by Tom Lowe
“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.
“You got the GPS numbers, but remember I’m Greek, we’ve been in boats for two-thousand years. But even if that news lady rode naked on my bowsprit, I wouldn’t take her out to the devil’s graveyard.”
Dave said, “I imagine finding a human skeleton underwater is quite sobering.”
“Sobering,” said Nick, entering Dave’s galley with Max at his heels. “It’s frightening. That’s where Hitler … Lucifer himself … that’s where his lost sailors are doin’ the dance with the devil in the dark currents of the ocean. Dave, I know where your good iron skillet is, and I know
where your beer is, too.”
“Help yourself to both,” Dave said. Nick started humming and sauteing the grouper, tossing a piece of bread to Max. Dave sat at a fold-out table near the lower station and began keying information into his computer. “Sean, you said that you and Nick found two canisters labeled U-235. How large was each canister?”
“Maybe three feet long, probably a foot wide.”
“If both canisters were holding weapons-grade uranium, that is at least ninety percent pure, it would mean that Germany was as far along as the Allies, or more specifically, the United States in the race to create a nuclear bomb. If I recall, it takes about five-hundred kilos or a thousand pounds to produce an atomic bomb the size of the one that destroyed Hiroshima. Two canisters the size you found would do some severe devastation. I’m wondering why those canisters are on that part of the sub. What were the Germans going to do with the stuff? Was it connected to those jets in boxes? Fascinating scenarios at play here.”
“Wish I knew the answers to that,” O’Brien said.
Dave opened a file cabinet under the console and began leafing through dozens of folders. He grunted as he read through a file. Then he keyed numbers and letters into his laptop. “I’ll find more information in the morning. However, right now, I can scan through some files remotely. I know it’s rude of me, but could you turn your head for a moment.”
“I can always go help Nick in the galley.”
“No you can’t,” said Nick, lifting up a knife in a mock swordfight stance. “I teach you all I know about fishing, look what happened, you catch a submarine.” Nick grinned and tossed Max a piece of cheese.
“Okay,” said Dave. “I can’t pull up the original manifest of U-boat 236, but I might be able to find it. I do have some stats on the vessel. It was commissioned in March 1945, the largest sub in Germany’s fleet, one of the few XB subs. This one was 340 feet in length. U-boat 236 carried a crew of forty-seven men. Highest ranking officer was Otto Heinz. The sub left Kiel, Germany, on April 13, 1945, to join six other U-boats in what was to be the final battle of the Atlantic. It evaded and crippled a Royal Navy sub in the North Atlantic. Those last seven submarines, known as Hitler’s Sea Wolf pack, were Admiral Karl Donitz’s, collectively, and Heinz’s last effort to strike a fatal blow to the U.S. as Germany was gasping for breath. U-boat 236 was believed to have been one of the subs that carried a more compact version of Germany’s deadly V2 rockets, which were the V3s. More powerful and more stealth-like than the infamous ‘buzz bombs’ that Hitler used against London. One or more of the subs was thought to be carrying disassembled Me2-Fighter Jets. If they had weapons-grade uranium for creating atomic bombs and V3 rocket launching capabilities, any one of these seven German U-boats could have sat a few miles off the coast and heavily damaged New York City or another target area.”
“Man,” Nick said. “A possible nine-eleven-type catastrophe almost six decades before nine-eleven.”
“The potential would have been much worse if they had about three times the amount of uranium that you two found, assuming that is indeed what you found.”
“Does it say what happened to U-boat 236?” O’Brien asked.
Dave scanned the data. “No.”
“Does it say what happened to the other six U-boats in the Sea Wolf pack?”
“Navy sent five of them to the ocean floor north of the Azores. One surrendered.”
“Anything about weapons-grade, HEU?”
“Hold on a second … umm … shortly after Germany surrendered in early May 1945, Admiral Donitz instructed the commander of U-boat 234 to give up and report to whichever Allied port it was nearest to at the time. That U-boat was escorted in by two U.S. Navy destroyers, taken to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And, gentlemen, it did have more than seven hundred kilos or almost two-thousand pounds of U-235, highly enriched uranium on board.”
“What happened to the stuff, the uranium?” Nick asked.
Dave nodded. “This report doesn’t say. I do know that three months later we dropped the same stuff, as you say, over Japan and closed the curtain on the whole damn war. If you two found HEU, the only way to know for sure is to dive back down and bring it up.”
“No freakin’ way!” Nick said. “Only one man can ever find what’s been lost out there. And that man killed the GPS numbers before Jason and I could look at them.”
“It was the best thing to do,” O’Brien said.
“Nick,” said Dave, his voice barely audible, “if that’s what you found, Sean may have done you the greatest favor in your life.”
Nick grinned. “See no evil, hear no evil, and tell no evil. Let’s eat.”
Dave opened three bottles of Corona and they sat at the bar to eat. Dave said, “Nick, the combination of sauteed grouper, melted cheese, diced tomatoes, and the Vidalia onions in your recipe is as treasured as Plato’s Republic.”
“Same old recipe,” Nick said, chewing a mouthful of food. “I just gave it a new name, sixteen fathoms sub sandwich.” He tossed a bite to Max as O’Brien’s cell rang.
“Jupiter Charters,” O’Brien said.
“Are you Captain O’Brien?” a woman asked.
“Yes, who’s calling?”
“I saw the news tonight. Did you find a lost German submarine out there?”
“Who’s this?”
“May I meet and talk with you, please. It’s very important.”
“What’s your name?”
“Abby Lawson. Sixty-seven years ago, my grandfather saw something on the beach that got him killed. If you found a German sub, that discovery could help my family bring closure to his murder.”
“Murder?” O’Brien thought he heard the voice of someone else in the background. “What murder?” he asked.
The call disconnected.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nicole Bradley slowly raked her long blond hair across Jason Canfield’s bare chest. He sat in his swimsuit on the second floor of her parent’s beachfront condominium balcony, the setting sun breaking through coconut palm trees, the scent of grilled fish coming from a courtyard. Nicole stood, leaning over him, hair trailing to his chest. She had full lips, the lower lip with a slight pout, dimples, thick hair backlit from the sun. At that moment, Jason thought her hair was spun from pure gold.
In a toast, she said, “Happy birthday!” They touched glasses, sipped wine and she kissed him. Nicole, a college senior studying journalism at the University of Florida, was home for the summer. Her parents were gone for the weekend, and she and Jason had the run of the beachfront condo. She sipped chardonnay from a crystal glass. “Have some more wine, Jason.”
“I really shouldn’t. I sort of made a promise to my mom and Sean-”
“Come on, it’s your birthday!”
“Yeah, but wine makes my head hurt.”
“Wine’s healthy.” She sipped. “Good for your heart.” She touched his chest.
“Lemme taste.” He passionately kissed her.
She broke the kiss and said, “I’m just trying to like broaden your tastes, that’s all. C’mon, birthday boy!”
He grinned. They touched glasses again and both emptied their wine. It was Jason’s fourth glass, and his head was beginning to feel numb.
“Aren’t you the charmer?” Nicole asked, straddling Jason’s lap. She ran her fingers through his blond locks. “If 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 s
miled.
“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.”