With a sweep of his hand, he cleared the upper gums of teeth. The maw snapped shut, squirting a mixture of blood, triangular teeth and angry bubbles. Too late. Remo's hand had already retreated.
On the return sweep he got most of the lower set. A few remained here and there. The lower corner was still heavily toothed.
Threshing about, the shark fought to regain its orientation.
Remo got under it, curled his body into a ball and, with the last atoms of oxygen still burning in his lungs, gave it an upward kick.
Shocked, the shark shot to the surface-as much from panic as from the unexpected blow.
Remo surfaced behind the shark, drew in air and got his mitochrondria-the part of his cells that functions like tiny energy furnaces--charged again.
The cold air felt like the cold water around him. He couldn't tell one from the other. His skin was cold and blue and unfeeling. In the moonlight he saw the skin under his fingernails turning a purplish black.
Kicking, Remo got to the shark's side, took hold of its sturdy dorsal fin and pulled himself on board.
The shark didn't resist. It was stunned.
Its tough bluish hide scraped skin from Remo's bare arms. But that hide could provide warmth by acting as a wet suit. Wrapping his legs around the shark's tail, Remo hugged it tightly, its fin nudging his crotch.
Gradually a bit of warmth was restored in his body. It wouldn't be in time. It would not save him. But as long as he breathed, Remo still had a chance.
Even if he couldn't exactly see that chance. Or where it would come from.
Time passed. The shark began to switch its muscular tail. Remo clamped down to inhibit its forward movement. Once the shark dived, it would be in its element. And it would be all over for Remo.
As they struggled, Remo focused on the will to live. A man fought for his life when his life had meaning. Remo's life had meaning to him. He wasn't always satisfied with it. Often not satisfied with it at all. But it was his life, and he intended to hold on to it.
He thought of Chiun, and how his life had been transformed and redirected through the training of the last Korean Master of Sinanju. He thought of the House of Sinanju, and the villagers who had survived for five thousand years because the Master of Sinanju had gone out into the known world to ply the trade of assassin, feeding the village that could not feed itself because the soil was too rocky to till and the waters too cold for fishing.
Remo saw the impassive faces of those villagers, unchanged down through the ages, with their suspicious eyes and alien faces.
On second thought, maybe staying alive for the sake of those people wasn't the way to go.
He thought of his own life. Of the women he had known and loved and mostly lost. He thought of Jilda of Lakluun, a Viking warrior woman with whom he had had a daughter, a laughing-eyed little girl named Freya. Over a year ago Remo had been visited by the spirit of his own deceased mother and was told by her that a shadow had fallen over Freya. The danger was not yet great, but it was growing.
Since then Remo had been on Harold Smith's back to find Freya, but even Smith's far-reaching computers couldn't locate a teenage girl whose last name was unknown and unguessable.
Shifting position to warm his left side, Remo recalled the image of little Freya. When he had last seen her, she was seven. Now she would be thirteen. A very young lady. Closing his eyes, he tried to imagine what her face would look like today. His imagination failed him. He couldn't envision the daughter he had seen only once in his life; he could only remember her as she was on their last meeting.
Over the lap and gurgle of water, he thought he heard her tinkling laugh. It came again. Clearer this time.
"Freya?"
"Daddy. Where are you?"
Remo's eyes snapped open.
"Freya!"
"Daddy, don't die. Live for me. Live for meeeeeee."
"Freya."
But the voice was gone. Only the monotonous waters spoke.
Regathering his energies, Remo made a decision. He would live for Freya. If for no other reason, for Freya. Freya was somewhere in danger, and he would find her. Somehow.
The shark was threshing more now. Remo kneed it. It huffed, expelling water from its bleeding mouth.
Its triangular head twisted and bucked. Remo held on. He caught glimpses of the remaining teeth down in its lower jaw.
If the shark ever caught him in its mouth, those few ragged teeth would still saw through his flesh like razors.
"You wanna eat me?" Remo growled.
The shark threshed, one eye coming into view. It was flat, black and inhuman. But Remo sensed a cold, predatory intelligence that saw him as warm food.
"You want to eat me, you rat bastard?" Remo repeated, angrier this time.
The shark flexed its stiff cartilage tail.
"Well, maybe I'll eat you instead."
Reaching forward, Remo snapped off a shark tooth. It happened so fast the shark couldn't react in time.
Remo plunged the tooth into the tough hide. It went in. Sharks were not immune to shark bites. They frequently cannibalized one another.
Blood erupted, dark, almost black-red. Remo placed his lips to the wound and drank deep. It was salty and bitter but it was sustenance. It was fish blood, so he could drink it safely. Beef blood would probably poison his purified system.
After drinking all he could stand, Remo reinserted the tooth deep, then ripped it straight back.
The tough hide parted, exposing reddish pink meat.
With quick motions Remo sliced row after row of lines, filleting the shark alive.
It struggled. Remo quieted it by squeezing until its gills expelled water. And reaching in, Remo ripped out a slab of shark steak.
He began eating it raw. Taking big bites and gobbling the food down. There was no time for the niceties of chewing it correctly. He needed the energy from its meat, its life force, in his belly. Now.
The shark tried rolling. Remo steered its fin against the motion. The shark righted itself. It resumed threshing and twisting, but ultimately it was weak from loss of blood. Its blood oozed out, a reddish shimmer on the surrounding waters.
Remo ate on, ripping out fistfuls of tough meat. The taste was rank. Sharks ate the trash of the sea and they tasted like it. So even though Remo's diet was restricted by Sinanju training to certain varieties of rice, fish and duck, Remo rarely ate shark.
As Chiun had once explained to him, "He who eats shark eats what a shark has eaten."
"Sharks sometimes eat people," Remo had said, understanding.
"He who eats shark risks being a cannibal by proxy."
So Remo avoided shark. But this was life or death. His life and the shark's death. It was the law of the sea. The big fish ate the little ones.
Little by little the shark's struggles became noticeably more feeble. After a while it just floated, still alive but dying.
And inevitably the fins of other sharks, attracted by the smell of seeping blood, appeared in the water.
They came from the north, south and west. At first they cut the water in aimless, searching circles. Closing in, they would rip red chunks from the shark's inert carcass in a matter of minutes.
And from Remo, too, if he let it happen.
Remo Williams wasn't about to let it happen.
Fuel in his stomach, his body temperature stabilized, he got up on his hands and knees. Then, balancing carefully because the shark carcass was unstable, he found his feet.
The approaching fins slicing the heaving swells were only yards away now. They knifed the water with cold intent. Remo could almost hear the Jaws theme in his head.
Selecting one fin swimming away from the others, Remo faced it.
The first maws yawed upward and lunged. It was now or never.