The Black Bullet

“He was one of the men killed when the USS Cole was bombed.”

O’Brien was silent.

Hunter said, “I really appreciate you taking the kid on, showing him the ropes, letting him earn some bucks. If you ever need a diver, I’d be glad to help you.”

“So you dive?”

“I’ve done a few dives in my time. Maybe one day you might need your hull cleaned.” He reached in his wallet for a card.

“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” O’Brien said, wondering why Hunter hadn’t asked him if the submarine sighting story was real. “I have to get back.”

“Let me give Max a fried shrimp,” Kim said. “That’s one of her favorites, Eric.” Hunter smiled and sipped his beer as Kim stepped back to the open kitchen and picked up a fried shrimp. O’Brien noticed a postage stamp sized tattoo high up on Hunter’s arm, only visible when the T-shirt he wore climbed farther back revealing solid biceps. The tattoo was the insignia of the Navy Seals.

Kim returned, the shrimp at the end of a toothpick catching Max’s eye. “Here’s an appetizer for the only lady I can see Sean O’Brien with and not feel a little jealous.” She winked at O’Brien and let Max take the shrimp off the tip of the toothpick.

“Between you and Nick, Max will never eat her dog food again.” To Hunter he said, “Good meeting you, Eric.”

“Same here.”

O’Brien nodded and said to Kim, “Maybe you can change the channel before the six o’ clock news comes on.”

She smiled. “Actually you look pretty good on TV. Maybe the publicity will jumpstart your business.”

As O’Brien walked back down the long dock, Max at his side, he watched a flock of pelicans sail effortlessly over the marina and cast slow-moving shadows against a sky lit in shades of maroon by the setting sun. The breeze across the Halifax River and tidal estuaries propelled the faint scent of rain in the distance.

Dave Collins stepped from the salon of his trawler, Gibraltar, to the wide cockpit just as O’Brien and Max were approaching. Collins, in his early sixties, looked like a seasoned college professor, thick mane of white hair, wide forehead, bushy gray eyebrows, and a cleft chin. He walked two miles a day to clear his head and burn off the remnants of his favorite vodka. He’d never told O’Brien details of his former work in the covert intelligence business. But after a few dinners, and a few glasses of wine, he’d let just enough slip out that O’Brien was convinced Dave had spent years as a foreign field agent before retiring and divorcing his wife three years ago. Now he did occasional “consultant work” from his boat and his beach-side condo.

Dave grinned as O’Brien and Max approached. “Looks like you could use a drink.”

“You can get thirsty out there having a nice chat with the Coast Guard.”

“Saw the news tease. Jupiter’s never looked better. Might bring customers.”

“You sound like Kim. I could do without this kind of publicity.”

“Nick stopped by, said he’d be over to fry up some grouper sandwiches, the kind he makes with feta cheese, tomatoes, and those wonderful Greek spices. He said in honor of the find, he’s calling them sixteen fathom subs.”

O’Brien followed Dave and Max inside Gibraltar’s spacious salon. Dave popped two bottles of Guinness, poured them slowly down the sides of two frosty mugs and said, “I’m multi-tasking. Tell me everything you and Nick saw.” Dave sipped his beer and listened as O’Brien detailed the find and the boarding by the Coast Guard.

Dave grunted. “A German U-boat was discovered not long ago in the North Sea very near Norway. Apparently, it had a lot of weapons-grade mercury on board. The sub was found by some fishermen in four-hundred feet of water.”

O’Brien opened his camera. “If what I’ve captured on the camera is real, it’ll make mercury look like a single firecracker next to a ton of TNT.” O’Brien brought up the first picture on the camera’s screen. “This is one of the jet engines. There are two crates, both filled with the parts you’d need to build two small fighter jets.”

“Why would the Germans be hauling two disassembled fighter jets?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Must be a large submarine to carry all this.”

“It’s blown in half. Both parts are twisted and partially buried in sand. But if you could make the two halves a whole, I’d estimate it would be at least three hundred feet long. I told you about the human remains, or broken skeletons, in the half we partially examined.”

Dave let out a low whistle. “That, my friend, would make this particular U-boat the biggest or certainly the longest in Germany’s fleet.”

“Look.” O’Brien advanced the images. A cylinder labeled U-235 appeared.

Dave put on his glasses. “I agree with your earlier assumption. The first thing I would surmise is that you and Nick stumbled on a sub named U-235.”

“Then we found the conning tower, spent a few minutes knocking the growth off it, finding this.” The image, 2 3 6, appeared on the small screen.

Dave’s eyes fell somewhere over O’Brien’s head, his mind deep in thought. He said, “Let’s load these images onto my laptop to get a clearer picture.”

“Okay, but are you sure no one has remote access to your computer?”

“I assure you, they don’t.” Dave loaded the images, sipped his beer, and studied them closely. “If the sub is U-boat 236, and some of the cargo is labeled U-235, is it because the Germans were clumsy in their payload, or is it because this sub was hauling the most deadly cargo known to man, enriched uranium, also known as U-235?”

“That’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last five hours.”

Nick Cronus opened the salon door, brown arms wrapped around a paper sack. “Turn on Channel Nine! Weather’s on now. But they say, ‘stay tuned, coming up next … did a fishermen hook his anchor on a World War Two submarine?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The television news anchorman said, “Recently, an oil company found a long lost German U-boat off the North Carolina coast. Could a local charter boat have hooked its anchor on one of these lost subs north of Daytona Beach? Susan Schulman reports.”

The picture cut to an image of Jupiter with the Coast Guard boarding her. Susan Schulman’s voice was heard: “In Ponce Inlet today, the Coast Guard boarded a thirty-eight foot charter fishing boat, Jupiter, based out of Ponce Marina and searched it … not for drugs but for possible World War Two artifacts. What kind of artifacts? No one we spoke to is saying. Someone on a marine radio was overheard talking about his boat getting its anchor caught on a sunken German U-boat. They allegedly made a dive down to free the anchor and found the sub. The owner of Jupiter, Captain Sean O’Brien, told us he didn’t find a submarine. Coast Guard Chief Carl Wheeler said they’d heard what he termed ‘chatter’ on a marine radio frequency that led them to believe it might have come from Jupiter or a similar vessel in the Gulf Stream off Daytona Beach by timing from when the call was received to entry into the port from that direction.”

The images cut from pictures of the Coast Guard cutter to Susan Schulman standing near the Ponce Lighthouse. She said, “In the early part of World War II, German U-boats were seen off the U.S. coast from New York to Florida. Some managed to sink a few American ships. So it’s conceivable the U.S. Navy sank U-boats that were never found. Although the crew of Jupiter says they didn’t hook a U-boat, if they had hooked one, it would certainly be an historic catch. Reporting live in South Daytona Beach, this is Susan Schulman.”

Nick said, “I take that woman on my boat to the dive site … she’ll see what a real anchorman does.”

“I don’t think you can find the exact spot to toss your anchor,” O’Brien said.