The Discovery

CHAPTER FOUR

In a split second, his mind sifted through thousands of pictures and diagrams, the nightmare images of a personal library of shark books. A nurse shark, probably. Maybe a reef shark. About four feet long — puny by Jaws standards.

But when you come across one, the real thing, with all the fearsome features, all the weapons in the right places —

It never occurred to him to try to swim away or to scramble for the surface. He just hung there, turned to stone, watching the big fish’s unhurried approach.

Go away, he pleaded silently. Don’t come near me.

He could see the teeth now. And he knew, in the absolute core of his being, that this predator was coming for him and him alone.

He would never have believed himself capable of such panic. Before he knew what he was doing, the dive knife was in his hand, and he leaped at the shark, plunging the blade into the soft underside. Strong arms grabbed him from behind, but nothing could stop him now. With a vicious slash, he slit the shark’s belly open from stem to stern.

The creature convulsed once, jaws snapping. Then it began to sink, leaving a cloudy trail of blood.

Kaz was spun around, and found himself staring into the furious eyes of Menasce Gérard. The guide gestured emphatically for the surface.

Kaz shook his head. Couldn’t he see? The danger was over; the shark was dead.

English did not waste a second command. He placed an iron grip on Kaz’s arm, inflated his B.C., and dragged the boy to the surface. They broke to the air thirty yards astern of the Cortés.

“Get on the boat!”

Kaz was bewildered. “But it’s okay! I got him!”

The guide was in a towering rage. “The boat! Vite!”

The five divers moved toward the ship, swimming through the light chop.

As he stroked along, Kaz was still shaking from the excitement of his shark encounter. He felt terrified and pumped up at the same time. He had spent years playing a sport at the very highest level, and yet nothing could have prepared him for the raw exhilaration of a life-and-death struggle. The world had never seemed so vividly alive.

English pulled ahead, his flippers kicking up foam like a paddlewheel. He scrambled onto the dive platform, shed his gear with a single motion, and began hauling his charges out of the water, bellowing like a madman.

Captain Vanover appeared on the deck above them. “What happened?”

English turned blazing eyes on Kaz. “Why do you do this idiot thing? You are maybe crazy? Fou?”

Kaz gawked at him. “I was protecting myself!”

“That petit guppy wouldn’t attack you!”

“How could you know that? He was coming right at me!”

“You move out of the way, alors!” English roared. “This is not the rocket science!”

“I’m sorry, okay?” Kaz said defensively. “I’m sorry I interrupted everybody. Let’s go back and finish the dive.”

“Oui, bien sûr!” the guide agreed. “A wonderful idea! After you, monsieur.”

Kaz frowned. “What’s the problem?” But then he saw it, boiling up from the ocean where they had been diving only minutes before — churning white water around a mass of flailing fins, tails, and sleek bodies. A feeding frenzy — dozens of sharks going after the carcass of the dead one, creating even more carnage with a barrage of snapping jaws.

“Blood in the water, kid,” the captain said mildly. “It’s like ringing the dinner bell.”

All of Kaz’s heroic exhilaration morphed into a wave of queasiness. If it hadn’t been for English, they would all be in the middle of that, being torn to pieces, thanks to Kaz’s mistake.

Now the guide turned on Vanover. “I have not nine lives, me! Why do you send me down with babies? Except the girl.” He indicated Star. “She is good. But these three — pah!” And he picked up his equipment, hopped onto the deck, and stormed below.

The four teens remained rooted to the dive platform, unsure of what their next move should be.

The captain couldn’t help but notice their intimidation. “Would it make you feel better if I told you he has a heart of gold?”

“He’s okay,” Star conceded.

“That’s because he said you’re good,” Dante accused.

“I am good,” she retorted.

The stocky man reached over and began helping them up to the deck. “I could throttle those pinheads in Hollywood for getting the whole world so hung up on sharks. There’s nothing on that reef for a diver to be afraid of. You run into a shark down there, rest assured he’s more scared of you than you are of him. Except maybe old Clarence.”

Four pairs of ears perked up.

“Clarence?” Kaz echoed, pulling off his dripping flippers.

“Five or six years back,” Vanover related, “we had a rush of marlin. You couldn’t put a foot in the water without stepping on a fin. The sharks came a few days later. Tiger sharks. Big. They shut this place down for two weeks. Nobody dove, nobody swam, nobody even fished. One pigheaded scientist took a sonar tow out. It came back chicken wire. When the marlin moved on, the sharks followed. No one knows why Clarence didn’t go with them. Maybe he was too old to keep up.”

“You mean he’s still here?” Adriana asked timidly.

“Every few months or so somebody spots him,” the captain replied. “He never hurts anyone. Still, you don’t fool around with an eighteen-foot tiger shark. But these other reef rats around here — they’re harmless.”

The teen divers gazed out over the water to where the feeding frenzy was in full swing.

“Oh, well,” Vanover conceded, “if you’re going to put blood in the water, all bets are off. Sharks are only human, you know. Your dive knife isn’t supposed to be a weapon. It’s for cutting your way out of fouled lines and hoses in an emergency. You use it as a last resort. And don’t ever pull it on a barracuda. All he’ll see is a flash of silver, just like half the fish he eats. He’ll take a bite — don’t think he won’t.” Vanover smiled at them benignly. “Now, get out of those wet suits before you roast.”

It was a very chastened dive team that sat in a row along the starboard gunwale as the Hernando Cortés carried them back to Côte Saint-Luc harbor.

“I knew all that stuff about sharks and barracudas,” Star commented. “I just didn’t want to be a brownnose.”

“Me neither,” put in Kaz. “That’s why I got the Furious Frenchman mad at me.”

“He’s scary,” Adriana agreed fervently. “Given a choice between him and the sharks, I’ll take my chances with the sharks.”

“Not me,” Dante said feelingly. “Did you catch that story about the tiger shark? They attack humans, don’t they?”

Star snorted. “There’s a lot of nasty stuff in the ocean. But if you let it spook you, it’s like never leaving the house because you never know when a bear is going to wander out of the woods. People dive their whole lives with no problem. So there’s a tiger shark somewhere. Big deal. The ocean’s full of animals. That’s why we take the plunge.”

Kaz’s eyes fell on an odd piece of equipment mounted on the bulkhead at the base of the Cortés’s flying bridge, behind a stack of orange life vests. It looked like a baby’s crib that had been taken apart, only the slatted panels were larger, and made of titanium. He had noticed it before, and reflected that the thing was kind of familiar. Now he recognized it — an antishark cage, complete with ballast tanks and control panel.

If sharks are so harmless, why do they need an antishark cage?

Dante interrupted his reverie. “Speaking of animals…”

Kaz followed his pointing finger to a large metal bucket sitting just astern of the cockpit. It was filled to the brim with water that kept spilling out with the movement of the boat. They watched, fascinated, as a slate-gray tentacle that matched the galvanized metal of the pail probed tentatively over the rim. A moment later, the octopus hoisted itself up to the edge of the bucket and dropped to the deck. Immediately, it began a quick, amoebalike oozing motion toward the nearest exit. When it spied the four teenagers, it froze for a moment, eyes fixed on them as its body assumed the olive-drab color of the planks.

“Go for it, dude,” whispered Dante. “He’s going to cook you.”

The octopus apparently took that advice to heart. It slithered to the gunwale and promptly disappeared over the side.

As they were unloading equipment on the dock at Côte Saint-Luc harbor, Menasce Gérard had his first look into the empty bucket that had once held his dinner. His frown was a thunderhead.

Adriana read his mind and saw accusation in it. “I swear we didn’t do it, Mr. English! He climbed out, ran across the deck, and jumped in the ocean. Honest!”

But once again, the dive guide had retreated into a series of grunts — grunts of suspicion.