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screen.
    “You see this here?”
    White nodded.
    “This is not fixable. Way too many holes; the whole thing is mangled beyond repair. The entire lower section of pipe—at least twenty feet of it—will have to be cut off and a new section welded on. Major job.”
    “You’re positive that’s the only solution?”
    Al looked at White with the same expression he reserved for kids with learning disabilities. “Yes, I’m positive, James.” Then he looked around the table, addressing his engineers. “Do any of you hold a different opinion?”
    None of them said anything.
    “All right!” White yelled. “I believe you. So tell me about this process. How long will it take?”
    Again the room was silent. White glanced at his Rolex.
    “Days to weeks, rather than hours to days,” Al said flatly.
    White’s faced turned crimson. “ Weeks ! Am I hearing this right?”
    Al nodded. “Unfortunately, you are, James. I understand the urgency of the situation, and I wish I could paint a rosier picture for you, but I’m just being realistic here.”
    White let out a long breath, resigning himself to the fact that Al was right. “What does the fix entail?”
    Al gave his boss a hard stare. “Why don’t we start with what happened to this thing in the first place?” He glanced over at the video before continuing. “Because we don’t want it to happen again, that’s for sure, and so maybe we can do something to prevent it during the restoration process.”
    White, who’d been standing up to this point, took a seat at the table and tented his hands.
    “Our marine biologist is blaming it on a large sea creature of indeterminate type.”
    “Indeterminate type?”
    “She didn’t see it happen. She speculates it may be a large shark. I think it’s wishful thinking on her part. You know how marine biologists are—all obsessed about Jaws—she’s probably hoping this will be her personal Jaws moment for all I know. You see what you want to see, and all that.”
    A wave of chuckling passed around the table. Al shrugged. “If it is an animal of any kind, it was probably just a random encounter, and will never happen again. I don’t see what we could do about it, anyway.”
    “Build a cage around it?” one of the engineers put forth.
    White stood again. “Good idea. See about implementing that after you get it back to the way it was. So in the meantime, Al, how’s the intermediate fix with the wall units going?”
    Al checked his smartphone. “Latest update a few minutes ago had my people in the air en route to Suva. As soon as they get there, they’re heading to our supplier, and they’ll be in contact.”
    “Contact me when you hear. I’ll be down in the hotel.”
    #
    In Mick’s “sub shack,” as he called the maintenance hut that held the tools of his trade, Coco stood in front of a workbench on which sat her laptop computer. She held the oversized tooth extracted from the pipe up to her screen where a photo of a life-sized megalodon tooth was shown to scale. It was black after undergoing the fossilization process over the eons, but other than color, the two teeth could have been from the same mouth.
    “Looks like a match, doesn’t it?” Mick looked over her shoulder while he performed a routine check of the sub’s carbon dioxide scrubber, a small cylinder containing material that absorbed the gas so that it wouldn’t accumulate in the close confines of the craft. Coco smiled without taking her eyes off the monitor.
    “It sure does. Look at these serrations.” She moved the mouse cursor over the tiny saw-like indentations on the sides of the extinct shark’s tooth. “They’re highly characteristic of a megalodon. Mick...”
    She turned to look into his eyes, and he held her gaze.
    “This is a megalodon. I’m sure of it. I don’t know how...but this tooth...the size of that shark down there...”
    Mick set the scrubber down on the bench, and turned all of his attention to Coco and the tooth. “That