The Black Bullet

you what we found out there.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Dave watched as Nick and O’Brien gently set the blanket-covered canisters on the galley table and unwrapped them. Dave looked at the labels and released a low whistle. “U-235. Germany had plans in the last days of the war. If it’s the real thing, these two alone are probably enough to make a dirty bomb.”

“That’s what we saw tonight,” Nick said. “A dirty freakin’ bomb.”

“What you saw probably was five pounds of C-4, remotely detonated or wired to explode at a certain time. The stuff on this table would destroy this marina and life within an immediate quarter mile from it.”

O’Brien said, “From our perspective, what Nick and I saw a hundred yards off our stern was very dirty. What’s your chatter tell you now? Who the hell’s behind this?”

“Don’t know. And, unfortunately, this stuff in front of us is highly enriched and highly desired by the world’s most undesirables. As you just witnessed first-hand, they’ll do anything to get it.”

“That narrows it down,” O’Brien said dryly. “We were almost taken out by a bull shark that must have weighed a thousand pounds. Then we were chased forty miles in open sea by some unknown undesirables who were killed by some other unknown undesirables.”

Nick shook his damp, shaggy head and said, “I need a drink.”

“How many hostiles were taken out tonight?” Dave asked.

“I saw two on the boat,” O’Brien said.

Dave inhaled loudly and exhaled slowly, his eyes studying the canisters. “If we knew where the chase boat came from, it’d be easier to check marinas and boat rentals. We now know that there are at least two rivals desperate to get their hands on this stuff. We know that one rival just lost two members. We’ll hide this while we search for the rest of it.”

“What do you mean by the rest of it?” O’Brien asked.

Dave touched the damp barnacles on one of the canisters. “If these are all that were left on the sub, the rest are indeed missing. I’ve done more research. U-boat 234, which was the sub that surrendered a week earlier than the one spotted by Billy Lawson and found by you two, had more than two lead canisters. Inside the canisters, they were lined with gold, and the cake baking in them was more than enough to make a bomb the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima.”

Nick whistled. “So what we pulled out of the sub tonight is only part of it?”

“Correct. I suspect the rest could be still buried somewhere on that beach. The area, Sean, where the old woman and her granddaughter told you about, the place where Billy Lawson saw enough to get him killed.”

“If it’s near Fort Matanzas, that’s been federally protected property. Land left undisturbed. The FBI or OSS must have done a check of the beach in 1945. Who’s to say it was never found? Maybe the two Japanese men that Billy Lawson saw leaving on foot returned for the HEU. The mystery man who met them, maybe he came back for it.”

“And did what with it?” Dave asked.

“The extent of my crime solving was always as a homicide detective. This seems more aligned with your old beat. What happened to the uranium on that other sub, the one that was escorted by Navy destroyers into Portsmouth?”

“That’s a question I can’t find the answer to. There are those who believe Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, had permission from President Truman to remove the U-235 and use it, or some of it, in the atomic bombs we dropped over Japan. Hitler may have been about to give Japan ‘the big gift’ in the war, material to build atomic weapons. Imagine what could have happened.”

O’Brien said, “If there’s any poetic irony in this, it’s using nuclear material made in Nazi Germany bound for Japan to use on America. It gives Dante’s Inferno a different perspective.”

“Hell with it,” Nick said. “Sean, let’s get this shit outta my galley and out of sight. I’m done with lookin’ at the end-of-the-war time bombs on my breakfast table. Good morning America, guess what’s for breakfast? Nukes, baby, that’s what!”

Dave said, “It’s still dark. Let’s get these in my inflatable. We’ll off-load them at the parking lot and into Sean’s Jeep, and then take them to my storage unit near the bridge.”

O’Brien said, “We could be followed.”

“Doubt it considering what happened at sea.”

“They’ve already proved to me they’re quicker than I’d have expected.” O’Brien lifted a pillow off the sofa, picked up the transponder, and handed it to Dave.

“So this is how they located Nick’s boat out there?”

“Yeah, I found it when I was pulling rope out of the storage hole on the cockpit.”

“How’d it get there?”

“I’m guessing, that so-called reporter, the guy with the dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses, who said he was from the A.P. He was here first, right before the others. You saw him walking around, chatting with boat owners. He could have hidden it on Nick’s boat in ten seconds. But because of the angle, you couldn’t see if he was knocking on the salon door or slipping something in a storage bin. This guy had the tall photographer with him. Wore a Tigers’ cap. Two cameras around his neck. Carried a red nylon backpack for cameras. Now I believe it held a GPS transponder or two. I’m checking Jupiter.”

Nick said, “When Sean showed it to me, I wanted to smash the thing like hittin’ a hockey puck. But he said ‘no,’ we may need it later to send theses bad dudes where we want them to go. Maybe they went straight to hell out there at sea.”

Dave exhaled loudly and said, “We’ve just entered the first ring of hell.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Rashid Aamed arrived at the Starbucks fifteen minutes early. It was mid-morning, and he had changed rental cars twice since leaving Miami on his trip to Orlando. He knew he was not followed. The Americans were not very good at even locating people. Following him would be a challenge to them. He always knew when someone was watching, following. Could feel their presence like a cold wind on his neck.

He paid for his espresso, bought a copy of the New York Times, and walked back outside, taking a seat at the most remote table in front of the coffee shop. He kept his sunglasses on as he read the latest print story about the discovery of the German U-boat and its potential deadly cargo off the coast of Florida. There was no mention of the explosion. The men had died a martyr’s noble death. They were in a better place, paradise. Their deaths would be avenged.

Aamed lit a Turkish cigarette, turned on his small laptop, and waited for his appointment to arrive. Checking the websites for major U.S. news organizations, he could find no mention of the explosion. He scanned his e-mail. One new message arrived in the last five minutes. In Arabic, the message said: “The deaths of Ata and Mansur were believed to have been ordered by a Russian arms dealer, Yuri Volkow. We know Volkow is in Florida. At least one of his men is there, probably more. You must find the material before they do.”

Aamed typed: “Will not fail.”

Abdul-Hakim made no eye contact with Aamed when he entered the Starbucks to buy a double espresso. He was tall and rail thin. Short-cropped black, wiry hair. He wore a black sports coat and a white button-down shirt that hung outside his pants. Soft loafers. No socks. His hard eyes took in the room. Two businessmen discussed the housing market. A female college student sat surfing the web on her laptop as American music entered her brain through the iPod earpieces. A housewife, the diamond in her ring the size of a garbanzo bean, chatted with another woman. A man sat in one corner, facing the entrance, reading a newspaper.

Hakim paid for his coffee and walked toward the door, looking at the reflection of the room off the glass door. He could see the man sitting alone in the corner, and he could see that the man did not look away from the