Extinct (33 page)

“I don’t care,” his uncle came back. “I just want it to come up where I can get a close look at it myself—for myself.”

“A
close
look at it, sir? Are you out of your damn mind?” At Douglas’s words, his uncle’s mouth fell open. And Douglas’s did, too.

Cowart stared at the two, first looking at one of them and then back at the other. And then her eyes suddenly squinted out over the water between them.

Douglas quickly looked that way.

A half mile away and moving in the direction that the forty-one had gone minutes before, a charter fishing boat moved at a rapid cruising speed across the rolling water. Cowart lifted a pair of binoculars from in front of the wheel and stared at the boat.

“Sir,” she said, “that’s the
Intuitive.
”

Vandiver’s face whipped toward the boat.

“Damn!”

He grabbed the radio mike. “
Intuitive,
this is Admiral Vandiver. Where is the shark you were towing?”

“We cut it loose,”
Carolyn replied.

“My God, woman! You don’t know what you’ve done!”

*   *   *

On the
Intuitive,
Carolyn calmly gave Admiral Vandiver the loran coordinates of the net, then replaced her mike.

They watched as a moment later the Whaler made a sharp circle and, a wide wake spreading out behind the Johnson motors revved to full speed, raced in the direction of the coordinates.

A hundred yards behind the Whaler, a fin suddenly broke the surface, and began to rise higher out of the water, gaining speed as it did.

Twin showers of spray climbing higher and higher out to its sides, the fin raced after the Whaler.

CHAPTER 40

Alan and Carolyn and Stark and Paul watched in horror as the thick fin sped after the Whaler. Its speed was incredible, quickly narrowing the distance. Carolyn grabbed for the radio mike.

*   *   *

On the Whaler, Vandiver, frowning, sat with his arms folded rigidly across his chest, bouncing when the Whaler crashed through a swell, but never deviating from his fixed stare in the direction of the loran coordinates. Despite the hard bouncing, Douglas began to relax.

“Admiral Vandiver!”
Carolyn yelled over the radio.
“It’s coming up behind you!”

All their faces jerked to the rear.

The tall fin was twenty feet behind them off to the side and angling directly toward the bow. Cowart spun the wheel away from the fin. The boat leaned and cut in a tight arc. Douglas was thrown across his seat, hit the side of the boat with his stomach, and bent over it toward the water. The fin slashed by his head.

The shark swerved in a sharp circle, and came after them again.

Cowart, standing, steering with one hand, tried to reach back across the seat toward the M-16. It bounced out of her reach. Douglas grabbed it, came to his feet with his back against the seats, and raised its barrel.

Nothing happened.

“Inject a cartridge into the chamber!”
Cowart screamed.

Douglas fumbled to pull back the weapon’s lever arm. A cartridge locked into place. He pulled the trigger. A burst of three slugs sprayed across the top of the fin, and the gun quit firing.

“Release the trigger and pull it again!” Cowart yelled.

A spray of three more slugs cut into the fin, heading directly toward the side of the boat. Cowart jerked the wheel away from the fin again. A third spray of slugs fired into the air as Douglas stumbled backward, hit his rear on the side of the boat, and tilted toward the water. The M-16 flew out of his suddenly upflung hands and over his head. He caught the boat under his buttocks, arched on backward toward the water—and Vandiver grabbed his legs. Douglas was pulled back into the bottom of the craft—as Cowart cut the wheel again and the shark’s fin slashed behind them.

Now she guided the Whaler in a straight line toward the Chandeleur Light and the shallow water extending out from it. Vandiver scrambled off Douglas and came to his knees, staring back at the fin.

It quickly closed the distance again and edged out to the right—and spurted toward them. Cowart cut the boat to the left. The fin suddenly swerved back to the left and cut across the Whaler’s wake much as a skier would, and came directly toward the side of the craft.

This time too quickly for the surprised Cowart.

Douglas ducked down in the boat. Vandiver stared wide-eyed from his knees. The shark’s broad head, ahead of the fin under the water, slammed into the Whaler just as Cowart jerked the wheel in the opposite direction.

The Whaler tipped up on its side, hung for a moment as water poured over its side, and they splashed back down onto the surface—and the motors went dead, drowned out with smoke pouring from them.

The boat rocked.

The fin, having shot ahead of them, made a wide circle and started back.

It rose higher. The wide head broke the surface, the thick-bodied, fifty-foot creature coming at them with water rushing back around its eyes.

Cowart dove for the small storage area under the bow. Douglas grabbed the bottom of a seat and hung on. Vandiver, his gaze directly into the creature’s eyes, tightened his hands on the side of the boat.

The shark smashed into the craft, knocking it sliding sideways across the water as if it was on a pad of grease. It slid into a rising swell, tilted—and flipped over.

Vandiver hit the water on his back, ten feet from the boat. Cowart splashed head-first into the water off to his side and was immediately popped right side up by her bulky preserver.

Under the upturned boat, Douglas, his cheeks puffed and his eyes staring through the light-green water, clung to the bottom of the seat.

Bubbles came out of his mouth. He looked toward the sand bottom beneath him. He let go of the seat and paddled madly to the side, hitting his head on the inside of the boat, ducking under it, and popping above the surface with a gasp for air.

Fifty feet away, the shark, nothing showing now but its tall fin, remained motionless as it faced them.

Douglas moved his gaze from the fin to a spot in the water twenty feet closer to them—where the head would be. The fin started slowly forward. They started back-paddling toward the upturned Whaler. The fin suddenly sunk a foot, and spurted forward.

“Watch out!” Vandiver screamed. He dove under the boat. Douglas dove behind him.

Cowart, held above the water by her preserver, couldn’t.

She grabbed for the top of the rounded hull, her hands slipped down its side, her feet kicked wildly, and, somehow, she scrambled up on top of the hull. Vandiver and Douglas scrambled up the other side.

The hull rose from the force of the water pushing up from below it as the shark shot underneath the craft.

*   *   *

Carolyn stared down at Paul, caught her lip in her teeth, shook her head, and spun the
Intuitive
’s wheel in the direction of the shark attacking the Whaler, and jammed the throttles forward.

Stark raced up the deck toward the bow.

Alan felt Paul catch his leg and hang on tightly. He laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

*   *   *

The shark circled sixty to seventy feet out from the overturned Whaler. Vandiver, Douglas, and Cowart were on their knees atop the rounded hull. The fin slowly began to rise. The eyes came out of the water. The wide head began to come slowly forward.

Douglas closed his eyes and mumbled a short prayer. Vandiver continued to stare directly at the shark. Cowart, her jaw tight, tried not to cry out. The shark didn’t increase its pace this time. It was fifty feet away.

“It’s going to simply pick us off the hull,” Vandiver said, his tone almost matter-of-fact.

Douglas swallowed and tightened his jaw. Cowart edged back a little, but there was only the water behind her. She suddenly stripped off her preserver and threw it at the shark.

“Damn you!” she yelled at the top of her lungs.

The wide nose brushed the preserver aside. It bobbed past the side of the head and moved back along the shark’s body.

Twenty feet away.

Ten.

Cowart dove off the other side of the boat and started swimming away from it as fast as she could.

The shark’s head submerged in a swirl of water. The fin shot forward, sinking.

The Whaler rose on a mound of water as the wide, brown shape swept underneath it.

Vandiver and Douglas looked toward Cowart. She swam frantically thirty feet away. The dark shape swept under her splashing legs. Her shoulders and head suddenly bounced upward out of the water. Her arms flailed as if she were trying to swim up into the air—and she was jerked beneath the surface.

Douglas closed his eyes.

The tip of the crescent tail made a wide sweep out to the side—and the dorsal fin straightened, facing back toward the Whaler. Vandiver looked toward the loud roar of the
Intuitive
racing toward them.

The fin came toward the Whaler.

It began to rise. The wide head broke the surface. The mouth lifted above the water. It gaped open.

Douglas backed down the side of the hull until he was in water to his thighs.

Vandiver didn’t move.

The mouth gaped wider, came up above him. He stared into row after row of thick brown pointed teeth.

The
Intuitive
slammed into the shark’s side. The bow dug into the thick flesh, bounced higher, and rolled the shark over onto its side, the keel of the boat cutting on across the body.

A propeller shattered against the thick bulk. One of the engines whined.

The shark rolled out from under the rear of the boat. The Whaler spun from the wave slammed against it. Vandiver toppled forward into the water. Douglas was knocked off the far side and splashed frantically. The shark’s fin came back above the water as the fifty-foot beast righted itself.

Ignoring the Whaler now, it sped toward the
Intuitive.

*   *   *

On the
Intuitive,
Carolyn gasped for breath, the wind knocked from her body as she’d slammed into the wheel during the collision. Alan’s grip had kept Paul from being thrown into the front of the flying bridge, but he himself had slammed into it with his shoulder and been knocked off his feet, pulling Paul to the deck with him. Stark had come dashing back from the bow as they neared the shark and had dived into the fishing cockpit as they rammed it. He rolled to his back now and, clasping his forearm, came painfully to his feet.

“Hang on!”
Alan yelled. He gripped the bridge with one hand and grabbed Paul around the shoulders with his other, jerking the boy tight against him.

The shark’s head drove directly toward the bow.

Carolyn kept the boat directly toward the shark’s head.

The two came together like a pair of mountain rams slamming head-on into each other. The shark’s head was driven under the water as the bow of the
Intuitive
rose into the air.

Carolyn bounced against the wheel again and around it into the front of the flying bridge. Paul’s shirt ripped off in Alan’s hand. Alan careened back off the wheel toward the rear of the bridge. The bilge pump alarms sounded their high-pitched yelping sound as water streamed through the cracked bow into the interior of the boat.

The shark rolled off to the side. A wide pectoral fin broke the surface and hung for a moment pointed into the air, and then the shark righted itself again. The dorsal fin popped back out of the water, tilted to the side, and straightened.

Stark reached over the side of the fishing cockpit and caught Douglas’ forearm. Vandiver came toward them, swimming slow, his head revolving back and forth as if he were dazed. Douglas pushed off the boat and swam toward him, catching his uncle’s flailing arm and dragging him back toward the boat. It was pulling away from them under the power of the still-working prop.

Alan jerked the gears into reverse and pushed the throttles forward. One engine whined and did nothing. The other pulled the stern back toward Douglas and Vandiver in a slight arc.

Stark grabbed Vandiver and dragged him into the cockpit. Douglas came in by himself and sprawled forward into the bottom of the boat.

Alan spun the
Intuitive
’s wheel toward the shallow water extending out around the Chandeleur Light.

Carolyn held Paul close against her legs.

CHAPTER 41

The
Intuitive
limped rapidly on one engine toward the Chandeleur Light. The shark, a hundred feet behind the craft, began to angle out of the wake instead of following directly behind the craft. Alan looked toward the Light, a little more than the length of a football field ahead of them. The water would shallow a couple of hundred feet short of that. The shark began to move faster, still angling slightly out to the side of the wake, but gaining on them at the same time.

“It’s going to cut us off,” Vandiver said in a low voice. He stood at the very rear of the fishing cockpit, above the water churning from the full power of the one spinning prop.

“And it knows exactly how much time it has before we reach shallow water.”

Alan looked at the protruding fin and the dark shape under it. It was coming faster now, but not as fast as it had moved before. Almost as if the shark were playing with them, letting them get closer to safety.

Or moving determinedly, with calculated purpose.
With a plan in its mind?
And then Alan knew that was exactly what was taking place. Its moving out to the side of the wake as it came toward them … It had felt the hardness of the reinforced bow. It knew the one, sharp-bladed prop still spun at the rear of the boat. The shark’s last charge would be at the side of the craft. The creature’s wide head would tear through the thinner fiberglass there as if it were paper. The fin began to move faster.

It was still a hundred feet to the shallow water.

“Here it comes,” Stark said.

*   *   *

“Damn it!” Joycelyn Johnson said. She had bumped the cumbersome TV camera into the dash at the front of the helicopter again. The wind whipping inside the craft through the open doorway which had been removed by the pilot before they’d taken off blew her long hair in every direction, stinging her eyes and forcing her constantly to pull it back from in front of her face. She was a reporter, not a damned cameraman. But the only WLOX cameraman working today was up on the Natchez Trace at the forest fire.