MEG: Nightstalkers

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Authors: Steve Alten
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bottom.”
    Lebowitz tested the crate’s weight, estimating it to be about a hundred and thirty pounds. With Donna’s help, he rolled it across the deck to the starboard pulley. Clipping the end of the line onto the crate’s O-ring, he reversed the winch, lifting the load off the deck. The Scottish woman swung it beyond the aluminum rail and the captain lowered it until it came to rest along the bottom.
    Now it was up to Lucas.
    The diver stood on the rocking transom, gazing at the churning water. Conditions were poor, the tide swift. He could see the tops of the bull kelp quivering just beneath the surface, his mind rationalizing the simplicity of the task before him against his own undercurrent of fear.
    For the umpteenth time his eyes scanned the horizon. No orca, no giant six-foot white dorsal fins.
    Donna nudged him from behind, jump-starting his already rapid heartbeat. “Forgetting something, lad?” She handed him the underwater video camera.
    “Right … thanks.”
    Rubbing saliva inside his dive mask, he sealed it to his face, then held the camera to his chest and stepped forward off the listing boat, falling feetfirst into the sea.
    The inflated buoyancy control vest prevented him from sinking. Bobbing along the surface, he reached for the valve and released air, sending himself plunging into an emerald green world entangled by towering strands of kelp.
    He paddled into a clearing and continued his controlled descent, following the steel cable to the bottom. He felt the pressure building in his eardrums as he passed thirty feet and paused to equalize, pinching his nose while blowing out his cheeks. When the squeezing sensation eased he continued, his eyes wide as they focused on the curtains of deep green kelp and what they might conceal.
    So engaged was Lucas with his surroundings that he was startled when his flippers struck the top of the crate, sending him tumbling backward. His air tank struck the rocky bottom with a loud crunch .
    In a frenzy of movement he righted himself. Which way was the ridge? The GPS had pointed southeast … which way was that? He checked his dive watch, collecting his bearings.
    First things first—empty the crate.
    Flipping open the metal latches, he opened the crate and dragged out the burlap sack. Inside were two cheap plaster busts Donna had purchased at a farmer’s market. Dumping them on the sea floor, he pushed away from the bottom, setting off at a brisk pace to collect the bag of abalone.
    Lucas bypassed the denser sections of kelp, swimming over a reef. Large anemone and sea cucumbers bloomed into view, along with coon-striped shrimp, ten-armed sunflower starfish, and other colorful clusters of invertebrates.
    The ridge was in a clearing up ahead—a slanted shelf of rock, twelve feet high at its apex and eight feet deep, serving as the local hangout for a variety of fish.
    A school of kelp greenling hovered before the entrance like nervous deer, the males with their brown bodies and irregular blue patches seemingly a different species from their female counterparts with their reddish-brown spots and yellowish-orange fins.
    A cluster of China rockfish darted out of his way, their dark blue bodies marked by a yellow stripe that extended around the third dorsal spine down to their lateral lines. As he neared the ridge opening he saw a lingcod hovering like a bulldog, its massive ninety pound girth spotted in shades of gray.
    Avoiding the popular eating fish, he ducked inside the ridge, nearly stepping on a buffalo sculpin lying along the bottom, the bottom dweller no doubt attracted to the roiling abalone trapped inside the burlap bag.
    Lifting the sack with both hands, he half-kicked, half-strode out of the crevasse of rock—only to be confronted by a ghost.
    It was a great white, a six-foot, three-hundred-pound female, its hide as pure as the driven snow. The albino swam with frenetic movements, her back arched in an aggressive posture. Clearly agitated, she circled

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