CHAPTER 58
Sturman stood with Eric beside the aquarium, as the sun’s rays began to light it from above, marveling at the scene inside the huge tank. Mack, without speaking to Eric, had left them to blow some money at the tables.
The divers above them gently drove the massive manta toward a platform of shallower water at the edge of his vision. According to handouts they’d been given, the resort’s plan was apparently to get the oversized critter to move above a net on the platform, where a number of hands would then lift the rigid edges to prevent his escape. When the helicopter arrived, dangling a long rope, they would clip the net harness to it and then off it would go, manta in tow, to a drop-off point in the ocean just past the reef.
“I’ll be damned,” Sturman said. “They’re just wranglers.”
Eric finished taking a picture and glanced at him. “What did you say?”
Sturman nodded at the divers. “They operate the same as ranch hands. They’re driving that manta to where they can lasso him, like cowpokes corralling a steer.”
A group of what looked like reporters, one of them carrying a large video camera and tripod, came down the tunnel and stopped by them. A few other distinguished-looking guests had also arrived.
“You really think this will work?” Eric said.
“I guess so. Your girlfriend there said it’s been done before.” Sturman looked at Eric. “She is your girlfriend, right?”
“Not really. We’ve been on a date. But she’s not talking to me.”
“Join the club.”
Eric smiled weakly. “Too bad Val isn’t here to see this.”
“Yeah,” Sturman said. “I guess. But she’s never been big on aquariums. She likes to see animals in their own environment.”
But Sturman knew Eric was right. She’d really enjoy the novelty of this operation. He was a little surprised she’d backed out, and a little worried. She didn’t look good. And there was something else. Last night, and again this morning, she’d seemed like she’d been hiding something.
He looked over at Ashley and the others. She was talking to someone in a security uniform and to her boss. He was a good-looking older man, with a well-trimmed beard, and apparently the owner of the resort. They’d been joined by a mid-forties blonde in a skirt and jacket, who appeared to be his assistant.
Sturman could tell by their body language that the conversation was serious. Ashley turned away from them, a concerned expression on her face, and passed by the small group of reporters. They were visiting casually with a heavyset young woman who, like Ashley, wore a turquoise shirt with the resort’s logo. He saw that Ashley flashed them all a brilliant white smile, but as she moved away from the reporters, the smile quickly left her face.
She saw him looking over at her and the forced smile returned. She headed back toward him and Eric. As Ashley drew closer, Sturman thought she looked worried. Ill, even. Almost as bad as Val had looked this morning.
She stopped a few feet in front of them, the well-practiced fake smile of a resort services employee still on her face. “It’s almost time, gentlemen. Once they get Spirit netted, we’ll make our way outside so you can watch the rest of the action from above. Hopefully, we can beat this storm, or we’ll have to call it off.”
“A hurricane?” Sturman said.
“No. But there’s a tropical cyclone offshore, headed our way, and it’s nasty looking. The wind and rain would make it too dangerous for this operation.”
“I didn’t think you got that kind of weather this early in the spring.”
“We usually don’t.”
“Thanks again for allowin’ us to be down here,” Sturman said.
“It’s no problem. No problem at all.” Her gaze dropped, and the smile finally left her face.
Eric finally spoke. “Ashley, is everything all right?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“Look. If it’s me . . . if I’m making you uncomfortable being here . . .”
“It’s not like that, Eric.” She paused, glanced at Sturman, then back at Eric. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I just found out there’s a problem. In another tank . . . the fish, the sharks, they’re all gone.”
Eric said, “What? What do you mean they’re gone?”
“They’re not in the tank. Like somebody somehow came and took them. But that’s impossible. A dolphin is also missing from our enclosure. And . . . I just heard that one of our security guards is missing. A friend. Someone found his radio by the shark tank.”
“Jesus,” Sturman said. “What the hell’s going on?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. But something happened in that tank. And to Dennis. We can’t let the media know.”
She stared past them, a faraway look in her eyes, and Sturman felt sorry for her. She began to chew on her lower lip, and Sturman could tell she was fighting off tears. He considered excusing himself from the conversation, so she could talk to Eric, but he figured it might upset her even more.
He said, “Can’t they just postpone this whole circus?”
“Mr. Barbas is insisting we continue—”
Sturman snorted. “Your boss? The fancy-looking fella with a beard?”
She nodded.
“What an asshole. Want me to talk to him?”
Eric shot him a look and subtly shook his head. He said, “Ashley, is that why those doors down the hall are now closed off? To keep everyone from going near the shark tank?”
She nodded. She glanced over her shoulder, where Barbas was gesturing for her to come back over, a broad smile on his face. She smoothed her skirt with both hands and took a deep breath. “He’s calling for me again. Please, don’t say anything.”
She hurried off. Sturman looked at Eric and raised his eyebrows.
They stood and watched the operation unfold, as the divers in the tank finished maneuvering the half-ton ray into the net, as the wealthy guests beside them oohed and aahed. Then Sturman heard something over the conversation.
The low, rhythmic thump of helicopter rotors.
She felt the deep vibrations. They were unfamiliar, but not unlike those she had felt recently in the depths. The vibrations from the objects on the sea floor, which since her birth had regularly pulsed through her body. But that now gave her tremendous pain.
Pressed against the unusual, almost tasteless corals in the small enclosure, her body swelled slightly in her agitation, a burst of red patterns briefly marbling her skin.
She was fully sated. Unable to feed any longer, and with nothing left to feed upon, she was desperate to return to her den. To protect her young. And to avoid the bright light of a sun that had recently risen. But she was trapped. She had been unable to locate a way out of this strange lagoon. There was only the way she had come in, from above, in the sunlight. In the air.
The rhythmic thrumming grew louder. Her body swelled with seawater and she finally revealed herself, filling much of the tank’s volume with her own loose form, her great arms uncoiling, still seeking a means of escape. She saw something move on the other side of the glass, but ignored it, pushing her body toward the base of the exhibit. Her sudden movement lifted a wall of water up and sent a wave over the side of the tank, where it crashed down inside the vacant viewing passage below.
The noise, now overhead, throbbed into the water. Ached between her eyes.
Feeling below her, one of her arms met with a small hole. No. A series of holes. She felt water flowing into them.
There was some sort of obstruction blocking a larger hole. One that might accommodate her. She thrust the tip of one arm into the metal grate and tore it free with a muffled clang, casting it aside. Below the grate she felt a round opening. It might be large enough.
The tips of a few of her arms entered the hole first, and quickly met a ninety-degree bend, with narrow tunnels leading in opposite directions. Unthinking, the lead arms wriggled quickly in one direction, and began pulling her colossal form after them.
Overhead, the noise grew louder.