by P D Singer
“About forever, because I won’t do that.” Bobby leaped to his feet. Looming over Eddy, he snarled, “I’m not desecrating the wreck for your diving pleasure.”
“You wanna get in, don’t you?” Eddy took a long chug at the bottle when he should have been contemplating the end of his diving on the Bottom Hunter. No way would Bobby let this arrogant shithead back into the water on one of his dive trips. “Or maybe you don’t—not bad enough to actually do it.”
“I will, eventually, in a way that doesn’t destroy the boat, you dumb shit.” Hell, Bobby didn’t need a wrench, he’d knock that insolence out of the kid with his bare hands.
Only a familiar hand on his arm and a “Whoa, Bobby,” kept him from lunging. And a “Don’t plan on diving with us again, Eddy. I don’t need the attitude.”
“Don’t worry about me, you old farts.” Eddy scooted backward, but he couldn’t get entirely out of range. “I’m going out with the Tech Tach from here on.” He slithered sideways out of the chair and headed below with a final jab. “A boat that won’t take you.”
“I don’t need the damned Tech Tach to dive!” Bobby bellowed. “And you just fucked yourself over—you can’t get back here on the Tech Tach.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, sure,” Eddy yelled up through the hatch. “You tell yourself that.”
Chapter 13
LEE TURNED the razor over, reading the name aloud again. “Asbeck. Poor guy, whoever he was.” After defusing the shouting match in his lounge, having a short recap of what led to it with Chuck, Darrell, Kent, and Bobby, and having a longer, tense discussion below with an angry young man who needed a stern reminder of the promises he’d made to get on this charter, Lee hadn’t had a chance to even glance at the object of contention until they’d docked and off-loaded everyone.
At least Stuart would come dive some other, less emotionally charged wreck, and Chuck, Kent, and Darrell would likely be in on further investigations on the mystery sub. The other divers were so glad to see the back of Eddy, they wouldn’t even shake his hand at the dock, which was a damned shame. He’d never come across as a vandal before. Lee could only be glad Bobby hadn’t actually punched him in the snoot. News like that got around, even if snoot-punching occurred in international waters and wasn’t a matter for charges. Not that the little hothead wouldn’t punch back.
What a stupid way to end the trip. He needed a drink.
Well, no. But he wanted a drink. Or two or three.
And he wanted Bobby to sit down instead of pacing all over the lounge, so they could watch all the video again with his hand hooked on to the curve of Bobby’s neck, like it used to be. Then they could plan their next dives, what they wanted to see and where they’d penetrate. To pore over deck plans and photographs, and he could watch Bobby do his peculiar 3-D magic of working out twisted corridors and locating fallen fixtures. To take the spark of the coming adventure to bed, where they’d do some penetrating of their own, with tongues and fingers and cocks and enough lube to let them glide against each other.
The best he was going to get right now was Bobby calming down.
“I don’t recognize the name” might be a good diversion. “Asbeck doesn’t sound all that German to me.”
Bobby stopped pacing—yay—and leaned his butt against a chair back. “It does and it doesn’t, but what else could that boat be? Any US wrecks of that vintage would be marked, and nobody else was getting all up into the Battle of the Atlantic this close to shore.” He rubbed his chin, coated with the three-day stubble that always accumulated on a weekend trip. “Once I get the dimensions plotted, we should be able to figure out what type she is, narrow the possibilities down.”
That was good for a couple of hours of work, and they still had some daylight. Not a lot—the storm had rolled in to gray the sky. “Want to get started? I can dash over to My Brother’s Place and get some bacon cheeseburgers to go while you’re drawing.”
Didn’t need a dictionary to translate that look—Bobby knew Lee’s tensions as well as Lee knew Bobby’s.
“Just some food, and I’ll be right back.” Damn it, Lee could go fetch burgers without stopping to drink the place dry.
“You’ll be soaked through before you get there.”
Rain was splatting on the windows, true, but since when had either of them been afraid of getting wet? Yellow weather gear worked as well on land as at sea. “Okay, I’ll stay dry, and you get reheated stew.”
That was enough to bring a smile. “Sounds great.”
Yeah, probably the “dry” part. Lee had no illusions Bobby was thinking of the weather. The stew would only be better the second time around.
Bobby sketched and Lee ran the video, freezing for this feature and that. Details grew under Bobby’s pencil, and a submarine came to life after seventy plus years in a watery grave. Straining to read dimensions upside down, Lee stayed silent, obeying the requests for visual aids. He could almost believe the good times were back. Just like always, Bobby’s hair fell in his face while he mapped a ship at the dining table. The Andrea Doria had been roughed out so, and the Lancing, the Mary O’Neill, and another twenty wrecks.
The rain stopped, but the boat still rocked on the storm-swell, a motion so familiar Lee didn’t register it, even at dock. Only when Bobby dropped his pencil to cover a yawn so huge it creaked his jaw hard enough for Lee to feel did he realize how late it was.
“We got some great work done today.” Bobby spoke through the tail of his yawn. “I can’t believe we found a sub.”
“Me either.” Lee chased the errant pencil. “Probably rewriting some history here.”
“Yeah.” Bobby swiped his hair back, the gesture so familiar and yet so long absent. “We’ll know more soon. Maybe even next dive. When is next dive?” He leaned back in his chair, his legs stretched out under the table and his eyes shut. Looking so good Lee wanted to say, Now. In the morning. We’ll fuel up and get back out there, just you and me. Forget the others.
If it wasn’t the storm, it would be obligations stopping his mouth. “Soon. Maybe even next week.”
“That’ll be great.” Bobby opened his eyes. “Lee. Thanks.”
Damn it all, he didn’t want thanks, he wanted kissing and groping and gasping and coming. Little steps. “Don’t thank me. This is our project. I wouldn’t do it without you.”
“Yes, you would. It’s torturing you not to know as much as it’s torturing me.” Bobby stretched his arms far over his head, making his sweater ride up his lightly furred belly. The wreck wasn’t the only torture going on. Dropping out of the stretch didn’t ease Lee’s aching need one bit.
“Well, yeah, but still… I’m not diving.” Two voids in his heart.
“Yeah. Maybe….” Bobby left that sentence like it burned him. The man could move fast for all his size—he was on his feet. “I better head home. Don’t we have another jack rig to weld tomorrow? We can get out earlier since I didn’t do the second dive today.”
Business had completely slipped Lee’s mind, but the contract had to be fulfilled. “We could.” Lee rose, wanting to meet Bobby’s eyes. “Might want to stay over tonight. For that early start.”
“Not going to wreck my back in the bunk room, but I’ll leave the gear.” Bobby gripped Lee by the upper arms and broke a chunk off his heart with the brief swipe of lips across forehead. “We’re still working on this, remember?”
How much work did it take? When would Bobby finally agree that they’d come to some kind of stability? He’d been diving his plans, and Lee’d been trying to keep a lid on the worry that pushed him toward the liquor. Hadn’t they been doing good? And Bobby still left!
Alone again, Lee tore the boat apart hunting for whatever forgotten stash he’d put aside for this exact rainy day. Damn it all, so close, so far, and the disappointment just might do him in.
Didn’t find a damn thing.
At least he could tell Bobby there wasn’t a bottle aboard.
THE BEST part of a sleepless night
was checking the weather early. The storm hadn’t grown worse, but neither had it abated, and the seas were high enough the jack rig was just going to have to wait. Lee called his crew to cancel the day’s work. He saved Bobby for last.
“Guess you don’t have to put your britches on after all.” Lee’d like to see Bobby without britches, but he’d been shot down enough this week. “Unless you’d like to come over and look at the video again.”
“I think I’d better” came across as music. “I’ll bring the Jane’s and a couple of other books. I want you to double check me. See you in an hour.”
This wasn’t a date. Lee didn’t have to shower and shave and clean up in the lounge. Or pick up all the socks in the captain’s cabin. Or brush his teeth twice and make the bed. And comb his hair just so. He fluffed the order out of his hair with restless fingers and sloshed his coffee half out of the cup when Bobby hailed to come aboard. He shed his yellow rain gear at the lounge door and came in clutching coffee-table books, all wrapped in grocery bags to keep the rain away, and a white waxed paper bag.
“I have a pretty good idea of what we have.” When had Bobby’s smile last been that bright for Lee? Maybe it wasn’t for him, but it sure looked like…. Try not to read too much into it—the sub was the find of a lifetime.
“You better tell me.” Lee reached for the coffeepot, dosed both mugs with cream, and Bobby’s with half a spoonful of sugar. Some things a man didn’t forget.
Bobby pulled two of the dining chairs to one side of the table and spread out his books and notes. “Um, you didn’t develop some unwholesome taste for bran muffins lately?” The pastries he produced from the bag had the S-shape of Lee’s favorite danish, one loop swirled around a cream-cheese filling, the other with a dollop of apricot preserves.
“This is my kind of bran muffin.” Lee exchanged the mug for the danish and luxuriated in the first bite of flaky pastry and sweet filling. Guess there were a couple things the other man hadn’t forgotten. They’d eaten more than a few of these in bed on lazy nondiving mornings, followed by a game of “lick the crumbs.” Surely Bobby wasn’t…. Not after last night.
Lee wouldn’t make the first move, just in case this was only Bobby’s version of filling the sugar spoon halfway. He’d take the small gesture for what it was, and if Bobby wanted to flick a golden flake from the corner of Lee’s mouth with his tongue….
But submarines were the order of the day, chased with a second cup of coffee and accompanied by a sheaf of drawn plans. The Jane’s fell open to a page decorated with sticky notes. “I think we can eliminate entire series just from the dimensions—our boat is about two hundred and seventeen feet, best Chuck and I could measure. The Class VII Bs and Cs are 218 feet long, and everything else is either longer or shorter.”
Lee followed Bobby’s fingertip along the page. “Terrific. We just narrowed it down to about 500 boats.”
“Four hundred and ninety-seven. We know for a fact the U-505 is in a museum in Chicago, and two more lie off North Carolina.” Bobby grinned over the edge of his mug. “It’s not even that bad, once you subtract the U-boats that we know were scuttled or surrendered and the ones that were definitely accounted for.”
Lee consulted the index of another submarine reference. “Guess we better start ticking off which ones we have good information on. If it is good information.”
“Ah, but we have some really good information.” Bobby flipped to a page with a sticky note. “Take a look here—the conning towers are all different shapes. What do we have?”
Rustling the right page out of the stack, Lee laid Bobby’s drawing next to the top views of the conning towers. “Okay, we’ve got a boat with an elongated hexagon, and four—I think those are gun mounts.”
“I think that’s what those lumps were. So barnacled up I couldn’t really tell, but they’re in the right spots. We can check the video again. But look—every other series of sub has round platforms, or roundish, and ours isn’t even close to round. All the earlier series VIIs are roundish too. So that leaves out everything built before 1943. And they quit building the Bs before then.” Bobby started flipping pages. “So it has to be a late VIIC.”
Being near Bobby with a hard-on for a project was about as intoxicating as it got with clothes on. His excitement might as well be electricity, lighting up his face, the room, Lee’s heart. The answer might lie in the pages of their references or in dusty files in some marine archive, but Lee had part of an answer. Would telling dampen Bobby, or make him glow more brightly for an answer nearly to hand? Would he pace like a caged beast until they took the Bottom Hunter back to the wreck? He could be pacing awhile—obligations plus storm could keep them away for weeks.
“It leaves out a lot more than that.” Lee leaned back in his chair. Bobby jerked around with his eyes full of questions. “It leaves out every post-1943 sub that didn’t have a sailor named Asbeck.”
“Whoa. You’re right, but how are we going to figure that out?” Bobby let go of the book, letting the pages wave randomly with the motion of the boat.
“Stuart said there’s naval archives in Washington.” That would be an overnight trip at the least. Also a pain in the ass while the storm raged—they couldn’t take the Bottom Hunter down the coast. Maybe Bobby wouldn’t mind driving. “He offered to put us up.”
“Why would the US archives have all the names of an enemy navy? Prisoners, yeah, I could see that, but not a complete list.” Bobby dimmed. Like the very photons had been sucked out of the lounge.
There had to be a way to bring back his sun. “The US isn’t the only country that keeps archives,” Lee thought out loud. His eyes fell on their references. “These books had to be researched out of somewhere.”
Had an eclipse ended, or what? Shining again, Bobby pounced on one of the heavy volumes. “Bibliography, it’ll be in the bibliography.”
“Hell yes!” Lee snatched up another oversized tome to discover its sources. “What about….” He flipped back to a previous page listed in the plates. “Bobby, the monument in Möltenort has names, like the Vietnam Memorial. All the U-boat sailors. Poor guys.” So many thousands of young men who dove beneath the sea and never came home. They’d wreaked carnage on more thousands of young men who never came home either. What a crazy fucking world. So few had survived, on either side. The numbers on the page made Lee’s head swim. Thirty thousand names to read.
“Every third citation in this book looks like the Deutsches U-Boot Museum in Cuxhaven. How far is that from Möltenort?” Bobby scrabbled through the pages, settling on a map. “This doesn’t look all that far, Lee.”
“I dunno, it looks to be across the Atlantic.” He hunted for a map in his own volume.
“So?” Bobby laughed aloud. “What else do we have to do today?”
EVEN AS he said it, Bobby felt the rightness of his wild suggestion. They really didn’t have anything else to do today. “Think about it—we can’t get out to the job site. This storm is forecast to last a couple of days, and the visibility is going to suck for a day or two after that. We can read these books until the ink rubs off and not know anything more than what’s printed, or we can go see for ourselves. Your passport’s current, isn’t it?”
“Yes….” Lee trailed off. “But….”
“But what?” Bobby could think of several buts, none of which would be allowed to get in his way. “Grab your passport, throw some underwear and your toothbrush in a bag, and let’s go. Skip the underwear if I find us a flight that leaves super soon.” Turning away from the gaffed-fish faces Lee was making ought to forestall the argument. “You want to know as bad as I do—don’t even pretend you don’t.” He nabbed Lee’s laptop and started typing. “Hmm, lots of flights to Düsseldorf, our best exit point is New York, looks like the soonest flight we could make is also the cheapest. Hope you don’t mind a two-hour layover in Istanbul, but if we’re at Kennedy by two, we can have breakfast in Germany.”
“You’re nuts, Bobby.”
“Y
eah, a sixteen-hour trip? If we do a shorter layover in Hamburg, we’ll get there about 9:00 a.m. local time, and we don’t have to be to the airport until five. Much better.” He typed faster, lest the more desirable flight be snatched away by another traveler.
“I can’t just up and leave.”
Bobby quit typing and stared at Lee from beneath his best vulture brows. “Why the hell not?”
Oh good, Lee was shrinking down and engaging the brain instead of his autopilot caution. “Because I have one hell of a fuel bill to pay off at the end of the month.”
“Trifles. Pay your fuel bill and find your passport. I’ll be done here in a minute.” Could he forestall the argument by whipping out a credit card?
Apparently not.
“I can’t…. You can’t….” Oh shit, he was back to sputtering.
“Sure I can. Go batten down the hatches.” Bobby went back to buying plane tickets. He’d never flown airberlin, or even heard of it, but there was a first time for everything. “Last minute flights through an aggregator don’t cost that much, and I’m buying.”
Lee caught at his hands. The drag across the keyboard turned their party into three adults and a child. “Bobby, you can’t just buy me a plane ticket.”
“Yes, I can.” Bobby yanked his hands back, adjusted the numbers and clicked. “I just did.” Not only that, but he was going to cut the spoilsport talk off at the knees. “You know exactly how much I make—you sign my checks. I have squat for expenses, I have a pile saved up, and if I want to spend some taking you along on this hunt, all you have to do is say, ‘Yes, Bobby,’ and grab your bags. Now—” He grinned about as hard as he’d ever grinned for anything short of Lee with a boner and a bottle of lube. “—go find your stuff. I’ll be back for you in an hour, and you better be ready.” With a wave and a flourish, he wrapped himself in his slicker and vamoosed.