Tom Lowe - The Black Bullet

“And what would that be?” asked O’Brien.

Dave sipped black coffee, grinned, peered out an opening in the curtains on the starboard window and said, “Spin it.”

“What do you mean?” asked Nick

“What I mean is survival.”

“So what do we do now? Those FBI agents haven’t been long gone and now we got the news people coming around like gnats.”

“We hold a news conference,” Dave said.

“Where?” Jason asked.

“Right here on the dock. We’re well represented by our esteemed fourth estate. They’re crawling out there, sniffing. It may be our only chance to shake this thing off your backs like little Max would shake water off her back. You three have had your faces plastered on international television, blogs and social media sites around the planet, courtesy of Susan Schulman. So you go out there, stand next to Jupiter and take their questions. What it’ll give you is an opportunity to distance yourselves with what could be a worldwide powder keg, so to speak.”

“What do we say?” Jason asked.

“You don’t say anything until asked. Then, it’s best to let Sean answer the questions. He is, after all, the captain of the vessel that locked horns with a submarine.”

“The facts are,” O’Brien began, “we have no clue where the sub is. We didn’t get a GPS reading. We were using our fish-finder looking for rocks and other places where fish could hide, and the next thing you know, we hooked a German U-boat.”

“What if they ask us about the skeletons?” Nick asked.

Dave said, “Be truthful. Human remains are part of shipwrecks.”

“But the HEU isn’t,” O’Brien said. “That’s where the questions will be directed.”

“Probably,” Dave nodded. “However, all you saw were two canisters. Snapped a picture, everything else was twisted remains of a U-boat.”

“What about those jet parts and some kind of rocket?” Jason asked.

“What about them? You don’t know for sure what they are, so there’s nothing to say,” Dave said, sitting at his salon desk. “Remember, you guys are just fishermen stumbling across something. You’re not salvaging divers or treasure hunters. You’re just a bunch of average Joes excited about what you found, but ready to return to your livelihood, fishing, which is suffering.”

“You comin’ out there with us?” Nick asked.

“It wouldn’t be prudent. Add to more confusion and personal jeopardy.”

Nick shrugged. “I got nine lives. You have to when you dive for sponges.”

“Come on Max,” O’Brien said. “You run interference as we meet the media.”

“How many bodies did you see?” asked a TV news reporter.

“Looked to be half a dozen or so,” O’Brien said.

They stood on the dock next to Jupiter and fielded questions. The journalists now numbered seventeen. Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC, BBC, Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, A.P., local TV reporters and freelancers. Nine satellite news trucks beamed the interviews live to television and news websites. “Did you bring up the cylinders marked U-235?” asked an A.P. reporter.

“No,” O’Brien said.

“Can you find the sub again with GPS readings?” asked a Fox reporter.

“Didn’t get them, it was all a little overwhelming.”

To Jason, a reporter asked, “How did your girlfriend get pictures from inside the U-boat on her Facebook page?”

Jason glanced at O’Brien for a second. “Umm, she sorta downloaded it off my camera-phone to her computer and posted them.”

“Weren’t you quoted as saying you thought you could go back out there and find the U-boat?” asked a local TV reporter.

“Umm, I may have said that … I was kinda bragging in front of my girlfriend … but I really couldn’t … you know … I wasn’t operating the boat. I’m not exactly sure where we were when the anchor got caught.”

“Mr. Cronus, we understand you were the first to discover the U-boat,” said a CNN reporter. “How many cylinders of U-235 did you see?”

“Same as what Sean saw, two. No more, no less.”

The New York Times’ reporter asked, “Why did you all tell the Coast Guard you didn’t find a U-boat when, in fact, you’d just come from diving around one?”

O’Brien said, “As a sailor, you have reverence for ships and those who went down with them. Nick dove down there, found the sunken U-boat. We figured the sub and its sailors had been lying out there since World War II, so we might as well leave them alone. I’m sure the families back in Germany would appreciate that. Thank you, we’ve got to be moving on and get ready for a charter.”

Rashid Aamed stood in his posh Miami Beach condo and turned the sound up on the television. He was tall, with dark hair perfectly parted, and eyebrows like wire stitched in his coffee-colored skin. He watched the conclusion of the live interview from the marina, his black eyes following every word, every gesture from the men being interviewed. Two are lying , he thought. However, the tall one, the one who did most of the talking, his body language was too natural to indicate deceit. Aamed scribbled notes on a piece of paper and punched numbers into a cell phone. “Listen closely,” he began in Arabic. “There may be an opportunity to retrieve what we’ve been waiting for.”

“I understand,” said a staccato voice.

“I will explain in detail later. But for now the place is called Ponce Marina, near Daytona Beach. Go there. The boat is named Jupiter . You know what to do.”

It was mid afternoon when Dave Collins finally had more than he could stomach of the all-news cable channels. “Hitler’s last sub,” said a voice-over with an image of the conning tower that had the number 236 on it. “Could Hitler’s last U-boat have carried nuclear bomb material? We’ll have more on the find off the coast of Florida and whether you and your family could be at risk today. Stay tuned for Fox Report tonight at six.”

Dave lifted the remote and turned off the small television in Gibraltar . Five seconds later his cell phone rang. No caller ID. The man said, “Dave, there’s been some internet chatter that concerns us.”

“What kind of chatter, Hamilton?”

“In reference to the find your friends stumbled upon.”

“Who’s talking?”

“We suspect an Iranian connection through an extremist, a man by the name of Abdul-Hakim. He has strong ties to Hezbollah. Suspected connections to those who took over after bin Laden was killed.”

Dave was quiet a beat. “Oh, what a lovely bunch. They can’t make their own stuff so they want to steal it from Nazi ghosts. I appreciate your help earlier in sending the documents to me. I know some are still classified.”

“No problem. Sixty-seven years ago, the Navy suspected the sub was Germany’s last. Its’ cargo was suspect, too. A similar cargo on one of the two surrendered subs confirmed what was listed on the manifest. They were carrying HEU. Your marina pals found what the Navy never did after they dropped depth-charges on it.”

“Maybe, in recent years, one of these underwater burps, a small quake or a storm, shook the sand off it. A lucky find, I suppose.”

“Not lucky if it falls into the wrong hands. The chatter indicates movement is happening right now. We don’t have time to immediately neutralize the area and remove the material. It’s not dangerous unless it’s opened, and it can’t ignite unless it’s detonated with high-speed electrical switches.”

Dave nodded. “I understand.”

“Can we trust the two men who found the HEU to deliver it to us, all of it?”

“Sean O’Brien and Nick Cronus are standup guys. Both come with a strong sense of ethics and patriotism. O’Brien’s a former homicide detective. The guy can read people, faces, the most minuscule stain on a shirt, even a trace of grease in a knuckle that wasn’t washed off. He can replay a crime backwards in his mind, retrace the trajectory of bullets, and formulate quickly where perpetrators stood-the talent to see what others often don’t.”