Island 731

“I didn’t see it,” Jones said. “But something took the body. Cahill is gone.”

“Come look,” Joliet said.

Hawkins joined her at the rail and peered over the edge. A large swath of thin netting hung over the rail and descended into the water some sixteen feet below. It was the kind of net used to catch large fish, like tuna, but worked just as well on sharks, dolphins, whales, and apparently human beings. But there was no body in this net. Not anymore.

Joliet pointed at the water beyond the net. “Look. There’s a footprint.”

Hawkins had recently learned that a footprint, in the ocean, was an area of flattened water caused by a disturbance by something beneath, most often a surfacing whale. But this wasn’t a footprint in the traditional sense. The water here was calm. There were no waves to flatten. Instead, the footprint left behind were widening ripples spreading out from the net, presumably where Cahill’s body had been caught in it.

The mystery of what happened to the body wasn’t hard to solve. “Shark,” Hawkins whispered. “Had to be.”

Joliet nodded. “A big one. These nets are strong enough to entangle whales. Shark’s teeth would cut some of the lines, but not all of them.”

Hawkins stared into the deep blue water surrounding the ship, looking for a shifting shadow, but found nothing. If there was a shark down there, it had either retreated to the depths with its meal or headed back out to sea. He hoped for the latter, but had a feeling the shark would stick around to see if anything else fell into the water—like a dog at a dinner table. “Think it’s our friend come back for the rest of the turtle?”

“Wasn’t a shark,” DeWinter said. She pulled away from her father’s grasp and wiped her wet eyes.

“Had to be,” Hawkins said. “What else in these waters could do it? Squid?”

Joliet shook her head no. “A squid big enough to pull a man free from this netting would have to be huge, and they live in deep waters.”

“This looks pretty deep,” Hawkins said, looking down into the water.

“Not nearly deep enough. Maybe—”

“It wasn’t a shark!” DeWinter shouted. “I saw it. It didn’t stop to bite, or to shake its head. I know how sharks bite. They shake their heads so the serrated teeth can cut. Whatever took him, took him as it swam past. It never slowed down. He was there, and then he wasn’t. A shark couldn’t do that.”

Joliet crossed her arms and frowned. “She right. A shark would have made a mess of things.”

“Then what did it look like?” Hawkins asked.

“Maybe we should give her some time?” Jones said, placing his hands on DeWinter’s shoulders. “She might remember the details better if—”

DeWinter shrugged out from her father’s arms. “I remember the details just fine, not that there is much to remember. It was black, fast, and at least eight feet long, maybe bigger. It came from beneath the hull, took the body, and went deep. That’s it. Was too fast to see anything more.”

Hawkins thought about the possibilities. A shark still felt right to him. They were the biggest deep-sea predators that could also hunt in shallow waters. But DeWinter was sharp and her testimony hard to ignore.

He shook his head. This wasn’t like an attack at a national park. He’d investigated several attacks at Yellowstone during his stint there. The culprit could always be identified. Even if no one witnessed the attack, there were always tracks. Or scat. Or easily recognizable bite marks. Sometimes claw marks. Hawkins rubbed a hand over his chest. And the potential offenders were few: bears, cougars, and sometimes herd animals like elk or bison provoked into action by a heckling tourist.

But out here in the ocean, there were an array of predators that could arrive and escape unseen. Not only that, while Yellowstone is 3,468 square miles of wilderness, the ocean and its depths are essentially limitless. New species of predator, including sharks and behemoths like the giant squid, were still being discovered. Since most ships avoided this stretch of water because of the thick Garbage Patch, it was possible that a new species of predator hunted here. That the island wasn’t on any charts supported his theory, but with no facts to support it, Hawkins decided to keep his speculation to himself.

A loud splash spun the group around toward the port side of the ship, beyond which the lush, green tropical jungle swayed back and forth, as though beckoning.

“What was that?” DeWinter blurted, fear filling her voice.

“Could be Kam,” Joliet said quickly, and before anyone could offer another possibility, she was off and running across the cluttered deck.

“Joliet!” Hawkins shouted as he gave chase. “Slow down!” But he could see she had no intention of slowing down. She’d jumped into shark-infested waters to save an already dead turtle. He had no doubt she’d jump in now to save Kam. But they didn’t even know if it was Kam. It could be the shark tearing apart Cahill’s body. It could be any number of things that wouldn’t be wise to dive-bomb.

Halfway across the debris-strewn deck, Hawkins could see that Joliet wasn’t going to slow down. Ignoring the mess, he risked not watching his step and sprinted forward. Look before you leap, Hawkins thought. The old catchphrase had become cliche over time, but no less effective at saving lives.

But Joliet seemed unfamiliar with the phrase. She leapt up, planting her right foot on the rail, and bent her legs, ready to spring out into the air. As her leg extended, Hawkins reached an arm around her waist. When she pushed, he pulled.

For a moment, Hawkins thought she might take them both overboard, but Joliet’s one hundred twenty pounds were no match for Hawkins’s two hundred. Still, the effort it took to pull her back sent them both sprawling to the deck, where she began kicking to get free.

“What the hell!” she shouted. “Hawkins, let me go!”

“Calm down,” Hawkins said, and then grunted as he caught an elbow in the gut. He understood the emotions driving her—it could be Kam, and to Joliet, not jumping in meant she was abandoning their friend. Hawkins felt similarly, but the splash could have been made by whatever had taken Cahill, and one close encounter with a predator in any given month was more than enough. If it had been Joliet who was missing, Hawkins might have jumped in himself. As he fought with her, he recognized the strong emotions fueling his fight to keep her on board, and safe. He was hooked like a tuna and she was reeling him steadily in. Of course, she might not talk to him after this. “You need to start thinking things through.”

As they struggled, Jones stepped past them and looked over the rail.

“Mark, I swear to God, if you don’t let me go—”

“Nothing down there,” Jones said.

The struggle stopped.

“Would have jumped in for nothing,” the engineer added. “You should listen to your man.”

Hawkins let go of Joliet. She stood up, gave Hawkins a kick in the leg, and turned on Jones. “He’s not my man.” She stepped up to the rail and looked over the side.

Jones helped Hawkins to his feet, and gave him a nod. “You did good, son. She’ll thank you later.”

Hawkins looked at Joliet. “We’ll see about that.”

When he stepped up to the rail, Joliet was back to business, scouring the water. Hawkins saw nothing, but a few random chunks of flotsam. “There’s nothing down there.”

He was about to follow up his observation by pointing out that she would have jumped in for nothing, but she pointed toward shore and said, “But something was.”

Rings of water rippled across the lagoon. But they weren’t just moving away from the Magellan, they were also moving toward it. “Whatever it was that made that splash, it didn’t fall from the ship. It was closer to shore.”

“It wasn’t Kam,” she said.

Hawkins scoured the scene with his eyes, looking for some sign of what had been in the water. But like most everything in the ocean, whatever made the splash had left no other trace, save for a few ripples on the surface. That’s when he turned his eyes to the sandy shore and saw something he recognized without any trouble.

“Footprints,” he said. “On shore.”

“Where?” Joliet asked. “I don’t see anything.”

Hawkins pointed toward the prints, but knew she wouldn’t see them. They were indistinct and masked by the glare of the white sand in the bright sun. But he knew footprints when he saw them.