AcMo Shark Hunters

I still feel the chills today from an incident many years ago.  We had thought it would be fun to take out the speedboat in open waters.  We were wrong.  It only took minutes before the darkness and the waves crashed overhead and we accepted that we were in way too deep.  The rhythmic thump of the unceasing waves was terrifying, but the violent motion of the hull made it even worse.  A fracture was inevitable, and we were all waiting to hear the sound of fiberglass exceeding its fatigue limits and separating, leaving us stranded and sinking.  Only it never happened.  The waves stopped and the sun appeared just in time to vanquish the darkness.  That was the moment we knew we were strong enough to survive, and that speedboats weren't meant for oceanic transport.  Most people would stay away from boats after having multiple near death experiences on them, but AcMo doesn't consist of most people.

The fear of death had never before been so real.  Realizing that death could arrive at any moment, we jumped to action and mobilized version 1.0 of AcMo.  We moved fast and we failed a few days later because we had neglected several basic business principles because we were ignorant.  It took more years of failure before we understood the process for incorporating.  If only I had found those business textbooks sooner.

Once we were in business, we had to get down to business.  Our side business is one that will benefit all humanity.  We are weekend shark hunters.  Most people were unaware that sharks use their continuous movement as a coping mechanism. Sharks are messy fish. They refuse to clean up after themselves, and are wasteful eaters. As a result, their aquatic homes were never clean. All shark species realized they were never going to be proficient cleaners, so they evolved into ruthless killing machines that never stayed in the same house twice. Cleaning problem solved. None of the above information changes my feelings towards sharks. They are menacing creatures that need to learn respect for soft and vulnerable humans. That's why AcMo's mission statement was written to incorporate the shark re-education through lethal force doctrine. 

This post had to be sanitized to reduce the chance of increased scrutiny from the Coast Guard.  It is conceivable that one, several, or perhaps all maritime laws were stretched while on this mission.  I am also surprised to learn that kidnapping pirates is a federal offense.  We had to institute a catch and release policy for the pirate, but we didn't have a hunting license anyway, so we weren't going to be able to keep him without a strong explanation.  We didn't have one, so we threw him overboard when we were near the shark's crime scene.

Previously posted artist's depiction of the shark entering the vortex.  It looks a bit different now.

The above picture shows a representation of the shark attempting to flee the crime scene through the vortex.  At the time I thought that the shark was alerted to our presence, and decided it couldn't withstand the imminent direct assault we planned.  It became clear that the shark knew something we didn't.  Vortexes have magical powers that are bestowed upon those entering them.

I need to explain that we are trained professionals, and that anyone reading this should not try shark hunting because I make it sound easy.  I make everything sound easy.  Shark hunting is dangerous and quite often there will be blood, a lot of blood.  In fact, unless you've worked at a blood bank, you'll never see more blood.  If you are squeamish at the thought of blood, you should have stopped reading two sentences ago.  That was your mistake.

We had not been able to get close to the shark to place a tracker on it, so we were going to have to hunt it down the old-fashioned way by following the trail of destruction it left in its wake.  Our hope was that we could reach it before anyone was maimed or killed.  We had a job to do, and we were not going to let anyone or any pirate get in our way.

In a move that might seem counter-intuitive, we decided to search for the shark by boat.  We couldn't be sure what powers the shark may have gained--if any--but we were not going to let that stop us.  The first thing we needed to do was find a proper boat.  Thanks to some quick thinking and a phone call, we had our boat secured within thirty minutes or less.

There were times when I had to force myself to maintain my focus on the primary objectives. I had a secondary mission that was pulling me from the moment at almost every opportunity.  At AcMo, there are always secondary mission objectives.  We spent three days on the water before making our discovery.  Sometimes I wish we never went after that shark.  Our lives would have been so much easier without the trauma.  At least it is easy to scrub the boat free of blood.  That may be the only positive takeaway from this whole sad ordeal.

People, I cannot stress this enough, but when you decide to go after a killer shark, make sure you are carrying more firearms than you think you could ever need.  Also make sure you have ammo for all of those firearms.  There is nothing worse than targeting a shark only to discover that your gun isn't loaded.  Because of the nature of this mission, we only brought one gun, but it was a special one:  a Barrett M82A1A.  That gun would have been all we would have needed if I hadn't forgotten to pack the ammo.  My fallback was to point it at the shark and bluff it into submission if possible.

Our on-board comedian (we found a well stocked boat) first spotted the shark while we were on land attempting to procure ammo to extend our so far failed search.  At first I thought the claimed sighting was another one of the onboard comedian's jokes, but then I heard the screams.  He was a funny guy, but not funny enough to make those screams anything but bone chilling.  Once you've been up close and personal with a shark, you recognize the reflexive terror scream unique to shark sightings.  This was 1997 all over again.  Crowds were running away from the water, so I knew he hadn't been joking.  I scanned the horizon until I saw the damn thing in the process of chewing up cars in the parking lot!  That vortex had more magical power than I suspected!

Yikes!  It's eating cars now?!!

The captain was calm and professional.  Craigslist is good for something.  He didn't even flinch when he saw the shark.  I felt that we were going to be OK as long as he stayed on the boat.  We did the only sensible thing since the M82A1A was on the boat:  we ran for our lives.  I'm not ashamed to admit that I ran.  I had been told since I was a young boy that more people have been saved by running away than any other method, and I am a firm believer in that.  Besides, if you say you would face that shark without fear, you are either lying or deranged, or both.  I would wager that you lean more toward being deranged, as that would also explain why you're still reading this.

While we ran for our lives, we formulated a new plan.  We were going to mount a surprise attack on that shark before it ate any more cars or got any bigger.  Since we knew its location, we went back to the boat to batten down the hatches (I've always wanted to say that) and surprise it from a distance from the water since it would never see that coming.  I am ashamed to say that I don't know how sharks think, so I'm not sure if it would have been able to grasp our plan or not.

There didn't appear to be any vortexes in the area, so we thought we would be safe from that threat at least.  What I failed to take into account was that the shark could have created the vortex itself, either through incantations, a remote control, or some other unknown shark type method.  If that was possible, we were going to be in deep trouble.

Moments before we were about to maneuver into position for a possible kill shot, the unthinkable happened.  A pirate monkey appeared.  I can't stand monkeys.  The sight of this one almost sent me running straight into the shark’s mouth.  I may not have mentioned this before now, but I can't stand monkeys.  This was a bad pirate monkey, so I can only imagine what type of insidious misdeeds this monkey was responsible for that inspired a book being written about it.

This bad pirate monkey almost derailed the whole mission.  I hate monkeys.

I think we have a sighting!

Target confirmed!

We dispatched the monkey with a spoiled banana we found in the ship's hold.  The cleaning crew will be questioned about that at some point.  Once we closed in on the shark, we fired everything we had from a safe distance.  The shark exploded revealing several of the cars it had recently swallowed and various boat parts. At least one of the cars appeared salvageable, so we took it to AcMo for testing. This was one time we adapted the shark's strategy, and refused to clean up the carnage. We kept on our trajectory pretending that there was nothing to see, but knowing there were a lot of blood, guts, and chewed apart cars to gawk at for days. We had somewhere else to be, and we were late. 

We saved the lives of hundreds of people by stopping that rampaging shark.  We are heroes in the noblest sense of the word. The water world is one shark safer after our triumphant assault. We are just waiting for our medals to arrive.