Meg: Hell's Aquarium (20 page)

The triangular head rises, drawing a gasp from Dr. Nichols. The blunt conical snout snorts an gurgling draft of sea and air as the powerful tail lashes back and forth, slapping frothy, six-foot waves over the northern sea wall, soaking the scientist’s feet.

Then, Dr. Nichols sees it—a flat, brown object that he realizes is Mac’s submersible, the craft lurching along the surface in an awkward circle like a wounded fish, its floundering movements attracting the monster.

Sensing the object, Angel circles slowly, merely investigating at first, until her head suddenly lunges sideways, her open jaws biting water as she makes a reflexive attempt to snag the wounded prey.

Compensating for the damaged starboard propeller, Mac barely manages to avoid Angel’s “bump and taste,” as he rolls the submersible past the Megalodon’s fluttering gill slits. He descends beneath an enormous pectoral fin that passes over his vessel like the wing of a jetliner. The Manta Ray is nearly sideswiped by the thrashing caudal fin.

Past the ghostly behemoth, attempting to coax speed from his crippled vessel, Mac dives the sub and heads west toward the canal entrance. Twelve knots . . . fifteen . . .
I’ll need at least thirty to clear the barbed wire above the submerged doors. Please be high tide!

He registers the sudden change in current—knows it is Angel turning in pursuit.
Don’t look back. Focus on being hydrodynamic . . . keep your wings level while you ease your foot down on the left pedal . . . compensate with the right joystick . . .

He hits twenty knots as he exits the lagoon and enters the canal, the concrete barriers on either side, his feverish mind white-hot as his hands and feet adjust the sub’s pitch and yaw against the head-current coming at him from beyond the porous doors.

Twenty-two knots.

Gotta push it . . . risk the roll for more speed. Get deeper . . . forty feet at least, or you’ll never clear the coils . . .

He sees the doors looming up ahead, his mind adjusting on the fly, calculating speed and distance, estimating when to begin his rapid ascent.

Not yet . . . not yet
. . .
now!

Mac floors the one working prop as he heaves back hard on the joysticks, pulling the Manta Ray into a steep climb, doing twenty-six knots. The sub breaches, skims the eight-foot-high coils of barbed wire anchored in place above the submerged canal doors, and barrel rolls as it splashes down on the other side of the canal into open ocean.

Angel is right behind him, and with a tremendous thrust of her caudal fin, the albino beast launches its head and upper torso out of the sea—

—her airborne belly snagging barbed wire. The heavy coils stretch and twist around Angel’s pectoral fins, pinning her belly-first against the submerged upper portion of the underwater doors. For a heart-stopping moment, the monster’s head and gills remain clear out of the water, her upper torso fighting for equilibrium.

Mac surfaces the sub and watches, his pulse pounding, his left foot poised above the accelerator, ready to flee. “Fall back . . . damn you. Stop thrashing and fall back inside.”

Gasping a suffocating mouthful of air, the Megalodon panics. It writhes and twists, its tail churning great swaths in the canal, but the beached seventy-four-foot-long prehistoric shark cannot generate enough forward momentum to get free of its perch. And the creature possesses no reverse gear.

The wave catches Mac by surprise, nearly flipping him over as it lifts and propels the Manta Ray back toward the trapped beast. Slamming his foot down on the pedal, he accelerates farther out to sea—

—as the incoming swell strikes Angel, lifting her up and over the steel doors, delivering her back into the confines of the man-made canal.

The flooded
Jellyfish
is hoisted slowly out of the tank, the truck crane’s lone cable barely enough to handle the additional ballast. Water pours out from the cracked hull as the sphere is set down upon the concrete deck. Virgil is first to scale the vessel, jamming a crowbar into the wheel of the topside hatch as other staff members join him to wrench loose the seal.

Somewhere up the coastal highway, an ambulance siren welcomes the night.

Somewhere out to sea, a pregnant humpback continues her journey south, never realizing that fate and several fortunate inches have just spared her life and that of her unborn calf.

But fate is not always fortunate. Inches not always enough.

Wrapped in a wool blanket, seated somewhere in the vacant stands, Jonas Taylor watches in silence as members of his staff drag the lifeless body of Steven Moretti from its watery tomb.

11.

Dubai Land
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

David Taylor lies in bed, staring at the digital clock. 4:46 a.m.

Despite the million-dollar view and the five-star room service, the king-size bed and more down pillows than he could ever use, he has had a restless night. Though exhausted from the long flight, it had taken him several hours to fall asleep, his mind refusing to cease its endless conversations. He had nodded off around ten, but was back up an hour later, struggling to breathe, the air far drier than he was used to. He had downed several bottles of water and returned to bed, only to awaken an hour later to use the bathroom. And so it had gone for the rest of the night and well into morning.

4:47 a.m.

“This is crazy! I can’t sleep. My body’s still on California time.” He kicks off the covers, leaps out of bed, and ruffles through his suitcase for his workout clothes. A quick search of the snack basket yields a protein bar. He wolfs it down, chases it with an orange juice, then pockets his room key and leaves the suite, heading for the elevators.

He takes the lift down to Level Three, the entire floor dedicated to a health and fitness club. The exercise room is empty, just the way he likes it. He inspects the weight training equipment, formulates a routine in his head, then warms up with fifteen minutes on the stationary bike before setting to work.

David is lying at a thirty-degree angle on a decline bench, finishing his third set of dumbbell presses when Kaylie suddenly steps into his view, the girl looking down on him.

“Morning, glory. Need a spot?”

“No . . . I’m good.” He continues pressing the weight, beads of sweat pouring down his face, his exhausted arms shaking as he looks up past Kaylie’s spandex pants, her bare midriff, and six-pack abs. She smiles, peering down at him between her twin peaks, held back by a matching spandex top. Finally he drops the weights onto the rubber exercise floor and pulls himself up into a sitting position.

She tosses him a clean towel from a stack. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not so good. My room needs a humidifier or something.”

“I couldn’t sleep either. You should have come over.”

“Really?”

“Sure. We could have watched movies together. I brought a bunch of DVDs from home.”

“DVDs . . . right.” He watches her stretch her hamstrings. “You look like you work out a lot.”

“I’m training for a triathlon; I did four last year. My best time was three hours seven minutes. My goal is to break two fifty.”

“That’s pretty good. I don’t think I could even finish.”

“Sure you could. You look like you’re in shape.” She selects a treadmill from a row of three and starts running. “You get better as you go . . . figure out how to pace yourself. Dumbest thing I ever did . . . was not lubing up. Leg cramps are nothing compared to chafing . . . my nipples were raw.”

“Yeah. That’s gotta suck.”

“So . . . what are you training for?”

“Me? Football. I played in high school. Wide receiver. Made all-state twice. Used to be a sprinter too. Hundred and two hundred meters. Florida coach asked me to come out. Figured I’d give it a shot.”

“That’s great.”

He watches her run another moment before heading off to work his lats, keeping an eye on her reflection in the mirror.
Football . . . good comeback . . . idiot! Practice starts in three weeks and you don’t even own a playbook, let alone a prayer. When’s the last time you even ran a wind sprint?

He works his biceps, finishes with three sets of concentration curls, then debates working his legs.
Nah . . . save ‘em for tomorrow
. He looks over at Kaylie, who is still running strong. He contemplates doing a mile on the treadmill, but he’s never liked running on machines, preferring the outdoors.

“I’m going outside for a run. Catch you later.”

“I’ve got twenty more minutes . . . then I’m in the pool. Come and find me . . . we’ll do breakfast together.”

“Okay, great.” He towels off and waves, nearly walking into the wall as he leaves the fitness room.

The sun is just coming up as he exits the lobby and heads outside, the desert morning air far cooler than he expected.
Sprints or a two-mile run? . . . Screw the sprints. I’m not really trying out for football
. He stretches his quads and hams then starts jogging at an easy pace, following a pedestrian trail that leads in the direction of the aquarium.

He jogs through a small park is passing several construction sites. The night shift is just getting off work, yielding to day workers in hard hats drinking coffee. Dubai’s population numbers just over a million, yet more than eighty percent of the people are expatriates, most hailing from Asia. Almost all of the workers he sees fits the demographic.

The trail connects to Avenue D, a pedestrian roadway lined with recently transplanted Canary date palms and the concrete block and wood frames of what will eventually be retail kiosks. The roadway intersects with a circular drive—future home to restaurants, eateries, and an open bazaar. Beyond the drive is an enormous man-made lake that harbors the twelve towering shark fins.

At the center of the lake is the aquarium.

Six futuristic acrylic glass and steel walkways arch gracefully over the lake, connecting the circular drive to the aquarium. The aquatic complex itself resembles something out of Oz’s Emerald City—a tinted green glass pyramid structure surrounded by interlocking triangular trusses that jut out from every possible angle.

David is drenched in sweat, his knees sore from running on concrete, and his blood sugar is low, but having come this far he decides to take a quick look around before returning to the hotel. He sprints up the walkway then slows to admire the architectural details of the aquarium as he jogs down the other side to a third-story pavilion.

There are three public entrances, none of which is open. He is about to begin the journey back when he sees the tractor trailer.

It is moving slowly up an access road on the street level, located forty feet beneath the pavilion. A double-wide eighteen wheeler, it is hauling an enormous railcar (sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, and fifteen feet high) chained to its flatbed. The load is being escorted by a detail of park officials in golf carts, technicians in white lab coats, and a handful of heavily armed military police riding shotgun.

As David watches, something causes the MPs to suddenly jump down off the truck and aim their weapons at the container. The vehicle stops, the technicians immediately scaling the flatbed. Water spills out from a series of air spaces located along the roof. The container is being rocked from within! Then David hears it—a dull, heavy
thudding
sound—something pounding on metal from within.

They’re transporting a live specimen . . . something big!

A short, dishwater-blonde woman in her mid-fifties rushes over, followed by a tall man—six foot six—in his early thirties. Probably her assistant. The assistant scales the outside of the container then lowers a hose into the air vent, siphoning out a water sample. The woman quickly tests the sample as the pounding increases.

She converses briefly with her lanky assistant before moving to the front end of the railcar where she opens the valve on one of a series of seven-foot-tall, yellow aluminum tanks, waits thirty seconds, before shutting it off again.

After a few moments the pounding ceases.

The woman speaks over a walkie-talkie, and the truck restarts, moving beneath the aquarium complex and out of David’s view.