Sins of the Fatherland (Scott Jarvis Investigations Book 6)

by Scott Cook

  Reinhardt nodded, “yes, captain. I’m prepared to turn the boat over to you. Perhaps you’d like to call your headquarters and report this?”

  He would, in fact, yet there wasn’t anyone close. It would take the better part of a day for any other vessel to reach their position. He’d have to make a report, of course, but that could wait a while.

  “I already have,” Turner lied, “I’m waiting for a response now.”

  “Very good,” Reinhardt said, “I hope that my men and I will be treated well?”

  “Of course, sir,” Turner reassured him, “We’re no longer at war and you’ll be welcome.”

  The bridge speaker crackled, “Bridge, control… Dutch is picking up faint mechanical transients from the other boat.”

  Turner clenched his fist. He knew what was coming but asked anyway, “Control, bridge… what are they?”

  “Torpedo doors opening,” Came Williams’ reply.

  Even as Turner inhaled to ask the German captain exactly what the hell this meant, he saw Reinhardt looked down, heard him curse and saw him pick up his own bridge telephone. The two ships were close enough that Turner could hear the one-way conversation easily.

  “What do you mean, opening!” Reinhardt bellowed, “On whose authority! Close them now, Yohan!”

  He’d said this in German, yet Turner had an idea of the context. This seemed to be confirmed by a string of German curses that followed.

  “Captain, what the hell!” Turner roared out.

  “One moment, please!” Reinhardt almost pleaded, “Apparently someone in my torpedo room jumped the gun, as it were. I’m ordering the doors closed. Please do not fire, Captain Turner! It’s all right.”

  Turner’s instincts were shouting. He’d learned long ago to trust them. He shook his head, “Forward Pom-pom, train your weapon on the U-boat’s bridge. On my word, open fire. Not yet, though.”

  Reinhardt saw the four barreled cannon swing his way. He held up a hand, “I assure you, Captain, this is not an aggressive move. If you’d like to double check, then please feel free to send an armed boarding party. Your men can take charge of my torpedo room themselves.”

  Turner’s growing anxiety was curbed a little by this. Not entirely, but it helped. If Reinhardt was willing to have a team of armed men board his boat, then he might actually be sincere. After all, there were almost sixty men on that boat. Not everyone would be a cheerful defector. It made sense that some short-sighted asshole might take matters into their own hands.

  “Cob!” Turner called, “Rouse out one of the inflatables. Get seven men plus you, full combat gear, and board that boat. Secure torpedo, control and engine room!”

  “Boarding team to take the boat, aye!” Rogers replied.

  The Chief began snapping out orders and several men from each gun broke off to carry them out. The chief tapped Carlson on the shoulder and the two of them scrambled down the hatch into the conning tower. Two more men followed and another two went forward to open a loading hatch in the deck.

  This shallow compartment contained the ship’s two inflatable tender rafts, each of which could hold ten men. They pulled one carefully folded rubber boat out and started unrolling it on the fore deck.

  Turner wondered briefly if the boat was in good enough shape. They’d never used it, after all. Everything was inspected, of course, but still…

  Soon the men applied the compressed air canister and the twelve foot rubber boat inflated and seemed to hold air. The two men rigged oars and stood by.

  The Cob came up the hatchway followed by Carlson and the other men of his party. All of them were loaded with gear. Rifles, side arms, bandoliers with ammo and grenades and even short Billy clubs.

  “Let me know when you’re ready, Cob,” Turner said, “I’ll flood down forward to let you off.”

  “We’re set, Skipper!” Cob said as the men jogged forward and began to climb into the boat.

  Turner thought about asking Reinhardt if he’d gotten the torpedo doors closed yet, but thought better of it. It didn’t really matter at that point anyway. The German sub couldn’t fire on them any better than Bull Shark could fire on the Germans. His armed party would see to it shortly in any case.

  “Control, Bridge,” Turner ordered, “Flood down forward. Fifteen degree down angle for foredeck wash.”

  The order was acknowledged and a whoosh of air burst from the forward ballast tank vents. The submarine tilted forward and the entire forward half of the deck slowly sank beneath the calm sea. The rubber raft was free and Carlson, who was seated at the oars, began to pull for the German ship.

  “Captain,” Turner called to Reinhardt, “Please flood down so my men can board. I want you to open your forward loading hatch once they’re on board so they can enter your torpedo room.”

  “Certainly,” Reinhardt said amiably, “thank you, Captain Turner. Give me a few moments to flood down.”

  That was fine. Cob’s raft was nearly alongside the forward section of the U-boat anyway.

  Reinhardt vanished below the cockpit fairing. Turner thought that was a little strange, as he could easily give the orders from his bridge. However, after only a few seconds, there came the sound of air escaping ballast vents and Turner could see the bow of the U-boat begin to sink.

  After about a minute, Turner was starting to wonder why he hadn’t seen Reinhardt reappear. He was just about to call down to control to radio over when a man’s head and torso appeared on the German bridge again. Rogers’ boarding party was positioned over the deck of the U-boat and waiting for it to resurface. Turner was just starting to relax when he saw that two other men appeared on the German bridge as well.

  Were they holding something in their hands…?

  Turner’s guts melted into ice water and he began to shout orders, “Cob! Get out of there! Pom-pom, open—“

  The night was ripped open by the clatter of automatic weapons’ fire. As Turner watched in disbelief, the eight men in the rubber raft began to scream in pain and jerk about like they were on strings. Heavy caliber rounds tore through them and their raft and in seconds, the boarding party was cut to pieces.

  Yet it wasn’t a single gunner. The two other men also carried light machine guns and began to shower the Bull Shark’s decks with a fusillade of bullets. At the five inch and at both Pom-poms, men began to fall, some silently pitching over and some screaming in pain and terror.

  “Take cover!” Turner said, “Get below, all of you!”

  Even as he turned to the hatchway, Turner’s left side and left leg were struck by a hammer blow. He pitched over and rolled, his breath coming in ragged gasps and his world spinning. He knew there was nothing he could’ve done. He would’ve been the last man down the hatch no matter what.

  He had some cover from the relentless spattering of bullets. He watched as only four of the dozen men who’d been manning the weapons made it down through the conning tower hatch. One man, a burly seaman named Roy Hutchins stooped to help Turner to get inside.

  “Go!” Turner gasped, his vision darkening, “Tell XO… dive…”

  “Sir!” Hutchins protested even as Turner pushed him toward the open hatch. The young man was halfway in and pulling his captain along with him when there came a flash and a roar above their heads.

  Hutchins was shoved backward by the grenade blast and he pitched into the conning tower, blood streaming from his left arm and scalp. Rough hands pulled him away from the hatch even as somebody slammed it shut.

  “Skipper!” Williams shouted as he lunged for the hatch.

  Somebody hit the exterior dive alarm at the same time as the hatch was dogged. Williams mindlessly pounded at the hatch. As he got control of himself and gripped the wheel to crank the hatch open once more, another explosion thrumped seemingly just outside.

  “Forget it, sir!” Hutchins said through his pain, “The skipper’s had it! I saw…”

  Williams knew the kid was right. With tears in his eyes, the XO ordered a full dive. No matter
what happened now, though, he vowed that those Nazi bastards would pay.

  Chapter 8

  I left Hank Lambert’s and drove to my office. It seemed like the thing to do, on account of I’m self-employed and all. Should probably be open for business once or twice a month.

  Since I no longer had a secretary, I was once again chief cook and bottle washer.

  I diverted my course back home first and scooped up Morgan the amazing doggy face. I’m sure he was just as lonely as me and it was nice to have him around. A definite benefit to being your own boss was that any day you desired could be bring your pooch to work day.

  “It’s been a while since we worked a case together, Pupson,” I commented to Morgan as we strolled down the hallway toward my office, “Your input should be most valuable.”

  Although he didn’t say so in as many words, Morgan made it perfectly clear that he appreciated this vote of confidence and that he’d do his best to offer any assistance it was within his considerable power to render. He could have, but didn’t, remind me that not very long ago he assisted in the rescue of four people from a sinking boat off Anna Maria Island.

  I chuckled at the thought and it reminded me to do a little online marketing for the latest literary masterpiece I’d published recently. My fifth book entitled Shadows of Limelight. My outer office door was unlocked and we strolled inside.

  I always left it unlocked now. There really wasn’t anything to steal in the outer office. My office was simple yet tasteful.

  A comfortable brown sofa with matching end and coffee tables. Two paper shaded lamps sat on the end tables and cast a nice glow on the big island mural on the wall over the sofa. I had an antique hat and coat rack complete with umbrella holders near the outer door and a secretaries’ desk.

  The desk was now bare. No need to keep a computer there. Just the office phone and a cup of writing implements. Anything else valuable was either locked in my inner thinking parlor or in the small utility closet next to the bathroom.

  “Well, Pupson,” I said, pulling open the first side drawer on what had been Lisa’s desk and retrieving several dog treats, “Chew on these and if any good ideas come to you, just speak up.”

  Morgan wagged his tail and I went into my office and parked myself in Ole Swively.

  “Ahh…” I said, “The captain has the con. Now, Swivatola, do your magic and inspire me.”

  I swiveled.

  I was not inspired.

  Dammit.

  I opened my laptop and figured it was time to do a little research. I used to have somebody for this…

  “Curses!” I complained.

  As I waited for the laptop to boot up, I suddenly realized something I’d forgotten. I stood and turned around, unlocked the windows and slid both panes open, letting in a cool late morning breeze. It carried with it the sounds of I-4 and the traffic, but it wasn’t too loud to be objectionable.

  “You may now pay homage, my subjects!” I announced. I felt like Che Guevara, Mussolini or Juliet maybe. Some famous balconied personage for certain.

  There was quite a lot of information on Jack Brody on the internet. He’d salvaged quite a number of wrecks in his twenty plus year career. Notably among these was a joint project with National Geographic, and the Smithsonian to dive and recover artifacts from Titanic in the early 2000’s. It was controversial, as all his projects seemed to be. They’d made a documentary on it, which I think I’d seen, and many of the recovered items were on display at the Smithsonian as well as several Titanic exhibits including the one here in Orlando.

  Another of his achievements was a major salvage operation in the Truk lagoon, a site where many Japanese ships were sunk in 1944. Although dived many times, Truk, now known as Chuuk, was never salvaged until about a dozen years ago when Brody somehow got permission to remove select items from the ships and planes on the bottom.

  This of course tweaked many in the international community. Not that it bothered Brody, of course. In 2016, he was part of a remote survey of the famous Japanese battleship Yamato. A Japanese political party was and is still trying to gather funds to actually raise the ship and recover it and the remains of Japanese sailors. A year later, Brody was involved with a Japanese group that went down to the wreck in submersibles and attached float bags to one of the ship’s huge bronze propellers and raised it.

  In an audacious display of arrogance, because of the complex legal issues, Brody claimed ownership of the prop and essentially held it for ransom until the Japanese agreed to pay him over two million dollars for it.

  “Wow…” I mused, “This guy’s got brass balls for sure.”

  And now he was after a phantom Balao-class submarine that was supposedly laden with several tons of German gold bars. If real, it would represent something close to a hundred million dollars.

  Of course, it wasn’t true. And I had to wonder how much an expedition to recover anything in five or six thousand feet of water would cost. Hundreds of thousands? Millions? They’d need a deep diving submersible, after all. And in the world, to my knowledge, there were only a handful. These included the Alvin, which was operated by Woodshole Oceanographic Institute. There was the Sea Cliff, which was the Navy’s DSRV and could go even deeper than Alvin. That wouldn’t be an option for obvious reasons. The French operated a deep diver called Nautile, something of a sister ship to Alvin although she could dive deeper as well. Jamstec, the Japan Agency for Marine Earth Science and Technology operates a deep diver called Shinkai. There were a handful of others as well that I could find out about.

  Then I remembered something Lambert had said. The two real submarines, the German’s Ariovistus and the American Bull Shark hadn’t gone down in the deep waters on the other side of the Middle grounds. He’d said the ships, rather than being in a thousand fathoms were only in about thirty… a hundred and eighty feet or less.

  The Middle grounds was a shoal about a hundred miles off the west coast of Central Florida. The shallow Gulf slowly deepened as you left land, although you had to go out about thirty miles just to hit a hundred feet. However, the water did deepen a little further along to about five or six hundred until you got out about a hundred miles. Then the bottom rose up dramatically to between one and two hundred feet for a few dozen miles before dropping into an abyssal plain that made up the central bowl of the Gulf of Mexico.

  If Lambert was correct, then Brody wouldn’t need a DSRV to salvage the Dogfish… if it had actually existed…. He could do it with plain old scuba rigs. Or get fancy and use heliox to extend the bottom time. On top of that there were any number of shallow water mini subs that could be employed along with divers to recover whatever was at the bottom.

  Of course, Brody wouldn’t find a diesel submarine loaded with shiny gold bullion… but he was likely to stumble on the unknown wrecks of two boats. One of which contained sixteen five foot long, twenty-one inch wide glass-lined concrete cylinders filled with flesh-devouring death. And his Arab backers, if that was true, would have a hideous weapon of mass destruction that they could employ. If Brody stumbled on that wreck, he could open up a can of worms that could and most certainly would have international consequences at best… at worst, he’d put Hitler’s final evil scheme into action after seventy-five years.

  It was mind-numbing to contemplate. That I, a down at heel private eye, should suddenly find myself entwined in something this complex and far reaching. I guess that’s what I get for refusing divorce business.

  As if on the heel of that thought, my outer office door opened and in walked a man who I felt was synonymous with the divorce business. It was none other than Orlando’s biggest private eye himself, Greg Foster.

  Foster was a fit man of about fifty and just under six feet tall. He was broad shouldered and trim with graying black hair and a square, tough looking face. He wore a stylish tailor-made power suit. Navy blue jacket and slacks, crisp white shirt and dark red tie knotted with a perfect Windsor.

  Foster wasn’t alone, however. Behin
d him strode another man. This guy had a similar build to Foster and was about the same age. He was taller, though, maybe six foot four with bulging biceps and close-cropped brown hair without a trace of gray in it. He had hard looking eyes that matched his lantern jaw. This man wore jeans, boots and a black T-shirt that looked to have been sprayed on and let everybody see how flat his belly was and how defined his chest was.

  “Good morning, Mr. Jarvis,” Foster said genially as he reached out and patted Morgan’s head.

  The dog was sitting next to Lisa’s desk eyeing the two newcomers. Morgan was well behaved and never barked or growled at people who came into the office. Bad for business after all. Yet he was always wary at first, as if analyzing new folks for any scent of evil.

  The other guy did the same and told Morgan he was a good boy. Both men seemed friendly enough so Morgan wagged his tail a couple of times and laid down to resume his nap.

  “If it isn’t the competition,” I said, standing. I said it in a friendly tone, although I too was wary.

  Foster entered my inner office and shook my hand, “A pleasure to meet you at last. You’ve made quite a name for yourself these past two years.”

  I thought about reminding Foster that we’d actually met a few years back while I was still with Orlando PD. I didn’t though, and took pleasure in knowing something Foster didn’t. Perhaps it was juvenile of me, but nobody’s perfect.

  The man had a reputation for getting the job done but he was also what we call a big spacone back in Rhode Island. It’s an Italian expression that refers to a guy who talks big and thinks he’s God’s gift.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” I asked, waving Foster into one of my client chairs, “And who’s your friend?”

  Foster sat and indicated the second man with a hand gesture, “This is my client, Jack Brody.”

  That surprised me. Although I’d just been researching him, I didn’t pay much attention to the photos. Yet when Foster said it, the man’s handsome tough guy face did pop out at me. I didn’t show any surprise as I shook Brody’s hand. The salvager had a grip like a vice and I was not surprised when he did what every meathead does and tried to crush the bones in my hand.