by P D Singer
“And brag about later.”
“Yeah.” Leaning on Lee felt mighty fine. Oughta do that more often. Except, well…. He’d enjoy it now. “And today—you hunted for me all over the ocean, and you found me.”
“Should have been there sooner.”
Bobby would have liked that too, but you get what you get sometimes, and no throwing fits. Not when the man with his arms around you would have to decide about bobbing around on the ocean with your carcass for company, or shoving it overboard with sad good-byes. Besides—“You’re here now.”
The crackle of the radio didn’t have much meaning. Kind of an intrusion really. Not like he and Lee would have a lot of time left for tender moments.
“And you were there for me in Laboe.”
“Huh? We didn’t do anything dangerous in Laboe.” Lee sounded downright incredulous.
Much as Bobby was enjoying sprawling on Lee, he needed to stretch. And he ought to look the man in the eye. He sat back on his heels, which he wouldn’t do for long: the dry suit wadded up behind his knees. “Speak for yourself. I went up to the top of a tower, and I didn’t piss myself, or fall off, or jump just to get it over with. Because you were with me. Got that?”
“Yeah, but….” Oh the look on Lee’s face. Complete and utter disbelief.
“Honest, you have no idea how much I hate heights.” Bobby reached to wipe the incredulity away. A dying man ought not to be argued with. His hands hurt, but his arm worked enough to bestow a caress, even with the gloves on.
But he’d rather snuggle. Maybe from some other position. “Damn, my knees hurt.”
“Cold hurt or diving arthralgia hurt?”
Bobby had to consider the state of his joints before he could answer. “More like ‘kneeling too long because sucking off a drunk man takes a while’ hurts.” Maybe that was a little too honest, but if not now, when?
Lee went stone still. “I will do my absolute best to stay sober and come fast, just to spare your knees.”
“Wish we were going to have the opportunity.”
Lee launched himself at Bobby, flinging him backward to the Zodiac’s floor. For a horrible moment, Bobby thought his tanks would fall on their heads and they’d die with their brains all over the rubber boat, but no, they were tied in, and Bobby could hug Lee and feel him all up and down his body, even his legs, which still hurt. And damn, hands could ache, and aching was good because it wasn’t the numbness of his soul slipping out of his body.
“You’re not going to die, are you? Are you?” Lee demanded at nose-to-nose range. “You’re warmer already.”
Well, fuck yes.
Yes!
That needed kisses, the open-mouth, probing-tongue kind, the “seal your lips together and frot like a wild man” kind. The “oh my God, I’m not going to die today” kind. Bobby wrapped his arms around Lee and promised himself to repeat this somewhere that didn’t rise and fall with every wave, or if it did, it had a rigid hull and a dry deck.
The radio crackled hard and long, but kissing Lee needed more of his attention. Lee broke off, tense with concentration. “Did he just say—”
Company. Bobby heard it too.
The grumble of engines jerked their heads around. All around—they couldn’t find the source at first, but a flash of white at the edge of a wave brought them upright.
A dive boat with a high wheelhouse bristling with navigation equipment crested the water and slid down into their trough. A beautiful boat, a glorious boat, the best boat ever, come to pull them out of the ocean. A familiar boat, one Bobby had dived from and surfaced to, one that had been home.
“Hey!” he screamed, and Lee screamed too. Lee scrambled to his knees. Bobby tried to sit and fell back flailing. He could scream and flail on his back. “Hey!”
“Need a lift?” The end of a rope fell into the Zodiac, and on the other end was a grinning Rafe Chatham.
Chapter 21
LEE NEEDED Rafe and another man’s help to get Bobby up and into the Tech Tach. Eager hands pressed mugs of tea upon them. Glorious hot tea to bring Bobby’s temperature back up. Efficient hands stripped Bobby of his dry suit, Lee of his weather gear, and wrapped them both in an electric blanket with hot water bottles at their feet.
Lee held Bobby close—he was there for support and to keep Bobby from shaking his tea all over, as well as to warm them both, at least as far as the Tech Tach was concerned. Maybe things weren’t quite so fucked-up between them now, but Lee wasn’t turning down any opportunity to put his arm over Bobby’s shoulder and guide his hand.
The audience was a bit much, but hey, Lee got to drip all over the Tech Tach’s lounge.
His Bobby was safe. Even if he hadn’t done it alone. The Zodiac tagged along in the Tech Tach’s wake, the double tanks riding alone.
Someone took his mug for a refill. “Should I put some brandy in this?”
“No.” Lee had to make that clear, even if the need inside screamed Yes!
“You sure?” Bert Guldbrandsen didn’t have to sound so incredulous. “You never turned a drink down before.”
“Call it a sea change.” His reputation wasn’t going to make sobriety any easier to maintain, damn it. “But I’m sure.”
Bobby leaned into his side with a tad more pressure. One day at a time, one hour at a time, or like now, one moment at a time, would be just a tad easier with his help.
“Okay, so where are we taking you? As if I didn’t know.” Bert grinned widely. “My surface radar found the Bottom Hunter at the same coordinates three different times, and I do believe that’s where she is now.” The rumble of the engines underlay his words.
“What’s down there, Lee?” Rafe pounced. “Ol’ Bob-and-weave there didn’t want to say, but you know we’ll be diving, just as soon as we get kitted up.”
The buzz from the other divers—looked like a full boat—grew with the speculation.
Their wreck wasn’t a secret anymore, not from the men who knew a secret was there to take. Which didn’t matter now. Bert Guldbrandsen was entitled to anything of Lee’s he wanted—the U-boat coordinates, his client list, his left nut.
He owed the man. Bobby was safe.
“There’s a U-boat. About a hundred forty feet down.”
Yelps and cries of “U-boat!” mixed with “Where’s the dive tables?” and “Which one?” filled the lounge.
Divers. Danger’s over, they want the booty. Lee had to laugh. Like he and Bobby were that much different?
“Which one, Lee?” Rafe demanded.
Lee pulled Bobby a little closer, hugging him if not the secret to his chest. “We don’t know.”
“Oh come on, you have to have an idea,” Rafe persisted. “That’s why you went to Cuxhaven.”
“Great trip, too, but Horst Bredow didn’t know, and we still don’t know,” Lee insisted. “Not for certain.”
“Sure we do.” Bobby sat up a little straighter and patted Lee’s knee under the blanket.
“What is it, then?” Rafe all but howled.
Lee might do some howling of his own—wasn’t that the point of this whole fucking exercise? And Bobby sounded so certain! He stuck to a lighter tone—Bobby’d just been through hell. “You didn’t want to tell me first?”
When would Bobby have told him? While they were floating around the Atlantic on a rubber boat? They’d spoken of more important things. Lee could live with it.
And then he didn’t have to.
“I couldn’t. Still can’t. And I won’t be able to until we go through my haul bag. But the answer’s in there.” Bobby turned to smile at Lee, and there was nothing wrong with that answer at all, at all.
“Hey, Guldbrandsen!” Rafe thunked his captain on the shoulder. “Doesn’t this barge go any faster?”
THEY DIDN’T have to go any faster; they were nearly back to the Bottom Hunter. Bobby wanted out of his fleeces, he wanted a hot shower, he wanted a hot meal, and he wanted to sleep for a month, preferably with Lee tucked in next to him for some
inter-nap intimacies. But more than anything else, he wanted a good look at what he’d risked his life to find.
His haul bag hung in the freshwater well. “Untouched,” Harley announced, as if that would get him off the hook with Lee about the anchor chain. Bobby wouldn’t lay any wagers on that one, but the captain wasn’t ripping any chunks out of him right now. The audience of interested divers and crew from a rival boat might explain it, but then, Lee kept a lot of things inside, well-pickled in alcohol. Wonder how things were going to change?
The Bottom Hunter’s deck was close to empty; just Tip and Harley waited. Didn’t a near-death experience merit a triumphal return, with huzzahs and toasts and backslapping? “Where is everybody?”
“We knew you were safe, and their planned top time was over, so everyone’s in the water.” Tip shrugged. “Didn’t seem like any reason to keep them from diving.”
“Get on with it, man!” Rafe moaned.
Lee helped Bobby transfer the dripping haul bag from the freshwater well to the deck. “I didn’t want the papers to dry out and stick together, and I don’t want to rip anything now.” Bobby reached to his forearm, where his means to slice netting always rode. He’d been in his suit so long, his gear was part of him, but they’d stripped him down to his long johns on the Tech Tach. “Where’s my knife?”
Lee produced the blade from the jumble of equipment wrapped in the suit. Bobby paused a moment. What if he hadn’t found the answer? All his bravado would make a great story, which Rafe would take great joy in retelling to all who would listen at My Brother’s Place. Fuck him. Bobby slit the mesh.
He gutted the bag, exposing the piles of books and maps. A collective moan went up around him. Sorting out folded charts, he set aside anything that looked too fragile to handle with hands still stiff, anything that needed to be opened. The square thing he’d snatched from the silt felt sturdy enough to handle, like a book. The nameless glop clung in lumps. “Rinse this, would you please?” He’d have done it himself if his body weren’t an exhausted, still-chilly wreck, but getting from his knees to his feet was one journey too far.
Lee plunged the relic in the water, swishing it around. “Huh? Oh!” He nearly dove into the well, emerging soaked to the shoulder, with something small in his hand. “You aren’t going to believe this.”
He handed the trophy to Bobby.
A fragment of a machine, like a typewriter key. A small cap marked with the letter L still visible centered in a metal ring, on an armature twisted and broken. Bobby turned it over in fingers gone numb from shock. “I kind of do. Believe it.”
“What?” was a group bellow.
“The rest of the machine’s there. It’s bolted down, half-smashed. I didn’t try to bring it up. Would have busted it up to try. I wouldn’t do that.” Bobby went fierce at the men standing around him. “And neither do you, hear me? The German government decides what to do with the rest of their Enigma machine.”
Not that he could enforce that, but he could let them see the bit of history he’d salvaged. They passed the key around, each man craning to see what the lucky holder had. Not that one key of a code machine held the identity of the U-boat it served.
Lee went back to rinsing, working with both hands in the well. He scrubbed with both hands, intent on his project, seemingly oblivious to the excitement around him. At last he turned, a dark rectangle in his hands. He stared, his lips parted, his eyes wide. Bobby heaved himself to his feet to see, or tried to.
“Guess you did find a way to tell me first.” Lee noticed Bobby’s beached-elephant-seal gracefulness and offered a hand. “It’s a logbook.”
A treasure trove, if they could get to the words inside. Bobby scrambled to lean heavily against Lee, one hand on his shoulder, clutching Lee’s upper arm. He had to hang on, or his knees would betray him. “Can you read it?”
Twisting the cover to catch the lowering sun, they stared at the ornate indents, traces of metallic lettering picking out words even Bobby could understand.
And yet—they still had no answer. “Open it.” Bobby’s words came with a rasp.
Only the wind whispered in the wires, while the water lapped against the hull. The Bottom Hunter scraped against the Tech Tach’s bumpers. A seabird cried far overhead, demanding answers. Every man on board went still.
Lee lifted the cover, the pages falling back to the body of the book. His hands shook, blurring the neat cursive of another time and another place.
“U-919.” Bobby pressed temple to temple with Lee, the words blurring with the salt water in his eyes. They knew their boat at last. “Konrad Asbeck, we have your razor.”
Chapter 22
THE ADRENALINE of knowing faded into the exhaustion of his ordeal. Bobby could have spent the rest of the day going through his haul bag—if he didn’t mind seeing double.
One traffic snarl resolved; Rafe and his companions scrambled over the gunwales like pirates, burning to see the U-boat for themselves. They’d be 140 feet down—on Bobby’s second-dive plan—in little more time than it took to dress and program their dive computers. Good luck to them. Bobby had less bottom time built in than they might have had otherwise. Bobby would get a jab or two of his own back on Rafe for doing the planning for his charter. Belay that. Rafe took the time to inspect the propeller and declare the shaft straight before disappearing into the deep blue.
There would be another when Chuck, Darrell, and the others returned, and probably some grumbling about not hearing the news before their rivals, or they might be too absorbed in whatever they hauled to the surface.
The papers and logs went back into the freshwater well to wait for some expert conservation on land. Lee settled Bert down but good over that.
“You can play gin rummy with your crew while you’re waiting for your divers.” Lee practically escorted Bert over the side. “Nobody looks until Bobby’s had the chance to see his own stuff, you know that. And he’s falling over.”
No, he wasn’t, that was the boat rocking. Okay, maybe he was. Lee led him below to a hot shower in the captain’s quarters. Complete with a mug of hot soup and a sandwich when he stumbled out of the bathroom and into the bed. The indentation he’d left that morning welcomed him back. Lee draped another blanket over him, and chased away the crumbs once he’d eaten.
“I’ll be back once I’m finished babysitting the Tech Tach. They didn’t drop anchors on our guys.” Lee hugged Bobby tight and landed a kiss near the corner of Bobby’s eye. “Get some sleep, okay? I’ll be back.”
Bobby didn’t let go. “I want a proper kiss first.”
“You do?” Lee’s whole face brightened, and he delivered. Mmm, did he deliver. Lips parting hesitantly and becoming a full-on press with little swipes of tongue. Their chins rasped with the day’s stubble, and Bobby caught a scritch on Lee’s upper lip. A proper kiss took time.
A proper kiss shouldn’t end in a yawn, but there was no help for that. Lee drew the striped blanket up higher while Bobby fought to keep his eyes open. And lost.
He woke slowly, to the thrum of the big diesel engines and a little more up and down than he could sleep through. Lee lay beside him. Bobby pulled Lee into the curve of his body, getting a little sleepy mumbling and no resistance. Poor guy had to be fighting an adrenaline hangover.
Bobby felt much better all the way around. Nothing like a few hours of staring at your own death to make a full belly, a warm bed, and your beloved’s ass against your sleepy-time wood feel like heaven.
“I love you,” he whispered, brushing a kiss against Lee’s neck. He’d repeat it a couple hundred times when Lee was awake to hear it.
“I love you too” came back in the darkness. “Always will. Even if you don’t stick around.”
Maybe they hadn’t gotten this settled back in the Zodiac. Bobby didn’t want to recall too precisely what he had or hadn’t said—since when had he become such a drama llama? Good thing Lee kissed some sense into him. “I’m sticking.”
“Even after last n
ight?” Lee rolled to face Bobby.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Their “today” overpowered last night, but Bobby didn’t want a repeat of either one.
“Your hazelnut coffee stuff hides the taste of Irish whiskey, did you know?” Lee snorted. “I sucked down two before I realized, and then… I kept going. Like, everything was already fucked, I might as well.”
“You turned down the brandy on the Tech Tach.” Because of the audience? Bobby truly didn’t know.
“It’s bad for you when you’re cold, you lose core heat. And it’s bad for me because it’s alcohol.” Lee started a trail of fingers up and down Bobby’s arm. “I’ve lost the best things in my life, and I want them back. I can’t have them and alcohol too. If the ‘just for today’ stuff and serenity prayers help, good. I need that help. I want you to want to be with me.”
This was the man Bobby had fallen in love with all those years ago. The determined one. The man with a goal. The man who would crisscross an empty ocean until he found what he was searching for.
“I want to be with you, Lee.” Bobby found some strength to say what he should have said long ago, before both their hearts took the stomping. “The way you are now. The man you are now.”
“The man I am now got stinking drunk last night.” Lee’s fingers stopped their tickly path.
“Yeah. Part of me still wants to kick your ass for that, but that’s a thing you did, not the man you are. I had a lot of time today to think about what’s important and how much it’s worth fighting for.” Nothing like facing a chilly death to find the places where regrets grew like barnacles. “You found a wobbly place in your sobriety. You gonna shore it up or let it crash the whole structure?”
“Fix it,” Lee whispered. “But there might be more.”
Bobby’d seen this sort of spiral before. Hated every twist of it, and damned if he was going to let it go any lower. “You did say sobriety takes as much maintenance as a boat. The Bottom Hunter runs pretty good.”