The Black Bullet (Sean O'Brien 1) Read online

  Jason grinned, “Can I see whatcha got?”

  O’Brien set the camera next to his wet fins and SCUBA tank in the corner near the salon door. He said, “I shot a few pictures of some stuff we found on the sub, at least the half of the sub we explored. We didn’t have enough air to venture into the other half. Looks like it was blown apart. Severed by a huge blast. Bombed, maybe.”

  “What’d you guys find?”

  Nick shook his head. “A friggin’ jet engine—”

  O’Brien interjected. “Jason, why don’t you take Max to the bow and bring up the anchor. You shouldn’t have any problems with it now.”

  “Okay … did you see a jet engine down there, too?”

  O’Brien smiled. “We’re not sure what we saw. Probably just some long lost relic from World War II.”

  “That’s awesome. If the charter fishing biz fizzles, we can bring divers out here. Wreck diving is huge. C’mon, Max.” Jason walked to the bow and started the windlass.

  “Nick, you’ve earned that beer,” O’Brien said, motioning for Nick to follow him into the salon. O’Brien entered the galley and brought two cold Coronas from the refrigerator. “Salute. You make a hell of an adventure diver.”

  Nick swallowed a mouthful of beer. “Yeah, I can do without these kinds of adventures. Nothing in Poseidon’s big ocean ever bothered me like what we just saw down there. And that sure looked like a jet engine to me.”

  “That U-boat was carrying more than pieces of jets. The less a kid like Jason knows the better. I promised his mom I’d keep an eye on him. It’s more than just a summer job … he had a rough time after his dad was killed. He’s already tried to numb the pain with drugs, now she suspects he’s drinking too much. He’s a good kid, and I don’t want to jeopardize his safety. And his mother’s an old friend of mine.”

  Nick’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean by safety?”

  “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Let’s be cautious. We think it’s a German sub because of the emblem on that dinner plate we found. There could be some dangerous material inside those canisters marked U-235.”

  “What kind of material?”

  “When I first saw them, with the U-235 markings, I assumed the sub was a German U-boat, U-235. But when we scraped the barnacles off one side of the conning tower and I saw the number 236, I knew the sub had to be U-boat 236.”

  “Maybe the Germans just got the numbers wrong on the boxes.”

  “Based on the size of this sub and the other cargo it was carrying, the jet fighters in crates, the sub may have been on a secret mission, especially if it went down toward the end of the war.”

  “Talk to me, Sean. I’m just a fisherman, you were the cop.”

  “I’d read once that Nazi Germany was very close to developing the atomic bomb. We managed to beat them and the Japanese. Nuclear bombs sealed the end of the war.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “Those canisters marked U-235 could be carrying enriched uranium.”

  “You mean the shit they put in the bombs?” Nick shook his head.

  “Exactly. U-235 is the accepted abbreviation for Uranium-235. It’s highly enriched uranium. Some call it HEU.”

  Nick took a long swallow from his beer, his face blooming with heat and alcohol, eyes watering a second. He glanced out the salon window, watched Jason with the anchor for a moment. “Sean, man, you did drop the hook on the gates of hell. What do we do? Who can we tell? This could be some big damn deal.”

  “You can’t say anything to anyone about this. Not until we can clear up what may be down there. If it’s HEU, terrorists would like to get their hands on it.”

  Nick let out a slow whistle and went to the galley for two more beers. He said, “Maybe the stuff in the boxes expired. World War II was a long time ago.”

  “That stuff doesn’t expire. Let’s get Jupiter back to the marina. Maybe Dave Collins is on his boat. Dave is the only one we can mention this to.”

  “You mean because of his background with the government?”

  “That, and because he’s the only one we can trust right now.”

  Nick popped the caps off the Coronas, handed one to O’Brien, and then sat in the captain’s chair in the lower station. He sipped his beer and set it near the control panel. Nick’s eyes narrowed. “What happen to the GPS down here? Looks dead?”

  “I turned if off.”

  “Sean, you don’t even trust me? C’mon.”

  “It has nothing to do with trusting you. If you don’t know exactly where this thing is located, and Jason either, then you two won’t be able to tell anyone ... under any circumstances.”

  “You know I won’t say nothin’ to nobody.”

  “I believe you. But no one knows what you’d say when someone starts cutting your fingers off—one by one.”

  Jason held the digital camera in his hands as he walked inside the salon with Max at his heels. He said, “Cool, pictures. That does look like a jet engine. You should let me build a website for you. We could stick these pictures on it. You know … advertise for fishing and wreck diving. What’s this U-235 mean? Is that the name of the U-boat?”

  CHAPTER NINE

  O’Brien gunned Jupiter, the twin diesels churning and heading back to port for more than an hour before he turned on the GPS. He called Jason up to the bridge and let him take over the wheel. Nick sat on one of the cushioned chairs, beer in hand, Max sleeping beside him.

  O’Brien said, “Jason, we’ve got a charter next Friday. We need to be through the pass and heading for open water by seven a.m. You should have everything prepped, rods, bait, and ice ready by six. We’ll need to have the food stocked the night before the charter.”

  “No problem,” he said, eyes scanning the horizon as Jupiter plowed across the azure surface. “Are we bringing Max?”

  “I have an elderly couple, neighbors, near my place on the St. Johns River. Great dog sitters, so she’ll be with them.”

  Jason flashed a boyish smile. “She’s a cool dog. She really likes it when Nick starts cooking. Amazing what that little dachshund can hold in her stomach. Mom told me you had a dog. How’d a big guy like you pick such a small dog?”

  O’Brien laughed. “My wife bought Max, unknown to me, as her buddy. When Sherri died, it was just Max and me. Sherri named her Maxine. The name Max just stuck when I started taking care of her. Now we’re partners in the fishing biz. Don’t let her know she’s not a Labrador.”

  Jason laughed. “You have a good teacher in Nick.” He glanced back at Nick. “He’s sleeping. Cutting Zs, like Max.”

  “I’ve been lucky to have Nick show me the ropes, the best places to fish, and you to help. Sounds like the making of a powerhouse team.”

  “Cool. I really appreciate you hiring me. I know you didn’t have to do it.”

  “We’ll make a good band of brothers. For your own good, don’t tell anyone what we found out there today. Not even your mom. Promise me you can keep a secret. I need to notify the proper authorities at the right time. The worst thing that could happen is for the media to know about this. It’d be a circus out there.”

  “It’s just an old World War II U-boat. I’d read there were a bunch of them in the Battle of the Atlantic during the early part of the war. Looks like you and Nick found one that wasn’t lucky enough to limp back to Germany.”

  “Just keep it under your hat.” He watched Jason’s eyes, the wavered movement, the licking of lips, tightening of hands on the wheel. “Want to talk about it? What’s on your mind, Jason?”

  “Before you told me not to say anything to anybody, Dave Collins called on the marine radio. You and Nick were down on the bottom. Dave was asking me how fishing was. I told him we hadn’t caught much, a few snappers. Then I said we might have caught an old submarine with skeletons in it. He was like real cool, you know? He said he was looking forward to Nick making Greek submarine sandwiches when we got back to the dock. I said we ought to be coming through Ponce In
let in a few hours, but he’d already gone off the radio. I don’t think he heard me.”

  “I wonder how many others did. Which channel?”

  “What?”

  “The frequency. Which channel did you use?”

  “Thirty-six, I think.”

  “On the bridge or below?”

  “Below.”

  “You sure? Go check. See what channel the radio’s set to.”

  “Okay, sorry. I didn’t—”

  Jason got out of the captain’s seat and started down the ladder. Nick opened one eye and grunted. “Jason hit a buoy?” he asked.

  “We’re not that close in yet. But he might as well have hit an iceberg.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Dave Collins called on the radio when you and I were underwater. Jason told him we’d found a submarine with bodies. Dave, with all his years of training, ignored it with a casual comeback about you making submarine sandwiches.”

  Nick leaned back in the cabin, rubbed his chest. “We could be screwed.”

  Jason, cheeks flamed, breathing heavy, flew back up the steps. He made a dry, forced swallow. “It’s channel thirty-six.”

  Nick said, “If you and Dave talked on thirty-six, that’s good. Not many people on that frequency.”

  O’Brien said, “It’s the channel used by some of the commercial boats. Maybe a drug runner or two. Which means it’s monitored by the Coast Guard.”

  Nick stood and stepped closer to one of the rolled up isinglass windows, the breeze in his face, his hair rising like bird wings flapping on the side of his head. He lifted binoculars from the console and looked at the horizon in all directions. “You ever feel like uninvited company’s comin,’ you just don’t know when?”

  “Let’s get something straight from this point forward,” O’Brien said. “We saw nothing. The casual remark you made was because we couldn’t figure out what snagged the anchor and you were goofing around, joking. It could have been a submarine or any ship or plane wreck on the bottom of the ocean. Understand?”

  Jason nodded. “I apologize. I didn’t think … just being dumb.”

  O’Brien couldn’t help but feel sorry for the kid. He said, “The genie’s out of the bottle. Don’t beat yourself up, okay? You got the call from Dave before I saw what was down there and told you not to say anything.”

  “You’re right about that ol’ genie,” Nick said. “Looks like we got a boat coming north outta Jacksonville. That’s where the Navy keeps the real subs.”

  “Is it Navy?” asked O’Brien.

  Nick stared through the binoculars for a long moment. “Don’t think it’s Navy. Still way too far off. But whoever it is, they’re in a big hurry.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  It took O’Brien less than twenty minutes to get within a half mile of Ponce Inlet. The lighthouse, highest in the Southeast, stood like a sentry near the inlet. Jason and Max stepped up to the bowsprit, the water spray keeping them both cool. O’Brien and Nick remained in the wheelhouse.

  Nick said, “Looks like, whoever and whatever that boat was, it’s laying way the hell back. Maybe just some kind of research vessel, or maybe we got a bad case of paranoia since we walked around that underwater graveyard.” He pulled a bottle of Corona out of the ice chest. “Fuck it. We haven’t done anything wrong? It is what it is.”

  O’Brien said, “I’m thinking about what it is and what it can be.”

  “You got worry in your DNA. That’s why you were a cop so long.”

  “You think that’s it?”

  A casino gambling boat, on a daily “trip to nowhere,” was coming out of Ponce Inlet and heading for international waters as O’Brien slowly guided Jupiter into the mouth of the pass. Fishing boats chugged by and two people on jet skis zipped through the inlet. O’Brien used his cell to call his friend, Dave Collins.

  “I was expecting to hear from you,” Dave said.

  “I wish I could have reached you before Jason did.”

  “I terminated the conversation when I heard him mention what you found.”

  “It’s definitely a German U-boat.”

  “I heard you found bodies, some skeletal remains.”

  “But you didn’t hear about a cargo that could be highly enriched uranium.”

  “What! If it’s yellow cake, the stuff is as dangerous now as it was then. Maybe more so, considering today’s global climate of terrorism. The Germans may have been further along that we knew at the time.”

  “I’m debating whether to give the coordinates to the Coast Guard and forget it, or let an old sleeping dog lie.”

  “Sometimes old dogs have a damn mean bite if you get close enough. I’d let the secret remain one until we can offer the intelligence to someone who’s got a higher clearance than a reservist. All we need is a weekend guardsman with an active Facebook page to create a viral mess for the world to see.”

  “You have a good point. We’re coming through the pass now. See you at the docks.”

  Max ran around the deck barking at the big gambling boat as it plowed through the choppy pass, its diesels belching acrid black smoke, retirees sipping free cocktails on deck, the captain and crew pushing toward the open sea and total unaccountability.

  “What’d we do if you forget the GPS numbers?” asked Nick, sipping his beer.

  O’Brien eased Jupiter through Ponce Inlet, keeping to the right of the channel markers. He said, “Maybe I’ve already forgotten them.”

  “You remember details and shit most people never see. You’ll remember those numbers as long as you want. Probably take ‘em to your grave.”

  O’Brien smiled. “Let’s hope the ‘grave’ part is far in the future.”

  Nick laughed. “If you get amnesia or something … that old sub will be hangin’ out there on the bottom of the ocean. Long as nobody wakes up that giant locked in those canisters—that HEU, no problem, right?”

  “Like you said, it could be canisters for another sub … or mislabeled.”

  Jason climbed the ladder to the bridge. “Want me to bring Max up?” he asked.

  “She’s fine down there,” O’Brien said. “She loves the breeze and the scenery. Max likes to bark at the dogs that people bring to the Lighthouse Park.”

  Nick grinned and added, “Scenery’s getting better.” He pointed to a bikini-clad woman lying on her beach towel. She sat up and sipped from a water bottle as Nick leaned out the open wheelhouse, raised his beer bottle in a toast, and yelled, “To the most beautiful lady on the beach!” The woman smiled and returned the wave. Nick, grinning, turned to O’Brien. “She thinks I’m Yanni and this is my yacht.”

  O’Brien laughed. “You’d better sell some more music on PBS and get a bigger boat. She looks like the mega-yacht type.”

  Nick reached across the console and turned on satellite radio. John Mellencamp filled the speakers with Little Pink Houses. “I always like music when I come back to the harbor. We celebrate now ‘cause we caught a few fish. Every time I bring my boat in, I’m out there a week or more, I always crank the music goin’ by the fishermen, the babes, restaurants, and the bars leading up to the marina. Kinda like Nick’s parade.”

  “If you want to go out on the deck and do a little Greek dance, don’t be shy.”

  “Shy? Sean, I’m the one tryin’ to get you to come outta your shell. I tried to introduce you to Shelia—”

  “The stripper?”

  “Doesn’t matter how she makes a livin,’ it’s what she’s made of, you know?”

  O’Brien started to respond, but stopped when he saw what awaited them just around the rock jetties. A Coast Guard cutter. The distinctive orange stripe from the lip of the bow to below the waterline. At least five men on deck. Two holding rifles. O’Brien said, “Gentlemen, company has arrived.”

  “Whoa, holy—” Jason said.

  “No shit,” Nick said, his voice dropping.

  O’Brien brought Jupiter to a slow speed. “Jason, where’d you put the camera?”
r />   “Lower station. Next to the wheel, right where I keep my cell and keys.”

  “Hide the camera in a milk carton inside the rear of the fridge. The carton has its backside partially cut out. Put the camera in there, and put the carton in the same place.”

  Jason nodded, his nostrils wide, a vein jumping in the side of his neck.

  From the Coast Guard boat, a voice came booming over a loudspeaker, “This is the United States Coast Guard. Pull the vessel west of marker seventeen and anchor. Prepare for boarding.”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “We’re rolling,” said the Channel Nine cameraman.

  Reporter Susan Schulman, a Julia Roberts look-alike, waited for a beat. She smiled and said, “So now motorists won’t have to make the long trek to drive from New Smyrna Beach to Daytona Beach. The new ferryboat service will operate seven days a week ferrying people and their cars across Ponce Inlet from seven a.m. until six p.m. In South Daytona Beach … this is Susan Schulman reporting.”

  “Got it,” the cameraman said.

  “Get a shot of the first cars driving onto the ferry. We can edit when we get back to the truck. It’s one feature piece too many today for me.”

  The cameraman’s eyes squinted in the late afternoon sun looking across the inlet. “You might have a real story over there. Coast Guard’s busting someone. That’s one of their fastest cutters. Could be a load of drugs.”

  Schulman bit her lower lip for a second, watching the Coast Guard approach the boat. She said, “They’re fully armed.” She looked around and saw a man sitting in a small boat and fishing near the jetties. Schulman, still holding her microphone, started walking quickly towards him.

  ***

  JASON LOWERED THE ANCHOR when O’Brien shut off the engines. The voice over the loud speaker said, “All occupants of the vessel, Jupiter, report to the cockpit.”

  O’Brien and Nick climbed down from the bridge. Jason, Max running in front of him, came around the deck and stood in the cockpit. They said nothing as three members of the Coast Guard approached in a Zodiac. One held a rifle, the others wore side arms.