Extinct (12 page)

But one thing the testing
could
do, Vandiver thought. It would be able to determine if the tooth was only a mere few years old, or less. He glanced at his watch again, then rose and walked toward his computer terminal. He pulled back a chair and turned the terminal on.

It instantly posed the request for a password. He typed it in and began stroking a series of keys.

Seconds later, a shark’s tooth appeared in the center of the screen.

The voice that emanated from the terminal’s speakers was that of a woman, her articulation of each word done precisely and in a pleasant tone as she spelled out the details pertinent to the tooth:

“… from Carcharodon megalodon. Probability: ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent certainty.

Slant-height, eight point one eight seven inches, with a corresponding width as seen by the ruler superimposed next to the tooth.”
The ruler flashed twice.

“Dimensions confirmed. If tooth is presupposed to be one of the larger teeth as are commonly found in front of jaw of modern sharks, then megalodon from which it came is estimated to be from fifty to sixty feet in length, with a possible error of twenty percent either plus or minus. If tooth is presupposed to be one of the smaller teeth as are commonly found in rear of jaw of modern sharks, then megalodon from which it came is estimated to be from seventy-five to ninety feet in length, with a possible error of twenty percent either plus or minus. Key feature: color beige. Confirmed. Conclusion…”

The tooth shrank and became enclosed in a square, which moved to the top left corner of the screen, and flashed. The center of the screen now displayed a depiction of a bulky, thick-bodied shark with much the same mouth and fin structure of a great white shark, but with a blunter, less pointed head.

“… Carcharodon megalodon. Prevalent in all oceans during Triassic through early Pleistocene Epoch. Probability: ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent certainty.”

The shark shrank and became enclosed in a square, which moved to the top-right corner of the screen and flashed. The center of the screen now displayed a map of the South Pacific Ocean. A small circle appeared in the center of the ocean, and enlarged, bringing that particular section of the South Pacific to the full size of the screen. The picture changed to a topographical layout of the bottom of the area, complete with ridges and peaks depicting a mountain range, and a deep valley running to a side of the range.

“Tooth was raised by robot dredge sampling area of Marianas Trench at twenty-six thousand feet on June fifteen, nineteen hundred eighty-two. Depth confirmed.

“Overall conclusion: Carcharodon megalodon tooth: reconfirmed. Probability: ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent certainty.

“Extinct for one and a half million to five million years.

“Variable conditions: Tooth’s dating inconclusive.

“Tests conducted by qualified European laboratories and Russian research institution indicated lack of evidence of carbonization, amino-acid racemization, or other obvious fossilization.

“Overall conclusion: Unknown action, possibly chemical in nature, in close association with deposit where tooth was found, retarded fossilization, or original apparent and real age tests were faulty.

“Probability; seventy-five percent.”

Vandiver sat for a moment in thought, then reached for the telephone next to the terminal and lifted the receiver.

The number he called didn’t answer, though Dr. Tegtmier had said he would be at the laboratory waiting for the tooth.

Vandiver frowned, replaced the receiver, looked back at the screen, and started thinking again.

*   *   *

A Coast Guard forty-one from the Gulfport Station sat close to the
Scent,
its stern barely visible under the surface in the light of the rising sun.

Bos’n Mate Third Class Beverly Cowart, her hands on the hips of her dark-blue trousers and her blond hair cut short above the collar of a crisply pressed short-sleeve shirt, stared down at the vessel. “We’ll mark it with a buoy,” she said, “and then see about getting somebody out here to move it out of the way of the pass.”

The Coast Guardsman next to her nodded.

The diver down near the bow of the sunken boat had been there for only seconds, but he was suddenly coming up.

His head broke the surface of the water with a splash.

“Sir … Ma’am, there’s a foot down there.”

*   *   *

There were eight boys in all. They had on bright orange life preservers and were standing next to a pair of eighteen-foot aluminum boats pulled up alongside the bank. Carolyn parked the Ranger and reached into its backseat for Paul’s tightly rolled sleeping bag as he hopped outside with his backpack and hurried toward the craft.

She pushed open the door and stepped to the ground as her father came toward Paul.

“Boy,” he said, “do
men
let
women
carry their equipment for them?”

Paul came to a sudden halt and dashed back toward the Ranger. He stopped in front of Carolyn and reached for the sleeping bag.

“Daddy,” she said, as Paul tugged the bag from her, “it doesn’t weigh anything.”

Paul, balancing his backpack on his shoulders where you couldn’t see his head, held the sleeping bag in his other hand as he ran back toward the boats.

Mr. Herald placed his hands on his hips and stared toward the children. “Look at them work without me saying a word,” he said.

San-hi and Armon were carefully checking each of the boys’ life preservers to make certain they were fastened properly, and then letting the boys step into the boats one at a time, each of them immediately going to the craft’s middle seats and sitting down, their backpacks held in their laps. San-hi handed Paul a preserver, watched him put it on, then pointed to the lead boat. Paul stepped into the craft and sat down next to the shortest boy on the team, a dark-skinned muscular boy with his hair cropped so close he appeared nearly bald. San-hi moved to the other boat and settled at the stern seat in front of the small outboard motor. Armon moved to the bow and looked back toward Mr. Herald.

“See,” her father said. He leaned forward and pecked her on the cheek. “See you tomorrow afternoon … late.”

“Daddy, if you knew how much this worried me.…”

“I’m not taking any liability on myself. You’re the one who decided you wanted him to go.”

“Daddy, this is your daughter you’re speaking to—I know you planned this whole thing.”

He kissed her cheek again. “The team’s away,” he said. Then in a softer voice, “Carolyn, what you should do is come with us, have a good time yourself. I’d like that.”

“A girl with the men?” she said in a deep voice. “Heaven forbid, Captain.” Then, her voice lower, she said, “Do keep an eye on him.”

Her father winked and nodded. Then he walked toward the boys patiently waiting in the boats.

“Ready, men?” he said as he stopped at the edge of the bank.

“Yes, sir,”
the boys came back as one.

“Yes, sir,” Paul said.

“Good.” Mr. Herald stepped into the lead boat and settled into its stern seat. In a moment, the outboard motor roared to life and he used its steering arm to guide the boat away from the bank. San-hi started the other boat’s motor and guided the craft out toward the center of the channel.

Moving slowly, the water behind the boats barely churning with the slow speed of their props, they headed toward the long Interstate 10 bridge, shimmering and blurred in the humidity-created haze in the distance.

Her father looked back over his shoulder and waved.

Paul’s face came around for a moment. Then he looked back up the river, as the other boys were doing.

*   *   *

Ensign Douglas Williams stared over the forty-one’s rail at the bright water zipping past the craft. He was thinking about sharks. Not the kind his uncle thought about, but real live sharks. Specifically, deep-ocean sharks. The species that stayed in deep water, or in shallow waters not far from the deeper ones—like shallow water around islands formed by seamounts, volcanic projections that over time had risen from miles below and now formed such places as Hawaii and the many other islands in the mostly deep Pacific. Sharks like the oceanic white-tip and the mako, the kinds of sharks that, along with the far-ranging tiger sharks, were responsible for far more deaths than the more publicized but less numerous white sharks, the kinds of sharks that yanked thousands of sailors from floating debris during World War I and II—although this almost always occurred in deep water.

But was that going to continue to be the case? The world’s commercial fishing fleets, forced far offshore by countries all over the world trying to protect their inshore waters, had congregated in the deep ocean the last couple of decades. Giant, super-efficient fishing vessels from the more technologically advanced countries such as Japan, pulling nets up to forty miles long, had wiped out entire schools of fish that had once swum these waters, not only taking them from the food chain but also any young they might have produced. With these fishes’ dramatic decline, he knew that the great ocean predators that had depended on them for subsistence since time began had started moving into the shallower waters of the continental shelves in search of prey. Sharks never before seen close to shore or only seen there once in a great while were starting to be seen frequently in shallower waters.

He was a witness to that. He had been assigned to the Pentagon for only the last few months. Before that he had been a junior officer on a destroyer. Only two months prior to being transferred from that vessel, he had been on its deck as it made its way up the eastern side of the Gulf of Mexico and had looked down over the rail to see a twelve-foot deep-water mako staring back at him.

He thought of the perception people had of a shark attack—a person struggling, yelling for help. But the general public really didn’t know. Maybe that scenario was true of what happened during an attack by some of the smaller, shallow-water sharks common to the American coasts. But it was not the case with the great giant creatures from the open seas—some of them reaching fifteen to eighteen feet in length and weighing two to three tons. When they attacked it was swift—no struggle, a swimmer often swallowed nearly whole, or bitten completely in half. He had a shipmate on the destroyer who had been present at such an attack. Swimming off a beach in the Philippines with a friend, the shipmate had looked away from his friend for a moment, and then looked back to see nothing but open water. Seconds later he had glimpsed the top of a thick dorsal fin momentarily breaking the surface, moving away from him—and nothing more.

And now I’m going to dive in waters not all that far from where I saw the Mako,
Douglas thought. He knew that, despite the almost universal misconception of a shark’s poor vision, such creatures in reality could see half again farther than a man could underwater, and several times farther than a man in poor light or murky water. So watching carefully did no good—a person would never see a shark before it saw him. And even if sharks were blind, the advantage would still be overwhelmingly theirs. They could hear and feel vibrations for over a mile. The predominant portion of their brains was devoted to olfaction. They could often smell prey farther even than they could hear or feel it. There was no possible way a swimmer could enter the water and stay very long and that presence not be known to every shark for miles in every direction.

And even if somehow an intended victim sensed an attack coming, to flee was useless, even when relatively close to a place of safety. Makos like the one he had seen had been clocked swimming at speeds in excess of thirty miles an hour—and that when they were not even up to attacking speed.

Douglas closed his eyes at the thought of his upcoming dive. He had actually wanted to be an English professor, teaching at some small college where he could spend a great deal of time involved with his interest in poetry. But his uncle was an admiral. So despite his mother maybe thinking the military silly, as his uncle had stated, she had directed him that way. And he had acquiesced. Her advice had always proved wise in the past.

Man,
he thought,
why did I listen to her?

And he cursed his uncle silently under his breath—almost meaning it.

“Sir,” the Coast Guardsman behind him said.

Douglas turned to face the shorter man.

“Sir, did you bring swim trunks?”

Douglas nodded.

“We have your scuba equipment ready inside,” the man said.

Douglas stared toward the center of the boat.

And then, a somber expression across his face, he followed the man down the deck.

CHAPTER 14

“How many of you have seen a beaver dam before?”

Paul raised his hand. “I have,” he said. Fred cut the outboard’s throttle. The boat glided broadside against the bank. San-hi guided the trailing boat in behind him and Armon stepped off its bow onto the soft ground.

“Easy, men,” Fred said as the boys in front of him began rising. Paul stood in the rocking boat. His backpack in one arm, his rolled sleeping bag in the other, he wobbled to the side of the craft. Put in motion by the feet pushing off of its side as the other boys stepped to the bank, the boat began to swing out into the water.

“Grab it, Armon,” Fred said.

At that moment Paul stepped out of the boat into knee-deep water, stumbled at the unexpected depth of the step, and splashed forward onto his stomach at the edge of the bank.

Armon smiled as he caught the side of the boat.

Fred stared at him.

Armon shrugged, but couldn’t help but continue to smile.

San-hi caught Paul by the shoulder and pulled him to his feet. His jeans and shirt and preserver soaked, his backpack dripping, his sleeping roll soggy, even his thick, dark hair hanging wet down across his forehead, Paul came up on the bank and grinned.