Chapter 9: Foolish Endeavors

A seasonal squall blew through during the middle of the day leaving a low layer of foreboding clouds in its path. During the intermittent rain bursts, Bobby, the professor, and his father gathered the frames to the cage and assembled it in front of the barge pilot house, before setting it over the side and securing it out of line-of-site with the Dreamer. Bobby rushed around feeling the thrill and anticipation of his first-ever cage dive. The last thing he wanted to do was to clue in his tightly wound wife or the two Irish-blooded twins who watched over her, so he remained on the barge and opted to use fins and air tanks from their dive locker since he would remain close to the surface. They planned the dive to occur in conjunction with the afternoon’s conclusion of dredging operations. The tide would be perfect to ensure that the jettisoned detritus would remain down current from where he planned to attempt tagging the huge shark. The professor introduced him to the tagging spear and its simple operation and made him repeat the instructions with a demonstration, several times.

“God, this is gonna be so cool!” he crooned as he set up the GoPro cube, attaching it to the front of his mask.

“I hope you’re ready for the fallout when my daughter gets wind of this,” the professor sniffed.

“Pfft,” the boy scoffed, “she was ready to feed me to the damn thing last summer.” He sat on the deck rechecking his regulator and harness. “So long as I get a successful tag, any repercussions will be worth it.” He checked his watch. They had ten minutes before the dredge pump would shut down. He waved to one of the local crewmen who was covered in muddy silt. “Hey Agwe,” he called out to the man. It was the same crewmember they had flown to the mainland to have his slashed arm treated. Kurt had brought him back to the barge that morning along with their resupply.

“Yah Mon,” the thin black man replied. He had developed an affinity for the boy ever since he piloted the seaplane on his first-ever airplane ride. He stepped over and studied the lad curiously.

“When you guys break from work and start fishing, I need the biggest fish you can catch.” He held his arms wide to indicate an impossibly large catch.

“For sure, Mon,” the man nodded quickly. “Why, Mon?”

“It’s a peace offering.”

Word had quickly spread about the giant bull shark and the unfortunate diver who had sadly died before he could reach the hospital. It was also bantered around, the boy’s intention to tag the beast for future tracking and observation. The Jamaican shook his head in disbelief and waved his hands wildly. “You be crazy, Mon. Lucky if you don’t become the ‘offering’.”

Chad appeared from the crew cabin, wearing nothing but a pair of tight shorts as he padded barefoot over to the pair. He began rummaging inside the tank locker for a dive harness, tank, and regulator.

Bobby gaped at him as the muscular man turned and joined him on the foredeck to check out his equipment. “Um, Dad?” he stammered. “What are you doing?”

“There’s room for two ain’t there?” his father replied, testing his regulator.

“Yeah ... but,” he faltered.

“But what? You think I’m gonna return to the Dreamer with just a few pieces of you?” he retorted, spitting in his mask and wiping it out with a finger. “I’d rather take my chances with your toothy girlfriend.”

They felt the huge pump halt through the deck. The large black discharge pipe shuddered nearby and three loud blasts from the ship’s horn echoed across the water. The deck crew divided themselves quickly with a few hands cleaning and stowing gear while the line handlers began retrieving the below crew. The remaining men grabbed their fishing gear and settled along the stern of the vessel. Since their provisions had been replenished that morning, the foreman was only giving them fifteen minutes before he shut down the Howler.

“Best get into the cage, lads,” Dr. Ashanti suggested as he strode toward them from the pilot house.

Bobby and Chad strapped on their tanks and carried their fins over the prow.

“MR. HARTLEY TO THE PILOT HOUSE FOR A VHF CALL!”

“Shit!” Bobby cursed as he climbed over the gunwale and sat, pulling his fins on. “How do they always know?”

Chad glanced over his shoulder to see the two younger boys jumping into the zodiac tied to the stern of the Dreamer, eager to score more teeth for their collection. Two familiar female figures could be seen looking back at him from the cockpit. ‘Ah, hell!’ he thought to himself. “They do have eyes, son,” he remarked.

“Do you think they saw us putting the cage together?” the boy asked.

Chad shrugged.

“Well?” Bobby pressed as he slipped his mask on.

“Well, what?”

“Are you gonna go see what they want?” ‘As if we didn’t know,’ he thought to himself.

“Why me?” Chad retorted.

“Because you are ‘Mister’ Hartley,” Bobby stated before slipping his regulator into his mouth, “I’m just his dumb-ass kid!” he mumbled before grabbing the spear and dropping over the side into the warm sea.

“You little...” Chad cursed as he swung his legs over the side. He looked back at the professor, “Why don’t you go into the pilot house and ask them which Hartley they want to speak to?” he suggested. “Walk slowly...” He quickly pulled on his fins and crammed the mouthpiece in place.

“CHADWICK!” a loudspeaker bellowed from the tall-masted boat nearby with an angry female voice.

The man dropped over the side, following his son.

“Well, that answered that,” Dr. Ashanti remarked to nobody in particular, as he refilled his pipe. Below him, he watched as the two skin divers clambered into the cage held in place, flush with the surface.

Agwe ran barefoot across the deck holding a huge yellowtail. He leaned over the edge and called out, “Hey, Crazy boy! Here is your fish, Mon!”

Bobby looked up and held up his hands to catch the fish as the man dropped it. He clutched it in one hand by the gills and gave the fisherman a thumbs up. He disappeared beneath the surface and the professor turned and nodded toward the pilot house. A loud blast of the ship’s horn sounded, signaling the imminent shutdown of the sonic emitter.

Bubbles and turbulent water sounded in their submerged ears as they positioned themselves within the confining metal cage. There was an occasional clank as it bumped against the hull of the huge barge. Bobby gave a hand signal to the line handlers and they felt the buzzing of an electric winch as they began dropping below the waves. It got quieter once they descended five meters and were clear of the vessel above them.

Bobby took the long knife strapped to his thigh and made several cuts in the kingfish that probably weighed twenty pounds and measured over thirty inches long. He ran a tether through its gills and tied it inside the cage. He felt a tap on his shoulder and looked back at his father. Chad was pointing beyond the cage and when he turned his eyes flew open, finding a literal wall of sharks racing towards them. Most were blacktips and reefers that dashed by them and circled back aggressively. The largest of them was barely five feet in length. Several hammerheads appeared and dashed around erratically. They were known to frenzy in bloody waters. Dozens of larger bulls raced by startling the entire school, causing several to bump into the cage setting it the swinging and spinning.

‘Okay, not one of my better ideas,’ Bobby thought as he considered signaling for rapid retrieval. He felt Chad’s hand gripping his shoulder tightly as the mass of carnivorous fish thrashed the water just beyond their safety cube. Suddenly the reinforced steel structure seemed woefully inadequate for its purpose. An especially aggressive reef shark charged forward and bashed the cage with its nose trying to get at the yellowtail. The cube shuddered from the blow and they heard an eerie scraping as its teeth scored the metal bars. ‘Holy shit!’ he gasped as he floated stationary just inches from those razor-sharp teeth.

‘This was fucking stupid!’ he lamented as another even larger fish battered the cage, locking its wicked jaws around the bars and shaking it like a wet rag. He poked it sharply in the snout with his knife forcing it to let go and retreat. The remaining crowd seemed less eager to attack but circled ominously around them. The cage settled in its swinging and twisting and Bobby turned to grin at his father’s incredulous expression. He made sure to pan the GoPro around to capture the mass of deadly swimmers that would reduce them to mincemeat in seconds, were it not for the protective cube around them. He detached the camera from his face mask and panned it around slowly for several seconds before turning it onto himself to record a selfie with a thumbs up. As he reconnected it to his mask, they felt a sharp turbulence buffet them. When he glanced back out, he was stunned to find no trace of the dozens of sharks that were hell-bent on eating him just seconds before. They had all vanished.

‘Uh oh,’ he thought as a chill ran down his spine.

He felt and heard his father’s muffled cry just behind him and turned to see him looking down with terror-stricken eyes.

Bobby felt his heart skip a beat as he sensed her presence. He looked down and nearly lost bowel tone as the massive creature appeared from behind them, gliding slowly beneath the cage, less than a yard from his tiny fins. Up close she appeared unbelievably huge. And as she passed under them, the cage shuddered from the casual flick of her immense tail.

‘Oh my ... fucking ... God!’ he thought frantically as she slowly swam away from them, growing smaller but remaining incredibly huge even at a distance. Then she turned and made her way perpendicular to their flimsy cube. ‘Bad idea, Bobbers! Really bad fucking idea!’ He gripped the tagging spear desperately in his left hand as he sawed frantically at the cord holding the bloody kingfish. Once it was free he released the dive knife and urgently pushed the fish through the bars. ‘Why did I do this?’ he pondered as he tried to shove the juicy morsel further away from them and deeper with his spear. He turned and watched in abject terror as the monstrous shark approached them from the right, slicing through the water with dreadful ease. He found himself paralyzed with fear as he stared into the depths of her huge black eye as she drew ever closer. It seemed as if she regarded him with disapproval at the meager offering, he presented to her. ‘I’m gonna die!’ he thought with absolute certainty as she glided closer and closer until her gigantic nose seemed to completely dominate his field of vision. She appeared to gaze back at him contemptuously as she glided past a mere yard away. Her ebony orb was easily the size of a softball.

Her mouth opened just enough to engulf the tiny morsel and then closed. The vertical slits of her gills swept past him trembling as she chewed. A blow to his shoulder jarred him from his reverie. ‘The tag!’ he gasped as his full situation dawned on him. The cage shuddered as her left pectoral fin brushed against it, pulling it along for a meter or two. He raised the spear and looked across her massive body as the three-foot-tall dorsal fin appeared before him. It was huge beyond imagination and impossible to miss as he reached through the bars and thrust the long spear forward. The tag resembled a rigid hotdog attached to a barbed spike with a foot-long cable tether. The razor-sharp spike protruded from the tip of the spear and detached easily as soon as he thrust it deep into the tough flesh at the base of the fin. He felt a brief flush of triumph for the successful tag.

His elation vanished as the massive shark responded to the painful prick. She effectively smashed the water with her gigantic tail and darted away like a torpedo. The turbulent backlash sent the cage spinning and swinging violently in her wake. He dropped the spear in his panic and grabbed the bars to steady himself inside the spinning cage. It settled quickly and he turned to give his dad a thumbs up for their successful operation.

Her attack was sudden and catastrophic. The cage was struck from behind, sending both of the divers backward into the hard metal bars. Her wide-open mouth engulfed the entire lower corner of the cube and with infantile ease, she crushed the metal bars, with Bobby’s head and torso literally inside her gaping maw. There was a terrible shriek of metal being torn and bent and his ears were blasted by the gnashing grinding sounds of her teeth trying to rend the enclosure to shreds to get at his puny frame.

Suddenly they were no longer surrounded by water as the cage was lifted free of the ocean. It tilted precariously however and continued to shudder and emit its metallic groans as the enraged shark continued to hang onto the crumbled cage with its horrific jaws. Bobby’s mask seemed to fog up and his brain seemed to ignite from sheer terror as he found himself gazing down the monster’s gullet — from inside her terrible mouth!

Then the cage shuddered again as she suddenly released and fell back into the water. Bobby and Chad were flung about the wrecked enclosure like bingo balls as the cables recoiled from the tension caused by the 3500-pound monster. Once their world stabilized an entirely new cacophony assaulted them.

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Chad bellowed as Bobby fell face forward into the lower corner of the bent cage. “Bobby! Are you alright?”

Bobby groaned through his mouthpiece as he tried to work his jaw to spit it out. He settled for a thumbs up (or was it down?) while he struggled to roll over. His tank was caught on something that prevented him from turning. Finally, he managed to spit out his regulator and drew in a deep breath.

“HOLY ... FUCK!” he bellowed as he gasped for air. “Shit! Fuck! Holy fucking shit!”

Outside the cage, the crewmen frantically pulled it over the gunwale and lowered it to the deck. Everyone was bellowing orders and yelling incoherently as the metal cage clanked down and came to a rest.

“Are you two injured?” the professor yelled frantically. He stood next to the cage which was no longer square but more diamond shaped with one end completely mangled.

Chad and Bobby had both managed to doff their masks. The younger Hartley panicked when he noticed the missing GoPro from its clip.

“Ah fuck!” he cried out as he gazed at his face mask miserably. All video footage of his incredible experience was lost! The disappointment struck him like a physical blow as the workers struggled to open the deformed portal above them.

He felt a jab in his shoulder and he turned to look dejectedly at his father, only to frown at his grinning face. Chad reached down and tugged on his harness prompting him to glance at his chest where the waterproof camera dangled from its tether. He threw back his head and bellowed like a maniac while his father joined him in his boisterous laughter.

As they were being extricated from the mangled shark cage, one of the crewmen dashed across the short span of water in the RHIB to fetch the three frantic women aboard Celtic Dreamer. The polite men who assisted them onto the deployable jetty were brushed aside as they stormed across the barge toward the crowd that had gathered around the deformed shark cage. Each of them bristled as they struggled with mixed emotions of fear, relief, and blind anger. The raucous laughter from two recognizable voices did little to assuage the latter emotion.

“MOVE!” Tavia bellowed as she glared at the naked backs of the crewmen blocking her way. They scrambled to the side allowing the three ladies to gawk in utter astonishment at the image before them. Chad and Bobby remained trapped within the damaged cage while two of the larger men, both divers—wrestled with the bent hatch, prying it away to open the man-sized entry hole.