Hotel Megalodon: A Deep Sea Thriller (5 page)

“Oh, right. So what’s this one from?”

Coco turned away from her view of the tooth to look at Mick. “As crazy as it sounds, it’s the right size and shape for a
megalodon
.”

Mick appeared confused, furrowing his brow and gnawing on his lower lip. “But it’s not fossilized. It’s white.”

Coco turned to stare at the tooth again. “I know, Mick. That’s what worries me.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Hold on, let’s make the radio call to Topside.”

Mick picked up the transmitter. “
Triton-1
to Topside, you copy?”

The reply was near-instant. Mick didn’t recognize the voice. “Copy that,
Triton-1
, go ahead, over.”

“Intake pipe is mangled up good. It’s got big tears in it.”

A slight pause, followed by, “Tears from what?”

Mick looked at Coco, who shrugged. “We don’t know, but we’ve got video to show you once we—“

Coco’s shrill scream cut the conversation short.

Chapter 9

The colossal fish moved gracefully up from the dark depths of the submarine canyon.

Mick put a hand on Coco’s shoulder. “Let’s go, Coco. It’s a Great White. We’re done here, no reason to stick around.”

She dumped some of the sub’s ballast along with a burst of vertical thrusters to initiate a rapid ascent. Her movements were hyper-fast, almost panicked, and Mick glanced over at the ruined intake pipe as their craft rose past it, almost hitting it.

“Coco, it’s okay. Relax. Whites don’t—“

“It’s not a White!’

Mick sat in the co-pilot seat in stunned silence. He looked down at the approaching animal, and was surprised to see it much closer now, swimming in lazy-looking circles that nonetheless took it ever higher very quickly. Still, Mick had seen Whites before, diving in Australia back home, and this sure looked like one. The pointed snout, the stiff dorsal and pectoral fins, the uniquely jagged line demarcating the white underbelly from the dark dorsal surface. How could it not be a White? He voiced this question to Coco as she pulled the sub out of a semi-spin she’d created with her frantic maneuvering.

“Look at our sonar, Mick! That shark is still one hundred fifty feet away.”

Mick felt the blood drain from his face as he riveted his gaze to the instrument’s display. She was reading it accurately. He turned his head back to the shark, and sucked in his breath. It was impossibly big for a shark so far away. A large Great White was about twenty feet long. One hundred fifty feet away...this thing had to be three times that size! He shuddered involuntarily at the realization before turning back to Coco, still raising the sub.

“You’re right. You’re also the marine biologist, so lay it out for me.”

Coco was getting a little tired of being reminded about her occupation lately. It seemed like suddenly she’d gone from being a glorified tour guide, to the only one who knew anything at all about what was happening to this place.

“I know it sounds crazy, but...” She broke off as she piloted the submersible around a coral outcropping. Then she stared down at the shark, still rising lazily.

“But what?” Mick prompted.

“The only thing I’ve ever heard about that it could be is a
Carcharadon megalodon
.”

The sub mechanic glanced down at the gigantic shark. “A what?”

“A
megalodon
. It’s an extinct, prehistoric shark from the dinosaur days.”

“If it’s extinct, how is it swimming up after us right now?”

Coco shook her head. “No idea.”

“What else could it be then? Maybe you’re wrong.”

“It’s either a freakishly large Great White, much huger than any previously seen, or else it’s a
megalodon
, somehow still alive, still extant. There’s nothing else it could be. Even supersized, it doesn’t look like a tiger shark, or a mako, or a bull shark, am I right?”

Mick stared down at the creature again. “Nope, it doesn’t. It looks exactly like a super-sized White.”

“It’s got the predation patterns of a White, too. Look at it circling like that. Classic white shark behavior. Hey—get some shots of it, will you!”

Mick scrambled for the video camera. In all the excitement, it hadn’t even occurred to him to shoot some footage. He aimed the device’s lens down through the transparent floor of the sub at the moving leviathan below. He began to narrate.

“Too bad there’s nothing to give it some scale, but this is what our sub pilot Coco Keahi thinks may be a megalodon shark.” He panned out to show the sonar reading, then went back to the shark.

“Sonar has it at 150 feet below us. As you can see, an ordinary Great White would not appear so large from this distance. We estimate this fish to be at least sixty feet in length.”

He recorded for a few more seconds, and then shut the camera off. “Is that tooth we grabbed the right size for a megalodon?”

She looked away from the controls long enough to meet his gaze, and nod solemnly.

“No idea how I’m going to explain this to James.”

#

James White was at the sub dock to greet them upon return. “Well?” he asked the second that Mick pushed up the dome hatch. “What’s it look like?”

Mick shook his head, and jumped onto the dock, then reached a hand out to pull Coco up. “It’s been pulverized by something. Several large tears in it for a few feet just above the intake. No wonder you’re not getting any water pressure. Here, take a look.” He handed White the camera with a shot of the damaged pipe on screen. The hotel developer narrowed his eyes as he took in the details of the disconcerting image.

“Doesn’t look like you’d be able to fix that,” he admitted.

Coco agreed. “Unfortunately, it’s not just a simple obstruction.”

White looked up from the camera at her. “What’s your opinion on how this happened?”

Coco hesitated while she gauged the expression of her boss. He seemed irritated, sure, but not like he was totally shutting himself off to being open. She decided to tell him her wild theory.

“I think an animal did it, sir.” Best to ease into it, though. The sound of sea birds calling rent the air as he seemed to judge her response.

“What kind of animal? The same mysterious one that supposedly wrecked the sub yesterday, I suppose?”

Coco nodded matter-of-factly. “I believe so, Mr. White. Come here, take a look at this.” She turned, and walked alongside the sub’s manipulator arm, the six-inch white tooth still clutched firmly in its claw. She knelt and released it from the grabber, then handed it point first to White, whose eyes widened as he took it, and turned it over in his hands.

“Is this some kind of joke?” He directed his angry stare in turn to Coco and Mick, both of whom shook their heads but said nothing. “Because if it is,” White went on, “it’s not funny at all. In fact, you may as well tell me now: is this a hoax?” He thrust the giant tooth out in front of him. “I’m telling you, if I find out later it is, then you’re both fired, mark my words.”

The aggressiveness triggered Coco to assert her own position more forcefully. “We extracted this tooth from inside the pipe, Mr. White. To the best of my knowledge, it’s a shark tooth, specifically one that is much larger than any currently known living species.”

“I don’t have time for games. Just tell me what the hell you think it is,” White spat.

“I think it’s a living relative of
Carcharadon
or perhaps
Carcharacles
megalodon
, an extinct prehistoric shark about three times larger than the modern day Great White.” She paused to gauge White’s reaction.

He handed the tooth back to her. “Maybe you can use this on one of your eco lectures. I’ve got to get back to fixing the damned pipe. We’ve got guests down there now who are not accustomed to five star tropical hotels without air conditioning.”

He opened the camera and removed its memory card, then handed the camera back to Mick. “I’ll take this to the engineers so we can figure out what to do about it.” Mick nodded, and White walked away.

He called out over his shoulder, “Make sure that sub is ready for more dives!”

                                                                                    #

Inside his private Triton office, James White loaded the camera’s memory card into his desktop computer. He called up the images and video on his jumbo monitor, scowling at a couple of faux-glamour shots Mick took of Coco goofing around on the pier before the sub dive. He was somewhat surprised those two clowns had been able to bring back footage of the pipe; he knew Coco wasn’t trained for that deep of a dive. Probably not the most prudent thing in the world to send her down there, but they had a situation on their hands, and that was her job. The psych tests they did on her during the interview process indicated she was highly adaptive, after all. And let’s face it, if it actually happened to be true that she did encounter some sort of humongous sea creature down there, and that’s why the sub was damaged...well then, she wasn’t such a bad sub pilot at all, now was she?

He opened the last video, the one of the shark, and watched it, his face souring further with each turn the great fish took toward the surface. He deleted the shark video and everything else except for the shots of the intake pipe.

Then he ejected the memory card, and headed over to the engineering building.

Chapter 10

“It’s fucking hot in here, Stanley!”

Priscilla Doherty, wife of Stanley Doherty, owner of one of the NBA’s most celebrated teams, fanned herself with a room service menu while she lay in bed.

“Relax, I’ll see if I can find a thermostat control somewhere.” He looked around their suite. “I guess it won’t be on that wall,” he joked, pointing to the floor-to-ceiling acrylic window looking out on the reef.

“Seriously, Stan! I wanted to go to Bora Bora, and the over-water bungalows. You said this place would be amazing. I guess it is if you’re looking for an underwater sauna.”

“Oh, c’mon, look at that! It’s pretty damn amazing don’t you think?” He swept an arm out the window, where a school of fish suddenly darted out of view.

“You want to know what I think? I think they’re still working the kinks out of this place, Stan. I don’t know why we had to be in the first group of guests. Let someone else be the guinea pigs, I say. All those accident liability waivers we had to sign...”

Stanley gave up looking around for a thermostat, and instead picked up the room phone. “All right, all right, I’ll call the front desk.” Priscilla sighed heavily while he held the receiver to his ear. She listened to the one-way conversation while fanning herself at an ever-increasing pace.

“Yes, hello, this is Stanley Doherty. My wife and I are in the Manta Ray Suite, and it’s awfully hot in here. I wonder if you could be so kind as to tell me where the thermostat is, or if you can adjust it from your end.”

“You’re too damned polite, Stan,” his wife heckled him from the bed. He swatted the air in her direction, and furrowed his brow. He nodded and said “uh-huh,” and “I see,” “Okay...” a few times before hanging up.

“What’d they say?” Priscilla peered at him over the top of her makeshift fan.

He took a deep breath before answering. “She told me there’s a problem with the hotel’s air conditioning right now—the entire hotel, not just our suite—but that it should be fixed soon.”

Priscilla let the menu drop to cover her naked breasts. “Oh, great! ‘Soon’! How soon is ‘soon’?”

“I didn’t ask. They’re working on it, that’s all she meant.”

“Well, you should ask, Stanley!”

“She said that it’s a little cooler in the common areas of the hotel. Why don’t we go out and try the restaurant, get some lunch?”

“Are you even hungry?”

“I could eat, yeah.”

She glanced at part of the menu she’d been fanning herself with, and appeared less than enthusiastic. He added, “If it’s still too hot when we go to the restaurant, we’ll take the tram back up to the beach, and get something to eat up there, how’s that? She said they have topside
bures
they could put us in if we don’t want to stay here while they’re fixing the problem.”

She snapped her head up. “I thought you said she said it would be fixed
soon
?”

“That’s what she said.”

“Well, if she’s offering alternative accommodations already, how confident could she be that they’ll have it fixed anytime soon?”

“I really don’t know, honey. I’m just telling you what she said. You want to go eat?”

Chapter 11

Al Johnson screwed up his features into a visage of extreme distaste as he viewed the video White played of the SWAC intake pipe. He wagged his head slowly from side to side.

“
Not
good, James. Not good at all.”

The room of marine engineers was silent, a huddle of pen-twirling, tablet-pecking geeks who knew their work was more than cut out for them.

“Can you please elaborate?” White watched as Johnson backed up the video to a frame of interest and froze it there. He pointed with the tip of a pen to an area on screen.

“You see this here?”

White nodded.

“This is not fixable. Way too many holes; the whole thing is mangled beyond repair. The entire lower section of pipe—at least twenty feet of it—will have to be cut off and a new section welded on. Major job.”

“You’re positive that’s the only solution?”

Al looked at White with the same expression he reserved for kids with learning disabilities. “Yes, I’m positive, James.” Then he looked around the table, addressing his engineers. “Do any of you hold a different opinion?”

None of them said anything.

“All right!” White yelled. “I believe you. So tell me about this process. How long will it take?”

Again the room was silent. White glanced at his Rolex.

“Days to weeks, rather than hours to days,” Al said flatly.

White’s faced turned crimson. “
Weeks
! Am I hearing this right?”

Al nodded. “Unfortunately, you are, James. I understand the urgency of the situation, and I wish I could paint a rosier picture for you, but I’m just being realistic here.”

White let out a long breath, resigning himself to the fact that Al was right. “What does the fix entail?”

Al gave his boss a hard stare. “Why don’t we start with what happened to this thing in the first place?” He glanced over at the video before continuing. “Because we don’t want it to happen again, that’s for sure, and so maybe we can do something to prevent it during the restoration process.”

White, who’d been standing up to this point, took a seat at the table and tented his hands.

“Our marine biologist is blaming it on a large sea creature of indeterminate type.”

“Indeterminate type?”

“She didn’t see it happen. She speculates it may be a large shark. I think it’s wishful thinking on her part. You know how marine biologists are—all obsessed about Jaws—she’s probably hoping this will be her personal Jaws moment for all I know. You see what you want to see, and all that.”

A wave of chuckling passed around the table. Al shrugged. “If it is an animal of any kind, it was probably just a random encounter, and will never happen again. I don’t see what we could do about it, anyway.”

“Build a cage around it?” one of the engineers put forth.

White stood again. “Good idea. See about implementing that after you get it back to the way it was. So in the meantime, Al, how’s the intermediate fix with the wall units going?”

Al checked his smartphone. “Latest update a few minutes ago had my people in the air en route to Suva. As soon as they get there, they’re heading to our supplier, and they’ll be in contact.”

“Contact me when you hear. I’ll be down in the hotel.”

#

In Mick’s “sub shack,” as he called the maintenance hut that held the tools of his trade, Coco stood in front of a workbench on which sat her laptop computer. She held the oversized tooth extracted from the pipe up to her screen where a photo of a life-sized megalodon tooth was shown to scale. It was black after undergoing the fossilization process over the eons, but other than color, the two teeth could have been from the same mouth.

“Looks like a match, doesn’t it?” Mick looked over her shoulder while he performed a routine check of the sub’s carbon dioxide scrubber, a small cylinder containing material that absorbed the gas so that it wouldn’t accumulate in the close confines of the craft. Coco smiled without taking her eyes off the monitor.

“It sure does. Look at these serrations.” She moved the mouse cursor over the tiny saw-like indentations on the sides of the extinct shark’s tooth. “They’re highly characteristic of a megalodon. Mick...”

She turned to look into his eyes, and he held her gaze.

“This is a megalodon. I’m sure of it. I don’t know how...but this tooth...the size of that shark down there...”

Mick set the scrubber down on the bench, and turned all of his attention to Coco and the tooth. “That canyon—it goes way down deep, right?”

Coco nodded. “To the abyss.”

“So is it possible a giant prehistoric shark could have survived in the deep ocean all this time? What would it eat? And why would it come up now, after so long?”

“You’re just full of questions aren’t you? I like that.”

Mick smiled sheepishly. Coco went on.

“First question first. Is it possible? Nobody knows for sure, but to me it’s not
im
possible. Riddle me this: what happens to whales when they die?”

Mick looked at the ceiling while he made a show of pondering this. “Unless they wash up on a beach somewhere, I guess they usually sink to the bottom of the ocean.”

“Exactly! That’s a heck of a lot of calories raining down from above.”

“But megalodons are like Great Whites—they’re hunters, not scavengers.”

Coco shrugged, staring at the tooth in her hand. “Maybe they’ve adapted, evolved over time to a new environment. Perhaps climate change rendered the shallow seas uninhabitable for them—too warm, too salty, too
something
—so they went deep.”

“Okay, but again, if they did, why would they come to the surface now?”

Coco tugged at her lower lip while she thought. At length, she said, “I know that the construction of the underwater hotel had quite an impact on the local marine environment. A negative one, some say. Dynamiting the reef to blast channels and post holes to place the building supports, dredging to create deeper water passages for bigger boats, tons of SONAR surveys that ping down into the ocean...”

Mick’s eyes widened. “All that commotion could have disturbed the megalodon way down there!”

Coco tilted her head while she stared at the laptop screen. “It’s just a thought. I don’t have any way of knowing for sure.”

The knock on the wooden door of the shack came about two seconds before it opened. James White poked his head inside.

“Coco. Come with me, please. I’m going down to the hotel, and want you to come with me to do an eco-lecture. Just from inside the main lobby or maybe the restaurant. Something to keep the guests happy down there while we work on the air conditioning issue.”

Coco flipped her laptop shut. She tried to shove the tooth into the pocket of her shorts but it wouldn’t fit, and actually tore through the fabric. She looked up to see White frowning at her, and so she handed the tooth to Mick.

“Mick, make absolutely sure that sub’s ready to go at a moment’s notice, okay? Everything charged, air topped off, all that. Clear?”

“As a bell, sir.”

Coco trailed after White as he left the shack. She turned around to close the door, and looked back at Mick, who made a comical stabbing motion in White’s direction with the tooth.