The Black Bullet

we ever did get … don’t get all weird on me or take this the wrong way, but if we ever like got married and had kids, they’d have blond hair.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely. You looked cute on the news yesterday. I couldn’t believe the Coast Guard actually boarded your boat. It was like watching reality TV.”

“It was crazy. The chief, he goes like … ‘Son, were you the one that radioed in the find of the submarine?’ He’s the most hyper dude I’ve ever seen.”

“What’d you tell the chief? Did you guys like really find a submarine on the bottom of the ocean?”

“What do you think?” Jason smiled.

“I think it’s kind of romantic and adventurous? Like the History Channel meets Lifetime TV.”

“I met that reporter, Susan Schulman. Doesn’t she work at the same TV station where you’re doing your internship?”

“Same place. I haven’t met her yet. I hear she’s like a ball buster. Intense.”

“She tried to bust Sean’s balls, but he wasn’t gonna let her. He really knows how to keep his cool.”

“He’s cute, way too old for me, but he’s got that something.”

“What’s that something?”

“It’s the way you do what you do, like how you walk, talk … kiss.” Nicole sipped her wine and kissed Jason deeply. “You have it. Now, did you or didn’t you find a long lost sub? ‘Cause if I’m about to have a famous boyfriend, I want to know.”

Jason looked out over the royal palm trees and watched sea gulls flying down to the beach. “Do I look like a pirate? We don’t go around salvaging old ships.”

“Yeah, but these aren’t some old rotten Spanish galleons sitting out there. Subs are made of steel. That will last in the ocean. Just like bones.” Nicole smiled, her lips wet.

“You mean skeletons?”

“Yeah, if the sharks didn’t take them off way back when the sub went down.”

“You have a great imagination.” Jason grinned.

“Did you guys see skeletons? Oh tell me Jason! Please!”

“I didn’t say we saw skeletons. I can’t say anything.”

“And that means you saw something. I can tell.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“If you tell me you saw skeletons, I might jump your bones.” Nicole poured more wine in their glasses. “Maybe that’s like where the word boner came from,” she said laughing. She kissed his ear and neck, her lips warm, her perfume traveling through Jason’s brain like a shot of adrenaline.

He drank more wine and reached for her breasts. “Not yet,” she said. “If we’re gonna trust each other in every way, you have to be honest with me and tell me if you guys found that U-boat.”

“What if I showed you pictures of it?”

“You’ll get a birthday present you’ll remember for a really long time.” She ran her index finger across his lips.

Jason reached over to the table beside them and picked up his cell phone. “Take a look at these.” He brought the images up on the small screen. “I loaded these off Sean’s camera while he was on the bridge talking with Nick. I’m just glad the Coast Guard didn’t find them.”

“Is that some kind of engine?” Nicole asked.

“A German jet, I think. Sean and Nick found crates with jet parts and a small rocket.”

“What are those things, the ones with the U-235 on them? Are they bombs?”

“I’m not sure. Sean said they might contain some very dangerous stuff.”

“And this number?” She touched the screen with a perfect fingernail.

“It’s the identifying numbers on the outside of the U-boat.”

She moved her hips, her warmth slowly gyrating against Jason. “So, where are the skeletons, mister boner?”

He grinned. “Right here.”

“Ohmygod!”

“Yeah, Sean only took one. I think Nick would have had a heart attack if Sean kept taking pictures of the skeletons. Nick’s like real weird in that way. I don’t think he’ll ever go down there again?”

“Would you?”

“I didn’t go. It’s pretty deep. Sean’s some kind of an expert SCUBA diver from his military days. Nick’s part human and part dolphin. The guy used to free dive, like they do for pearls. Only he did it getting sponges off the ocean floor when he was twelve over in the Greek islands. Guy’s a freakin’ animal. I gotta pee real bad.” He stood, the wine now causing him to be dizzy.

Nicole smiled. “Looks like you’ve reached your limit, Jason. Try not to get sick in my parent’s bathroom, okay lover?”

“I’m just gonna pee, c’mon, Nicole.”

When Jason left the balcony, Nicole held his cell phone, punched up her personal e-mail, attached the pictures and hit the send button.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

O’Brien returned to his home on the banks on the St. Johns River for the night. As much as he enjoyed time on Jupiter and the company of the marina folk, he liked the solitude he found in the place he now called home. He liked his big, antique bed. His house was a seventy-year-old “Florida Cracker” home built on an Indian shell mound overlooking the river. The old home was made from cypress, oak, heart-of-pine, and it had a massive river-rock fireplace, tin roof, and a sprawling screened-in porch. The porch, with a view of the river, was constructed from white oak beams that bent and snapped nails like toothpicks.

In the kitchen, O’Brien poured some Jameson over ice. As he walked to the porch, he stopped and stared down at a picture of his wife, Sherri. She stood at the helm of their sailboat, wind in her hair, morning light in her eyes, a smile that penetrated O’Brien’s heart like the first time he whispered his love to her. He touched the picture, the glass hard to his touch.

Max trotted in from the porch. She sat and cocked her head, looking up at O’Brien. He said, “I miss Sherri, Max. I know you do, too. How about I join you back out there for some fresh air, little one?”

On the porch, he sat in a big whicker rocker and lifted Max onto his lap where she curled into a ball. O’Brien sipped his drink and looked at the reflection of a harvest moon off the river’s dark surface. Frogs and cicadas competed for dominance in the theater of the night. The scent of blooming jasmine and orange blossoms mingled in the air with wood smoke from across the river, somewhere in the national forest. A great horned owl alighted on a thick, crooked limb reaching up from a cypress tree down by the river. Spanish moss hung from the limb, motionless in the still air, the owl’s silhouette caught in the rising moon.

O’Brien thought about the discovery of the sub, its potential revelations, the media attention, how it might play out. And he thought about Jason Canfield. The kid definitely had his mother’s eyes. He hoped Jason took their conversation to heart. He scratched Max behind her ears and mumbled, “When the past intersects with the present … the future could be in somebody’s crosshairs ….”

What was it? Something was churning in his gut. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and replayed Maggie’s visit to his boat. What tugged at his thoughts as if weights were in his shoes? What was out of sync? When she’d hugged him, his memory banks registered the scent of her perfume, as if twenty two years was two seconds. He hadn’t smelled that particular brand on any other woman. She’d felt so small in his arms. He remembered that she had a physical presence of strength, a rare combination of athleticism wrapped in feminine sexuality. He sipped his drink and wondered what Maggie was doing tonight. He had a strong urge to pick up the phone and call her. To talk about old times … to just to hear Maggie’s voice tonight.

The Irish whiskey took the edge off the day. He thought about the events. Sure it was coincidental that he docked Jupiter less than two miles from an old girlfriend he hadn’t seen in what seemed