The Black Bullet (Sean O'Brien mystery/thriller)

by Tom Lowe

  “I rendezvoused with those FBI agents before they were killed last night. Nick Cronus and I had found the remaining HEU buried on Rattlesnake Island.” O’Brien watched the casket being lifted from the grave. “We found it where the man buried in that hole saw it.”

  Dan looked at the casket. It was gently lowered to the ground next to the open grave. “So the guy in that box was the last person alive to see German troops bury those canisters on Rattlesnake Island. Now we’re digging him up, and, in turn, we’ll be burying men who just saw the stuff after it was pulled out of the ground all these years later. Some evil irony, Sean.”

  “Feds think the Russian mafia is behind the killings and HEU theft, a guy named Yuri Volkow. If it’s him and the same thugs who took the first two from the storage building, they now have ten. So, in addition to a nuclear arsenal, they have Jason Canfield as their hostage.”

  “Why weren’t you with the feds during transport?”

  “Same reason they pulled rank on your guys: national security, Homeland rules, whatever excuse they manufacture at the moment. I was told my services were no longer needed.”

  Dan looked down and shook his head. “What do you do now?”

  “I don’t know … I’m not sure who I can trust.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure one of the feds is who he’s supposed to be. There isn’t anybody I can raise a red flag with because it’s hard to tell who’s working for whom.”

  “How about Lauren Miles? Man, you two worked well together when you found the asshole that killed the supermodel. You and Lauren went out, right?”

  “For a while. She’s doing some digging, and she’s very good at it.”

  “Oh, almost forgot.” Dan reached into the left, inside pocket of his sports coat and retrieved an envelope. “Here are the homicide reports Brad Ford did. He was a deputy investigator who worked the case of the man inside that coffin. Pulled them off microfiche, which we had stored in our digital files, and printed them for you.”

  “Thanks. What’s it say?”

  “The Reader’s Digest version is that Billy Lawson was shot by an ‘unknown assailant or assailants.’ Ford questioned dozens of people. Ran down possible leads. But the murder weapon was never recovered. No real suspects. No witnesses.”

  O’Brien opened the report and scanned it. “There was a witness.”

  “Who?”

  “Glenda Lawson. You saw her leave with her granddaughter.”

  “But she wasn’t there, Sean, at the time of the murder.”

  “No, but she was on the phone and heard something that differs from this report. Brad Ford writes, ‘one shot fired from a .38 caliber handgun; victim died from a single gunshot wound to the stomach.’ Do you have a current address for Brad Ford?”

  “Wrote it on the other side of the envelope. He lives near Orange City in an old house that’s been part of his family for a lot of years. Lives alone. That’s all I know.”

  “Soon you’ll know a lot more.”

  “Maybe.”

  “When they pry the lid off the box back at the ME’s office, you’ll soon know if what deputy Ford wrote was the truth.”

  “I just hope to God we’re not opening some Pandora’s Box.” Dan shook his head. “But, I guess you already found that one in the sub.”

  O’Brien was silent, watching the men load the casket into the back of full-sized cargo van. “You know anybody who’s good at restoring old guns?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “One that’s seen salt water.”

  “There’s a guy who runs a little gun shop off Ninth and Lilac. He’s damn good. Getting up there in years but knows guns and how to bring them back to life. Still has a slight accent, although he’s been here for years. Grunts more than he talks.”

  “The accent, what is it?”

  “German.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Jason Canfield watched as the men lined the ten canisters along the warehouse wall and took pictures. Two of the five Russians were still dressed like state troopers. One had a dark stain on the back of his shirt. The man with the stained shirt, Zakhar Sorokin, walked over to a laptop computer and began uploading the images.

  Yuri Volkow entered the room, glanced at Jason, said nothing and then stood over Sorokin’s shoulder. One Russian stepped to a window, peered out, and walked to Volkow. Another man stood at the door, all men carried pistols, and six assault rifles were on a table in the center of the room.

  Andrei Keltzin sat at another table and typed in information, fingers rapidly moving over the keys. In Russian he said, “We have a total of six bidders. Five have been certified. The sixth, a new Islamic group. Most of its members are fifteen years younger than their top leader. They ask for time to be extended to raise the necessary funds.”

  “No!” shouted Volkow. “Sunday at four. No exceptions. Either they can or cannot bid. It is that simple.”

  “Understood. The representatives come from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia, one in Pakistan, one in Lebanon, and one here in the U.S. Do you want to begin the bids at a minimum of five million U.S. dollars for each cylinder with the condition that all must be sold together?”

  “Yes,” Volkow said.

  “We have transportation, a Liberian liner, waiting for us at Port Canaveral. It will be in port for five days or until we arrive.”

  Jason sneezed. Volkow turned and looked at him. “Do you want water?”

  Jason shook his head quickly. “I’m okay.”

  Volkow laughed. “No water? Why? Is that so you don’t have to piss, or is it because you think we will poison you?”

  “Neither. I’m just not thirsty, that’s all.”

  Sorokin asked, “What do we do with him after the transaction?”

  Volkow looked at Sorokin and studied him for a few seconds, caught by the image of the light from the computer screen reflecting off the surface of his black eyes, which looked ominous, like small, burning white coals. “You eliminate him.”

  ***

  O’BRIEN LOADED MAX into his Zodiac, started the electric motor, and eased away from Jupiter, heading toward the center of the marina, and then into the Halifax River and the Intracoastal. Max stood at the bow, wind blowing her hound dog ears like socks on a clothesline, her wet nose testing the air. O’Brien could smell the scent of garlic and blackened grouper coming from the Tiki Bar as they were gearing up for the lunch crowd. As he cut toward the canal leading to the river, the smell shifted to the odor of oyster bars drying at low tide. It was late morning, almost cloudless, sky like a cerulean bowl over the world.

  O’Brien skimmed the dinghy across the flats. He was glad to be out on the water, the wind in his face and the warm sun on his back. But Jason Canfield and the fate of the HEU were on his mind, a presence that might as well have been sitting next to him in the rubber Zodiac.

  He pulled the little boat alongside the floating Styrofoam ball indelibly marked in black: A-111. The ball had a hole in the center where a quarter-inch rope was knotted. O’Brien leaned over, grabbed the ball, and began pulling the rope, hand-over-hand, into the Zodiac. Max paced the boat, eyes animated with excitement.

  He lifted the crab trap over the rubber wall of the Zodiac, set it down, and opened the trapdoor. A large blue crab scurried out. Max almost jumped off the boat. She balanced herself on the rubber side-wall, like a cat on the back of a couch, ears flat, eyes wide. Her barks sounding more like pleas.

  O’Brien caught the crab and dropped it into the water. “Come on down, Max.” She did and began sniffing the spot the crab had landed. O’Brien reached in the trap, got the holster and checked it. The Luger was there. He lowered the trap back in the water and started toward the marina.

  ***

  DAN GRANT STOOD FIFTEEN feet away from the autopsy table and watched Dr. Julia Barnes cut through mummified human tissue and bones, the remains of Billy Lawson. Dan tried not to look at the face, half skeleton and half atrophied tissue resemb
ling tawny leather stretched over exposed cheekbones.

  Dr. Barnes examined the fresh MRI transparencies she had taken earlier of Billy Lawson’s body. “I see two objects that aren’t supposed to be there,” she said to Dan as the saw cut through rock-hard tissue, a chemical smell like moth balls in the puff of human dust. She stuck a gloved finger into a small hole in what was left of a concave stomach, similar to a collapsed tent draped over exposed ribbons. She said, “They used a lot of embalming fluid in 1945. I see one entrance wound to the abdomen … one in the chest … and one beneath the left armpit. Three shots and at least two bullets because here’s an exit wound.”

  She used a tiny camera attached to a long prod, pushing though the dusty body cavity, her head glancing up at the flat plasma screen for reference.

  “There,” she said, “see that?”

  Dan stepped closer and looked at the color screen. Buried in the opaque honeycomb of cadaverous, emaciated body parts was a dark object smaller then the tip of his little finger. “Looks like a bullet,” he said.

  Dr. Barnes used a long, tweezers-like prong to retrieve the object. Removing the piece of metal from the body, she held it in the light, her eyes studying it. She said, “It’s a bullet. But it’s a most peculiar one at that. It weighs more than most its size. And this is the first time I’ve ever removed a black bullet.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  O’Brien finished tying the Zodiac to the support near Jupiter’s stern when Nick Cronus approached. “I’ll get hot dog,” Nick said, Max’s reflection in his dark sunglasses.

  “Thanks.” O’Brien got out of the dinghy and stepped up to the dock.

  Nick lifted Max gently and set her on the dock. Immediately, she began stalking a lizard sunbathing on the side of a piling, throat extending like a cherry tomato.

  “What’s wrapped in the wet towel?” Nick asked.

  “Just got the Luger we left in one of your crab traps.”

  “I didn’t leave it there, you did. Number A-111. I never pull up that trap again. I’m leavin’ it on the bottom of the river.”

  “Why?”

  “That Luger was on one of those skeletons. Now any crab that comes outta that trap is no good. You’ve heard of deviled crab, right?” Nick grinned.

  O’Brien smiled. “Have you seen Dave?”

  “He left a few minutes ago. A couple of FBI types walked out of Gibraltar, and none looked too happy, especially Dave.”

  O’Brien was silent. He looked down the long dock toward the Tiki Bar. A pelican sailed across the dock alighting on the fly bridge of a Grand Banks trawler.

  “Was Eric Hunter one of them?”

  “Yeah. What are you gonna do with that gun?”

  “Right now, I’m taking it with me in the shade, going inside Jupiter until Detective Dan Grant arrives, and that should be any minute. He called me and said they dug two bullets out of Billy Lawson’s body, a man who supposedly died from a single gunshot wound.”

  Nick followed O’Brien and Max into Jupiter. “What does all this crazy stuff mean?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jupiter moved. Max barked once running toward the cockpit. Detective Dan Grant knelt down to pet her. “Hello, little dog. You haven’t changed much.”

  “Come in,” O’Brien said. “You remember Nick Cronus?”

  “Of course,” Dan said, extending his hand. “Good to see you.”

  “You, too.”

  “Nick’s okay,” O’Brien said. “He found that damn U-boat with me. Whatever you can tell me about the autopsy, he can hear.”

  Dan nodded. “Not much more to tell you than what I said on the phone. But I wanted to show you what the ME found. Lawson was hit in the chest, the gut, and one slug entered near his left armpit, lodging next to his heart.” He reached inside his sports coat pocket and took out a Ziploc bag with two dark objects in it. Dan stepped to the bar, opened the bag, and carefully set the bullets on the bar top.

  “What the hell are those?” Nick asked.

  “They’re two of the three bullets that killed Billy Lawson,” Dan said. “But they’re different from any bullets I’ve ever seen. Seems to be from a nine millimeter, but they’re heavy. Definitely not lead or brass. I’d like to see the gun that allegedly shot Lawson.”

  O’Brien unfolded the damp towel, opened the holster and slowly removed the Luger, placing it next to the bullets. “Now you have it,” O’Brien said.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dan said, letting out a low whistle. “Are you sure?”

  “A Luger clip holds eight rounds. I’m betting that, when we remove this clip, we’ll see bullets that match with only four rounds left in the clip. Three used on Billy and one on the guy buried in the hole under the HEU canisters.” O’Brien put the bullets back in the Ziploc, folded the bag, and placed it in his pocket. “Thanks, Dan. Nick, can you keep an eye on Max for a couple of hours?”

  “Sure. Where you gonna go?”

  “To the man who can take this gun apart and put all the pieces back together again.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  O’Brien was less than half way to the Black Forest Gun Shop when Lauren called his cell. “It took some pretty deep digging,” she said, her voice upbeat, “but we found a couple of a.k.a. names for Yuri Volkow, not that two aliases have much bearing on what’s going on right now.”

  “What do you have?”

  “Yuri Volkow isn’t his real name, of course. We believe he’s Boris Borshnik, born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in1951. He was educated at Moscow State University and did graduate work in theoretical physics at Oxford. He’s fluent in English, Chinese and German. He had a German passport, we discovered, that had his ID listed as Heimlich Schmidt. In Russia, he worked in a number of lower-level Kremlin jobs. He’s suspected of being a player in the hit on Alexander Litvineko. We’ve worked with Scotland Yard, MI-5 and SISMI in Italy.”

  O’Brien was silent a moment. “Did this come from CIA files or FBI?”

  “What difference does it make? You know everything I told you is classified anyway. Let’s say it’s a combination—all packaged from NSA. So why am I telling you? Maybe it’s because we have just under twenty-five hours to find these jerks before they have their insane version of a Sotheby’s auction. Maybe it has something to do with the fact we have two separate terrorists cells, mujahideen and Russian—probably within a few miles of one another. One has enough weapons-grade uranium to make a bomb. The other thinks it has a legitimate reason to do so.”

  “Who’d you consult, Lauren? I just want to know who in the circle there at the command center knows you’ve been looking under stones.”

  “Mike Gates, of course, Paul Thompson, and Eric Hunter. Dave Collins also was helpful, although in an unofficial capacity. Outside this immediate circle, as you called it, about half dozen analysts, Soviet specialists at Langley and Quantico.”

  O’Brien was silent.

  Lauren said, “Everything I’m telling you I’ll disavow if I have to. Eric Hunter was questioning me hard about your background. For some reason, you’re on his radar. I don’t know a lot about him. Deep CIA cover I suspect. He looks like he could hide bodies in places they’d never be found. It’s smart to tread around the guy.”

  “Thanks, Lauren.” He disconnected and called Maggie Canfield and filled her in with what he knew. He added, “Maggie, remember I’d asked you about Eric Hunter? You said you didn’t know him. But apparently Jason does. I think Jason called this guy.”

  “Why? Who is he?”

  “I’m not certain. But somehow he befriended Jason, and his number is on Jason’s phone. I believe Hunter is a federal agent.”

  “What?”

  O'Brien was silent, his mind trying to connect the hidden dots.

  "Sean, are you there?"

  “Maggie, Hunter is about forty. Maybe six three. A darker shade of blond hair combed back. A small Navy Seal tattoo high on his upper arm. Blue eyes, eyes that never stray when he’s looking at you.”
>
  “That sounds like Wes Rendel.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “He served with Frank. And he’s a friend of the family, although we don’t see him much. We never know when he’s in town. He just sort of appears. Why is he calling himself Eric Hunter?”

  “Maggie, I have to go. I'll call you as soon as something breaks. I'm so sorry this has happened to you and Jason."

  “It’s not your fault,” she said, her voice now flat and resolute. "These sick bastards have my son, and all I can do is to pray that God will wrap his arms around Jason and shelter him. Why is this happening to him? He's just a kid.”

  “I don't have all the answers, but I think I know how some of this is connected. And if I’m right, I might diffuse it.” O’Brien could hear the television news on in the background. “I’ll bring him back to you, Maggie.”

  Her voice was only a whisper, a lost echo in a seashell. “Please, bring him back to me alive.”

  ***

  THERE WAS ONLY ONE car in the small parking lot of the Black Forest Gun Shop when O’Brien arrived. He got out of his Jeep and walked inside, removing his sunglasses in the low light. A Bavarian cuckoo clock was chiming four times as O’Brien opened and closed the door, a bell on the door handle ringing. No one appeared. The dimly lit store smelled of gun oil, leather, and dark coffee.

  There was a long glass case filled with dozens of hand guns, some with hand-carved grips, most in the .38 and 9 mm categories. O’Brien spotted two .44 magnums and one .357 revolver. The wall behind the case was lined with vintage Mauser rifles and shotguns, a small chain laced through the trigger guards.

  A door leading to the backroom opened and a man appeared dressed in faded blue jeans, white T-shirt, and red suspenders. Mid-sixties. Shaved round head. Shiny wide face. Thick chest, sausage fingers and a lumberjack’s forearms. A half foot shorter than O’Brien, he looked up through blue eyes deep as the Caribbean Sea. “Can I help you?” he said in an accent right out of Munich.