Tom Lowe - The Black Bullet

May 19, 1945

Billy Lawson smelled it before he saw it. Something was out there. Beyond the breakers and hidden in the veil of night. When the silhouette appeared, he wasn’t sure it was really there. Clouds smothered a three-quarter moon over the ocean, and the image, a hundred yards off shore, faded to black. The breeze let Billy know it was near. The odor of diesel fumes, salt and baitfish blew across the surface of the ocean-a ghost wind delivering something felt but obscured in the dark.

There was the drone of engines, throaty growls similar to a pride of lions after a fresh kill, mixing with the crash of the breakers. Could be a boat in distress stuck on a sandbar , he thought. But there were no running lights. Maybe just hearing and seeing things again. Couldn’t tell sometimes, not since the injuries in the war. Smells and tastes all messed up-a ringing in the left ear that only stopped when sleep came.

The wounds on his chest had beaded into scar tissue, but sometimes, in the middle of the night, the horror in his dreams was as deafening as the night a mortar exploded in the center of Company C. He’d left that world-that war-in Europe. Back in Florida, after a month of rehab, he could walk with only a slight limp, and he could throw a cast net with the best of them. He readied his net once more. Maybe get it a few feet beyond the breakers. Let it fall around the fat mullet and flounder. He had only three mullet in the bucket behind him wedged in the sand. He thought of his pregnant wife, Glenda, and he threw with all his strength. Casting to put food on their table.

As the net hit the dark surface, a cloud parted in front of the moon. Before the net could sink to the bottom, Billy saw the thing.

Something long and dark.

No lights.

His pulse pounded, hair rising on the back of his neck. It looked like some sea serpent lying about a hundred yards off shore. “Jesus,” Billy muttered. He ignored the punching of fish in his net and stared at the ship. But it was no ship in the traditional sense. Billy Lawson knew it was a submarine. It wasn’t supposed to be there.

Neither was a life raft.

The raft was maybe eighty yards off shore and coming toward the beach.

Who were they?

Billy watched for a moment, the flashes of white in the water on either side of the raft, the paddles breaking the surface, creating a phosphorescent green glow in the ocean, the smolder of the moon leaving a trail of broken light.

“Time to get,” he whispered.

Billy felt his heart in his throat. He pulled in his cast net. It was heavy with fish, the night air thick and humid, mosquitoes orbiting his head. The salty sting of sweat rolled into his eyes while he tugged at the net. No time to sort the fish. “Ya’ll got lucky,” he mumbled, emptying his catch back into the sea.

Something wasn’t right. The war had been over for two weeks. Was it a German U-boat? Japanese? American? Who was in the life raft?

Seventy yards away and coming.

He could feel it-a signal buried in his heart, almost like the night he could feel the impending destruction when Company C was caught off guard. But tonight Billy had seen the men in the life raft and hoped they hadn’t seen him. He slung the net over his shoulders, lifted his fish bucket, and tried to run up the beach, ignoring the pain in his knee. In less than one hundred feet, he’d be where his old truck was parked under a canopy of palms, next to Highway A1A.

Billy set the fish bucket in the corner of the truck-bed, laid the net around it for support, and searched for his keys.

Gone.

In his haste to leave, he’d left his keys and his Zippo lighter on the beach. He crept behind palms and sea oats. The men were now close to the breakers. Too near to get his keys. He thought of Glenda. Saw her growing stomach, a stomach he placed his hand against only a few hours ago, feeling the kick of the child inside. He heard Glenda’s laugh when he’d asked if it hurt when ‘she’ kicked.

“How do you know it’s a she?” Glenda had asked.

“ Just feel it inside. Gonna be a daughter.”

The sound of German broke his thoughts. The men were rowing through the breakers, and one man was giving orders, trying to keep his voice down, but having to shout over the waves.

German. Billy was damn glad he’d left quickly. He squatted down and watched the men get out of the raft. Six of them. Four looked to be dressed in German military uniforms. Two other men, shorter, were in civilian clothes and looked Asian. The men carried canisters, each about three feet long. One German sailor carried a shovel.

Had they come to bury something?

Billy held his breath as the men walked right past his keys and lighter. They were in a hurry, the weight of the canisters slowing them in the sand. The two men in civilian clothes walked in front. One tall sailor, who Billy assumed was an officer, pointed towards Matanzas Inlet and said something in quick German.

Although the war in Europe had ended, this was American soil, and Billy Lawson was no longer on active duty. He was serving his last six months of his enlistment on a disability deferment. Maybe he was out of uniform, but he felt something in his heart that was protective-a defiance. They were not supposed to be here. But they were. What the hell did they think they were doing here? He hadn’t lost half his Army buddies, part of his left knee, some of the flesh on his ass, to sit and watch a small squadron of German sailors come to hide something on American soil. Hell no.

Billy Lawson reached under the seat of his truck and found the short-nosed.38 he’d carried for safety. He stayed in the shadows of the palms and followed the men.

Just get the keys and go , Billy told himself. Go! Run! The Germans would see him if he walked down near the water’s edge to search for his keys. Just wait them out. See what the bastards are doing and report everything as quickly as possible to the Navy base in Jacksonville. If he could reach them, they might capture or bomb the U-boat.

Billy kept behind the trees and sea oats as he followed the men around a bend at the mouth of the inlet. In the distance, a wink of light popped over the horizon from the St. Augustine lighthouse. A green sea turtle crawled from the surf. She would dig a hole to lay her eggs. The men ignored the sea turtle. They were near the 250-year-old Fort Matanzas. The old Spanish fort, with its tower and coquina stone, was a dark gothic sentry, and now a silent witness to another round of military history. The men sloshed through ankle-deep water in the inlet, stopped near a live oak gnarled from time and weather, and started digging.

Billy hid behind sea oats, watching the men finish the hole. Gotta phone Glenda.

There was movement.

Someone hiding behind dunes and palmettos approached the men. They stopped digging and spoke. Under the moonlight, he could tell that the man who walked up to the Germans was dressed like an American. It looked like they were exchanging something.

As they began shoveling sand back into the pit, one of the men dressed in civilian clothes stopped and said something to the German officer. The officer shook his head and dismissed whatever it was the shorter man had said. Billy could hear the shorter man raise his voice. And the words were not German.