Generations

by Steve Alten

  —Brutus heading back to the bow to make another assault on the stern.

  * * *

  The Bell 525 helicopter soared south above the Pacific coast on its short excursion from downtown San Francisco. Among its thirteen passengers was the CEO of the Emirates National Oil Company; one of the presidents of the National Bank of Fujairah; Ryan Skinner, the newly elected governor of California; a half-dozen chairmen representing three of the largest construction companies in Dubai; and a reporter with the Gulf News.

  There were also two Arab security men, their Glocks bulging beneath the jackets of their dark suits.

  The man seated alone in the last row unplugged his headphones, cutting off the voice of his first cousin. Crown Prince Walid Abu Naba’a had been pitching his entourage of financial backers about “his” aquarium and “his” juvenile Liopleurodon from the moment they had taken off from the rooftop of their hotel, and Fiesal bin Rashidi could not handle another word.

  Your Liopleurodon? Was it you who spent the last eight months aboard the Tonga, chasing that creature’s mother across the Pacific Ocean? Was it you who had to deal with a mutinous crew after you threatened to cancel their bonus checks?

  The only reason we captured that monster’s offspring is because I held the mission together … me, cousin. Not you. Instead, you’ve reduced me to an afterthought. Do you think that I cannot hear the whispers of deceit coming from back home … your discussions to buy out my twenty percent? To replace me as director of Dubai-Land?

  Without me, there would be no aquarium … there would be no Dubai-Land!

  Fiesal bin Rashidi massaged the tension knotting beneath his unibrow. The Dubai-Land Resort and Aquarium was on the verge of becoming the entertainment mecca of the world. Yet by the time the park opened, he would be as forgotten as Billy Wilkerson, the man who had lost the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas to Bugsy Siegel.

  * * *

  Like his father before him, Fiesal bin Rashidi was an engineer, earning his degrees from Cambridge, his field of interest targeting naval applications. He had been working on the Chunnel when a friend introduced him to a marine biologist in need of someone with his expertise.

  Dr. Michael Maren had been as paranoid as he was brilliant—an odd chap who had avoided eye contact when he spoke and trusted no one. His mother had died recently, leaving him an abundance of wealth with which to pursue his scientific endeavors. Maren had been interested in exploring the deepest ocean trenches in the world and was looking to hire a naval engineer who could design a deep-water habitat possessing a submersible docking station capable of withstanding water pressures in excess of nineteen thousand pounds per square inch.

  The challenge had been enormous, the requirement a bit baffling, since the Mariana Trench, the deepest known location on the planet, possessed sixteen thousand pounds of pressure. Still, the job paid well and Fiesal could work on it while he completed his work on the Chunnel.

  Over the next three years the naval engineer had tested half a dozen different designs before coming up with one that had proved stable enough to flood and drain a docking station nine miles beneath the surface. Two titanium habitats had been built while Maren’s research vessel was fitted with an A-frame, winch, and steel cable strong enough to lower and raise the enormous weight. After five years of construction and tests, the marine biologist had been ready to set sail to “an unexplored realm.” Fiesal had been offered a position on the maiden voyage, but the thought of spending upward of a year at sea with the volatile scientist and his lover/assistant, Allison Petrucci, held no appeal. With the Chunnel complete, Fiesal had accepted an offer from his father’s firm, returning to Dubai to work on the emirate’s new airport.

  Eighteen months later, he had been contacted by Allison Petrucci, who informed him Dr. Maren was dead. After coercing the engineer into signing a nondisclosure agreement, the woman had presented him with evidence of an unexplored sea that dated back hundreds of millions of years, possessing ancient marine life that could be captured and placed on exhibit. For a seven-figure sum she would provide Fiesal with the coordinates of an access point into the realm her fiancé had referred to as the Panthalassa Sea.

  Bin Rashidi had needed more convincing. He got it when the woman had produced a map of the Philippine Sea Plate, indicating that the ancient sea actually resided beneath the Mariana Trench. Years earlier, Jonas Taylor had theorized that these same depths harbored a warm-layer habitat that supported a subspecies of Megalodon, a sixty-foot prehistoric cousin of the great white shark. He had proven it to the world when one of the monstrous sharks—a pregnant female—had risen to the surface. Taylor had been forced to kill the beast, but its surviving pup, Angel, had grown into a seventy-four-foot monster, and for years was the star attraction of the Tanaka Oceanographic Institute.

  If Fiesal could bring such an attraction to Dubai …

  The Middle East was a battleground. America’s military interventions in Iraq and a failed Arab Spring had added only more fuel to that fire. Democracy had been subverted in Egypt, autocratic rule festered in Syria and Iran, and ISIS militants were threatening both Arab states and the West.

  Three months after his meeting with Allison Petrucci, Fiesal bin Rashidi had presented his first cousin, Crown Prince Walid Abu Naba’a, with a business plan for Dubai-Land, a marine theme park featuring a dozen five-star hotels centered around massive aquariums stocked with real prehistoric sea monsters. The popularity of the Tanaka Institute had proven the public’s love of aquatic beasts; Dubai-Land would take the concept multiple steps further, making their country the number one tourist destination in the world. Just as important, the aquarium would present Westerners with a more positive opinion of Muslims, while inoculating the UAE against the threat of radical Islam.

  Bin Rashidi had designed the supersized aquariums himself. He had also identified two Malacca-class crude oil tankers, the Tonga and the Mogamigawa, that could be purchased from the Japanese. All that was needed was the crown prince’s capital and someone to lead the underwater safari to stock their exhibits.

  Jonas Taylor was the unanimous choice—only the former Navy submersible pilot and marine biologist had flatly refused. He and Dr. Maren had crossed paths before, the last time culminating in Michael’s death. The Tanaka Institute did agree to sell two of Angel’s four surviving Megalodon offspring to the crown prince, along with four of its deep-sea Manta submersibles.

  But there was another Taylor who had captured Fiesal’s eye—Jonas’s son, David. The cocky twenty-one-year-old was not only a highly skilled Manta pilot, but he seemed fearless around the Megalodons. A lucrative summer job offer in Dubai to stabilize the two Meg runts in their new aquariums was the lure to bring David to the UAE; but it was a summer romance with one of their pilot candidates—Kaylie Szeifert—that would send him into the depths of the Panthalassa Sea searching for ancient prehistoric monsters.

  Locating the Panthalassa life-forms had been easy; drawing them into the surface ships’ nets had proved to be a bit more challenging. After several months, the submersible crews had managed to capture four different species, two of which perished inside their tanker pens.

  And then Fiesal bin Rashidi had laid eyes on the Liopleurodon.

  The creature was an aberration of evolution—a specimen that Fiesal knew would easily become the identity of the aquarium. While the rest of the crew aboard the Tonga remained mesmerized by the Lio, Fiesal had fired a tracking device into the animal’s back as it surfaced, ensuring they would not lose their prized quarry.

  For the next eight months, the aquarium director and his crew aboard the Tonga had chased after the hundred-twenty-two-foot creature as it trekked across the Western Pacific and south to Antarctica. The Lio had refused to surface, and Fiesal’s team of submersible pilots had been too afraid to venture close enough to engage the goliath and lure it into the tanker’s nets. Compounding the problem was the failure of bin Rashidi’s second unit aboard the Mogamigawa to capture a pod of Shonisaurus
that had escaped the Panthalassa Sea. With only three of the twelve exhibits occupied, the crown prince’s initial excitement about the aquarium had waned, turning Fiesal’s optimism into doubt, his joy festering into resentment, frustration, and bitterness.

  A sense of gloom seemed to hang over the Tonga. Desperate, lacking a game plan, and clearly out of his element, Fiesal bin Rashidi had lost the respect of his crew. The driving force behind the aquarium had spent his days alone in his stateroom, a prisoner to his own ambition. Women no longer interested him, gold no longer shimmered. Stuck on a seemingly endless voyage of damnation, Fiesal bin Rashidi, once the favored cousin of the crown prince, had become his albatross.

  And then David Taylor had arrived on board the Mogamigawa and lady luck had returned. Three prehistoric sea creatures had been captured within thirty-six hours, including a Mosasaurus.

  It was as if the sun had shone for the first time in almost a year.

  The crown prince arranged for a helicopter to transport David, his friend Monty, and the ship’s female marine biologist, Jacqueline Buchwald, to the Tonga. A buzz of excitement had spread through the crew—David Taylor would take charge of the mission and capture the Lio. The Tonga would return home with its prize, families reunited, bonus checks cashed.

  But was the son of Jonas Taylor to be trusted? The Liopleurodon had savagely taken the life of David’s girlfriend, and the young man was clearly haunted by her death.

  Was he out to capture the Lio … or kill it?

  In the end, the answer had turned out to be both.

  * * *

  The disgruntled naval engineer plugged his headphones back in as the helicopter began its vertical descent over the Tonga’s helipad, their arrival having done little to slow down the crown prince’s pitch.

  “… That’s the beauty of internal fertilization. All the pups are female, each a genetic clone of their mother. That means our Liopleurodon pup will grow into a thirty-seven-meter monster, just as Angel’s daughter, Zahra, will be her mother’s mirror image.”

  A smattering of applause was followed by the chopper’s landing gear touching down. One by one the men climbed out, crossing the tanker’s enormous deck to where a set of bleachers had been set up before a three-story-high, five-hundred-thousand-gallon aquarium.

  Bin Rashidi was the last person to deboard. As he stepped down from the helicopter he was met by the crown prince. His cousin’s personal attorney, Kirsty Joyce, was standing two paces behind him holding a leather briefcase.

  “Fiesal, things have changed. Our costs have skyrocketed, and I need to recapitalize the venture or we’ll be bankrupt before we open.” He turned to the British woman, who handed him two copies of a legal document. “I’m releasing another ten million shares of the company—”

  “Diluting my twenty percent to…?” Bin Rashidi scanned the five-page addendum, his hand shaking. “A buyout? I was the one who came to you with this idea … the location of the Panthalassa Sea … the design of the tanks. Cousin, how can you do this to me?”

  “I am offering you ten million dollars for your stock. Most people would be grateful.”

  “Once it’s open, the park will make that every hour.”

  “You mean, if it opens. My accountants estimate our start-up costs will exceed twenty-four billion before we book our first reservation. Will you be putting up that money, Fiesal?”

  “We’re already booked three years in advance.”

  “And those deposits must all be returned if I cannot recapitalize the venture. Sign the contract and Ms. Joyce will wire the funds into your account. Don’t sign, and my next offer will be half that amount.”

  Fiesal bin Rashidi felt the blood rush to his cheeks. Taking the pen from the blond attorney, he signed the two signature pages, the crown prince’s authorizations already stamped and notarized.

  Kirsty Joyce filed one of the copies in her brief. Removing her iPhone, she quickly texted instructions to the crown prince’s bank. “The funds have been wired.”

  “Plans within plans, eh, cousin?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s been nine days since the Tonga arrived, nine days since the blood sport occurred in the Tanaka Lagoon. And yet the Miocene whale has still not been released, the contract to sell the Taylors’ facility to Agricola Industries is yet to be signed.”

  “As Ms. Joyce will tell you, there are still several deal points being negotiated.”

  The attorney nodded. “There is a legal question as to which party owns the teeth from the two deceased Megalodons, as well as the adult Lio. As you can imagine, each tooth can bring in quite a lot of money. Mr. Agricola is claiming owner’s rights to the albino Megalodon, Lizzy, since he captured the shark after it had escaped—”

  Fiesal held up his palm. “There is an old Arab saying, ‘Avoid the company of liars, but if you can’t, then be sure you never believe them.’ I may not be royalty, Ms. Joyce, but do not take me for a fool.” He turned back to his cousin. “I see Governor Skinner is among your entourage.”

  “Is it a crime to extend the courtesy of an invitation to a political ally?”

  “You mean a future bedfellow, don’t you, cousin? There will be no deal with the Canadian. You mean to keep the Tanaka Institute for yourself, along with the Miocene whale, which will occupy the lagoon.”

  “And will I also be spending half a billion dollars to place a dome over this thirty-year-old facility?”

  “The sale of the two Megalodon siblings’ teeth alone would cover that expense.”

  “And when the bull dies?”

  “You have a living specimen and a modern relative in the sperm whale. Cloning the species would be a relatively easy task for our genetics team, on par with what the Russians are doing to bring back the woolly mammoth. The bigger concern is one of real estate. How much land will the governor make available for you in Carmel and Monterey to build your hotels and theme park?”

  “An interesting theory, Fiesal—one I’d advise you to keep to yourself. You wouldn’t want to violate the nondisclosure section of the buyout agreement you just signed.”

  “Is that it then?”

  “I see no reason for you to attend tonight’s festivities. Gather your belongings and the pilot will take you back to San Francisco.”

  The crown prince turned to his attractive personal attorney. “Come, Ms. Joyce … let us introduce the Lio to our new partners.”

  * * *

  At eleven hundred feet from bow to stern and a hundred ninety-six feet wide, the Tonga was as large as an aircraft carrier, and when her hold was filled to capacity, she displaced more weight. A floating steel island, the Malacca-class crude tanker was anchored less than a mile offshore, her starboard flank several hundred yards from the entrance of the canal that led into the Tanaka Institute’s man-made lagoon.

  The ship’s superstructure towered twelve stories above the stern, the Lio’s holding tank erected in its shadow. Sixty feet in diameter and thirty feet high, the circular Lexan aquarium had been flown in from the Dubai-Land resort and assembled by Jacqueline Buchwald and her staff to better care for the Lio pup during the anticipated three-week voyage to Dubai.

  * * *

  Like excited children on Christmas Day, the crown prince’s entourage hurried across the deck to join the other invited guests and members of the media, all of whom were busy snapping photos and taking video of the star attraction.

  While the business pitch from their billionaire host had certainly been convincing, it paled in comparison with actually seeing the Liopleurodon circling within its tank. Only a month old, the pliosaur was already a dangerous predator, its jaws sporting two-to-five-inch dagger-like teeth, the largest of which jutted outside of its mouth. Flapping along its short, powerful neck were six gill slits. While the creature’s ancestors that had dominated the Late Jurassic seas were air-breathing marine reptiles, the subspecies that had escaped extinction in the Panthalassa Sea had adapted to their new deep-water environment by grow
ing gills, rendering them “reptilian fish.”

  What really surprised the crown prince’s guests was how large the Lio had grown in such a short amount of time. When the public had last seen the pliosaur, it had measured eight feet from the tip of its crocodile-like snout to the point of its stubby tail and weighed just under two hundred and fifty pounds. Its transformation during this past week in captivity had been startling. While its length had increased by 50 percent, its girth had more than doubled. The marine biologists on board the Tonga theorized the pliosaur’s incredible growth spurt could be credited to a diet much higher in fat content than the prey the juvenile might normally find in the Panthalassa Sea, combined with the aquarium’s increased oxygen content. The latter also helped to explain the creature’s hyperkinetic movements.

  Lead-gray on top with a speckled belly, the juvenile killer glided around the tank on a single burst from its paddle-like forelimbs with the dexterity of a seal, using its hindquarters as a rudder from which to steer. With both sets of limbs pumping in open water, it could give a speedboat a run for its money.

  The animal remained close to the inside of the glass, the dark pupil of its yellow right eye appearing cold and calculating as it circled counterclockwise, watching the watchers.

  A few of the VIPs had brought their children to the event. When a six-year-old boy went running toward the tank, the Lio banked on a dime to intercept, its jaws wide and outstretched and ready to swallow the shrieking child down its hideous pink gullet, had the three-inch-thick, bulletproof Lexan glass not been in the way.

  This reaction naturally spurred a dozen copycats, and within minutes, the videos had gone viral.

  * * *

  Fiesal bin Rashidi entered his stateroom, not surprised to find his belongings already packed, his two suitcases and duffel bag tagged, the airline ticket left ontop of his laptop. He checked the itinerary. San Francisco to Dubai, leaving at eleven-thirty tonight, with a layover in New York. Not only does he have me on the red-eye, he has me flying coach …