Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

Tomlinson, Jeth, Dieter, and his secretary were below. It was late, nearly midnight, so they had probably drifted off to the fore or aft staterooms to bed. Or maybe they were still in the air-conditioned salon playing liar’s poker on the octagonal, teak dining room table. Or watching a video in the teak entertainment center. Wherever they were, whatever they were doing, they were comfortable.

Dieter’s forty-six-foot Grand Banks Classic was a model of useful luxury. Everything was inlaid, beautifully fitted, and multifunctional. The floors were teak parquet, the salon was surrounded by glass with the sides curtained, and there was a sea view forward. The U-shaped galley was on the port side, the steering station with instrument and circuit breaker panels on the starboard side next to the hinged deckhouse door. The staterooms were plush, the heads and shower stalls massive. The interior smelled of fine wood, lacquer, brass, and electronic circuitry. A very nice combination, indeed, if you are a yachting type.

Even so, I preferred to be topside, in the wind, where I could see the stars and smell the open Gulf. The Gulf of Mexico has a more complex mix of odors than other ocean places, perhaps because it is more intimately adjoined to its landward influences.

Even thirty miles offshore, the wind carried trace remnants of the Everglades. There were brief balloonings of denser, warmer air. A hint of mangrove sulphur. A touch of frangipani, sawgrass, and feral jasmine. Out there, beyond the horizon, were shell mound outposts-Chokoloskee, Everglades City, Dismal Key. The wood ash and citreous lime odor of those places clung to the occasional, abraded air molecule, touched the nose briefly, then was gone.

I’d volunteered for the early morning watch. Had been up there alone for nearly an hour when, surprise, surprise, Amelia slid into the chair next to me, bringing two iced cans of Bud Light, a thoughtful gesture. Along with her floated new odors, the good, bedtime girl-odor of shampoo, toothpaste, soap.

“Mind some company? I’m the night-owl type even when I’m home.”

I told her that she was most welcome-very true-but I also sensed that there was something on her mind.

There was. It was a possibility we had all thought about, even talked about briefly, but had never fully and openly discussed because the subject was too terrible.

She began by saying, “I can’t get the image of that shark out of my mind. I’ve never seen a tiger shark, and nothing even close to that big. The way it came gliding in, like a big plane about to land. I know what you told me this afternoon, but you have to admit, that’s what could’ve happened to them. Sharks.”

What I’d told her is what I’d told many people since Janet had disappeared: The possibility of a shark attacking one of the three divers was unlikely but not impossible. A fatal attack, however, was extremely unlikely. Sharks in the Gulf are very good at what they do, and what they do, aside from copulate and give birth, is eat fish. In very murky water, they will sometimes mistake a human hand or leg for something that should have scales, but that is rare. The probability of a shark or sharks attacking all three was so unlikely that it was statistically insignificant.

I’d thrown in some data that I’d gathered in my own work with bull sharks. Worldwide, there are normally between fifty and eighty unprovoked attacks a year, according to the International Shark Attack File, and only a dozen or so of those attacks are fatal.

When you consider the many millions of hours that humans spend in, on, and under salt water, that is a telling statistic.

Records also show that nearly 80 percent of all attacks occurred in shallow water, while divers and snorklers account for only 18 percent of attack victims. Something I didn’t mention was that attacks do seem to be increasing slightly, and laws protecting sharks from certain types of fishing may be increasing their numbers while populations of fish upon which they feed decrease. Didn’t mention it out of pure and simple self-interest: I like sharks.

Water depth was an issue, so I said, “It’s a generalization, but, in my experience, deep water tends to be clearer than shallow water. In shallow water, rain, wind-things like that-drainage, they have an immediate effect on turbidity. That’s not true offshore, so sharks are less likely to make a mistake in deep water. Once again, Gulf sharks are experts at finding and eating fish, not people.”

She repeated herself. “But it could have happened.”

I took a sip of beer, rocking back in my chair, and said, “Okay, it’s a possibility, sure. You’re asking me to shift from what is probable to what might have happened, which is something I try to avoid, frankly. You know that as an attorney… what’s the legal term you folks use? Speculation. Plus, I don’t see the point in a useless emotional exercises.”

“I wish I could stop thinking about it. Maybe it’s because I was out there with them. Because it could have happened to me. Or maybe it’s like Tomlinson told me. We were up here last night talking, drinking some wine. He was telling me about you, what kind of person you are. You’ve got a lot of admirers, Doc. But one thing he said was that you find the sensitivity of others surprising because it’s a weakness that you refuse to recognize in yourself. Only he didn’t say weakness. He used another word. A… frailty, that was the word. A frailty that you refuse to recognize in yourself.”

I smiled. “You’re insisting. Okay, sharks. Let me attempt to be sensitive then.”

I said, “Let’s take your question and think it through aloud, though neither one of us is going to like it. Let’s see… three people adrift at night, their legs hanging down, kicking in a hundred feet of water, and one or more sharks head for the surface, drawn in by the vibrations.

“No matter how big they are, sharks tend to be skittish, easily spooked. So they take their time. Maybe even do a couple of bump and runs. Finally, one shark makes a mistake, hits what it thinks is a fish. If that happened, the best-case scenario-and the most likely scenario-is that the attacking shark would immediately realize that it’d made a mistake and would bolt. The other sharks would have followed. That’s what usually happens when shark bites man. Remember a few years back, near Daytona, when they had all those minor injuries, sharks biting surfers? The numbers were way higher than normal, but no one was badly hurt. Same thing. One chomp and they were gone.”

“And the worst-case scenario?”

I’d been looking northward, through the darkness, at a distant, flashing halo of light that reflected off clouds. Probably Cook Key light near Marco Island-not long ago, I’d spent part of a terrible night there. Not a good memory to linger over. Now I turned and looked at Amelia. “Are you sure you want to hear?”

She nodded. “Sorry, but yeah. Facts are about the only thing we attorneys allow ourselves to trust.”

“All right. One shark makes a mistake, rolls, takes a bite of a foot or an arm, and the other sharks react. There’s blood in the water, then a blood trail forms. One by one, the sharks arch their backs in a feeding display, and the frenzy is on.

“For Janet and your two friends, it would have been the horror of all horrors. Worse than any nightmare. One of them gets hit, screams and keeps screaming. The other two try to help, but there’s nothing they can do. They have to float along beside the victim and wait, knowing that something is beneath them, feeding.

“If they were attacked by sharks, the trauma would have been to their legs, maybe their arms. They would have bled to death, and probably pretty quickly. Massive blood loss, shock, then a sleepy unconsciousness. Thing is, their inflated BCDs would still be afloat, probably with their heads and torsos intact. There would have been plenty left for the Coast Guard to find. Or us. Or some random boater during the last month.”