Barracuda (23 page)

***

“Where is your gear?” Regis cried. “What
happened?”

“Are you all right?” Dr. Collins inquired.

“Your suit is all torn up, and so are your
hands,” Celestial chimed in. “I’ll get the first aid kit.”

Micko lay on the gunwale bench, breathing
heavily as he spoke. “Those Russian bastards tried to kill me, and
I’m sure they think they did.”

“Slow down and catch your breath,” the professor
suggested. “Then start from the beginning.”

Celestial came over and started to swab some
antibiotic ointment on Micko’s hand cuts. James removed Micko’s
fins, where it was evident that his feet and ankles were also
cut.

The prostate diver finally caught his breath and
began. “It’s definitely your skiff down there lying next to the
Apogon
. When I shone my flashlight, I could easily see the
distinct pink paint and the small white rabbit painted at the
stern. I also found an empty vodka bottle.”

Micko reached into the rear loop of his weight
belt and produced the bottle that he had found. Everyone recognized
it as the private stock of the Russians.

“I found it between the skiff and the submarine,
and since there’s very little marine growth inside, it’s safe to
assume that it was dropped there fairly recently. Then I was
attacked by two divers riding underwater scooters. I heard the
motors, but thought I was getting narced or my first stage was
leaking. The scooters had fishing reels jury rigged on them, and
the pair of murderous swine wrapped me up tighter than a Christmas
present.”

Micko relayed the skills he used to escape. “The
Russkies are sure that I’m dead, so I’ll have to live in the
fishing village until this is all sorted out.”

The other men stared at the weary diver like he
was some kind of madman, but as the story sank in, they realized
that he’d had no choice but to flee his watery grave without his
life-saving gear.

“You’re lucky to be alive,” James said.

The others nodded in agreement.

“The Majestic sport fishing boat had been
shadowing us since we departed early this morning. I think they
knew of our plans and devised one of their own,” Micko added.

He unzipped the front of the light dive suit and
slid it down to this waist, but when he tried to pull the bottoms
off at the ankles, he grimaced in pain. James grabbed the foot
straps and gently removed the suit, leaving the diver clad in just
his bathing suit. Regis gasped as he saw the raw flesh across
Micko’s thighs, calves, ankles, and feet.

“That spider wire really did a job on you,”
Celestial commented as he applied more ointment to the newly
revealed wounds. He stopped when he got to Micko’s right thigh. The
four men were concerned about their friend, but they couldn’t help
staring.

“What happened there?” Celestial asked with
concern.

The four men were gazing at the scar left by the
nine-millimeter bullet hole. The wound looked ghastly, but this cop
appeared okay.

“Just an old injury, but it’s much better now,”
Micko sheepishly revealed.

Celestial could see that the officer was
reluctant to talk about the nature of the wound, so he lowered the
left side of his own pants to reveal an ugly scar. “Bull shark bit
me in the ass while I was spear fishing off the coast of
Honolulu.”

“Shit, that’s nothing,” Regis spoke up. He
pulled up his shirt to reveal an even uglier scar on his right
breastbone. “Two hundred-pound black marlin speared me while I was
hauling it into the boat in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Hurt
like hell, and I bled all the way back to the dock three days
later.”

James pulled up his shirtsleeve to show a spider
web-like scar. “Portuguese Man o’ War off the coast of Cape Town,
South Africa.”

Everyone looked at Dr. Collins, waiting to see
his red badge of courage and hear the corresponding story. The good
professor stuck out his arm in a sign of defiance and pointed to a
red welt on his forearm. “Bunsen burner, my lab, Florida, USA.”

The boatload of battered old salts laughed
merrily as they replayed the scene from the movie
Jaws
.
Micko was relieved that this levity took some of the pressure off
their current situation.

When the laughter ended and Regis untied the
Hummingbird
from the mooring, Micko said to the scientists,
“We are all in a great deal of danger from these crazy Russians,
but I have an idea.”

***

The Renegades were a wild bunch as they loaded
their dive gear onto the
Thor
. Denise gave instructions from
dockside as the crew readied the craft for the dive on the
Saratoga
. The weather was perfect and the sea was calm.
Denise noticed that several of the Renegades were standing on the
bow pointing south. As she approached the noisy divers, Rat asked,
“What’s that? A convoy?”

The other Renegades laughed as Denise looked.
The majestic dive boats were pulling the fireworks barge, and a
small armada of fishing boats trailed behind.

“Shit!” Denise cursed. “These damn boats are
filing past our route to the
Saratoga
. If we don’t hurry,
we’ll have to wait until they cross the atoll to the Majestic
resort before we can drive the
Thor
to the wreck.”

***

Tiki was repairing his fishing nets when Chino
burst into the yard.

“They hurt Flacka!” he screamed. “The Russians
hurt Flacka!”

Tiki calmly placed his repair tools on the
ground. “Tell me.”

“Flacka didn’t show up at work, and her friends
were worried, so they sent me to her home,” Chino said. “She is
badly beaten, and she told me that it was Disco and another goon.
She’s afraid that the Russians are going to kill that cop and the
scientists.”

Tiki stood up and thought for a moment. A short,
muscular man with long black hair and fiery black eyes, he was the
leader of the rebel movement, and all the natives loved and trusted
him.

“Our plans do not change,” he stated. “We will
take back our land and chase the Japs and Russians back to where
they came from. Take me to Flacka.”

***

The
Hummingbird
was on a slow course back
to the Majestic when they encountered the flotilla.

“It’ll be a slow ride back, so I hope nobody’s
in a rush,” Celestial proclaimed.

“Damn!” I want to get back and download the
video from the satellite link,” Dr. Collins complained.

“As long as we have time, I might be able to
retrieve some footage from the camera’s memory stick. The entire
footage will be downloaded from the satellite, but we might have
enough here to answer a few questions. I can download from the
satellite to the memory stick until it’s full. Then we can view it,
erase it, and then download it again, and repeat the process. It’s
time consuming—but we do have time,” James quipped.

Micko was feeling better, but his mind was
racing. He had enough evidence to hang the Russians, but would he
be able to survive until Buddy arrived with help? Looking up at the
wheelhouse he saw Regis and Celestial engaged in some playful
banter as Celestial steered the boat. The scientists were deeply
involved with the u/w camera and arguing as usual. He told himself
to stop worrying and to enjoy the rest of the day.

He looked out over the atoll and marveled at the
brightly colored sails of the locals as they formed a flotilla. The
sailors proudly displayed their finest sails used only for special
occasions. Numerous native dugout canoes paddled by muscular men
brought up the rear of the impressive little entourage.

But Micko was only able to enjoy the sight for a
little while. He desperately needed to get back on land and see
Flacka. She was paramount in the execution of his next plan, and he
also feared for her safety. She had been perfect with the planned
blackout, and he knew that the rebels would listen to her again.
His mind was racing but he was distracted by a commotion from the
scientists in the galley.

“Mother of God!” cried the incredulous Dr.
Collins. “Do you see what I see?”

“Holy shit!”

“Un-fucking believable!”

“Freaking impossible!”

“Oh my god!”

The expletives were flowing as Micko raced to
the galley to see what the intellectuals were raving about. “What’s
all the cussing about?” he demanded.

An excited James stammered, “Most of the video
is boring stuff, but I’m downloading the interesting stuff onto a
new memory stick with one gigabyte of memory. Professor, rerun the
video we saved.”

The professor looked perturbed that Micko was
interfering, but he relented and placed the one-gigabyte memory
stick into the camcorder and hit the “play” button. What the three
men viewed next would be forever etched into their nightmares. The
LCD screen was small—only two-and-a-half inches, so it was
difficult to see the gray images that emerged. At first, all that
could be seen was the passageway funnel with a few fish scattered
about. Then the gray reefers came into view as they entered the
lagoon from the open ocean end of the funnel.

“Watch and see what happens,” Dr. Collins
instructed.

A wagon train of sharks had almost passed the
camera’s line of sight when a flash of bright silver torpedoed past
the lens. Micko thought the image was just overexposed until it
kept happening again and again. Something was streaking through the
camera’s line of sight with lightening speed. His mind could not
decipher what he had just witnessed.

“Look!” the professor exclaimed.

Suddenly, a swarm of injured sharks could be
seen cartwheeling down the walls of the gateway. The video was
grainy, but it was evident that the injured sharks were missing one
or two fins. The uninjured sharks beat a hasty retreat back into
the open ocean as their fallen comrades writhed in pain on the
floor of the passageway. Some just lay on their sides, mouths
agape, trying to force oxygen through their gills. Others kicked
their tails violently in an attempt to escape, but they only
managed to swim in tight circles as they descended to the ocean
floor.

Micko’s mind finally figured out that something
had attacked these sharks, but he couldn’t figure out what beast
was capable of inflicting such devastating wounds to the top
predator in this food chain.

“Look upon the face of pure evil,” growled Dr.
Collins.

Abruptly, a shadow appeared above the contorted
sharks. Micko strained his eyes to see what was hiding. Like a huge
submarine, a gigantic barracuda glided into view. The creature
hovered over its victims, seeming to enjoy watching their death
throes. Very calmly and deliberately, the beast began to consume
the sharks that lay on the bottom.

“Holy shit! That barracuda dwarfs the sharks! It
must be twenty feet long!” Micko blurted.

It was now clear that the barracuda was
responsible for the shark massacre on the flight deck of the USS
Saratoga
. The huge fish hid in the shadows, and then with
lightening speed and great accuracy severed the sharks’ pectoral or
dorsal fins in one motion. If the barracuda swam past the sharks,
slicing the fins as it raced by, it never had to face the sharp
teeth or strong jaws of its adversaries. The sharks didn’t stand a
chance against such a skilled warrior.

Micko was about to ask a few hundred questions
when he saw the barracuda stop feasting and turn toward the video
camera. The fish swam ever so slowly toward the lens. The sunlight
penetrated deep into the passageway and the silver sides of the
barracuda lit up like a swimming lamp. The great beast bared its
awesome arsenal of jagged teeth to the camera, and for several
moments just stared into the lens. The big black eyes were cold and
humorless, but a hint of intelligence was evident. The monstrous
creature looked up at the sunlight, and then back at the camera
before quickly turning perpendicular. A huge flash of silver
overexposed the automatic settings on the camera. When the camera
reset itself, the beast was gone. It was like someone using a
mirror to blind another person with the sun.

Dr. Collins turned the camera off and stroked
the long hair of his white goatee.

“Don’t tell me that fish blinded the camera on
purpose!” Micko remarked.

“I’m not asking you to believe anything because
I still don’t believe my own eyes,” the professor responded.

“This video answers a lot of questions,
gentlemen,” James added. “Let’s just suppose that this barracuda
had some of the same strange reactions to radiation as the other
unusual creatures in this lagoon. We’ve already seen and accepted
giant groupers, lobsters, and angelfish. Why not a giant barracuda?
We just saw the hunting technique of a normal barracuda fishing for
small fish. Since this fish is larger, it feeds on larger prey.”
James smiled with satisfaction at his theory.

“A lot of what you say appears to be on target,”
the professor replied, “but why attack sharks when there is
abundant food in the atoll? This monster appeared to have staked
out this underwater portal and then ambushed the top predator. He
killed more sharks than he needed to devour, and the remaining
carcasses will be dragged out to sea with the tide change, so he
won’t harvest his kills.”

Micko jumped in, “C’mon now, Professor. You
don’t think this fish is staking out his territory and warning the
sharks to stay away?”

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” James
jumped in. “This barracuda attacked sharks on the
Saratoga
,
and I think he either chased them out of the portal or followed
them. Then he set up this deadly surprise attack to prove
convincing dominance over the sharks. I bet we never see gray reef
sharks in Bikini Atoll as long as this predator resides here.
Territorialism is huge amongst the top predators.”

“But why now? Where did this big fish come from?
Your earlier colleagues indicated that the atoll was flourishing
with gray reefers, so where does this immense barracuda come from?”
Micko asked.