: A pilot who has lost his job is trying to earn money by shooting sharks. On the set, he takes a ten-year-old son, a relationship with which he does not go well. A shark attacks the pilot, and the son saves the wounded father.

The titles of the chapters are conditional and do not correspond to the original.

Ben's life story

Ben was a good pilot. He gained the necessary experience by flying in Canada on an old DS-3 aircraft. In recent years, he flew to Fairchild, looking for oil for the non-export company Texegippto. To land the geologists, Ben could land the plane anywhere: “on the sand, on the bush, on the rocky bottom of dried up streams and on the long white shallows of the Red Sea”, each time capturing the last inch above the ground.

But now this work is over. The company management abandoned attempts to find a large oil field and decided that they did not need a reconnaissance aircraft. Ben is 43 years old. The wife, unable to bear her life in the hot Egyptian desert, left for her native Massachusetts. Ben promised to come to her, but he understood that he would not be able to hire a pilot in old age, and that “decent and decent” work did not appeal to him.

Now Ben only had a ten-year-old son, Davy, whom his wife did not consider it necessary to take with her. It was a closed child, lonely and restless.His mother was not interested in him, and the boy was afraid of his father, a sharp laconic. For Ben, his son was a strange and incomprehensible man with whom he did not even try to find a common language.

Shark attack

And now he regretted that he had taken his son with him - the Oster plane rented by Ben for rent was very shaking, and the boy was sick. Taking Davy to the Red Sea was Ben's next magnanimous rush, which rarely ended in good. During one of these outbursts, he taught the boy to fly a plane. Although Davy was a quick-witted child, his father's rude shouts eventually brought him to tears.

On the secluded coast of the Red Sea, Ben brought another job: he was supposed to shoot sharks. The television company paid well for a meter of film with such a film. Putting the plane on a long sandbank, Ben forced his son to look and study, although the boy was very ill.

The sandbank formed the Shark Bay, named after the toothy inhabitants. After giving his son several sharp orders, Ben disappeared into the water. Before dinner, Davy sat on the shore, looking at the deserted sea, and thinking what would happen to him if his father did not return. The predators were not very active today, and Ben decided to lure them with a horse leg, which he took with him. He had already shot several meters of film when a cat shark became interested in him.

The fish was four feet long, and one god weighed knew how much; she glanced at him from her refuge, as last time a week ago. She lived here, probably not less than a hundred years.

She swam too close, and Ben hastened to get ashore.

During lunch, he found that he had only beer with him - he did not think about his son who does not drink beer. The boy wondered if anyone knew about this trip. Ben said that this bay can only be reached by air, he did not understand that the boy was afraid not of uninvited guests, but of loneliness.

Ben hated and was afraid of sharks, but after lunch dived again, this time with bait. With the money received for the film, he hoped to send Davy to his mother.

Predators gathered around the meat, but a cat shark rushed at the man. Ben climbed out onto the sand, drenched in blood. When Davy ran up to him, it turned out that the shark almost tore Ben's right arm and severely damaged his left. Her legs were also all rugged and chewed.

Ben realized that his business was very bad, but he could not die. He had to fight for Davy. Only now he tried to find an approach to the boy and persuade him to sit at the helm of the plane.

Father and son

Minutely losing consciousness, Ben lay down on a towel and kicked off the sand while his son dragged him to the plane. So that his father could climb into the passenger seat, Davy folded stones and pieces of coral in front of the plane and dragged his father along this ramp.

In life, you can do anything you want, Davy, ”he said in a weak voice,“ if you don't tear yourself up. ” Do not bother ...

Only now Davy realized that the role of the pilot goes to him. Meanwhile, a strong wind rose and began to get dark. Ben sincerely regretted that he did not bother to recognize this gloomy boy, and now he could not find the right words to cheer him up.

Following the instructions of his father, Davy hardly lifted the plane into the air.The boy remembered the map, knew how to use the compass and knew that he had to fly along the Suez Canal, and then turn to Cairo. Ben was unconscious almost all the way. He woke up just before landing. Having hardly got up in a chair, Ben helped his son to land a car. At the same time, they miraculously missed a huge four-engine aircraft.

To the surprise of Egyptian physicians, Ben survived, although he lost his left hand along with the ability to fly airplanes. Now he had one concern: to find the way to the heart of his son, to overcome the last inch separating them.