by William Kerr
“Twenty feet…fifteen…oh, shit, seven feet!” Park immediately swung the wheel to port as Native Diver rolled on the first of the swells headed shoreward.
Remembering the depth readings from the chart, Matt pushed his face against Park’s ear, “Not too much, or you’ll be back where they can ram us or board us. Keep the bottom between seven and ten feet. A one sixty-five degree course oughta keep you in that range and out of the surf.”
“You’d better be right, damn it,” Park shouted out of the side of his mouth. “Otherwise, we bottom out and—”
With Sea Rover now off their port beam and less than a quarter mile out, Native Diver took another round of gunfire. Plexiglass in the cabin windows exploded in a burst of shrapnel, tearing into the cabin’s fiberglass overhead and sending shockwaves beneath their feet.
“Better to bottom out and walk ashore than get shot. Can’t you get any more speed out of this baby?”
“Way she’s sputtering, lucky to get this much. Flare gun and shells in the drawer under your seat. Fire it off, and maybe somebody ashore will call the Coast Guard.”
Matt pulled the drawer open, grabbed the gun and a handful of pyrotechnic shells, snapped open the barrel and rammed a shell into the chamber. “Nobody’s gonna help us, Steve, unless we help ourselves.”
“So what the hell are you gonna do?”
“Let’s hope this works. Hold her steady as you can, and let’s see if we can’t reach out and touch someone.”
Resting his arm on the side of the cockpit, Matt took aim just ahead of the twin-hulled ship, now slowed to match Native Diver’s twelve knots or less. Raising the pistol to compensate for the arc of the flare, he fired. Phoomf! A starburst of red exploded from the end of the barrel and hooked its way upward into a crescent-shaped slipstream of fire, settling harmlessly in the water just aft of the beam and only feet from the ship’s starboard hull.
Immediately, more weapons fire. Bullets tore through the side of the cockpit, one ripping through the fleshy part of Matt’s left shoulder. The impact forced him to spin halfway around in his seat and duck as though he could still dodge the bullet. Even though there was no immediate pain, he grabbed for his shoulder and felt a sticky wetness spreading along his arm. Whether by bullet or fiberglass shrapnel, he knew he’d been hit. “Damn it!”
“You hit?” Park shouted.
“Yeah, but don’t worry. I’m not gonna die on you. Not yet, anyway.”
Shaking off the initial shock of being shot, Matt poked his head to eye level above the bulwark and growled, “At least the flare showed me where the shooters are. Three on the wing of the bridge and two on the helo deck. Steady as she goes.”
Ramming another shell into the flare gun’s chamber, Matt took aim, this time farther ahead of the ship with a slightly higher angle. Again, Phoomf!
Matt watched the flare cut a path through the night sky, turning the water beneath its route a fiery crimson. As the flare reached the top if its arc and started its downward flight toward the AFI ship, he could see men, scrambling over one another, shouting, trying to push their way from the bridge wing, through the open door of the pilothouse. The flare struck the back of the last man, who let out a scream as he fell forward into the compartment, a human ball of flame that lit up the pilothouse interior and windows like a four-alarm fire.
“Gotcha, sonofabitch!” Matt shouted, jumping to his feet and quickly grabbing his upper arm as a sudden dart of pain stabbed through his wounded shoulder, into his neck, and down through his chest. “Aw, man, that hurts!” He fell back into his seat as Sea Rover turned seaward, bells clanging, men running toward the pilothouse with fire extinguishers in hand. Now falling astern of Native Diver, the twin-hulled ship completed a wide, 180-degree turn, and assumed a course to the north, the fire glow from its pilothouse beginning to flicker until it faded into darkness.
“Looks like our friends are going home,” Park said, gradually slowing Native Diver’s speed until he was barely able to maintain steerageway.
“Yeah,” Matt answered, the sound of the diesel engine now only a low rumble, broken by a sputter and a cough every few seconds. “And I think I’m gonna need a little tender loving care on this shoulder of mine. You okay?”
“If I’m not, I don’t know it, so let’s get into St. Augustine and find you a doctor.”
“You know anybody there?”
“Old diving buddy, head of disaster preparedness for St. Johns County.”
“That’s us,” Matt groaned. “A fucking disaster if I ever saw one.”
Park laughed. “He’ll know the right doctor and a good place to get Native Diver patched up before I take her home.”
“Let’s just hope it’s a place where nobody asks embarrassing questions,” Matt said, leaning back into his seat and closing his eyes against the wind and the now steady pain burning in his shoulder.
CHAPTER 15
Saturday, 20 October 2001
It was 6:30 in the morning when the aging Isuzu Trooper loaned by Park’s friend in St. Augustine rolled to a stop in front of the dive shop. Except for several delivery trucks bringing goods to some early-opening stores, there were only a few vehicles in the lot, most in front of a small breakfast café across the way. Matt’s stomach growled at the thought of food. Ignoring the hunger pangs, Matt said, “I see you got your Atlantic Pro Divers sign back up. New dive flag, too. When did that happen?”
“Yesterday. Steve Jr. fixed the sign and put up the flag—but stop changing the subject. Sure you don’t wanna go to your aunt’s house and get some sleep?” Park asked.
Matt shook his head as he eased his way out of the SUV. Nodding to the sling holding his left arm, he said, “Shoulder will hurt whether I’m here or at the house, and I want to take a look at this bag of souvenirs we brought up from the sub.” He patted the strangely shaped plastic shopping bag cradled between his chest and the cloth sling. “Might just tell us something about what’s down there. Give me the keys to the front door, and I’ll open up.”
While Park unloaded the dive equipment from the rear of the Trooper, Matt unlocked the front door of the shop, pushed inward, took two steps, and stopped dead in his tracks. “Holy Christ!”
“What?” Park asked, the neck of an empty air tank swinging from each hand as he crossed the sidewalk.
“Looks like another hurricane just tore the hell out of the shop.”
Park set the steel tanks on the concrete walk with a simultaneous ca-clank before edging past Matt with a shocked sing-song “Go-o-oddamn! This can’t be happening.”
“Seeing is believing, and you can bet your ass, it was Henry Shoemaker’s crew that did this,” Matt said. Stepping past Park and over a pile of Atlantic Pro Divers logo T-shirts and packaged swim fins strewn across the entranceway, he was careful not to go any farther. Buoyancy control jackets, regulators, dive masks, fish and seashell placards, diver training manuals, overturned air tanks and racks of wetsuits and dive skins—all blocked his way like an impenetrable wall of storm wreckage. The several glass fronts of the L-shaped sales counter were broken out; the counter’s stock of dive knives, watches, and compasses swept to the floor. The cash register had been torn from its mounting and slammed down through the top of the sales counter. It rested on the bottom shelf in a sea of broken glass.
Matt pointed to the open doorway in the back of the store and the delivery alley visible in the early sunlight. “They came in that way. I think you better call the cops.”
“What are we gonna tell ‘em?”
“Nothing about last night or Henry Shoemaker, but maybe they can pick up prints or something that might help at some point in the future.”
“We’ll need your son’s prints and anybody else who works here, Mr. Park,” Detective Hammersmith said, his voice as gruff and unyielding to Matt’s ears as during their first encounter. To Matt, he said, “Looks like you’re the little black cloud hangin’ over a lotta things, Berkeley. Your buddy in Washington gettin’ waxed, and no
w your buddy here gettin’ tossed. And what’d you do to earn a sling on your arm?”
“Slipped in the shower.”
“I hate a smart-ass,” Hammersmith said before nodding at the destruction in the store. “Guess you’re gonna tell me Henry Shoemaker’s chauffeur drove him over here so he could bust things up like this?”
“I’m not telling you anything, Hammersmith. I came in with Steve this morning, and we found what you see here.” Matt waved his good hand in a 90-degrees arc. “You’re the policeman. You solve it.”
“Know somethin’, Berkeley? I don’t like your attitude.”
“Sorry about that, Detective, but that’s not telling us who broke in here last night. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find the evidence and solve the crime?”
Matt felt Hammersmith’s eyes boring deep into his own before the man turned to the crime scene technician in the doorway to Park’s office. The technician was snapping photographs of the pulled-out desk and filing cabinet drawers and the reams of paper scattered around the room. “Okay, Mezzaro, let’s finish it up and get outta here. I’m gettin’ a bad taste in my mouth.”
“But I’m not—”
“Now, Mezzaro.”
Stepping gingerly over equipment still lying on the floor, the technician threw a disgusted look in Hammersmith’s direction. Quietly shaking his head, the technician quickly disassembled his equipment and headed out the door to a blue and white van parked next to Hammersmith’s unmarked Crown Victoria. As Hammersmith reached for the door, he turned and asked, “You been holding that plastic bag like it was gonna fly away if you turned loose, Berkeley. What’s in it?”
Matt looked down at the package, tightly pressed between his left arm and side, and chuckled. “Would you believe a bottle of mouth-wash to clean away the bad taste some people leave behind?”
For a second time, Hammersmith’s eyes narrowed into small slits of hostility, his upper incisors grinding against his lower lip. “Keep it up, Berkeley, and you and me, sooner or later…”
Hammersmith caught himself, finishing with, “Just sooner or later, and you’ll know.” His last word was cut short by the slamming of the door behind him.
“Hey, man, what the hell’s going on between you two?” Park asked, one arm laden with wetsuits, his free hand hanging them on the upturned clothing rack.
“Henry Shoemaker’s name came up when they called me in about Sam Gravely. Wrong move. Hammersmith’s like everybody else around here: thinks Shoemaker’s the second coming of Christ. See what money can do?”
“I’d rather see what you’ve got in that bag and that little souvenir you talked about.”
“Come, my friend,” Matt said, giving a wave of his hand while carefully stepping his way around and over the mountain of dive equipment still on the floor. “To the office for a little show-and-tell.”
After Park cleared the top of the desk of paper, Matt untwisted the tie from around the top of the plastic bag, pulled both the framed picture and the officer’s hat from the bag, and laid them on the desk.
“What the hell is that?” Park asked impatiently, pointing to what was largely a smear of black and white, badly wrinkled photographic paper beneath the glass.
“The picture is of the man I’m fairly sure was the commanding officer of the sub, but the water’s pretty much done a number on it, even since I brought it up. I’ll have to see if there’s a photo restorer around who can do anything with it. It was a captain and his crew on a U-boat, but all I could make out of the boat’s number was an eight something-or-another.”
Park pointed to the hat. “And that?”
“A German officer’s hat.”
“I can tell that, damn it, but what kind?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s SS, one of the really bad guys, right up there with the Gestapo.” Matt stepped back and let his eyes do the touching. The hat cover, a heavy cotton material, still in excellent condition, had already begun to dry. Immediately below the hat’s peak was a silver eagle, wings outspread. Beneath the eagle’s talons, a wreath-like design encircled a swastika, and below that was a silver skull-and-crossbones. The black, half moon-shaped bill with a dull leather finish was ringed by a rapidly blackening, silver-threaded chinstrap.
“The death’s head indicates the guy was part of the SS,” Matt said. “From what my dad told me about the war and a saber he brought home from Germany, SS officers could be part of the Army, kind of a special forces type, and there were also those who ran the concentration camps. He took the saber from a German officer who had committed suicide when the U. S. Army liberated Dachau.”
Very carefully, Park picked up the hat. “Wonder if there’s any kind of identification inside?” Turning it over, he inspected the underside of the bill, then the leather hatband that ran the interior circumference of the hat. “Something that looks like the manufacturer’s name. Can’t make it out, and two letters pressed into the leather. J. K. The guy’s initials?”
“Could be,” Matt said, “and how about this?” He pulled a handkerchief from his hip pocket, unfolded it on the desktop, and removed the medal he’d taken from the naval officer’s remains. “There were two corpses in the compartment. Owner of the hat and the guy I took this from.” He pointed to the medal. “Fairly certain this came from the sub’s CO.”
Park touched the medal with his fingers, but left it in Matt’s hand. “Iron Cross?”
Cleaning off another area on the desk, Matt arranged the medal and its red, white, and black ribbon so the ribbon encircled an imaginary throat. “Think so. Couldn’t make out the word or numbers below the swastika, but looks like it’s, uh…yeah, nineteen thirty-nine.”
“Okay, and these things?” Park asked, pointing at the ribbon just above the cross.
“An oak leaf cluster, and those,” Matt fingered the design, “are crossed swords. If their meaning is anything similar to U. S. medals with stars, oak leaves, and other decorations added, my friend on the U-boat did a helluva lot more than whatever was required to get the Iron Cross.”
“Like sink allied ships.”
Matt nodded, turned the medal over, and read the inscription engraved on the back, “’Gott mit uns.’ God with us, the letters H and S, and the numerals eleven, twelve and nineteen forty-two.”
“Twelve November nineteen forty-two,” Park said.
“No, eleven December forty-two. We put the month first. Europeans just the opposite.”
“But nothing to indicate the name of the sub,” Park said. “And you didn’t see anything down there that had a name on it?”
Matt shook his head. “No, but to my knowledge, U-boats didn’t have names. Just a U followed by a number, and if there was something like that, I either didn’t see it or didn’t recognize it.”
“So what do we do? Your buddy Gravely’s dead. Any more contacts in Washington you can trust? Anybody who can help us find out what we’ve got down there?”
“What we and Henry Shoemaker’s got, you mean,” Matt said, a low, sarcastic grunt couched beneath his words. “And I’ll tell you something else. The Law of the Sea Convention, to which the U. S. is a signatory, says sunken military vessels still belong to the country of origin. I learned that the hard way when NAARPA was working on some wrecks off Bermuda a couple of years ago. The way Shoemaker and Antiquities Finders work, there’s no way they’ve told our government they’ve found a World War Two U-boat, let alone the German government. No, and I—”
A set of chimes interrupted Matt, followed by the closing of the door at the front of the shop. “Sounds like you’ve got a customer.”
Park checked the clock on the wall, took a final look at the officer’s cap and medal, then turned and moved through the doorway into the shop. Matt heard Park say, “Sorry ma’am, but as you can see, we got burgled last night, so we’re not really open for business.” This was answered by a woman’s voice, only low and whispery, unintelligible, and unidentifiable, immediately followed by a short laugh from Steve Pa
rk and more whispers.
Reexamining the inside of the hat, Matt pulled down the hat band to see if there was anything else that might help identify the owner and what he was. As he ran an index finger inside the band, he heard a woman’s voice behind him. “It’s impossible for you to stay out of trouble, isn’t it?”
Matt whirled around. “My God, Ashley! I thought you said—” “Steve called me last night while you were getting your body sewn up again for the twenty-or thirtieth time and…” Ashley’s face puckered into a sad little frown. “You’re not glad to see me?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I’ve never been so glad to see anybody in my life.” Matt pulled his left arm from its sling with a, “Who needs that damn thing! C’mere, you gorgeous creature.”
Free of the sling, he grabbed his wife and threw both arms around her waist. “Kiss me quick, before I—” And she did.
CHAPTER 16
Using Aunt Freddie’s membership card for access to the Ocean Club Resort’s beachfront parking wasn’t really the kosher thing to do, Matt knew, but what the hell! With the card, he was able to gain entry to the famous resort where his aunt had taken him to dine several years back. To the best of his knowledge, it was her one major extravagance. The card was like a magic key to the world of private clubs along the beachfront.
The multi-storied resort’s lavishly appointed hotel and restaurants cast mid-afternoon shadows along the beach, and a gaggle of sandpipers skittered about in front of Matt and Ashley as they walked along the spread of bone-white sand. With an arm wrapped around each other’s waist, the couple made the impression of two lovers out for an afternoon stroll, but their conversation was far from amorous.
“You know how much I appreciate your help,” Matt said, flexing his left shoulder against the pull of the stitches and tightness of the bandage covering the bullet wound. “But to be honest, I should never have asked you to do anything. This whole damn thing’s turned into a bucket of snakes that won’t stop wriggling.”