The Black Bullet (Sean O'Brien 1)

by Lowe, Tom

  “Anything about weapons-grade, HEU?”

  “Hold on a second … umm ... shortly after Germany surrendered in early May 1945, Admiral Donitz instructed the commander of U-boat 234 to give up and report to whichever Allied port it was nearest to at the time. That U-boat was escorted in by two U.S. Navy destroyers, taken to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And, gentlemen, it did have more than seven hundred kilos or almost two-thousand pounds of U-235, highly enriched uranium on board.”

  “What happened to the stuff, the uranium?” Nick asked.

  Dave nodded. “This report doesn’t say. I do know that three months later we dropped the same stuff, as you say, over Japan and closed the curtain on the whole damn war. If you two found HEU, the only way to know for sure is to dive back down and bring it up.”

  “No freakin’ way!” Nick said. “Only one man can ever find what’s been lost out there. And that man killed the GPS numbers before Jason and I could look at them.”

  “It was the best thing to do,” O’Brien said.

  “Nick,” said Dave, his voice barely audible, “if that’s what you found, Sean may have done you the greatest favor in your life.”

  Nick grinned. “See no evil, hear no evil, and tell no evil. Let’s eat.”

  Dave opened three bottles of Corona and they sat at the bar to eat. Dave said, “Nick, the combination of sautéed grouper, melted cheese, diced tomatoes, and the Vidalia onions in your recipe is as treasured as Plato’s Republic.”

  “Same old recipe,” Nick said, chewing a mouthful of food. “I just gave it a new name, sixteen fathoms sub sandwich.” He tossed a bite to Max as O’Brien’s cell rang.

  “Jupiter Charters,” O’Brien said.

  “Are you Captain O’Brien?” a woman asked.

  “Yes, who’s calling?”

  “I saw the news tonight. Did you find a lost German submarine out there?”

  “Who’s this?”

  “May I meet and talk with you, please. It’s very important.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Abby Lawson. Sixty-seven years ago, my grandfather saw something on the beach that got him killed. If you found a German sub, that discovery could help my family bring closure to his murder.”

  “Murder?” O’Brien thought he heard the voice of someone else in the background. “What murder?” he asked.

  The call disconnected.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Nicole Bradley slowly raked her long blond hair across Jason Canfield’s bare chest. He sat in his swimsuit on the second floor of her parent’s beachfront condominium balcony, the setting sun breaking through coconut palm trees, the scent of grilled fish coming from a courtyard. Nicole stood, leaning over him, hair trailing to his chest. She had full lips, the lower lip with a slight pout, dimples, thick hair backlit from the sun. At that moment, Jason thought her hair was spun from pure gold.

  In a toast, she said, “Happy birthday!” They touched glasses, sipped wine and she kissed him. Nicole, a college senior studying journalism at the University of Florida, was home for the summer. Her parents were gone for the weekend, and she and Jason had the run of the beachfront condo. She sipped chardonnay from a crystal glass. “Have some more wine, Jason.”

  “I really shouldn’t. I sort of made a promise to my mom and Sean—”

  “Come on, it’s your birthday!”

  “Yeah, but wine makes my head hurt.”

  “Wine’s healthy.” She sipped. “Good for your heart.” She touched his chest.

  “Lemme taste.” He passionately kissed her.

  She broke the kiss and said, “I’m just trying to like broaden your tastes, that’s all. C’mon, birthday boy!”

  He grinned. They touched glasses again and both emptied their wine. It was Jason’s fourth glass, and his head was beginning to feel numb.

  “Aren’t you the charmer?” Nicole asked, straddling Jason’s lap. She ran her fingers through his blond locks. “If we ever did get … don’t get all weird on me or take this the wrong way, but if we ever like got married and had kids, they’d have blond hair.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely. You looked cute on the news yesterday. I couldn’t believe the Coast Guard actually boarded your boat. It was like watching reality TV.”

  “It was crazy. The chief, he goes like … ‘Son, were you the one that radioed in the find of the submarine?’ He’s the most hyper dude I’ve ever seen.”

  “What’d you tell the chief? Did you guys like really find a submarine on the bottom of the ocean?”

  “What do you think?” Jason smiled.

  “I think it’s kind of romantic and adventurous? Like the History Channel meets Lifetime TV.”

  “I met that reporter, Susan Schulman. Doesn’t she work at the same TV station where you’re doing your internship?”

  “Same place. I haven’t met her yet. I hear she’s like a ball buster. Intense.”

  “She tried to bust Sean’s balls, but he wasn’t gonna let her. He really knows how to keep his cool.”

  “He’s cute, way too old for me, but he’s got that something.”

  “What’s that something?”

  “It’s the way you do what you do, like how you walk, talk … kiss.” Nicole sipped her wine and kissed Jason deeply. “You have it. Now, did you or didn’t you find a long lost sub? ‘Cause if I’m about to have a famous boyfriend, I want to know.”

  Jason looked out over the royal palm trees and watched sea gulls flying down to the beach. “Do I look like a pirate? We don’t go around salvaging old ships.”

  “Yeah, but these aren’t some old rotten Spanish galleons sitting out there. Subs are made of steel. That will last in the ocean. Just like bones.” Nicole smiled, her lips wet.

  “You mean skeletons?”

  “Yeah, if the sharks didn’t take them off way back when the sub went down.”

  “You have a great imagination.” Jason grinned.

  “Did you guys see skeletons? Oh tell me Jason! Please!”

  “I didn’t say we saw skeletons. I can’t say anything.”

  “And that means you saw something. I can tell.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “If you tell me you saw skeletons, I might jump your bones.” Nicole poured more wine in their glasses. “Maybe that’s like where the word boner came from,” she said laughing. She kissed his ear and neck, her lips warm, her perfume traveling through Jason’s brain like a shot of adrenaline.

  He drank more wine and reached for her breasts. “Not yet,” she said. “If we’re gonna trust each other in every way, you have to be honest with me and tell me if you guys found that U-boat.”

  “What if I showed you pictures of it?”

  “You’ll get a birthday present you’ll remember for a really long time.” She ran her index finger across his lips.

  Jason reached over to the table beside them and picked up his cell phone. “Take a look at these.” He brought the images up on the small screen. “I loaded these off Sean’s camera while he was on the bridge talking with Nick. I’m just glad the Coast Guard didn’t find them.”

  “Is that some kind of engine?” Nicole asked.

  “A German jet, I think. Sean and Nick found crates with jet parts and a small rocket.”

  “What are those things, the ones with the U-235 on them? Are they bombs?”

  “I’m not sure. Sean said they might contain some very dangerous stuff.”

  “And this number?” She touched the screen with a perfect fingernail.

  “It’s the identifying numbers on the outside of the U-boat.”

  She moved her hips, her warmth slowly gyrating against Jason. “So, where are the skeletons, mister boner?”

  He grinned. “Right here.”

  “Ohmygod!”

  “Yeah, Sean only took one. I think Nick would have had a heart attack if Sean kept taking pictures of the skeletons. Nick’s like real weird in that way. I don’t think he’ll ever go down there ag
ain?”

  “Would you?”

  “I didn’t go. It’s pretty deep. Sean’s some kind of an expert SCUBA diver from his military days. Nick’s part human and part dolphin. The guy used to free dive, like they do for pearls. Only he did it getting sponges off the ocean floor when he was twelve over in the Greek islands. Guy’s a freakin’ animal. I gotta pee real bad.” He stood, the wine now causing him to be dizzy.

  Nicole smiled. “Looks like you’ve reached your limit, Jason. Try not to get sick in my parent’s bathroom, okay lover?”

  “I’m just gonna pee, c’mon, Nicole.”

  When Jason left the balcony, Nicole held his cell phone, punched up her personal e-mail, attached the pictures and hit the send button.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  O’Brien returned to his home on the banks on the St. Johns River for the night. As much as he enjoyed time on Jupiter and the company of the marina folk, he liked the solitude he found in the place he now called home. He liked his big, antique bed. His house was a seventy-year-old “Florida Cracker” home built on an Indian shell mound overlooking the river. The old home was made from cypress, oak, heart-of-pine, and it had a massive river-rock fireplace, tin roof, and a sprawling screened-in porch. The porch, with a view of the river, was constructed from white oak beams that bent and snapped nails like toothpicks.

  In the kitchen, O’Brien poured some Jameson over ice. As he walked to the porch, he stopped and stared down at a picture of his wife, Sherri. She stood at the helm of their sailboat, wind in her hair, morning light in her eyes, a smile that penetrated O’Brien’s heart like the first time he whispered his love to her. He touched the picture, the glass hard to his touch.

  Max trotted in from the porch. She sat and cocked her head, looking up at O’Brien. He said, “I miss Sherri, Max. I know you do, too. How about I join you back out there for some fresh air, little one?”

  On the porch, he sat in a big whicker rocker and lifted Max onto his lap where she curled into a ball. O’Brien sipped his drink and looked at the reflection of a harvest moon off the river’s dark surface. Frogs and cicadas competed for dominance in the theater of the night. The scent of blooming jasmine and orange blossoms mingled in the air with wood smoke from across the river, somewhere in the national forest. A great horned owl alighted on a thick, crooked limb reaching up from a cypress tree down by the river. Spanish moss hung from the limb, motionless in the still air, the owl’s silhouette caught in the rising moon.

  O’Brien thought about the discovery of the sub, its potential revelations, the media attention, how it might play out. And he thought about Jason Canfield. The kid definitely had his mother’s eyes. He hoped Jason took their conversation to heart. He scratched Max behind her ears and mumbled, “When the past intersects with the present … the future could be in somebody’s crosshairs … .”

  What was it? Something was churning in his gut. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and replayed Maggie’s visit to his boat. What tugged at his thoughts as if weights were in his shoes? What was out of sync? When she’d hugged him, his memory banks registered the scent of her perfume, as if twenty two years was two seconds. He hadn’t smelled that particular brand on any other woman. She’d felt so small in his arms. He remembered that she had a physical presence of strength, a rare combination of athleticism wrapped in feminine sexuality. He sipped his drink and wondered what Maggie was doing tonight. He had a strong urge to pick up the phone and call her. To talk about old times … to just to hear Maggie’s voice tonight.

  The Irish whiskey took the edge off the day. He thought about the events. Sure it was coincidental that he docked Jupiter less than two miles from an old girlfriend he hadn’t seen in what seemed like a few generations. As a detective, he’d learned to be wary of chance because of criminal circumstances. What was mixing in his gut with the whiskey?

  The guy at the Tiki Bar.

  Kim Davis had introduced the man as Eric Hunter, a friend of Frank Canfield, Maggie’s dead husband. Coincidental? Maybe. Maybe not. O’Brien knocked back the rest of his drink and listened to a bull gator grunt at river’s edge. It was the start of mating season. The natives were restless. O’Brien could identify on some primal level. He gently lifted Max and said, “Let’s hit the bed, lady. Maybe you can teach an old dog like me how to sleep like you.” She licked O’Brien on his unshaven face.

  ***

  ALTHOUGH HE HAD RETURNED to the comfort of his own bed at home on the banks of the St Johns River, calm was an ephemeral feeling. His sleep had been awakened by silent screams from human skeletons and the punctuated chant from a whippoorwill in an ancient live oak outside his window. He saw Maggie’s face and then a close-up of Jason’s eyes—frightened eyes.

  O’Brien shook the narcotic of sleep’s illusion away and watched early morning light pour through an opening in the curtains on his bedroom window. He replayed the images he and Nick had seen around the sunken U-boat. The human remains, the mystery surrounding the sinking of the sub, the cargo of rockets, jet parts, and two canisters lovingly sealed by Pandora herself. He thought about Maggie Canfield, more than twenty years ago when she was Maggie Greene. And he thought about the telephone call he received from the woman who identified herself as Abby Lawson.

  IN HIS RAMBLING KITCHEN, O’Brien made a pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, called Max from her roost in his recliner, stepped onto the porch, and walked down the sloping backyard to his dock that extended fifty feet into the river. His property bordered the Ocala National Forest. From the view on his dock, the river made a wide oxbow turn, flowing around live oaks, the limbs draped heavy with beards of pewter-gray Spanish moss.

  It was about a half hour after sunrise and the river looked like hammered copper. The morning light broke through the cypress trees, illuminating water bugs on the surface as they made figure eights and elliptic orbits resembling tiny skaters. A slight breeze carried the scent of honeysuckles, decaying oak leaves, and damp moss.

  O’Brien and Max watched a great blue heron stalk the tannin water, stopping to carefully step over cypress knees that protruded up from the dark mire like giant, gnarled fingers. His thoughts drifted back to the discovery of the U-boat and its cargo.

  Max turned her head, the alarms firing in her brain. O’Brien had noticed that her reaction to human-produced sounds and scents was different from those in nature. Her defense mechanisms ignited faster when approached by intruders walking upright.

  O’Brien scratched her back. “You have hound dog ears, and you can certainly hear things I can’t. What do you hear, Max?”

  She half barked and half whined, paced the dock, and started to run toward the house. “Hold on, Max. How do those little legs move so fast, huh?”

  A car pulled in at the end of his driveway. Rarely did he ever see a car pull in his long drive. His nearest neighbor was almost a mile away, and lost motorists didn’t need to use his drive to turn around. There were plenty of access roads leading into the national forest. His driveway made a slight bend to the left from the front of his house to the road. Even from his dock, he had a line-of-sight to the end of the drive. But visitors seldom noticed him from that distance.

  He watched a woman get out of the car and start toward his front door. She stopped, hesitated, like she wanted to turn around, and then continued.

  “Come on Max, let’s go see who has come calling. If it’s the Avon lady, boy did she get the wrong house … that is unless you want something for your nails.” Max scampered up the backyard, climbed the steps leading to the porch, and waited for O’Brien to open the screen door. He heard a knock.

  “Be with you in a second,” O’Brien said, checking the drawer for his Glock. He wedged the pistol under his belt, beneath his shirt, and opened the door.

  The woman was frightened. O’Brien cut his eyes from her to the car. A small gray head barely protruded over the console. The woman at his door was about one hundred and ten pounds, mid-thirties, auburn hair pulled back, an
d hazel eyes that were filled with fright and fervor. She wore blue jeans and a blouse open enough on her shoulders to show a powder sprinkling of freckles.

  “Mr. O’Brien?” she asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “I apologize for coming to your home unannounced. But ... .” She bit her lower lip and said nothing.

  “I’m the one who called you—the one who talked about her grandfather being murdered.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  There was a strong gust of wind for a moment causing acorns to rain down from a live oak, beating against the tin roof before falling into O’Brien’s yard.

  The woman bit her lower lip and tried to smile.

  “You said your name is Abby Lawson?” O’Brien asked.

  “Yes … and I’m sorry I had to hang up before I could explain further. My grandmother, she’s in her late eighties, I was visiting her, bringing some dinner over, when we watched the story on TV. I saw the expression on her face when they reported about the submarine. It was like she’d seen a ghost. I told her I was going to find you.”

  “I assume that’s your grandmother in the car.”

  “I talked her into coming. She’s not well … lymphoma.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. How’d you know where I live?”

  “I used to work for the Volusia County Sheriff’s office. You’d helped Detective Leslie Moore with one of her cases before she was killed. She and I were friends. One day she mentioned how much respect she had for you, and how good you were at seeking justice for the families of victims … murder victims. Leslie said you had a natural-born talent for it, a sixth sense. Anyway, she had mentioned you lived off Highway 46 near the Ocala National Forest. I grew up in DeLand so this wasn’t too hard for me to find.”

  “Would you and your grandmother like to come in?”

  Max wedged out the door and trotted over to the Abby Lawson. “Your dog’s so cute. Now I remember Leslie telling me you had a little dachshund, too.”

  “She’s my watchdog.”

  “I can tell by the rambunctious wag of the tail. Look, I don’t want to impose. I’m prepared to pay you.”