Darryl looked up at the sun. “What do you think that rig diver saw, Jason?”
“What do you mean? He saw the rays.”
“I know that. I mean adults or newborns.”
“He said they were ‘fairly large,’ right, so it couldn’t have been adults; he would have called those enormous, bigger than cars.”
Darryl nodded. “That’s my point. He must have seen the newborns, only now they’re small juveniles. These things grow fast, don’t they?”
“Not as fast as a shrew, but yeah.” Some species of shrew ate up to 1.3 times their body weights in a single day. “They could easily weigh two hundred pounds. What I want to know is what the hell have they been eating? If not plankton, what?”
“It’s the ocean, Slick, how about fish?”
“Mantas can’t catch fish, Darryl. They can’t catch anything. They swim too slowly, that’s why they just eat masses of floating stuff.”
Craig hopped into the water. “What I want to know is why haven’t we seen one of these things yet. All this time and we haven’t seen one.”
Darryl dunked his mask. “You think that’s so unusual?”
“Yeah. Mantas are friendly, right? They like to show themselves, they like to play. Whatever these things are, they’re not doing that. In fact, it seems like they’re hiding.”
“Under the circumstances, that’s natural.”
“What circumstances?”
“Doing a migration they’ve never done before. They’re just being cautious. Even humpbacks, when they do a new migration they’re much less visible than normal. What I’ve been wondering is where are these things from? Any thoughts on that, Jason?”
A shrug. “Could be a lot of places. Mexico… Costa Rica or Ecuador… Hawaii, the Marquesas. Maybe further west like Australia or Malaysia.”
“Hey, is that Lisa?” Craig squinted. Someone was swimming toward them from the boat. “Oh man, I hope she’s wearing that bikini I like—you know, the tight one with the blue polka dots.”
Darryl shook his head. “Give it up, man. She wants nothing to do with you.”
“Some smooth lines and a night of drinking could change that.”
“You don’t have any smooth lines.” Darryl turned. “Besides, I think she might dig you, Jason.”
“Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious. You guys have that love-hate thing going on. I think there might be something there. Shut up, here she comes….”
As she swam up, she immediately smelled a rat. “Boy talk, huh, Darryl?” She shook her head at him as Craig carefully scanned her body, realizing with disappointment that there were no polka dots anywhere on it.
“Craig.” She almost caught him looking. “Is there anything new with GDV-4 lately?”
Summers’s demeanor changed. “A ton, actually. Hot off the presses. They’re beginning full-scale testing for it in the Pacific soon.”
Lisa was stunned. “They are? When the hell did that happen?”
“They announced it publicly first thing this morning.”
“Who?”
“The Woods Hole Virus Group.”
Lisa paused. Did the virus have something to do with the plankton depletion after all? “Are they looking for anything in particular?”
“GDV-4’s origins, among other things.”
“They’re looking for that in the Pacific?”
“Evidently, they’re not positive it originated in the Atlantic anymore. They’re testing at multiple depth levels too.”
“I thought it was a confirmed surface virus.”
“It was, but evidently they’ve been reevaluating that, too.”
Lisa realized she had work to do. She’d share her findings from the Okezie Center later. “OK, thanks…”
As she started to swim back, Darryl wearily put his mask back on. He was still exhausted but wanted to find one kelp strand—just one—to confirm that they were still on track. He ducked his head into the water and suddenly, with fresh eyes, saw something below that he’d missed earlier. It wasn’t kelp but a small pile of little white objects, lying right on the dark sand. He pulled his head out.
“Hey, Lisa.”
She continued swimming, not hearing him.
“Lisa!”
She turned back. “Yeah.”
“Stick around, I might have something for ya….” He inhaled and dove. He kicked very hard, knowing he had to reach the bottom on a single gulp of air. He reached the pile without difficulty, carefully grabbed a handful, then ascended.
At the surface, Jason didn’t even let him catch his breath. “What do you have there?”
Darryl removed his mask and handed them to Lisa. “Shark’s teeth.”
“Yeah?” Jason tried to see them over Lisa’s shoulder, but she became annoyed and turned away, blocking his view. She studied the glistening little objects. Were they really shark’s teeth? Most sharks went through tens of thousands of teeth during their lifetime, constantly replacing blunt and broken ones, some species as often as every other week. These teeth were the size of human fingertips, and slightly curved, almost like fat, stumpy S-shapes. Lisa wasn’t a tooth expert by any means, but as an oceanic nutrition specialist, she’d seen her share of them. She didn’t recognize these, but there were tons of shark species….
Darryl didn’t recognize them either. “Can I see those again?”
She handed him a few, but he wasn’t as careful as he should have been. “Damn, they’re sharp!”
They all watched as a few drops of his blood fell into the sea. Jason shook his head.
Maybe they’d been looking for an excuse, but now they had to get out of the water. If the shark that had lost its teeth was still around, it would smell the blood.
They swam back immediately.
As Jason cut through the water, he considered the teeth more carefully. Had they really come from a shark? Was it just a coincidence they’d found them in the exact spot they’d tracked the new species to? It had to be. No ray species had teeth like that. Perhaps some sharks were hunting them.
Darryl suddenly stopped swimming and so did Jason—rather nervously. “Something wrong, Darryl?”
Darryl smiled, raising a dripping kelp strand. “We’re still on track.”
“Good. Let’s get back to the boat.”
They reached the Expedition without incident. On deck, Phil immediately began photographing the teeth. Then Craig started the engine, and they motored away.
AS THE Expedition disappeared, Darryl Hollis’s blood dissipated. Just as they had feared, something did smell it. Only it wasn’t a shark.
CHAPTER 15
MORE THAN a mile away, the adult rays smelled the blood. Completely unseen in the blackened waters, they were on the move again, swimming north along the ocean’s floor. All were alive but not healthy. Several thousand had recently died.
Far above them, just fifty feet below the surface, were their younger brethren, now juveniles. Unlike the adults, these animals had eaten well and their numbers were undimished. The younger animals now averaged two hundred pounds and were formidable, frightening-looking creatures. Blocks of lean, tapered muscle, they were five feet across the wings, four feet long, and as thick as a three-hundred-pound man’s stomach at their centers.
They floated listlessly in the sun-dappled waters. Strands of kelp hung from many of their mouths. They’d frozen midchew when they first sensed the boat. The boat was gone now, and nothing else was near. Still, none moved. Their attention had just shifted. Another sense—smell—had alerted them. Now they knew what their much larger brethren below had known moments ago.