by Tom Lowe
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t Jason’s only stop. He was going to three other places, all of which had larger parking lots, less chance to be seen if you were going to kidnap someone.”
Dave crossed his legs. “Sean, what are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking you knew where Jason was going because I told you.” O’Brien turned to Thompson. “Then you told him, and now Jason is missing.”
“And what’s your point?” Paul asked, crossing his arms.
“If Jason was being followed, the kidnappers had better opportunities and places to snatch him. Chapman’s is a crowded, small parking lot. The last place he was going before coming back, but you knew that.”
“Dave, I don’t appreciate your friend suggesting that I may have had something to do with the kid’s disappearance.”
“The name’s O’Brien. And, right now, I don’t trust anyone. Especially the CIA, where lying is an art form. Sixty-seven years ago a kid about Jason’s age, Billy Lawson, trusted the wrong people and was murdered.”
“Sean,” Lauren said, standing. “There’s no conspiracy here. Maybe Jason was going to meet Nicole.”
O’Brien started for the door. “Sean, hold on a second,” Dave said. “Look, I know how tense this is right now. We have to-”
“We have to find Jason. And we have to do it now.” O’Brien headed out, noticing the rain had stopped.
“Where are you going?” Lauren asked
“The next place these freaks will be, Dave’s locker. You’re right, Nick. Now it looks a hell of a lot like Davy Jones locker.”
“I’m goin’ with you,” Nick said.
Thompson stood. “No! You can’t go alone!”
O’Brien was already gone.
Yuri Volkow looked at the ball ping hammer and said, “Very effective little tool.”
“What are you gonna do?” Jason’s voice cracked.
“This hammer is small,” Volkow said. “However, it can do large damage. Because the steel head is small, I can tap certain vertebra on your spinal column with just enough force to cause severe pain. And, you will never heal properly. Your bones will be fused. You will never be able to bend over to tie your shoes. Your ability to make love with a woman will be greatly diminished.”
“Please ….”
“Get him out of the chair, Andrei. Rip the shirt off his back.”
“Wait!” Jason shouted. “You don’t need the numbers.”
“What do you mean?”
“The canisters aren’t on the bottom of the ocean anymore.”
“Where are they?”
“Here! Sean and Nick brought them up. They put them in a warehouse.”
“What warehouse?”
“It’s called Ponce Storage in Dunlawton.”
“Which room?”
“Number’s U-236. Same number that’s on the sub.”
Yuri turned his head like a cat looking at a goldfish in a bowl. He smiled, teeth barely visible, a web of saliva in the corner of his small mouth. “Excellent. You are proving to be valuable. My father wasn’t much older than you when they killed him.”
“Who killed him?”
“Your people, Americans.”
Jason stammered. “Look, there’s a lot more of that uranium.”
“Where?”
“Sean O’Brien knows. He met this woman and her grandmother. The grandmother told him in 1945 her husband, a guy about my age, saw the Germans bury a bunch of canisters like the ones we found.”
“Where?
“On the beach. Near here. Sean thinks he knows the location.”
Yuri walked around Jason’s chair. “Is O’Brien’s number on your cell phone?”
“Yes.”
“Is O’Brien a good friend of yours?”
“Yes … he’s there for me. And he knows my mom real well.”
“Let us see if he will be there for you now. We will discover if he thinks your life is worth more than that of the German cargo buried in a hole in 1945.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
O’Brien thought about Maggie Canfield, the look on her face the morning she stepped on his boat after a twenty-year absence and, again, last night in the parking lot when he was walking Max. Then he pictured Jason, pushing images of torture from his mind. He drove his Jeep more than eighty-miles-per-hour in a forty-five zone. Nick tightened his seat belt. “This is a hellava way to make me never drink again. You don’t have to kill me!”
“I should,” O’Brien said.
“Yeah, man, you should. I really screwed up, runnin’ my mouth. Jason overhearing what I-”
“Let’s move on, Nick. We can’t change it. We can try to salvage what we have left, beginning with Jason’s life and maybe a couple million more.”
O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Maggie Canfield. “Sean, dear God! Where's Jason? I just saw the news. Nicole's dead! Jason's missing! Sean, please tell me Jason's alive! ”
“Maggie, listen to me. Jason's been kidnapped-”
“Kidnapped! Who? Who took my son?”
“I'm not certain. But I am certain of this-I will find him. Trust me.”
“Bring him back to me, please Sean. He's all I have.” Her voice cracked, deep sobs coming through the phone.
“I have to go, Maggie. I'll find Jason, I promise you.” He disconnected and felt his pulse hammer in his temples, his lips dry, stomach churning.
“Sean, man I'm so damn sorry,” Nick said, running a hand through his dark hair. “Look, I'll fight these bastards with you-”
O'Brien's cell rang again. He recognized the number. It was one of two on Jason’s cell phone the day they found the sub. It was someone whom Jason had called from Jupiter. The man said, “Sean O’Brien.”
“Who’s this?”
“You and I met. Eric Hunter, remember me?”
“How’d you get this number?”
“Jason gave it to me. I thought I might send you two some business.”
“I’m a little busy right now.”
“Look, Mr. O’Brien, I’m the kind of guy that gets to the chase real fast. I saw the news. Jason’s in deep trouble. I want to help you find him.”
“I have no idea where he is. You’re better off working with the police.”
“We both know Jason has little time left. Depending on what the kidnappers want, his life is protected only by the time it takes them to get the info out of him.”
“No thanks. I never liked riding with a posse.”
“Jason was kidnapped by two men.”
“How do you know that?”
“Across the street from Chapman’s is a church. A homeless man was on a bus stop bench. He was waiting for the church to open its soup kitchen. I sat down on the bench next to him and asked him if he saw anything. Said he saw two men toss a guy in a van and peel off.”
“Why didn’t he tell the police?”
“Because they didn’t bother to ask him.”
“How do we know this homeless guy is telling the truth?”
“Chapman’s lot is covered by a security camera, north end. When the detectives go through the hard drive, they’ll see what the homeless man saw. But, by then, it might be too late for Jason. Whether you like it or not, you need my help.”
Dave Collins drove with operative Paul Thompson on the passenger side of the car and FBI agents Lauren Miles and Ron Bridges in the backseat. Dave said, “We’re not far from the storage units. Sean may be there by now. I’d suggest calling the local authorities. Have the bells and whistles sounding. That may ward off any hostiles approaching the target area.”
Lauren said, “We don’t know if the hostiles have found out the location of the HEU. They certainly don’t know we’re headed there.”
“I agree,” Thompson said. “Our first objective is to secure the HEU and remove it. The second is to capture the hostiles. If we can manage to do both at the same time, great. I have back-up coming. The armored truck is on the way from Orlando. Jet is on stand-by
. I hope your pal, O’Brien, doesn’t screw this up.”
“Sean won’t screw it up,” Dave said. “Trust me. He’s one of the best.”
“I don’t like his rebel style.”
Lauren said, “It’s not a style with Sean, it’s a talent-”
“All we have to worry about is O’Brien’s Greek friend doing something dumb.”
O’Brien looked in his rearview mirror and saw the driver trying to stay far enough behind but making the last three turns he had made. “Nick, we have a tail.”
“What?”
“Don’t look back! Two guys. Black Lexus. Following us since we hit A1A.”
“Can you lose them?”
“Maybe.” O’Brien cut the wheel and drove though a convenience store parking lot. He pulled out onto Atlantic Boulevard, hooked a quick left on Silver Beach and a fast right on Beach Street. He gunned the Jeep, and as he was cresting a slight incline, he could see the Lexus turn onto Beach. “These guys are good.”
“How good?”
“Good enough that I’m going to have to do something to shake them.”
“Oh shit,” Nick tightened his seatbelt.
“Yeah.” O’Brien made a sharp left, stopping at a long line of cars.
“Holly mother!” Nick shouted. The sound of multiple sirens seemed to converge from all four corners.
“Looks like a bad wreck,” O’Brien said.
The intersection was blocked by a dozen police cars and emergency vehicles. O’Brien looked in the rearview mirror. “They’re three cars back. Damn!”
“What do we do?”
“Whatever we have to do.”
O’Brien cut through traffic, driving over a sidewalk, into a cemetery. Nick said, “You got some kind of dead thing happening, you know? We swim through a graveyard on the bottom of the ocean and now you’re driving on top of dead people.”
“I’ll try not to wake them,” said O’Brien, adjusting his dark sunglasses.
O’Brien pulled into the Ponce Storage Center lot, his eyes scanning for movement. There was a Toyota in the lot. “Wish I had a gun, like you,” Nick said.
“Stay hidden in the Jeep. I’ll go in there.”
“You’re gonna need me to help you carry the magic dust to the Jeep.”
“Okay, but stay outside the door.”
They moved toward the unit. Nick said, “I hope nobody’s in there.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Mohammed Sharif sat in a chair next to a small table and read his incoming e-mails. He looked up at Abdul-Hakim who stood by a window, peering through a small opening in the drapes at the traffic. In Arabic, Sharif said, “Raashad writes that our sources in Germany indicate the submarine was carrying the largest of Hitler’s U-235 cargo. An old man there told the German news that he was supposed to have been on the voyage of this vessel. He became ill a few days before and was left behind. From his home in Nurnberg, he told a reporter that the submarine carried 700 kilos of U-235. He says the materials CNN reported recovered are only part of the cargo. The man said, in Kiel, he was assigned to the radio room. The last contact he had with his friend, Jacob Friedrich, the sub’s radio operator, was that most of the U-235 was left on a beach in Florida, south of St. Augustine. Raashad said that Allah smiles on us, Allah akbar.”
“Allah akbar,” said Hakim. His cell rang. The caller said, “We lost them.”
“How?”
“The traffic came to a stop at an accident. Police everywhere. That O’Brien, drove like a man possessed, around police-”
“Enough! Incompetents!”
“GPS says they are near Speedway Boulevard. They have come to a halt in the nine-hundred block. We should be there as soon as the police allow traffic to move.”
“The younger one they show often on television, Jason Canfield. Was he with them?”
“No.”
“Keep us informed. The Russians are probably close, too. You know what to do if you see them.” Hakim disconnected and told Sharif what had transpired.
“To me,” Sharif said as he stood, “this indicates that O’Brien and the Greek are very anxious. Few people can discover our men following them when a tracking device is used. O’Brien is more than a fishing guide. He was a detective, a man who left, according to the news, after he was investigated by his own department.”
“He may prove to be a formidable adversary. Allah will guide us. Inshallad … he will guide the knife when I cut the infidel’s throat.”
O’Brien knew the man was dead. He could tell the man had been shot after he’d been forced to unlock the storage unit door, giving access to the building. The body was sprawled face down, eyes open, a single bullet hole in the temple. A yellow fly crawled across the man’s blood-splattered wedding ring. A dark stain fanned out from the victim’s head like feathers.
“Holy mother of Jesus-” Nick stopped when O’Brien held his hand up.
O’Brien whispered, “They may still be in there. This guy’s been dead a few minutes. Ten, tops. Walk around the side of the building toward the street. Take cover. Call Dave. Tell him what happened. Tell him to get some officers here.”
“What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going inside.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
“Dave, you gotta get here quick!” Nick said into the cell phone.
“What happened?”
“Dude’s shot. Dead.”
“Where’s Sean?”
“Inside the storage place.”
“By himself?”
“I don’t have a fuckin’ gun!”
“Are the hostiles there?”
“I don’t know who the hell’s here!”
“Any cars in the lot?”
“Two.”
“Stay out of the way, Nick. We’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Sean said for you to call the cops.”
“Done.”
O’Brien removed his shoes inside the air-conditioned storage warehouse. The floor was concrete. He didn’t want the sound of his soles to give him away. Locked doors lined both sides of a thirty-foot hallway. O’Brien crept down the passage. He stopped before it opened into a T-corridor going left and right. He listened, trying to detect the slightest hint of human presence. He could hear the hum of the air-conditioners, the creak of the sun’s heat against the corrugated rooftop, and the buzz of a fly that had followed him inside.
As he walked by one of the units, he smelled old furniture and rat poison. Then he smelled gunpowder the same time he stepped on a large sliver of glass. O’Brien looked up at a security camera he remembered seeing the last time he was here. It had been hit with a single bullet in the lens. Glass on the floor. He stepped around the glass and a broken piece of mirror that had fallen from the shattered lens. He picked up part of the mirror.
O’Brien knew Dave’s storage unit was to the left about fifty feet down the hall. But what if the hostiles stood silently in the right side corridor? They’d blow the back of his head off before he could turn to face them. He wedged the section of broken mirror into the end of the Glock’s barrel. Then he slowly extended the pistol until he could see a reflection from the hallway off the mirror’s surface. No one. He reversed the angle and saw no one down the other corridor. The door to Dave’s unit was ajar.
O’Brien stepped to unit 236 knowing what he’d see before he opened the door. The padlock had been hit with a bullet shattering the lock. He opened the door and saw a half dozen cardboard boxes and Dave’s outboard motor. The U-235 canisters were gone.
O’Brien felt something wet on the bottom of his sock. He lifted his right foot and saw a blood stain on the concrete, dripping from the cut caused by the piece of glass from the shattered camera lens. O’Brien could hear the sound of sirens approaching. His thoughts were rapid, pulling at fragments, trying to grasp the enormity of the theft.
What would they do with the U-235? Who took it? How many could die? What else did they get out of Jason? What had Jason told Nicole? W
hat if Jason told the hostiles the story about the other canisters buried somewhere on a beach? Are Abby and Glenda Lawson’s lives at stake?
“Sean!” Dave Collins yelled outside the storage unit.
“In here! Clear!”
Dave ran in with Lauren Miles, Ron Bridges, Paul Thompson, Nick, two sheriff’s deputies, and two men O’Brien assumed were government agents. Dave looked at O’Brien’s face and didn’t even ask the question.
“Gone,” O’Brien said.
“Shit!” shouted Thompson.
Dave said, “The vic outside probably was the manager.”
Lauren said, “We’ve got two choppers in the air! Flying the perimeter of this place in an expanding three-sixty.” She asked the officers, “Are roadblocks in place?”
“Should be in place now,” one officer said. Police radios crackled with orders.
“Should be isn’t good enough!” yelled Thompson.
One officer held his hand up for silence, trying to hear the police radio. He said, “We have a ten-sixty-nine. They found a body. White male. About twenty. Wearing a gone fishin’ T-shirt. Found his body behind some bushes near the South Davison Wal-Mart.”
“Jesus, no.” Nick said, making the sign of the cross. “Tell me it’s not Jason.”
O’Brien felt his stomach in his throat. The air in the storage unit was like a crypt, the taste of mold and the odor of rat urine coming from the concrete floor. O’Brien put his arm around Nick’s shoulder for a moment. “Can you ride back with Dave? I need to take care of some business.”
“No problem,” Nick said.
O’Brien walked back down the corridor, picked up his shoes, pushed open the door, stepped around the blood from the body, and limped in his socks to the Jeep. An oak tree was full of movement, black starlings, their chortles like canned sitcom noise, mixed with the sirens in the distance and the whirr of an FBI helicopter nearby. Beyond the glut of flashing blue lights and the blur of yellow crime tape, O’Brien could see the media circling like a pack of wolves.