Sharkman Read online

  “That’s the problem with you spooks, Jeffrey; you’re always assuming what tests well in the lab performs well in battle. It doesn’t. Diving to the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench is a lot different than sitting in a steel canister and watching numbers flash by on a pressure gauge. Out there the real pressure comes from that little voice screaming in your head. You saw what happened when the water began rising—Kwan panicked. His mind shut down, rendering his mutation useless. Believe me, my friend, I’ve seen enough ‘deer-in the-headlights’ paralysis to know you don’t rely on an inexperienced operator to fly solo on a mission like this.”

  “What choice do we have? Woods Hole’s pushed back their subs’ availability for another five weeks. We can’t wait that long . . . unless?”

  The Admiral nodded. “Unless someone more experienced—more trustworthy used the stem cells the way Kwan did, and mutated.”

  “Sabeen?”

  “The two of them have more in common than you know. Sabeen’s haunted by her past, just like Kwan.”

  “True. But psychologically, they’re on different ends of the spectrum. Sabeen’s motivated by revenge, not guilt.”

  “She hates her life, Jeffrey, and that’s all that matters. E-mail her the video of Kwan swimming in the aquarium, then send a chopper to bring her to Miami.”

  “What about Kwan? He’s a celebrity now, which makes him dangerous. We can’t risk releasing him.”

  “Sedate him for the flight out to the Malchut.”

  “But you just said—”

  “I said we can’t rely on him to complete the mission; I didn’t say I wouldn’t give him a chance. After all, he is expendable.”

  33

  Kwan Wilson Suffers Drug Overdose in Florida Resort

  WEST PALM BEACH, FL (Associated Press). Kwan Wilson, the seventeen-year-old paraplegic wunderkind who regained full use of his lower body to become an overnight celebrity and basketball sensation was taken by ambulance Tuesday morning to an undisclosed medical facility after a hotel chambermaid found him lying unconscious in his private bungalow at the Breakers Resort in Palm Beach. Unconfirmed reports suggest a drug overdose may have been involved, possibly cocaine.

  Wilson’s publicist issued a statement following the incident. “Kwan has undergone a tremendous amount of physical and emotional change in a very short period of time, with everything magnified by being in the public eye twenty-four seven. Neither Kwan’s family nor I have any evidence indicating drugs were involved in his collapse, or that his condition is related to his dramatic physical transformation. His location is being kept secret so he can deal with his situation in private.”

  According to a Breakers employee, Wilson checked into the resort Monday evening to prepare for a Tuesday morning interview with Oprah Winfrey. A spokesman for the Oprah Winfrey Network claims the previously scheduled interview had been canceled two days earlier.

  Seacrest High School

  While I was being forcibly reunited with my father, Anya was back in school. She was struggling to make it through first period when she was summoned to the guidance counselor’s office.

  She knocked on the open door and entered. “Mrs. Solomon, you wanted to see me?”

  Rachel Solomon looked up from reading the file on her desk. “Come in and close the door. You missed school Monday and Tuesday. Were you sick?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then where were you?”

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  Rachel Solomon said nothing, allowing the intense gaze of her hazel eyes to do its job.

  “I can’t talk about it, Mrs. Solomon, because it involves my internship. There are things you don’t understand. I signed nondisclosure agreements.”

  “Where’s Kwan?”

  Anya looked away. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know, or you can’t disclose his whereabouts?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly.”

  “But he was at the lab with you and Li-ling this weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you, young lady. I also don’t believe the story that was posted on the front page of today’s Sun Sentinel. Neither does Kwan’s grandmother, who is hiring a lawyer to find out where her grandson was taken, and by whom. You know exactly what happened this weekend, and if you don’t tell me, you can tell the police.”

  Anya broke down in tears. “He told me they’d deport my family if I said anything.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “This guy. I can’t tell you his name . . . even if I knew his real name. All I know is that he does some kind of work for Kwan’s father.”

  Key Largo, Florida

  Located an hour’s drive south of Miami, Key Largo is the largest and first of the islands that make up the Florida Keys. Bordered by Florida Bay to the west and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Key Largo is home to the John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, a seventy-square-mile underwater sanctuary encompassing coral reefs, mangrove swamps, and the Spiegel Grove, a 510-foot-long naval vessel sunk in one hundred and thirty feet of water as a dive attraction.

  The Sikorsky S-434 light chopper raced west over emerald-green shallows, its pilot slowing as he located his destination—a private estate on the east side of the island on a three-acre lot facing the ocean. Hovering over a stretch of manicured lawn within walking distance of the mansion’s swimming pool, the pilot touched down just long enough for the female passenger in the copilot’s seat to jump out with her duffle bag.

  Instead of ducking, Sabeen Tayfour stood defiantly against the gale-force winds created by the chopper’s circulating rotors, the teen’s raven-colored hair whipping past her face, her coal-black eyes glittering in the sun as she waited for the helicopter to lift off.

  “Sabeen?”

  The Syrian freedom fighter turned to find a woman in a blue lab coat, her left eye squinting badly.

  “I’m Nadja Kamrowski; we’ve been expecting you.”

  “You are the geneticist?”

  “One of them, yes.”

  “You are the one who can transform me into this?” Sabeen held up her cell phone, set to the video she had been watching almost nonstop over the last twenty-four hours.

  “Well, yes and no.”

  Dr. Kamrowski winced as she was dragged to her knees by her ponytail, Sabeen pulling her down to the ground. “What means ‘yes and no’? You think this is game?”

  “Let me explain. Yes, we can do it, but Kwan—the subject in the video—was mutated using stem cells from a bull shark. Since then, those particular stem cells have lost their potency. We have new, very potent shark stem cells we want to give to you, only these were taken from a tiger shark.”

  “Tiger shark?” Sabeen released Dr. Kamrowski’s hair. “My skin . . . it will have stripes?”

  “Dermal denticles only appear when you’re underwater, but yes it’s possible.”

  “I will lose my hair?”

  “Yes. But that’s because your scalp will harbor a sensory organ capable of detecting the electrical impulses produced by a beating heart or moving muscle of any living creature over great distances.”

  “How long before I am transformed?”

  “By placing you in a hyperbaric chamber we can accelerate the effects. Assuming we begin the first dosage right away, we’re estimating two to three days.”

  “And my muscles? Will they grow as large as this man’s muscles?”

  “We have to stabilize the stem cells using human growth hormone. Being a woman, you won’t have huge muscles like Kwan. Then again, female sharks are far larger than their male counterparts, so . . .”

  Sabeen reached down and helped the geneticist to her feet. “Give me stripes, Kamrowski. Long, beautiful stripes over large, p
owerful muscles.”

  Nadja smiled. “Come inside the house; we have everything waiting.”

  Twenty minutes after dropping off Sabeen in Key Largo, the Sikorsky S-434 helicopter landed at a private helipad in Homestead, Florida, where three more passengers joined the pilot for his return trip across the Atlantic.

  Jeff Elrod rode in the copilot’s seat while my father and I sat in back. Perhaps “slumped in back” would be a better description, since I remained semiconscious for the first hour of the flight. I finally came to about halfway to Puerto Rico, only to discover my wrists were shackled to the seat.

  The Admiral positioned the straw of a container of orange juice to my lips and I drained the cup. He then adjusted a pair of headphones around my ears, speaking through his headset. “Back in February 2013, the Iranian government announced they had installed a new set of machines in one of their fortified underground facilities designed to enrich uranium. Enriched uranium, as you probably know, is the key ingredient needed in both the generation of nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The mullahs, of course, continue to insist they only want to enrich uranium for nuclear power—as if these oil-rich bastards need it.

  “While the Iranian mullahs and their puppet officials continued to play cat and mouse with representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations, our contacts in Tehran confirmed that Iran’s nuclear scientists had produced enough enriched uranium to destroy major cities in Israel and Saudi Arabia. Though they’re capable of it, Iran won’t launch a nuclear missile at Israel. The Israelis air defense system is top-notch, and their own nuclear arsenal is far greater than the Iranians. Launching a nuke at an Arab nation carries its own blowback.

  “The real threat is that the Iranians will provide suitcase bombs to a terrorist organization like al Qaeda, or Hezbollah and Hamas, making September eleventh look like a fender bender. The Bush Doctrine holds the country who supplied enriched uranium to a terrorist organization responsible for a terrorist act—assuming you can prove the enriched uranium used in a suitcase nuke came from that country’s reactor.

  “When a nuclear device is detonated, it leaves a trail of isotopes that can be used to trace it back to the reactor that produced the enriched U-235. The key is to obtain a sample of the enriched uranium before it’s detonated. Just showing the rest of the world that we have a sample can be enough to dissuade Iran from providing nuclear material to these nut jobs.”

  I glanced at Elrod in the copilot’s seat. “I assume that’s why he’s here.”

  The Admiral nodded. “A few months ago, we managed to sneak one of our retired Los Angeles attack subs into the Strait of Hormuz. A private militia was used to obtain a sample of enriched uranium from one of the Iranian black sites. The sub made it all the way back to the Atlantic, but sunk before we could rendezvous with its crew.”

  “It sunk?”

  “We don’t know what happened. The remains of the sub, its crew, and the enriched uranium are lying at the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench in 28,373 feet of water.”

  “Where the water pressure’s—let me guess—13,000 pounds per square inch.”

  “Twelve thousand, six hundred pounds, to be exact. Well within your mutation’s physical capabilities. The question is whether it’s within your mental parameters.”

  “You know me pretty well, Admiral. What do you think?”

  My father turned to me, looking me straight in the eye. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I didn’t believe in you, son. The question is whether you believe you can do it.”

  I drained the bottle of orange juice, the sugar rush shaking the cobwebs loose from my brain. “After all the crap you’ve put me through over the years, diving into a sea trench sounds like a vacation trip to Disney World.”

  * * *

  It was dusk by the time we landed on the deck of the fishing trawler Malchut. My father had released my shackles during the flight, citing his need to be able to trust me. He talked about my mother and how they had met while he was stationed at the Commander Fleet Activities Chinhae naval base in South Korea.

  “CFAC is a big base, lots to do, plenty of recreational activities for a guy like you. And Chinhae is a lovely city, surrounded by mountains on one side and the harbor on the other. I used to love looking at the cherry blossoms set against the backdrop of the sea. Anyway, it was my second week at the base—a hotshot captain, full of piss and vinegar. One night I walked into the base club and there she was tending bar—the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes on. And I wasn’t the only one who thought so, there were sailors lined up three deep to get her attention. She was only nineteen at the time, but she handled herself like someone far more mature. I remember pulling rank and clearing out the drunks, then I said the only Korean I knew, ‘Young-oh hahm-nee-ka?’. . . Do you speak English? And ‘Ee-ru-mee moo-ot-shim-nee-ka?’ . . . What is your name? She told me her name was Mi Yung and that her boss said she wasn’t allowed to speak more than two sentences to any customer or she’d lose her job. I later found out her boss was her father and that his company supplied the base with alcohol. I stayed until closing and helped her clean up, and I refused to leave until she agreed to one date. It wasn’t until our fourth date that she allowed me to kiss her good night, but it was worth the wait.”

  I told him about seeing Anya for the first time and our first kiss, and suddenly my father and I were actually talking to one another. He introduced me to a few of the internationals, then escorted me below deck and gave me a tour of the vessel. I was surprised to find a modern galley and crews’ quarters that were far more comfortable than I imagined and a workout room that he said I could use anytime. In fact, my father gave me complete freedom to explore any part of the ship—except the lab, which he said was the private domain of one Professor Presley O’Bannon Gibbons.

  We found Professor Gibbons eating pizza and playing video games on an iPad in a corner of the galley. An average-looking white guy, the dude never looked up from his screen, even when we were hovering over his table.

  “Gibbs, this is my son, Kwan.”

  “He’s been briefed?”

  “Just the basics. I thought you’d handle the rest in the morning.”

  Gibbons finally looked up, scrutinizing me as if I were a horse being evaluated for either the Triple Crown or the glue factory. “You probably think those muscles make you more efficient. They don’t. They weigh you down. Wastes blood circulation. Forces your liver to overcompensate. In ten hours, when you find yourself five miles below the surface in oxygen-low waters paralyzed with hypothermia and you can’t remember who you are or what you’re doing, you can blame those Captain America muscles of yours.”

  And then he returned to his video game.

  “Nice to meet you, too.”

  We grabbed a plate of chow from the kitchen; then my father walked me to my stateroom. “Don’t let Gibbons get inside your head. He’s not a bad guy; he’s just spent too many hours alone in the lab.”

  “He’s creepy. And what did he mean when he said I’d be paralyzed with hypothermia?”

  “The deeper you descend, the colder the water. Temperatures in the trench drop to near freezing. But don’t worry—I’ve never seen a fish wearing a sweater.”

  We stopped at my door and he gave me a hug that wasn’t awkward or forced. “Get some rest, son. I’ll wake you in the morning.”

  34

  Maybe it was the salty air blowing in from the portal, maybe it was the unexpected budding relationship with my dad, but that night I slept better than I had since before the car accident.

  My father knocked on my door at first light, carrying a breakfast tray. “I brought you a ham and egg sandwich and a few bananas for potassium. I didn’t know if you drank coffee.”

  “No, but maybe a Coke—just to wake me up.”

  “We’ll grab one on the way to the lab.
How’d you sleep?”

  “Surprisingly good.”

  “You’ve got sea legs, just like your old man.”

  “I’ve got more than sea legs, Dad; I’ve got gills and fins.”

  My father wiped a tear. “You know how long it’s been since you called me Dad? Fourth grade. I remember because you got in trouble in school. ”

  “Do you remember what I did? A teacher’s aide said I was talking during a fire drill. Turned out to be a Filipino kid who was suspended a week later for bringing a switchblade to school. When I tried to explain what happened, you grounded me for a month.”

  “It was excessive, I know.” He stood by the open portal, breathing in the briny air. “My father was a military man, his father and two uncles before him. The Wilsons have always believed in the virtues of discipline. You think I was tough? My old man used to take a hickory switch to my behind if I was so much as late to supper. It was a different time—the world always at war. Guess it’s the only world I’ve ever known.”

  For my father, it was as close to an admission of guilt as I was going to get, and for some reason it made me think of Rachel Solomon. She had told me that her father couldn’t get past being a victim; as a result, he died an angry, bitter man. After seventeen years, my father had just apologized the only way he knew how . . . and his confession lightened my soul.

  “Come on, Dad. Let’s go retrieve your uranium.”

  Gibbons’s lab was located in the lowest of the three decks, aft of the engine room. To enter the sealed-off chamber you had to proceed through two pressurized doors which created an airlock that was similar to the BSL-3 safety measures back at ANGEL.

  Entering the lab, I realized the compartment served a far different purpose.

  At the center of the chamber was a diving well—a volcano-shaped resealable opening to the sea that peered straight down into the abyss. Only the pressurized air inside the chamber prevented the ocean from flooding the hull.

  The rest of the lab held worktables and lamps attached to magnifying glasses and an assortment of luggage, including several small suitcases and an army backpack about the size of my Doors bag. There were also supplies packed in stacks of military crates that gave me the distinct impression that Professor Gibbons had sanitized the lab before allowing me inside.