Dave Freedman - Natural Selection

As Theresa left, she wondered who Jason was. Perhaps a marine biologist? As she entered Manta World’s massive empty parking lot, she realized she’d forgotten to mention the animal’s very odd muscle movements. She wouldn’t bother now. She got in her car and drove off.

Moments later, Ackerman hung up the phone and was quietly thrilled. One of the world’s premiere experts on rays had just said something fantastic: he had no idea what the woman had seen.

Well, they were going to find out. Ackerman picked up the phone again. “Get me a car. Now.”

“ WHAT’S HE doing here?”

Lisa Barton wiped a strand of dark hair away from her binoculars.

It was another gorgeous, sunny day here in the middle of the tropical ocean. Alone at the front of a white fiberglass yacht, Lisa had been sunning herself on a lounge chair when she heard the boat engine in the distance. She was a very pretty twenty-nine, with a young face, big brown eyes, and soft white skin that never darkened thanks to heavy use of number thirty lotion. People often said she looked like something out of an animated film, the damsel in distress who’s rescued by the hero. Lisa Barton was anything but a damsel in distress. Her opinions were strong and, when necessary, so was her mouth. She was also a top oceanic nutrition specialist.

She held her hair back, peering through the binoculars. Yes, it was Harry Ackerman, her boss’s boss and the man who was paying them. Why was he here? Ackerman was a businessman and never showed up to chitchat. They were in the Sea of Cortés on the Gulf of California in tropical Mexico. Ackerman’s yacht cut out, and Lisa guessed he’d stopped to take in the scenery or something else.

In a bikini, she put on a bright green T-shirt and khaki shorts and realized both were wrinkled. Son of a bitch! Lisa loved clothes and was sick of living like a vagabond. She hadn’t signed up for this. Manta World was supposed to have been a land-based job. No ocean work—none. But things hadn’t gone according to plan, the aquarium had been a disaster, and now the six of them—four men and two women—were virtually living on the water, either in the five tiny bedrooms below or at junky seaside motels that went for thirty-nine dollars a night with continental breakfast included.

Their boat, the Expedition, actually wasn’t half bad. White fiberglass with lacquered wood accents and a rough-hewn teak deck, the ninety-foot yacht had been converted into a floating research facility. With generous amounts of space in the front and rear decks, it featured a tiny living room; an even tinier galley; three bathrooms like those on United Airlines coach class; and a satellite for TV, phone, and data transmissions.

They’d been out here for eighteen months. For eighteen months, they’d done nothing but try to determine why the manta rays had died in their specially designed San Diego aquarium. They’d considered everything—food, water temperature, salinity, amounts of natural and artificial light. They couldn’t figure it out. It had been a frustrating, unsolvable mystery, and everyone except Jason Aldridge, their leader, had accepted that.

Still, frustrations aside, at least they had jobs, and Lisa had grown accustomed to the relative lack of outside intervention. She was focused on her core research now and didn’t like surprises. She slipped on some leather flip-flops and wondered again: Why’s Ackerman here? She turned to two men at the very back of the boat, a good distance away, so—

“Darryl! Craig! You guys know what Ackerman’s doing here?!”

“What?! Just a second, Soccer Mom!”

Lisa shook her head. Soccer Mom. This had come from Darryl Hollis, what he swore she’d become if she ever got off the boat and actually met anyone. Lisa liked Darryl, but she didn’t care for what he was doing at the moment: shooting at skeet again. God, she hated that. Darryl and Craig were always very careful with their weapons, but it still made Lisa nervous to see arrows and bullets flying off the back of the boat. But what else were they going to do? They were as bored as she was. Finding little use for their advanced degrees, they had to do something, and needlepoint wasn’t an option. The two of them, as well as Darryl’s wife, Monique, were former ROTC members who’d met during active duty as they learned to fly Sikorsky helicopters and fire rifles. The guys weren’t “regular army” at all, more fun-loving, likable partyers. Darryl was tall, preppy, and black, with a powerful, athletic frame. Craig was a slovenly white guy with a beer gut who rarely did his laundry in the stacked machines below deck. They got along famously.

As Lisa walked closer, Craig shook his head at a jammed skeet machine.

Darryl just smiled at her, his customary big, toothy grin on full display. “I told ya I’ll never make any bad calls on your little ones, right?”

Lisa paused. “I don’t have any little ones, Darryl.”

“You will one day, and if I’m a ref, no bad calls for the Barton kids.”

“ Barton? So these kids will have my last name?”

A nod. “As will your husband.”

Craig looked up, annoyed. “Wait a second. I’m pretty traditional about that kind of thing. Lisa, we’re gonna have to talk about that before the wedding.”

Lisa chuckled. Craig Summers had been lusting after her for a year.

“Even if your kids go against the Hollis kids,” Darryl continued, “I’ll still treat ‘em right.”

Lisa paused. “ The Hollis kids? So you and Monique are expecting now?”

“Planning, Lisa. The great ones always plan.” He looked down at Craig. “How’s it going with that, Sloppy Joe?”

In jungle-green cargo shorts and a stained white undershirt, Craig whacked the skeet machine. “Fantastic.”

Lisa put the binoculars back to her face. “You guys don’t know why Ackerman’s here?”

“Got it!” Craig said suddenly.

“Hold on, Lisa.” Darryl grabbed his hunting bow off the deck, and Lisa put down the binoculars to watch. As much as weapons frightened her, she found Darryl’s archery skills fascinating. She eyed his bow. It wasn’t some skimpy thing, but a formidable piece of equipment, nearly as thick as a baseball bat at its center, made of shiny, hard cherrywood, and four feet long fully strung. Darryl put the whole thing over his big shoulder. Darryl was one-eighth American Indian. As a kid, he’d spent eleven summers on his grandfather’s Indian reservation, owned by the Limble tribe of Hoke County, North Carolina, and was very experienced at hunting with a bow and arrow. Before she’d met Darryl, Lisa had thought of bows and arrows as archaic, almost cute devices. But when Darryl described one of his hunts, she realized there was nothing cute about seeing a twenty-eight-inch, hundred-and-fifty-mile-per-hour speeding projectile plunge into a stampeding wild boar’s chest. Bows and arrows were serious weapons, Lisa now knew. With characteristic cockiness, Darryl had assured her they were more dangerous than guns and carried far more foot-pounds of kinetic energy than bullets did. Why were guns so popular? Because any idiot could fire them. Craig Summers could fire a gun.

“OK, gimme some skimmers, Craig.”

“Yes, your lordship.” Craig put the machine on a sidewall and angled it out to sea.

Darryl shook his head at Lisa. “So hard to find good help these days.”

Craig looked up angrily. “Ready?”

Darryl was still facing Lisa. “Yep.”

Whoosh! A skeet rocketed away above the ocean. Then: Whoosh! Whoosh! Two more.

In a fluid series of motions, Darryl turned and fired three arrows. Voom! Voom! Voom! In rapid succession, they sped away at truly frightening speeds. Crack! One skeet down. Crack! A second. Crack! A third.