ve got to be finished teething.” She slumped slightly, waiting for him to rip into her with his second-guessing. Instead, he simply nodded.
Lisa paused, not understanding this reaction. But then she realized: if they wanted to find a brain in the depths, they had to do it fast. Even if a body had been preserved by GDV-4, it wouldn’t last down there long. Water currents could destroy it in days. They had to get moving, and Jason didn’t have the time to second-guess her now.
On cue, his shoe started tapping. “How are we going to track them, then?”
Monique shrugged. “Maybe we can track them directly.”
“How, Monique?”
“Darryl, are these things big enough to pick up with sonar?”
A devilish smile. “You know, they might be. We got a bunch of buoys in storage.”
Jason raised an eyebrow. “Would that actually work?” The Expedition’s sonar buoys had an acoustical range designed to track torpedoes but could also be used to detect whales, dolphins, and other large animals. So why not the rays? The buoys were just like regular buoys except they had sonar microphones on their bottoms with a range of five miles each. With two dozen, more than a hundred square miles of ocean could be covered. They could just toss them in and see what they picked up.
Jason nodded. “It’s worth a shot. All right, Monique, tomorrow you and Darryl will throw out buoys, then track from the boat. The rest of us will see if we can find a brain.”
Darryl raised a finger. “Jason, if you’re planning to use a submersible, you know that requires a special license, right?”
“Oh.” Jason paused, looking around the boat. “Does anyone have that license?”
Blank faces looked back at him.
Then Monique turned to Darryl. “You have that license, right, my modest husband?”
Darryl smiled, his lovable smugness in plain sight. “Big Dog to the rescue again.”
Jason shook his head. “Fine. Darryl comes with us to find the brain, someone else goes with Monique.” He glanced at Phil, silent in the corner. “How about Phil?”
“Oh.” Darryl hesitated awkwardly. “Uh, well, Monique’s worked with Craig for years. Why doesn’t he just help her?”
Jason said nothing. He had to play this carefully. On the one hand, he thought this could be a perfect chance for Phil to actually do something useful on the boat. But on the other hand, this job was critically important, and he didn’t want Monique Hollis unhappy. “Sure, Phil will come with us and Craig will go with Monique.”
Darryl pivoted to Summers. “Test your harpoon gun before you go, Craig. Carefully.”
Summers nodded. While Monique could more than handle herself with a rifle, Craig, Darryl, and Jason were the only ones on the boat who’d used harpoon guns before.
“You really know someone who has this diving equipment?” Lisa asked.
Jason popped open his cell. “Let’s find out.”
“SID, IT’S Jason Aldridge.”
Sid Klepper paused, eyeing the cordless phone in his hand. He couldn’t believe it. “Jason Aldridge?! How the hell are you, man?!”
In an enormous living room, Klepper and his business partner, Ross Drummond, were stretched out on a pair of custom-made eight-foot leather couches, their large, shirtless bellies on proud display. The men didn’t look it, but they were the multimillionaire owners of Marwood Enterprises, a hugely successful conglomerate of diving businesses. The pair knew Jason from much leaner times, when all three had spent a summer working on the tiny white-sand island of Yap, in Micronesia, when Jason first learned about mantas and Sid and Ross were mere clerks in a local dive store. Drummond and Klepper’s lives had changed dramatically since then, but they’d always considered Jason a friend. “What’s going on, Jason?!”
Jason smiled quietly at the greeting. Klepper and Drummond had once been friends of his, real ones, and with the exception of Phil Martino, he didn’t have many of those
anymore. “Let me tell you what’s going on, Sid.”
When he finished explaining, Klepper didn’t hesitate. “Of course you can borrow the equipment. When do you want it?”
“As soon as you can do it, Sid. Sure, I’ll hold.” Jason literally crossed his fingers. Then he smiled. “Tomorrow would be perfect.”
CHAPTER 25
THE NEXT afternoon was a gorgeous mid-October day, perfect for jeans and sweatshirts. While Monique and Craig dropped sonar buoys in strategic locations at sea, Jason, Lisa, Darryl, and Phil were at the busy Monterey docks, waiting to be picked up. Watching one yacht after another enter the marina, Jason anxiously drummed his fingers on a guardrail.
“Excuse me, Jason?”
He turned. Phil Martino was standing there. “Hey, Phil, what’s up?”
“Can we talk really quick?” Phil seemed to mean in private, away from Lisa and Darryl.
“Sure.” They walked down the dock then stopped. “What’s up?”
Phil raised his camera. “I sure take some great pictures, don’t I?”
“You really do, Phil. I’m glad we have you.”
Phil nodded sadly. A white lie from a friend. “Jason, I don’t feel like I’m a part of the team.” He rubbed his curly hair and looked out at the fancy boats. “I haven’t felt like I’m a part of the team for some time.”
“Oh.” Jason nodded, quietly disappointed. Phil had been the Expedition’s whipping boy for as long as he could remember. Maybe Darryl’s outright snub the night before had finally pushed him over the edge. “You’re not saying you want to quit, are you?”
“Not at all. I’m just wondering if I can do anything else to contribute.”
“Hmm.” Jason scratched his chin. He had no idea what else Phil Martino could do.
“So I was thinking. Since you and everybody else are so busy, maybe I could transcribe all of your findings, analyses and all that, into the laptop. There’s tons of stuff floating around among all of us, and I figure things can get lost or whatever. This way we’d have a written record on a hard drive. What do you think?”
Natural Selection Page 11
