Chapter 36

CHAPTER 36

THE TWO MEN stood by the antique cannon on the hill overlooking the beach. They did not fit in. They were both white, for one thing, and neither spoke the local language. They'd arrived on a small motorboat that morning. The island was small and remote, but sometimes boaters discovered it by accident and hung around for a day or two to enjoy the scenery. The residents were content to ignore them, as long as they didn't cause any trouble. With their Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts, these two looked like just two more misguided tourists.

As the men watched, a large fishing boat pulled up to the wooden dock. A mass of villagers swept down the beach as the boat tied off. Curious, the two men walked down the slope, too, adjusting their baseball caps to ward off the glaring sun.

As they reached the beach, the three-man boat crew was working a huge rusty winch amidships. Slowly, a large shape rose from a hatch, held aloft by a thick rope.

A great white. Twenty-footer, at least.

The arm of the winch swung over and deposited the stiff shark onto the dock. There was a huge metal hook through its upper jaw and a harpoon gash in its right flank. From where the two men stood on the beach, they got a potent waft of dead-fish stink, so strong it made them both gag.

Men and teenage boys swarmed around the shark's body as it settled on the dock, tugging on its fins and poking at its rows of daggerlike teeth. One of the village men elbowed the kids aside and whipped out a ten-inch knife. He jabbed it into the underside of the fish just below the gill slits and ran the blade all the way down to the pelvic fin. The pale belly skin parted and the innards spilled out in a froth of pinkish water.

Howls and shouts rose from the crowd. The young boys pushed in closer. The men grabbed them by the shoulders and pulled them back.

Everybody was staring at the freshly released stomach contents.

Two discernable objects had survived the shark's digestion process—a Caucasian male arm from the elbow down, and a wad of clothing that looked like it had once been part of a white suit.

The men in Hawaiian shirts looked at each other.

"Holy shit," said one.

"I think we just found Vail," said the other. He reached into his fanny pack and pulled out a satellite phone.