by Tom Lowe
O’Brien knelt down by Max and rubbed her behind the ears. “Could be a lost sub from World War II. Did you see any identification, insignias, or any numbers?”
“Sean, you’re back in cop mode. It’s not some crime scene.”
“Is the anchor still stuck?”
“Yeah. After I saw the stick man standing there at the door, fish swimmin’ outta the fuckin’ eye sockets, I sort of lost it and headed north. Dropped the crowbar.”
“Let’s go get it,” O’Brien said smiling.
Nick’s eyebrows arched. “Go get it? That’s a freakin’ graveyard! Got to respect the dead! Let it be. I shoulda let you do like you wanted-cut the damn rope.”
“I’ll go with you, Sean,” Jason said, glancing down at the crushed can of beer.
O’Brien put his arm around Jason’s shoulder. “It’s pretty deep. Nick will go back down. He’s done a thousand dives at this depth. If we have two divers down, we’ll need a man on deck for safety. We need you up here, okay?”
“No problem. I saw that underwater camera up in the fly bridge. Maybe when you go down you could snap a couple of pictures?”
“Good idea. I’ll get it.” O’Brien climbed back to the bridge. He picked up the small digital camera with the underwater housing. He looked down into the cockpit where Nick was preaching to Jason about desecrating the dead. Maybe the less the kid knew, the better, O’Brien thought. If it was a relic from World War II, what was it doing sixty miles off the Florida coast? And why was the sub never spotted? Leave well enough alone. He glanced at the GPS numbers and committed them to memory.
Max barked. From the bridge, O’Brien could see a sailboat less than two hundred yards off starboard. He could tell a woman was sunning near the bow and wore nothing but her sun block. He disconnected the GPS and climbed down the ladder.
“Check out the sailboat,” Jason said.
“Better check out the lady on deck,” Nick said, standing and inhaling through his nostrils like a bull snorting.
O’Brien said, “Jason, while Nick and I are down there, if any boat approaches, just make casual conversation. At this time, it’s probably not smart to talk about some sunken submarine. There’ll be a time and place. Okay?”
Jason half smiled. “No problem. I’ll hang out with Max.”
O’Brien turned to Nick. “You good to go back down?”
“It goes against my Greek Orthodox religion. But as scared as I was starin’ into the face of skeletons, I’m more afraid to let you go down there alone to get your anchor.”
“How much sunlight is getting to the bottom?”
“Could use a flashlight to see farther in the hull. Not that I really want to see.”
O’Brien opened a storage compartment and took out two underwater flashlights. He said, “I guess the only way to see what’s there is to take a look.” He slipped on a pair of fins and a mask and then knelt to lift the tank onto his back.
As O’Brien and Nick stood on the dive platform, adjusted their masks and tested their regulators, Nick said, “You got no fear for this weird stuff … dead people.”
“That’s usually what you’d see at a homicide scene.”
“Maybe this wasn’t a crime. Just something that happened in the war.”
“Just tell yourself we’re going down to free the anchor.” O’Brien dropped backwards into the sea.
Nick shook his head and mumbled, “Why did I volunteer to teach him how to find fish. He caught a monster.” Nick looked up and saw the tern fly from the bridge. “Not a good sign,” he said to Jason. “Lucky’s gone.” Then Nick dropped back in the sea. Max darted around the cockpit and barked.
Jason yelled, “Bring back some good pictures! Freakin’ skeletons, that’s insane.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
O’Brien dodged a plate-sized jellyfish, tentacles more than three feet in length, as he found the anchor rope and followed it into the abyss. Nick was at his side, descending through the warm currents of the Gulf Steam. The anticipation of discovering a lost ship, maybe a relic from some war, kicked in strong. The adrenaline was pumping through O’Brien’s blood the deeper he went and the closer he came to the shipwreck.
When they were fifty feet from the bottom, O’Brien had to remind himself not to suck all of the air from the tank. The human eye could pick up what the sonar couldn’t. Human tragedy.
It was a submarine, and it was a big one. O’Brien guessed that between the two huge pieces, the sub would have been more than three hundred feet in length. He could make out the conning tower, a chimney-like structure built atop some World War II subs. He forced himself to control his breathing.
O’Brien knew the tower was usually near the center of a U-boat, a place used for greater visibility when the sub was on the surface. The tower was where he might find the sub’s ID number. But as they descended closer, O’Brien didn’t need a number to tell him what he already knew.
A German U-boat.
Although the tower was covered in barnacles, there was no mistaking the maritime monster sleeping quietly beneath them.
Nick tapped O’Brien’s arm and pointed toward the anchor lodged in the section without the tower. O’Brien followed Nick down to the ocean floor. Nick picked up the crowbar and twisted the shards of metal. A small brown cloud drifted from the barnacles and wandered in the current like dust blown off attic furniture. Within a few minutes, Nick managed to create a hole large enough to free the anchor. O’Brien helped him lift it out of the tangle, the anchor falling to the sandy floor.
Nick gave O’Brien the thumbs up sign, motioning for them to swim back to the surface. O’Brien shook his head and pointed to the torn opening in the hull. He gestured for Nick to follow him, gently tugging at Nick’s elbow. Through the face mask, O’Brien could see Nick’s dark eyes wide with disbelief. Reluctantly, Nick followed.
The flashlight beams traveled deep into the hull. Small fish and plankton were caught in the light like alien life forms in a tiny galaxy of eternal night. O’Brien looked at the first skeleton, the one Nick had described as “standing.” It was propped up, captured by the force of a blast that had splintered the sub. O’Brien swam inside, keeping a respectable distance from the human remains. He saw the second skeleton lying on its side, bony arms over the skull as if the victim had been shielding his head when he died. O’Brien saw an algae-covered holster still strapped to the remains. He could tell the holster was made for a German Luger.
O’Brien turned, expecting to see Nick right behind him. Nick stood at the entrance, his flashlight illuminating an erect skeleton. O’Brien signaled. Nick made the sign of the cross and swam between both skeletons, not looking at either, quickly catching up with O’Brien who was more than thirty feet into one half of the U-boat.
O’Brien aimed his light at a metal desk that had toppled upside down. He picked up a dinner plate that was not broken and turned it over. On the bottom was an emblem of a golden eagle. He felt his heart race as he handed the plate to Nick who nodded and gently returned it to the floor.
There were more than a dozen skeletons scattered throughout the sub. Most were lying face down. As O’Brien swam over them, he thought about the horror of their deaths. The plight of their last minutes on earth caused his chest to tighten, their frightened misery somehow still present in the dark, confined waters. The explosion, followed by the sub plummeting to the ocean floor, an iron coffin in a dark vortex, would have created a shared terror for the encapsulated men in their final seconds. Who were they? Did their families have any idea they were here, so close to America? At what point in the war was the sub hit?
As a detective, he always felt it was his job to speak for the dead, at least those murdered. He had never been around as many dead that lay broken like human china. Were more in the other half of the sub? Did the U.S. government know this was here?
O’Brien noticed something strange in a place where everything was mysterious.
A jet engine.
There was no mi
staking the barnacle encrusted turbines, the air intake, the torpedo-like shape of the housing. How did a small jet engine, probably something that was destined for a fighter jet, get into a German U-boat? O’Brien pointed the engine out to Nick, who shrugged and held both palms up.
He aimed the flashlight through some of the metal slates in a crate. A plastic canopy, one that would cover a jet pilot, was there along with tires and assorted jet parts. O’Brien thought the sub was carrying enough cargo to assemble two small fighter jets. He pulled the camera from his swimsuit pocket and snapped a picture of the engine.
A larger crate sat behind the one with the jet engine protruding from it. The enclosure resembled a giant crab trap, metal slats welded like a cage, and inside were two canisters, each about three feet long.
Nick looked at his watch and the gauge that indicated he had less than ten minutes of air in his tank. He breathed slowly and watched as O’Brien opened the solid steel crate. He reached inside and struggled to bring out one of the canisters. Even underwater it was heavy. Nick trained the light on the top of the container.
The label read: U-235.
Nick shined the light on the second container: U-235. O’Brien gently set the canister back in the cage and snapped a picture. Maybe the sub was U-boat 235. The canisters were cylinder-like. O’Brien signaled Nick to follow him out of the sub. He thought he saw Nick grin behind the regulator clinched in his teeth.
O’Brien snapped a picture of one skeleton as he swam out of the broken sub and over to the conning tower. The tower was covered in thick barnacles. O’Brien used the knife he’d strapped on his belt to chisel through the crustaceans. The barnacles fell like bark from a stripped tree.
Nick tapped O’Brien and pointed to the air gauge. He had six minutes of air remaining. O’Brien nodded, looked at his gauge and moved the knife along the conning tower faster. Within a minute he could read: 2 3-the last number still too covered in barnacles to see. He used both hands to scrape and break away enough covering to reveal the faded white number, a worn down inscription on a long-forgotten tombstone.
2 3 6
O’Brien nodded to Nick and pointed toward the surface. He looked at Nick who seemed delighted to be leaving the dead. O’Brien hoped the labels on the box they’d found in the cage were some kind of misprints. He knew the numbers on the conning tower were accurate, and they didn’t match the labels on the two mysterious cylinders.
Maybe the German’s loaded the cargo into the wrong sub. Maybe the cargo was meant for a U-boat named U-235. If not, O’Brien thought that he and Nick just chiseled the top off a modern Pandora’s Box. That thought alone sent a chill down his spine in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Because below them might be enough uranium to make an atomic bomb.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“You guys were down a long time!” Jason almost shouted, helping O’Brien and Nick out of their SCUBA tanks. “What’d you see? How many skeletons?”
“Too many,” Nick said, running a hand through his wet hair.
“Get some pictures?”
“Sean did. Just like a crime scene photographer.”
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.”