by Steve Alten
Omni San Francisco Hotel
San Francisco, California
Stefanie Smith had served as Governor Ryan Skinner’s personal assistant for the past four years. During that time, she had dealt with everything from defending the governor against accusations of sexual misconduct to delivering secret child support payments for a “love child” born to Skinner’s former housekeeper—an illegal immigrant. And yet nothing seemed as nefarious as the cover-up she had been placed in charge of seventy-two hours earlier.
The cab circled through the Nob Hill neighborhood and pulled into the hotel’s private cul-de-sac. She paid the driver in cash, collected the long rectangular flower box from the seat next to her, and exited the car into the grand lobby, taking the elevator up to the top floor.
The doors opened to a Secret Service agent dressed in the requisite black suit, a communication device visible in his right ear. He checked her credentials and then pointed down the hall to the King Suite, where an Arab man dressed in a similar outfit stood outside the last set of double doors.
Stefanie approached and handed the guard her identification. He glanced at it, but was more interested in inspecting the contents of the flower box.
“These flowers are a special gift from the governor. No one handles this box except the crown prince.”
The security guard spoke Arabic into a handheld device. A moment later the suite door opened, revealing Kirsty Joyce, the personal attorney of Prince Walid Abu Naba’a.
“Mrs. Harmon, so good to see you again.”
“Actually, it’s Stefanie Smith. I went back to using my maiden name after the divorce.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not. May we?”
“Of course.” Kirsty spoke Arabic to the guard, who nodded and allowed Stefanie to enter.
The suite occupied a corner section of the top floor—six hundred fifty square feet divided between a living area, bedroom, and two bathrooms. The crown prince was situated in an easy chair by a floor-to-ceiling window looking out onto the city, his attention focused on his iPhone.
The women waited an uncomfortable forty seconds before he spoke, his eyes remaining fixated on the tiny screen.
“Three days, Mrs. Harmon. For three days I have been kept a prisoner in your city, my private jet denied our takeoff orders. And all the while, the governor has avoided my calls.”
“My apologies, Your Highness. He’s been extremely busy.”
“Am I a suspect in my cousin’s death?”
“No, Your Highness. As the police stated, the deaths of Paul Agricola and your cousin have officially been listed as shark attacks.”
“Is this the governor’s retribution for my decision to pull out of the Monterey project?”
“Not at all, though we’d certainly love for you to reconsider.”
“Then why is your boss risking an international incident by refusing to allow me to return to Dubai?”
“Your cousin, Fiesal, was killed by a sea creature, but it was not a shark. Of course, you already knew that, having seen his remains.”
“My apologies,” Kirsty said. “We were not informed as to who was given security clearance.”
“Understood.”
The crown prince looked up. “What is in the box?”
“The reason your cousin ordered the Marieke to the Farallones.”
“I assumed he was hunting the Liopleurodon.”
“They were hunting the Lio. Paul Agricola had tracked it to the northwest coast of Oregon—or so he believed. Your cousin ordered his ship to the Farallones because the Livyatan melvillei’s homing device indicated the whale had died and beached itself on one of the islands.”
“Why would he care about that brute?”
“He cared because the brute’s bio-tracker contained this.” Stefanie opened the flower box, removing the transmitter—a four-foot-long hollow harpoon designed to accommodate its three-foot-long, seven-inch-diameter hollow insertion tube.
“This tube fits inside the harpoon. It contained trace amounts of doxapram, a powerful veterinary stimulant designed to accelerate an animal’s heart rate.”
“I don’t understand,” Kirsty said. “Why would Fiesal want to inject the whale with a stimulant … unless? Oh my God—”
The prince stood, crossing the room to the minibar. He removed a small bottle of Jack Daniel’s and handed it to his attorney. “Fiesal knew we were terminating our partnership. Sinking the Tonga offered him a means to get back at me while putting ownership of the Lio back in play. You have to give him credit—in the end he proved himself to be quite resourceful.”
Kirsty took a swig of whiskey, choking on the gulp. “‘Resourceful’? More than forty people died.”
The prince shot back a disparaging look. “I did not say I approved of his methods, Ms. Joyce.”
“Understood. But approval or not, as a former partner and employee of Dubai-Land, his actions leave the company, and you personally, responsible for everything that happened.”
“Nonsense. I had nothing to do with the Tonga’s demise. It was Fiesal who prepared the tracking device, and the girl who shot it into the Miocene whale.”
Stefanie looked up. “Girl? What girl?”
“The female marine biologist … what was her name, Ms. Joyce?”
“Jacqueline Buchwald. She’s David’s girlfriend.”
“David? As in David Taylor?” Stefanie circled the small room, thinking aloud. “The Lio’s still out there; it’s worth a lot of money to you … correct?”
“Go on,” the prince said, returning to his chair.
“Who better to recapture the Lio than David?”
“He won’t do it,” Kirsty said, draining the whiskey sampler. “We already approached him through the girl—we offered her a million dollars. He only wants to deal with the Megs.”
“He might change his mind if this evidence implicated his girlfriend in the drowning deaths of forty people, and the only way to keep it out of the public’s eye was to capture Junior.”
The prince smiled.
Kirsty looked aghast. “You can count me out—I want no part of this.”
“Perhaps you should leave then, counselor.” The prince motioned to the door.
The attorney’s eyes went wide. Exiting the living area, she entered the bedroom, returning a moment later wheeling out a small suitcase. “You’ll receive my firm’s final invoices in your email. Be sure to pay them promptly—I wouldn’t want to jeopardize the attorney-client relationship.”
She exited the suite, briskly shutting the door behind her.
“What a bitch.” Stefanie crossed to the minibar, helping herself to a drink. “Of course, recapturing the Lio doesn’t help the State of California. Then again, now that we know the pliosaur is somewhat amphibious by nature, it sort of makes more sense to design a habitat that encompasses both land and water. We can easily do that using the parcels of land the governor had set aside for the new Monterey exhibit.”
“Mrs. Harmon, you are proving yourself to be far more resourceful than I knew.”
“It’s actually Ms. Smith: I’m divorced.”
Monterey, California
There were two patient relocations scheduled on this blustery Saturday in mid-February, both ending along the Northern California coast. Each involved members of the Taylor family, neither of whom had been given much hope of surviving their arduous ten-day journey.
The McFarland was first to arrive, its task to bring Lizzy’s lone surviving albino pup to the Tanaka Institute. The feisty female—named Luna, after her unusual habit of spy-hopping to watch the moon—had arrived by hopper-dredge thirty minutes before daybreak and a full twelve hours ahead of her announced ETA. In sharp contrast to the sold-out event that had occurred six months earlier, the institute would remain closed to the public this time around—the deception an attempt to avoid the chaos associated with the expected fanfare, as well as potential threats from protesters. A heavy police presence took over
the access roads, beachfront, and empty parking lots, the Coast Guard securing Monterey Bay.
At 6:27 a.m., the submerged King Kong–size doors of the canal opened, allowing the McFarland to enter the Tanaka Lagoon.
For nine out of the past twenty-five years, the lake-size, man-made waterway had been home to Angel, Luna’s seventy-four-foot, fifty-ton maternal grandmother. The discovery that the monstrous Megalodon had been pregnant had forced the institute to construct a separate facility to house her pups. The result: a state-of-the-art, sixty-million-gallon, saltwater aquarium featuring an underwater gallery.
Though designed as a separate self-contained habitat, the Meg Pen was connected to the larger lagoon by way of a twenty-foot-diameter access tunnel—a feature deemed necessary to relocate at least a few of the pups as they became young adults and the Meg Pen grew too crowded. Still, Angel had made it clear that she had no interest in sharing the lagoon, reminding her offspring on a daily basis who the “Alpha” was by slapping her caudal fin against the grated steel barrier that separated the two habitats.
Did adult female Megalodon sharks possess maternal instincts? Angel’s behavior had clearly demonstrated an adversarial relationship with her offspring. This was in sharp contrast to the recent discoveries of ancient Meg nurseries located in close proximity to one another along prehistoric coastal areas, which indicated cooperative parenting among the sharks.
By way of an explanation, Jonas Taylor pointed out the unique circumstances involving Angel’s mother and her ancestors—a subspecies of Megalodon that had lived in isolation for millions of years in the Mariana Trench. Food would have been scarce, leading to cannibalism among the adults. Having escaped her purgatory, Angel’s mother would still have considered her newborn pups a threat—any offspring spared at birth might grow into tomorrow’s killer.
Housing five Megalodon pups in one tank had come with its own set of problems. There had been two distinct litters: Bela and Lizzy in one, the smaller triplet “runts” in the other. Angel’s terrifying round-the-clock presence had bound Bela and Lizzy to each other, while the three smaller triplets had kept to themselves. The litters had coexisted like rival gang members in a prison yard. Though the “sisters” were larger, Lizzy realized the runts were growing bigger and more aggressive—which is why she unleashed her dark-pigmented sister on one of the triplets, thereby reducing the future threat of their rivals.
Had the two remaining triplets not been shipped to Dubai, they too would have met their demise—such is the law of the jungle.
Despite their ruthless nature, the sisters had possessed a strong maternal instinct, which they had passed on to their own offspring. The six newborns had quickly learned that the Salish Sea was filled with predators, and that safety came in numbers within the scent-established borders of the Meg nursery.
Before Lizzy’s capture, the sisters had divided their pups into pairs, teaching them through cooperative parenting how to swim and hunt in tandem, with Bela’s pups on top to camouflage the white hides of their cousins—a major detriment in the wild.
With their parents gone, two of the three tandems gradually expanded their hunting grounds. The third pairing had been reduced to one of Lizzy’s pups, after its “Bela-mate” had been netted and drowned by Paul Agricola.
Left on its own, the albino had been the second Meg offspring to die.
Luna and her Bela-mate had been the last pair to remain intact. After the albino’s capture, the dark-backed pup had remained within its cousin’s sensory range … right up until the moment the ship had left the Strait of Juan de Fuca. The Pacific Ocean was flush with orca scent trails. When Bela’s offspring detected several pods of killer whales patrolling the outskirts of the Salish Sea, the Meg returned to the strait, abandoning its cousin.
The realization that her partner was no longer around sent Luna into a frenzy. The moment one of its human captors was revealed, the one-and-a-half-ton shark attacked that area of the hopper, slapping its tail along the surface and beating its head against the wall—a behavior that led Monty to rename the Meg “Lunatic.” Mac sent footage of these attacks to David via iPhone, hoping he could suggest a course of action, but the new owner of the Tanaka Institute could not be reached. In the end, Jackie had no choice but to increase the flow of sedatives into the tank—a dangerous maneuver that required a round-the-clock vigil in the event the shark lost consciousness, ceased swimming, and drowned.
* * *
Mo Mallouh docked the McFarland along the stretch of concrete walkway that separated the Meg Pen from the lagoon. Waiting for the ship were three men wearing wetsuits and a thirteen-year-old boy in street clothes.
Alan Cox had been the head orca trainer at Sea World, his eldest sons, Mason and Jalen—ages twenty and eighteen—having served as his assistants. Cox’s youngest son, Ashton, was placed in charge of the team’s equipment, but would not be joining the members of his family in either the hopper or Meg Pen.
Each member of Cox’s crew was armed with a rubber tripod attached to a six-foot reach pole that was used for prodding and pushing the shark. At the center of these rubber pads was a metal probe that could disperse an “attention-grabbing” electrical charge.
Mac would man the crane; his job was to transport Luna from the hopper into the Meg Pen once the shark had been secured within its twenty-by-twenty-foot reinforced canvas pouch. Suspended beneath the hoist, the sides of the shark harness contained adjustable Velcro side panels that opened to accommodate the Meg’s pectoral fins.
Jackie had increased Luna’s tranquilizers over the last hour to make sure the animal was heavily sedated. To further minimize the risk to Cox’s team, both the hopper and Meg Pen had been drained to five feet—a depth sufficient to allow the Meg to swim and breathe, but too shallow for it to establish neutral buoyancy, forcing the shark to bear a third of its own weight, which handicapped its movements.
Jackie zipped up her wetsuit and followed the three men down a ladder into the hopper. Moments later, the crane’s boom appeared along the portside of the McFarland, positioning the canvas harness over the tank. Steel cable fed out, lowering the device to the water.
The pouch was quickly retrieved by Cox’s team and laid out flat along the bottom of the tank in the path of the semilucid, fifteen-foot Megalodon. Alan positioned himself in front of the shark, pressing his tripod to the shark’s snout as it attempted to move forward, occupying its attention while his sons positioned the side vents around Luna’s pectoral fins.
Alan tightened the harness and then offered a thumbs-up to Jackie.
Reaching for the radio strapped to her left shoulder, she called Mac. “We’re good. Take her up.”
Mac pulled back on one of the crane’s half-dozen control levers, causing the winch to retrieve steel cable, raising the three-thousand-pound predator out of the McFarland’s hopper. Circling the cab counter clockwise in its track, he swung the shark slowly over the concrete walkway while extending the boom until it was positioned directly over the Meg Pen.
Jackie and Team Cox deboarded the McFarland just as the captive creature began its four-story descent into the nearly drained aquarium.
Monty stood by the west end of the tank, where he had secured the top of a forty-foot ladder to the railing. Jackie leaned out and looked down, the rungs disappearing along the sleek curved sides of glass, the descent daunting.
Alan was the first one up. “Just take your time and don’t look down. Mason, wait until I’m at least halfway down before starting your descent … then Jackie and Jalen.”
“What about me?” Ashton asked.
“We’re counting on you to be our eyes and ears from above. Remember, when you use the radio, we’re all on Channel-1.”
“Yes, sir.”
Checking his radio, Monty switched his channel from CH-2 to CH-1.
Mason waited until his father had descended twenty rungs before swinging his legs over the rail one at a time, onto the ladder.
Jackie looked do
wn, forcing herself to take slow, deep breaths. Alan was already wading in the water; Luna was suspended ten feet above his head.
“Ma’am.” Jalen Cox tapped Jackie on the shoulder, indicating it was her turn.
Gripping the top of the rail, she swung her right leg over, her rubber-boot-covered foot, feeling for a ladder rung before her left leg followed.
The descent was nerve-racking but uneventful, and she soon found herself chest-deep in cold salt water. She waded out to Alan and Mason, who were flanking the Meg.
Jackie approached the albino, all but its head and tail sandwiched within the canvas hoist. The first step in releasing the Meg was to escort it around its new environment to allow the heavily drugged shark to come out of its stupor; but from Luna’s thrashing, the drugs clearly appeared to have worn off.
“I don’t understand—I gave her heavy doses of phenobarbital. I thought we’d have to walk her around the tank for at least a few hours.”
Alan pointed to a twenty-foot-diameter grate along the top half of the southern wall. Water was streaming in through its porous steel surface, the incoming flow matched by the Meg Pen’s drains. “What is that?”
“That’s a tunnel connecting the Meg Pen with the lagoon.”
“The two tanks share the same water supply?”
“Correct.”
Alan shook his head. “The same water supply that accommodated Angel for all those years?”
“Angel’s been gone since last July. And both tanks have filtration systems.”
“But her scent is everywhere. Chemical traces from her urine have seeped into the pores of the lagoon, as well as into the algae and moss that coats the inside of the canal’s walls. Luna detects the presence of an adult female, and even though it’s her deceased grandmother, she’s none too happy about it.”
Opening its mouth to breathe, the juvenile predator inhaled a river of salt water into its nostrils and gullet … and once more went berserk, whipping its tail back and forth while twisting in an attempt to free itself and flee.
