Absolute Pressure by Sigmund Brouwer

Author:Sigmund Brouwer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: JUV000000
Publisher: Orca Book Publishers
Published: 2009-04-01T04:00:00+00:00

chapter seventeen

Ten miles out of Key West, I stood on the deck of the GypSea and watched angry sharks bump at the cage in the blue Gulf waters.

Uncle Gord and I had chummed the waters to bring them in. We’d thrown out chopped up fish, knowing the scent of oily blood would bring sharks in from all directions.

We’d saved the raw hamburger for the center of the cage. Five pounds, in a meshbag that kept it from dropping through the floor of the cage.

Now the sharks were banging at the cage, which was held in position by the floats three-quarters up the sides. Six, maybe seven, sharks. Just little ones. Three to five feet long. Nothing really exciting.

Then I saw a big, dark shadow. A big dark shadow that came to the surface.

I felt a tingle.

Not the kind of tingle when my senses get mixed up.

But the kind of tingle that said danger.

It was a bull shark.

A great white shark will shake you and spit you out. Bull sharks hold on and chew, like bulldogs but with a hundred times more teeth and strength. Bull sharks eat anything and everything. Fish, seals, turtles, smaller sharks. Even license plates or pieces of old tire. And whenever you read about a shark attack on a human, chances are it was a bull shark.

This big dark shadow wasn’t just a bull shark though. The average bull shark is bigenough—seven feet—and end to end will be longer than some couches.

This one was half as big again. A female. Its nose could touch one wall of an average room, and its tail would curl against the opposite wall. Fast, mean, unpredictable. The perfect killer. Some grew as big as eleven feet, seven hundred pounds.

“Uncle Gord,” I whispered. I didn’t need to whisper. But it was so scary I was afraid to draw its attention. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Like I was a rabbit, and it was a python hypnotizing me. “Check it out.”

Uncle Gord moved beside me.

“Dang,” he said, with admiration. “Can’t ever remember seeing one that big. This is perfect.”

The other sharks had scattered. In fear.

This monster nosed the cage. Its dorsal fin broke the surface of the water, showing a gleaming dark blue triangle. I shuddered at the thought of what it would be like to be treading water and see a fin like that approach.

The bull shark bumped the cage a little harder, trying to get at the mesh bag of hamburger inside. The cage bounced on its floats.

The shark turned away, but in a flash swirled back and hit the cage hard. Maybe it was my imagination, but the bars seemed to dent a little.

“Ready?” Uncle Gord said. “We’ve got to get footage of this before it gives up.”

No. I wasn’t ready.

It’s one thing to talk about it over breakfast in a diner. Onshore. Safe.

It’s another to be on a gently swaying deck of a boat in a hundred feet of water. Looking down at a monster shark that was angry and hungry and could take off an arm with a single swipe of its jaws.

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