He grinned as he thought about that and keyed the ignition of his Ford 150 to back away from the wharf parking lot. Don was still onboard the Sea Dog, and he waved once then went back to checking all the tie-lines in case a storm came up out of nowhere. They had a way of doing that in the middle of the night. Waving back, Dex threw the pick-up into first gear, and patched out like he was in a hurry to get somewhere.
He wasn’t.
And his list of options ranged from totally avoidable (going back to the Dive Shop and doing the QuickBooks statements) to mildly objectionable (going home and doing all the piles of laundry) to eventually necessary (stopping at the B&O Diner for the meatloaf special).
Being hungrier than he’d first figured, he refueled first at the diner, then headed home, which was a townhouse condo in a little satellite of Annapolis called Crofton. He’d been there years now, and it was finally beginning to feel like it really was home. Although he’d always tell people he didn’t need much space, Dex had done a pretty decent job of filling it up with plenty of stuff—power tools, woodworking gear for his handmade furniture projects, and spare diving equipment. It made the basement look acceptably junky; plus, the second bedroom was shelved high with old records, magazines, paperback books and outdated rack-mounted stereo components. His old Technics turntable had given up the ghost years ago, and he kept saying he was either going to fix it or finally chuck all those “LPs.” (Did anybody still call them that? Did anybody even know what an LP was?)
The thought made him smile as he closed the front door behind him and stepped into the living room. His years in the Navy had taught him how to be neat when he had to be, and it was reflected in the clean lines and uncluttered look of the place. Plenty of shelves and books, some modern lighting and the requisite flat-screen TV, but not much else that couldn’t have been in the room fifty years ago.
Flopping down on the couch, Dex remoted on the cable news, fighting the room’s silence, more as background noise rather than the focus of his thoughts. He was tired, but he knew he couldn’t sleep yet. As much as he’d been trying to be cool, he kept thinking about that sub they’d found.
Not Tommy and his gold.
That was most likely crap. Dex hardly gave it a thought. He was far more interested in finding out why it ended up in the Bay. And its crew? What happened to those guys? Even though he’d told his men there was nothing special about sunken U-boats, he had a good hunch this one might be different. Its size for one. Almost twice as long as any ever built for the German fleet.
And maybe that number—5001. So maybe what Dex saw on the inside hatch was the answer. Getting an ID on the boat would be the first thing they’d need to start unwinding the mystery of the big sub.
Getting up from the sofa, Dex bounded upstairs to the second bedroom, which served as office and library. Filled with shelves and bookcases and a big desk, it was a dark, comfortable place where Dex spent most of his time at home.
After checking a few of the more obvious websites and databases, he found absolutely nothing on U-boats of the huge size they’d found, but that didn’t surprise him. Near the end of the war, the Nazis (despite their penchant for detailed record-keeping) started to run out of time, and there was a good chance they didn’t keep up their registries as well as they normally would. And Kevin’s memory had been correct; there were no numbers in the five thousands. The highest number he could find was the U-4718—a boat that had never been commissioned, probably never finished. Then there was—
The phone bleated electronically and after checking the ID on the little screen, he grabbed it. It was Kevin Cheever.
“Hey, Kev…what’s up?”
“Well, cutting to the chase,” said Cheever. “I was just wondering about what you made of today’s adventure?”
Dex exhaled. “Not a lot, so far. I have a few ideas, but nothing concrete.”
“Me too,” said Kevin. “I figured it might be easier to talk now than doing it tomorrow. With the rest of them there. Especially with everybody thinking we’re going to be rich. That’s all Mike’s ex needs to hear. I can smell her lawyers salivating already.”
“I know. Can you believe Tommy? What a goof.”
Kevin cleared his throat. “Hey, boss, it wasn’t me that brought him to our little party.”
Dex smiled. “Mea culpa. I guess I feel sorry for him.”
“The same way you feel towards dumb animals?”
“You really don’t like him, do you, Kev.”
“I don’t know. Just kidding, I guess.”
Dex exhaled slowly. He hated when conversation devolved into bullshit chatter.
“C’mon, your point—you did have one, right?”
“Yeah,” said Kevin. “I’ve been checking all the usual websites and sources…”
“Yeah, me too,” said Dex.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but according to the official records I’ve been able to track down, that boat we found today never existed. I couldn’t find any reference to the Nazis ever building anything that big.”
“We’ve got to get coordinated so we’re not duplicating the same work,” said Dex. “You check the number too?”
“Yeah. Nothing.” Kevin paused. Then: “You still have some friends in the Navy?”
“A few. And some of them have some friends. We’re a long way from being shut-out at this point of the game.”
“I have a guy at work, Sal Robustelli,” said Kevin. “Good guy. World War II nut. You know the type.”
“Sure.”
“Anyway, I’ll ask him if he has any ideas.”
“Sounds good. What about your own thoughts?”
“I’m thinking prototype,” said Kevin.
“Me too. And it looks pretty obvious to me—that superstructure on the aft deck was a hangar.”
“For a plane.” Kevin spoke definitively. It was not a question.
“You bet…”
“Now that would be cool—we get into that hangar and find a plane. That would make it pretty interesting. Maybe we found one of their secret weapons.”
“We’ll know soon enough,” said Dex.
“You know, I remember reading about a Japanese boat like this one. But I don’t think it got off the drawing boards. An underwater aircraft carrier. To knock out the Panama Canal. Can you imagine?”
“Man, that would’ve been something…” said Dex as he imagined the Japs pulling it off.
“So it wouldn’t be all that crazy for the Nazis to be thinking of something like that.”
Dex nodded. He liked solving a good mystery. “So listen, keep me up to date on your guy at work and make sure you copy me on it, so I don’t re-invent the wheel—and I’ll give some of my old Navy buds a call and see what’s what.”
“Sounds like a plan,” said Kevin.
“The other option might be a little trickier—depending on how clean it is in there.”
“What’s that?”
“The Germans usually put a small, metal ID tag on one of the torpedo tube hatches in the forward compartment. A little plate with boat’s designator, the date completed, and the yard where it was built. I just read that somewhere.”
“If we can find that, it’s going to make all this work a waste of time.” Kevin chuckled. “Yeah. So, I guess I’ll see you at the dock.”
“Seven a.m., pal.”
He killed the call, and reached for his address book. It was old and beat-up and filled with scratch-outs, changes, margin notes, and outdated info. He really needed to re-do his address book—get rid of the guys who were dead, married, missing, whatever. Another one of those projects he just never got around to doing. Like replacing that low-pressure showerhead, which was starting to drive him crazy. Save water, my ass…
Not now, he told himself. Stay focused, on course. Up until now, he knew, his little dive club an
d chowder society had been just dicking around, but now it was serious business.
Dex finally faced what was lurking just beneath his thoughts—that damned boat kind of scared him.
He hoped the rest of the guys realized what they might be up against.
Chapter Twelve
Manfred Fassbaden
Off the coast of Greenland, April 30, 1945
The air in the close quarters of the aft torpedo room grew heavy with the smell of men at work. Manfred knew it all too well—not just the dank scent of labor, but of subtle terror as well. In the submariner’s world, the rank odor of fear had become as much a part of a U-boat’s atmosphere as the pungent tang of diesel fuel.
As he worked with Gunnery Officer Schlag, he allowed his movements to become mechanical and repetitive. The torpedoes slipped past them as if they were factory workers, and gradually their pace and skill grew quicker. Every few minutes another underwater missile leapt from the forward tubes, lightening the bow by another appreciable fraction.
With each firing, he tried to sense a change in the bubble of the deck, but noticed nothing. Manfred tried to not worry about whether this desperate move was going to work or not. It was all they had. The control deck would let him know how they were doing.
“That’s twelve,” yelled Neil Schlag to one of his men. “Good work—keep them moving!”
Continuing to perform his part of the task, Manfred slipped into a semi-trance. Ever since the first depth charge attack, he’d felt a kind of strange sense of completeness, of finality. He knew their mission was doomed to failure, and he could feel an increasingly powerful grip of fear crushing his spirit. He knew he was going to die, and he could no longer face the inevitability with the stoic acceptance that had carried him through more than five years of battles and uncounted hours of dread.
Whoosh…!
Another fish away, and Manfred hoped the plan would have an effect. The boat continued to almost hover, its forward motion all but stopped, but if its bow continued to point just enough off the level, it would be sufficient to take it on an inexorable, if terribly slow, trip to the bottom.
Gunnery Officer Schlag moved another torpedo along the ball-bearing track, stopping it in front of Manfred. As they began to loosen the screws of the plate concealing its arming device, they heard the Captain’s voice bark from the tube.
“Achieving bubble. Cease fire. Fassbaden to the control deck.”
When Manny reached the con, Ostermann stood hunched over his chart and the Captain’s expression hinted at a level of relief. Looking up at Manny, he afforded him a small grin. “Good work, Herr Fassbaden. We are leveling off and have ascent capapbility.”
Ostermann finished a calculation, handed a slip of paper to Bruckner, who read it aloud: “New heading One-Six-Zero. ETA in three hours twelve minutes.”
The helmsman adjusted the course as Bruckner moved to peer through the glass of the forward port. “Schnorkel depth. All ahead full,” he said.
Manny relayed the command to Engineering, then joined his captain at the glass, beyond which a dark, cold sea waited to devour them—if they made even the slightest miscue.
Chapter Thirteen
Dexter McCauley
Chesapeake Bay, Now
The harbor area of Annapolis had grown over the years to accommodate an ever-increasing number of pleasure boaters, struggling to retain its centuries-old charm. As Dex entered the narrow cobblestoned streets leading to the wharfs, he could smell the water in the air, and he felt at home. Funny how the sea became such a part of you.
As he parked at the dock he recognized some of the other guys’ vehicles already. Nobody wanted to be late for this one. The Sea Dog, with its long aft deck, bobbed and nudged at its moorings, waiting for its call to duty. When he climbed on board, he found Kevin Cheever and Doc Schissel giving their gear a once-over. They both waved when they saw him.
“Hey, Boss,” said Kevin with his characteristic big smile.
“Where’s Don?”
“Below,” said Doc. “He said he wanted to take a look at the engines before we headed out.”
Dex nodded, moved to his own locker and started his own equipment-check. As much as he didn’t want to admit it, he was feeling very anxious about going back down to the wreck. Although he’d conducted more than a hundred dives to sunken vessels over the years, intuitive forces tugged at him like the unseen gravities of worlds, whispering a message of urgency, and perhaps danger.
And that was a strange thing—part of him wanted this dive to be just like all the others (which meant routine and ultimately unremarkable), and another wanted it to be the one that would be a milestone, the signal event in his life that would make the difference, would make Dexter McCauley know it had all been worth it.
That all the crap he’d endured actually meant something.
He smiled as he thought about that. No way he’d ever want any of these guys to know such notions of fame and posterity ever crossed the brow of good, old, pragmatic Dex…
He spread out his pale green dry suit, and began checking his array of electronic gadgets. He liked the modern stuff, but he never forgot the most important fact about them: they might make diving easier, but not safer. There was no gear that could make you cautious.
Sensing movement in the periphery, Dex turned to see Don Jordan’s watchcap-clad head appear above the stairs to the main deck. His big Irish face was flush and grinning.
“Hey, Dex! .Ready for a big day?”
“We’ll see. Everything look good down there?”
Don rubbed his two-day stubble with the back of his hand. “Oh yeah. Those engines’ll still be running a hundred years from now. I’m going up to the bridge and warm up the radio gear.”
“Weather going to hold?”
“If you wanna believe the Weather Channel.” Don smiled, then headed up to the bridge.
Dex checked his watch. Almost seven. Where were the other guys?
His cell chirped as if in answer, and he fished it from his outer vest pocket.
“Dex here,” he said.
“It’s Mike. Just checking in. I’ll be there in about five minutes.”
“No problem. We’re still waiting on Tommy and Andy too. Relax.”
“I’ll try to do that. See-ya.”
As he flipped the little phone shut, he spotted Andy’s dark green Cherokee pulling into the parking area. And as Andy was opening his door, Tommy’s Mustang almost clipped him as it swung into the slot next to him.
Andy just stood there, hands on his hips, glaring at Tommy, who climbed out of the car with a big smile on his face.
Dex shook his head. He’d been trying to figure out how he’d set up the teams this morning, and his choices just got narrower. Even though Andy’s temper was by nature as brief as it was volatile, Dex would not be pairing him up with Tommy Chipiarelli. The smartest move would be to keep Tommy on a short leash, and that meant buddying up with him all day. One thing for sure—he knew he wouldn’t be hearing any complaints from any of the other guys.
True to his word, Mike Bielski showed up five minutes later. Watching him walk from his car and down the dock, Dex caught a weird feeling. The guy was walking so slow it was a little scary. Like he was headed to his own gallows.
When he came aboard, everybody greeted him with the usual round of chatter, and Dex’s odd feeling passed. He didn’t believe in premonitions or any of that kind of stuff. Nobody noticed his silence as they tugged into their suits and gear, trading bullshit chatter. Maybe he was just being his usual overly cautious self, but he was aware of a couple things: everyone had become partially infected with the gold bug, and Tommy had pissed everybody off yesterday. If he acted as impulsively today, there could be worse trouble. But at least with Tommy, Dex and the other guys knew what they were dealing with.
As he undressed in the cool m
orning air, layering into his dry suit, Tommy was already in high motor.
“And I gotta tell ya,” he said. “This chick had legs up to her ass.”
Andy Mellow rolled his eyes. “How many times I have to tell you, you dumb fuck? Everybody has legs up to their ass! That’s where they connect, you dope!”
The other guys laughed, and so did Tommy. “Oh yeah, that’s right. I meant her shoulders. Yeah, she had legs up to her shoulders!”
“We get the picture,” said Doc.
“Actually I got some great pictures with my phone,” said Tommy.
“God bless Apple,” said Kevin Cheever and smiled. “Just her, right?”
Suddenly the entire hull shuddered as Don kicked in the big 872 diesels. Their power surged through the deck steel and you could feel the boat just itching to yank them out of the harbor.
“Okay, ya swabs!” yelled Don, grinning. “Let’s break us loose!”
Doc and Tommy jumped up and ran fore and aft to unslip the lines holding them to the dock. Mike Bielski barely looked up from the fiddling he was doing with the adjustments to his Divelink, and Andy was testing his respirator.
Dex felt the comforting rock of the deck as the Sea Dog eased out into the channel and headed for the open Bay.
“I’ll go check on the GPS,” said Kevin. “Make sure we’re headed back to the same spot.”
Nodding, Dex snugged up his suit. If it hadn’t been for Kevin’s surplus gear from NavTronics, they would’ve never found that sub. He wondered how much easier all this new gear would’ve made some of the crazy operations his Navy unit had attempted during his long hitch.
Checking his watch, Dex figured they’d be over the target in about a half hour.
And they were.
He’d divided them up into three teams—Tommy and him, Kevin and Andy, and Doc and Mike. And they would dive in that order with each team overlapping the one in front by ten minutes. That way, there would always be a window of at least four divers on the wreck at any one time—in case there was trouble. Upon hearing his plans, none of them had complained about not going down with Tommy. No kidding…
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