by Tom Lowe
“That’s it!” Nick yelled. “That place is cursed! I tried to tell you that. We came within an inch of being chum meat.”
“Thought you said you didn’t miss with the spear when they were close.”
“That devil shark came up straight from hell. I had one second to shoot.”
“It bought us time to get to the boat.” O’Brien leaned down and picked the brass bolt lock off the floor. “But did you have to kick the transom door in?”
“Rather kick it in then have a pissed-off bull shark with a scratch across its back come and take me off the dive stand like I was a piece of fish on a plate.”
“Let me see your shoulder.” Nick turned around and O’Brien examined the wound. “Nasty cut. How’d that happen?”
“Something in that freaking sub stuck me. After I stepped on what felt like a human skull, BAM! Right across my spine. Maybe Nazi ghost sailors stabbed me.”
“It might need stitches.”
“Sean, you gotta listen to me. There’s real evil down there. I feel it! We weren’t supposed to find that thing. When we go back down there it’s like daring the devil to step across a line. Devil’s cursed that place.”
O’Brien was silent, his eyes looking across at the horizon.
“We need to get outta here,” Nick said.
“Let’s pull up the canisters and move. We have to work in the moonlight. We need the winch.”
Nick grunted. “If that shark cuts this rope with his teeth, that shit can stay down there.”
Soon the canisters were to the surface. O’Brien said, “Let’s be very careful. Swing them over the platform, and we’ll secure them in the bilge.”
“Dave said this stuff had to have some kinda super electrical spark to blow up.”
“Let’s hope Dave’s right. Get some blankets. We’ll wrap each cylinder separately, store them in different sides of the bilge and move on before first light.”
Nick looked toward the east. It was still more than two hours before sunrise. The moon was straight overhead. Lightning popped far out at sea. Then Nick saw another light. This one was a boat, coming from the southeast. A tiny wink in the distance. “We got company,” Nick said. “Somebody’s out in the stream.”
O’Brien looked up. “They’re a long way off. Maybe they’re fishing.”
Nick studied the light for a second. “No, they’re not fishing. They’re moving too fast. Let’s get the shit outta here, Sean. Could be the Coast Guard again. They might be the ones tracking us with that damn bug you found.”
“Or it could be somebody else. We can’t stick around to find out.”
They quickly wrapped the canisters and stowed them. O’Brien cranked the diesels and got the boat on a fast plane, both three hundred horsepower engines at full bore. He glanced down at the old holster he’d set on the bridge floor. He picked it up, turned a small bridge light on and tried to unsnap the metal button. The top flap of the holster fell apart like wet cardboard. He reached in and pulled out a German Luger. The pistol was in good condition despite the fact it had been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for sixty-seven years. The magazine was too corroded to remove.
He knew the clip held eight bullets. If four were missing, he would contact Abby and Glenda Lawson. Maybe the German sailor who owned this had put a bullet through the head of his comrade and three into the body of Billy Lawson.
O’Brien wondered what the autopsy performed on Billy Lawson would show, if they even did an autopsy. Would bullets removed from the body have been stored?
Nick climbed the steps, holding two bottles of Corona in one hand. He gave one to O’Brien and toasted. “Sean O’Brien, ever since you pulled into the marina a couple years ago, I’ve never been bored.” Nick took a long pull off the bottle and flopped down on the bench seat, his wet hair in dark curls. “You are only at the marina a couple weeks a month. If I had your old river house, I’d be up there, too. But when you do come in, don’t take this wrong, Sean. Shit happens. That time that crazy cop was tryin’ to frame you. Put that dead girl’s hair in your bed. It’s never boring, my brother.”
O’Brien sipped his beer. “Glad you like excitement because the people in that boat you spotted definitely aren’t fishing. I’m hoping your boat has bigger engines, because it looks like we’re being followed.”
Nick whirled around. He saw the running lights in the distance. “Oh shit! Did you hide those rifles in the closet behind the head?”
“Yes, and it might be smart to go below and get them.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Dave Collins poured his first glass of scotch at 4:02 a.m. He walked from Gibraltar’s galley to the salon where Max slept on the couch. She opened her eyes. Dave sat next to her and caressed her back. “They’ll be back soon, girl. Go to sleep.”
Dave sipped the scotch and thought about his thirty-year career with the CIA. He thought about the costs, the gains and the compromises, the slow disintegration of his marriage. The inability to tell his wife anything about what he did, what he had to do, or where he was. The world in which he had to exist was a world of no illusions and yet so artificial. It was so deceptive that the reality of exposure was more frightening than the plausible denial of who he was and for what he stood.
Sometimes, alone late at night, surrounded by shadows and deception, far away from his wife and sleeping children, he had to remind himself of exactly what he did stand for and why his personal sacrifices were less important than a successful mission.
He sipped the scotch, his mind drifting to the last phone call he’d received from Hamilton Van Arsdale, his former director at the Agency. Van Arsdale had another two years until retirement, and he planned to go out with the arrival of the new administration. Van Arsdale agreed that the HEU should be locked in Collins’ storage unit until it could be secured and removed.
He looked at his watch: 4:20. Where were they? They should have checked in by now. Were they okay?
The marine radio above his desk crackled to life. The sound of static caused Dave to sit up straight. O’Brien said, “ETA … seventy minutes tops.”
Max lifted her head, a slight whine from her throat.
Dave picked up the microphone and keyed the button. “How’s fishing?”
“We got a couple of grouper.”
Dave half smiled, fatigue knotting the muscles in his shoulders. “That’s good. We’ll keep the light on for you.”
“We have a light about two miles to our east. Seems to be gaining. Don’t know if they’re following us or just heading into the pass.”
“I’ll make a call.”
“I don’t know if that’d be good or bad. Could be the Coast Guard. Stay tuned.”
Andrei Keltzin looked at his watch as he walked through Miami’s international airport. He traveled with no luggage. Everything he needed would be purchased in Miami. He stepped outside, the warm breeze full of humidity and scents of flowers. He liked Florida. He liked coming to Miami. Women. Weapons. Both so easy to find and buy. But he knew on this trip he’d have limited time. Yuri Volkow had sounded more urgent that usual. Whatever it was, the job would require his immediate attention. Keltzin new something would happen within hours. He could smell the odor of a hunt in the warm Florida air. These things a man comes to know, like a change in weather before it happens. Only Yuri, a man who saw more abuse than he had under the old regime, understood the consequences of action and inaction. None moved faster than Yuri to seize opportunity.
His cell rang. “Where are you?” asked Yuri Volkow.
“Airport. Outside. Near the taxi stand.”
“Meet me where we met last. Things have changed much since we spoke.”
“How?”
“I will tell you when you arrive. We are not the first here. I have been working to eliminate another threat. They had men placed here in Miami previous to our arrival. However, before the sun rises, the immediate competitor should be removed.”
“Zakhar is here for the job?”
<
br /> The phone call ended. Keltzin stepped to the curb, raising a hand to signal a taxi.
O’Brien watched the boat gaining in the distance. “Nick, take the wheel a minute.”
“I was born with a boat wheel in my hands.”
O’Brien held up a marine infrared night telescope and spotted the boat. He was quiet for a moment. “What do you see?” asked Nick.
“I’m not sure. At least two men. One has a moustache. Boat’s a Sea Ray. Probably twenty-six feet. No outriggers. Doubt they were fishing.” O’Brien lifted one of the rifles off the bench seat. Remington M-24. Bolt action with a scope. He chambered a round and sat the rifle back on the bench.
Nick looked at the gun. “I might have been born with a boat wheel in my hands, but I have a feelin’ you came outta your mama with a gun in yours. You handle that thing like it’s part of your body.”
“During the war it was.”
“Did you use a gun like that over there?”
“No, it was a Remington 700.”
“All the troops carry them, I guess, huh?”
“Some do.”
“Which ones.”
O’Brien held the night-scope back to his eye. “Snipers.”
“Shit, you were a sniper?”
“I was whatever I had to be. Those guys are gaining on us.”
“Bet they put the bug on my boat!”
O’Brien lowered the night-scope. “They have a gun. Looks like a shotgun.”
“A fuckin’ shotgun can kill you!”
“But they have to get in range.”
“How close is this range thing?”
“They’re probably using buckshot. About thirty yards.”
Nick pushed the throttles. “We aren’t gonna go any faster. How far can you take somebody out with that gun?”
“From an elevated position, like a hill in Afghanistan, maybe a mile. On the sea, bouncing like this, I don’t know.”
“How long you gonna give them?”
“Before what?”
“Before you shoot?”
“I don’t know.”
“Sean, they’re less than a quarter mile behind us.”
“I know.”
“You gonna just let ‘em run up and blow a hole in my boat?”
“They won’t do that because they probably want what we collected.”
“So, you gonna let ‘em fire at you and me before you shoot? We have two rifles. I’m not an ex-sniper, but if that boat gets much closer, I can sure as hell hit it.”
“I don’t want to see you facing a murder charge.”
“It sure as hell would be self-defense! Them or us, Sean.”
“Closer we get to shore, Nick, the greater our odds are that there’ll be other boats and these guys will just go away”
“In another couple of miles, they gonna be caught up with us. What then?”
“When they get within shotgun range, we’ll cut the engines back to half speed, do a three-sixty move around their boat, and have a little conversation with them on the PA. If they choose to start firing, we’ll do the same. They won’t win.”
Dave Collins keyed his marine radio. “Checking on your ETA. Before I start mixing the pancakes, wanted to know when the kitchen can expect you?”
“Should be about twenty-five minutes,” O’Brien’s voice came over the radio speaker.
“Is the fishing party still with you?”
“Yes.”
“Hanging close?”
No answer.
“How close is close?”
No answer.
“Shit!” Dave keyed the microphone, “Are you okay?”
No answer. Max whined.
O’Brien followed the boat through the night scope. One hundred yards.
“Whatcha gonna do?” Nick yelled. “I don’t feel like getting shot!”
O’Brien was silent. He looked up from the scope for a moment as the boat behind them exploded in a ball of white and orange fire.
“Holly shit!” Nick yelled. The light from the explosion illuminated the dark sea.
“What’s going on?” Dave’s voice came across the radio.
Dave paced his salon. The radio crackled. O’Brien said, “The boat following us just blew up.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The beam from Ponce Lighthouse punched through a fog stretching a half mile out to sea. O’Brien watched the light pierce the mist while Nick brought his boat toward the inlet. Nick had been quiet since witnessing the explosion.
As they entered Ponce Inlet, swells bounced off the rock jetties and crashed into the boat’s hull from left and right angles. A night heron called out from the blanket of fog, the cry an unseen mariner’s siren, a warning in sync with the rotation of the light.
Along the jetties, the fog wafted in backlit shadows, moving like spirits of Indians crawling down to the water’s edge to spear fish that no longer swam into the river to spawn. On the wind was the smell of a saltwater tide breaking against dry rocks, Australian pines, and a smoldering campfire burping up the taste of charred pine sap. O’Brien looked at his watch: 5:27 a.m. “Almost home, Nick. You okay?”
Nick held the wheel, fighting the turbulent water. “That coulda been us back there. Who killed the men who probably wanted to kill us?”
“I don’t know.” O’Brien looked at the holster and Luger on the bench seat. “Nick, you still pull a few crab traps?”
“Yeah, man. Why?”
“I want a place to park this Luger in its own salty environment until I need it.”
Dave Collins spotted Nick’s running lights through the fog. He sat in Gibraltar’s wheelhouse with Max lying on the bench seat. “Here they come, girl. Your papa and his pal Nick were almost toast out there. And, now, they may be carrying material that could turn cities into toast. I know that gentle creatures like you don’t relate to the concept of absolute power and mass killing. It’s an evil unique to the animal kingdom of man.”
She lifted her head, cocked her ears before Dave could hear the rumble of the diesels coming through the mangroves and onto the docks. “Ahhh, you know that sound, don’t you, girl? Uncle Nicky’s big boat, right?”
Dave carried Max down the steps to the cockpit then placed her on the dock so she could walk with him to Nick’s slip. They watched him work the bow thrusters and reverse the engines, bringing the boat to a perfect stop. Dave fastened the bow rope and stepped aboard with Max.
“You two are a sight for scorched eyes,” O’Brien said, coming down from the bridge, careful to keep his voice low. He petted Max. “Hi, lady.” O’Brien looked at the eastern sky. “Dawn’s coming soon. Let’s go inside. We’ll show you what we found out there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Dave watched as Nick and O’Brien gently set the blanket-covered canisters on the galley table and unwrapped them. Dave looked at the labels and released a low whistle. “U-235. Germany had plans in the last days of the war. If it’s the real thing, these two alone are probably enough to make a dirty bomb.”
“That’s what we saw tonight,” Nick said. “A dirty freakin’ bomb.”
“What you saw probably was five pounds of C-4, remotely detonated or wired to explode at a certain time. The stuff on this table would destroy this marina and life within an immediate quarter mile from it.”
O’Brien said, “From our perspective, what Nick and I saw a hundred yards off our stern was very dirty. What’s your chatter tell you now? Who the hell’s behind this?”
“Don’t know. And, unfortunately, this stuff in front of us is highly enriched and highly desired by the world’s most undesirables. As you just witnessed first-hand, they’ll do anything to get it.”
“That narrows it down,” O’Brien said dryly. “We were almost taken out by a bull shark that must have weighed a thousand pounds. Then we were chased forty miles in open sea by some unknown undesirables who were killed by some other unknown undesirables.”
Nick shook his damp, shaggy head and said
, “I need a drink.”
“How many hostiles were taken out tonight?” Dave asked.
“I saw two on the boat,” O’Brien said.
Dave inhaled loudly and exhaled slowly, his eyes studying the canisters. “If we knew where the chase boat came from, it’d be easier to check marinas and boat rentals. We now know that there are at least two rivals desperate to get their hands on this stuff. We know that one rival just lost two members. We’ll hide this while we search for the rest of it.”
“What do you mean by the rest of it?” O’Brien asked.
Dave touched the damp barnacles on one of the canisters. “If these are all that were left on the sub, the rest are indeed missing. I’ve done more research. U-boat 234, which was the sub that surrendered a week earlier than the one spotted by Billy Lawson and found by you two, had more than two lead canisters. Inside the canisters, they were lined with gold, and the cake baking in them was more than enough to make a bomb the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima.”
Nick whistled. “So what we pulled out of the sub tonight is only part of it?”
“Correct. I suspect the rest could be still buried somewhere on that beach. The area, Sean, where the old woman and her granddaughter told you about, the place where Billy Lawson saw enough to get him killed.”
“If it’s near Fort Matanzas, that’s been federally protected property. Land left undisturbed. The FBI or OSS must have done a check of the beach in 1945. Who’s to say it was never found? Maybe the two Japanese men that Billy Lawson saw leaving on foot returned for the HEU. The mystery man who met them, maybe he came back for it.”
“And did what with it?” Dave asked.
“The extent of my crime solving was always as a homicide detective. This seems more aligned with your old beat. What happened to the uranium on that other sub, the one that was escorted by Navy destroyers into Portsmouth?”
“That’s a question I can’t find the answer to. There are those who believe Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, had permission from President Truman to remove the U-235 and use it, or some of it, in the atomic bombs we dropped over Japan. Hitler may have been about to give Japan ‘the big gift’ in the war, material to build atomic weapons. Imagine what could have happened.”
