Meg: Hell's Aquarium (12 page)

—into a refrigerated warehouse. The dead female Megalodon has been placed belly-up, propped slightly on its left side to prevent the remains of its insides from falling out of a jagged wound the size of a Jacuzzi. Heavy plastic sheets cover the concrete floor, bright portable lights illuminate the carcass. Dissection tools have been laid out across the tops of three large tables located by the creature’s head. Their “surgical” equipment includes a variety of chainsaws, handsaws, vacuum hoses, hunting knifes, machetes, rakes, hooks, and a stack of clean towels. A fourth table—a portable lab—holds beakers, test tubes, blood sampling kits, and a dozen sterilized, plastic vacuum packs. Two electric, heavy-duty Toyota forklifts are parked off to one side, their steel prongs wrapped in plastic.

The necropsy team has already assembled, everyone dressed in similar protective attire. Steven Moretti, director of husbandry, is using a metal rake to retract Angelica’s upper lip and gums, allowing Dr. Stelzer’s assistant, Fran Rizzuto, to snap a few photos of the wide front row of teeth. Moretti’s assistant, Virgil Carmen, uses an acetylene torch to mark areas of incision along the remains of the dead Meg’s devastated ventral surface.

Dr. Stelzer observes his crew, then walks to a dry-erase board. “Gentlemen—and Frannie—if you could join us, please.” He picks up a blue marker and draws a rough sketch of the dead Megalodon. “Moretti, I want you and Virgil to begin with the skull. Remove Angelica’s right eye and place it in formalin before starting on the upper and lower jaws. You’ll need to cut here—” he references the diagram “—to remove the jaws to allow us access to her gill arches. Every tooth, including those folded back into the interior gum line, will be removed from the jaw, then laid out on a board and numbered, measured, and photographed, as they’re worth a small fortune. And please don’t get any ideas; there are security cameras recording every procedure.

“Fran, you and David will assist me in taking tissue samples of the major organs. Heart, liver, intestines, gonads, and liver . . . at least what’s left of them. Remember, all toxicology samples must be frozen and stored immediately. Anything that appears abnormal gets documented, cut, placed in formalin, and tagged. Keep an eye out for lesions. We’ll work for two hours then break for twenty minutes and reevaluate. Questions? . . . No? . . . Then let’s get started.”

The two teams head for the equipment tables. Steven Moretti grabs a hunting knife to excise Angelica’s eye, his assistant filling a Tupperware bowl with formalin—a strong-scented liquid disinfectant that will help preserve the visual sensory organ.

Dr. Stelzer points to the sixteen-inch chainsaw. “David, that’s your tool for today. Fran, grab a machete and a handsaw.”

The biologist selects a metal rake then leads them to the massive bite mark located along Angelica’s stomach. “Bela did quite a job on her. We lost her stomach, spleen, and most of her intestines. We’ll access her heart after Moretti and Virgil remove the gills; so, for now, our primary target will be the gonads. David, very carefully, I want you to make an incision from the edge of the bite mark to the anal fin, making sure you only slice into the hide. Fran, as he cuts with the chainsaw, we’ll use the rake and machete to retract the Meg’s skin, exposing the internal organs.”

David sets the chain saw on the floor and gives the pull-starter a yank, starting the engine. Avoiding Angelica’s enormous wing-like pectoral fins, he moves to the edge of the jagged bite mark and sets the whirring blade against the rancid bite wound.

The chain saw spits out blood and shards of alabaster-pink skin.

Dr. Stelzer sets the teeth of his rake against the splitting four-inch-thick skin, pulling the upper flap back while Fran hacks at the connective tissue with her machete. David continues his cut, pausing five minutes later at the anal fin, an equilateral triangle of flesh harboring the female Megalodon’s cloaca.

“Good enough, stop there.” Dr. Stelzer climbs over the carcass. “Now, make a transverse incision here.” He traces an invisible crosswise line over the Meg’s lower belly.

David makes the incision. Using their tools, Fran and Stelzer pull back the ten-foot flaps of skin created by the cut, exposing the dead Meg’s ovaries and right and left oviducts.

The smell is overpowering.

Using a handsaw, Dr. Stelzer slices open the ovary, revealing hundreds of clear eggs, each the size of a tennis ball. Fran hands him a plastic ladle and opens a specimen bag. One by one, Stelzer scoops out twenty eggs, then seals up the bag.

“Set these aside, Fran. We’ll look at them later. Let’s see how the guys are doing.”

Moretti and Virgil have removed Angelica’s eye and retina, bagging it in formalin. Using ladders and chainsaws, they are hard at work cutting around the juvenile’s six-foot jaws. It will take another hour before the incisions are complete, allowing Moretti to yank the jaws free from the Meg’s mouth using cables rigged to one of the forklifts.

The sun is just setting over the Pacific by the time David emerges from the locker room. The muscles in his shoulders, lower back, and arms ache, and despite two showers, he still reeks of formaldehyde. He steps out onto the main deck of the lagoon, allowing gusts of cold wind to blow in his face and long brown hair.

His eyes search the lagoon. The surface waters of the concrete bathtub are choppy with whitecaps, but there is no sign of its seventy-four-foot, fifty-one-ton resident.

Looking to his left, David spots Teddy Badault and his team working in the southern end of the arena by the A-frame, using a long chain to dunk a slab of raw beef from the steel tower as if it were a church belfry.

David jogs over. “Any luck?”

Ted shoots him a disgusted look. “Not a bite in forty-five minutes. Your father’s guests are growing impatient.”

Seated midway up the southern bleachers are the visitors from Dubai.

“Wait here, I have an idea.” David heads for the equipment room. The metal door is unlocked, and he enters.

Inside the large rectangular storage space are shelves filled with flotation devices, reach poles, lengths of steel chain, hooks, and an assortment of underwater lights. He quickly finds what he is looking for—a metal object roughly the size of a coconut.

David powers-on the device. Nothing.

He checks the batteries, replaces them with eight new D cells, and tries it again.

The thumper reverberates in his hands like a giant artificial heart.

Leaving the equipment room, he returns to the A-frame. “Ted, pull the carcass out of the water. I want to try something.”

The trainer signals to his two assistants, who swing the water-laden side of beef out of the lagoon and onto the deck.

Using his pocket knife, David slices a deep slit into a section of fatty tissue and shoves the thumper inside, powering it on high. “Try it now, only don’t bob the meat. Just let it float along the surface.”

The assistants hoist the carcass up over the sea wall and back into the lagoon. The side of beef floats just below the surface, the meat vibrating rapidly in the water.

Several minutes pass.

A harsh wind kicks up, whistling through the near-empty bleachers.

“
Al Abyad! Al Abyad!
” One of the men in
dishdashi
is on his feet, pointing at the canal entrance as a ten-foot wake pushes majestically into the lagoon, the ghostly form fully submerged, the killer remaining deep.

Ted Badault and his men instinctively back away from the sea wall as the great fish slowly approaches the thumping bait.

David never moves. He has watched Angel feed a thousand times. He knows her every approach, revealing her every mood.
She’s hungry, but in no hurry. She’ll circle first, just to be sure. Maybe take a nip, then circle again . . . until she goes deep and comes up from below . . .

The alabaster dorsal fin, streaked with scars, cuts the surface like a triangular periscope. Angel rises. An eddy forms as the pale behemoth circles the bait twice. Then, with a sudden slap of her caudal fin, the huntress launches herself at the side of beef, waves cascading over the sea wall as she steals a quick bite before tossing her prey aside.

The Dubai delegation is on their feet, their videographer filming. For several long minutes they simply stare at the water, the lull allowing their fluttering hearts to calm as the creature remains out of sight.
Is it over? Have they waited so patiently for so long, just to be teased?

Small waves lap at the sea wall. Somewhere close by, a metal bracket clinks against a naked flagpole, its hollow cadence set to the wind. The Pacific thunders in the distance. Monterey grays as a storm front moves in from the west.

There are no warnings, no telltale fin, no tsunami-like wake. Death simply rises from the aqua-green depths as if drawn to the heavens. The triangular head, as large as a garbage truck, yawns open to form an encompassing cavern of teeth. The carcass—and several hundred gallons of sea—are siphoned, crushed, and swallowed in one all-consuming bite, pink froth squeezing out the sides of the clenching jaws as the albino goddess continues to rise clear out of the lagoon.

The half-moon tail curls as it flicks air. The broad, almost barrel-shaped back, arches. For one gravity-defying split second the most prolific hunter ever to stalk the planet is airborne, its 102,000-pound girth blotting out the opposite end of the arena—

—until the laws of physics return and the monster plunges through the sea, its mass not so much sinking as opening a great hole from whence it is swallowed.

The
craaack
of mass striking water echoes across the empty arena, followed by a geyser of sea that shoots four stories high. The Dubai entourage remains awestruck, their mouths hanging open, their minds struggling to grapple with what their eyes have just witnessed—

—save for Fiesal bin Rashidi, who is staring at David Branden Taylor. The twenty-year-old had never so much as flinched. Poised three feet from the heaving sea, Jonas’s young prodigy remains unafraid, totally within his element.

6.

KGO-TV
San Francisco, California

Wednesday

Terry Taylor closes her eyes as the woman applying make-up touches up her dark circles. Hovering behind her is Kayla Cicala. The publicist had arranged this morning’s live interview as a means of presenting the Tanaka Institute’s side against the mounting tide of public opinion that is being stirred by members of the radical PETA affiliate, R.A.W.

The station’s producer enters the room. “Terry? Keith Auton. I’ll be coordinating things on our side. Have you ever done a satellite interview before?”

“No.”

“It can be a little disorienting. You’ll be looking into the camera while one of the hosts at
Good Morning America
speaks with you through an earpiece. He can see you. You just can’t see him.” The producer scans his notes. “I see they have Frank Youngblood scheduled to do the interview.”

“Frank’s straightforward but fair,” Kayla says, checking Terry’s make-up. “Blot the lipstick. You don’t need it, and it sends the wrong message.”

An intern pokes her head inside the doorway. “They want her on the set.”

Kayla gives Terry a smile and two thumbs up. “You’ll do great.”

The studio is cold, the lights hot and bright, the cameras a bit intimidating. The set features a backdrop of the San Francisco skyline. A sound man attaches a microphone to Terry’s blouse collar, instructing her to snake the wire down her shirt. He pins the remote’s battery pack to the back of her skirt, then hands her an earpiece.

She hooks it in place behind her right ear, eavesdropping on a cross-conversation among producers in New York.

“Hi, Terry. Can you hear me?”

“Yes.” She looks at the large studio camera, its lifeless glass lens pointed directly at her. Someone has taped a “Happy Face” above the lens, providing her with a point of reference.

“Terry, this is Frank Youngblood. Thanks so much for agreeing to do the show. How’s your daughter?”

“Fine. Better. She gets out of the hospital today.”

“Great. Stand by.”

Terry sits back in the upholstered chair, each breath slow and deliberate, her racing pulse gradually slowing.

“Thirty seconds.” The red light above the camera blinks on. Theme music plays in her ear . . .

“. . . and we’re back. For the last four years the Tanaka Institute and Aquarium has rivaled Disney World’s popularity, attracting tens of millions to its seaside arena to visit Angel: The Angel of Death. Last Saturday, visitors watched in horror as two volunteers were swept into the lagoon, one of the men—an undergrad at usc—devoured by the seventy-four-foot Megalodon. Less than twenty-four hours later, one of Angel’s offspring attacked and killed a smaller pup inside the aquarium known as the Meg Pen. With us here this morning, live, via satellite from our ABC affiliate in San Francisco, is Terry Tanaka-Taylor, CEO of the Tanaka Institute. Terry, good to have you with us.”

“Good morning.” The bright lights cause her eyes to water. She forces herself to focus on the yellow Happy Face.