Tom Lowe

The Black Bullet

“There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago.”

— Robert Oppenheimer (“Father of the atomic bomb”)

CHAPTER ONE

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.

CHAPTER TWO

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.

He spoke heated Japanese.

Billy mumbled to himself, “Japs and Germans here on American soil … why?”

One of the other German soldiers stepped in and raised the shovel like he was going to hit the Japanese man standing next to him. The tall German officer pulled a pistol out of his holster and shot the German sailor in the head, his body crumpling next to the hole. The two Japanese men made a cursory bow to the officer and the man dressed in American clothes, before walking quickly toward Highway AIA.

Billy felt his heart hammer in his throat. He had to work to control his breathing. Calm. Stay calm.

He ran toward his truck. Could make it to get the keys. He turned and darted down the beach, dropping to his knees to search for his keys. The tide soaked his pants. Where are the keys? His hands fanned sand and rushing water. The keys seemed to tumble into his hand. Headlights from an approaching car punched through the tree line, and Billy became a moving shadow in the sand. He heard the Germans yell as he tried to run up the beach to the truck.

Run! His rebuilt knee snapped causing Billy to fall face down. He spat sand out of his mouth, lifted himself up, ignoring the pain, running as fast as he could. He saw the remaining sailors moving back in the direction of the life raft. They’d spotted Billy, no doubt. A German was missing. Maybe he left with the Japs. Deserted.

Billy jumped in his truck. The engine strained, sucking the life out of the old battery. “Start! Just fucking start!” The engine turned over and roared. Billy burned rubber going from sand to pavement.

He drove a mile to the A1A Bait ‘n Tackle, which he knew was closed. He pulled up to a phone booth and searched his pockets. One dime! Who to call? Glenda or the Navy? Phone Glenda and tell her what’s happening and tell her to call the Navy and the sheriff. What was his damn phone number? His index finger shook so hard he could barely get it in the rotary dial.

“Glenda!”

“Billy, what’s wrong?”

“Just listen. I just saw a murder!”

“What?”

“A German soldier shot another German soldier on the beach. There were six of them-four Germans and two Japanese. Another guy I think was American. He walked outta the bushes after the Germans and Japs came ashore in a life raft from a German U-boat sitting off the beach-”

“A what-”

“Listen, baby! They buried something on Rattlesnake Island! South of the fort. It’s in line with the light from the lighthouse passing through the tower window. Six o’clock position-maybe two hundred feet from the old fort. Call the Navy! Tell them there’s a German submarine lying about a quarter mile off Matanzas Pass. Tell them there’s been a killing on the beach. Tell them two Japs ran away! And tell them it looks like an American-maybe a spy-met them. The Japs headed north on A1A on foot. I don’t know what this is about. War in Europe is over, but the Japanese haven’t surrendered.”

“Oh God, Billy. Sweetie, this isn’t one of those flashbacks from the war-”

“Glenda! It’s real! Call them! I’m outta change. I’ll be home in a few minutes.”

Billy saw the reflection in the phone glass, a dark figure leaping from the truck-bed. Billy dug for his pistol as two bullets shattered the glass and slammed into his body.

“Billy!” The tiny voice came through the receiver. “Billy! Dear God, no!”

The man stood next to the phone booth and fired a third shot into Billy’s stomach and then ran. He jumped in the truck and drove away while Billy slid down the back wall of the booth. He sat in the broken glass and blood, nausea and bile rising in his throat.

Billy lifted a bloodied hand toward the phone hanging by the cord just out of reach. “Billy! Billy!” His wife’s cries sounded far away. He wanted to speak, to tell Glenda how much he loved her. To tell her goodbye … to have her put the phone on her stomach, right where he’d felt the little kick, to whisper his love to his unborn child. “Glenda ….” He coughed, the taste of blood like pennies in his mouth, his wife’s cries so distant now. Darkness covering him.

Billy heard the explosion of a mortar above Company C. The blast was the brightest white he’d ever seen, and he saw his wife’s smile somewhere in the absence of color. Felt the gentle kick of his baby on the tips of his fingers. The ringing in his left ear was now silent, the sound of the pounding surf across AIA the only noise in the night.

CHAPTER THREE

Florida, Present Day

Something about the way she walked caught Sean O’Brien’s eye. It was a typical Saturday afternoon at Ponce Marina, yet she stood out from the people milling around the docks. Boat owners, charter boat captains, deck hands, and tourists moved with the rhythm of the marina. Sunburned charter customers snapped pictures as first mates unloaded red snapper and dolphin at the fish cleaning stations. Pot-bellied pelicans waited patiently for fish heads and other handouts. The people and wildlife all seemed to move in sync.

She did not.

O’Brien stood in the fly bridge of his 38-foot boat and watched her walk down the long dock. The scent of fried grouper sandwiches from the Tiki Bar mixed with marine varnish, mangroves, and the smell of the sea. O’Brien, six-two, mid forties, dark hair, stopped sewing a small tear in the canvas top over the fly bridge as he observed the woman. She paused and started walking back toward the marina office, then turned around and came down the dock. Slowly. Almost cautiously.

Max barked.

O’Brien looked toward the cockpit where his miniature dachshund stood on a deck chair, eyes following an orange and black cat stalking a lizard on a dock post. “Stay away from ol’ Joe,” O’Brien said smiling. Max’s fur rose down her spine, and she looked up at O’Brien, her pink tongue visible, a sense of the hunt reflective in her brown eyes. “That cat is bigger than you, Max.”

O’Brien glanced toward the marina office and restaurant. The woman was closer. Less than seventy-five feet. O’Brien thought he recognized her, a distant memory like a hologram on the horizon in the shape of a woman he once knew. He climbed down from the bridge, petted Max on her back and said, “We have company coming-a lady. I want you on your best behavior.” Max seemed to nod as O’Brien went inside the salon. When he came out with a second canvas deck chair, the woman approached his boat.

“Hello, Sean. It’s been a long time.”

Max barked once, her tail a blur. “Maggie, it’s good to see you,” O’Brien said.

Maggie Canfield crossed her arms, the sea breeze teasing her auburn hair. In her early forties, she still had the striking good looks that O’Brien remembered twenty years earlier. She bit her bottom lip and offered a nervous smile. “I’m surprised you still recognize me.”

“The good things in life you try not to forget.”

She smiled. “But it’s often the bad things you remember because you try so hard to forget them.”

O’Brien said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

She blew out a breath, her eyes falling on Max. “You always liked animals. Somehow I pictured you with a German Shepherd or something.”

O’Brien set Max on the cockpit floor. “Max is the ‘something.’ There’s a long story behind her. Come aboard, Maggie, please.”

She took a seat in one of the deck chairs. O’Brien sat opposite her. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee? As I recall, you liked chardonnay.”

“You have a good memory. And you always saw things others seemed to miss.”

“Just observant.”

She smiled, her eyes now bright. “I think it was more than that. I won’t be long.”

“Take all the time you need … it’s only been twenty plus years.”

“How are you, Sean?”

“Can’t complain. I’m trying my hand at this charter boat thing. It’s a good way to make some money, especially during season. One of the guys, two boats down, a Greek with saltwater in his blood, is showing me the ropes.”

“I read a story in the News Journal that a former Miami homicide detective was starting a charter fishing business at Ponce Marina. When I saw your name, I knew it had to be you. I read about your wife … her death, when I went online. I want to….” Maggie paused, seemed to look at something over O’Brien’s shoulder for a moment, her caramel brown eyes falling back to his. “I was so sorry and sad for you when I heard about your wife’s death. After they killed my husband, Frank, I believe I could relate to your loss on a deeper level.” Her eyes watered.

O’Brien nodded. Silent. He waited for her to speak.

“God, look at me, Sean. I haven’t seen you in twenty two years, and I’m crying.”

“I’m sorry to hear about your husband’s death.”

She looked away, her eyes filling with guarded thoughts. She smiled, pushed a strand of hair behind her ear. She looked up at the fly bridge. “You always loved boats … sailboats I thought. But I guess you can’t charge people to fish from a sailboat. I live about two miles from the marina.”

“I’m sort of a recovering former homicide detective. Left it all behind in Miami. This boat’s twenty years old-owned by a former drug runner. I bought it in a DEA auction and brought it up here, hoping the Daytona area might open some new doors. Where I spend most of my time, though, is at an old house I’m fixing up on the banks of the St. Johns River about a half hour’s drive from here.” O’Brien touched the top of her hand. “Who killed your husband?”

“The same people who run in the pack of murderers responsible for the nine-eleven tragedies. Frank was one of seventeen killed during the attack on the USS Cole. Our son, Jason, was only ten when it happened-a horrible age for a boy to lose his father. Jason’s now a sophomore at Florida State University. I had a rough time; the single parent thing isn’t easy, especially with a boy. When he was fifteen, he got involved with the wrong crowd. Drugs. His attitude was so defensive. Somehow we pulled through. Now that he’s away in school, I think he’s developed a drinking problem. I’ve tried to talk with him, but he’s in denial. When he was home for spring break, I got really scared. I found him passed out in his car. Sean, he reeked of alcohol. An empty vodka bottle was on the floorboard, and he had his father’s picture against his chest.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“I feel odd about coming here, crying on your shoulder after all this time.”

“It’s okay. I can see you’re in pain.” O’Brien looked at her hands, his eyes tender, taking in her face. “You’re not sleeping. And I remember a woman who had manicured fingernails. Now they’re bitten down.”

Maggie folded her hands. O’Brien picked up Max and set her in his lap. “Max was Sherri's, my wife’s, idea. One she didn’t share with me until I came home from a week-long stakeout. Sherri said Max could keep her warm when I was away. Sounded like a fair trade. Now Max is my first mate here on the boat. Back at the house, she’s the boss, especially in the kitchen.”

“She’s so sweet.”

“She has her moods.”

“Sean, I feel weird, guilty coming here. It’s presumptuous for me to contact you after all these years, but I remember you as somebody a boy might look up to.”

O’Brien said nothing.

“Jason’s not a boy anymore, but God knows he’s not a man either. I was thinking that if you needed someone to work on your boat, help you with the charter fishing business, maybe you’d consider my son. He’s home for the summer. He’s always been a hard worker at his part-time jobs. He will-”

“It’s okay.” O’Brien smiled. “You’re all the referral I need. He’s hired.”

“Oh, Sean, thank you!” Her eyes watered. O’Brien lifted a hand, using his thumb to wipe a single tear from her right cheek.

He said, “You always had good cheekbones.”

“And you always had a good heart. I’d better be going now.” She stood to leave. O’Brien set Max down and walked with Maggie to give her a hands-up to the dock. “Jason will be so excited.” She hugged O’Brien. “When does he start?”

“He can come in for training tomorrow morning. Seven sharp.”

“Thank you. It’s good to see you, Sean. Seems like a lifetime ago.” She leaned in and embraced O’Brien, her hands holding onto his back and shoulders for a long moment. “Seven sharp,” she said, through damp eyes.

O’Brien watched her walk down the dock. “Max, ever wonder how the past often intersects the present and changes the future?” Max cocked her head. O’Brien said, “Gone fishing might take on a whole new meaning. Let’s go find Nick.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The following afternoon, O’Brien’s boat, Jupiter, was sixty miles out into the Atlantic when Max started pacing the cockpit.

“Bathroom break,” O’Brien said, setting Max on the boat’s dive platform. A sea gull flew over and squawked as Max squatted on the edge of the platform. She spread all four legs to balance herself above the gentle roll of the sea, looked up at O’Brien, who stood in the open cockpit, and released a stream that flowed through the slots in the platform into the Atlantic Ocean.

Jason Canfield said, “It’s pretty cool she knows where to pee.” He scratched the back of his sunburned neck. “What do you do when Max has to take a dump?” Jason grinned. O’Brien could see Maggie in her son’s bright face-high cheekbones, wide smile, gentle eyes. O’Brien also could smell the taint of cheap gin coming from the boy’s skin.

“We’ve never been out that long for Max to feel the urge,” said O’Brien, hosing off the platform as Max trotted back into the cockpit. “If she does, sounds like a job for our newest deckhand, though.” O’Brien turned to his friend, Nick Cronus and winked.

Nick, a Greek with a mop of curly black hair, wide moustache, playful dark eyes, crossed his Popeye forearms. “That’s the way it’s done in Greece. Mates get the shit duties ‘til they can buy their own boat.”

“Wait a sec,” protested Jason, “you guys never said anything about that.” He licked his dry lips. “I mean … I like Max, but-”

“Look at that,” O’Brien said, pointing to a bird.

A small black and white tern circled the boat twice and landed on top of the fly bridge. Nick looked at the bird, rubbed his thick mustache and said, “Birds bring good luck. They get tired flyin’ at sea. One time I was out about a week and had a little bird land on top of my head. Outta nowhere. Let the little fella stay in my hair for a while. Gave him some water and bread, you know.”

“What happed to the bird?” asked Jason.

“He stayed on the boat for a half day. When we got close to land, maybe ten miles out, he took off. But before he could fly home, a sea hawk-the osprey, come down and caught the little fella. Man, I felt awful.”

“That’s sad,” Jason said, petting Max.

O’Brien looked at the tern perched on his bridge. “Maybe our newest passenger will have better luck.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, grinning. “We’ll call him Lucky.”

“Lucky it is, Jason,” O’Brien said. “Let’s hope he brings us fishing luck.”

Nick grinned and added, “No luck in fishing, it’s an art. C’mon, we got to get our hook up and move to a better spot. Where’s the fish?” He ran a hand through his thick hair and climbed up the ladder to the fly bridge. Nick looked at the sonar fish finder, his eyes reading the bottom. He leaned out the bridge door. “We got some grouper comin’ in on port side. Jason, fish about seventy-five feet down.”

Jason nodded, put a fresh piece of bait on the hook and cast a few feet off the port side of the 38-foot Bayliner.

Nick cracked a beer, wiped the foam and ice from the top of the can, took a long swallow, and studied the readings he was getting from the ocean floor. His black eyes squinted as he watched the topography one hundred feet beneath Jupiter. Something was wrong. “Sean, come up and take a look.”

O’Brien climbed the steps to the bridge. “Have you spotted a big school of reds?”

“Naw, man. Something strange. We’re sixty miles in the Atlantic, in the Gulf Stream, water’s warmer here, but should be more fish. Bottom looks like a canyon. Lots of places for fish to make a home, you know? But look here … see … those dark shapes?”

O’Brien watched the screen. “Nature doesn’t design things in straight lines. Shipwreck maybe?”

Nick touched his thick index finger to the screen. “See those dark contours?”

“Yeah.”

“They’re deeper valleys-drops from seventy-five feet to more than two-hundred in the span of thirty yards. Man, I know I’ve fished this area before. Least I think I have. Don’t remember those shapes.”

“It’s a big ocean.”

“I don’t care if its thirty-million square miles. With GPS, I can find just about anything out here.”

“Find the fish.”

“I’m tryin’. Sean, first thing you gotta learn, if you want to be successful as a fishing guide, is patience. You get a couple of guys payin’ for your boat … you can’t show impatience. Your customers will pick up on it.”

“Where are the fish you spotted before Jason dropped his line?”

Nick pointed to the left of the screen. “They were right there. Now they‘re gone. Look, that’s a shark.”

O’Brien followed the tip of Nick’s finger on the monitor, the shadow in the deep slowly swimming off the screen. “Probably a bull,” Nick said. “Not huge, but big enough to chase off fish. That’s a pisser. Tell Jason to pull up the anchor. We’ll move on about a half mile west. We’re still gonna be in the Gulf Stream. The few reds we caught aren’t enough.”

O’Brien leaned out the bridge and told Jason to reel in the rod and hit the winch to bring up the anchor. To Nick he said, “You know, I had better luck catching killers than I’m having catching fish.”

“Sean, you are my friend. Stick with ol’ Nicky and I teach you how to catch killer fish. In no time, word will spread that Sean O’Brien knows the secrets of the fishing gods. Then ever’body wants to hire you and your boat. I help make a great friend a great fisherman!” Nick lifted his beer in a toast toward the sea and took a long pull off the can. Jupiter’s bow made a hard pitch causing Nick to spill beer on his tank top. “Shit!”

O’Brien stepped out of the bridge. Jason strained with the anchor rope near the bowsprit. He pressed his foot on the large button that controlled the winch. The motor slowed, making a sound like a chainsaw pinched in tough wood. “Anchor’s caught on something!” Jason shouted.

“Give it slack!” O’Brien said.

Nick stared at the screen. He yelled, “Give it more rope! I’ll move the boat to starboard ten meters and see if I can ease the anchor outta whatever’s got it.”

O’Brien turned to Nick. “Can you see where it’s stuck?”

“Naw, man. The anchor is still about two-hundred feet north of us and in ninety feet of water.” Nick eased the boat to the east as Jason released more rope.

Jason opened the anchor storage area. He took off his sunglasses to peer inside the dark cavity. “Looks like we only have a few more feet of rope.”

“I’m not gonna lose it,” Nick said, watching the bow and cutting his eyes to the depth finder. He reversed the engines and backed Jupiter slowly in the direction of the anchor. The rope went slack. Nick leaned his head out the bridge window. “Jason, hit the windlass. See if you can bring it up now.”

Jason nodded, starting the winch, the rope coiling nicely in the storage well. Then it was taught as a trapeze. “It’s caught!” He stopped the motor.

Nick put Jupiter in reverse. “Shit! Man, I can’t believe it’s snagged on something. What the hell’s down there?”

“Don’t know,” O’Brien said. “Let’s cut the rope.”

Nick shook his head, face filled with concern. “You do that and you lose a nice, expensive anchor.”

“Better than losing the bow trying to plow the ocean floor.”

Nick drained his beer. “I’m supposed to be teachin’ you, and we get the damn anchor caught. Can’t remember the last time I got one snagged.”

“Forget it. I’ll have Jason cut the rope.”

“No! I’ll go down and see if I can wedge it out.”

O’Brien looked at the depth chart. “It’s ninety feet down.”

“That’s nothing, man. You forget that I made a livin’ for ten years as a sponge diver. That depth is no big deal. When I was a kid in Greece I could free-dive it.” Nick climbed down the ladder and began strapping on a weight belt. He lifted a crowbar from the engine hole. “Jason, help me with this tank.” Nick pointed to one of the two SCUBA tanks in the corner of the cockpit and turned his back to Jason.

“What do you think has the anchor?” asked Jason, lifting the tank so Nick could get his arms through the straps.

Nick adjusted the tank on his back and grinned. “Maybe it’s a sea monster.” Nick carried a pair of fins to the bow, Max following at his heels. “Max, what do you think swallowed our anchor?” Max cocked her head and barked. Nick glanced up at O’Brien in the bridge. “I’m gonna follow the rope down to the hook. You make sure the rope stays slack, otherwise, even Hercules, my second favorite Greek god, wouldn’t have the strength to get it outta there.”

Nick jumped off the side of the boat as Max barked. He swam to the anchor rope, inhaled once through the regulator, and vanished into the cobalt blue sea.

Jason watched the bubbles and said to O’Brien, “Looks like a long way down.”

O’Brien stared at the fish-finder and could see Nick swimming down the rope. He glanced back at Jason. “I don’t know what he’ll find, but if anybody can free an anchor from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, it’s Nick Cronus.”

When O’Brien looked back at the screen, Nick was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

Nick Cronus almost wished he didn’t have the tank on his back. He always had the ability to descend to the ocean floor very fast. Sometimes he thought he might have had gills in another lifetime. Today, he felt the force of the Gulf Stream at his back, kicking the fins and shooting through the water like a human torpedo. His right hand slid down the rope, eyes scanning all around him as he descended.

The current gently pushed Nick down the long anchor rope, which ran at a perpendicular angle from the boat to the floor of the sea. He figured he was already out of Jupiter’s sonar radius unless Sean was quick to follow the rope.

At a depth of seventy feet, the dwindling sunlight turned the ocean floor into shades of merlot and purple. Nick could see he was descending on top of an underwater canyon that looked like a long crevice that had opened, causing a fracture on the bottom of the sea. The sand resembled underwater hills that faded into a blend of muted colors, slow dancing like a sea-induced hallucination.

“I’ve lost Nick on the screen,” O’Brien said, starting the diesels. “Don’t use the winch. Use your hands and pull the rope in hand-over-hand, not too tight, but enough so I can see which direction Nick swam. Maybe I can follow him.”

“Okay,” Jason said, not stopping to pick up the sunglasses that fell off his face as he leaned over and began coiling the anchor rope into the storage well.

Max trotted to the edge of Jupiter, where she had last seen Nick. She looked at the small swells and barked once, watching Jason pull up rope.

“I see Nick,” shouted O’Brien, looking at the screen. “I think he’s on top of whatever is holding the anchor.” O’Brien could make out two odd shapes, shapes that didn’t look like the natural topography of the ocean floor. He could see Nick was right in the center of them.

Nick wasn’t quite sure what to make of his surroundings. Maybe there had been some crazy earthquake out here recently, he thought. Maybe the waves from the last big storm churned this stuff up. The bottom was cracked like a bowl. What were the two long broken shapes, one with some kind of tower on it? He had seen plenty of shipwrecks in his time. He wasn’t certain even if it was a ship. Mother Nature didn’t cough up some broken cylinder out of the hole. It came from the surface, and it sank a long time ago. But it wouldn’t make sense, not off the shores of Florida.

He followed the rope to where it was caught on a twisted chunk of coral that stuck out from one part of the giant cylinder like a broken bird wing. Nick used the crowbar to chip away the barnacles. He saw the dark pewter of metal, tarnished like unpolished silver. It was some kind of ship’s hull. Blown apart. Maybe hit by a bomb years ago. How long had it been here? What kind of ship was it?

The other section was scattered about one hundred feet away. Both pieces of the ship were half buried in the sand like the remnants of a giant’s toy long ago forgotten and left in an underwater sandbox.

Nick had an eerie feeling sweep through his body. Maybe it’s an underwater grave? He used the crowbar to work the anchor. It was lodged in the twisted metal as if it was caught in the petrified jaw of an extinct leviathan whose gaping mouth had turned to stone.

A moray eel slid from a cranny underneath the structure. It darted by Nick’s leg and retreated to another massive piece of pretzel-like metal thick with barnacles. Nick pulled the knife out of its sheath on his belt and began scraping away barnacles so he could see where to apply the crowbar.

He saw it out of the corner of his left eye. Something white. Motionless. Something very out of place.

Nick looked farther inside the hull. A human skeleton was trapped upright like a scarecrow in shards of torn metal and dappled bluish light. It seemed to stare back at Nick. The eye cavities dark and vacant. Small fish swam through the shattered rib cage. The skull’s lower jawbone was gone. There was a second skeleton lying in a fetal position near a crushed table.

Nick felt cold. A chill ran through his body as he sucked in the compressed, cool oxygen a tad too quick. He made the sign of the cross, dropped the crowbar at his feet, and swam for the surface toward the promise of bright sky and warm air.

CHAPTER SIX

“There he is!” shouted Jason as Nick popped to the surface about thirty feet off the bow. O’Brien nodded and cut the diesels, letting Nick swim to the dive platform behind the cockpit.

“Sean!” yelled Nick, kicking the fins and paddling to the stern.

O’Brien knew something had shaken up Nick. He scaled down the ladder to the cockpit. Max and Jason joined him as Nick tossed the fins up on the platform, removed his face mask and said, “Somebody get me a beer!”

“You see a shark or something?” Jason asked.

“I saw something! That’s for damn sure.” Nick touched the cross hanging around his neck before he pulled himself up on the platform. “Sean, you got the damn anchor caught in the gates of hell!”

O’Brien smiled. “I’ve told you not to dive down so fast. Deprives oxygen from the brain.” He grinned and tossed a towel to Nick.

“I’m freakin’ serious as a heart attack.”

“Was the anchor caught on a reef?”

“A manmade reef. Looks like you caught an old submarine.”

“A what?”

Jason handed Nick a beer. “A sub! Cool. Maybe it was from the war, the Germans or even the Japs. Dude, I want to see it.”

Nick took a long pull from the can, wiped the foam from his mustache with the back of a hand and shook his head. “No you don’t. Place is full of bodies.”

“Bodies?” Jason’s eyes popped.

“Skeletons, man. Long time ago picked clean by crabs and whatnot. I feel bad for whoever those guys are … were.” Nick sipped the beer and flopped in a deck chair. He set the beer at his feet and extended both hands. “I’m shakin’ like a damn leaf.”

O’Brien said, “Where was the anchor?”

“Caught in a bunch of twisted metal. Looks like whatever’s down there got hit by a bomb or something. Blew the thing in half. That was what we saw on the sonar. The straight lines, man. They are two long pieces from a submarine.”

“A sub! That’s pretty wild,” Jason said.

“How many bodies did you see?” O’Brien asked. “Where exactly were they?”

“Right inside the biggest piece of the sub. Saw at least two. The freaky thing is one of ‘em is caught in the splintered metal. It’s kinda like the poor dude was running or something. Sort of blew up in his face and caught him from fallin’ down. Spooky. No, it looks evil.” Nick touched the crucifix lying against his chest, picked up his beer, and drained the can, crushing it with one hand.

O’Brien knelt down by Max and rubbed her behind the ears. “Could be a lost sub from World War II. Did you see any identification, insignias, or any numbers?”

“Sean, you’re back in cop mode. It’s not some crime scene.”

“Is the anchor still stuck?”

“Yeah. After I saw the stick man standing there at the door, fish swimmin’ outta the fuckin’ eye sockets, I sort of lost it and headed north. Dropped the crowbar.”

“Let’s go get it,” O’Brien said smiling.

Nick’s eyebrows arched. “Go get it? That’s a freakin’ graveyard! Got to respect the dead! Let it be. I shoulda let you do like you wanted-cut the damn rope.”

“I’ll go with you, Sean,” Jason said, glancing down at the crushed can of beer.

O’Brien put his arm around Jason’s shoulder. “It’s pretty deep. Nick will go back down. He’s done a thousand dives at this depth. If we have two divers down, we’ll need a man on deck for safety. We need you up here, okay?”

“No problem. I saw that underwater camera up in the fly bridge. Maybe when you go down you could snap a couple of pictures?”

“Good idea. I’ll get it.” O’Brien climbed back to the bridge. He picked up the small digital camera with the underwater housing. He looked down into the cockpit where Nick was preaching to Jason about desecrating the dead. Maybe the less the kid knew, the better, O’Brien thought. If it was a relic from World War II, what was it doing sixty miles off the Florida coast? And why was the sub never spotted? Leave well enough alone. He glanced at the GPS numbers and committed them to memory.

Max barked. From the bridge, O’Brien could see a sailboat less than two hundred yards off starboard. He could tell a woman was sunning near the bow and wore nothing but her sun block. He disconnected the GPS and climbed down the ladder.

“Check out the sailboat,” Jason said.

“Better check out the lady on deck,” Nick said, standing and inhaling through his nostrils like a bull snorting.

O’Brien said, “Jason, while Nick and I are down there, if any boat approaches, just make casual conversation. At this time, it’s probably not smart to talk about some sunken submarine. There’ll be a time and place. Okay?”

Jason half smiled. “No problem. I’ll hang out with Max.”

O’Brien turned to Nick. “You good to go back down?”

“It goes against my Greek Orthodox religion. But as scared as I was starin’ into the face of skeletons, I’m more afraid to let you go down there alone to get your anchor.”

“How much sunlight is getting to the bottom?”

“Could use a flashlight to see farther in the hull. Not that I really want to see.”

O’Brien opened a storage compartment and took out two underwater flashlights. He said, “I guess the only way to see what’s there is to take a look.” He slipped on a pair of fins and a mask and then knelt to lift the tank onto his back.

As O’Brien and Nick stood on the dive platform, adjusted their masks and tested their regulators, Nick said, “You got no fear for this weird stuff … dead people.”

“That’s usually what you’d see at a homicide scene.”

“Maybe this wasn’t a crime. Just something that happened in the war.”

“Just tell yourself we’re going down to free the anchor.” O’Brien dropped backwards into the sea.

Nick shook his head and mumbled, “Why did I volunteer to teach him how to find fish. He caught a monster.” Nick looked up and saw the tern fly from the bridge. “Not a good sign,” he said to Jason. “Lucky’s gone.” Then Nick dropped back in the sea. Max darted around the cockpit and barked.

Jason yelled, “Bring back some good pictures! Freakin’ skeletons, that’s insane.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

O’Brien dodged a plate-sized jellyfish, tentacles more than three feet in length, as he found the anchor rope and followed it into the abyss. Nick was at his side, descending through the warm currents of the Gulf Steam. The anticipation of discovering a lost ship, maybe a relic from some war, kicked in strong. The adrenaline was pumping through O’Brien’s blood the deeper he went and the closer he came to the shipwreck.

When they were fifty feet from the bottom, O’Brien had to remind himself not to suck all of the air from the tank. The human eye could pick up what the sonar couldn’t. Human tragedy.

It was a submarine, and it was a big one. O’Brien guessed that between the two huge pieces, the sub would have been more than three hundred feet in length. He could make out the conning tower, a chimney-like structure built atop some World War II subs. He forced himself to control his breathing.

O’Brien knew the tower was usually near the center of a U-boat, a place used for greater visibility when the sub was on the surface. The tower was where he might find the sub’s ID number. But as they descended closer, O’Brien didn’t need a number to tell him what he already knew.

A German U-boat.

Although the tower was covered in barnacles, there was no mistaking the maritime monster sleeping quietly beneath them.

Nick tapped O’Brien’s arm and pointed toward the anchor lodged in the section without the tower. O’Brien followed Nick down to the ocean floor. Nick picked up the crowbar and twisted the shards of metal. A small brown cloud drifted from the barnacles and wandered in the current like dust blown off attic furniture. Within a few minutes, Nick managed to create a hole large enough to free the anchor. O’Brien helped him lift it out of the tangle, the anchor falling to the sandy floor.

Nick gave O’Brien the thumbs up sign, motioning for them to swim back to the surface. O’Brien shook his head and pointed to the torn opening in the hull. He gestured for Nick to follow him, gently tugging at Nick’s elbow. Through the face mask, O’Brien could see Nick’s dark eyes wide with disbelief. Reluctantly, Nick followed.

The flashlight beams traveled deep into the hull. Small fish and plankton were caught in the light like alien life forms in a tiny galaxy of eternal night. O’Brien looked at the first skeleton, the one Nick had described as “standing.” It was propped up, captured by the force of a blast that had splintered the sub. O’Brien swam inside, keeping a respectable distance from the human remains. He saw the second skeleton lying on its side, bony arms over the skull as if the victim had been shielding his head when he died. O’Brien saw an algae-covered holster still strapped to the remains. He could tell the holster was made for a German Luger.

O’Brien turned, expecting to see Nick right behind him. Nick stood at the entrance, his flashlight illuminating an erect skeleton. O’Brien signaled. Nick made the sign of the cross and swam between both skeletons, not looking at either, quickly catching up with O’Brien who was more than thirty feet into one half of the U-boat.

O’Brien aimed his light at a metal desk that had toppled upside down. He picked up a dinner plate that was not broken and turned it over. On the bottom was an emblem of a golden eagle. He felt his heart race as he handed the plate to Nick who nodded and gently returned it to the floor.

There were more than a dozen skeletons scattered throughout the sub. Most were lying face down. As O’Brien swam over them, he thought about the horror of their deaths. The plight of their last minutes on earth caused his chest to tighten, their frightened misery somehow still present in the dark, confined waters. The explosion, followed by the sub plummeting to the ocean floor, an iron coffin in a dark vortex, would have created a shared terror for the encapsulated men in their final seconds. Who were they? Did their families have any idea they were here, so close to America? At what point in the war was the sub hit?

As a detective, he always felt it was his job to speak for the dead, at least those murdered. He had never been around as many dead that lay broken like human china. Were more in the other half of the sub? Did the U.S. government know this was here?

O’Brien noticed something strange in a place where everything was mysterious.

A jet engine.

There was no mistaking the barnacle encrusted turbines, the air intake, the torpedo-like shape of the housing. How did a small jet engine, probably something that was destined for a fighter jet, get into a German U-boat? O’Brien pointed the engine out to Nick, who shrugged and held both palms up.

He aimed the flashlight through some of the metal slates in a crate. A plastic canopy, one that would cover a jet pilot, was there along with tires and assorted jet parts. O’Brien thought the sub was carrying enough cargo to assemble two small fighter jets. He pulled the camera from his swimsuit pocket and snapped a picture of the engine.

A larger crate sat behind the one with the jet engine protruding from it. The enclosure resembled a giant crab trap, metal slats welded like a cage, and inside were two canisters, each about three feet long.

Nick looked at his watch and the gauge that indicated he had less than ten minutes of air in his tank. He breathed slowly and watched as O’Brien opened the solid steel crate. He reached inside and struggled to bring out one of the canisters. Even underwater it was heavy. Nick trained the light on the top of the container.

The label read: U-235.

Nick shined the light on the second container: U-235. O’Brien gently set the canister back in the cage and snapped a picture. Maybe the sub was U-boat 235. The canisters were cylinder-like. O’Brien signaled Nick to follow him out of the sub. He thought he saw Nick grin behind the regulator clinched in his teeth.

O’Brien snapped a picture of one skeleton as he swam out of the broken sub and over to the conning tower. The tower was covered in thick barnacles. O’Brien used the knife he’d strapped on his belt to chisel through the crustaceans. The barnacles fell like bark from a stripped tree.

Nick tapped O’Brien and pointed to the air gauge. He had six minutes of air remaining. O’Brien nodded, looked at his gauge and moved the knife along the conning tower faster. Within a minute he could read: 2 3-the last number still too covered in barnacles to see. He used both hands to scrape and break away enough covering to reveal the faded white number, a worn down inscription on a long-forgotten tombstone.

2 3 6

O’Brien nodded to Nick and pointed toward the surface. He looked at Nick who seemed delighted to be leaving the dead. O’Brien hoped the labels on the box they’d found in the cage were some kind of misprints. He knew the numbers on the conning tower were accurate, and they didn’t match the labels on the two mysterious cylinders.

Maybe the German’s loaded the cargo into the wrong sub. Maybe the cargo was meant for a U-boat named U-235. If not, O’Brien thought that he and Nick just chiseled the top off a modern Pandora’s Box. That thought alone sent a chill down his spine in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. Because below them might be enough uranium to make an atomic bomb.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“You guys were down a long time!” Jason almost shouted, helping O’Brien and Nick out of their SCUBA tanks. “What’d you see? How many skeletons?”

“Too many,” Nick said, running a hand through his wet hair.

“Get some pictures?”

“Sean did. Just like a crime scene photographer.”

Jason grinned, “Can I see whatcha got?”

O’Brien set the camera next to his wet fins and SCUBA tank in the corner near the salon door. He said, “I shot a few pictures of some stuff we found on the sub, at least the half of the sub we explored. We didn’t have enough air to venture into the other half. Looks like it was blown apart. Severed by a huge blast. Bombed, maybe.”

“What’d you guys find?”

Nick shook his head. “A friggin’ jet engine-”

O’Brien interjected. “Jason, why don’t you take Max to the bow and bring up the anchor. You shouldn’t have any problems with it now.”

“Okay … did you see a jet engine down there, too?”

O’Brien smiled. “We’re not sure what we saw. Probably just some long lost relic from World War II.”

“That’s awesome. If the charter fishing biz fizzles, we can bring divers out here. Wreck diving is huge. C’mon, Max.” Jason walked to the bow and started the windlass.

“Nick, you’ve earned that beer,” O’Brien said, motioning for Nick to follow him into the salon. O’Brien entered the galley and brought two cold Coronas from the refrigerator. “Salute. You make a hell of an adventure diver.”

Nick swallowed a mouthful of beer. “Yeah, I can do without these kinds of adventures. Nothing in Poseidon’s big ocean ever bothered me like what we just saw down there. And that sure looked like a jet engine to me.”

“That U-boat was carrying more than pieces of jets. The less a kid like Jason knows the better. I promised his mom I’d keep an eye on him. It’s more than just a summer job … he had a rough time after his dad was killed. He’s already tried to numb the pain with drugs, now she suspects he’s drinking too much. He’s a good kid, and I don’t want to jeopardize his safety. And his mother’s an old friend of mine.”

Nick’s eyebrows rose. “What do you mean by safety?”

“We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. Let’s be cautious. We think it’s a German sub because of the emblem on that dinner plate we found. There could be some dangerous material inside those canisters marked U-235.”

“What kind of material?”

“When I first saw them, with the U-235 markings, I assumed the sub was a German U-boat, U-235. But when we scraped the barnacles off one side of the conning tower and I saw the number 236, I knew the sub had to be U-boat 236.”

“Maybe the Germans just got the numbers wrong on the boxes.”

“Based on the size of this sub and the other cargo it was carrying, the jet fighters in crates, the sub may have been on a secret mission, especially if it went down toward the end of the war.”

“Talk to me, Sean. I’m just a fisherman, you were the cop.”

“I’d read once that Nazi Germany was very close to developing the atomic bomb. We managed to beat them and the Japanese. Nuclear bombs sealed the end of the war.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Those canisters marked U-235 could be carrying enriched uranium.”

“You mean the shit they put in the bombs?” Nick shook his head.

“Exactly. U-235 is the accepted abbreviation for Uranium-235. It’s highly enriched uranium. Some call it HEU.”

Nick took a long swallow from his beer, his face blooming with heat and alcohol, eyes watering a second. He glanced out the salon window, watched Jason with the anchor for a moment. “Sean, man, you did drop the hook on the gates of hell. What do we do? Who can we tell? This could be some big damn deal.”

“You can’t say anything to anyone about this. Not until we can clear up what may be down there. If it’s HEU, terrorists would like to get their hands on it.”

Nick let out a slow whistle and went to the galley for two more beers. He said, “Maybe the stuff in the boxes expired. World War II was a long time ago.”

“That stuff doesn’t expire. Let’s get Jupiter back to the marina. Maybe Dave Collins is on his boat. Dave is the only one we can mention this to.”

“You mean because of his background with the government?”

“That, and because he’s the only one we can trust right now.”

Nick popped the caps off the Coronas, handed one to O’Brien, and then sat in the captain’s chair in the lower station. He sipped his beer and set it near the control panel. Nick’s eyes narrowed. “What happen to the GPS down here? Looks dead?”

“I turned if off.”

“Sean, you don’t even trust me? C’mon.”

“It has nothing to do with trusting you. If you don’t know exactly where this thing is located, and Jason either, then you two won’t be able to tell anyone … under any circumstances.”

“You know I won’t say nothin’ to nobody.”

“I believe you. But no one knows what you’d say when someone starts cutting your fingers off-one by one.”

Jason held the digital camera in his hands as he walked inside the salon with Max at his heels. He said, “Cool, pictures. That does look like a jet engine. You should let me build a website for you. We could stick these pictures on it. You know … advertise for fishing and wreck diving. What’s this U-235 mean? Is that the name of the U-boat?”

CHAPTER NINE

O’Brien gunned Jupiter, the twin diesels churning and heading back to port for more than an hour before he turned on the GPS. He called Jason up to the bridge and let him take over the wheel. Nick sat on one of the cushioned chairs, beer in hand, Max sleeping beside him.

O’Brien said, “Jason, we’ve got a charter next Friday. We need to be through the pass and heading for open water by seven a.m. You should have everything prepped, rods, bait, and ice ready by six. We’ll need to have the food stocked the night before the charter.”

“No problem,” he said, eyes scanning the horizon as Jupiter plowed across the azure surface. “Are we bringing Max?”

“I have an elderly couple, neighbors, near my place on the St. Johns River. Great dog sitters, so she’ll be with them.”

Jason flashed a boyish smile. “She’s a cool dog. She really likes it when Nick starts cooking. Amazing what that little dachshund can hold in her stomach. Mom told me you had a dog. How’d a big guy like you pick such a small dog?”

O’Brien laughed. “My wife bought Max, unknown to me, as her buddy. When Sherri died, it was just Max and me. Sherri named her Maxine. The name Max just stuck when I started taking care of her. Now we’re partners in the fishing biz. Don’t let her know she’s not a Labrador.”

Jason laughed. “You have a good teacher in Nick.” He glanced back at Nick. “He’s sleeping. Cutting Zs, like Max.”

“I’ve been lucky to have Nick show me the ropes, the best places to fish, and you to help. Sounds like the making of a powerhouse team.”

“Cool. I really appreciate you hiring me. I know you didn’t have to do it.”

“We’ll make a good band of brothers. For your own good, don’t tell anyone what we found out there today. Not even your mom. Promise me you can keep a secret. I need to notify the proper authorities at the right time. The worst thing that could happen is for the media to know about this. It’d be a circus out there.”

“It’s just an old World War II U-boat. I’d read there were a bunch of them in the Battle of the Atlantic during the early part of the war. Looks like you and Nick found one that wasn’t lucky enough to limp back to Germany.”

“Just keep it under your hat.” He watched Jason’s eyes, the wavered movement, the licking of lips, tightening of hands on the wheel. “Want to talk about it? What’s on your mind, Jason?”

“Before you told me not to say anything to anybody, Dave Collins called on the marine radio. You and Nick were down on the bottom. Dave was asking me how fishing was. I told him we hadn’t caught much, a few snappers. Then I said we might have caught an old submarine with skeletons in it. He was like real cool, you know? He said he was looking forward to Nick making Greek submarine sandwiches when we got back to the dock. I said we ought to be coming through Ponce Inlet in a few hours, but he’d already gone off the radio. I don’t think he heard me.”

“I wonder how many others did. Which channel?”

“What?”

“The frequency. Which channel did you use?”

“Thirty-six, I think.”

“On the bridge or below?”

“Below.”

“You sure? Go check. See what channel the radio’s set to.”

“Okay, sorry. I didn’t-”

Jason got out of the captain’s seat and started down the ladder. Nick opened one eye and grunted. “Jason hit a buoy?” he asked.

“We’re not that close in yet. But he might as well have hit an iceberg.”

“What do you mean?”

“Dave Collins called on the radio when you and I were underwater. Jason told him we’d found a submarine with bodies. Dave, with all his years of training, ignored it with a casual comeback about you making submarine sandwiches.”

Nick leaned back in the cabin, rubbed his chest. “We could be screwed.”

Jason, cheeks flamed, breathing heavy, flew back up the steps. He made a dry, forced swallow. “It’s channel thirty-six.”

Nick said, “If you and Dave talked on thirty-six, that’s good. Not many people on that frequency.”

O’Brien said, “It’s the channel used by some of the commercial boats. Maybe a drug runner or two. Which means it’s monitored by the Coast Guard.”

Nick stood and stepped closer to one of the rolled up isinglass windows, the breeze in his face, his hair rising like bird wings flapping on the side of his head. He lifted binoculars from the console and looked at the horizon in all directions. “You ever feel like uninvited company’s comin,’ you just don’t know when?”

“Let’s get something straight from this point forward,” O’Brien said. “We saw nothing. The casual remark you made was because we couldn’t figure out what snagged the anchor and you were goofing around, joking. It could have been a submarine or any ship or plane wreck on the bottom of the ocean. Understand?”

Jason nodded. “I apologize. I didn’t think … just being dumb.”

O’Brien couldn’t help but feel sorry for the kid. He said, “The genie’s out of the bottle. Don’t beat yourself up, okay? You got the call from Dave before I saw what was down there and told you not to say anything.”

“You’re right about that ol’ genie,” Nick said. “Looks like we got a boat coming north outta Jacksonville. That’s where the Navy keeps the real subs.”

“Is it Navy?” asked O’Brien.

Nick stared through the binoculars for a long moment. “Don’t think it’s Navy. Still way too far off. But whoever it is, they’re in a big hurry.”

CHAPTER TEN

It took O’Brien less than twenty minutes to get within a half mile of Ponce Inlet. The lighthouse, highest in the Southeast, stood like a sentry near the inlet. Jason and Max stepped up to the bowsprit, the water spray keeping them both cool. O’Brien and Nick remained in the wheelhouse.

Nick said, “Looks like, whoever and whatever that boat was, it’s laying way the hell back. Maybe just some kind of research vessel, or maybe we got a bad case of paranoia since we walked around that underwater graveyard.” He pulled a bottle of Corona out of the ice chest. “Fuck it. We haven’t done anything wrong? It is what it is.”

O’Brien said, “I’m thinking about what it is and what it can be.”

“You got worry in your DNA. That’s why you were a cop so long.”

“You think that’s it?”

A casino gambling boat, on a daily “trip to nowhere,” was coming out of Ponce Inlet and heading for international waters as O’Brien slowly guided Jupiter into the mouth of the pass. Fishing boats chugged by and two people on jet skis zipped through the inlet. O’Brien used his cell to call his friend, Dave Collins.

“I was expecting to hear from you,” Dave said.

“I wish I could have reached you before Jason did.”

“I terminated the conversation when I heard him mention what you found.”

“It’s definitely a German U-boat.”

“I heard you found bodies, some skeletal remains.”

“But you didn’t hear about a cargo that could be highly enriched uranium.”

“What! If it’s yellow cake, the stuff is as dangerous now as it was then. Maybe more so, considering today’s global climate of terrorism. The Germans may have been further along that we knew at the time.”

“I’m debating whether to give the coordinates to the Coast Guard and forget it, or let an old sleeping dog lie.”

“Sometimes old dogs have a damn mean bite if you get close enough. I’d let the secret remain one until we can offer the intelligence to someone who’s got a higher clearance than a reservist. All we need is a weekend guardsman with an active Facebook page to create a viral mess for the world to see.”

“You have a good point. We’re coming through the pass now. See you at the docks.”

Max ran around the deck barking at the big gambling boat as it plowed through the choppy pass, its diesels belching acrid black smoke, retirees sipping free cocktails on deck, the captain and crew pushing toward the open sea and total unaccountability.

“What’d we do if you forget the GPS numbers?” asked Nick, sipping his beer.

O’Brien eased Jupiter through Ponce Inlet, keeping to the right of the channel markers. He said, “Maybe I’ve already forgotten them.”

“You remember details and shit most people never see. You’ll remember those numbers as long as you want. Probably take ‘em to your grave.”

O’Brien smiled. “Let’s hope the ‘grave’ part is far in the future.”

Nick laughed. “If you get amnesia or something … that old sub will be hangin’ out there on the bottom of the ocean. Long as nobody wakes up that giant locked in those canisters-that HEU, no problem, right?”

“Like you said, it could be canisters for another sub … or mislabeled.”

Jason climbed the ladder to the bridge. “Want me to bring Max up?” he asked.

“She’s fine down there,” O’Brien said. “She loves the breeze and the scenery. Max likes to bark at the dogs that people bring to the Lighthouse Park.”

Nick grinned and added, “Scenery’s getting better.” He pointed to a bikini-clad woman lying on her beach towel. She sat up and sipped from a water bottle as Nick leaned out the open wheelhouse, raised his beer bottle in a toast, and yelled, “To the most beautiful lady on the beach!” The woman smiled and returned the wave. Nick, grinning, turned to O’Brien. “She thinks I’m Yanni and this is my yacht.”

O’Brien laughed. “You’d better sell some more music on PBS and get a bigger boat. She looks like the mega-yacht type.”

Nick reached across the console and turned on satellite radio. John Mellencamp filled the speakers with Little Pink Houses. “I always like music when I come back to the harbor. We celebrate now ‘cause we caught a few fish. Every time I bring my boat in, I’m out there a week or more, I always crank the music goin’ by the fishermen, the babes, restaurants, and the bars leading up to the marina. Kinda like Nick’s parade.”

“If you want to go out on the deck and do a little Greek dance, don’t be shy.”

“Shy? Sean, I’m the one tryin’ to get you to come outta your shell. I tried to introduce you to Shelia-”

“The stripper?”

“Doesn’t matter how she makes a livin,’ it’s what she’s made of, you know?”

O’Brien started to respond, but stopped when he saw what awaited them just around the rock jetties. A Coast Guard cutter. The distinctive orange stripe from the lip of the bow to below the waterline. At least five men on deck. Two holding rifles. O’Brien said, “Gentlemen, company has arrived.”

“Whoa, holy-” Jason said.

“No shit,” Nick said, his voice dropping.

O’Brien brought Jupiter to a slow speed. “Jason, where’d you put the camera?”

“Lower station. Next to the wheel, right where I keep my cell and keys.”

“Hide the camera in a milk carton inside the rear of the fridge. The carton has its backside partially cut out. Put the camera in there, and put the carton in the same place.”

Jason nodded, his nostrils wide, a vein jumping in the side of his neck.

From the Coast Guard boat, a voice came booming over a loudspeaker, “This is the United States Coast Guard. Pull the vessel west of marker seventeen and anchor. Prepare for boarding.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“We’re rolling,” said the Channel Nine cameraman.

Reporter Susan Schulman, a Julia Roberts look-alike, waited for a beat. She smiled and said, “So now motorists won’t have to make the long trek to drive from New Smyrna Beach to Daytona Beach. The new ferryboat service will operate seven days a week ferrying people and their cars across Ponce Inlet from seven a.m. until six p.m. In South Daytona Beach … this is Susan Schulman reporting.”

“Got it,” the cameraman said.

“Get a shot of the first cars driving onto the ferry. We can edit when we get back to the truck. It’s one feature piece too many today for me.”

The cameraman’s eyes squinted in the late afternoon sun looking across the inlet. “You might have a real story over there. Coast Guard’s busting someone. That’s one of their fastest cutters. Could be a load of drugs.”

Schulman bit her lower lip for a second, watching the Coast Guard approach the boat. She said, “They’re fully armed.” She looked around and saw a man sitting in a small boat and fishing near the jetties. Schulman, still holding her microphone, started walking quickly towards him.

Jason lowered the anchor when O’Brien shut off the engines. The voice over the loud speaker said, “All occupants of the vessel, Jupiter, report to the cockpit.”

O’Brien and Nick climbed down from the bridge. Jason, Max running in front of him, came around the deck and stood in the cockpit. They said nothing as three members of the Coast Guard approached in a Zodiac. One held a rifle, the others wore side arms.

The oldest man, square-jawed, early forties, precision-cut salt and pepper flattop, crisp white uniform, tied a line to the swim platform and stepped out of the Zodiac. His men followed. They opened the transom door and entered the cockpit. Max barked.

“I’m Chief Carl Wheeler,” he said. “Petty Officers Johnson and Kowalski.” The men said nothing. Wheeler looked at O’Brien and asked, “What’s your name?”

“Sean O’Brien.”

“Mr. O’Brien, have you been fishing?”

“We got a few snapper. A slow day.”

“Who’s the captain of this vessel?”

O’Brien smiled. “Don’t know if I’ve earned the title of captain, yet, but I’m the owner. What’s this about?”

Chief Wheeler looked at O’Brien like he was about to inspect his hair for lice. “We’ll need to see your registration. Do you men have anything to declare?”

Max barked.

“Confine that dog, please.”

“I declare Max is no threat,” O’Brien said. “Come on, Max. Hang out inside.” She trotted into the salon and O’Brien closed the door. “Declare? We’ve been fishing.”

“So, I take it your answer is no?” asked Chief Wheeler.

Nick said, “All we got on this boat is fish, man. Wanna take a look at ‘em?”

“We do,” the chief said.

Nick pulled open the big ice chest on the far right side of the cockpit. Chief Wheeler gestured with his head and one of the men began searching through the ice and catch. He said, “Looks like fish only, sir.”

To both petty officers, Wheeler said, “Search this vessel.”

“Wait a minute,” O’Brien said. “I have no problem with a search of Jupiter. But I do have a problem with a lack of explanation as to why.”

“Sir,” said Chief Wheeler. “This is an issue of Homeland Security, and we’re within our authority to search this vessel.”

O’Brien felt the anger rise in his chest. He said nothing as the petty officers began their search. When the men entered the salon, Max barked. Nick started to walk inside to get her. “Halt!” ordered the chief. To O’Brien he said, “Sir, call your dog outside.”

“Come on, Max. Stay out here with us while our guests make themselves at home. If you want my papers, Chief, I have to go inside to get them.”

“I’ll escort you.”

O’Brien said nothing. He entered the salon with the chief close behind him. O’Brien opened a cabinet beneath the lower control station, sorted through papers and pulled out the boat’s title and registration. He handed them to the chief who spent a minute reading them, gave the papers back to O’Brien and said, “They look in order. Do you have diving equipment on board this vessel?”

“I do.”

“I need to see it.”

“It’s outside.”

“Let’s take a look.”

“What’s this about?”

“At this point, I ask the questions. Where’s the dive gear?”

“When I left for a fishing trip this morning, I remembered leaving America.”

“You’d be smart to dispense with the editorial comments, Mr. O’Brien.”

“If you’re looking for drugs, why don’t you just say so?”

Petty Officer Kowalski popped his head up from the galley. “Sir, clean down here. Ron’s looking through the master. Want me to go topside?”

“Affirmative. Check the engine compartment, outside storage areas, too.”

“Yes sir.”

Chief Wheeler stepped back onto the cockpit as Petty Officer Kowalski scampered up the ladder to the bridge. “Where’s the dive gear?” Wheeler asked.

“Over here,” said O’Brien, stepping to a storage area. O’Brien opened the compartment. Chief Wheeler removed the tanks and fins. He knelt, feeling the inside of the fins. “Wet. When did you last dive?”

“This afternoon.”

“Who dove?”

“Nick and I did.”

“Why?”

“Had an anchor stuck. Didn’t want to lose it.”

“Caught on something, was it?”

“Rocks.”

“What were the GPS numbers?”

“Don’t know. In all the commotion, we didn’t jot them down.”

Petty Officer Johnson emerged from the salon. “Open the engine compartment,” ordered the chief. To Nick he said, “What kind of rocks had your ground tackle?”

“Blue rock,” said Nick gesturing with his arms. “Big ones. Down there it’s kinda hard to tell what kind they are. Everything looks blue, you know?”

“What I know is about three hours ago someone used marine channel thirty-six and talked about finding a submarine on the bottom of the Atlantic. Said there were bodies, skeletons. This person said they were fishing in the Gulf Stream when they got their ground tackle stuck, stuck on a submarine, maybe a German U-boat. We heard they were heading back into port, Ponce Inlet. I figured this vessel travels at about eighteen to twenty knots. You’ve already said you were fishing the stream. If you left close to after the time we intercepted the call that would put you here about now.”

O’Brien said, “Dozens of boats come in and out of this inlet every hour.”

“Yes, but none came from the exact direction you came from.” Chief Wheeler dropped the fin he held, stood, and turned to Jason. “What’s your name, son?”

“Jason Canfield.”

“Did you dive today?”

“No sir.”

“Were you the one who radioed in the find of the German submarine?”

Jason glanced at O’Brien. “I was just saying that we might have found a U-boat. I’d read about some of them sinking off the east coast of America in 1942. I guess my imagination got the best of me.”

“Quite an imagination, I’d say. In monitoring the radio frequency, one of our officers heard you mention human remains, maybe munitions on the site, too. Is that what was seen?”

“I’ve played too many video games. I’d guess that if a U-boat was ever found, one that went down with its crew, there would be skeletons and stuff.”

“I bet that’d be a good guess,” Chief Wheeler said. “Did any of you see a submarine today?”

Nick grinned and said, “I’m making grouper submarine sandwiches. You and your posse are welcome to stop by.”

O’Brien said, “Chief, unless you have a public affairs person on board, it looks like you might be asked for a comment from a TV news crew. If you want to tell them you’re questioning us about finding a German U-boat out there, I’d like to hear their follow-up question.” O’Brien pointed to the boat heading their way, cameraman standing, legs slightly open, camera on his shoulder.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The middle-aged fisherman sat with his hand on the Evinrude throttle and three empty Budweiser cans near his feet. His leathery face was the shade of a worn saddle. His eyes glistened from wind and alcohol. Susan Schulman turned in her seat on the boat and asked, “Can you take us closer?”

“Sweetheart, for you, I’d jump overboard and pull this damn boat by holding a rope in my teeth. Guess the Coast Guard will tell us when we’re too close.”

To her cameraman she said, “Make sure you’re rolling when they kick us out.”

“No problem.”

“The party in the boat approaching the detained vessel,” the voice resonated through the bullhorn. “You must keep within one-hundred feet.”

The fisherman said, “We might get our asses shot off.” He looked at Susan and added, “That’d be a real bad loss. I think I recognize that boat, Jupiter, right?”

“Yes,” Susan said.

“That boat’s docked at Ponce Marina. I’ve heard rumors about the ol’ boy that owns her. You hear a lotta shit around marinas ‘cause ever’body talks, you know. Close nit bunch of degenerates. Anyway, I’d heard he sorta showed up one night, paid a year’s lease on a slip and nobody saw him for a few months. Heard later on that he lives in some remote cracker shack on the St. Johns River. The fella is supposedly an ex-Delta Force, ex-cop, and one tough dude. They say he was a homicide cop. Supposedly right in the thick of all that Miami shit. Cocaine cartels, mobsters and whatnot. I heard he got fired ‘cause he crossed the line.”

“What do you mean, crossed the line?” Susan asked.

“Dirty Harry kinda stuff, I guess.”

“Interesting. Maybe he got a little too close to the drug world, crossed over and is working in it. Which one is he?”

The fisherman grinned as he idled his boat in what he guessed was a distance of one hundred feet from Jupiter. “Believe he’s the tallest one, blue shirt to the left. If he’s gettin’ busted for haulin’ drugs, I guess you two done stumbled onto one big ol’ news story, huh?”

Chief Wheeler said, “If you didn’t see something out there, my apologies. We need to know about these kinds of things, potentially so close to our shores, even if it’s been lying out there more than sixty years. In the Gulf of Mexico, not too far from that BP spill, an oil company found a sub in five-thousand feet of water. Some of those enclosed caskets carried dangerous material like mercury.” He pulled three cards out of his shirt pocket, handed one to O’Brien, Nick, and Jason. “Should any of you gentlemen remember something else, here’s my card. Since none of you know the GPS numbers to your last fishing hole, I bet you won’t be going back there. Am I right?”

“Absolutely, Chief,” O’Brien said. “It’s a big ocean. Thirty million square miles, give or take a few.”

Chief Wheeler forced a smile. To his men he said, “Let these fishermen get in port to make their submarine sandwiches.” They climbed off the swim platform, cranked the gasoline engine, and headed back to the cutter.

The small fishing boat followed. Within fifty feet, Susan Schulman stood and yelled, “Excuse me!”

Chief Wheeler looked behind him. “Official business,” he barked.

“Follow them,” said Susan

“Yes maaam,” said the fisherman grinning. “I like a woman who ain’t afraid to say what she wants.” He covered the beer cans with a rain slicker and cranked the engine.

As the Zodiac pulled alongside the cutter, Susan said, “Excuse me. I’m Susan Schulman with Channel Nine news.”

“I know who you are,” Chief Wheeler said, his tone all military business. “You’re risking arrest if you continue to film this. Homeland Security, Patriot Act.”

Schulman smiled. “I’ve seen you on some of the biggest drug busts between West Palm and Jacksonville. Is that what you and your men are doing today, checking that boat for drugs? What did you find?” The camera rolled.

“It was a routine stop. That’s all.”

Susan looked at the rifle and the 9mm pistols the men carried. She glanced up at the fifty-caliber machinegun, its barrel still trained on Jupiter. “If it’s routine, then why all the firepower, Chief?”

“In this day and time, it pays to be very cautious at sea.”

“You had to be looking for something, right? I hear one of the men on that boat is ex-Delta Force military, and a former Miami homicide cop, a person known for fighting crime. Are you holding him and his boat?”

Chief Wheeler felt blood rise in his face. “Absolutely not. They’re free to go. We boarded the vessel because our Mayport station picked up a conversation, if you will, on a marine frequency about a boat getting its anchor stuck in the wreckage of an old World War II vintage submarine. It proved to be false, a prank, we suspect. But we’re obligated to investigate these possibilities. You never know when it’s real.”

“An old submarine? What kind of submarine?”

“Like I said, someone playing games on the radio, sort of like the chatter and rumors that get started on the Internet. It’s hard to trace. The wrong information gets out, and we have to look under rocks. Takes a lot of manpower sometimes, but it’s our job. Thank you for your interest, Miss Schulman. We have to go now.”

Jason secured the anchor when it cleared the water. He waved to O’Brien in the wheelhouse and said, “It’s up.”

Nick reached for a beer. “The TV chick is headin’ our way.”

O’Brien said, “Take the helm, no-wake speed. I’ll go down and bid the lady adieu. If you see me put my hat on, gun Jupiter.” O’Brien climbed down to the cockpit and stood at the transom door as Susan Schulman and her entourage caught up with them.

“Why’d they search your boat?” she asked with a look of concern on her face.

“Got us mixed up with some other boat,” O’Brien said. “A lot of these Bayliners are still on the water. This particular make was one of Bayliner’s best sellers.”

“Did you buy it after you left Miami PD?”

O’Brien wouldn’t let her see surprise in his face. He smiled. “No, I bought it while I was there. Tell your viewers it’s for hire. We offer some of the best half and full-day fishing rates in Daytona Beach.”

She fired right back. “Did you find a sunken submarine out there today?”

Jason walked the side deck to the cockpit, Max following him, tail wagging. He said nothing as the TV camera was pointed toward O’Brien.

“Now wouldn’t that have been a catch,” O’Brien said. “I’d like to be the first to come across one. I’ve always been fascinated by boats, as you can see, especially boats that can travel underwater. Now if you’ll excuse me.” O’Brien pulled a baseball cap on his head, and Nick dropped the hammer on the twin diesels.

Susan Schulman shouted something, her voice silenced by Jupiter’s diesels. The fisherman held his beer to keep it from spilling in the wake. He grinned and said, “Guess he felt the conservation was over. Can’t say I blame him.”

Schulman ignored the comment. “Get me to shore!” she ordered. “Now!”

O’Brien stepped inside the salon and closed the door, picked up his cell phone and punched the keys. “Dave,” he said over the drone of the engines. “We’ve just been searched by the Coast Guard. Didn’t tell them anything yet.”

“Where are you now?”

“Coming into Halifax River. See what you can find out about Germany’s nuclear efforts toward the end of the war.”

“Okay. How fast can you get here?”

“Not fast enough.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

A pelican sat on the top of a dock piling and watched as O’Brien backed Jupiter into its slip. “That’s good!” shouted Nick. He tossed ropes to Jason who quickly wrapped them around the boat cleats. O’Brien killed the diesels and Jupiter became silent, the only sound now coming from the slap of a small wake against the barnacle-covered pilings.

As O’Brien zipped up the isinglass in the wheelhouse, he could smell the scent of blackened fish coming from the grill at the Tiki Bar, smoke drifting across the marina. The rustic restaurant, a place where customers ate off paper plates, sat on pilings a few feet above the high tide mark. It was adjacent to the marina office near the parking lot. O’Brien’s slip was almost at the end of a long dock, more than two hundred feet from the Tiki Bar.

“Jason, let’s clean these fish,” Nick said.

O’Brien said, “Jason will join you in a minute, Nick. I want to show him something in the salon.”

“Cool, I’ll unload the fish from the ice.”

Jason followed O’Brien into the salon. “Have a seat.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Yes. And you know what it is.”

Jason licked his dry lips, silent.

“You’re nineteen. Legally you can’t drink in a bar, and you can’t drink on this boat. I know you had two beers while Nick and I were underwater. Let me make this very clear to you. Your mom and I go way back. I can see the hurt in her eyes, hurt for you. She’s worried sick about you, your health-”

“I’m leaving. I don’t have to take this-”

“Sit down!” O’Brien’s voice was non-negotiable. “You accepted this job. I expect you to honor your commitment. And I expect you to honor your mother.”

Jason looked down at his hands. “How’d you know I drank the beers?”

“Popping breath mints after we came to the surface.”

“How’d you know I drank two?”

“I guessed. Nick and I were down about the time it takes to polish off two, especially if you’re addicted to alcohol.”

“I’m not a drunk!”

“Maybe. But you drink enough to make your mom sick with worry.”

“Why’d she tell you this?”

“Because she loves you.”

“But why you?”

“Because, at one time … years before your dad … she loved me.”

Jason looked up at O’Brien as if seeing him for the first time. “So I got the job because you’re doing a favor for my mother, right?”

“Wrong. You got the job because I believe you can do it. All your mom did was let me know you were available. You can walk out of here and quit on the first day. But if you do, you’d better be man enough to tell your mother why you quit … because you’re making a choice to drink rather than help her by helping yourself. Can you do that? Can you be honest with your mother and tell her why you really walked off the job, or are you going to make the choice to do the right thing by her … and by you?”

Jason’s voice was just above a whisper. “My dad taught me never to quit at anything respectable if I made a decision to do it. I made a decision to work here this summer. I’ll stick with that, and I won’t touch alcohol on the boat again.”

O’Brien nodded. “Think about not touching it anywhere if it has become a problem. And if it has, this time quitting would be honorable. I bet your dad would be the first to agree.”

Jason let out a long breath, his cheeks flush with color. “I look at his picture a lot because my memories of him are kind of fading some. That makes it hard, you know?”

“I know. But you still have them, and the good ones will stay with you.”

“I’d better go help Nick with the fish. Gotta earn my money.”

Jason walked out of the salon as Max trotted inside.

O’Brien went in the galley, found the milk carton in the rear of the refrigerator, got his camera, and called to Max. “Let’s go find a patch of grass for you, little lady, okay?” Max looked up at him through excited brown eyes and barked once.

As O’Brien walked by Nick and Jason, he said, “Jason, take some fish home to your mother. I remember her as a gourmet cook.”

Jason grinned and wiped a fish scale off his eyebrow. “Yeah, she is. Thanks, I’ll see you Saturday for our first customers.”

“Sounds good. I’m really glad you’re aboard. We’ll make it a good summer.”

Nick tossed a fish head to a calico cat, big as a raccoon. “Ya’ll got me in the mood for submarine, Greek-style, grouper sandwiches. Stay for dinner, Jason.”

“I appreciate it, but I promised Nicole we’d hang out tonight. My birthday’s tomorrow. I think she wants to do something special.”

“Happy birthday!” O’Brien said.

“Thanks.”

Nick chuckled. “Women like it when their men come back from the sea.”

“We’ve only been gone a day,” Jason said, dimples popping.

Nick raised both eyebrows, his dark eyes catching the late afternoon light. “I understand, but it’s not how long you’re gone. It’s how you greet them on your return. Trust me, I’m an old sailor. The smell of the sea, it’s something women like to taste. Only thing that makes ‘em more passionate is after a good fight when you make up and then make love like you invented it. The meaning of life is to live it.”

Jason laughed and hosed water inside the stomach of a gutted snapper, the dappled setting sunlight breaking through palm fronds.

“Come on, Max,” said O’Brien. “We’re hearing some real fish tales now. I’ll be on Dave’s boat when you’re done, Nick.”

“Tell Dave I’m bringing over some Ouzo. Need something to chase the ghosts away. I’m still seein’ those bones.”

Almost every stool at the Tiki Bar and Grill was taken by a mix of charter boat captains, deck hands, tourists, and bikers. A teenage girl worked the wooden plank floor and its dozen tables, about half filled with diners.

As O’Brien walked with Max back from the oyster shell parking lot and its grassy places, he looked up and saw Kim Davis working behind the bar. She spotted him at the same time and waved. Kim was in her late thirties, brunette, high cheekbones, her raven hair pinned up, firm body, and eyes that could hypnotize most men. To a college-aged bartender she said, “Tim, I’m taking five.”

“No problem.”

Kim stepped to the end of the bar, next to the open-air ramp leading down to the dock. “Sean O’Brien and his first mate, Miss Max.” She leaned down and petted Max. Kim lowered her voice and took O’Brien aside. “Sean, we have to talk. You okay?”

“Last I checked all was fine.”

Kim smiled. “I bet. Channel Nine had video of your boat, you, and your crew in the inlet. They showed the Coast Guard questioning you. Said something about a local fishing crew catching a German submarine. They said the details are coming up at six. What’s going on, Sean? Did you find a German submarine somewhere out there?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

O’Brien’s cell phone chirped on his hip. He looked at the caller ID, but didn’t recognize the number. “Excuse me a second, Kim. I transferred in-coming charter calls to my cell. Not that I’ve had a lot of calls.” O’Brien answered the phone, “Jupiter Charters,” he said.

“I just saw your boat on the news preview,” the man said. “If you can take me out to catch a submarine, I’ll book your fuckin’ boat for a month.”

O’Brien disconnected. “The nuts are falling and calling.”

Kim smiled. “They saw the news promo on Channel Nine, huh?”

“Looks that way.”

“What’s the news talking about, Sean? Who started it?”

“Coast Guard heard something on one of the marine channels. Probably a practical joker. Said they’d found a lost German submarine out in the Atlantic. We were fishing there today and I guess the Coast Guard got a little jumpy. Could be because of the last scare at Port Canaveral. Can’t blame them for being suspicious these days.”

“That incident at Port Canaveral was a fishing boat with some Middle Eastern types cruising in a restricted area. You guys don’t fit that profile. We’ll, maybe Nick looks a little like a terrorist.” She smiled. “I can’t even begin to imagine Nick being arrested in some mistaken identity thing. He’d start swearing in Greek.” She glanced over toward the TV in the corner of the bar. “There it is again!”

O’Brien looked up and saw his face on the screen. Then there was a wide shot of Jupiter and the Coast Guard boat, the shot cutting back to him, Nick and Jason being questioned by Chief Wheeler.

The reporter’s voice said, “Could a local fishing guide have found a German U-boat somewhere in the Atlantic? That’s the question the Coast Guard is asking. The full story on Eyewitness News tonight at six.”

“See!” said Kim. “They’re going to have everybody buzzing about the story.”

“There’s no story. There’s only an over-zealous reporter who wants to accelerate her career by doing inaccurate, sensationalized stories. Trash TV. Junk journalism.”

A man sitting nearest them at the bar laughed at O’Brien’s comments. He held a bottle of beer in a large hand, knuckles thick and scarred. The man, late thirties, had the shoulders and arms of a pro football quarterback, short cropped dark hair, tanned angular face and a Paul Newman nose.

“Eric Hunter, meet Sean O’Brien,” said Kim.

Hunter extended his hand and O’Brien shook it. “Looks like the Coast Guard had a lot of firepower pointed at your boat.”

“You noticed that, too?”

“Hard not to.”

“Overkill.”

“They get jumpy out there in today’s hostile climate.”

O’Brien laughed. “Out there was right here in Ponce Inlet.”

“I see you’ve got Jason Canfield on board. He’s a fine young man.”

“How do you know him?”

“His dad was a friend of mine. We served in the military together. His mother has done a good job raising him after his father died.”

“You knew his father?” O’Brien asked.

“Yes. Frank died a few years ago.”

“How’d he die?” Kim asked.

“He was one of the men killed when the USS Cole was bombed.”

O’Brien was silent.

Hunter said, “I really appreciate you taking the kid on, showing him the ropes, letting him earn some bucks. If you ever need a diver, I’d be glad to help you.”

“So you dive?”

“I’ve done a few dives in my time. Maybe one day you might need your hull cleaned.” He reached in his wallet for a card.

“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” O’Brien said, wondering why Hunter hadn’t asked him if the submarine sighting story was real. “I have to get back.”

“Let me give Max a fried shrimp,” Kim said. “That’s one of her favorites, Eric.” Hunter smiled and sipped his beer as Kim stepped back to the open kitchen and picked up a fried shrimp. O’Brien noticed a postage stamp sized tattoo high up on Hunter’s arm, only visible when the T-shirt he wore climbed farther back revealing solid biceps. The tattoo was the insignia of the Navy Seals.

Kim returned, the shrimp at the end of a toothpick catching Max’s eye. “Here’s an appetizer for the only lady I can see Sean O’Brien with and not feel a little jealous.” She winked at O’Brien and let Max take the shrimp off the tip of the toothpick.

“Between you and Nick, Max will never eat her dog food again.” To Hunter he said, “Good meeting you, Eric.”

“Same here.”

O’Brien nodded and said to Kim, “Maybe you can change the channel before the six o’ clock news comes on.”

She smiled. “Actually you look pretty good on TV. Maybe the publicity will jumpstart your business.”

As O’Brien walked back down the long dock, Max at his side, he watched a flock of pelicans sail effortlessly over the marina and cast slow-moving shadows against a sky lit in shades of maroon by the setting sun. The breeze across the Halifax River and tidal estuaries propelled the faint scent of rain in the distance.

Dave Collins stepped from the salon of his trawler, Gibraltar, to the wide cockpit just as O’Brien and Max were approaching. Collins, in his early sixties, looked like a seasoned college professor, thick mane of white hair, wide forehead, bushy gray eyebrows, and a cleft chin. He walked two miles a day to clear his head and burn off the remnants of his favorite vodka. He’d never told O’Brien details of his former work in the covert intelligence business. But after a few dinners, and a few glasses of wine, he’d let just enough slip out that O’Brien was convinced Dave had spent years as a foreign field agent before retiring and divorcing his wife three years ago. Now he did occasional “consultant work” from his boat and his beach-side condo.

Dave grinned as O’Brien and Max approached. “Looks like you could use a drink.”

“You can get thirsty out there having a nice chat with the Coast Guard.”

“Saw the news tease. Jupiter’s never looked better. Might bring customers.”

“You sound like Kim. I could do without this kind of publicity.”

“Nick stopped by, said he’d be over to fry up some grouper sandwiches, the kind he makes with feta cheese, tomatoes, and those wonderful Greek spices. He said in honor of the find, he’s calling them sixteen fathom subs.”

O’Brien followed Dave and Max inside Gibraltar’s spacious salon. Dave popped two bottles of Guinness, poured them slowly down the sides of two frosty mugs and said, “I’m multi-tasking. Tell me everything you and Nick saw.” Dave sipped his beer and listened as O’Brien detailed the find and the boarding by the Coast Guard.

Dave grunted. “A German U-boat was discovered not long ago in the North Sea very near Norway. Apparently, it had a lot of weapons-grade mercury on board. The sub was found by some fishermen in four-hundred feet of water.”

O’Brien opened his camera. “If what I’ve captured on the camera is real, it’ll make mercury look like a single firecracker next to a ton of TNT.” O’Brien brought up the first picture on the camera’s screen. “This is one of the jet engines. There are two crates, both filled with the parts you’d need to build two small fighter jets.”

“Why would the Germans be hauling two disassembled fighter jets?”

“I don’t have a clue.”

“Must be a large submarine to carry all this.”

“It’s blown in half. Both parts are twisted and partially buried in sand. But if you could make the two halves a whole, I’d estimate it would be at least three hundred feet long. I told you about the human remains, or broken skeletons, in the half we partially examined.”

Dave let out a low whistle. “That, my friend, would make this particular U-boat the biggest or certainly the longest in Germany’s fleet.”

“Look.” O’Brien advanced the images. A cylinder labeled U-235 appeared.

Dave put on his glasses. “I agree with your earlier assumption. The first thing I would surmise is that you and Nick stumbled on a sub named U-235.”

“Then we found the conning tower, spent a few minutes knocking the growth off it, finding this.” The image, 2 3 6, appeared on the small screen.

Dave’s eyes fell somewhere over O’Brien’s head, his mind deep in thought. He said, “Let’s load these images onto my laptop to get a clearer picture.”

“Okay, but are you sure no one has remote access to your computer?”

“I assure you, they don’t.” Dave loaded the images, sipped his beer, and studied them closely. “If the sub is U-boat 236, and some of the cargo is labeled U-235, is it because the Germans were clumsy in their payload, or is it because this sub was hauling the most deadly cargo known to man, enriched uranium, also known as U-235?”

“That’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last five hours.”

Nick Cronus opened the salon door, brown arms wrapped around a paper sack. “Turn on Channel Nine! Weather’s on now. But they say, ‘stay tuned, coming up next … did a fishermen hook his anchor on a World War Two submarine?”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The television news anchorman said, “Recently, an oil company found a long lost German U-boat off the North Carolina coast. Could a local charter boat have hooked its anchor on one of these lost subs north of Daytona Beach? Susan Schulman reports.”

The picture cut to an image of Jupiter with the Coast Guard boarding her. Susan Schulman’s voice was heard: “In Ponce Inlet today, the Coast Guard boarded a thirty-eight foot charter fishing boat, Jupiter, based out of Ponce Marina and searched it … not for drugs but for possible World War Two artifacts. What kind of artifacts? No one we spoke to is saying. Someone on a marine radio was overheard talking about his boat getting its anchor caught on a sunken German U-boat. They allegedly made a dive down to free the anchor and found the sub. The owner of Jupiter, Captain Sean O’Brien, told us he didn’t find a submarine. Coast Guard Chief Carl Wheeler said they’d heard what he termed ‘chatter’ on a marine radio frequency that led them to believe it might have come from Jupiter or a similar vessel in the Gulf Stream off Daytona Beach by timing from when the call was received to entry into the port from that direction.”

The images cut from pictures of the Coast Guard cutter to Susan Schulman standing near the Ponce Lighthouse. She said, “In the early part of World War II, German U-boats were seen off the U.S. coast from New York to Florida. Some managed to sink a few American ships. So it’s conceivable the U.S. Navy sank U-boats that were never found. Although the crew of Jupiter says they didn’t hook a U-boat, if they had hooked one, it would certainly be an historic catch. Reporting live in South Daytona Beach, this is Susan Schulman.”

Nick said, “I take that woman on my boat to the dive site … she’ll see what a real anchorman does.”

“I don’t think you can find the exact spot to toss your anchor,” O’Brien said.

“You got the GPS numbers, but remember I’m Greek, we’ve been in boats for two-thousand years. But even if that news lady rode naked on my bowsprit, I wouldn’t take her out to the devil’s graveyard.”

Dave said, “I imagine finding a human skeleton underwater is quite sobering.”

“Sobering,” said Nick, entering Dave’s galley with Max at his heels. “It’s frightening. That’s where Hitler … Lucifer himself … that’s where his lost sailors are doin’ the dance with the devil in the dark currents of the ocean. Dave, I know where your good iron skillet is, and I know where your beer is, too.”

“Help yourself to both,” Dave said. Nick started humming and sauteing the grouper, tossing a piece of bread to Max. Dave sat at a fold-out table near the lower station and began keying information into his computer. “Sean, you said that you and Nick found two canisters labeled U-235. How large was each canister?”

“Maybe three feet long, probably a foot wide.”

“If both canisters were holding weapons-grade uranium, that is at least ninety percent pure, it would mean that Germany was as far along as the Allies, or more specifically, the United States in the race to create a nuclear bomb. If I recall, it takes about five-hundred kilos or a thousand pounds to produce an atomic bomb the size of the one that destroyed Hiroshima. Two canisters the size you found would do some severe devastation. I’m wondering why those canisters are on that part of the sub. What were the Germans going to do with the stuff? Was it connected to those jets in boxes? Fascinating scenarios at play here.”

“Wish I knew the answers to that,” O’Brien said.

Dave opened a file cabinet under the console and began leafing through dozens of folders. He grunted as he read through a file. Then he keyed numbers and letters into his laptop. “I’ll find more information in the morning. However, right now, I can scan through some files remotely. I know it’s rude of me, but could you turn your head for a moment.”

“I can always go help Nick in the galley.”

“No you can’t,” said Nick, lifting up a knife in a mock swordfight stance. “I teach you all I know about fishing, look what happened, you catch a submarine.” Nick grinned and tossed Max a piece of cheese.

“Okay,” said Dave. “I can’t pull up the original manifest of U-boat 236, but I might be able to find it. I do have some stats on the vessel. It was commissioned in March 1945, the largest sub in Germany’s fleet, one of the few XB subs. This one was 340 feet in length. U-boat 236 carried a crew of forty-seven men. Highest ranking officer was Otto Heinz. The sub left Kiel, Germany, on April 13, 1945, to join six other U-boats in what was to be the final battle of the Atlantic. It evaded and crippled a Royal Navy sub in the North Atlantic. Those last seven submarines, known as Hitler’s Sea Wolf pack, were Admiral Karl Donitz’s, collectively, and Heinz’s last effort to strike a fatal blow to the U.S. as Germany was gasping for breath. U-boat 236 was believed to have been one of the subs that carried a more compact version of Germany’s deadly V2 rockets, which were the V3s. More powerful and more stealth-like than the infamous ‘buzz bombs’ that Hitler used against London. One or more of the subs was thought to be carrying disassembled Me2-Fighter Jets. If they had weapons-grade uranium for creating atomic bombs and V3 rocket launching capabilities, any one of these seven German U-boats could have sat a few miles off the coast and heavily damaged New York City or another target area.”

“Man,” Nick said. “A possible nine-eleven-type catastrophe almost six decades before nine-eleven.”

“The potential would have been much worse if they had about three times the amount of uranium that you two found, assuming that is indeed what you found.”

“Does it say what happened to U-boat 236?” O’Brien asked.

Dave scanned the data. “No.”

“Does it say what happened to the other six U-boats in the Sea Wolf pack?”

“Navy sent five of them to the ocean floor north of the Azores. One surrendered.”

“Anything about weapons-grade, HEU?”

“Hold on a second … umm … shortly after Germany surrendered in early May 1945, Admiral Donitz instructed the commander of U-boat 234 to give up and report to whichever Allied port it was nearest to at the time. That U-boat was escorted in by two U.S. Navy destroyers, taken to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. And, gentlemen, it did have more than seven hundred kilos or almost two-thousand pounds of U-235, highly enriched uranium on board.”

“What happened to the stuff, the uranium?” Nick asked.

Dave nodded. “This report doesn’t say. I do know that three months later we dropped the same stuff, as you say, over Japan and closed the curtain on the whole damn war. If you two found HEU, the only way to know for sure is to dive back down and bring it up.”

“No freakin’ way!” Nick said. “Only one man can ever find what’s been lost out there. And that man killed the GPS numbers before Jason and I could look at them.”

“It was the best thing to do,” O’Brien said.

“Nick,” said Dave, his voice barely audible, “if that’s what you found, Sean may have done you the greatest favor in your life.”

Nick grinned. “See no evil, hear no evil, and tell no evil. Let’s eat.”

Dave opened three bottles of Corona and they sat at the bar to eat. Dave said, “Nick, the combination of sauteed grouper, melted cheese, diced tomatoes, and the Vidalia onions in your recipe is as treasured as Plato’s Republic.”

“Same old recipe,” Nick said, chewing a mouthful of food. “I just gave it a new name, sixteen fathoms sub sandwich.” He tossed a bite to Max as O’Brien’s cell rang.

“Jupiter Charters,” O’Brien said.

“Are you Captain O’Brien?” a woman asked.

“Yes, who’s calling?”

“I saw the news tonight. Did you find a lost German submarine out there?”

“Who’s this?”

“May I meet and talk with you, please. It’s very important.”

“What’s your name?”

“Abby Lawson. Sixty-seven years ago, my grandfather saw something on the beach that got him killed. If you found a German sub, that discovery could help my family bring closure to his murder.”

“Murder?” O’Brien thought he heard the voice of someone else in the background. “What murder?” he asked.

The call disconnected.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Nicole Bradley slowly raked her long blond hair across Jason Canfield’s bare chest. He sat in his swimsuit on the second floor of her parent’s beachfront condominium balcony, the setting sun breaking through coconut palm trees, the scent of grilled fish coming from a courtyard. Nicole stood, leaning over him, hair trailing to his chest. She had full lips, the lower lip with a slight pout, dimples, thick hair backlit from the sun. At that moment, Jason thought her hair was spun from pure gold.

In a toast, she said, “Happy birthday!” They touched glasses, sipped wine and she kissed him. Nicole, a college senior studying journalism at the University of Florida, was home for the summer. Her parents were gone for the weekend, and she and Jason had the run of the beachfront condo. She sipped chardonnay from a crystal glass. “Have some more wine, Jason.”

“I really shouldn’t. I sort of made a promise to my mom and Sean-”

“Come on, it’s your birthday!”

“Yeah, but wine makes my head hurt.”

“Wine’s healthy.” She sipped. “Good for your heart.” She touched his chest.

“Lemme taste.” He passionately kissed her.

She broke the kiss and said, “I’m just trying to like broaden your tastes, that’s all. C’mon, birthday boy!”

He grinned. They touched glasses again and both emptied their wine. It was Jason’s fourth glass, and his head was beginning to feel numb.

“Aren’t you the charmer?” Nicole asked, straddling Jason’s lap. She ran her fingers through his blond locks. “If we ever did get … don’t get all weird on me or take this the wrong way, but if we ever like got married and had kids, they’d have blond hair.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely. You looked cute on the news yesterday. I couldn’t believe the Coast Guard actually boarded your boat. It was like watching reality TV.”

“It was crazy. The chief, he goes like … ‘Son, were you the one that radioed in the find of the submarine?’ He’s the most hyper dude I’ve ever seen.”

“What’d you tell the chief? Did you guys like really find a submarine on the bottom of the ocean?”

“What do you think?” Jason smiled.

“I think it’s kind of romantic and adventurous? Like the History Channel meets Lifetime TV.”

“I met that reporter, Susan Schulman. Doesn’t she work at the same TV station where you’re doing your internship?”

“Same place. I haven’t met her yet. I hear she’s like a ball buster. Intense.”

“She tried to bust Sean’s balls, but he wasn’t gonna let her. He really knows how to keep his cool.”

“He’s cute, way too old for me, but he’s got that something.”

“What’s that something?”

“It’s the way you do what you do, like how you walk, talk … kiss.” Nicole sipped her wine and kissed Jason deeply. “You have it. Now, did you or didn’t you find a long lost sub? ‘Cause if I’m about to have a famous boyfriend, I want to know.”

Jason looked out over the royal palm trees and watched sea gulls flying down to the beach. “Do I look like a pirate? We don’t go around salvaging old ships.”

“Yeah, but these aren’t some old rotten Spanish galleons sitting out there. Subs are made of steel. That will last in the ocean. Just like bones.” Nicole smiled, her lips wet.

“You mean skeletons?”

“Yeah, if the sharks didn’t take them off way back when the sub went down.”

“You have a great imagination.” Jason grinned.

“Did you guys see skeletons? Oh tell me Jason! Please!”

“I didn’t say we saw skeletons. I can’t say anything.”

“And that means you saw something. I can tell.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

“If you tell me you saw skeletons, I might jump your bones.” Nicole poured more wine in their glasses. “Maybe that’s like where the word boner came from,” she said laughing. She kissed his ear and neck, her lips warm, her perfume traveling through Jason’s brain like a shot of adrenaline.

He drank more wine and reached for her breasts. “Not yet,” she said. “If we’re gonna trust each other in every way, you have to be honest with me and tell me if you guys found that U-boat.”

“What if I showed you pictures of it?”

“You’ll get a birthday present you’ll remember for a really long time.” She ran her index finger across his lips.

Jason reached over to the table beside them and picked up his cell phone. “Take a look at these.” He brought the images up on the small screen. “I loaded these off Sean’s camera while he was on the bridge talking with Nick. I’m just glad the Coast Guard didn’t find them.”

“Is that some kind of engine?” Nicole asked.

“A German jet, I think. Sean and Nick found crates with jet parts and a small rocket.”

“What are those things, the ones with the U-235 on them? Are they bombs?”

“I’m not sure. Sean said they might contain some very dangerous stuff.”

“And this number?” She touched the screen with a perfect fingernail.

“It’s the identifying numbers on the outside of the U-boat.”

She moved her hips, her warmth slowly gyrating against Jason. “So, where are the skeletons, mister boner?”

He grinned. “Right here.”

“Ohmygod!”

“Yeah, Sean only took one. I think Nick would have had a heart attack if Sean kept taking pictures of the skeletons. Nick’s like real weird in that way. I don’t think he’ll ever go down there again?”

“Would you?”

“I didn’t go. It’s pretty deep. Sean’s some kind of an expert SCUBA diver from his military days. Nick’s part human and part dolphin. The guy used to free dive, like they do for pearls. Only he did it getting sponges off the ocean floor when he was twelve over in the Greek islands. Guy’s a freakin’ animal. I gotta pee real bad.” He stood, the wine now causing him to be dizzy.

Nicole smiled. “Looks like you’ve reached your limit, Jason. Try not to get sick in my parent’s bathroom, okay lover?”

“I’m just gonna pee, c’mon, Nicole.”

When Jason left the balcony, Nicole held his cell phone, punched up her personal e-mail, attached the pictures and hit the send button.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

O’Brien returned to his home on the banks on the St. Johns River for the night. As much as he enjoyed time on Jupiter and the company of the marina folk, he liked the solitude he found in the place he now called home. He liked his big, antique bed. His house was a seventy-year-old “Florida Cracker” home built on an Indian shell mound overlooking the river. The old home was made from cypress, oak, heart-of-pine, and it had a massive river-rock fireplace, tin roof, and a sprawling screened-in porch. The porch, with a view of the river, was constructed from white oak beams that bent and snapped nails like toothpicks.

In the kitchen, O’Brien poured some Jameson over ice. As he walked to the porch, he stopped and stared down at a picture of his wife, Sherri. She stood at the helm of their sailboat, wind in her hair, morning light in her eyes, a smile that penetrated O’Brien’s heart like the first time he whispered his love to her. He touched the picture, the glass hard to his touch.

Max trotted in from the porch. She sat and cocked her head, looking up at O’Brien. He said, “I miss Sherri, Max. I know you do, too. How about I join you back out there for some fresh air, little one?”

On the porch, he sat in a big whicker rocker and lifted Max onto his lap where she curled into a ball. O’Brien sipped his drink and looked at the reflection of a harvest moon off the river’s dark surface. Frogs and cicadas competed for dominance in the theater of the night. The scent of blooming jasmine and orange blossoms mingled in the air with wood smoke from across the river, somewhere in the national forest. A great horned owl alighted on a thick, crooked limb reaching up from a cypress tree down by the river. Spanish moss hung from the limb, motionless in the still air, the owl’s silhouette caught in the rising moon.

O’Brien thought about the discovery of the sub, its potential revelations, the media attention, how it might play out. And he thought about Jason Canfield. The kid definitely had his mother’s eyes. He hoped Jason took their conversation to heart. He scratched Max behind her ears and mumbled, “When the past intersects with the present … the future could be in somebody’s crosshairs ….”

What was it? Something was churning in his gut. He closed his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose, and replayed Maggie’s visit to his boat. What tugged at his thoughts as if weights were in his shoes? What was out of sync? When she’d hugged him, his memory banks registered the scent of her perfume, as if twenty two years was two seconds. He hadn’t smelled that particular brand on any other woman. She’d felt so small in his arms. He remembered that she had a physical presence of strength, a rare combination of athleticism wrapped in feminine sexuality. He sipped his drink and wondered what Maggie was doing tonight. He had a strong urge to pick up the phone and call her. To talk about old times … to just to hear Maggie’s voice tonight.

The Irish whiskey took the edge off the day. He thought about the events. Sure it was coincidental that he docked Jupiter less than two miles from an old girlfriend he hadn’t seen in what seemed like a few generations. As a detective, he’d learned to be wary of chance because of criminal circumstances. What was mixing in his gut with the whiskey?

The guy at the Tiki Bar.

Kim Davis had introduced the man as Eric Hunter, a friend of Frank Canfield, Maggie’s dead husband. Coincidental? Maybe. Maybe not. O’Brien knocked back the rest of his drink and listened to a bull gator grunt at river’s edge. It was the start of mating season. The natives were restless. O’Brien could identify on some primal level. He gently lifted Max and said, “Let’s hit the bed, lady. Maybe you can teach an old dog like me how to sleep like you.” She licked O’Brien on his unshaven face.

Although he had returned to the comfort of his own bed at home on the banks of the St Johns River, calm was an ephemeral feeling. His sleep had been awakened by silent screams from human skeletons and the punctuated chant from a whippoorwill in an ancient live oak outside his window. He saw Maggie’s face and then a close-up of Jason’s eyes-frightened eyes.

O’Brien shook the narcotic of sleep’s illusion away and watched early morning light pour through an opening in the curtains on his bedroom window. He replayed the images he and Nick had seen around the sunken U-boat. The human remains, the mystery surrounding the sinking of the sub, the cargo of rockets, jet parts, and two canisters lovingly sealed by Pandora herself. He thought about Maggie Canfield, more than twenty years ago when she was Maggie Greene. And he thought about the telephone call he received from the woman who identified herself as Abby Lawson.

In his rambling kitchen, O’Brien made a pot of Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, called Max from her roost in his recliner, stepped onto the porch, and walked down the sloping backyard to his dock that extended fifty feet into the river. His property bordered the Ocala National Forest. From the view on his dock, the river made a wide oxbow turn, flowing around live oaks, the limbs draped heavy with beards of pewter-gray Spanish moss.

It was about a half hour after sunrise and the river looked like hammered copper. The morning light broke through the cypress trees, illuminating water bugs on the surface as they made figure eights and elliptic orbits resembling tiny skaters. A slight breeze carried the scent of honeysuckles, decaying oak leaves, and damp moss.

O’Brien and Max watched a great blue heron stalk the tannin water, stopping to carefully step over cypress knees that protruded up from the dark mire like giant, gnarled fingers. His thoughts drifted back to the discovery of the U-boat and its cargo.

Max turned her head, the alarms firing in her brain. O’Brien had noticed that her reaction to human-produced sounds and scents was different from those in nature. Her defense mechanisms ignited faster when approached by intruders walking upright.

O’Brien scratched her back. “You have hound dog ears, and you can certainly hear things I can’t. What do you hear, Max?”

She half barked and half whined, paced the dock, and started to run toward the house. “Hold on, Max. How do those little legs move so fast, huh?”

A car pulled in at the end of his driveway. Rarely did he ever see a car pull in his long drive. His nearest neighbor was almost a mile away, and lost motorists didn’t need to use his drive to turn around. There were plenty of access roads leading into the national forest. His driveway made a slight bend to the left from the front of his house to the road. Even from his dock, he had a line-of-sight to the end of the drive. But visitors seldom noticed him from that distance.

He watched a woman get out of the car and start toward his front door. She stopped, hesitated, like she wanted to turn around, and then continued.

“Come on Max, let’s go see who has come calling. If it’s the Avon lady, boy did she get the wrong house … that is unless you want something for your nails.” Max scampered up the backyard, climbed the steps leading to the porch, and waited for O’Brien to open the screen door. He heard a knock.

“Be with you in a second,” O’Brien said, checking the drawer for his Glock. He wedged the pistol under his belt, beneath his shirt, and opened the door.

The woman was frightened. O’Brien cut his eyes from her to the car. A small gray head barely protruded over the console. The woman at his door was about one hundred and ten pounds, mid-thirties, auburn hair pulled back, and hazel eyes that were filled with fright and fervor. She wore blue jeans and a blouse open enough on her shoulders to show a powder sprinkling of freckles.

“Mr. O’Brien?” she asked.

“That’s me.”

“I apologize for coming to your home unannounced. But ….” She bit her lower lip and said nothing.

“I’m the one who called you-the one who talked about her grandfather being murdered.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

There was a strong gust of wind for a moment causing acorns to rain down from a live oak, beating against the tin roof before falling into O’Brien’s yard.

The woman bit her lower lip and tried to smile.

“You said your name is Abby Lawson?” O’Brien asked.

“Yes … and I’m sorry I had to hang up before I could explain further. My grandmother, she’s in her late eighties, I was visiting her, bringing some dinner over, when we watched the story on TV. I saw the expression on her face when they reported about the submarine. It was like she’d seen a ghost. I told her I was going to find you.”

“I assume that’s your grandmother in the car.”

“I talked her into coming. She’s not well … lymphoma.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. How’d you know where I live?”

“I used to work for the Volusia County Sheriff’s office. You’d helped Detective Leslie Moore with one of her cases before she was killed. She and I were friends. One day she mentioned how much respect she had for you, and how good you were at seeking justice for the families of victims … murder victims. Leslie said you had a natural-born talent for it, a sixth sense. Anyway, she had mentioned you lived off Highway 46 near the Ocala National Forest. I grew up in DeLand so this wasn’t too hard for me to find.”

“Would you and your grandmother like to come in?”

Max wedged out the door and trotted over to the Abby Lawson. “Your dog’s so cute. Now I remember Leslie telling me you had a little dachshund, too.”

“She’s my watchdog.”

“I can tell by the rambunctious wag of the tail. Look, I don’t want to impose. I’m prepared to pay you.”

“To do what?” O’Brien studied her face, the eyes that evaded his, a red patch appearing on her lower neck. “Would you like some water, soft drink, or something?”

“No, I’ll get right to the point. If you want to talk further, I’ll come inside. If not, I’ll turn away and never bother you again.”

O’Brien was silent.

“My grandfather was twenty-one when he was shot and killed off Matanzas Beach. The year was 1945, the nineteenth of May. The war in Europe had just ended. My grandfather had fought in the Army overseas where he was wounded and lost some of the function in his left leg. He was shipped back home, recuperating, and on active-reserve. One night he was surf-casting, trying to put food on the table, when he spotted something out in the ocean. Then he saw six men row to shore in a life raft. My grandfather hid, watched them bury something. Before they started back to their boat, he saw someone else, a man, walk down from the road to meet the men. Mr. O’Brien, four of those men were German soldiers, two were Japanese. The man they met, my grandfather said, looked American. They buried something in the sand that night. My grandfather saw it … he saw one of the Germans shoot and kill another one. Granddaddy managed to get to a phone booth to call my grandmother. He told her everything and said for her to call the Navy in Jacksonville and tell them what he saw.”

“Why the Navy?”

“Because the boat my grandfather saw that night was a U-boat. I think you may have found it. They killed my grandfather because he saw them and the submarine. Before grandfather was shot, my grandmother said he told her he’d seen the two Japanese men leave the Germans and walk toward Highway A1A. Don’t know what happened to the guy that came out of the bushes. Maybe he shot granddaddy. Maybe one of the Germans did. The U.S. Government never even acknowledged what he reported that night. He was the first and only American soldier in World War II killed on U.S. soil. His murder has gone unsolved for more than sixty-seven years. There’s not a day that goes by that my grandmother doesn’t think about him. She was pregnant with my mother when he was killed. My mother and father were killed in a car accident when I was twelve. Grandmother raised me. Maybe, before she passes, you could help her … help her by finding out who killed him. It would bring closure to a patriotic, old woman.”

O’Brien was quiet for a long moment. He looked at the gray head in the car, eyes peeking above the console. “Please, you and your grandmother, come inside.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Susan Schulman stood from behind her desk in an alcove of the Channel Nine newsroom and walked toward the restroom. Nicole Bradley looked up from the computer on her desk, her first assignment as an intern-searching through digitally-stored stock footage-and watched Susan disappear down the hallway.

“How are you coming?” asked the five o’ clock news producer, a no-nonsense, prematurely balding veteran of television news.

“Oh, fine,” Nicole said. “I found some shots of alligators for the story Rod’s doing on habitat destruction.”

“Good, punch in the reference numbers for Sam to pull them in. He’s in editing.”

“Okay.”

The producer looked at his watch. “I’ve got a story rundown meeting now.” He crossed the newsroom to sit with the executive producer.

Nicole walked down the hall to the restroom. She entered and saw Susan Schulman applying lip gloss. “I’m Nicole Bradley. I just want to tell you I’ve always thought you did great work. I watched you a lot before heading up to UF. Still watch you when I come home. You’re one of the reasons I’m studying journalism.”

Schulman didn’t miss a beat applying lip gloss. “You’re the new intern, right?”

“Third day.”

“So you want to get in the news biz?”

“Absolutely.”

“Lots of people do now. It looks like a sweet job, but you’ve got to work hard at it. To get to a larger market, the networks, CNN or Fox, you’ve got to really stand out, and that usually comes by finding a breakout, killer story.”

“Have you ever found that story?”

“Close, but no Emmy yet.” Susan picked up her purse and started for the door.

Nicole said, “Wait a sec. What if I had that killer story for you?”

“Excuse me?”

“The kind of story you could ride to the network.”

“This is your third day as an intern and you think you have a story of national significance?”

“I think it’s of international significance, and I’ll share it … if-”

“If what?”

“If, wherever you’re going, you promise to get me hired, too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

O’Brien sipped a cup of coffee on his back porch and listened to Abby Lawson. She said, “My grandmother used to talk about what Florida was like in the days before, during and after the war. She said it was in the summer of ‘42 when the man who would become my grandfather decided to join the Army. He made the decision when he and my grandmother, and dozens of other people, witnessed a German U-boat blow up an American tanker a few miles off the coast of Jacksonville Beach. Right, grandma?”

Glenda Lawson smiled. “Right, honey. I’ll never forget that night.” Her white hair was combed neatly, parted off center and pulled back. Her face was pale, eyes the color of a budding leaf, pastel skin smooth for a woman in her eighties. She wore a trace of rose-colored lipstick. O’Brien thought she possessed a quiet dignity, and yet a sadness as faint as the small blue veins beneath her opaque forehead.

“Grandma told me it was horrible, bodies floated in with the oil slicks, right here on Florida beaches. It wasn’t long after Pearl Harbor was bombed. A lot of people don’t even know that kind of thing was going on so close to our shores until the Navy put a stop to it. The irony is that my grandfather went to war in Europe because of what he saw close to American shores. It infuriated him that the Germans had taken out some of our ships. He went over there, fought them, got shot, and came back here to see a U-boat in the summer of ‘45.”

O’Brien asked, “Why’d the authorities think he’d been killed in a mugging?”

“We don’t know,” Abby said. “They say they found him with his wallet scattered. What little money he had, gone. Or so their reports said. And this was after my grandmother told them everything he told her before his death.”

“If it was some kind of cover up, what would have been the reason?”

“We don’t know that either. It could have something to do with that mystery man who met the men from the submarine. Maybe it’s because they never caught the Japanese. Or maybe it’s because they did catch the Japanese.”

“I wonder what two Japanese men were doing riding in a German sub. Why didn’t they return to the sub?”

“Those are all good questions, Mr. O’Brien-”

“Please, call me Sean. What did the Germans and Japanese bury?”

“We don’t know that, either? Grandma, tell Sean what granddaddy told you.”

The old woman folded her hands, took a deep breath and said, “Billy told me they dug near the fort … you know … Matanzas.”

O’Brien nodded. “Yes, I fished there as a kid.”

She slightly smiled and continued. “He said it was when the light from the St. Augustine lighthouse comes across the fort’s tower, it shines through an opening, makes a line. Billy said they buried some cylinders in the path of that line of light.”

O’Brien said, “The lighthouse is about twenty miles from the old fort.”

Glenda Lawson smiled and said, “Yes sir, it is.”

“Today,” said O’Brien, “the area of Matanzas Pass is a national park. There hasn’t been development. Did the authorities find what was buried?”

Glenda Lawson’s eyes grew wide and she leaned forward. “If they did, nobody bothered to tell me! I asked and they said they’d dug up dozens of sea turtle nests and could never find the hole Billy said was covered up.” She reached in her purse, her hand trembling, blue veins visible under milky skin. She retrieved a folded piece of newspaper, faded yellow. She carefully unfolded it and handed the paper to O’Brien. “They printed this the day after Billy died. There were a few other stories, but they stopped writing when police found nothing.”

O’Brien scanned the story. The sound of a boat came from the river and mixed with the full throttle of a mockingbird in a live oak. “Glenda, the night your husband called you, when he was shot … how many gunshots did you hear?”

“Three.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. I’ve heard those shots fire in my nightmares for many, many years, sir. It’s something I will never forget.”

“This story quotes a deputy sheriff saying Billy was shot once.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

O’Brien’s cell rang. “Excuse me,” he said to Glenda and Abby Lawson. It was Nick Cronus. “Sean, I got a call from some guy who said he’d give me a million dollars for the GPS numbers to the wreck. This is gettin’ more crazy by the minute-”

“Nick, I’ll call you in a minute. Keep the return number of the caller.”

“Can’t. Came in as an unknown number. Not traceable.”

O’Brien said nothing.

“Another guy called and said I looked like a towel head on TV, a terrorist.”

“I’ll get back with you in a few minutes, Nick.” O’Brien ended the call, looked at Glenda Lawson and, again, said, “The newspaper story indicates one bullet fired.”

“They were wrong.”

“Did they do an autopsy on your husband?”

“No, sir. I don’t know why.”

“Did your husband … did Billy have a gun?”

“He carried a pistol when he came back from the war. The war changed him.”

“Wars can do that. Do you know if his gun was fired that night? Did you hear him return fire, or did someone take his gun and use it to kill him?”

The old woman looked out the screen porch, her eyes falling on the river, her thoughts flowing through decades lost without the one she had loved. “All three gunshots sounded the same … and I’d heard Billy shooting lots of times at cans he’d set up in our backyard. His gun didn’t sound like the shots I heard that awful night.”

“Who investigated your husband’s death? And can you remember what was said?”

Glenda watched Max sleeping on a rocking chair. “I had a dachshund once,” she said softly. “She was such a fine little dog. Slept in my bed. Does your dog sleep in your bed?”

“She’s a bed hog,” O’Brien said, letting the old woman take her time.

“So was mine … you asked me who investigated Billy’s death, right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, let me see. The sheriff, at least his deputies did … then there was a fella from the FBI … and some men from the Navy, and one from the Army because Billy was still enlisted, but on disability ‘till his leg was properly healed.”

“And they told you Billy died in a robbery … a mugging?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“Did the sheriff tell you that?”

“Yes, at least the deputy assigned to the case. An FBI agent told me that, too. Even after I insisted it wasn’t a mugging … not after what Billy told me. But the police, especially the FBI fella, didn’t pay me any mind. Billy wasn’t mugged. He was murdered.”

“Your husband was fishing that night. How much money could a twenty-one-year-old fisherman have on him to get him killed?”

Abby said, “Exactly. My grandfather might have had a couple of dollars on him. Who would kill a man for that, steal his truck, and then abandon it?”

“Strange,” O’Brien said. “No one was ever arrested or even questioned, right?”

“Right,” said Glenda. “His killer, or killers, walked free.”

“Maybe not,” O’Brien said. “Not if your husband was killed by one of the Germans, and it was their submarine sunk that night.”

“Oh dear.”

Abby said, “Your finding the submarine proves it!”

“I didn’t say I found a sub.”

“If you did, it might be connected to my grandfather’s murder. Maybe whoever gunned down granddaddy was killed when that U-boat sank.”

O’Brien was silent. He stared down to the river, glanced at the yellowed newspaper story, and then said, “Look, Abby … Glenda … I think it was tragic that your grandfather-your husband-was killed. If he was murdered, it was more than sixty years ago, and whoever did it is probably dead. If it’s tied to German soldiers landing on the beach, the police, Navy, FBI and the Army, should have a record.”

Abby shook her head. “We couldn’t find it. FBI people in the Miami office told us they checked records, files stored in Washington and couldn’t find anything about my grandfather’s killing. Navy says they did get a report of a U-boat sighting that night, the call from my grandmother, and said they dispatched a gunboat and two planes but saw nothing suspicious. If you found a German sub, it’s the closest thing we have to bringing closure to an old wound. Not so much for me, I never knew granddaddy. He never got a chance to know the baby he’d fathered, my mother. When she was alive, we never had closure. But we might find it for an eighty-eight-year-old woman who never remarried, raised a daughter and granddaughter by herself, practiced the Ten Commandments better than anyone I’ve ever known, and still says goodnight to her dead husband’s picture by her bed. In that photo, he’s dressed in his Army uniform, and he was buried in it.”

“I’m not a homicide detective anymore. I’m trying a new career as a fishing guide. I think what happened to your grandfather is horrible. If it was connected to a sub on the bottom of the sea, it doesn’t mean you’d ever prove anything. No witnesses, or if there were, probably long dead. If the authorities covered up his death, it’s a shame. Without knowing why-a probable reason-it’s hard to prove it ever happened. I wish there was something I could do-”

“I said I’d pay you,” Abby said

“It has nothing to do with money.”

“Leslie told me you once said to her you felt an obligation to speak for the dead-the ones murdered because they had no one else. Sorry for wasting your time.” She stood and started to help her grandmother out of the chair.

Glenda Lawson took a small step toward O’Brien. “Sir, my husband gave his life for his country. He died on American soil trying to let us know we’d been invaded. My Billy was a hero, and they said he was killed in a robbery. The killers robbed him of his life, dignity … they robbed him of our unborn daughter. And they robbed Abby. I’ve often thought how the history books tell us about Paul Revere, the man who warned us that the British were coming. He saved Boston and became a hero. What about my husband, sir, what if he saved the nation?”

O’Brien was silent.

“They tell me my time left in this world’s short … I’ve lived a good life … sometimes a lonely life … but a good life. A free life. I’d like to think my husband calling that night had something to do with that. If you did find that submarine, it proves what Billy told me that night. Whatever those men buried was worth more to them than my husband’s life. Was his death in vain?” Her green eyes were alive, searching. Her nostrils flared, and she made a clicking sound with her mouth.

“Come on Grandma,” Abby said.

“I apologize, sir, for my show of temper. I just want to know who killed Billy. If he was shot by our enemy at a time of war, a war that had just ended, then why didn’t our military stand up for him when he stood for us and everything that is American?”

O’Brien listened for a half minute to the sound of her car as Abby drove away. He picked up his cell and called Dave Collins. “I have no idea if a murder mystery that happened sixty-seven years ago can be connected to the discovery Nick and I found. Maybe you can check your sources.”

“Sixty-seven years ago? What do you have?”

“You might want to take notes, Dave. This one begins May 19, 1945. It’s a war story that starts after the war officially ended.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The news director, assistant news director, executive producer, two reporters and Susan Schulman crowded around Nicole Bradley’s desk and watched her open the computer to her Facebook page. Nicole felt more excited than she had in a long time. She had the attention of the people who ran the number-one-rated newscast. She was going to be working on a big story with Susan Schulman.

“Here they are,” said Nicole, her eyes dancing with excitement, her fingers trembling as she pointed to each picture. “My boyfriend, Jason, said this is some kind of rocket … and these parts are from fighter jets.”

“Must be an enormous sub,” said the news director.

“Look at that … wow,” Susan’s said. “That’s the ID of the sub, U-235.”

“I don’t know,” said Nicole, “because there’s like another number, too.” She clicked to the image of the conning tower. “Jason said this is what’s on the outside of the sub. Looks kinda like a fat chimney, don’t you think?”

“Then what are the boxes labeled U-235?” asked Susan.

The portly news director crossed his arms over his chest and said, “Those boxes are labeled with the short, abbreviated name of enriched uranium, U-235.”

“What?” Susan asked. “As in the guts of a nuclear bomb?”

“Yes,” said the news director. “But only if it’s highly enriched uranium.”

“What a story!” Susan pounded her fists on the back of Nicole’s chair.

“Ohmygod!” squealed Nicole. “I told you it was big!”

“You did, girlfriend!” They slapped hands in a high-five.

The executive producer said, “Hold on. We don’t know what that U-235 means. However, if it’s the stuff of nuclear bombs … oh boy. This could be huge!”

The news director said, “Susan, you run with the lead piece. Bob, you find out everything you can on U-235. Todd, call some of the universities, talk to historians, physicists, whomever, see if you can find out how advanced we think the Germans were with this stuff. Karen, you get on the line to Homeland Security, work those ‘potential threat’ angles. Susan, pictures are good, but it’d be enormous to have video from the U-boat. Take Johnny, he’s a certified expert diver. See if you can find that boat captain, the one who lied to you, O’Brien, and get him to take you out there. Let’s move people!”

As they scattered, Nicole asked, “Mr. Brickman, what do you want me to do?”

“Nothing right now.” He disappeared beyond the cubicles and desks as he entered the control room.

Nicole stared at the pictures of the U-boat on her Facebook page and mumbled, “But I’m the one who told you about it.”

Susan grabbed her purse and was followed by a brawny cameraman. She stopped at Nicole’s desk. “Where can I find that cute boyfriend of yours?”

“Why?”

“I want to interview him.”

“You mean … like on camera?”

“That’s exactly want I mean.”

“Uhh … I don’t know where he is-”

“Does he have a cell?”

“Yes.”

“Call it. Tell him to meet you at the boat I saw him on, Jupiter.”

“Meet me? Why me?”

“Why not? He won’t show up if he knows he’s meeting me.”

“I … I don’t know about-”

“Listen-this is a huge story. Don’t blow your chance at jumpstarting a career by getting a little guilt complex now. One day you’ll thank me for it.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

O’Brien had planned to spend most of the day at his river house replacing planks on his dock, which were protesting under his weight. But Dave had called and said it was urgent they talk, and he didn’t want to discuss it over cell phones. O’Brien thought about that as he drove his Jeep across the oyster shell parking lot of the Ponce Marina, Max’s small head poking out of the passenger window.

His cell rang: UNKNOWN CALLER

“Ponce Charters,” said O'Brien.

“Do I call you Captain Sean or Captain O'Brien? Hi, it's Maggie. I just wanted to tell you that I haven't seen Jason so excited in a long time. Thank you, Sean. Thank you for taking the time, taking Jason under your wing. I can already see a big change in him. It's going to be a good summer.”

"He's a great kid. You've raised him well.”

"I thank God I stumbled upon you after all this time. I remember years ago, during some of the long walks we used to take together, we debated destiny and fate, a bigger plan, the whole damn cosmos. I remember you saying we make our fate in the choices we make or those we choose not to make. I have to believe, though, that I didn't just stumble across your path, Sean. I was desperate to find help for Jason. Look, I never read those weekly community newspapers. But for some reason I did that day, and I saw your name in the first paragraph of a story about a new charter fishing business starting in the marina. What are the odds? And now Jason has a purpose this summer. I'm sorry, but I don't normally talk non-stop like this. But since Frank was killed … I … I've tried so hard with Jason.”

O'Brien remembered what Eric Hunter had said about knowing Frank Canfield, Maggie, and Jason. He started to ask her about it, but decided there would be a better time. "It's okay. Maggie. You’re a mom, and from what I can tell, a damn good one. Jason's lucky to have you. I always thought you'd be a great mother one day?”

"You did? I didn't know that.”

"Yeah, I did.”

Maggie was silent for a few seconds. "Sean, maybe we can go to dinner. I'd love to catch up with you. Although it's been more than twenty years, I feel like it was closer in time. You know?”

"I know. I'd like that.”

Max whined, staring out the car window at the sights, sounds and smells coming from the Tiki Bar.

"Is that little Max I hear?” Maggie asked.

"She smells blackened grouper sandwiches, her favorite on the menu.”

"Give her a doggie hug for me. Bye, Sean.” She disconnected. O'Brien looked across the marina, watching a white pelican sail over the boats, flapping its wings twice, and flying towards the sea. Max whined again.

“No stopping at the bar for a snack, Max.”

She followed him, picking up her pace as they got closer to the Tiki Bar. The smells from garlic crabs, fried fish and spilled beer filled the air.

Kim Davis was pouring a draft beer for a customer at the bar when she spotted O’Brien. She waved him over to her. “Sean, have things settled down somewhat since the news story the other day?”

O’Brien smiled. “I haven’t had 60 Minutes ask for an interview.”

“Good. With you trying to establish a business as a legit fishing guide, the last thing you need is people not booking you because they think they’re hiring a Discovery Channel crew rather that and fishing crew.”

“Maybe you can help me in the PR department.”

“I see you have Miss Max which means you don’t have a charter, right?”

“Right, why?”

“Eric Hunter, you met him the other day … he was friends with Jason’s father?”

“I remember him.”

“He was just here. He said he saw Jason walking down the pier toward your boat.”

“Maybe Jason left something on Jupiter.”

O’Brien walked by Nick’s boat. It was closed and appeared locked. Dave’s boat was wide open, the sound of a CNN news program on the television, the scrubbed smell of bleach off the transom. O’Brien spotted Jason at the very end of the dock, looking out toward the Intracoastal. “Come on, Max. Let’s go see if Jason is lost.”

Jason turned around when he heard O’Brien and Max approach. “I didn’t hear you, but I could hear Max’s claws on the wood.”

“She’d probably prefer you called them nails. Cats have claws. Dogs, especially one like Max, on second thought I can’t think of another dog like Max. See what I mean?” Max darted to the edge of the dock where a boater was hosing off his Morgan sailboat. Max barked at the splashing water. The boat owner looked up and O’Brien said, “You can squirt her. She loves playing in the water. Max thinks she’s a ten pound lab.” The man with the hose grinned and playfully squirted Max, who bit at the stream, barking, tail wagging, chasing the splashes across the dock.

“Jason, don’t tell me we have a charter that I forgot.”

“No, I just came down to meet my girlfriend Nicole. Said she wanted to see where I worked. You mind if I show her around Jupiter?”

“Here, take the key. You two make yourself at home. Nick left some grape leaves in the refrigerator. They’re stuffed with rice and his secret ingredients. If you guys are hungry, pop ‘em in the microwave. Don’t tell Nick that I said microwave and his food in the same sentence.”

“Thanks.”

He handed Jason the keys. “How was your birthday?”

Jason’s eyes drifted away from O’Brien. “Okay, I guess. Had a little too much to drink. Paid for it the next day.”

O’Brien watched him a moment. “Moderation is the key. Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” He pursed his lips, his eyes averting from O’Brien.

“Is there something you want to talk about?”

“Not really.”

O’Brien smiled. “Anytime you want to talk, about anything on your mind, I’m here for you, okay? I’ll be on Dave’s boat. If you have time, I’d like to meet Nicole.”

As O’Brien turned to leave, Jason said, “Thanks, Sean.”

Dave Collins was just starting to fix his first afternoon cocktail, a Grey Goose martini, when O’Brien stepped onto Gibraltar’s cockpit, lifting Max aboard. “Ready for a very cold martini?” Dave asked

“A little too early for me, thanks.”

“You might develop a taste for one when I share some of my research with you.”

“Let me start with a beer.”

“You know where they are. Max looks like she just got out of the bay.”

“She played tag with a garden hose.” O’Brien popped the cap off a bottle of Old Speckled Hen and tried not to overanalyze Jason’s odd behavior, but he felt Jason was hiding something.

Dave sipped his martini, smacking his cold, wet lips. “As you know, Sean, I still maintain contacts with people who have access to information that can never be made public. In that light, if you will, there are some dark secrets in America that might as well remain that way.”

“Why do I have a feeling you’re about to tell me something I’d rather not hear? I’d just as soon not know where the bodies are buried.”

“You stumbled over them, you and Nick. The ‘unofficial’ classified documents indicate that U-boat 236 was Hitler’s last sub. It was by far his largest and the most technically sophisticated one the Nazis ever produced.” Dave glanced at his notes. “The sub had duel sources of propulsion-powerful diesel engines and very quiet, long-range electric motors. It had an advance snorkeling system allowing it to ride far enough below the surface to avoid most visual detection.”

“Was it carrying nuclear material?”

“Let me give you a little background information. I think it’ll put this find of yours in context with the times. In 1942 German U-Boats sank at least 259 American ships right off our coasts. These included Merchant Marine ships, tankers, and Liberty Ships. It was bloody, fast and furious until the Navy ended it. Now, advance four years later to the time Glenda Lawson’s husband, Billy, spotted a U-boat south of St. Augustine. Germany had surrendered, but there were still German U-boats prowling the waters. Via radio, they were told to surrender to the closest Allied port city. I mentioned one U-boat, number 234, surrendering to the U.S. Navy, impounded in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, May 17, 1945. This was a few days before Billy Lawson spotted the sub you, Nick and Jason found. It was at the time of the Manhattan Project. The race to build the first nuclear bomb was in the final hours. It’s known that the physicist, the man who led that pursuit at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, Robert Oppenheimer, boarded the impounded U-boat in Portsmouth. Some believe his team removed the cargo, the HEU, of more than two-thousand pounds. There are those who speculate that we used at least some of it, if not all of it, in the bombs we dropped over Japan three months later.”

“Hold on. Enriched uranium, found on a German U-boat, may have been used in the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?”

“Indeed.”

“And the stuff Nick and I found?”

“If it is HEU, it would be deadly as the day it was manufactured.”

O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Nick Cronus. “Sean, where are you?”

“On Dave’s boat. You okay?”

“That TV reporter, the same woman that filmed us the day the coast guard stopped-”

“What about her?”

“I’d just parked my bike. Walkin’ up to order a beer from Kim when this woman-the reporter, all tits, ass, and perfume like tropical flowers, comes up to me. I recognized her, and she asked me if I knew where the sub was. I laughed, you know me, and say, hey, I can take you there. You wear a bikini, ride in my boat, I’ll take you there. About that time she moves her arm from around her back. She’s holding a microphone. She waves and her cameraman and another chick step out from a corner. Then that crazy woman starts asking me all kinds of questions.”

“What kind of questions?”

“Like did I know there might be nuclear bomb stuff on the sub? She said she knows there was uranium on the sub-saw pictures-wanted to know if we brought it up and where is it? I started to tell her what she could do with that microphone. Got back on my bike and rode to the other side of the marina.”

“How’d she see pictures?”

“I don’t know. But as I was driving off, I saw her open the dock gate. Looks like she’s walking toward your boat.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Jason Canfield was polishing Jupiter’s transom door when he looked up and saw his girlfriend, Nicole Bradley, and a TV news crew approach. He wasn’t sure what was about to happen, then he recognized the reporter. Susan Schulman, the same woman that had asked them questions after the Coast Guard search.

Something was wrong. Nicole looked embarrassed. “Jason, I wanted you to meet Susan Schulman, and this is our cameraman, Lyle Hartman.”

“What’s everybody doing here?” Jason asked.

“Susan just wants to ask you a few questions.”

“I don’t know-”

“Roll, Lyle,” Susan said as she extended the microphone toward Jason. “Did you and the crew bring up the canisters labeled U-235?”

“What?”

“The canisters, the cargo you found on the German U-boat. What did you find?”

“Nothing.”

“Jason, we have the pictures, the ones you shared with Nicole. Now, tell us what you found down there. Where is this submarine?”

Jason shot Nicole an angry look. “I don’t know exactly. It’s out in the Gulf Stream. About ninety feet down.”

“We have a problem,” O’Brien said, heading for the cockpit door.

“What kind of problem?” Dave asked.

“Jason is about to get crucified on television.”

“That is indeed a problem. Max, stay here.”

Lyle, the camerman, zoomed in, the frame filling with Jason’s nervous face. “Who made the dive?” asked Susan.

“Nick and Sean.”

“What did they do with the canisters?”

“Nothing.”

“Did they and you know those canisters may contain weapons-grade uranium?”

“What?”

“Jason, this is a very serious matter. How much of this material did they find?”

“Two canisters, I think.”

“What was the condition of the U-boat?”

“Broken in half.”

“Did they know what was in those canisters? Did they try to open them?”

“I think Sean might have known.”

“We saw pictures of a jet engine and something that looked like a rocket. What did Nick and Sean say about those?”

“Not a lot.”

“How about the human remains? We saw pictures of a skeleton.”

“I don’t know about-”

“How many skeletons?”

“I don’t know.”

“Jason, can you take our crew back out there?”

“No, he can’t,” O’Brien said, coming from behind the cameraman.

Susan whirled around and stuck the microphone in O’Brien’s face. “You weren’t truthful when you told us you didn’t find a U-boat. Why’d you lie?”

“Is that how you get your kicks-ambushing a kid, hitting him with questions?”

“This is a serious matter, potentially one of national security. We have the pictures. We saw what you found. You said you didn’t find the sub?”

“I didn’t. Another member of my crew did.”

“Where is it located?”

“In the Atlantic Ocean.”

“This is not a time to be coy, Mr. O’Brien.”

“Excuse me. Come on, Jason, we have charter prep work to do.”

“Mr. O’Brien, did you bring up any of those canisters?”

“No.”

“Have you alerted the proper authorities about this find?”

“Looks like you’re doing that for me, the authorities and everyone else.”

“America’s safety may be at risk if those canisters contain enriched uranium.”

O’Brien said nothing. He started for Dave’s boat, Jason following.

“Mr. O’Brien, we understand there are human remains in that sub, correct?”

O’Brien was silent.

“You’re jeopardizing national security by acting this way.”

O’Brien turned toward her. “What way? By remaining silent about a potentially, and the operative word here is potentially, deadly substance if it is U-235. Seems to me, Miss Schulman, you are the one compromising the safety of the nation by your zeal to be the first to put this on television rather than to be responsible and shut the hell up. Don’t attempt to follow me on private property.” O’Brien stepped onto Gibraltar’s cockpit, walked past Dave with Jason following. Dave closed the cockpit door and seemed to melt into the salon couch.

“Come on,” Susan said. “We got some great stuff! Let’s get in the truck and start editing. I’ll have Manuel call the network news desk to see if they want us to do a live feed.”

“What about Jason?” Nicole asked.

“What about him?”

“You embarrassed him! He’s going to look like an idiot on TV.”

“Hey, no offense to your boyfriend. It’s part of the job. Get used to it.”

O’Brien looked at Jason. “How’d that reporter get those pictures?”

“I don’t know! I swear.”

“How’d you get them from my camera?”

“I downloaded them to my cell when you and Nick were in the bridge.”

“Damn! Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry. I didn’t know this would happen.”

“Who saw the pictures?”

“Only Nicole.”

“Jason, I thought I had made it clear not to say anything!”

“I didn’t know Nicole would do this. I’m not sure how she got them off my phone. We were celebrating my birthday, and I had too much to drink. After she looked at the pictures, I went to the bathroom.”

“And she simply e-mailed them to herself.”

“Oh, shit ….”

“Oh shit is right, Jason. Take your phone off your hip. Look at the sent e-mails.”

Jason searched through the phone’s digital records, his face pinched, hands trembling. “She sent it and then deleted the file. But it’s here.” He glanced away, his face reddening, eyes searching. “I trusted her.”

“And I trusted you,” O’Brien said. “Let me see your cell.” Jason handed him the phone. “Is your girlfriend’s number the last one called?”

“Think so, yeah.”

O’Brien scrolled to the next number, memorizing it before returning the phone.

Dave handed Jason a bottled water and O’Brien a Corona.

Jason said, “I’m really sorry. I did something I shouldn’t have. I wish I could take it back or make it up to you. If you want to fire me, Sean, I understand. I deserve it.”

O’Brien was silent. Max trotted over to Jason and he rubbed her head.

O’Brien said, “You’re right. I should fire you. But I won’t. You’re a young guy who made an old mistake. You let your small head think for you.”

Dave grunted, “A mistake like that, Jason, can easily get you killed. This is a hell of a breach-”

“I’m sorry, Sean,” Jason mumbled, blinking back tears.

O’Brien looked at Jason a long moment. He felt compassion for the kid-a young man who took his mistakes to heart. “I hope you’ve learned a lesson.”

“I have. I swear.”

“Call your mom. Tell her what’s happening before she sees the news.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll get through this. You’ll have something to tell your grandkids in a few decades. In the meantime, we need to think through how to minimize the risks.”

Jason tried to smile. Max sat at his feet, her eyes half closed.

O’Brien added, “We need to get Nick in here so that all of us can talk about what to do next. We’ve got to form a plan.”

Dave grunted. “This is about to get way out of our control.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Nick Cronus stood in Dave Collins’ galley and poured himself a tall glass of Ouzo. He said, “Never in my life have I ever wanted to slap a woman. They are God’s most special creations. I give her a compliment. But she kept askin’ me questions, even after I said there was nothing I could say.” Nick walked up the two steps from the galley to the salon and sat in a canvas director’s chair with the words ‘Key West, FL’ on the back. He leaned over and scratched Max’s head, her tail thumping.

Dave said, “This Susan Schulman is on a mission, no doubt.”

Jason looked at his watch. “News will be on in an hour. I don’t want to watch my stuttering face on TV.”

O’Brien peered out of an open slat in the blinds. “I see their satellite news truck in the parking lot. The other TV stations, the papers, and the national news, will be here soon. We have to plan for that and deal with it the best we can.”

“So what we gonna do?” Nick asked. “Just tell ‘em where the ghost sub is and let’s go on and let our lives get back to normal.

Dave said, “It’s not that simple.”

“Why?” Nick asked.

“Because the ghost sub, as you so aptly put it, is indeed a ghost sub.”

“What do you mean?” Jason asked.

“It’s a phantom. Officially, it doesn’t exist. You gents opened Pandora’s Box. Now the evil genie is out. The German U-boat 236 has no documentation in unclassified U.S. war documents. It seems that somebody didn’t want a record of it. Sean and I are working on a time-line. We’re not sure exactly when the sub you found was sunk. Probably May 19, 1945. The same day an eyewitness spotted it from Matanzas Inlet. He saw men leave the sub in a life raft and bury something on the beach. Perhaps more of the uranium canisters. I did some digging, spoke with an old contact in Germany. The manifest on file in Germany from U-boat 236 indicates there were ten canisters of U-235 on board. You spotted two. Maybe the other eight were buried that night on the beach.”

O’Brien said, “The eyewitness Dave mentioned was an American not much older than you, Jason. He was shot and killed after he reported the presence of the sub and a party of four German sailors and two Japanese men burying something in the sand. This man saw one of the Germans shoot another. He said a man, maybe an American, came out of the bushes that night and met them.”

“The FBI and Navy,” Dave said, standing, “have no unclassified record of the sub’s existence. Why? Because they took down a sub with nuclear material on it, and they never found it. This was almost the twelfth hour before the dawn of the nuclear age. With the race to see who was going to make the bomb first, the least amount of information out there, less chance for a leak or to cause a breach. The other reason could have been connected to the shooting death of the young man or the mystery man who met them. I hope you now understand you have to be quiet about his. No more information to anyone. It’s too dangerous.”

“I understand … I won’t say a word,” Jason said.

Nick’s eyebrows arched. “I hope our guys didn’t kill the fella about Jason’s age who saw this thing goin’ down.”

“Authorities at the time reported he died in a mugging,” O’Brien said. “His surviving family-his wife, who’s now in her late eighties, and his granddaughter, have reasons to believe otherwise. Both live here and told me the story.”

“What reason?” Jason asked. “Was it some kind of a conspiracy?”

O’Brien said, “Maybe. But at this point, probably the least you know about things, Jason, it will be smartest and safest for you.”

“No problem-I don’t think I want to know anything else.”

“Good,” O’Brien smiled. “These news stories will be all over the planet in a matter of minutes, both on the Internet and international TV. There are ruthless people who would do anything to get their hands on weapons-grade uranium. Dave and I are going to give all we know to the FBI. You two don’t know the sub’s coordinates. That’s a good thing.”

“But,” said Nick finishing the ouzo, “nobody knows that. They see our faces all over the news and people will think we’re out there huntin’ for lobsters between the rib cages of human skeletons. Especially after that reporter tricked me and I told her I knew where the sub was and would take her there. When they show the story, they’ll cut out the part about her havin’ to wear a bikini.”

“Jason, where did you park?” O’Brien asked.

“My truck is on the north side of the lot.”

“Go up L dock, cross over to M dock, avoid the media in the parking lot near the Tiki Bar, and head on home. Tell your mom “hi” for me. We have a charter coming up.”

“Cool, maybe it won’t be so bad when the TV news is over.”

“Maybe not,” Dave said. “But just in case, be very careful. Say nothing to anyone and be aware of your surroundings.”

O’Brien stepped to the port window and watched Jason walk quickly down the dock. He saw two more news satellite trucks roll up in the far parking lot. He thought about Maggie’s face, heard her voice from the morning when she walked out of his past into the present. “Sean, I remember you as somebody a boy might look up to.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Dave moved to the couch, sank into the cushions, and let out a deep sigh. “The more we understand what was going on in the summer of ’45 the better-1945, by the way, was the year I was born.”

O’Brien smiled, “’45 eh? Hope with age you got some wisdom.” Then he said, “Looks like Germany’s nuke world was in high gear at that time.”

“Indeed. If my old contact in Germany was right about the listing on the manifest, we have eight canisters MIA. They still could be somewhere on the sub.”

“Or they might be found on the beach where Billy Lawson watched the German sailors bury something. Maybe it was something they intended to use later. Who was the guy waiting for them, and what sort of deal did he cut?”

“So this Billy Lawson, he was the one shot, right?” Nick asked.

“Yes,” O’Brien said. “He was a PFC, sent home from the front for rehab. He may be the only U.S. soldier in World War II killed on American soil.”

Dave said, “In the intelligence world, you have selective information, disinformation and silence. This falls in the category of a void. Nothing. Not even up there on the same shelf with UFO sightings.”

“A void or avoid,” O’Brien said. “Or maybe disavow.”

Dave used a toothpick to spear a loose olive out of his martini. He chewed it and said, “A lot was at stake. Literally, our nation.” He looked down at a legal pad where he’d scrawled notes. “It’s now believed that Germany probably had gaseous centrifuge machines in 1945. Uranium oxide was mixed with fluoric acid to form uranium-hexafluoride gas. U-235, or HEU, was produced from the spinning gases.”

“But why carry the HEU on that sub?” O’Brien asked. “Were they going to try to somehow launch it over Washington?”

“When Germany was down and out, Japan was still in the fight. If they could have acquired this material, it may have changed the outcome of the war if they’d dropped it on say … New York or even San Francisco.”

“Is seven hundred kilos enough to make two bombs?”

“Enough to make a couple moderate-sized nuclear bombs.”

O’Brien stood. “Since Glenda Lawson said Billy saw two Japanese men, both dressed as civilians, with four German sailors that night … what’s the connection? What’s the tie to Japan receiving the deadly cargo you mentioned earlier?”

“There may be a connection.” Dave looked at his scribbled notes. “Here’s why: on U-boat 234, the one escorted into Portsmouth a few days before Billy Lawson was killed, there was an all-German crew that surrendered. Under interrogation, one of the officers admitted they had two Japanese officers aboard when they left from Kiel, Germany. When the crew of U-boat 234 got word of Germany’s surrender in the war, they could have turned themselves over to the Brits rather than the U.S. However, Commander Johann Fehler elected not to surrender in England, but to turn themselves in to the Americans. Fehler said when the two Japanese men on the sub heard the Germans were going to surrender to the U.S. Navy, the Japanese men said they could not. The honorable thing for them to do was commit suicide or hari-kari. They overdosed on pills and died in their bunks. After a couple of days, the Germans tossed their bodies overboard.”

“I can’t say I’d blame ‘em,” Nick said.

“So along comes yet another sub,” O’Brien said. “The one Nick and I found, U-boat 236, and it’s carrying Japanese, too. But these guys don’t commit suicide. They slip into the U.S. undetected. Well, undetected until Billy Lawson sees them, and then he’s killed as he makes a call to his wife. Maybe one of the Japanese shot him.”

“That’s a possibility,” Dave said.

“Abby Lawson told me her grandfather saw only two of the Germans walking back to the life raft. One was dead. So where was the third?”

“Good question,” Dave said.

“Maybe he’d hidden in the bed of the truck, hoping to kill Billy Lawson as he drove off. But he didn’t get a chance until Lawson stopped at that closed bait and tackle store where he made the call to his wife from the phone booth.”

Dave asked, “What happened to Billy Lawson’s truck that night?”

“Glenda said the sheriff told her, after Billy was mugged and robbed, that the perp stole Billy’s truck only to abandon it near the beach.”

“What if the shooter joined his comrades and got back in the life raft to row out to the U-boat?”

“Anything’s possible,” Nick said. “End of the big war. Maybe it did happen. Was some American really involved?”

“Maybe. How’d that sub go down?” O’Brien asked.

Dave grunted. “Couldn’t find that. But I’d be willing to wager that if Billy Lawson’s call was taken seriously, the Navy, so close at the Jacksonville Air Station, could have dispatched one of its planes and dropped a lot of depth charges on the sub.”

“Would they do that knowing it was carrying weapons-grade uranium?”

“Maybe they didn’t know, figured it was safer to sink it than take the chance.”

“Then why didn’t they recover the material Nick and I found?”

“Maybe they couldn’t find it.”

“I caught it on my anchor. How hard would it have been for the Navy to find it?”

“This was way before sophisticated underwater topography reading equipment. They could have hit the sub closer to shore and it managed to limp a long way out before finally striking bottom. After searching and not finding it, the Navy may have assumed they never hit it. Years drift by, Atlantic storms partially bury the twisted sub, and that footnote in the war fades away with those who died on the U-boat.”

“And along comes my boat, its anchor snags a World War II relic, not just any bottom dweller, but rather one that may be sitting with the earth’s deadliest luggage.”

Dave opened his laptop and looked at the photos he’d loaded from O’Brien’s camera. “I think these canisters are the real deal, U-235 or HEU. And I think if they somehow fell into the wrong hands today, they could inflict as much damage on us as they could have in the hands of the Japanese or Germans. Maybe more.”

Nick said, “But today it could be anybody-any sick-ass group or nation with a hard-on against the good ol’ U.S. of A.”

“And,” Dave said, “with a half-life of a million years, it’s good as new. We have some calls to make. Sean, it’d be a good idea to keep a close eye on Jason.”

“He’s learned his lesson.”

“That’s not what I meant. He may need protection.”

O’Brien looked at the media growing like a mob in the parking lot and said nothing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

At five minutes to six p.m., the Channel Nine control room filled with people. The general manager stood in the back of the room with the news director, group vice president, and the executive producer. They watched the monitors as the camera focused on the anchor team fitting earpieces in their ears, checking copy for last minute changes.

“Coming to camera one, ten seconds,” said the director. “Roll opening.”

“Rolling,” said a technician.

“Standby Mark and Angela,” said the director into the small microphone that fed the tiny earpiece in the news anchors’ ears.

The general manager leaned toward his news director and whispered, “This is going to be Peabody Award stuff.”

“Five seconds,” barked the director.

The anchor team said, “Good evening, I’m Mark Linsky.”

“And I’m Angela Franklin.”

“We have breaking news tonight.”

“This story sounds like a Hollywood script, but it’s real. We have dramatic pictures, images from the bottom of the sea taken inside a German U-boat that’s apparently been on the ocean floor since World War II. Was that U-boat carrying enriched uranium, the material used to make a nuclear bomb? Susan Schulman will tell us what her investigation is uncovering in terms of the potentially dangerous cargo. Amber Rothschild is at the University of Florida, where she has a historical perspective on the time the U-boat went down and how it may have gone down. Todd Knowles is at the Navy base in Jacksonville where he’ll have a report on what the Navy is doing about the situation, as well as what Homeland Security is saying tonight. But first let’s go to Susan Schulman.”

“Mark and Angela, the sub is said to be off the coast of Daytona Beach down about ninety feet,” Schulman began her report. “We want to show dramatic pictures of canisters stamped as U-235. This is a name enriched or weapons-grade uranium was called before the cold war had ended. The label was known to people working on the Manhattan Project, the top secret work done to build an atomic bomb to bring World War II to a fiery close. What was this dangerous material allegedly doing on a German U-boat just found off the coast of Florida? That’s the question a lot of people would like to have answered tonight. As Channel Nine first reported, Captain Sean O’Brien, Nick Cronus, and a college student hired as a deckhand, Jason Canfield, were fishing in the Atlantic, somewhere in the Gulf Stream, when they got their anchor caught on something. O’Brien and Cronus dove down to free the anchor and found it caught on some twisted metal from a German U-boat that one member of the crew, Jason Canfield, told us was blown apart. Here’s some of what they found ….”

O’Brien stood in Dave’s salon with Nick and Dave, watching as the news reports unfolded. The images were of the pictures he’d shot on the sub. Nick stood, his black eyes tired, his voice a grunt, “We’re screwed.”

Susan Schulman’s report continued, “These are pictures taken by Captain O’Brien. The canisters are labeled U-235. The outside of the submarine is marked 236. There are human remains on board. The sub also was carrying parts of what is believed to be M2 German fighter jets. Where’s all this potentially disastrous cargo right now? Still out in the ocean, east of the world’s most famous beach, Daytona Beach. Cronus said he knows the location.”

The video cut to Schulman’s ambush interview with Nick.

Cronus: “I can take you there, sure. Come on, TV gal.”

Schulman: “Perhaps Mr. Cronus isn’t fully aware of the magnitude of this find. Nonetheless, Captain Sean O’Brien told us yesterday he didn’t find the U-boat. When presented with pictures we managed to obtain from Canfield’s girlfriend, Nicole Bradley, a Channel Nine intern, the dam of secrecy broke apart. And Captain O’Brien is none too happy about it.”

O’Brien: “Seems to me, Miss Schulman, you are the one compromising the safety of the nation by your zeal to be the first to put this on television rather than to be responsible and shut the hell up.”

Schulman: “Mark and Angela, Captain O’Brien says he did not bring up the canisters marked U-235. So, as far as we know, they’re sitting out there where they’ve been hidden since World War II. We spoke with a physicist at nearby Lockheed Martin, and she told us it would take about two-thousand pounds of enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima.”

Anchorman: “Thanks, Susan. Before we go to Todd Knowles’s report, a programming note, Susan will be appearing via satellite on CBS national at nine o’clock tonight fielding questions. Now, let’s go to Todd in Jacksonville.”

Dave Collins turned to O’Brien and Nick. “Not good gentlemen. The woman’s obviously very subjective. What she’s managed to do in three minutes is pop the top on a sixty-seven-old secret and place you two and Jason in the middle of what she’s painting as something almost akin to smuggling nuclear weapons.”

“Well fuck you very much,” Nick said toward the television. He shut off the sound. “What are we gonna do now? I feel like a wanted man, a freakin’ criminal, and we haven’t done anything wrong.”

Susan Schulman appeared live on CBS, in a news/talk show format that was broadcast nationally. Sean O’Brien, Nick Cronus, and Jason Canfield’s faces, along with the underwater photos O’Brien took, on television for the world to see. In addition to Schulman, the host’s guests included a U.S. senator to hypothesize, a retired Pentagon general to “put things in perspective,” a doomsday minister to lose perspective, and a Columbia University physicist to tell how nuclear bombs are made. O’Brien and Nick left, Nick swearing he’d never watch television news again.

Dave poured a scotch and wondered how long it would take before he got the first phone call.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

The 11:00 p.m. newscasts had O’Brien, Nick and Jason’s face on every channel, the stories going viral and getting millions of views on the Internet. Five minutes later, O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Maggie Canfield. “Sean, Jason told me what happened, how his girlfriend managed to get and give those pictures of that submarine to the news media. I am so very sorry.”

“It’s okay, Maggie.”

“No, no it’s not okay. I know it’s late, and I feel bad for even asking, but can we talk? Not on the phone. Are you at the marina?”

“Yes, I was just about to take Max for her walk.”

“Maybe I could join you. I can be there in ten minutes.

“We’ll be in the parking lot in front of the Tiki Bar.”

As he opened the sliding glass door leading to Jupiter’s cockpit, he looked at his Glock lying near the boat’s helm. O’Brien picked up the gun, wedged it under his belt in the small of his back, and stepped out onto the dock with Max at his heels.

The pier was damp from heavy dew. A vapor rose off the surface of the marina water and drifted eerily above the flickering security lamps, the sound of an eighteen-wheeler fading in the distance, the breakers across the road like a whisper from a seashell. O’Brien followed Max down the long dock. The soft flash of light from the lighthouse made him smile as it oddly looked like a firefly lost in the rising mist.

Maggie Canfield was just getting out of her car when they approached. “Thank you for letting me join you and Max on your walk.”

“It’s not always a walk, lots of stopping and starting, but it’s always an adventure, especially when ol’ Joe, the boatyard cat, is around.”

Maggie walked beside O’Brien, both following Max as she sniffed beneath the coconut palm trees, the fronds rustling from a sudden breeze across the water. Maggie said, “Jason told me what happened, how you got your anchor caught on that submarine and found those things. He also let me know he promised you confidentiality. That trust was broken. Trust is something his father and I always tried hard to instill in our son. I’m sorry this got out of hand so quickly.”

“Don’t sweat it, Maggie. Jason’s a good kid.”

“What’s all this on the news about some kind of nuclear material? Is that what you found out there?

“Maybe.”

“Dear God … what are you going to do?”

“Where’s Jason now?”

“He’s home in his room, playing video games on his computer. Why?”

“Keep a close eye on him.”

“Is my son in some kind of danger … please … after Frank’s death-”

“Maggie, just tell Jason to be aware of his surroundings. If he even suspects he might be followed, call me immediately.”

“I’m scared now. I haven’t felt this way in a long time.”

“It’ll be fine. Hopefully, it will pass in a couple of days.”

They stood next to one of the docks and watched a forty-two foot Chaparral enter the marina, its green and white running lights diffused in the mist above the water. Maggie turned toward O’Brien. “Jason is so looking forward to working on your boat with you this summer. Thank you, again, for giving him a greater sense of purpose.”

“It’ll be a good summer. We need to catch fish, and leave sleeping subs alone.”

Maggie smiled and pulled a loose strand of dark hair behind one ear. She watched Max a moment and said, “I’d love to have you over for a home-cooked meal. I can broil a great fish, that’s assuming your crew can catch a few.” She laughed and touched O’Brien’s arm.

“I’d like that, Maggie.” He glanced toward the Tiki Bar. “Would you like a drink? I think we can make last call.”

Maggie smiled, the revolving light from the lighthouse illuminating the tops of sailboat masts and the highest coconut palms. “I’d love that, but I better head home. I have an early day tomorrow, and I told Jason I’d be back soon.”

“I’ll walk you to your car.”

Max followed them, stopping only once across the parking lot, the sound or laughter coming from the Tiki Bar. At the car, O’Brien said, “Maggie, tell me what you know about Eric Hunter?”

“Who?”

“He said his name’s Eric Hunter.”

“I don’t know anyone by that name.”

“He said he knew you and your husband, Frank, knew him before the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole.”

“Sean, I don’t know this man, and I never heard Frank mention his name. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.”

Maggie studied him for a second, and then said, “I need to get home.” She leaned in and hugged O’Brien. He could smell the shampoo in her hair, the perfume she always wore twenty years ago, the way she used to hold him close, her head on his chest.

She brushed her hand against the Glock. “What’s that on your back? Is it a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Do you always wear a gun when you walk Max?”

“Upon occasion.”

“Just tell me one thing … is my son safe with you?”

“Yes.”

She leaned up on her toes and kissed O’Brien on his cheek, and then she drove away. O’Brien watched her taillights swallowed in the fog. He heard the wail of a siren in the distance and saw the beam from the lighthouse rake across the rising mist, giving symmetry and animation to ghosts climbing the masts of sailboats.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The following morning the FBI arrived at 8:00 a.m. Two men. One wore blue jeans, knit golf shirt, sneakers, and a nine millimeter on his hip. The other man dressed in a blue sports coat, kakis, and a button-down, white shirt. They walked toward Jupiter.

Jason was hosing down Jupiter as O’Brien and Dave shared a pot of coffee on Gibraltar’s cockpit. O’Brien saw them approaching and said to Dave, “We have some company. Are they your guys?”

“Not my guys, although I am retired, remember? However, one of our guys would be somebody who looked like a marine diesel mechanic. Those two have to be Homeland or FBI.”

“I have a close friend, an agent in the Miami Bureau.”

“Lauren Miles?”

“Yeah, Lauren. Wonder why they didn’t send her. Because of what Abby Lawson and her grandmother, Glenda, told me … I’m not eager to volunteer a lot of information to the FBI at this point. I see no use in showing every card in a deck that might have been marked a long time ago.”

“The days of J. Edgar Hoover, eh? Let’s hope that’s not the case.”

As the men got closer to Jupiter, O’Brien stood. “Good morning.”

The one in the sports coat said, “Sean O’Brien.”

“That’s me.”

The one in the blue jeans said, “Recognized your face from TV. You mind coming over here so we can talk?”

“You mind telling me who you are?”

The man in the sports coat took off his sunglasses and stared as if he needed to see O’Brien with his naked eyes. He stepped close to Gibraltar. The morning light wedged in his black eyes. Square jaw shaved so close his skin was still red from his razor. “I’m Special Agent Steve Butler. And this is Special Agent Mike Gates.” Gates was in his mid-sixties, thinning grey hair combed straight back, eyes cool and detached. O’Brien thought he resembled the actor Anthony Hopkins.

O’Brien said, “Sure, I can come up there on the dock, but it might be more comfortable if you fellows joined us down here for coffee. This is Dave Collins. The kid hosing off my boat, right over there, is Jason Canfield. The lady sitting in her deck chair on that nice trawler right behind you is Mrs. Pittman. Sweet lady. Has ears like an elephant and the personality of Henny-Penny, you know, the sky’s falling.”

The men looked around them to the marina community awaking, people moving, watching. They walked down the side dock and stepped onto Gibraltar’s cockpit.

“Coffee?” Dave asked.

“No thanks,” they said in unison.

O’Brien said, “I imagine you might want to chat with Jason. He’s my deckhand. I’ll call Nick. He’s in the boat on the other side of Dave’s boat. He was with us when we found it. That way you can ask whatever you want, get it all out of the way at once.”

“We’ll decide who we question and when we question them,” said Special Agent Gates, his voice chilly, just above a whisper.

“Let’s not get off on the wrong foot,” Dave said. “Please, sit down. The deck chairs are pretty comfortable. Or if you want, we can go inside.”

“This is fine,” said agent Butler. He and Gates sat. Agent Butler began the questioning, “Tell us how you found the German submarine.”

“Okay,” O’Brien said. “It started when I decided I’d get into the charter fishing business.” O’Brien told them the story as they scribbled notes, nodded and broke in with a question from time to time. When he finished, O’Brien asked, “Anything else?”

“What did you bring up from the sub?” asked Gates.

“Nothing.”

“Did your dive partner, Nick Cronus, bring up anything?”

“No.”

“Would you submit to a polygraph?” asked Butler.

“Yes.”

“Could you find the sub again?” Gates asked.

“Maybe.”

Agent Butler raised his left eyebrow. “What do you mean by maybe? Aren’t the coordinates in your GPS?”

“No, they’re not. We were at anchor, fishing. Catching nothing. I didn’t see a need to mark numbers. When we caught the sub, there was so much excitement, we forgot.”

“And your men will concur with that?” Gates asked.

“Yes.”

Gates stared over the marina water, the reflection off the bay bouncing in his olive green eyes. For a moment, O’Brien saw a detached glimpse of absolute power. He knew he was looking at a man used to getting his way. Gates moved only his eyes to O’Brien. He didn’t blink.

“Mr. O’Brien, we know of your background with Miami-Dade homicide. Some of our Miami agents speak highly of you and your investigative talents. But let me get one thing very straight, and put you on notice, too. If enriched uranium is, in fact, on that sub, then this is a very serious investigation. We won’t need, nor ask for your help in conducting any portion of it. The FBI has the manpower to nip this quickly, and we’re not looking for any soldiers to help or hinder us. Do I make myself clear?”

“Clear as a bell,” O’Brien said with a smile.

Dave said, “There is nothing territorial here. I’m retired CIA. I’m sure the agency will be in the thick of things, too. Because Sean and I understand your challenges, if there is anything that we can do or add to your investigation, please let us know.”

“Do you know if anyone from the agency is here yet?” asked Butler.

“No, not in an official capacity.”

Agent Gates looked over at Jason washing down Jupiter and said, “It would have been more appropriate if you and your crew had come to us before all this hit the media.”

“If you’re implying that Jason screwed up by having too much to drink and letting his girlfriend get it out of him, you’re right. But that’s happened, and there’s nothing we can do about it. I assure you, he feels awful.”

“The unfortunate part is, with the Internet, this kind of stuff gets around the world in a matter of a few clicks,” Gates said. “What we know, the bad guys know. I’d hate to see one of them question that kid. If you did find weapons-grade uranium out there, the salvagers you’ll see can make sharks look like guppies.”

Dave said, “We’re aware of the gravity.”

“Are you?” asked Gates, standing. “O’Brien, you need to figure out where you were when you hooked that U-boat, and then take us out there.”

“Could take a long time. Atlantic’s a big ocean,” O’Brien said.

“Mike, you want to question the kid?” asked Agent Butler. “I’ll walk over and get to know Mr. Cronus.”

O’Brien said, “Knock loudly on Nick’s door. He’s a sound sleeper.”

The first reporter arrived at 10:00 a.m. It was an online newspaper reporter, bearded, plaid shirt, sleeves pushed up above his elbows, in tow with a pudgy photographer. The reporter stepped aboard Jupiter’s deck and knocked on the salon door. The photographer stayed dockside, both hands on his camera, ready.

A TV news crew, reporter, and camera operator were coming down the dock, followed by a freelancer from the Associated Press.

CHAPTER THIRTY

From inside Gibraltar, Dave Collins watched the media converge around Jupiter. He looked at Sean, Nick and Jason. “Gentlemen, the only way to combat the damage done is to do what politicians and pundits would do in these circumstances.”

“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.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

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.”

“Sounds like the remote viewing we did at the agency in the nineties.”

“Similar, I think. I believe people like O’Brien can somehow perceive things on a near subconscious level and make them rise up to connect with the conscious mind.”

“Most of us try to go the opposite direction, regress in some way to tap into the subconscious by various mediation techniques. You said he’s a former homicide detective, did he retire?”

“Resigned. The very talent he has to sense a crime scene, I think, allowed him to get so close to the criminal mind, to evil, he often found himself in a place he didn’t want to be.”

“The evil in the minds of people like Hitler and his band, some of whom I’m sure are buried in that sub, isn’t a place to dwell too long. Let’s have them quickly get back down there and remove the U-235; we’ll come pick it up for secure storage. We need it done immediately, and I mean tonight. This is of utmost national security”

“I understand. I’ll contact them.”

“Keep us posted. Sort of like old times, eh, Dave? Remember, you’re supposed to be drawing a pension and fishing in Florida.”

“I’ll get back to that. Contact you when I have something.” Dave disconnected, called O’Brien and Nick, and explained the conversation he had with the CIA and the urgency to retrieve the canisters marked U-235.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

When Nick stepped into Gibraltar’s salon, Max trotted over and greeted him, tail wagging. “Little Max, even in that tiny head of yours, you have more brains than the people on this boat.” Nick looked at Dave and added, “The only reason I’d go back out there, back to that ocean graveyard, middle of the freakin’ night, is ‘cause I don’t want to see Sean try to do it alone. Too dangerous. Currents. Sharks.”

O’Brien said, “Can’t say I’m overjoyed to be working for the CIA.”

Dave said, “They’ve done more good than bad.”

“I’d rather give this stuff to the CIA than the FBI, considering the FBI might possibly have a sixty-plus-year connection with the incident on the beach with Billy Lawson.”

Dave grinned, “Who knows what Hoover did or didn’t do. Regardless, you found the sub in international waters anyway. It’s in the jurisdiction of the Agency.”

“Wait a minute,” Nick said, folding his arms across his chest. “When Sean and I start pulling that H-E-U stuff outta there … what if it blows up in our faces?”

Dave said, “It can’t be ignited unless it’s detonated in a way that delivers a very fast charge to the material.”

O’Brien said, “I don’t know how much each canister weighs, but I do know this: it’s probably not a good idea to take Jupiter back to the spot. Somebody could be watching it. Nick, let’s take your boat. It’s got a winch, which we’ll need to lift the canisters on board. You’ve got dive gear. Do you have guns aboard?”

Nick’s eyes popped. “I don’t even own a BB gun.”

O’Brien nodded. “I’ll bring mine. Dave, did your CIA contact say what the chatter was about? Who’s talking and what they’re saying?”

“I’d answer that if I knew. Internet chatter. Arabic. One person is a guy named Abdul-Hakim whom, I was told, helped supply Hezbollah with bombs it used against Israel in a skirmish.”

“A weapons’ broker? I imagine they’ve heard about all of this, of course.”

“A good guess is they’re on their way. Between the Internet and satellite TV, it’s a world without borders. Many young Islamic extremists are recruited via the Internet, including the ones who strap bombs to themselves. They’re recruited by the top echelon. The so-called martyrs do live forever on these websites where a new generation can see and hear why they do what they do. It’s all about perception. You can bet Abdul-Hakim and his group probably aren’t alone in their desire to possess weapons-grade uranium.”

Nick mumbled, “That TV chick don’t know the shit she’s got us into.”

“Probably doesn’t care,” said O’Brien. “I’ve got three good underwater flashlights. Plenty of batteries. Nick, are your dive tanks filled?”

“Yeah, man. Always.”

“Okay, we’ll have about an hour to comb through what we can.”

“Good,” said Dave. “I checked the weather. No storms. Seas are about two feet in the stream. Can you find it again, Sean?”

“Yes.”

“No doubt. You’re about ninety minutes away from it, an hour on the bottom and ninety minutes returning. Should put you back at the marina before sun-up. We can off-load it and store the stuff in a secure area.”

O’Brien smiled. “Outside of Fort Knox, what do you have in mind?”

“I don’t know yet. We’ll hear soon. Let me fix you two a big thermos of coffee.”

“Don’t need any caffeine down there,” Nick said. “When you’re in the devil’s den, your heart’s goin’ a mile a minute. I imagine one of those skeletons tapping on my shoulder as I swim by. If I had too much caffeine, I might shoot up outta the ocean like a rocket. Maybe I come down on the lovely island of Mykonos.”

Andrei Keltzin walked out of the Kiev, a Ukrainian restaurant and bar in Midtown Manhattan, at a little past midnight. When in New York, it was where he always went on Tuesday nights. This night of the week they provided two-for-one Stolichnaya and his favorite, Zapechona, a dish of braised lamb and garlic-roasted potatoes. Although the restaurant was Russian-owned, they adopted some of the American marketing. Two-for-one called a “happy hour.” Then why are the Americans such unhappy people? His small ears were pink, and they protruded from a round, bald head that seem to sit on a neck too long to be attached to such wide shoulders. His hard eyes looked liked black beads surrounded by too much white.

Rain fell over the city as he stood to hail a cab. A Ford Excursion gunned through a changing traffic light, splashing water across Keltzin’s shined black wingtips. “Fuck you,” he grumbled in Russian. The Americans and their giant fucking cars, SUVs-a stupid name. Automobiles a poor Russian couple could live in and call home.

His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He slipped back into the shadows beneath an awning, the rain popping against the canvas, the odor of diesel exhaust in the air. “There is a plane leaving for Miami in two hours,” said the deep monotone voice in Russian. “From LaGuardia. Be on it.”

“Will you meet me in Miami for further instructions?”

“Yes. Same place as last time.”

“Are you alone?”

“Dimitri will be there as well, and others very soon.”

The caller disconnected and Keltzin stopped the next cab. “LaGuardia. You get a tip of one hundred dollars if you can get me there in twenty minutes.”

“No problem,” said the man in a Moroccan accent. “This time of night, not much traffic. You might get lucky.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Nick Cronus stood near his boat’s bowsprit as clouds parted and a near full moon rose above the dark ocean. He watched O’Brien in the bridge read the GPS and slowly bring the boat somewhere over the lost submarine. “Drop it!” yelled O’Brien above the throttle of the diesels. Nick pressed a button on the deck, and the anchor slid into the inky water.

O’Brien cut the engines and climbed down to the cockpit. The boat rocked gently on the surface, the slap of waves lapping against the hull, the stars like twinkling ornaments in the sky. O’Brien pulled out the SCUBA tanks, fins, knives, wetsuits, and underwater flashlights.

Nick got a spear gun from the salon. “Might need this down there.”

“What do you think you’re going to shoot?”

“Hope I don’t have to shoot a shark. You can get great whites out here. Tiger sharks. This is the freakin’ Gulf Stream, a flowing smorgasbord for things to eat things.”

“Let’s hope they’ve all eaten and gone to sleep it off?”

“Sharks don’t sleep at night. They eat at night. I’m not gonna be their meal.”

“You don’t have to go down there, you know.”

“If I don’t, who will? Jason? That kid would go just to say he’d gone, but he’d suck up so much air outta the tank seeing those skeletons he’d be no help. If he saw a shark swim through the light beam, bet he’d panic and pop to the top. He’d die from the bends.”

“I’m glad you’re here, Nick. I mean that.”

“I’m not out here ‘cause I’m still payin’ you back for pulling those three bikers off me. But when a man saves another man’s life … well, that kinda friendship is about as deep as you can get. You know?”

“I know. I just don’t want you to think you owe me something. You don’t.”

Nick grinned. “Let’s dive, brother!” He strapped on his tank, braced himself against the transom to slip the fins on his feet and shook his head. “Did I ever tell you what happened to me one night off Cedar Key?”

“No.”

“One time, ‘bout an hour before sunset, I was diving off Cedar Key, more than one hundred feet down. Found a lot of sponges. I stayed down too long. Come up too fast. Got back on my boat. Dropped the anchor and started fixing dinner. Looked at my chest, stomach, and I was getting blue spots all over. Felt weak. Dizzy. I knew I’d got hit, you know, the bends. Couldn’t get to a hospital for decompression. The old Greek way is to go back down, at least thirty-three feet … just hang there on the anchor rope ‘till the nitrogen is outta the system. Maybe an hour. So, that’s what I did.”

“Looks like it worked, you’re here.”

“Yeah man, but as I was floatin’ on my back like an astronaut in space, I see nothing but the lights from my boat above me. Then the lights went dark. Like a blanket was tossed over them. Know why?”

“Generator quit?”

“No. A huge shark was between me and the lights. Then it circled me, round and round. From dark to light to dark. I’ve never been so damn scared in my life.” Nick held up the spear gun. “But I had one of these. When the beast from hell opened his mouth to try and take off my leg, I say a quick prayer, stick this spear down his throat, and pulled the trigger. This saved my life that night, Sean. Could save ours tonight.”

O’Brien tossed a knife in a sheath to Nick. “Wear this on your belt in case you miss with the spear.”

“I won’t miss close. And sharks are only dangerous when they’re close.”

“Where’s your extra rope?”

“Storage bin behind you.” Nick pointed.

O’Brien opened the bin on the cockpit and pulled out rope, arranging it in a neat figure-eight loop that would allow for it to easily slide into the sea without becoming knotted. As he reached in to tie off the remaining few feet, he noticed something about the size of a small hockey puck. Black. Stuck on the side wall of the compartment. “Nick, shine one of the lights over here.”

Nick clicked on one of the flashlights, the beam falling on the object. “What the hell’s that?”

“O’Brien carefully removed the object and studied it in the light. “It’s a GPS transponder, Nick. Somebody knows we’re out here.”

“This is my boat! Not Jupiter. How the hell do they know?”

“Because they’re good, damn good. Turn off the light.”

Nick shut off the light and looked in a 360 circle. Nothing. Miles of dark sea and silence. “Who put that there, Sean?”

“I don’t know.”

“We’re way the hell out in this big ocean, and now I feel like we’re not alone.”

O’Brien scanned the horizon, the reflection of the moon on the water as clouds parted. “I don’t see another boat in site. If they’re coming, they could be running with lights out. Let’s beat the bastards. There may be no time for a two-tank dive. I just hope whoever put this here doesn’t surprise us when we come back to the surface.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

O’Brien climbed to the fly bridge and used a pair of binoculars to scan the horizon in all directions. He came back down the steps, binoculars in hand. “Nothing,” he said. “We have three-hundred feet of rope. When we get down there, let’s look in the other half of the sub we didn’t enter. If there are no canisters marked as U-235, we’ll go back in the half where we saw the stuff. We’ll tie both of them onto this rope, move them to a spot on the bottom, swim back to the boat, and use the winch to haul the stuff to us. Got it?”

“Yeah, I got it,” Nick said.

They stepped onto the dive platform. Before putting the regulator in his mouth, O’Brien said, “Turn the lights on underwater. Okay, let’s do it.” He slapped a high-five against Nick’s hand and stepped off the platform, the flashlight descending in the clear water like a meteor fading in the night sky.

Nick made the sign of the cross and looked up at the heavens. “If you get us outta this one, I won’t ask for nothin’ else, and I take back those thoughts I had today of Ralph Jenson’s wife.” Nick gripped the spear gun in one hand, the flashlight in the other, and fell backwards into the dark sea.

At thirty feet down, O’Brien adjusted his buoyancy and waited for Nick. Within a few seconds, Nick appeared next to O’Brien, and they began to swim the remaining seventy feet to the floor of the ocean. Nick panned his flashlight beam left to right as they descended, occasionally looking toward the surface, the light illuminating jellyfish and squid. O’Brien kept his light pointed in the direction they were heading. A minute later, they could see the dark gray hull, most of it encrusted with barnacles and algae.

O’Brien tapped Nick on the arm and motioned toward the long remnant of the sub they had not entered on their first exploration. Nick nodded and followed O’Brien as he swam for the opening, a twisted cavity of metal so thick with sea growth it looked like a dark entrance to an underwater cave.

The spotlights crisscrossed as the men entered, the light illuminating plankton, small fish, and shrimp flittering across the floor of the broken U-boat like mice scurrying for shelter. Nick pointed to a human skull, decapitated from the rest of the body, the skull wedged under a shard of metal. The skull had a small hole above one eye socket. A moray eel, mouth slightly parted, dogteeth visible in the light, backed into the dark crevice beside the skull. The men swam by, careful not to disturb the sediment, their bubbles rising to the ceiling of the broken U-boat.

The lights panned across shattered wires, pipes, pressure gauges frozen in time, and valves resembling small steering wheels, locked with barnacles. O’Brien thought it looked as if the insides of the U-boat were coated in volcanic lava.

Even with the veneer of ossified sea life, O’Brien could tell the long objects in front of them were torpedoes. They had entered the torpedo room. Four of the deadly cylinders had never been fired. A partial skeleton, missing one leg, was resting on the floor, half buried in residue.

The men could find no evidence of the U-235 canisters anywhere in that half of the submarine. O’Brien pointed toward the entrance and motioned to leave. He thought he caught a glimpse of relief in Nick’s eyes through his mask.

They swam by the remains of an eighty-caliber deck gun, blown off the area near the conning tower when the sub was hit. They tied the rope to a piece of metal shard at the opening, connecting it to the other half of the sub. Nick secured his spear gun at the entrance, and they slowly entered. Everything was as they’d left it.

Within a minute, O’Brien and Nick were back at the place where they originally found the U-235 canisters. They spent another ten minutes searching through the remainder of the sub. Nothing. Nothing but bones and bent metal. Then O’Brien spotted something on the floor about two feet from what looked like human pelvic bones. The object was a leather holster, caked in corrosion. O’Brien heard Glenda Lawson’s voice echoing off the walls of the U-boat. “All three gunshots sounded the same … and I’d heard Billy shooting lots of times at cans he’d set up in our backyard. His gun didn’t sound like the shots I heard that awful night.”

O’Brien lifted the gun out of the sediment, the move causing a soup of rust colored water to swirl in a vortex, a small red ghost dancing down the center of the submarine before melting to the floor.

They swam back to the cage that held the U-235, opened it and together lifted out each canister. O’Brien motioned for Nick to help him swim with the first canister to the blown-out entrance of the sub. Nick nodded, held a flashlight under his armpit, and swam beside O’Brien with the canister between them.

At the entrance, they turned and looked back toward the cage that held the remaining canister, the water murky, rust and sea mud in a thick broth. O’Brien shined a light on his watch. Eleven minutes of air left. He motioned for Nick to follow him to the cage for the other canister.

Nick’s eyes popped behind his mask. He reluctantly followed O’Brien back into the sea of tarnish, reaching for one of O’Brien’s fins for a connection. Using their sense of touch, the men lifted the remaining canister and walked it toward the entrance.

Nick stepped on something hard and round, like a bowling ball under his fin. The object, a human skull, cracked under the weight of the canister. Then Nick felt a pain across his shoulders as he backed into a sharp metal shard, the rusty edge slicing through his wetsuit, blood mixing with the decay in the water.

O’Brien tied the canisters to the end of the rope. He looked at his watch. Less than eight minutes of air left. O’Brien checked the slash across Nick’s back. Blood drifted from it, creating an eerie image of red smoke floating around his shoulders. O’Brien pointed to the surface. Nick nodded as they started a slow ascent.

Something shot through a flashlight beam. It could have been a shadow out of the corner of his Nick’s eye. But there are no shadows ninety feet down in the ocean at night. There are only predators.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Nick grabbed his flashlight and spear gun at the same time. Within a second, O’Brien had his knife off his belt. Nick looked at O’Brien and motioned toward the left. Both men aimed their flashlights into the dark void. Squid and needlefish swam by them.

Nick panned a few feet to the right, his shoulder bleeding.

A monster bull shark, at least ten feet long, circled the men.

O’Brien knew the bull shark was one of the most aggressive. One this size feared nothing, especially when there was blood. He looked at Nick, whose eyes were wide behind the face mask. O’Brien gestured, moving Nick’s back against his and pointing toward the surface. Nick nodded, keeping the spear gun in front of him as his flashlight swept the murky sea. Back-to-back, both men began moving the beams of light in half-circles as they ascended. They followed the anchor rope. To rise too quickly would risk a dangerous case of the bends. To stay where they were any longer would put them at risk of more sharks arriving and attacking.

O’Brien looked at his depth gauge. At fifty feet they stopped, held onto the rope and breathed slowly. They would have to decompress here for two minutes, purging the trapped nitrogen from their bloodstreams.

The shark circled again. Each orbit closer. An aggressive twist of the head. Eyes watching the men. Closer. O’Brien and Nick followed it with their lights. Then it was gone. Vanished. O’Brien looked at his watch. Thirty seconds more to decompress. Two minutes of air left. For thirty long seconds they would have to stay right where they were. He tapped his watch and showed Nick who nodded, his eyes darting back to the moving light. Then Nick aimed the flashlight beneath them.

The image was frightening. The bull shark rose like a torpedo from the inky depth. Mouth open. Rows of one-inch teeth expanding. Nick fired the spear gun. The spear grazed the shark’s side. It was like hitting a dinosaur with a dart. But it was enough to confuse the shark. It cut to the right and swam off into the dark.

O’Brien pointed toward the surface. Nick nodded and they followed the rope. Another twenty feet and they’d be at the dive platform. Could they clear the water before the shark turned around and charged? O’Brien tried not to think of the odds. Within ten feet of the boat’s dive platform, they broke the surface. Nick spit out his regulator and blurted, “Swim! Fuckin’ swim!”

They both reached the wooden platform at the same instant. Hands slapping wood. Fingers gripping the half-inch slots. Feet and fins grappling for the ladder rungs. Nick stood. He grabbed O’Brien’s hand and helped pull him up from the top rung of the ladder. Under the moonlight, they saw the shark swim closer. Just beyond the dive platform, the shark’s steal gray dorsal fin slicing the surface.

“It’s following us up on the stand!” Nick yelled. He pushed the transom door so hard the lock flew across the cockpit floor. Both men stood in the cockpit, the boat rocking in the swells, the sound of water dripping from dive suits, breathing heavy.

“That’s it!” Nick yelled. “That place is cursed! I tried to tell you that. We came within an inch of being chum meat.”

“Thought you said you didn’t miss with the spear when they were close.”

“That devil shark came up straight from hell. I had one second to shoot.”

“It bought us time to get to the boat.” O’Brien leaned down and picked the brass bolt lock off the floor. “But did you have to kick the transom door in?”

“Rather kick it in then have a pissed-off bull shark with a scratch across its back come and take me off the dive stand like I was a piece of fish on a plate.”

“Let me see your shoulder.” Nick turned around and O’Brien examined the wound. “Nasty cut. How’d that happen?”

“Something in that freaking sub stuck me. After I stepped on what felt like a human skull, BAM! Right across my spine. Maybe Nazi ghost sailors stabbed me.”

“It might need stitches.”

“Sean, you gotta listen to me. There’s real evil down there. I feel it! We weren’t supposed to find that thing. When we go back down there it’s like daring the devil to step across a line. Devil’s cursed that place.”

O’Brien was silent, his eyes looking across at the horizon.

“We need to get outta here,” Nick said.

“Let’s pull up the canisters and move. We have to work in the moonlight. We need the winch.”

Nick grunted. “If that shark cuts this rope with his teeth, that shit can stay down there.”

Soon the canisters were to the surface. O’Brien said, “Let’s be very careful. Swing them over the platform, and we’ll secure them in the bilge.”

“Dave said this stuff had to have some kinda super electrical spark to blow up.”

“Let’s hope Dave’s right. Get some blankets. We’ll wrap each cylinder separately, store them in different sides of the bilge and move on before first light.”

Nick looked toward the east. It was still more than two hours before sunrise. The moon was straight overhead. Lightning popped far out at sea. Then Nick saw another light. This one was a boat, coming from the southeast. A tiny wink in the distance. “We got company,” Nick said. “Somebody’s out in the stream.”

O’Brien looked up. “They’re a long way off. Maybe they’re fishing.”

Nick studied the light for a second. “No, they’re not fishing. They’re moving too fast. Let’s get the shit outta here, Sean. Could be the Coast Guard again. They might be the ones tracking us with that damn bug you found.”

“Or it could be somebody else. We can’t stick around to find out.”

They quickly wrapped the canisters and stowed them. O’Brien cranked the diesels and got the boat on a fast plane, both three hundred horsepower engines at full bore. He glanced down at the old holster he’d set on the bridge floor. He picked it up, turned a small bridge light on and tried to unsnap the metal button. The top flap of the holster fell apart like wet cardboard. He reached in and pulled out a German Luger. The pistol was in good condition despite the fact it had been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for sixty-seven years. The magazine was too corroded to remove.

He knew the clip held eight bullets. If four were missing, he would contact Abby and Glenda Lawson. Maybe the German sailor who owned this had put a bullet through the head of his comrade and three into the body of Billy Lawson.

O’Brien wondered what the autopsy performed on Billy Lawson would show, if they even did an autopsy. Would bullets removed from the body have been stored?

Nick climbed the steps, holding two bottles of Corona in one hand. He gave one to O’Brien and toasted. “Sean O’Brien, ever since you pulled into the marina a couple years ago, I’ve never been bored.” Nick took a long pull off the bottle and flopped down on the bench seat, his wet hair in dark curls. “You are only at the marina a couple weeks a month. If I had your old river house, I’d be up there, too. But when you do come in, don’t take this wrong, Sean. Shit happens. That time that crazy cop was tryin’ to frame you. Put that dead girl’s hair in your bed. It’s never boring, my brother.”

O’Brien sipped his beer. “Glad you like excitement because the people in that boat you spotted definitely aren’t fishing. I’m hoping your boat has bigger engines, because it looks like we’re being followed.”

Nick whirled around. He saw the running lights in the distance. “Oh shit! Did you hide those rifles in the closet behind the head?”

“Yes, and it might be smart to go below and get them.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Dave Collins poured his first glass of scotch at 4:02 a.m. He walked from Gibraltar’s galley to the salon where Max slept on the couch. She opened her eyes. Dave sat next to her and caressed her back. “They’ll be back soon, girl. Go to sleep.”

Dave sipped the scotch and thought about his thirty-year career with the CIA. He thought about the costs, the gains and the compromises, the slow disintegration of his marriage. The inability to tell his wife anything about what he did, what he had to do, or where he was. The world in which he had to exist was a world of no illusions and yet so artificial. It was so deceptive that the reality of exposure was more frightening than the plausible denial of who he was and for what he stood.

Sometimes, alone late at night, surrounded by shadows and deception, far away from his wife and sleeping children, he had to remind himself of exactly what he did stand for and why his personal sacrifices were less important than a successful mission.

He sipped the scotch, his mind drifting to the last phone call he’d received from Hamilton Van Arsdale, his former director at the Agency. Van Arsdale had another two years until retirement, and he planned to go out with the arrival of the new administration. Van Arsdale agreed that the HEU should be locked in Collins’ storage unit until it could be secured and removed.

He looked at his watch: 4:20. Where were they? They should have checked in by now. Were they okay?

The marine radio above his desk crackled to life. The sound of static caused Dave to sit up straight. O’Brien said, “ETA … seventy minutes tops.”

Max lifted her head, a slight whine from her throat.

Dave picked up the microphone and keyed the button. “How’s fishing?”

“We got a couple of grouper.”

Dave half smiled, fatigue knotting the muscles in his shoulders. “That’s good. We’ll keep the light on for you.”

“We have a light about two miles to our east. Seems to be gaining. Don’t know if they’re following us or just heading into the pass.”

“I’ll make a call.”

“I don’t know if that’d be good or bad. Could be the Coast Guard. Stay tuned.”

Andrei Keltzin looked at his watch as he walked through Miami’s international airport. He traveled with no luggage. Everything he needed would be purchased in Miami. He stepped outside, the warm breeze full of humidity and scents of flowers. He liked Florida. He liked coming to Miami. Women. Weapons. Both so easy to find and buy. But he knew on this trip he’d have limited time. Yuri Volkow had sounded more urgent that usual. Whatever it was, the job would require his immediate attention. Keltzin new something would happen within hours. He could smell the odor of a hunt in the warm Florida air. These things a man comes to know, like a change in weather before it happens. Only Yuri, a man who saw more abuse than he had under the old regime, understood the consequences of action and inaction. None moved faster than Yuri to seize opportunity.

His cell rang. “Where are you?” asked Yuri Volkow.

“Airport. Outside. Near the taxi stand.”

“Meet me where we met last. Things have changed much since we spoke.”

“How?”

“I will tell you when you arrive. We are not the first here. I have been working to eliminate another threat. They had men placed here in Miami previous to our arrival. However, before the sun rises, the immediate competitor should be removed.”

“Zakhar is here for the job?”

The phone call ended. Keltzin stepped to the curb, raising a hand to signal a taxi.

O’Brien watched the boat gaining in the distance. “Nick, take the wheel a minute.”

“I was born with a boat wheel in my hands.”

O’Brien held up a marine infrared night telescope and spotted the boat. He was quiet for a moment. “What do you see?” asked Nick.

“I’m not sure. At least two men. One has a moustache. Boat’s a Sea Ray. Probably twenty-six feet. No outriggers. Doubt they were fishing.” O’Brien lifted one of the rifles off the bench seat. Remington M-24. Bolt action with a scope. He chambered a round and sat the rifle back on the bench.

Nick looked at the gun. “I might have been born with a boat wheel in my hands, but I have a feelin’ you came outta your mama with a gun in yours. You handle that thing like it’s part of your body.”

“During the war it was.”

“Did you use a gun like that over there?”

“No, it was a Remington 700.”

“All the troops carry them, I guess, huh?”

“Some do.”

“Which ones.”

O’Brien held the night-scope back to his eye. “Snipers.”

“Shit, you were a sniper?”

“I was whatever I had to be. Those guys are gaining on us.”

“Bet they put the bug on my boat!”

O’Brien lowered the night-scope. “They have a gun. Looks like a shotgun.”

“A fuckin’ shotgun can kill you!”

“But they have to get in range.”

“How close is this range thing?”

“They’re probably using buckshot. About thirty yards.”

Nick pushed the throttles. “We aren’t gonna go any faster. How far can you take somebody out with that gun?”

“From an elevated position, like a hill in Afghanistan, maybe a mile. On the sea, bouncing like this, I don’t know.”

“How long you gonna give them?”

“Before what?”

“Before you shoot?”

“I don’t know.”

“Sean, they’re less than a quarter mile behind us.”

“I know.”

“You gonna just let ‘em run up and blow a hole in my boat?”

“They won’t do that because they probably want what we collected.”

“So, you gonna let ‘em fire at you and me before you shoot? We have two rifles. I’m not an ex-sniper, but if that boat gets much closer, I can sure as hell hit it.”

“I don’t want to see you facing a murder charge.”

“It sure as hell would be self-defense! Them or us, Sean.”

“Closer we get to shore, Nick, the greater our odds are that there’ll be other boats and these guys will just go away”

“In another couple of miles, they gonna be caught up with us. What then?”

“When they get within shotgun range, we’ll cut the engines back to half speed, do a three-sixty move around their boat, and have a little conversation with them on the PA. If they choose to start firing, we’ll do the same. They won’t win.”

Dave Collins keyed his marine radio. “Checking on your ETA. Before I start mixing the pancakes, wanted to know when the kitchen can expect you?”

“Should be about twenty-five minutes,” O’Brien’s voice came over the radio speaker.

“Is the fishing party still with you?”

“Yes.”

“Hanging close?”

No answer.

“How close is close?”

No answer.

“Shit!” Dave keyed the microphone, “Are you okay?”

No answer. Max whined.

O’Brien followed the boat through the night scope. One hundred yards.

“Whatcha gonna do?” Nick yelled. “I don’t feel like getting shot!”

O’Brien was silent. He looked up from the scope for a moment as the boat behind them exploded in a ball of white and orange fire.

“Holly shit!” Nick yelled. The light from the explosion illuminated the dark sea.

“What’s going on?” Dave’s voice came across the radio.

Dave paced his salon. The radio crackled. O’Brien said, “The boat following us just blew up.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

The beam from Ponce Lighthouse punched through a fog stretching a half mile out to sea. O’Brien watched the light pierce the mist while Nick brought his boat toward the inlet. Nick had been quiet since witnessing the explosion.

As they entered Ponce Inlet, swells bounced off the rock jetties and crashed into the boat’s hull from left and right angles. A night heron called out from the blanket of fog, the cry an unseen mariner’s siren, a warning in sync with the rotation of the light.

Along the jetties, the fog wafted in backlit shadows, moving like spirits of Indians crawling down to the water’s edge to spear fish that no longer swam into the river to spawn. On the wind was the smell of a saltwater tide breaking against dry rocks, Australian pines, and a smoldering campfire burping up the taste of charred pine sap. O’Brien looked at his watch: 5:27 a.m. “Almost home, Nick. You okay?”

Nick held the wheel, fighting the turbulent water. “That coulda been us back there. Who killed the men who probably wanted to kill us?”

“I don’t know.” O’Brien looked at the holster and Luger on the bench seat. “Nick, you still pull a few crab traps?”

“Yeah, man. Why?”

“I want a place to park this Luger in its own salty environment until I need it.”

Dave Collins spotted Nick’s running lights through the fog. He sat in Gibraltar’s wheelhouse with Max lying on the bench seat. “Here they come, girl. Your papa and his pal Nick were almost toast out there. And, now, they may be carrying material that could turn cities into toast. I know that gentle creatures like you don’t relate to the concept of absolute power and mass killing. It’s an evil unique to the animal kingdom of man.”

She lifted her head, cocked her ears before Dave could hear the rumble of the diesels coming through the mangroves and onto the docks. “Ahhh, you know that sound, don’t you, girl? Uncle Nicky’s big boat, right?”

Dave carried Max down the steps to the cockpit then placed her on the dock so she could walk with him to Nick’s slip. They watched him work the bow thrusters and reverse the engines, bringing the boat to a perfect stop. Dave fastened the bow rope and stepped aboard with Max.

“You two are a sight for scorched eyes,” O’Brien said, coming down from the bridge, careful to keep his voice low. He petted Max. “Hi, lady.” O’Brien looked at the eastern sky. “Dawn’s coming soon. Let’s go inside. We’ll show you what we found out there.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

Dave watched as Nick and O’Brien gently set the blanket-covered canisters on the galley table and unwrapped them. Dave looked at the labels and released a low whistle. “U-235. Germany had plans in the last days of the war. If it’s the real thing, these two alone are probably enough to make a dirty bomb.”

“That’s what we saw tonight,” Nick said. “A dirty freakin’ bomb.”

“What you saw probably was five pounds of C-4, remotely detonated or wired to explode at a certain time. The stuff on this table would destroy this marina and life within an immediate quarter mile from it.”

O’Brien said, “From our perspective, what Nick and I saw a hundred yards off our stern was very dirty. What’s your chatter tell you now? Who the hell’s behind this?”

“Don’t know. And, unfortunately, this stuff in front of us is highly enriched and highly desired by the world’s most undesirables. As you just witnessed first-hand, they’ll do anything to get it.”

“That narrows it down,” O’Brien said dryly. “We were almost taken out by a bull shark that must have weighed a thousand pounds. Then we were chased forty miles in open sea by some unknown undesirables who were killed by some other unknown undesirables.”

Nick shook his damp, shaggy head and said, “I need a drink.”

“How many hostiles were taken out tonight?” Dave asked.

“I saw two on the boat,” O’Brien said.

Dave inhaled loudly and exhaled slowly, his eyes studying the canisters. “If we knew where the chase boat came from, it’d be easier to check marinas and boat rentals. We now know that there are at least two rivals desperate to get their hands on this stuff. We know that one rival just lost two members. We’ll hide this while we search for the rest of it.”

“What do you mean by the rest of it?” O’Brien asked.

Dave touched the damp barnacles on one of the canisters. “If these are all that were left on the sub, the rest are indeed missing. I’ve done more research. U-boat 234, which was the sub that surrendered a week earlier than the one spotted by Billy Lawson and found by you two, had more than two lead canisters. Inside the canisters, they were lined with gold, and the cake baking in them was more than enough to make a bomb the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima.”

Nick whistled. “So what we pulled out of the sub tonight is only part of it?”

“Correct. I suspect the rest could be still buried somewhere on that beach. The area, Sean, where the old woman and her granddaughter told you about, the place where Billy Lawson saw enough to get him killed.”

“If it’s near Fort Matanzas, that’s been federally protected property. Land left undisturbed. The FBI or OSS must have done a check of the beach in 1945. Who’s to say it was never found? Maybe the two Japanese men that Billy Lawson saw leaving on foot returned for the HEU. The mystery man who met them, maybe he came back for it.”

“And did what with it?” Dave asked.

“The extent of my crime solving was always as a homicide detective. This seems more aligned with your old beat. What happened to the uranium on that other sub, the one that was escorted by Navy destroyers into Portsmouth?”

“That’s a question I can’t find the answer to. There are those who believe Robert Oppenheimer, the director of the Manhattan Project, had permission from President Truman to remove the U-235 and use it, or some of it, in the atomic bombs we dropped over Japan. Hitler may have been about to give Japan ‘the big gift’ in the war, material to build atomic weapons. Imagine what could have happened.”

O’Brien said, “If there’s any poetic irony in this, it’s using nuclear material made in Nazi Germany bound for Japan to use on America. It gives Dante’s Inferno a different perspective.”

“Hell with it,” Nick said. “Sean, let’s get this shit outta my galley and out of sight. I’m done with lookin’ at the end-of-the-war time bombs on my breakfast table. Good morning America, guess what’s for breakfast? Nukes, baby, that’s what!”

Dave said, “It’s still dark. Let’s get these in my inflatable. We’ll off-load them at the parking lot and into Sean’s Jeep, and then take them to my storage unit near the bridge.”

O’Brien said, “We could be followed.”

“Doubt it considering what happened at sea.”

“They’ve already proved to me they’re quicker than I’d have expected.” O’Brien lifted a pillow off the sofa, picked up the transponder, and handed it to Dave.

“So this is how they located Nick’s boat out there?”

“Yeah, I found it when I was pulling rope out of the storage hole on the cockpit.”

“How’d it get there?”

“I’m guessing, that so-called reporter, the guy with the dark hair and dark-rimmed glasses, who said he was from the A.P. He was here first, right before the others. You saw him walking around, chatting with boat owners. He could have hidden it on Nick’s boat in ten seconds. But because of the angle, you couldn’t see if he was knocking on the salon door or slipping something in a storage bin. This guy had the tall photographer with him. Wore a Tigers’ cap. Two cameras around his neck. Carried a red nylon backpack for cameras. Now I believe it held a GPS transponder or two. I’m checking Jupiter.”

Nick said, “When Sean showed it to me, I wanted to smash the thing like hittin’ a hockey puck. But he said ‘no,’ we may need it later to send theses bad dudes where we want them to go. Maybe they went straight to hell out there at sea.”

Dave exhaled loudly and said, “We’ve just entered the first ring of hell.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Rashid Aamed arrived at the Starbucks fifteen minutes early. It was mid-morning, and he had changed rental cars twice since leaving Miami on his trip to Orlando. He knew he was not followed. The Americans were not very good at even locating people. Following him would be a challenge to them. He always knew when someone was watching, following. Could feel their presence like a cold wind on his neck.

He paid for his espresso, bought a copy of the New York Times, and walked back outside, taking a seat at the most remote table in front of the coffee shop. He kept his sunglasses on as he read the latest print story about the discovery of the German U-boat and its potential deadly cargo off the coast of Florida. There was no mention of the explosion. The men had died a martyr’s noble death. They were in a better place, paradise. Their deaths would be avenged.

Aamed lit a Turkish cigarette, turned on his small laptop, and waited for his appointment to arrive. Checking the websites for major U.S. news organizations, he could find no mention of the explosion. He scanned his e-mail. One new message arrived in the last five minutes. In Arabic, the message said: “The deaths of Ata and Mansur were believed to have been ordered by a Russian arms dealer, Yuri Volkow. We know Volkow is in Florida. At least one of his men is there, probably more. You must find the material before they do.”

Aamed typed: “Will not fail.”

Abdul-Hakim made no eye contact with Aamed when he entered the Starbucks to buy a double espresso. He was tall and rail thin. Short-cropped black, wiry hair. He wore a black sports coat and a white button-down shirt that hung outside his pants. Soft loafers. No socks. His hard eyes took in the room. Two businessmen discussed the housing market. A female college student sat surfing the web on her laptop as American music entered her brain through the iPod earpieces. A housewife, the diamond in her ring the size of a garbanzo bean, chatted with another woman. A man sat in one corner, facing the entrance, reading a newspaper.

Hakim paid for his coffee and walked toward the door, looking at the reflection of the room off the glass door. He could see the man sitting alone in the corner, and he could see that the man did not look away from the newspaper.

“My friend, it has been too long,” Hakim said, sitting down at an outdoor table.

“Yes,” said Aamed, looking up from his laptop. “How is your business here in Orlando, this home of the Mickey fucking Mouse?”

“Good, my gift shop is small, but it allows me more legitimacy.”

“Ata and Mansur were killed early this morning.”

Hakim glanced down, his eyes returning back to Aamed. “How did this happen?”

“When their boat got near the vessel operated by the Americans who found the HEU, the boat we hired exploded in the sea approximately fifty kilometers east of Daytona Beach. We think the Americans retrieved the HEU.”

Hakim sipped his coffee, glanced through the storefront glass into the shop. The man in the corner continued reading the newspaper. Hakim said, “So they have it … who killed Ata and Mansur? Was it the Americans?”

“Mohammed Sharif tells me it is most likely the Russian mafia. The operative’s name is Yuri Volkow. He’s known to sell weapons to the highest bidder. He and his men have no allegiance to anyone or anything. He is a Russian whore. He stands for nothing, nor does his country. At least with Lenin, they had an identity, a history.”

Hakim sipped his espresso and nodded. “That is one of the many things this American government refuses to realize. They do not understand our history. How can a people do what they are trying to do in the homeland without understanding a history that goes back fourteen centuries?”

“A Muslim’s sincerity is that he will pay no attention to those things that are not his business. But circumstances make it our business. It was first told in the Hadith. This Russian, like the Americans, this Volkow, is entering a place where he should not tread.”

“How do we get the HEU before he does? Or how do we stop him?”

Aamed felt a slight chill. He looked around, his dark eyes searching parked cars in the lot. He closed his laptop. “Let us drive. We can talk. We can plan. Mohammed is arriving tonight. He has conferred with others and will know how we shall triumph.”

Inside the coffee shop, Eric Hunter lowered the newspaper to the table, punched numbers on his cell and said, “They just left. Heading toward the parking lot.”

CHAPTER FORTY

O’Brien felt like he was free-falling backwards. He had completed dozens of successful night parachute jumps. Free-falling from a high altitude. Waiting until he was less than five hundred feet over enemy terrain before deploying his chute. This was different. The sensation was a gravitational pull without a sense of perspective. He simply fell through a world of darkness. Then the killer’s face appeared. Oily dark hair combed into a pompadour, like a wet bird’s nest above the forehead. Eyes electric with light. A muscle quivering beneath his left eye. Rapid blinking. The girl’s blood on his chin and hands. Head swaying like a hyena over dead prey. “You’re not going to shoot me!” he mocked.

O’Brien raised his pistol, the sights locked on the killer’s forehead.

“You can’t kill me, Detective! If you do, you are me.”

O’Brien felt the trigger against his finger, the bile rising in his chest.

There was movement. Jupiter rocked. Slightly, but it was enough to jog O’Brien out of sleep. He lay in his cabin, the sheets damp from sweat. He tried to sit up. But something held him to the bed. Something pressing both his shoulders. Something strong. Something mocking. O’Brien shook his head, not fully conscious. Had he been restrained? Was he dreaming?

Jupiter moved again. That was real. He reached under the pillow for his Glock. Max, sleeping at the foot of the bed, opened her eyes. O’Brien whispered, “Shhhh … we have company.” He looked at his watch: 3:30 p.m. He’d fallen asleep at noon. Three and a half hours. His mind felt drugged from sleep deprivation. O’Brien stepped into the salon. Jason Canfield stood outside in the cockpit, leaning against the glass door, his hands on the glass and cupped around his eyes so he could see inside.

“Come in,” O’Brien said.

“Can’t. It’s locked.”

O’Brien set the Glock on the bar and opened the door. “Been out there long?”

“Couple of minutes. Looks like you were taking a nap.”

“More like a coma. Didn’t get any sleep last night.”

“My sleep’s been kinda weird, too. Since we found that stuff, everything is different. Our pictures are all over the news, the web, people are tweeting and re-tweeting like crazy. It’s freakin’ crazy. I had like five hundred new friend requests on Facebook in a couple of hours. Nicole’s got hundreds of new friends on her page, and like a thousand new followers on Twitter. She took the pictures of the sub and stuff off there.”

“Good. Listen, Jason. You’re like a son I never had. I care about what happens to you. That’s why I want you to understand what I say, it’s for your own good. I want to keep you safe-”

“It’s okay. I understand, but you don’t-”

O’Brien held up one hand. “Listen to me. We’ve stepped into a hornet’s nest. Be careful. If you even suspect you’re being followed, you call me. Understand?”

“Okay. Mom told me you told her, too. This is about the stuff in the sub, huh?”

O’Brien leaned over the wet-bar sink and splashed cold water in his face. “Yeah.”

“I didn’t notice anybody following me from my house to the marina.”

“Just be very aware. Chances are nothing will happen. Thanks for waking me. If I sleep during the day, my clock gets out of whack.”

“You’d wanted me to pick up some stuff for the charter.”

“I’ll write up a short list. You should be able to get what we need at the grocery store. Go to Chapman’s to pick up the bait. Get it last thing. It’s frozen. Don’t need it thawing out in your truck.” O’Brien handed Jason the list and money. “Call me when you get to the store and call me when you’re headed back. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I just think this is kinda paranoid, maybe.”

O’Brien’s cell rang. He answered as Jason nodded and left. Dave Collins said, “Sean, the team will be here in a little while for a debriefing. They’ll need to talk with you, Nick and Jason. Where are they?”

“I just sent Jason to pick up some stuff for a charter. He’s going to the grocery store, then Chapman’s Fish House. Nick’s probably on his boat.”

“Tried his cell before I called you. No answer. Maybe he’s napping.”

“I’ll see if I can find him. What time are they arriving?”

“Couple of hours, tops.”

Nicole Bradley sat in her cubicle at Channel Nine and read her e-mails. Since she was interviewed on CNN, her e-mail and text messaging was so heavy she sent her Twitter followers an update telling people she couldn’t begin to answer them.

This is wild! I WILL answer everyone!!! One person she corresponded with immediately was a new friend, a USC grad student who was in Orlando with his family for a vacation. He was waaay cute, she thought, pulling up his picture again and reading his bio. He was a film student, and he’s written two original screenplays. Had a super great idea for a journalism-based new reality TV show for the Internet. He could have been Robert Patterson’s twin brother. God, what a smile. He texted that he’d like to meet her. Wanted to talk about an online TV show. Thought she would be perfect for the host’s job.

Nicole couldn’t stop smiling. They agreed to meet at 4:00 p.m. at a place with lots of people, the Starbucks on the corner of International and Riverside. “How will I recognize you?” she’d asked.

“Just check out the guy that looks like Patterson. I’ll be wearing a USC shirt.”

Nicole glanced at her watch, shutting off the computer. She picked up her purse and headed for the channel nine parking lot.

She parked next to a tree in the shopping center lot, hoping the shade would keep her car cooler. Nicole tilted the rearview mirror in her direction. As she applied lip gloss, she saw his reflection. A fast walk. His head darting right to left.

Lock the door. But he was at her door before she could lock it. He yanked it open with one hand and pressed the barrel of a gun to her ribs. “You scream you die.”

“Please don’t hurt me!” Please-”

“Silence! Bring your purse and your cell phone. Come with me to the van. Get in the side door. If you even think of running, we will kill you on the spot.” He pulled her up and put his one arm around her shoulder as he escorted her to the waiting van. He opened the door, and they both got inside. In Russian, he said to the driver, “Find a quiet place. A place where no one can hear if she screams.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Nick Cronus stood at the small bar in O’Brien’s boat, Jupiter, and sipped from his fifth bottle of Corona. He touched the center of the water ring his beer bottle left on the bar. Nick looked up as O’Brien entered the galley. “Sean, you ever think about the circle of life?”

“Not in the last few minutes.”

Nick gestured toward the condensation ring. He said, “Once you play in the circle of evil you can’t get out ‘cause it never ends. Unlucky sailors get sent to Davy Jones locker. Sean, we hooked it. We caught evil like we picked up a psycho hitchhiker. And now, about a mile from this barstool, the devil got his cocaine in those U-235 cans.”

O’Brien shook his head. “Nick, you need to eat something, the beer’s talking.”

Nick sipped his beer and raised his voice louder. “Listen to me. Maybe you and I are the ones tapped to be led down into hell for some reason. Some kinda punishment-or a test. That submarine is a cursed place, just like Davy Jones locker. Some old-time Greeks told me Davy Jones was really Davy Jonas, you know, the guy who was eaten by the whale. We were almost swallowed by a bull shark last night.”

Jason Canfield stepped onto Jupiter’s cockpit. He walked toward the open door leading into the salon and stopped, overhearing Nick’s voice. It was loud, a little slurred, and Nick was arguing with Sean. Jason held back at the door, partially because he didn’t want to intrude, and also because what he was hearing stopped him in his tracks.

Nick drained his beer. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, looked over at O’Brien and said, “I’ve been on the ocean all my life, and I have never seen a boat blown clean outta the damn water like we saw last night. Who bombed it? We never should have gone back out there and dove down to bring up those two canisters of magic dust.”

“We were asked to do it because we knew where the U-boat was and could get to it before someone else could in international waters. It’s done, Nick. Let’s move on.”

“Bullshit! It’s just starting. Now that stuff is stored less than a mile from here off Dunlawton Road in Dave’s storage unit. Kinda funny, the word unit. Stored in U-236, same damn number as on the side tower of the U-boat. Now I challenge you to tell me that is just coincidental. It might as well be stored in Davy fuckin’ Jones locker. The devil got his cocaine in those U-235 cans. You gotta be able to see that.”

“That’s enough! Lower your voice, Nick.”

Jason Canfield cleared his throat and walked in through the salon’s open door. Max trotted over to greet him as Nick spun around on his barstool. He said, “Jason, you’re quiet as mouse with laryngitis. Where’d you come from?”

O’Brien cut his eyes to Nick and then looked over to Jason. He said, “Thought you were on your way to run the errands.”

“I was, but I forget my truck keys.” Jason stepped to the coffee table next to the couch and bent down to pick up his keys. “Sorry, Sean. I’ll be back soon.”

Jason was almost out the door when O’Brien said, “Hold it! Come back in here, Jason. What’d you hear? Trust me on this. I really need to know.”

Jason turned around, his face flushing. He swallowed dryly, looked down at Max a second before looking up at Nick and O’Brien. “I didn’t hear anything, really. Just you and Nick arguing about something. I guess I should have knocked, sorry.”

O’Brien walked around the bar, stopping next to the coffee table. A horsefly darted in through the open door. Max waited a second and snapped at the fly. O’Brien said, “Jason, if you overheard us, you need to tell me right now. Because if you did, you wouldn’t be prepared … others can find out, and they’ll do things to make you talk, things you can’t imagine. Now, what did you hear?”

“Nothing, Sean. I better get going.” Jason turned and stepped out the door. As he walked quickly down the dock, a flock of sea gulls flew over the boats, their calls like choppy laughter rolling over the smooth surface of the quiet marina water.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Nicole Bradley sat as far away from Andrei Keltzin as possible. On the passenger bench seat behind the driver, she sat with her back against the van’s panel wall. They used duct tape to bind her hands. She didn’t want to look at the man. Wanted to close her eyes, open them and hope he’d disappear, like a bad dream.

The driver stopped the van behind an abandoned warehouse. He parked next to a dumpster. He left the motor running, the air conditioner blowing cold air, a slight smell of moldy newspaper, exhaust, and sour wine seeping through the system.

“Zakhar,” said Keltzin, sitting next to Nicole. They spoke English.

“Yes.”

“Hand me the blade-the one you worked so hard to sharpen.”

Zakhar Sorokin lifted a straight razor from a pocket inside his sports coat and handed it to Keltzin.

“Please don’t,” pleaded Nicole.

Keltzin opened the razor, the light from a panel window reflecting off the blade. He leaned closer to her and whispered in a throaty voice, “Your profile on Facebook said you had been told by friends you have a face for television.”

“Please ….”

“So what does a ‘face for television’ mean?”

“I didn’t mean anything … please … what do you want?”

“Your boyfriend, Jason, what did he tell you about the submarine?”

“He said it’s like somewhere off Daytona Beach.”

“How many cylinders of U-235 did they really find?”

“He said two.”

“Where is this submarine located? What are the GPS numbers?”

“I don’t know.”

“On your television station, we heard him say he could find it again. There is no way he could find it again without the numbers. What are they?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

Keltzin slid next to her. She could smell sweat and vodka from his skin. He took the razor and touched the tip of it to her cheek. “If I cut you, I will cut you from this cheekbone, down to your mouth and up to the other cheekbone. I’ve had much practice to perfect the cut. I would not sever the nerves. I will slice through flesh and muscle. The result will be an enormous scar in the shape of a wide smile. You like to smile, no? I can tell from the pictures. But your smiles do not look real. You can always see a real smile. It’s in the eyes. What I see in your eyes right now are lies. Where are the numbers?”

“I swear to God … I don’t have numbers. Jason didn’t get them. Please!”

“Then how is it possible for Jason to find the U-boat? I believe your Jason shared with you the numbers? Do you wish to know why I believe this?”

“No ….”

“Because I can tell a lot about you from your Facebook and Twitter comments. I believe the reason your television station has the pictures from the German submarine is because you got them from your boyfriend. A woman that ambitious will not stop with a few enticing photographs. No, you would find out where the wreck is because you would have the power to reveal the location for your own personal gain-”

“No!”

“Yes! Jason admitted on television he could find the site.”

“That’s not exactly what he said. The editors took a short sound-bite-”

“Silence!”

Keltzin opened the purse on the floorboard, lifted out the cell phone. He quickly found Jason’s number. “I am going to put this on speaker. You tell Jason you must meet him. Tell him you will come to him. You simply want to talk-alone. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“If you make one sound other than what I told you to say, anything to give him an indication you are in distress, I will slit your throat. Again, do you understand?”

“Yes.”

He hit the number, pressed the speakerphone. Jason said, “Hi, you off work?”

“Yes.” Nicole shivered once. “Want to hang out?”

“I’ve got to get a bunch of stuff back to Sean. We have a charter tomorrow.”

“Jason, it’s like real important. I’ll meet you. I only need a few minutes to talk.”

“Okay.”

“Where will you be in thirty minutes?”

“Chapman’s. It’s fish house on Riverside.”

“I’ll meet you there in the parking lot. We need to meet alone. We need to talk.”

“Nicole, you okay? Have you been crying or something?”

She looked at Keltzin. He held the razor inches from her face. “I’m okay … just putting a lot of hours in at the station. See you in a half hour.”

Keltzin grinned, teeth like a predator, a small crescent moon scar visible under a nostril. He closed the razor and set it on the bench beside them. “Does your phone have a tracking chip inside it?”

“I’m not sure-”

“Another lie!”

“Please ….” begged Nicole. The instant she glanced down at the razor, Zelkin drove his fist into her left temple. The blow slammed her head against the metal panel, cracking her skull. She slumped down to the van floor, her blue eyes horror-struck, locked, disbelieving under the welling of tears.

Keltzin smiled as he reached for Nicole’s head. She made wet murmurs in her throat. His massive hands held her skull as if he were feeling for the ripeness in a melon. He stared into her pleading eyes, grinned and twisted, the sound like a dog biting through a chicken wing. Three pops as muscle, ligaments, and bone ripped apart. He dropped her head to the cargo floor.

Keltzin cut off the duct tape. He pulled her out of the van and lifted the body over the side of the dumpster. A large rat scurried beneath a cardboard box. He dropped the body on top of broken glass, used condoms, and discarded McDonald’s bags. The stench from human urine rose from the dumpster like sulfurous gas.

Zakhar Sorokin drove to a strip shopping center. A Sam’s Club store was in the middle of the complex. “Stop here,” Keltzin said. He got out of the van and set the dead girl’s purse in a shopping cart someone had left next to a light pole. He got back in the van and said, “Find this Chapman’s fish place. He will be easy to recognize.”

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

O’Brien was pouring fresh water into Max’s bowl when the man approached. O’Brien set the bowl in a corner of the cockpit. The man was late forties, hawk nose, veiled eyes, two-day growth of salt and pepper stubble, blue jeans, black T-shirt, and deck shoes right out of the box. He stopped walking on the dock behind Jupiter and said, “Nice boat. I always liked a Bayliner. It’ll take a wave. Cute dog. What’s his name?”

“Her name’s Max.”

“At the bar, they told me I could charter your boat.”

“Looking to catch some fish?”

“What do you offer, trolling or bottom fishing?”

“Depends on what the customer wants to catch.”

“Bottom fishing, grouper, maybe. I hear they’re biting.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

The man motioned toward the Tiki Bar. “Guy at the bar … said his name’s Eric Hunter. He told me he knew you, and a kid he knows works for you. Thought you guys could probably use the business.”

“Maybe, if you’re really here to fish. Nice shoes.”

“What if I wanted to catch a U-boat?”

“They’re extinct.” O’Brien glanced at the man’s lower pant legs. No indication of a strap-on pistol.

“I’m not carrying. Rarely do anymore.”

“Who are you?”

“Paul Thompson. I was sent by an acquaintance of Dave Collins. I suppose that’s Dave’s boat over there?” Thompson gestured toward Gibraltar. “I was going to stop there first, but I saw you and decided to come over. Sean O’Brien, correct?”

“If you’re with the CIA, I’m sure you know all you think you know about me.”

“No need for the defense screen,” Thompson said. “We’re trying to quickly neutralize this. Get you and your friends out of the spotlight. I’m going to let Dave know I’m here.”

Mohammad Sharif checked into a Best Western motel. There he knew he could blend easily among the millions of tourists who make the pilgrimage to Orlando to pay homage to a mouse. A rodent, he thought. The Mecca of America, a castle made from fiberglass and a theme taken from European fairytales. He walked the steps up to his second-floor room overlooking International Drive and its long line of rental cars. It was a sea of lost drivers changing lanes at the last second, cutting each other off, heading for restaurants tucked between T-shirt shops, timeshare condos, and theme parks.

As he put the card in the slot to open the motel room door, he hesitated for a moment, waiting for a family walking toward him to pass. The man wore his shirttail tucked inside baggy shorts, legs milky white, sandals, and dark socks pulled up to his mid-calves. The wife wore a tank top and a swimsuit bottom. “Nathan, stop running!” she yelled to her son in a British accent. As they herded past, Sharif could smell the swimming pool chlorine and hamburgers on their skin and clothes.

He entered the room, and his cell rang. It was Rashid Aamed. He said, “Faysal Hazim, Kareem, and Ishmael have arrived from Washington, Jacksonville and Atlanta, doing what you requested-coming by separate routes.”

“Good, “Sharif said. “I checked in where I said I would stay. Room 2191. The boat Ata and Mansur where trailing has returned to the marina. Unfortunately, the boat they were in did not make the return. We believe the two Americans recovered the product and have hidden it somewhere off the boat. It may be easier to track the Russians. If they find it for us, we surprise them, avenge the deaths of Ata and Mansur, take the product, and begin preparing for the event. Imam Majd al Din wants to talk with us about the kidnapping. He has it planned to the minute. Once the man’s daughter is in our hands, the bomb is good as built.”

Dave Collins made a pot of coffee in Gibraltar’s galley and said to Paul Thompson and O’Brien, “The two canisters we placed in the storage unit are essentially the proverbial tip of the iceberg. U-boat 236 was carrying ten. So they’re either hidden under a lot of bottom sand, beach sand, or somebody recovered them sometime before or after World War II ended.”

Thompson said, “We’ll dive the wreck in the morning. Our guys will use the most sophisticated magnetometers and super sonar to comb the bottom.”

“Don’t think you’ll find anymore,” O’Brien said.

“Why?”

“Because the canisters Nick and I found were locked away in a secure spot on the sub. There was plenty of room for more, at least enough room to accommodate eight more like them. But they weren’t there.”

Dave poured three cups of coffee. “Paul, you still take yours black?”

“Good memory, Dave.”

“I do a lot of crossword puzzles in my spare time.”

O’Brien felt Gibraltar move. “Troops are here.”

“FBI and they’re a half hour late,” Dave said.

Thompson chuckled. “Maybe the GPS in their car took them the scenic route.”

Dave opened the sliding glass doors of Gibraltar’s cockpit and let a man and a woman enter. O’Brien knew the woman, Lauren Miles, Special Agent, Miami office, and a one-time special person in his life. He’d met her about a year after the death of his wife. He always thought Lauren resembled Sandra Bullock, chestnut brown hair, curvaceous body, and a smile that turned heads. She entered the boat with a man in his late thirties, straw-colored hair swept back, eyes red, irritated from something.

Lauren Miles said, “Hello, Sean. Why am I not too surprised to see you here?”

“I don’t know, Lauren. Luck of the Irish, I suppose.”

Max trotted up from the galley when she heard Lauren. “Hi, Max. I’ve missed you.” She introduced herself and Special Agent Ron Bridges to Paul and Dave who reciprocated.

“We’ve already seen other members of the FBI,” O’Brien said. “Special Agents Mike Gates and Steve Butler. I guess you guys are sharing notes?”

“Why?” asked Agent Ron Bridges.

“Because we’ve gone over this with them. Hate to be redundant.”

Lauren smiled. “Agents Gates and Butler are back at the Federal building where we’re setting up a command center with Homeland. They’ve briefed us. But humor us, Sean. Perhaps you guys can take it from the top.”

Dave briefed everyone, and O’Brien filled in the details from the discovery of the U-boat, his conversation with Abby Lawson and her grandmother, Glenda, and the recovery of the canisters and where they were stored.

After Paul Thompson said he worked for the National Security Agency, he added, “We’ll have an armored car and an armed escort meet us at the storage locker. A jet is on stand-by at Daytona International. We’ll load it within the hour, after we debrief Jason Canfield and Nick Cronus. Then this thing will die down.”

Agent Bridges said, “How about the part, Mr. O’Brien, where you said what the old woman told you? Could that be true? And if it is, how’s it tied to that sunken sub?”

“We found U-235 canisters in the sub. Why would her story be doubtful?”

Agent Bridges said, “Makes no sense for her husband’s story to be covered up.”

Dave Collins sipped his coffee. “Sure it does,” he said. “You guys had cross-dressing J. Edgar in charge of the bureau. He was instrumental in the prosecution and execution of the eight Germans, the ones who turned themselves into the FBI three years earlier in ‘42. Found guilty of espionage by a military tribunal, the same precedent used in 2002 to try detainees held at Guantanamo. May 1945 was an intense time. Roosevelt dies in the eleventh hour. Truman takes the reins. And now we know what Truman probably heard from our spies, the OSS, in 1945, that Nazi Germany had the potential to make an atomic bomb. It looks as if Hitler was handing the baton to the Japanese as Germany was out of the race.”

Lauren said, “All the media are calling Sean’s find ‘Hilter’s last U-boat.’”

“I didn’t really find it. I hooked it on my anchor. Nick Cronus found it.”

“Where is Nick?” asked Dave. “He might be able to add something.”

“I’ll try his cell again.”

Thompson said, “Where’s Canfield? Still at Chapman’s fish place?”

“Nick’s MIA,” O’Brien said. “How’d you know Jason was at Chapman’s?”

Dave said, “I mentioned it to Paul when he called earlier. Told him that everyone, including Nick, should be back about this time.”

O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Nick. “Sean!”

“Where are you?”

“The Tiki Bar. Kim’s got the news on the TV. Some homeless dudes found Jason’s girlfriend, Nicole. She’s dead! Found her body in a fuckin’ garbage can.”

“Jesus,” O’Brien whispered. “I’ll call Jason.”

“Sean … maybe he heard everything I said on your boat about divin’ back on the U-boat and then storing that nuclear shit in Dave’s locker.”

“We’re on Gibraltar. Get over here now.” O’Brien called Jason’s cell. No answer. Two rings, a popping noise and silence.

O’Brien set his cell down on Dave’s bar. “Nicole Bradley was found murdered. Jason’s cell has been disabled. If he’s still alive, he won’t be for long.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Yuri Volkow watched as Andrei Keltzin finished tying Jason to the metal chair. They had popped the locks on a boarded up, abandoned warehouse in another area of town. It was an old brick building of grays and browns. The for-sale sign in front was long faded. Late afternoon light, diffused by dirt on the window, illuminated the desolate room. It had been a citrus packing warehouse in the eighties. The room was scarred with broken wooden crates that read: Indian River Fruit.

Sweat ran down Jason’s face. He licked his dry lips. “I don’t know anything.”

“On the TV you said you could find the U-boat. What are the GPS numbers?”

“I don’t know. Sean hid them from Nick and me.”

“This Sean sounds like a noble captain, or a very greedy one. That cargo is worth millions to people with the money and a cause to use the uranium. How can we find it?”

“I don’t know! I swear!”

“Andrei, do you have your hammer?”

Keltzin reached inside his coat pocket and brought out a small hammer. “Here, do you want me to administer it?”

Nick paid his drink bill at the Tiki Bar and thanked bartender Kim Davis for giving him black coffee in a Styrofoam cup. He turned to walk down the dock to Dave’s boat when Susan Schulman’s face came on the TV screen above the bar.

Schulman stood in front of the local police station. “As Channel Nine reported minutes ago, twenty-year-old Nicole Bradley, a Channel Nine intern, was found dead in a dumpster behind an abandoned warehouse off Ninth Street. Police say Bradley’s boyfriend, nineteen-year-old Jason Canfield, is believed to have been abducted. His truck was found at Chapman’s Fish House. Police aren’t saying whether Bradley’s death and Canfield’s disappearance could be related to the finding of Hitler’s lost submarine and its alleged cargo of enriched uranium. More on this story as it breaks … I’m Susan Schulman.”

Kim looked away from the television. “Oh my God! Nick, it’s because of that German sub you guys found. Dear God ….”

Nick tried to hold the Styrofoam cup in his trembling hand. He sat the cup on the bar, looked at his shaking hands. “To hell with Nazi ghosts. They hurt Jason, they die twice.”

Nick told O’Brien and the others on Dave’s boat what he’d heard from the television newscast. “We gotta find Jason. Anything happen to him … I hold myself responsible. Dave’s locker is Davy Jones locker.”

“Nick,” said Dave, “they probably picked Jason up because of the soundbites taken out of context. Why they killed Nicole, I don’t know. Must have thought she knew more than she did, or could identify them if she was used as a pawn to get Jason. But you should have kept your voice down when you and Sean were talking about the canisters and where we stored them. Unfortunately, both Jason and the canisters are in jeopardy.”

Paul Thompson stepped back inside from the cockpit where he’d gone to use his cell. Dave asked, “Paul, who does your team think is behind this?”

“Most likely a sleeper cell right here in Florida. The imam ostensibly working for Syria or Iran, connected to al-Qaeda. But one of our profilers told me it also might be any of the international mafia affiliations. Russians, maybe even the Germans since we’re talking German U-boat and material they may believe they own. If it’s Russian mob, they’re here to steal and sell it. It’s worth millions.”

Lauren said, “Or they might use it. I assume NSA is all ears on possible bid wars coming in from out of the country.”

“Out of the country and in the country,” Paul said. “All known channels are being monitored by the minute. Nothing yet.”

O’Brien looked out a curtain on Gibraltar’s port side, sun shining, a light rain now running off the palm frond roof on a fish cleaning station. He half expected to see Jason’s grinning face as he hustled down the dock. “Nick, you said they found Jason’s truck, engine running, at Chapman’s. A witness saw a blue van speed out of the lot.”

“Yeah.”

“That wasn’t Jason’s only stop. He was going to three other places, all of which had larger parking lots, less chance to be seen if you were going to kidnap someone.”

Dave crossed his legs. “Sean, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking you knew where Jason was going because I told you.” O’Brien turned to Thompson. “Then you told him, and now Jason is missing.”

“And what’s your point?” Paul asked, crossing his arms.

“If Jason was being followed, the kidnappers had better opportunities and places to snatch him. Chapman’s is a crowded, small parking lot. The last place he was going before coming back, but you knew that.”

“Dave, I don’t appreciate your friend suggesting that I may have had something to do with the kid’s disappearance.”

“The name’s O’Brien. And, right now, I don’t trust anyone. Especially the CIA, where lying is an art form. Sixty-seven years ago a kid about Jason’s age, Billy Lawson, trusted the wrong people and was murdered.”

“Sean,” Lauren said, standing. “There’s no conspiracy here. Maybe Jason was going to meet Nicole.”

O’Brien started for the door. “Sean, hold on a second,” Dave said. “Look, I know how tense this is right now. We have to-”

“We have to find Jason. And we have to do it now.” O’Brien headed out, noticing the rain had stopped.

“Where are you going?” Lauren asked

“The next place these freaks will be, Dave’s locker. You’re right, Nick. Now it looks a hell of a lot like Davy Jones locker.”

“I’m goin’ with you,” Nick said.

Thompson stood. “No! You can’t go alone!”

O’Brien was already gone.

Yuri Volkow looked at the ball ping hammer and said, “Very effective little tool.”

“What are you gonna do?” Jason’s voice cracked.

“This hammer is small,” Volkow said. “However, it can do large damage. Because the steel head is small, I can tap certain vertebra on your spinal column with just enough force to cause severe pain. And, you will never heal properly. Your bones will be fused. You will never be able to bend over to tie your shoes. Your ability to make love with a woman will be greatly diminished.”

“Please ….”

“Get him out of the chair, Andrei. Rip the shirt off his back.”

“Wait!” Jason shouted. “You don’t need the numbers.”

“What do you mean?”

“The canisters aren’t on the bottom of the ocean anymore.”

“Where are they?”

“Here! Sean and Nick brought them up. They put them in a warehouse.”

“What warehouse?”

“It’s called Ponce Storage in Dunlawton.”

“Which room?”

“Number’s U-236. Same number that’s on the sub.”

Yuri turned his head like a cat looking at a goldfish in a bowl. He smiled, teeth barely visible, a web of saliva in the corner of his small mouth. “Excellent. You are proving to be valuable. My father wasn’t much older than you when they killed him.”

“Who killed him?”

“Your people, Americans.”

Jason stammered. “Look, there’s a lot more of that uranium.”

“Where?”

“Sean O’Brien knows. He met this woman and her grandmother. The grandmother told him in 1945 her husband, a guy about my age, saw the Germans bury a bunch of canisters like the ones we found.”

“Where?

“On the beach. Near here. Sean thinks he knows the location.”

Yuri walked around Jason’s chair. “Is O’Brien’s number on your cell phone?”

“Yes.”

“Is O’Brien a good friend of yours?”

“Yes … he’s there for me. And he knows my mom real well.”

“Let us see if he will be there for you now. We will discover if he thinks your life is worth more than that of the German cargo buried in a hole in 1945.”

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

O’Brien thought about Maggie Canfield, the look on her face the morning she stepped on his boat after a twenty-year absence and, again, last night in the parking lot when he was walking Max. Then he pictured Jason, pushing images of torture from his mind. He drove his Jeep more than eighty-miles-per-hour in a forty-five zone. Nick tightened his seat belt. “This is a hellava way to make me never drink again. You don’t have to kill me!”

“I should,” O’Brien said.

“Yeah, man, you should. I really screwed up, runnin’ my mouth. Jason overhearing what I-”

“Let’s move on, Nick. We can’t change it. We can try to salvage what we have left, beginning with Jason’s life and maybe a couple million more.”

O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Maggie Canfield. “Sean, dear God! Where's Jason? I just saw the news. Nicole's dead! Jason's missing! Sean, please tell me Jason's alive! ”

“Maggie, listen to me. Jason's been kidnapped-”

“Kidnapped! Who? Who took my son?”

“I'm not certain. But I am certain of this-I will find him. Trust me.”

“Bring him back to me, please Sean. He's all I have.” Her voice cracked, deep sobs coming through the phone.

“I have to go, Maggie. I'll find Jason, I promise you.” He disconnected and felt his pulse hammer in his temples, his lips dry, stomach churning.

“Sean, man I'm so damn sorry,” Nick said, running a hand through his dark hair. “Look, I'll fight these bastards with you-”

O'Brien's cell rang again. He recognized the number. It was one of two on Jason’s cell phone the day they found the sub. It was someone whom Jason had called from Jupiter. The man said, “Sean O’Brien.”

“Who’s this?”

“You and I met. Eric Hunter, remember me?”

“How’d you get this number?”

“Jason gave it to me. I thought I might send you two some business.”

“I’m a little busy right now.”

“Look, Mr. O’Brien, I’m the kind of guy that gets to the chase real fast. I saw the news. Jason’s in deep trouble. I want to help you find him.”

“I have no idea where he is. You’re better off working with the police.”

“We both know Jason has little time left. Depending on what the kidnappers want, his life is protected only by the time it takes them to get the info out of him.”

“No thanks. I never liked riding with a posse.”

“Jason was kidnapped by two men.”

“How do you know that?”

“Across the street from Chapman’s is a church. A homeless man was on a bus stop bench. He was waiting for the church to open its soup kitchen. I sat down on the bench next to him and asked him if he saw anything. Said he saw two men toss a guy in a van and peel off.”

“Why didn’t he tell the police?”

“Because they didn’t bother to ask him.”

“How do we know this homeless guy is telling the truth?”

“Chapman’s lot is covered by a security camera, north end. When the detectives go through the hard drive, they’ll see what the homeless man saw. But, by then, it might be too late for Jason. Whether you like it or not, you need my help.”

Dave Collins drove with operative Paul Thompson on the passenger side of the car and FBI agents Lauren Miles and Ron Bridges in the backseat. Dave said, “We’re not far from the storage units. Sean may be there by now. I’d suggest calling the local authorities. Have the bells and whistles sounding. That may ward off any hostiles approaching the target area.”

Lauren said, “We don’t know if the hostiles have found out the location of the HEU. They certainly don’t know we’re headed there.”

“I agree,” Thompson said. “Our first objective is to secure the HEU and remove it. The second is to capture the hostiles. If we can manage to do both at the same time, great. I have back-up coming. The armored truck is on the way from Orlando. Jet is on stand-by. I hope your pal, O’Brien, doesn’t screw this up.”

“Sean won’t screw it up,” Dave said. “Trust me. He’s one of the best.”

“I don’t like his rebel style.”

Lauren said, “It’s not a style with Sean, it’s a talent-”

“All we have to worry about is O’Brien’s Greek friend doing something dumb.”

O’Brien looked in his rearview mirror and saw the driver trying to stay far enough behind but making the last three turns he had made. “Nick, we have a tail.”

“What?”

“Don’t look back! Two guys. Black Lexus. Following us since we hit A1A.”

“Can you lose them?”

“Maybe.” O’Brien cut the wheel and drove though a convenience store parking lot. He pulled out onto Atlantic Boulevard, hooked a quick left on Silver Beach and a fast right on Beach Street. He gunned the Jeep, and as he was cresting a slight incline, he could see the Lexus turn onto Beach. “These guys are good.”

“How good?”

“Good enough that I’m going to have to do something to shake them.”

“Oh shit,” Nick tightened his seatbelt.

“Yeah.” O’Brien made a sharp left, stopping at a long line of cars.

“Holly mother!” Nick shouted. The sound of multiple sirens seemed to converge from all four corners.

“Looks like a bad wreck,” O’Brien said.

The intersection was blocked by a dozen police cars and emergency vehicles. O’Brien looked in the rearview mirror. “They’re three cars back. Damn!”

“What do we do?”

“Whatever we have to do.”

O’Brien cut through traffic, driving over a sidewalk, into a cemetery. Nick said, “You got some kind of dead thing happening, you know? We swim through a graveyard on the bottom of the ocean and now you’re driving on top of dead people.”

“I’ll try not to wake them,” said O’Brien, adjusting his dark sunglasses.

O’Brien pulled into the Ponce Storage Center lot, his eyes scanning for movement. There was a Toyota in the lot. “Wish I had a gun, like you,” Nick said.

“Stay hidden in the Jeep. I’ll go in there.”

“You’re gonna need me to help you carry the magic dust to the Jeep.”

“Okay, but stay outside the door.”

They moved toward the unit. Nick said, “I hope nobody’s in there.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

Mohammed Sharif sat in a chair next to a small table and read his incoming e-mails. He looked up at Abdul-Hakim who stood by a window, peering through a small opening in the drapes at the traffic. In Arabic, Sharif said, “Raashad writes that our sources in Germany indicate the submarine was carrying the largest of Hitler’s U-235 cargo. An old man there told the German news that he was supposed to have been on the voyage of this vessel. He became ill a few days before and was left behind. From his home in Nurnberg, he told a reporter that the submarine carried 700 kilos of U-235. He says the materials CNN reported recovered are only part of the cargo. The man said, in Kiel, he was assigned to the radio room. The last contact he had with his friend, Jacob Friedrich, the sub’s radio operator, was that most of the U-235 was left on a beach in Florida, south of St. Augustine. Raashad said that Allah smiles on us, Allah akbar.”

“Allah akbar,” said Hakim. His cell rang. The caller said, “We lost them.”

“How?”

“The traffic came to a stop at an accident. Police everywhere. That O’Brien, drove like a man possessed, around police-”

“Enough! Incompetents!”

“GPS says they are near Speedway Boulevard. They have come to a halt in the nine-hundred block. We should be there as soon as the police allow traffic to move.”

“The younger one they show often on television, Jason Canfield. Was he with them?”

“No.”

“Keep us informed. The Russians are probably close, too. You know what to do if you see them.” Hakim disconnected and told Sharif what had transpired.

“To me,” Sharif said as he stood, “this indicates that O’Brien and the Greek are very anxious. Few people can discover our men following them when a tracking device is used. O’Brien is more than a fishing guide. He was a detective, a man who left, according to the news, after he was investigated by his own department.”

“He may prove to be a formidable adversary. Allah will guide us. Inshallad … he will guide the knife when I cut the infidel’s throat.”

O’Brien knew the man was dead. He could tell the man had been shot after he’d been forced to unlock the storage unit door, giving access to the building. The body was sprawled face down, eyes open, a single bullet hole in the temple. A yellow fly crawled across the man’s blood-splattered wedding ring. A dark stain fanned out from the victim’s head like feathers.

“Holy mother of Jesus-” Nick stopped when O’Brien held his hand up.

O’Brien whispered, “They may still be in there. This guy’s been dead a few minutes. Ten, tops. Walk around the side of the building toward the street. Take cover. Call Dave. Tell him what happened. Tell him to get some officers here.”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going inside.”

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

“Dave, you gotta get here quick!” Nick said into the cell phone.

“What happened?”

“Dude’s shot. Dead.”

“Where’s Sean?”

“Inside the storage place.”

“By himself?”

“I don’t have a fuckin’ gun!”

“Are the hostiles there?”

“I don’t know who the hell’s here!”

“Any cars in the lot?”

“Two.”

“Stay out of the way, Nick. We’ll be there in five minutes.”

“Sean said for you to call the cops.”

“Done.”

O’Brien removed his shoes inside the air-conditioned storage warehouse. The floor was concrete. He didn’t want the sound of his soles to give him away. Locked doors lined both sides of a thirty-foot hallway. O’Brien crept down the passage. He stopped before it opened into a T-corridor going left and right. He listened, trying to detect the slightest hint of human presence. He could hear the hum of the air-conditioners, the creak of the sun’s heat against the corrugated rooftop, and the buzz of a fly that had followed him inside.

As he walked by one of the units, he smelled old furniture and rat poison. Then he smelled gunpowder the same time he stepped on a large sliver of glass. O’Brien looked up at a security camera he remembered seeing the last time he was here. It had been hit with a single bullet in the lens. Glass on the floor. He stepped around the glass and a broken piece of mirror that had fallen from the shattered lens. He picked up part of the mirror.

O’Brien knew Dave’s storage unit was to the left about fifty feet down the hall. But what if the hostiles stood silently in the right side corridor? They’d blow the back of his head off before he could turn to face them. He wedged the section of broken mirror into the end of the Glock’s barrel. Then he slowly extended the pistol until he could see a reflection from the hallway off the mirror’s surface. No one. He reversed the angle and saw no one down the other corridor. The door to Dave’s unit was ajar.

O’Brien stepped to unit 236 knowing what he’d see before he opened the door. The padlock had been hit with a bullet shattering the lock. He opened the door and saw a half dozen cardboard boxes and Dave’s outboard motor. The U-235 canisters were gone.

O’Brien felt something wet on the bottom of his sock. He lifted his right foot and saw a blood stain on the concrete, dripping from the cut caused by the piece of glass from the shattered camera lens. O’Brien could hear the sound of sirens approaching. His thoughts were rapid, pulling at fragments, trying to grasp the enormity of the theft.

What would they do with the U-235? Who took it? How many could die? What else did they get out of Jason? What had Jason told Nicole? What if Jason told the hostiles the story about the other canisters buried somewhere on a beach? Are Abby and Glenda Lawson’s lives at stake?

“Sean!” Dave Collins yelled outside the storage unit.

“In here! Clear!”

Dave ran in with Lauren Miles, Ron Bridges, Paul Thompson, Nick, two sheriff’s deputies, and two men O’Brien assumed were government agents. Dave looked at O’Brien’s face and didn’t even ask the question.

“Gone,” O’Brien said.

“Shit!” shouted Thompson.

Dave said, “The vic outside probably was the manager.”

Lauren said, “We’ve got two choppers in the air! Flying the perimeter of this place in an expanding three-sixty.” She asked the officers, “Are roadblocks in place?”

“Should be in place now,” one officer said. Police radios crackled with orders.

“Should be isn’t good enough!” yelled Thompson.

One officer held his hand up for silence, trying to hear the police radio. He said, “We have a ten-sixty-nine. They found a body. White male. About twenty. Wearing a gone fishin’ T-shirt. Found his body behind some bushes near the South Davison Wal-Mart.”

“Jesus, no.” Nick said, making the sign of the cross. “Tell me it’s not Jason.”

O’Brien felt his stomach in his throat. The air in the storage unit was like a crypt, the taste of mold and the odor of rat urine coming from the concrete floor. O’Brien put his arm around Nick’s shoulder for a moment. “Can you ride back with Dave? I need to take care of some business.”

“No problem,” Nick said.

O’Brien walked back down the corridor, picked up his shoes, pushed open the door, stepped around the blood from the body, and limped in his socks to the Jeep. An oak tree was full of movement, black starlings, their chortles like canned sitcom noise, mixed with the sirens in the distance and the whirr of an FBI helicopter nearby. Beyond the glut of flashing blue lights and the blur of yellow crime tape, O’Brien could see the media circling like a pack of wolves.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

O’Brien ignored the mob of reporters, the click of cameras and the microphones shoved in his face as he approached his Jeep. Susan Schulman stepped in front of him with her cameraman behind her left shoulder. She extended her Channel Nine microphone. “We understand there has been another murder, the first being the death of one of our interns, Nicole Bradley, and the kidnapping of Jason Canfield, whose body might have just been found. This is connected to you finding the U-boat, correct Mr. O’Brien?”

O’Brien disregarded Schulman, walking around her and the cameraman. She shouted, “Are these deaths tied to the uranium?”

O’Brien stopped, his eyes narrowed. “Have you made sure family has been notified before you identify a body, or is this how far you’ll go for a fucking soundbite?”

“We’re reporting live, Mr. O’Brien.”

“You may be live, but any semblance of civility with you is dead. Now move the hell out of my way.”

As O’Brien got in his Jeep, his cell rang. He recognized the number again, Eric Hunter. “So now the news media know Jason was kidnapped,” Hunter said.

“You watching Channel Nine in some bar?”

“Matter fact, I am.”

“What do you want?”

“To talk. Where are you going to be in fifteen minutes?”

“Chapman’s Fish House. I want to find that homeless man you told me about.”

“I’ll meet you there.”

As O’Brien pulled into Chapman’s parking lot, he looked across the street to Saint Paul’s Church. There was a bus stop bench in front of the church but no one was sitting on it. He parked and got out. The smell of fresh-caught fish came from a truck as the driver unloaded the order. O’Brien’s cell rang. It was Maggie Canfield. “Sean! Is Jason okay?” Her voice was ragged, desperate.

“Maggie … we’re doing all we can to find him-”

“Is he alive … is my son alive?”

“I believe so. We’re going to find him and-”

“Please, Sean, find him. Every minute he's gone could mean ….” Her voice cracked. “I'm coming to wherever you and the police are-”

“No, Maggie. Stay home. Stay off your phone in case he calls.”

“I can’t take another loss … not after his father ….” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please keep him alive ….” She disconnected.

O’Brien looked at his phone for a second, started to place it in his pocket as it rang again. Dave Collins was on the line. He said, “We met with Daytona PD and Volusia SO detectives. The body we thought might be Jason’s, turned out not to be. They found the guy in an alley behind an abandoned pool hall. Place is littered with syringes, smells like a sewer. It’s a communal commode. Detectives know the dead guy, gang-banger and user. It’s not Jason. Where are you?”

“Looking for a homeless man in the vicinity of Chapman’s.”

“Better luck there. I think the homeless people gave this place up.”

“The feds still with you?”

“Yes. Paul, Ron and Lauren. All present and counted.”

O’Brien said nothing.

“We’ll be there in twenty minutes, Sean.” Dave disconnected as Eric Hunter got out of a pick-up truck and walked toward O’Brien.

Hunter said, “Jason’s mother is almost catatonic over this. Woman’s lost her husband-”

“So let’s make sure she doesn’t lose her son.”

Hunter pursed his lips and blew out like he was cold, looked across at the church, then at O’Brien. “If we’d started on it earlier together maybe Jason would be going on that next charter trip with you.”

“Who are you?”

“I told you, I’m a friend of Jason’s family. Knew his dad for a long time.”

O’Brien made sure his face reflected nothing. He nodded. “So what does a friend of the family do for a living?”

“Day job is working with Homeland Security. I can build a motorcycle or take one apart. Pretty good with my hands.”

O’Brien was quiet a long beat. Then he looked closely in Hunter’s eyes as he spoke. “The day Nick, Jason, and I found that U-boat, the day we dove down and found the U-235 canisters, Jason had called you. Probably coming back from sea. I saw your number on his phone that day. It was one of two calls. The other one was to his girlfriend. She’s dead. Who do you work for?”

“Right now I’m working for Jason. Trying to save his life-”

“That’s not good enough!”

“It has to be, okay?”

“It’s not okay! Too much is at stake. You tell me you got an eyewitness description of the hostiles from some homeless guy. An anonymous witness.”

“What are you getting at?”

“You were one of two people who knew about the sub and the cargo. Nicole, the girlfriend, didn’t know until she got Jason drunk and seduced it from him. But you, his surrogate father figure, he probably told you. And then who did you tell? Somebody in the mob? American? Russian? Some Islamic radicals who’ll stop at nothing to acquire enriched uranium? Who’s paying you?”

“You have quite an overactive imagination, O’Brien.”

“How did that reporter, Susan Schulman, know our boat was going to be stopped by the Coast Guard? Did you call her? Did you want this out in the public for some asinine bureaucratic or covert reason?”

“He’s returned,” Hunter said, looking over O’Brien’s shoulder.

O’Brien was hesitant to turn around for a moment. He stepped back from Hunter and looked at the bus stop. A man sat there staring straight at him.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

Eric Hunter shook his head, glanced down at the parking lot and then looked at O’Brien. “You’re wrong about me, but let’s see what he has to say.”

The homeless man watched them approaching. He grinned, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and asked, “Anybody got a quarter or two?”

“Sure,” said Hunter, peeling off a couple of one-dollar bills.

“Much obliged,” said the man. He was in his mid-fifties, matted dark hair, swimming pool blue eyes through slits of black dirt, new dirt on top of old dirt. He had a sour smell of old sweat and cheap wine.

“Now,” said Hunter, “you know, Robert, the church folk won’t let you have dinner in there if you’ve been drinking.”

The man sighed like the last ounce of breath just left his body. “Only had a swallow or two around noon.”

“And you haven’t eaten, right?”

“That’s why I’m here. You can get supper in there two nights a week.” He nodded toward the church, his eyes suddenly filled with buried thoughts.

“Robert Ingham this is Sean O’Brien. Tell Sean exactly what you saw when they kidnapped the young man.”

“I saw the young fella put some boxes in his truck, ‘bout the time he opened his door, this blue van, a Ford, pulled up and these two men jumped out. One of them stuck a gun in the dude’s ribs while the other pushed him into the van. I stood up to yell about the time two semi-trucks blew by. When the trucks were gone, so was the van.”

“Can you describe the men who took Jason?” O’Brien asked.

“Jason … that’s his name?”

“Yes.”

“That’s a fine name.” His eyes faded a moment and then returned. “One was tall, shoulders like a football player, bald. Other one was blondish. I’d say medium size.”

“Was there anyone else in the van?” O’Brien asked. “A driver, maybe?”

“Not that I could see. One of ‘em dudes who jerked him into the van was the driver.”

“Thank you,” O’Brien said. “If there’s something else, how do I find you?”

“I’m usually here Monday and Friday’s ‘bout this time. I had me a bicycle ‘till somebody stole it from my camp.”

“Camp?”

“Yeah, I used to sleep under the I-95 bridge downtown. But it’s got so damn crazy, teenage kids comin’ in and beating up people like me. Three of ‘em like to beat me to death last winter. I stay in the woods, west side of town off Wilson Avenue. I got me a little tent and a sleepin’ bag. I don’t bother nobody.”

O’Brien handed the man a twenty dollar bill.

“Now do you believe me?” asked Hunter as he and O’Brien walked across Chapman’s parking lot.

“I questioned whether we could find him again. We did. End of that story, but it’s the beginning of the rest of the story. I want to know where you fit into all of this.”

“Jason was kidnapped, we hope not killed. It shouldn’t have happened. His girlfriend is dead. Others may die if they’re in the way of whoever’s doing this. You need my help. I can dive down there with you and pull up the U-235.”

O’Brien was silent for a long beat, studying Hunter. “We brought it up.”

“You did? When?”

“Two nights ago. Nick and I dove back down. We off-loaded it in a storage unit, stored where only three people knew the location. Jason wasn’t one of them.”

“So they kidnapped him for information he didn’t have?”

“He initially didn’t know. Nick got boozed up, and while ranting to me, Jason overheard him. The HEU was just stolen. Storage manager was shot through the head. This tells me they got the information out of Jason. His immediate value to them may be gone.”

Hunter grunted. “How much uranium did they get?”

“Two canisters, probably enough to make a dirty bomb if they wanted.”

Dave Collins pulled his Land Rover into the parking lot. Dave, Lauren Miles, Ron Bridges, and Paul Thompson all hit the ground almost running. Nick walked behind them. O’Brien saw something in Hunter’s eyes, the subliminal recognition, the discovery and concealment coming in the blink of an eye. But it was all the time O’Brien needed. Hunter knew one of the four people.

Lauren said, “We have a multi-agency task force setting up near the U.S. Attorney’s office on the second floor of the federal building. Secretary of State and Homeland Security want hourly reports. Volusia detectives said that, when they were here earlier, the manager told them Jason bought twenty pounds of bait fish and left the store. He said no one in the store saw the abduction.”

“Guy across the street,” Hunter began, “a homeless man, said he saw two men push Jason into a blue Ford van. He said they put a pistol in his ribs and kidnapped him.”

“I’m sorry, who you are?” asked Paul Thompson.

O’Brien studied Thompson’s eyes, his body movement for a hint of deceit.

“Eric Hunter. I’m a family friend, also working with Homeland.”

O’Brien introduced Hunter to the others and looked in each person’s eyes as they greeted Hunter. Nothing. O’Brien said, “There’s a camera on the left corner of the building, pointed toward the parking lot. Did the SO look at the hard drives?”

Thompson said, “They’re doing that now at our headquarters.”

“Tape or drives?” O’Brien asked.

“Drives,” said Agent Bridges. “They downloaded the data. Drives are still in there.”

O’Brien said, “Maybe the one glass eye of the camera will give us a better picture than what a homeless man saw from across the street. Let’s go have a look.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

They lay hidden under a green army blanket on a wooden table in a small warehouse. Yuri Volkow entered the room, nodded at Andrei Keltzin and Zakhar Sorokin. He looked at Jason tied in the chair and said, “You have proved most valuable. Let us see what we have recovered from that storage room.” Volkow slowly removed the blanket from the canisters as if he was trying not to awake what slept inside.

In the middle of the table, two long metal cylinders lay side-by-side. The late afternoon sun splintered through the window giving the cylinders an antique bronze look. Still visible were the labels on the right side of both containers: U-235.

“This,” began Volkow, his voice a mix of arrogance and authority, “is going to do three things. It will settle a long-standing score between the motherland and the Americans from 1945 to 1950, the Venona Project, they called it. Second, these cylinders give us supreme reign because we decide who acquires the power inside them. And, third, we will be compensated well.”

Sorokin said, “We have the computer equipment assembled in the next room. Everything is secure, non-traceable. You can begin the auction whenever you wish.”

“Perhaps the first bid should come from those who almost acquired it before we did, that asshole Mohammed Sharif and his comrades. Will they use the power to strike the Americans, especially since it is already in this country, or will they export it to Syria or Iran?”

“Does it make a difference?”

Volkow smiled and stroked the barnacled-surface of one cylinder like a man caressing a sacred object. He looked up at Sorokin and Keltzin. “These are two of more … correct, Jason Canfield? More buried on a beach?”

“Maybe,” Jason said, the ropes dulling the blood circulation to his hands. “The old woman told Sean that the Germans buried something.”

“Where is this old woman?”

“I don’t know.”

Volkow sneered. “If we locate the other cylinders, we will begin the bidding at fifty-million dollars. Put images of these on the site.”

“Should we not find the remaining U-235 first?” asked Keltzin.

“This will arouse the appetite of our buyers.”

“Perhaps the other cylinders do not exist.” Sorokin said. “What if the Americans found them in 1945? Or they may not have been found and never will be.”

“The target area has been narrowed. Also, based on what Canfield told us, this O’Brien either knows or might be able to find the rest of the U-235. We’ll offer him a motivation, if you know what I mean, and a deadline. Set up the video camera.”

Lauren Miles pointed toward the image on the monitor and said, “Freeze that.” The Chapman’s Fish House manager clicked the mouse in his hand and the image on the screen stopped playing. O’Brien, Cronus, Collins, Bridges, Thompson and Hunter stood by the monitor and watched. Lauren continued, “There they are, coming out of the dark van under the mimosa tree.” It was a wide shot. The images on a computer monitor showed the entire parking lot. Two men walked quickly over to Jason’s truck, less than fifty feet from the van.

“The kid doesn’t even see them coming,” Thompson said.

“Play it,” Lauren said to the manager. The video continued, the men moving casually toward Jason as he placed the boxes in his truck bed and opened the driver’s side door.

Dave grimaced. “This is hard to watch.” The images showed no struggle. Jason was surprised, his head whipping right and left to look at both men. In ten seconds, he was inside the blue van, one man climbing in the back seat with him.

Eric Hunter looked away. “They’ve had him long enough to get what they want.”

“Yeah, they got the location of the storage unit out of him,” Dave said.

O’Brien’s cell rang. He looked at the number. “It’s Jason!”

“Put it on speaker.” Hunter said.

O’Brien hit the speaker button. “Jason ….”

“Sean! They’re holding me!”

“Where are you?”

“At an undisclosed location,” Yuri Volkow said.

“Who is this?” O’Brien demanded.

“I’m the man who can slit Jason’s throat. Are you near a computer, O’Brien?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Go to Anonev.com. I will spell it for you. A…n…o…n…e…v.”

O’Brien typed in the address and an image of Jason sitting in a chair appeared. A man, only visible from the chest down, held a knife to Jason’s throat.

“Jas-” began Nick as O’Brien raised his hand for silence.

The others crowded around the screen. O’Brien held up one hand to make sure no one spoke. He said to Volkow, “Don’t hurt him. He’s a kid-not even twenty.”

“My father was only twenty-five when your people killed him.”

“I’m sorry to hear that … what were the circumstances?”

“Similar to what we have in the world today. The cold war never ended. It will never thaw as long as your country continues its world meddling.”

“Who is this?” O’Brien asked.

“How much do you want to see Jason live?” Volkow pulled Jason’s head back with one hand, placed a knife against his neck. “His carotid artery is less than one inch from the blade.” Then he began cutting.

“Oh dear God …,” Lauren whispered.

“Wait!” shouted O’Brien.

Jason screamed, his body visibly trembling. Volkow held the knife, and blood trickled down Jason’s neck, looking into the camera, tears spilling from his eyes.

“What do you want?” O’Brien asked.

“I want the rest of the cargo. It is rightfully ours. There are other canisters. We know this. You have forty-eight hours from now to deliver them to a destination I choose. If you do not, the next time you see Jason, you will watch him die. You cannot find him, but we can find you. All GPS and tracking devices on his mobile have been deactivated. But you can leave a text message to communicate. The clock starts right now.”

The screen faded to black.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Lauren Miles said, “Ron, I don’t care what that asshole says about deactivating Jason’s phone. Let’s see if we can triangulate a location from a cell tower. Maybe we’ll get something. I’ll call Mike Gates. We’ll see if the cyber team can get a trace from this computer to that website. Maybe there’s something there that will give us a location, lead us to Jason. They’ve got to be within a few miles of us. But where?”

Agent Bridges said, “The unsub’s voice. Did anybody notice the slightest hint of an accent? German? Russian, maybe? Didn’t sound Middle Eastern.”

“Not much of an accent,” said Paul Thompson. “Could be some German.”

O’Brien watched Eric Hunter as his eyes darted from Lauren to Thompson. Hunter said, “His hands, large, light skin. Very non-Middle Eastern in appearance.”

“I noticed that,” Lauren said. “Like the unsub had Scandinavian or German stock.

“He wasn’t Greek,” chimed in Nick. “And what the hell’s an unsub?”

“Unknown subject,” Dave said. “A frequently used FBI term.”

O’Brien shook his head. “It’s what the guy holding Jason said that might be our biggest clue. He said, ‘my father was only twenty-five when your people killed him,’ and he added, ‘It is rightfully ours … the rest of the cargo.’ If his father was twenty-five when he died, where did he die? How’d he die, and when did it happen? What was, or is, ‘rightfully ours?’ By ours, does he mean a country, a group of people, or is he talking about himself, like a claim on a property inheritance?”

“All good questions,” Dave Collins said.

“Yes,” added Lauren, “and right now we don’t have any of the answers.”

“Maybe some are outside,” O’Brien said. “Let’s take a look.”

“Wait a minute,” protested Thompson. “We have plenty of expertise here. We don’t need or want your assistance. Take your friends and go back to the marina.”

O’Brien ignored Thompson and started for the parking lot. He walked to the spot under the tree where the kidnapper’s van had been parked. He knelt down a few feet from the trunk of the tree and looked at the soil, his fingers touching a small dark spot about the size of a half dollar. He smelled the stained grains of sand.

The others approached, Paul Thompson visibly angry. “Go home, O’Brien.”

Thompson looked at Lauren. She said, “Sean, we can take it from here.”

Thompson said, “There’s no shoe or tire print. That’s enough, leave.”

“The stain is transmission fluid,” O’Brien said. “Their van probably has a leak. Maybe the lab can match the chemical analysis of this fluid with the van, if we find it-”

“We will find it,” Thompson said. “But we-”

“We’ll get forensics back out here,” Lauren said, dialing her cell. “Ron, stay here until they arrive. We’ll head back to the federal building.”

As the others started for Dave’s SUV, Eric Hunter walked to his truck. O’Brien pulled Dave aside and asked, “Who’s Hunter?”

“What do you mean?”

“Dave, I saw him recognize you. What nailed it for me was when you looked the other way. Who is he?”

Dave watched Hunter get in his truck and leave. “I can’t get into who he is. Suffice to say he’s deep undercover. Let’s just leave it at that, Sean, all right?”

“No. Hell, no, it’s not all right. A kid we both know has less than forty-eight hours to live. His girlfriend is dead. A storage manager is dead. Two men in a boat at sea chasing us are blown to hell out of the water. And, today, two guys were tailing Nick and me before I found the U-235 missing. I don’t think they were the hostiles who kidnapped Jason. I need to know who Hunter is and what’s going on.”

“Eric Hunter is one of the Agency’s best field agents. I don’t know what he’s involved in or how deep the layers are.”

“Then who’s this Paul Thompson?”

“He’s with the Agency, liaises between Homeland and the FBI.”

“And he has no clue who Hunter is, come on, or is all that a charade?”

“I doubt he knows what I’ve told you, if that.”

“But you can’t ask because there are only so many lies that a human brain is capable of processing before plausible denial doesn’t work. And the CIA is the best at this kind of-”

“Look, Sean-”

“I think Hunter tipped the media, maybe called the reporter Susan Schulman that day we found the U-boat and the cargo. Jason had called Hunter, a man Maggie, Jason’s mom, says she doesn’t know. I saw the number on Jason’s cell. Hunter knew we were bringing the boat back after the find. Maybe he contacted the Coast Guard. Maybe he had the boat blown up when we went back there and got the HEU.

“Remember, I’d radioed you guys that day you found it. You were on the bottom exploring the sub and Jason answered the radio. Coast Guard could have heard that.”

“How’d Hunter get here so fast?”

“He’s been here. Working undercover in Florida. This is a hotspot for hostiles. We saw that with 911. I do know he’d been part of the investigation that brought charges against Awwab Bakir.”

“Hunter says he knew Jason’s father. His dad died in the Cole bombing.”

“Maybe they worked together. We have no way of verifying that.”

O’Brien said nothing.

Dave asked, “Did you get a look at the hostiles following you and Nick?”

“Dark features, from what I could tell. They weren’t bald or blonde.”

“Looks like we have two factions. If the guys in the van stole the HEU after they kidnapped Jason, then who were the men tailing you? Maybe Abdul-Hakim’s men?”

“I don’t know. Ask Hunter. Right now we’ve got to find the men who kidnapped Jason and stole the HEU. It could be loaded onto a container ship in Port Canaveral in a couple of hours and shipped to just about anywhere. Possibility of it being shipped out creates a greater urgency.”

“Whoever gets it, they’ll have to know how to turn it into an atomic bomb. That’s not an easy thing to do unless you’re a nuclear physicist.”

“I have to go. Keep an eye on Nick. He’ll be safer with you.”

“Where you going?”

“You remember how we were talking, trying to make sense out of this-you, me Jason and Nick? Then I told you about Abby Lawson and her grandmother, Glenda?”

“What about them?”

“If the men who kidnapped Jason managed to get that out of him, Abby and her grandmother could be in danger. If Glenda’s story is true, we could have a repeat today.”

Dave looked at the others waiting by his SUV. “What do you mean, repeat?”

“I think what Billy Lawson saw before he died in 1945 caused two things: it brought down the German sub after Lawson called his wife … and it exposed something or someone.”

“As a nation, we were trying to end the war.”

“Maybe Billy Lawson’s report that night had something to do with that.”

“What are you going to do?”

“What if Lawson wasn’t killed in a mugging? What if he was killed in a cover-up and the cover-up has a direct connection to Jason being held hostage today?”

“How could that be?”

“The hostile on camera-it’s what he said about his father and the rightful ownership of the U-235 canisters. Why would he say that? Maybe his father was around the time Billy Lawson was shot. What if there’s a connection?”

“Sean, what connection? Any witnesses in the Lawson case are probably dead. Evidence is long gone.”

“Not if Billy Lawson was buried with it.”

“What?”

“Bullets. An old newspaper story indicated Lawson died from a single gunshot wound to the chest. Glenda Lawson, on the phone with her husband at the time of the shooting, said she heard three shots.”

“Maybe she was mistaken. Regardless, what can you do at this stage?”

“Exhume Lawson’s body from the grave.”

“Do what? If you find evidence of more than one shot, what have you proved?”

“That the newspaper story, taken from the police and FBI reports, was a lie. If they didn’t remove all the bullets in an autopsy, assuming they even did one in 1945, I might be able to identify the type of murder weapon.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Glenda Lawson’s home was cast in dark olive green shadows when O’Brien pulled into her driveway, which was long ago built of aged bricks. The home was turn-of-the-century old Florida: coquina stone, one story, and a tile roof the tint of rust. A large banyan tree stood in the small front yard flanked by philodendrons along one side of the home.

When O’Brien parked his Jeep and walked across the small, faded limestone blocks, the sweet scent of night-blooming jasmine and magnolia blossoms escorted him to the door. He knocked once; and in the dying light, Abby Lawson opened the door and greeted him.

“Sean, I’ve been watching the news,” she said, holding her hands in front of her, fingers locked. “They say two people died … the manager of a self-storage building and the girlfriend of Jason who works on your boat. They also said Jason was kidnapped … is he …?”

“He’s alive. What your grandmother might tell me could keep him that way.”

“Please, come in.”

“I won’t be long.” O’Brien looked at the road beyond the home before entering.

Abby closed the door. “Things are happening at a frightening pace since you found that U-boat.”

“Good evening Mr. O’Brien,” said Glenda Lawson entering the living room. “It’s nice to see you.”

“Mrs. Lawson-”

“Please, dear, call me Glenda. We heard about the deaths of that poor young woman, the kidnapping of her boyfriend and the death of the storage place manager.” She was quiet a moment and said, “This is all happening because of what my Billy saw that night, isn’t it, Mr. O’Brien?”

“I think it might be connected.”

Glenda coughed once, inhaled, a wheezing sound bubbling from her lungs, and said, “Is there anything we can do for you? Please stay for supper.”

“I need to ask you some questions about the night Billy saw the U-boat.”

“Okay, but I must ask you a question first, when was the last time you ate?”

“Yesterday.”

“You look like it. Abby makes the best lasagna you’ll ever have. We just took it out of the oven half hour ago. Please join us.”

“I don’t have a lot of time-”

“Young man, if you have time to talk, you have time to eat, too. I insist.” She turned and went into the kitchen. “Come join us, don’t keep an old woman waiting.”

As Abby served lasagna, warm garlic bread, and salad, O’Brien, who was sitting across the oak table from Glenda, asked, “When your husband told you where the men had buried the cargo, what did he say? You’d mentioned the old Fort Matanzas, remember?”

“I’ve never forgotten it,” Glenda said, looking out through the glass French doors onto her small garden. Holding her gaze on the fireflies floating in the philodendron, she added, “He told me they buried it maybe two hundred feet south of the old Spanish fort. When the light from the St. Augustine lighthouse comes across the fort’s watchtower at the six o’clock position, it shines through the window. Billy said they buried something in the sand along the line of light.”

“Do you know where Billy was standing when he saw the light on the fort?”

“No.”

O’Brien was silent. “Billy told you that when the light from the St. Augustine lighthouse rotates across the fort’s watchtower at the six o’clock position and shines through the window, that’s where something is buried in sand. The watchtower would have at least two openings, observation points, for the light to shine through it. If someone were to position themselves in the general area and walk it until they see the beam from the lighthouse through the observation opening on the south side, maybe-”

“But that area has dramatically changed since 1945. There are million dollar homes through there now.”

“Two things have not changed. The fort has been there for two-hundred-sixty-six years. It hasn’t moved. Neither has the lighthouse, which has been there at least a century. I used to surf fish there. There are no homes on the island, it’s a national park. I’d have to retrace, or try to retrace Billy’s steps that night.”

Glenda said, “His truck, it would have been close to AIA. He’d park off the shoulder, under some palms, and then walk down to the surf to cast his net. He liked to fish in the area because of the inlet. Sometimes Billy would cast directly into the surf. Other times he’d fish the inlet, usually on the north side of the pass.”

“The north side is still undeveloped today. Maybe it’s still there,” O’Brien said.

“Do you think you could find it?” asked Abby.

“I have to try. The kidnappers are holding Jason.”

“I’ll pray,” Abby whispered.

O’Brien said, “They know of the possibility of the remaining uranium hidden somewhere on the beach, maybe Rattlesnake Island, the island where Fort Matanzas is located. The men holding Jason might comb the sand on the island with sophisticated metal detection equipment. The advantage I may have right now is what you’ve told me about the lighthouse, but if you can remember anything else Billy said that night, something might give me another lead.”

“I’m so sorry about the young man,” Glenda said. “Unfortunately, I’ve told you all that my husband told me. He didn’t have a lot of time to get out details.”

“I understand.”

“Maybe you can find it with the information grandma gave you.”

“I don’t know,” Glenda said. “Matanzas doesn’t give up its secrets easily. It’s a beautiful place, but it is a place of suffering and a lot of bloodshed.”

“Matanzas Inlet has quite a horrific past,” Abby said, serving more food. “Not a good story at dinner, horrendous.”

O’Brien nodded. “I remember some of the history.”

“It was where the Spanish, in 1565, slaughtered the French Huguenots.” Glenda’s eyes enlarged. “More than two-hundred-fifty settlers died. The waters of the pass ran red with their blood. Happened at the inlet on Rattlesnake Island. In Spanish, Matanzas means massacre.”

Abby said, “Years later, the fort was built by the Spanish to keep the British from entering the inlet, coming upriver and attacking the back side of St. Augustine.”

O’Brien said, “A few centuries after that, the Germans enter the inlet and, somewhere on the beach, they bury a deadly cargo. Glenda, who investigated Billy’s murder?”

“Let me see … umm … there was a young man, a FBI agent. His name was Robert Miller. Never forgot him. A nice person. Professional, but he had some sort of anxiousness about him I didn’t quite understand.”

“How do you mean?”

“Each time I asked him about the investigation he became more evasive. Finally, he stopped returning my calls. I never heard from him again. In St. Johns County, Sheriff Walker investigated it. He thought Billy was killed by a highway robber. He couldn’t explain why Billy’s truck was abandoned. Sheriff Walker died about twenty years ago. One of his deputies is still alive, I think. Deputy Brad Ford said he had kept the investigation going as long as he worked in the department, about twenty-five years. However, he never found anyone either.”

O’Brien took a bite of food. “What was the general reaction, both on the federal and local levels, when you told them about Billy’s sighting of the German sub and the burying of something on the beach?”

“They were polite but not really interested in talking with me. I never got the chance to tell them what Billy said about the beam of light from the lighthouse. A few days after my call, I was told the Navy dispatched planes but never saw the submarine. Government men said they dug all around Matanzas Inlet but only found turtle eggs buried in the sand.”

“Sean,” said Abby, “my grandfather said that the Japanese men took off running. Grandma, you never heard if the government caught them or what, right?”

“No, I didn’t, and I never saw anything in the papers. Agent Miller told me the FBI never turned up anyone.”

O’Brien was silent. He asked, “Did they do an autopsy on your husband?”

“Told me they did.”

“The newspaper report you showed me when you came to my house indicated Billy had been shot once and, yet, you said you heard three shots.”

Glenda coughed, her eyes watering. “Yes, and sometimes I still hear them.”

“Did they tell you, or did they know what kind of gun was used to kill Billy?”

“I do remember the FBI telling me it was a.38 caliber bullet that killed him.”

“Would you allow your husband’s body to be exhumed? I’d want to know if he was shot more than once and whether all the bullets were removed from the body.”

Abby bit her lower lip and sipped some wine. Glenda looked beyond the dining room to a framed picture of her husband on the wall. Billy Lawson, dressed in his Army uniform, was smiling. Forever twenty-one. “Okay,” Glenda said. “If you do find evidence of more gunshots, what do we do? What if Billy wasn’t killed by a.38 bullet?”

“Then we find out why Billy’s murder was covered up by the U.S. government.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

The Phoenicia restaurant was crowded for a Thursday evening. Mohammed Sharif liked it that way. Easier to blend in with the people-his people, he felt. The scent of garlic chicken, braised lamb, baklawa, and Turkish coffee drifted over the tables. Sharif and Rashid Aamed sat in a back corner of the restaurant, watched a belly dancer, and spoke Arabic in hushed tones. They ate grape leaves with rice and lamb, hummus, and tabouli, and drank a Chateau Musar white wine grown in the Bekaa Valley.

Sharif said, “The Russian, Yuri Volkow, he already has images of the material on the Internet, offered to select dealers who have been vetted for their lists of private buyers. Our dealer has invited us to bid. The bidding is to begin at ten million U.S. dollars. However, they boast more is expected. The person who offers the highest bid for these two will have an even more exclusive first-bid option for the other canisters.”

“It confirms what the old German told us. But the Russians have yet to produce the rest of the canisters,” Aamed said.

“How would they know where more material is anymore than we might? They must know something. It would be information they could only have received from one of the three men who discovered the submarine.”

“The one who was kidnapped, the younger one. No doubt that Volkow extracted information from him.”

“Perhaps,” said Aamed, biting into a stuffed grape leaf. “So if the younger man knows the possible location of the remaining canisters, then the two other men, the one named Cronus-the Greek guy, and the American, Sean O’Brien, would know the location as well.”

“Indeed. O’Brien, we learned, owns the boat.”

“Your thoughts, Mohammed?”

“Allah will guide us, hamdulillah. I feel we must find O’Brien.”

“If we find the material before the Russians, how shall we deal with them and recover the canisters they have?”

“We become the highest bidders. Upon retrieving the material, Waahid will become a martyr, inshallad, God willing. As the smoke clears, we leave with the material.”

Aamed’s jaw noticeably popped from controlled tension. He smiled just as the reflection of the belly dancer’s supple body moved across his dark eyes, and said, “It would seem the time is approaching to kidnap the girl as well.”

“Not yet, not until we have the material. After that, take her. We have takfir-complete authority. Then her father will come without a sound.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

“Sean, you’re not going up to Rattlesnake Island tonight, are you?” Abby Lawson asked.

“The kidnappers have given Jason forty-eight hours unless we can produce the rest of the HEU. A few hours have passed already. If the stuff is there, I need to find it before they do.”

“HEU?”

“Highly enriched uranium. Maybe I can get my bearings, see the lighthouse beam coming through the fort’s watchtower. If I can find what the Germans buried that night, it will corroborate what your grandfather saw.”

Glenda looked at her watch. “It’s almost 8:00. Billy wasn’t killed until almost midnight. If you are trying to follow the evening as close as it was when he saw the men on that beach, you need to wait a few more hours.”

“I don’t have a few more hours.”

“Please,” said Glenda, touching O’Brien’s arm, “stay for coffee. The caffeine will help your vision on Rattlesnake Island. How do you take it?”

“Black’s fine, thanks.”

“Let’s take our coffee out on the back patio for a few minutes. It’s such a nice evening. I’ll tell you a quick story about Billy.”

O’Brien started to excuse himself to leave, but her face was aglow with trust, her spirit rising above the cancerous tissue and signaling the need to be heard-for Billy to be understood.

“Okay,” O’Brien said.

“Good,” nodded Glenda, holding her coffee cup in two weathered hands and stepping to a door leading into the backyard.

Abby beamed a wide smile. “We’ll join you outside in a moment, Grandma.” The old woman smiled and started humming as she walked slowly to the French doors. “My grandmother is humming, Sean. She only does that when she’s very comfortable. She’s at ease around you. She likes you and believes you can help.”

“She never remarried, right?”

Abby held her eyes on O’Brien, and then she looked at the photograph on the wall for a second before letting her gaze drift back up to O’Brien’s face. “She never found the right man. Not that she would compare every fella to Granddad. She knew what she wanted, what she had, and she didn’t want to compromise or settle for less.”

“I don’t want to sound crude, but do the doctors know how much time she has?”

“A year ago, they gave her three to six months. She’s still here. You go out there, slay a few dragons at sea, and then bring her something our government has refused to and what none of her doctors could.”

“What do I bring her?”

“Hope.”

“Please, I don’t want you or your grandmother to have any illusions about what was found in that submarine. Today, a young woman died. She was about the same age as your grandfather at his death. A German U-boat and a deadly cargo seem to be the cosmic path between the two, but like any theory of the universe, I don’t know what, how, or if it’s connected.”

“Hope is eternal and universal.” Abby pointed to a black-and-white framed photograph of a young man smiling and dressed in an Army uniform. “That’s my grandpa. He looks too young there to be a grandfather, but Grandma was carrying his baby, my mother, when that picture was taken. Mom and I should have had the privilege of knowing him, and that sweet lady out there still misses him and deserves to know who killed him.”

“I agree, Abby. But, two canisters of enriched uranium are missing. A kid I gave a summer job to is being held hostage. I don’t know if coming here tonight may be placing you and your grandmother in danger, too. You need to be on alert”

“What do you mean?”

“I was followed earlier. I lost them, but they could be back.”

“Do you believe anyone followed you here tonight?”

“I don’t think so. But, nevertheless, I want you and your grandmother to be very aware of your surroundings. They may have tortured Jason, and he could have mentioned you and your grandmother by name. He heard me tell the story of what happened to your grandfather.”

Abby hugged her arms. A shiver went through her body. “Let’s join Grandma.”

Glenda looked up as Abby and O’Brien appeared and said, “I was just listening to a nightingale across the yard in the live oak. The male nightingale is the singer, you know? When most birds are long into their nightly roost, he’s throwing his head back like the fine Italian tenor Caruso.” She paused and listened. “Hear him?”

“I haven’t heard a nightingale in a while,” O’Brien said. “At my place on the river, I hear owls at night.” O’Brien could smell gardenias blooming in the yard, the scent musky and yet feminine. He looked at Abby’s striking profile under the soft light, and admired her dedication and love for her grandmother.

She sat down by Glenda. “Grandma, Sean was just telling me about a lot of the things … really bad things that have happened since he found the U-boat. We, you and I, just need to be careful who we speak to and where we go.”

“What do you mean?”

“Glenda,” O’Brien began, “there are some very forceful people who want to get their hands on weapons-grade uranium. Nick and I hooked our anchor on the past and may have opened a door leading back to your husband. I feel responsible for what’s happened the last six days.”

“I hope you can find these people.”

“I’m going to try.”

“Maybe, when you do, in some way, it’ll shed light on a sad, dark place in my heart.”

“How do we exhume my grandfather’s body?” asked Abby.

O’Brien said, “I have a detective friend at the sheriff’s department. He’ll ask for a court order. Then the medical examiner will have a look.”

“How long will this take?” asked Glenda.

“It can be expedited, done within couple of days.”

O’Brien stood. “Thank you both for dinner.”

Glenda smiled and coughed. “It’s getting a little cool. I think I’ll go inside and read some before bed.” O’Brien opened the French doors and Glenda entered her home just as the nightingale began another song. “Good night, sweet bird, sing one more for me,” she said, vanishing into the house.

“Let me walk you to your Jeep,” Abby said

“That’s not necessary. I’ll just walk around the side yard and be on my way.”

“Please, I insist.” She strolled around a birdbath and the blooming bougainvillea.

“Wait, you are a stubborn lady.”

She paused, looked back, and smiled. “Yes, yes I am. Now, are you going to walk with me or stand there listening to the bird sing?”

O’Brien grinned. “What I’m going to do is walk you to your front door. When you go inside, make sure everything’s locked and the alarm’s set.”

“Are you trying to scare me?”

“Yes.”

At the front door she said, “Thank you for being such a good listener around my grandmother. I’m here as often as I can. She gets lonely.”

“I enjoyed her company, and yours.”

“I guess this is where we say goodnight.” She paused and looked up at O’Brien, the smolder of a three-quarter moon casting them in a serene glow. “Thank you for doing what you didn’t have to do. After all these years, you come along and really give a damn. Hopefully, you’re the one to right this wrong. I admire that, Sean.”

“I haven’t done anything yet.”

“Yes, you have. You’ve given her hope. Tonight, she’ll sleep better.”

“Goodnight, Abby.”

As O’Brien started to leave, she said, “Sean ….”

He turned back to her. “Yes?”

She laughed nervously. “Maybe it’s the wine … maybe it’s the damn nightingale singing his silly head off … or maybe I’m just afraid something will happen to you out there tonight. Please be very careful.”

O’Brien was silent. He thought he heard a car engine on the next street.

She said, “Let me go with you. I can help-”

“No. It’s too dangerous, and you need to stay with your grandmother.”

“Matanzas is an inlet where the sands are always shifting due to the swift currents and the fact that there are no manmade jetties or embankments. Matanzas Inlet also has an evil past. My grandfather saw it. Between the location and those cruel people out there, I don’t want anything to happen to you either.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

O’Brien drove away from Glenda Lawson’s home and checked his mirrors. Nothing. No sign of car lights. No movement. He called Dave Collins. “How’s Max?”

“She’s lying on the sofa watching the news with me.”

“Can you keep an eye on her a little longer?”

“She’s not a bother. Nick wants to take her up to the Tiki Bar. He says women approach him when Max is sitting in his lap.”

“Is Nick there?”

“He’s in the galley cooking and drinking.”

“I hate to ask you to watch Max and Nick at the same time, but-”

“We’ll stay up talking. Are you going to make it back here for some food?”

“Just ate. I’m driving to Matanzas Inlet.”

“Sean, it’s dark. What the hell are you going to find in the dark?”

“The light, Dave, I hope. Now I have a better idea of what Billy Lawson saw that night when the Germans and Japanese came ashore after he spotted the U-boat.”

“Sean-”

“I’m going to call Dan Grant at Volusia SO and ask him to get a court order to exhume Billy Lawson’s body.”

“Between all the federal and local agencies, there must be a hundred people chasing leads while you’re chasing ghosts.”

“What’s Eric Hunter chasing?”

“Sean, you have him wrong.”

“It’s not a question of right or wrong, it’s grasping what motivates him.”

“What do you mean?”

“If he’s in as deep as you say, and he’s as good as you say he is, where are his allegiances? He may be legit … or he may be ready to score a crime of global consequences.” O’Brien could hear Dave exhale slowly.

“I hope you’re wrong about him,” Dave said.

“I do too.”

O’Brien called Volusia County Sheriff’s Detective Dan Grant. Grant, middle aged, African-American, with twenty years on the force said, “Sean O’Brien, looks like you still have my number programmed. Are you doing okay?”

“Dan, I have a big favor to ask of you.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask … what is it?”

O’Brien brought Grant up to date and said, “Billy Lawson was shot and killed in Volusia County May 19, 1945. He’s buried in Sea View Gardens. His widow, Glenda, has given us permission to exhume the body. There’s no statute of limitations for murder.”

“Exhume it for what? After all this time, what the hell can be left in a box?”

“Have the medical examiner do an autopsy best she can. We’re looking for signs of more than one bullet wound entrance. And we’re looking for bullets.”

“Sounds like a hellava scavenger hunt. Maybe the forensics test of the year.”

“See if you can get a judge to sign it tomorrow morning.”

“How’s this going to help us find who killed Taylor Andrews, the manager of the storage units?”

“I don’t know, but if you can get an emergency court order for this, the information we learn might prevent another murder, the killing of Jason Canfield. I’m trying to put pieces of the past together. It might give me a bearing on finding the rest of the U-235 canisters.”

“I don’t think Jason’s kidnappers hit Nicole Bradley. We picked up a gang-banger for that. Guy’s name is Lionel Tucker. Street name-Popeye. Did a nickel stretch for selling meth. On top of that, he’s a habitual user. When we picked him up, the guy had Nicole’s cell phone and her credit cards on him. Says he found the girl’s purse in a parking lot. He busted his probation, and he’ll sit in the county jail until a trial.”

“You might want to cut him loose, Dan.”

“What?”

“Did he admit to killing her?”

“No, says he never saw her, only saw the purse in a shopping cart.”

“He’s probably telling the truth. I’m sure the kidnappers killed her, the same men holding Jason. Check with Agent Lauren Miles. The suspect you picked up most likely found the purse where he said he did. It was a decoy, and it gave them time to kidnap Jason.”

“Who? Wait a minute, Sean-”

“The people who killed Nicole and the manager are the same. They’re very smart, fast, and ruthless. There must be an enormous price tag for the HEU.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Try to find it before forty-three more hours expire.”

O’Brien was silent, watching fog rise above the ocean as he drove north on A1A.

“Okay, Sean, back to exhuming Billy Lawson’s body. What if we find evidence he died from multiple gunshot wounds? What does it prove?”

“Lies, lots of them. How far back do your homicide investigation records go?”

“I’ve never traced a case to 1945, if that’s what you mean.”

“Maybe you could check. Get the report, if there’s one. See who worked it.”

“They have to be dead.”

“One’s not.”

“Who?”

“His name’s Ford … Brad Ford. See what his involvement was, and see if you can find a current address for him.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

O’Brien looked at his watch as he pulled off the shoulder of the road near Matanzas Inlet. It was a few minutes past nine. He parked, slid his Glock under his belt, and got out of his Jeep, the engine ticking as it cooled, and waves breaking on the beach to his right. The moon rose above the Atlantic Ocean, the light giving form to a shadowy mist rising from the Matanzas River, which silently rushed through the inlet into the sea. The moving water in the pass delivered the night smells of a changing tide, wet barnacles, mangrove roots, and baitfish. He remembered fishing here twenty years earlier.

O’Brien stepped down the embankment under the Matanzas Pass Bridge, A1A now above him. A car passed. He stopped and listened, the sound of the car growing faint in the distance. He walked under the bridge to the water’s edge, following the shoreline a few feet until he had cleared the bridge above him.

A nighthawk called out as O’Brien knelt down and lowered his hand into the wide stream, the current pulling toward the sea, a receding tide. Vapor rose from the brackish river like a conga line of ghosts riding a silent night train-the river, flowing around the dark mangrove islands. O’Brien thought about what Glenda and Abby had said-history of the inlet, the bloodshed and the fact that where he stood was a back door into the New World. It was a clandestine place that gave the Spanish dominance after the slaughter of 250 French settlers.

As O’Brien moved farther toward the west, it appeared. A wink of light in the distance. To the northeast. Then it was gone. O’Brien waited and the light reappeared, the rotation of the lamp in the St. Augustine lighthouse took twenty seconds. He looked toward the northwest, the direction of the old Spanish fort. When the wind blew and the mist vanished, the coquina shell fortress was an outline in the moonlight. Its watchtower was a silent sentry, the block fortress still making an imposing statement.

The distant beam from the lighthouse took on a diffused look when the haze returned, drifting above the water, becoming lost in the dark. Then, suddenly, like a flock of startled birds in the wind, the apparitions were gone. The silent stone sentinel remained, the edges of the coquina blocks worn, resembling stooped shoulders in a halo of revolving light.

The light rotated in its 360-degree arch behind the old fort. Nothing punched through an opening in the watchtower. O’Brien kept walking in a westward direction, glancing up at the fort each time the light swept it. Nothing. He slapped the sand fleas biting the back of his neck.

Looking toward the fort, he waited for the rotation of the light. As it swept behind the fort, the turret was dark and ominous. O’Brien studied the stream and a large sandbar just beneath the surface that straddled almost the distance of the stream. He took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his pants and stepped into the water. It was cool, and he felt minnows nibbling at his ankles. O’Brien sloshed through the water glancing up at the fort each sweep of the light, walking toward Rattlesnake Island.

He dropped, water covering his head. It was as if a wool blanket was tossed over him. He knew he’d stepped into a hole. Water rushed around his body, sucking him downstream. A rip current pulled his clothes, his pants and shirt felt like dead weight.

O’Brien kicked through the current and soon found the sandbar again. He stood and regained his balance, water dripping from his face, hungry mosquitoes orbiting his head with bloodthirsty whines.

Rattlesnake Island had a strip of sandy beach, but fifty feet into the interior, it turned to mangroves and gnarled trees, bent like old men stooping in a field under the moonlight. O’Brien stepped across the sand a few feet to the west, wondering how the inlet, the island, and the topography had changed since Billy Lawson stood somewhere near. When he looked up toward the fort, he stopped in his tracks. In the direction of the lighthouse, it looked as if someone was signaling with a lantern from the watchtower, the window glowed for a second.

O’Brien was motionless, ignoring the mosquitoes. He watched for the light to return and the dark opening in the tower to shine for a moment. Again it was there. He stepped twenty feet toward the west and stopped. When the beam returned it wasn’t visible from the opening in the tower. He retraced his steps.

“Show me the light,” he said as the lighthouse winked in the distance, sending light through an opening on the tower’s north face to a stone window on the south side.

O’Brien looked at his bare feet and wondered if he might be standing on top of the U-235. Eight canisters of the stuff could turn everything from here to the lighthouse, a distance of fourteen miles, into ashes. He used his right foot to mark an X in the sand and then found a large rock and lifted it onto the center of the X. He fished the cell phone out of his wet pocket and tried to call Dave. The phone was dead.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Forty-five minutes later, O’Brien stepped onto Gibraltar. Max jumped off Dave Collins’ couch in the salon and trotted to the sliding glass door. She whined a note as O’Brien slid open the door.

“Hello, Max,” O’Brien said, stepping inside. She ran around his feet, panting, tail blurring. He picked her up, and she licked his face.

Dave and Nick sat at the bar. CNN news was on the television behind them.

Nick said, “Whoa … you look like you been on a safari in the jungle.”

Dave stood. “How’d it go?”

“I think I’m close to a lot more HEU. Enough to blow Florida in half.”

Dave said, “You look like you could use a cold beer. Plenty in the fridge.”

O’Brien sat in a canvas director’s chair in the salon, Max curling at his feet. He told them the story from his meeting with Glenda and Abby and of his surveillance on Rattlesnake Island. “I feel I was close to that stuff, sort of like the feeling I had before swimming into the sub. Something eerie, but you don’t quite know what.”

“You got that right,” Nick said, lifting his glass in a toast.

Dave said, “So you found an area where the lighthouse beam was actually hitting the back window-you said the north side of the tower and shining through from the south side window, right?”

“Yes. When the light sweeps through the tower and aligns with the front and back opening, it shoots down a narrow, but long path. To find the U-235, if it’s there, you’d have to know where along the path they may have dug the hole. Maybe 200 feet south of the fort.”

“Let the stuff stay there,” Nick said. “An island named after rattlesnakes.”

“If I knew where Billy stood that night, knew what the inlet and the island looked like sixty-seven years ago … it might be easier.”

“This,” Dave said, fixing a fresh drink, “may sound strange to you-”

Nick shook his head. “Nothing we do, from this point, will sound strange to me.”

Dave said. “Have either one of you ever heard of remote viewing.”

“From what I read,” O’Brien said, “it was some kind of ESP used by the military. Some debate over its accuracy.”

Dave grunted. “It depends on the talents of the person doing it. We did tests in the mid-nineties. Bottom line: the person who is doing the remote viewing is using his or her subconscious to locate or find something. Could be a target like a missile silo, maybe some detail of a military base, whatever the individual is trying to locate. Time, space and geography are meaningless, have no bearing, no borders, no walls, if you will.”

“Sounds like psychic stuff,” Nick said

“No, no it’s not. It takes practice with specific techniques and protocols. But the trained viewer sort of taps into a universal mind where all things are allegedly filed, connected, stored in some way … past, present and future. Some people have called it a form of traveling via virtual reality.”

“That’s soul travel,” Nick said.

O’Brien asked skeptically, “So you think this might help us find the buried U-235 canisters?”

“Maybe. But we’d have to find the right person.”

“Plenty of psychics out there … way out there,” Nick said.

“They’re not psychics. They’re people, most of ‘em trained though the Defense Department, who often can get a fix on the location of something … something lost. They sketch the object on a piece of paper.”

O’Brien said, “I’m assuming you know someone with this talent.”

“I do know someone.”

“Time’s our biggest problem.” He looked at his watch. “We have thirty-nine hours to save Jason’s life. How quickly can you contact this remote viewing person?”

“Her name is Anna Sterling. She lives in an old farmhouse in Michigan. If we show her a picture of Fort Matanzas, give her the date Billy Lawson saw the Germans and Japanese bury the stuff, she might give us a location.”

“I don’t know,” Nick said. “Sounds like this woman’s got to tap into the subconscious of a man who’s been long dead, maybe find his spirit.”

“Wrong idea, Nick. Time and space are irrelevant. It’s just how and where the event is floating in the universal filing cabinet, and whether Anna can open that drawer.”

“How do we find her?” O’Brien asked.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Dave Collins called Anna Sterling and told her what was at stake, and what they needed. She agreed to go online and speak with O’Brien via a camera between Dave’s laptop and the camera on Anna’s computer.

As the connection was made, O’Brien thought the woman on the screen looked like Suzanne Sommers. She said, “It’s been a while Dave. The project sounds intriguing. I don’t know if I can give you anything. I’ve had a long day. My brain is firing with more visual noise than I can cap, but for old time’s sake, I’ll give it a go.”

“Great, Anna. This is Sean O’Brien. He’s been to the site. At least where we think the site might be after all these years.”

Nick slid off the barstool and stood between Dave and O’Brien, looking at the screen. Anna asked, “And who is the handsome fella you have hidden behind you?”

Nick grinned and leaned toward the camera. “Nick Cronus … you come to Florida, I give you a boat ride. The ocean helps you see things better.”

“I’ll remember that,” Anna smiled.

Dave said, “We have a link to a picture of Fort Matanzas. I just sent it to you.”

“It’s here,” she said.

“Good. Sean, give Anna what you have.”

“Billy Lawson saw the men bury the material at night, May 19, 1945. We think it’s on a place called Rattlesnake Island. It’s national monument land, and it hasn’t been developed. Before Lawson was killed, he told his wife, a woman named Glenda Lawson, who’s still alive, that the men buried it on the island aligned with the path of light as it shines through the tower. The light comes from the old St. Augustine lighthouse.”

Anna stared at the image on her screen of Fort Matanzas, her eyes burning into the symmetry of the building. She didn’t blink for fifteen seconds. Intent. Concentrating. Then she squinted slightly, like she was seeing something at a great distance. She kept her focus, her body motionless.

Nick took a long pull on a bottle of beer and started to speak, but Dave held up a hand. Anna began sketching then paused, looked into the camera and said, “Give me a half hour. If I can complete something, I’ll scan in my drawing and e-mail it to you.”

“Anna, we really appreciate this.”

“No problem. It’s a lot different from what we did at Langley. I’m going to fix a hot tea and see what the leaves tell me.” She smiled, pressed a button and her image in the box on Dave’s screen went black.

“Tea leaves,” Nick said.

“She’s kidding,” O’Brien said. “Let’s see what the woman can do. Dave, do the intelligence agencies or DOD use anyone like Anna today?”

“I don’t know. The project, called Stargate, closed shop in 1996 amid controversy over costs versus real results. However, Anna was at the top of the class.”

Nick snorted. “So our government was training people to do this remote stuff?”

Dave sipped his drink. He said, “Some of this goes back to the study of quantum and theoretical physics during the second world war. A guy by the name of Ethan Lyons, who was working on the Manhattan Project at the time, first wrote a paper on Remote Viewing potential. He didn’t call it RV … called it universal perception and did some experiments with subjects drawing sketches of photos he sealed in envelopes. He had a success rate about twenty five percent over the average.”

“That’s impressive,” O’Brien said.

“Ethan Lyons may still be alive. One of the physicists we’d worked with in the beginning on the Stargate Project was Lee Toffler. He’d studied Lyons’ work and added to it. Toffler was a professor who used to work at a nuclear facility in Georgia. I recently read where his only daughter was killed in a car accident. Damn shame. He had raised her by himself.”

“Do you know what became of Lyons after the war?” O’Brien asked.

“Sad story. Arrested by the FBI for selling some of our atomic secrets to the soviets. He did a long stretch in prison. I only know this because I researched it before we hired Toffler as a consultant. He had great admiration for Lyons’ grasp of physics, not so much for his concept of politics and government.”

“How’d they catch him?” O’Brien asked.

“FBI sting. It didn’t take the FBI too long to nail him and others. There were at least two physicists working on the Manhattan Project who sold secrets to the Russians. One of the FBI agents was working undercover, posing as a soviet or communist sympathizer. The agent was acting as a courier, getting the secrets from Lyons and others and then reportedly meeting with Soviet spies.”

O’Brien scratched Max behind the ears. “Do you remember the name of the agent acting as the courier?”

“Not off the bat. I’ll check online.”

“And I’ll check the box for a beer,” Nick said.

Dave put his glasses on, keyed in the names, and began to read the information. “Oh, I remember now that I see it. The agent’s name was Robert Miller. The irony is that Miller went to Harvard the same time Lyons was there. May have been classmates, and he had to bust him. Had to testify against him. Lyons is lucky he wasn’t executed.”

“Did you say Robert Miller?” asked O’Brien.

“Yes, why?”

O’Brien stepped over to the computer and read the name. “Because Glenda Lawson told me that Robert Miller was the young FBI agent who investigated the killing of Billy Lawson. The one who said Lawson died as the result of a mugging … said he died from one bullet. I’m betting an autopsy will prove it didn’t happen that way.”

“Is this FBI guy still alive?” Nick asked.

“Let’s find out,” O’Brien said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

O’Brien spent a few minutes searching online for information about FBI agent Robert Miller. “There’s a brief mention in relation to something called the Venona Project,” O’Brien said. “In 1950 it was a project designed to catch Soviet spies in the U.S.”

“If he’s still alive, wouldn’t take much to find him,” Dave said. “We have two dozen FBI agents here now. I’m sure one of them could locate him or his grave.”

“Let’s not mention to the FBI, yet, what we’ve discovered so far. After what Glenda Lawson told me, we may need access to FBI records, information we might want to corroborate all this. Let’s see what Billy Lawson’s autopsy reveals.”

“Could prove nothing, Sean. FBI files from 1945 should be declassified by now.”

“What does that really mean? Regardless, let’s see what we can find on Ethan Lyons.” O’Brien keyed in Ethan Lyons’ name with dates and data. His eyes scanned the information. “Lyons was released from federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut … 1964 after serving eighteen years on four counts of espionage. After his release, he moved to England, taught physics at Cambridge. It says he never publicly apologized for compromising America’s nuclear weapons program. When asked why he provided the Russians with details of our Manhattan Project, Lyons was quoted as saying he didn’t believe America, or any nation, should ever be in a position to dominate the rest of the world by imposing the monopolistic threat of nuclear annihilation. He believed the prospect of mutual destruction would be the safety mechanism the world needed to contain atomic weapons. It says he and his wife, Sarah, moved back to the U.S. in 1996, due to her failing health and the couple’s desire to be with grandchildren. Last known address, Jacksonville, Florida.”

O’Brien stood and looked out Gibraltar’s port window. He watched a shrimp boat leave the marina, the boat’s running lights bleeding white and red over the dark surface.

Dave asked, “What are you thinking, Sean?”

“I’m thinking that if one of J. Edgar Hoover’s agents, Robert Miller, was undercover acting as a courier transferring information to the Soviets … how could he be undercover when he went to the same university, same time, as Ethan Lyons?”

“Doesn’t mean that Miller knew Lyons.”

“No, but there is irony there. Why would Miller say that Billy Lawson was shot in a mugging … shot once, and shot with a.38 caliber bullet?”

“Maybe he was,” Nick said.

“The autopsy will speak for the dead,” O’Brien said.

“If he was shot more than once, and it wasn’t a.38 that killed him, how will you approach that?” Dave asked.

“We find three old men: Ethan Lyons, Robert Miller, and Brad Ford.”

Dave heard the bong of an in-coming e-mail. He said, “Anna’s sent us something.” Dave put on his glasses and read aloud the e-mail. “Gentlemen, this is the best I could get … don’t know if it helps much. I’m seeing the fort and a small embankment. I’ve attached my drawing. It’s rather simple, but the image is, too. I’m not sure if the embankment might be where the stuff is buried, or the spot where Billy Lawson stood to view the things being buried someplace else. Or it could be near the big tree near my stick people.”

“What tree?” O’Brien asked.

Dave continued, “She says … ‘good luck, please let me know what happens, Anna.’ Well, let’s see what she sent us.” Dave opened the attachment. “I wish it was as easy as X marks the spot.”

“Looks like a little kid’s drawing,” Nick said.

Dave chuckled. “They never look polished. Images without a lot of form. With remote viewing there is no coloring between the lines. It’s creating the lines as quickly as you can before the part of the human conscious that’s seeing them is blocked.”

“Gives etch-and-sketch a new meaning,” O’Brien said. “Anna’s drawing looks like stick figures, maybe a big tree … and a shape that could be Fort Matanzas at the top of the island. The tree is gone. I will ask Glenda Lawson if she remembers one on the island.”

Dave said, “Anna’s sketch comes from what the place looked like at the time Billy Lawson viewed it. The island could have changed some in six decades.”

Nick said, “Might be the magic dust is sittin’ under somebody’s house near there. They coulda built right on top of it. And people with mold think they got problems.”

O’Brien said, “Looks like the Germans buried it on the island. Anna’s sketch indicates seven stick figures. Six, I assume, are German and Japanese sailors, the seventh-a mystery man … this is something that could have been a life raft. If we dig in the general area where the figures are on the drawing, we might find something”

Dave hit the print button. O’Brien said, “Here’s our treasure map. Nick, that tool you use to spear flounder may do the trick in the soft sand.”

Dave said, “We should call the federal task force, let them know what we found.”

“We haven’t found anything yet.” O’Brien punched numbers quickly on his cell. Abby Lawson answered. “Abby, sorry to call so late, but can you wake your grandmother?”

“She’s been asleep for several hours, Sean. You okay? Are you still at Matanzas?”

“No. But, it’s important-I need to ask her something.”

“Hold a sec … I’ll get the phone to her.”

O’Brien looked at his watch: 2:07 a.m. Thirty-eight hours remaining.

“Hello,” Glenda’s voice was like words coming through water.

“Glenda, I know it’s late. But, can you think back to the time you and Billy spent on the beaches of Matanzas Inlet and Rattlesnake Island. Do you remember a large tree on the island?”

“I do, and I remember it because it was the only live oak on that island. Rattlesnake Island had palms, but the live oak, it was big and really old back then, probably saw the massacre of the French. As it was the only oak tree there, I always wondered if it was lonely. The tree was about five blocks from the south end of the island, about half-way to the fort. I believe it was knocked out by a fierce storm”

“Thank you, Glenda.” O’Brien disconnected. “Let’s go.”

“Whoa, where we goin’?” Nick asked.

“Rattlesnake Island.”

Dave said, “Sean, we have to let the task force know. They need to be there.”

“Okay, tell whoever is coming, someone you really trust, to bring a van or truck in case we find this stuff. Nick, let’s tie a zodiac to the Jeep. If we find the canisters, we’ll need to float them to the road. I know this is a stupid question, but anyone got a shovel on his boat?”

Dave shook his head. Nick said, “There’s at least one in that tool shed the dock master has behind the Tiki Bar. He keeps one of those metal detectors locked in there, too. I’ll get the prod and meet you at the tool shed.” Nick left.

“You coming, Dave?” O’Brien asked.

“My service might be more helpful with the task force. I’ll start briefing them on the phone en route to the federal building. Between the old woman’s memory and the images Anna sketched … let’s hope there is something under that sand.”

“We’re about to find out. Max, I’ll see you later.” Max jumped from the couch and stood behind the sliding glass door, watching until she could no longer see O’Brien as he ran down the dock.

CHAPTER SIXTY

O’Brien pulled the Jeep off the road right before the Matanzas Inlet Bridge, drove down an embankment and across fifty yards of sand to the inlet. The moon was now higher, a pastel mist lying low over the pass like flat smoke from a smoldering campfire.

“How close can you get?” Nick asked.

“Close as I can. Let’s unload the Zodiac, grab the flashlights and shovels. We’ll put the boat in the water next to the bridge piling. Looks like an in-coming tide. That’s good. Less fight to get the inflatable to the island.”

They pulled up on the island’s sandy beach and got out. Nick said, “Rattlesnake Island. You never said how this place got its name?”

“I always heard that when they were dredging the Intracoastal on the other side of the island, the men would take a break and bring their bagged lunches to the island to eat. Place was so full of rattlesnakes it was difficult to find a safe spot.”

“Damn,” Nick said, shining the flashlight around him. “Any snakes still left in here? Sure are plenty of sand fleas. Little shits are crawlin’ in my hair.”

O’Brien looked at the crude sketch Anna Sterling drew. “I hope she’s accurate … for Jason’s sake. Maybe what Billy Lawson saw is still here.”

“How much time do we have?”

O’Brien looked at his watch. “A little over thirty-six hours. Let’s find this stuff. Glenda Lawson said the old tree was on the island.” O’Brien slowly panned the flashlight from the beach to the interior. He looked at the drawing and back up at the terrain. A fat raccoon waddled between the mangrove bushes. O’Brien stared at the south end of the island.

“If Billy Lawson stood somewhere in here out of sight, watching the Germans unload their stuff not far from where our raft is … they walked inland a little piece … and Billy saw the rotation of the lighthouse … the beam illuminating the window in the old watchtower ….” O’Brien kept moving, Nick following silently. “He said it was in the path of light coming through the opening in the tower. Then, right here, we’re in the same path, the same trajectory that Billy apparently saw. Now, if we take the drawing that Anna sketched and walk about to where Glenda says the live oak was, maybe two hundred feet south of the fort … what will we find?”

O’Brien stepped through the sand and palmetto bushes, looking back and ahead, keeping in the path of the light from the tower. “Then,” he said, gesturing west, “the big oak would have been here to our left … and just maybe …”

O’Brien aimed the light toward a slight bowl-shaped indentation in the undergrowth. He said, “If a large oak was ripped out during a hurricane, there would be a big root ball. Through the years, the plants that grew from a hole deeper than the surrounding ground would be shorter than those around them.”

Nick said, “This is like tracking Mother Nature.”

“Let’s use the metal prod and see if we can get lucky.”

“I’ll start in one part and work around ‘till I’ve covered the area.” He stuck the prod in the sand, using his weight to work the point deep into the soil. Nothing. He tried again in an area about five feet to the east. Nothing. He slapped at biting sand fleas and mosquitoes and said, “I’m gonna use the treasure finder.”

O’Brien picked up the prod and began working it into the sandy soil. He looked toward the watchtower, the light now like a firefly in the misty air. After several prods and in keeping an eye on the rotation of the light coming through the tower, he worked his way closer to the beach, “Bring that thing over here, Nick. Think I found something.”

Nick moved the metal detector just above the surface where O’Brien pointed. “Not a peep,” Nick said.

O’Brien picked up a shovel and removed a few large scoops of sand. “Try again.”

As Nick moved the detector over the hole, there was a faint beep … beep. “Pay dirt! Lemme help you.” He took the shovel and started digging. Within a minute, Nick hit something. It was metal clashing against metal, the dull sound of iron against an anvil. Nick dropped to his knees. “Hit me with the light!” O’Brien pointed the flashlight beam into the hole as Nick scooped out the sand with his hands. “We found it! We fuckin’ found the rest of the magic dust!” Nick used both hands to brush the sand from one canister, reaching in, struggling to lift it from the hole.

Within twenty minutes of intense digging and prying, they had removed eight canisters from the hole. “Hand me the prod,” Nick said. After a few more stabs through the sand, Nick hit something. He dropped back to his knees and, again, began moving the loose sand with his hands. “This one doesn’t feel like a canister. Hit me with some light.” O’Brien aimed the light where Nick dug. “Mother Mary!” Nick shouted, dropping the object and making the sign of the cross.

The vacant eye sockets of a human skull stared up from the bottom of the pit.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

O’Brien called Dave Collins. “We found them. We’re pulling them out of a hole on Rattlesnake Island about eighty yards north of the Matanzas Bridge.”

“Excellent. We’ll send agents. Mike Gates doesn’t want to alert the locals. He doesn’t want a lot of blue lights flashing or media getting wind of the pick up. It’s too dangerous. Couple guys he’s sending are bomb experts.”

“Dave, these aren’t bombs. They’re the fuel for bombs.”

“FBI folks have their way of doing things.”

“Maybe they have their own medical examiner.”

“You found a body?”

“Buried under the canisters.”

“State of decomposition?”

“Sixty-seven years. Picked clean.”

“We’ll send some people.”

“The vic’s probably what’s left of the German sailor Billy Lawson saw shot. They must have tossed him in the hole and buried him with the HEU.”

Andrei Keltzin and Zakhar Sorokin received the call as they were entering the parking lot of a Waffle House. Keltzin answered. In Russian, the voice said, “They are leaving now. Coming south from Washington Oaks. Destination … Bank of America at the corner of Beach and Oakridge in Daytona.”

“How many?”

“Four. One vehicle. Dark blue, Ford van. Tag … J79K1S5.”

“Very good.” Keltzin disconnected and drove slowly around the parking lot. At 5:00 a.m. there were only three cars in the lot, and one was a Florida Highway Patrol car. Keltzin said, “I see two officers at the counter paying their check. Do you think they know it was their last meal?”

Sorokin smiled. “I hope to keep blood off the uniforms.”

Three FBI agents handled the canisters like they were touching fully rigged nuclear bombs. They carefully loaded them in the back of a dark non-descript van they’d parked beside O’Brien’s Jeep. When the final canister was braced in the reinforced crate, Special Agent Bridges said, “We’ll get these into a secure area. Task force wants them stored in a bank vault. They’ve made arrangements to have the Bank of America opened tonight by the manager.”

“What are the plans for the dummy transfer?” O’Brien asked. “We have less than thirty-five hours.”

“Gates wants to extend the window as long as possible to give us more time to find where these unsubs are.”

A second van pulled near the first FBI vehicle. Two men got out, their dark windbreakers marked in bold white letters: FBI. They removed a gurney and body bag from the van. One asked, “Where’s the body?”

“Nothing left but bones,” Nick said, glancing toward the island.

O’Brien said, “Take our Zodiac. You can’t miss the hole. It’s about half way up the island. I left a shovel stuck in the sand, vertical. You’ll see it.”

“Appreciate that,” said the agent. They boarded the Zodiac with their gear and headed through the pass toward Rattlesnake Island.

The other four agents got into their van. The driver, Agent Bridges, lowered his window and followed the men in the Zodiac with his eyes before locking them on O’Brien. He said, “You guys made a hellava find over there. Nice bit of police work; we’ll take it from here.”

“How about if we follow you to the bank? You might need more back-up.”

The agent glanced at Nick, looked at O’Brien, and shook his head. “Thanks, but no thanks. Orders from the top.”

“I need to be there for the transfer,” O’Brien said. “Their hostage is my employee. More than that, he’s the son of my close friend.”

“I understand. Take it up with Gates. We’re the messengers and right now, the delivery wagon. Why don’t you guys get some sleep?” He put the van in reverse, turned around, and headed south down highway A1A.

The blue van passed by Marineland, which was closed and dark except for a few security lights catching the acrobatics of bats. The FBI agents continued south through Washington Oaks and drove the highway hugging the beach, the moon reflecting off the breakers. Agent Bridges pushed the van to seventy-five miles-per-hour. He glanced up in his rearview mirror. Blue lights. “Shit!” he said.

“What’s wrong?” an agent in the back seat asked.

“We’ve got the locals pulling us over for speeding.”

“Probably one of the Barney Fifes looking to make his quota.”

“It’s the end of the month,” said the agent sitting on the front passenger side. “These guys have to make the town’s budget.”

“Yeah, but not on our time,” said Agent Bridges. He pulled over, lowered his window and waited. In the side mirror, he watched as the state trooper got out of the car, the strobe of blue lights crossing A1A and fading against the dark sea, the sound of the waves breaking over sand illuminated by the moon.

The trooper stepped to the window. “Sir, is there a reason you’re speeding?”

Agent Bridges said, “We’re FBI heading into Daytona in an emergency status.” He handed his ID to the trooper. The agent in the passenger side noticed something in his side-view mirror. He sat up, lowering his window. The trooper holding Agent Bridges’ ID, handed it back and said, “We’d be happy, sir, to offer an escort under blue light.”

“No thanks,” Agent Bridges said, placing his ID back in his pocket. He never made it. A nine millimeter bullet entered his right temple and exploded blood and brain matter on the agent in the passenger side. The side panel doors jerked open. The two agents in the back seat hit with 12-gauge buckshot to their chests. The agent in the front passenger seat had just cleared his gun when a bullet entered his neck, shattering the spinal column. He was still alive as his door was opened, strong hands pulling him out, dragging him to a canal. He was thrown down an embankment, the water covering his face, the flash of blue lights fading to black as he sank in the dark water.

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Eric Hunter stood at the end of the Sunglow Pier on Daytona Beach and watched the pink glow of a newborn sun yawning over the Atlantic. It was 5:45.a.m. He thought about the phone call he was going to make. They wanted him to wait until the sun was up: 6:15 a.m. Make the call from the beach. Wear a red shirt, they’d instructed. No hat. No sunglasses. Come alone. Hunter watched an auburn sky in the east slip into a burgundy scarf wrapped above an indigo sea. A pelican sailed low across the water, flapping its wings only when it had reached the breakers.

Hunter walked down the old wooden pier behind a lone fisherman with a four-day growth of salt and pepper whiskers. The man stopped and threaded a shrimp on a hook. A cigarette dangled from his lips. To concentrate on what he was doing, he cocked his head and closed one eyelid to keep out the smoke. He cast the line, propped a foot on the rail, and opened the lid on a steaming cup of black coffee. He sipped and nodded as Hunter passed.

Two people sat in Crabby Joe’s Restaurant, a restaurant built on the pier, about one hundred feet from the entrance. Hunter could smell the eggs, grits, fried whiting and fresh coffee. He walked through the open-air restaurant and over* to the steps leading from the beginning of the pier to the beach directly below it. The sun broke over the ocean, bathing the beach in a hue of copper off the water. As Hunter walked across the dunes, he knew a Volusia County beach webcam would pick up his image. The camera, mounted atop a concrete utility pole, fed a live picture of Daytona Beach to the Internet. Beachgoers and surfers logged on to check weather and surf.

Hunter knew one man watching was not a surfer. He was a killer, and he would be watching Hunter’s every move. When he got in the area that he thought was about the center of the image picked up by the camera, he took out his cell phone and sat on the sand. Then he waited for the phone to ring.

Mohammed Sharif watched Hunter on the computer screen twenty miles away. He sat in the posh hotel room with Rashid Aamed and Abdul-Hakim, each man on the opposite side of the computer screen. Sharif said, “He appears to be alone, at least from this angle. No one else on that part of the beach except an old man walking.”

“I still do not trust him.” Aamed said. “He has not proven himself enough.”

“He’s an American. He can never prove himself,” said Sharif, “which means you can never trust him. You can only use the infidel for Allah’s wishes. We extract information once more, he comes to collect the money, and you cut his throat.”

Aamed smiled. “Inshallad. It would be an honor.”

Sharif dialed his cell phone. “It appears to be a nice morning on the beach.”

Hunter said into his cell, “It’s a beautiful day on the world’s most famous beach.”

Sharif’s lips curled into a smile, his marble-black eyes watching the live picture of Eric Hunter. He asked, “What can you tell me?”

“The remaining material was found and then captured by someone.”

“Who?”

“I thought you might have that information.”

“Why would I know this?”

“Because you’re a buyer”

“How do you know whoever stole the HEU is a seller?”

“Because these people believe they own the uranium-think they bought it once and they can sell it.”

“How did the thieves accomplish this?”

“Somehow they knew we’d found the HEU, and their men were disguised as state police. They killed four of our agents and two state troopers.”

“How did the men who stole the HEU know your men had found more of it?”

“I thought you might have a suggestion.”

“What do you mean?”

“Someone, one of our people, must have tipped them off.”

“Perhaps you have another mole … one besides yourself. Americans, there is no badge of honor among thieves.”

Hunter glanced toward the camera mounted on the pole. “You need the HEU. I need information. If you are working with someone else, fuck off.”

“If I was employing one of your agents, why would I tell you?”

“Because you’d want me to kill him. He’d be a double agent. And that means he’s smarter than us and a hell of a lot smarter than you, because he’s managed to fool whoever stole the HEU and you.”

Sharif was silent a long moment. Then he leaned closer to the computer screen. “How do I know what you tell me is true?”

“It will be all over the news. When four FBI agents are killed, it’s big news.”

“How many canisters total?”

“Ten. Two from the sub and eight taken from a remote area on the beach.”

“That is all of the cargo on the submarine when it left Kiel, Germany, correct?”

“Yes. Look, Mohammed, these men are holding a kid.”

“There is no guarantee that the sellers will contact us, and if they do, there is no assurance I will be the highest bidder.”

“Maybe you can bid as an option, or you can simply take it. Regardless, I want a guarantee the kid isn’t harmed.”

“What do you mean, simply take it?”

“There was a transmitter in the FBI van they stole. It’s hidden so deep they’d have to be a mechanic to find it. We know where it is.”

“Where?”

“Who’s the mole?”

“If you tell me where the van is, there is no guarantee the HEU is still in it.”

“Yes it is.”

“How?”

“Because one of our agents took a canister from the hole we’d dug and glued a microchip tracker near the screw cap, looks like a big thermos bottle. We ran a quick analysis on HEU inside a canister. Ninety percent pure. God love the Germans, eh.”

“Where is the HEU?”

“Three conditions if I tell you: one is you don’t harm the kid, you give me the ID of the person who can compromise us both, and you confirm for me who’s the mastermind behind the theft of the HEU.”

“How would I know who stole this material?”

“Because we know the first two canisters are up for auction, with a possibility of the highest bidder getting the rest if the U-235 canisters are located. Now, they’re found, and you’re one of the bidders.”

“Perhaps I am. Although we have done business together, I cannot trust you.”

“No, and I can’t trust you either. You do know that if you divulged my association with you, I will be killed. Give me the name!”

“What if there is no other contact … no other mole? What then, Hunter?”

“Then our business is finished. Find the HEU yourself.”

“And, if I told you I know the name of the man who found the HEU in the sand, what would that mean to you?”

“It’d mean someone told you.”

“The man who found it on the beach is the same man who found it in the sea, Sean O’Brien.”

“Who told you that?”

“Sean O’Brien.”

Hunter was silent. He stood on the beach and watched a lifeguard open an umbrella on a stand closer to the breakers. Hunter said, “Don’t lie to me!”

“Why would I lie? I got what I needed from your double agent O’Brien. Now you can get what you need. But you might have to go through the … shall I say, gates of hell to catch him. He’s clever … and expensive.”

“What’d you get?”

“The original location of the sunken U-boat. Unfortunately, someone, probably the Russian, killed my men before they could get to it. And now we must buy from him only because he got to it before we could.”

“Russian? Who’s behind the auction?”

“A man you’ve chased for years. A brilliant Russian. Ran the old KGB, you just didn’t know it … perhaps one of your people knew it. This Russian, a free agent, if you will, has supplied our needs with weaponry. I believe because we are, perhaps, his best customer, there is the factor of customer loyalty.”

Hunter glanced back at the beach-cam. “You know you can’t trust the Russian! But if you know where he’s holding the HEU, you have a chance to compromise him and take it. What’s his name?

“Yuri Volkow, perhaps you know of this man. Perhaps he knows of you.”

Hunter said nothing, eyes focused on the horizon.

“Where is he holding it?” Mohammed asked.

“In Jacksonville. A warehouse. 1845 Anchor Drive. If it’s really Volkow, he said he’d kill the hostage if we didn’t deliver the rest of the HEU. Now that he’s got the uranium, the only reason he’d keep the kid alive is to use him as a shield or as a negotiation tool should we trap him. Make your bid higher than anyone else, and make a condition of the bid that he turns over the hostage to you.”

“Why would Volkow believe I would want the hostage?”

“He’d believe you will want to kill the hostage to have the video on the Internet.”

“He is of no value, Hunter.”

“You’re wrong.”

“How am I incorrect?”

“Because you killed his father. He died in the attack on the USS Cole. His father was a high-ranking officer, a captain in the U.S. Navy, and he was Jewish. Now, you almost have his son.”

“And the last of his seed?”

“Yes.”

“I like the way your mind works, Eric Hunter.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Lauren Miles had agreed to meet O’Brien at a place called Hell’s Kitchen, a hole-in-the-wall diner on Daytona Beach that served breakfast only. They sat on a tiny balcony overlooking the Sunglow Pier, the smell of sea salt and wet sand blowing up from below them. “Thanks for meeting me,” O’Brien said.

Lauren looked across the ocean. “You don’t know how good it feels to get away from the command center if for only an hour. The whole place seems like a funeral parlor. Ron Bridges’ wife had to be sedated when she heard. The other agents that died were from our profile division in Quantico. It’s hard to plan four funerals, concentrate on finding the terrorists, try to secure the HEU, and get Jason Canfield out safe.”

“Maybe they’ll use him as a bargaining chip.”

“Their website has a simple graphic that says the auction begins Sunday at four Eastern Time. We don’t know what they have planned. We have some new intel, and now we believe a Russian, Yuri Volkow, ambushed our team and stole the uranium. We think Mohammed Sharif and his group will either try to out bid for the uranium, or simply take it by force if they can find the Russians. We’re trying to come up with a plan to catch both groups at the same time, maybe under the same roof, if we can pull it off.”

“Do you know where Volkow may be hiding?”

“No. We believe it could be somewhere in the Jacksonville area. The firewall he’s using on the site won’t allow geographic penetration or tracing. But if we could lead Sharif to the water, so to speak, we may close the gate on the bastards, Russian and jihad terrorists.”

“We’ve only got 32 hours left to try to save Jason, if they haven’t killed him already. O’Brien was silent, eyes scanning the ocean to a smudge of a mauve rain cloud perched on the horizon.

Lauren said, “We’re doing all we can to make sure Jason doesn’t become another causality in this never-ending war on our own soil.”

“Maybe some of what Billy Lawson was up against when he first saw the Germans and Japanese get off that sub and bury the canisters on the beach.”

“Now it’s not the Germans and Japanese. It’s the Russians and a consortium of radical Muslims, tied to al Qaeda and ostensibly Hezbollah, that are here.”

“The Russians were here in 1945, too.”

“Well, I guess, after the big war ended the cold war began to get colder.”

“Check into the FBI’s declassified files. See what you can find on an agent by the name of Robert Miller. See if you can find a report he filed, probably May of ’45 on the Billy Lawson case.”

“Robert Miller. I’ve heard the name. One of those old legends, he did it all, tackled everything from the mob to spies. He’s been retired for twenty-five years, at least. Maybe he’s dead. Still run across his name tied to some ancient case from time to time.”

“He could be tied to a current case.”

“What?”

“Don’t know for sure.”

“Sean, I’ve seen that look on your face before. Want to tell me what you’re thinking?”

“How’d Yuri Volkow know Nick and I found the remaining U-235 canisters? How’d he know the FBI was transporting it somewhere?”

“We assumed they’d had a tail on you. One that you couldn’t spot.”

“There were some fishermen on the beach that night … but ….”

“What do you think?”

“I think you’ve got a mole. Someone smart enough to work the Russians and al Qaeda.”

“Don’t even say that-”

“Listen, Lauren. This mess we’re in now, I think it began the moment Billy Lawson saw that sub on the horizon and the Germans rowing to shore. His widow told me she distinctly heard three shots coming through the phone that night. Yet she insists that the FBI, and for that matter, the local sheriff, reported one shot from a.38.”

“Why would the bureau cover up the killing of a young man still on active duty with the Army as the war was winding down?”

“Good question.” O’Brien took out a pen and began writing on a napkin. He handed the napkin to Lauren. “Guy’s name is Ethan Lyons. He did a couple of decades in a federal house for selling nuclear secrets, straight out of Los Alamos, to the Russians. He attended Harvard same time Robert Miller was there. Years later, Miller is the go-between, buying atomic secrets from Lyons and supposedly setting up the Russians.”

“Wouldn’t time be better served if we focused on Mohammed Sharif and today’s Russian counterpart, Yuri Volkow?”

“This might focus on them, at least on Volkow.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“When Volkow’s goons first nabbed Jason, we heard Volkow say the U-235 was his, or they were the rightful owners. Does he mean Russia or him personally?”

“It could be a metaphor for the motherland.”

“Maybe.” O’Brien watched a sea gull land on the banister less than ten feet behind Lauren. “Could be something else. What do you know about Yuri Volkow other than what you’ve already told me?”

“Not a lot. Mike Gates is the pro in that area on our end, Paul Thompson, too. Mike says Volkow was deep KGB before the KGB morphed. Volkow did the odd jobs, if you will, for the Kremlin. Now he’s a shadowy arms broker.”

“How many aliases does Volkow have?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Check. Check with someone you can trust in the Agency or whoever might know. Far back as you can go.” O’Brien sipped his coffee.

“You’re on to something, aren’t you?”

“Maybe.”

Lauren watched the breakers, a breeze teasing her hair. “But you aren’t going to get specific until you have something. I know you.” She sighed. “Sean, why’d you stop calling me?”

“Your work is down in Miami. I’m here. Most of my days are on the river. The rest of my time I’m at the marina learning a new profession. It’s not you, Lauren, it’s what you do … something I did for thirteen years with Miami-Dade PD.”

She reached across the small table and touched his hand. “I can’t apologize for my career. I’ve worked too hard. It’s what I do, not who I am.”

“I know that, and I’m happy you can separate them. I couldn’t after a while.”

The gull behind Lauren flew from the banister. “We had a good time on your boat. You, Max and me. I miss that … and I miss you. Maybe after this thing ends … maybe we could take some time together. Promise, no shop talk.” She smiled.

O’Brien nodded and smiled back.

“I need to get back. Where will you be?” Lauren asked.

“In a cemetery. They are pulling Billy Lawson out of the grave in an hour.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

The backhoe operator waited for the old woman to finish her prayer.

“Amen.” Glenda Lawson whispered. She opened her eyes and stared at the headstone for a few seconds…

Abby Lawson stood next to her grandmother. Sensing the mood of the investigators, keeping a respectable distance away, she said, “Grandma, we should be going. They need to do what they came to do.”

Glenda Lawson lowered a long stem yellow rose to the headstone that read:

Billy Lawson

Beloved Husband

1924–1945

Glenda looked at the headstone through blue eyes damp from memories. “As much as I hate to let them lift you out of your resting place … it’s for the best, darling.”

Abby Lawson put a gentle hand on her grandmother’s shoulder. “It’ll be done soon. Everyone’s waiting … there’s no need for us to stay here any longer. Grandma, let me take you home.”

Glenda nodded and stepped slowly with her granddaughter back to the car.

Detective Dan Grant, two uniformed officers, and two men from the medical examiner’s office, watched as the backhoe claw bit into the soft earth and scraped away six decades of sandy soil over Billy Lawson’s casket.

O’Brien arrived in his Jeep as Abby helped her grandmother get into the passenger side of their car. Abby turned toward O’Brien when he approached. “Fine morning to exhume a body,” she said, lips tight, face heavy from a listless sleep.

“I’m sorry we have to do this.”

“No, it’s what makes sense.” She glanced down at her grandmother who stared straight ahead, her eyes following the dark puff of diesel smoke from the backhoe, the men now working to place wide leather straps beneath the coffin to lift it from the earth. Abby smiled and said, “Thank you, Sean. Thank you for coming.”

O’Brien glanced toward the gravesite. “You’re welcome. Go ahead and take her home, Abby. I’ll call you when I know something.” As O’Brien turned to walk away, he looked back at Glenda through the reflection of blooming magnolias splattered across the car’s windshield. Her blue eyes, framed by the white flowers, looked like robin’s eggs tucked in a nest of leaves, making her face appear somehow younger and filled with promise-a bud of life from trees rooted in fields of death.

Dan Grant motioned for O’Brien to follow him where there was less noise. “Sean, we’ll have the coffin loaded in less than a half hour. The ME and her assistants were called in early this morning to autopsy the poor agents that got slaughtered last night. Cause of death seems the same-gunshot, mostly to the head on all the bodies. They must have a hundred FBI agents and assorted federal folk working this nuclear trail, along with our people, and this still happens.”

“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 resembling 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.

“Maybe. I came on Detective Dan Grant’s recommendation.”

The man grunted. “I know Grant well.”

O’Brien opened the towel and set the Luger on the glass case.

The man’s eyes instantly filled with delight. “Where did you get that?”

“Bottom of the ocean. Do you think you can restore it?”

The man used a tissue to pick up the gun. He held it under a gooseneck lamp on the counter, carefully turning it over, like a jeweler. His breathing was labored, breaths sounding as if air was being pushed through a wet sponge. He set the pistol on a clean rag, squirted some gun oil on another rag, and began rubbing a light coat of oil over the barrel and stock. “Perhaps I can restore it. I do not know if it will ever fire again, but I might be able to restore it enough for display.”

O’Brien pulled the Ziploc out of his pocket, opened it, and set the bullets on the glass next to the gun. “Can you tell me if these bullets came from that Luger?”

The man’s eyebrows arched. He held one of the bullets in his palm, sniffed it, and said, “This is made out of iron and lead. They called them mit Eisenkern.”

“Iron?”

“Yes, made in Germany at the time of the last war. They were trying to conserve lead, so they made the core of the bullet out of iron encased in a lead jacket. The way they would identify these rounds was the jacket, black as ink.” He worked the oil slowly in and around clip, reached under the counter and laid a leather gunsmith apron on the glass, unfolding it. He used a small wrench and knife to ply the corroded button that controlled the clip. In a few seconds, he leveraged the clip from the pistol grip. He held the clip under the lamp. His voice just above a whisper, “They’re in there like sleeping children. Look.”

O’Brien closed one eye to see the round in the clip. “The jacket is black.”

“Yes, looks like there are four rounds left. Someone fired four.” He looked at the bullets on the glass. “You think these are two of them?”

“I do.”

“Give me a minute.” The man disappeared in the back room and returned with a cigar box. He opened the lid and removed eight bullets. All had black jackets. “These are some I’ve saved, collected, I suppose. They were made for a gun like this. You have a German officer’s gun. The eagle and cross on the bottom … look, you can see it here. Remarkable. I have never found a gun like this, but I did come across nine millimeter parabellum bullets. Parabellum is Latin and it means if you seek peace, prepare for war. Inside that Luger, my friend, during World War II, these bullets were very accurate … had enormous knock-down power. Today, they could shoot right though some bullet-proof vests. They are the black bullets.”

O’Brien lifted one of the rounds off the counter. “How long before you can have the gun cleaned?”

“Give me a full day.”

“Thank you. Here’s my cell number.” O’Brien turned to leave.

“Can I ask you something?”

O’Brien stopped at the door. “Sure.”

“You said you found this in the ocean … can I ask where?”

“On a German U-boat.”

“The one that’s in the news, correct?”

“Right.”

“I knew it! So this Luger came from Hitler’s last sub, Germany’s last mission?”

“Looks that way.”

“This is a very special gun.”

“It probably is the last Luger fired in World War II.”

The man looked down at the gun like it possessed a soul.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

O’Brien started his Jeep and entered Brad Ford’s address into the GPS. As he pulled out of the Black Forest Gun Shop, he called Glenda and Abby Lawson. Abby answered on the first ring. “I’ve got some interesting news,” O’Brien said.

“What’d they find?”

“Your grandfather was shot three times. Just like your grandmother said. The bullets that killed him didn’t come from a.38. They came from a German Luger.”

“Oh my God,” Abby screamed, “Grandma!”

Abby repeated what O’Brien had told her. He could hear Glenda speaking in the background, and then Abby came back on the line. “Grandma had to sit down.”

“Tell her that Billy’s body and casket will be placed back in the grave tomorrow.”

“We can’t thank you enough, Sean. Where do we go from here?”

“The suspect, the guy who actually shot your grandfather, one of the German sailors, has spent the last sixty-seven years in a watery grave. Now I try to find out why the people who investigated the murder wanted it to look like something it wasn’t.”

It took O’Brien less than an hour to locate the house where Brad Ford lived. The home was 1950s ranch style, shingles long overdue for replacement, and white paint the shade of dinosaur bones, cracked and peeling. Chinch bugs had sucked the life out of the St. Augustine grass, leaving knee-high patches of brown weeds. The home sat under century-old live oaks, each sporting thick branches holding Spanish moss, extended like hand towels. The yard reeked of dog shit and urine.

O’Brien knocked at the door. No response. He knocked a second time, louder. He heard someone stirring inside. A minute later, a man with white hair and tumbleweed eyebrows looked suspiciously through the glass panels.

“Hello, Mr. Ford. My name is Sean O’Brien.”

The door cracked open, a tarnished brass chain visible against the dark room. “What do you want?” The old man’s voice was gruff and strained at the same time.

“I want to ask you a couple of questions about an investigation.”

“What investigation?”

“May I come inside?”

“Show me your badge.”

“I don’t have a badge … PI. I do have a young man who’s being held hostage by some people who have nothing to lose by killing him. Please, can we talk?”

The door opened. “Come in.”

O’Brien walked into a home that smelled like fried eggs and dog food mingling with the odor of a carpet that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Brad Ford was tall, almost O’Brien’s height. Rail thin. Round shoulders. Uncombed white hair. Guarded eyes that squinted in the light entering the room. He looked like a man who’d slept through the last century and was abruptly awakened by a stranger who wanted to know the time.

“C’mon in the living room,” Ford said.

O’Brien followed as the old man led him to a small living room. He walked by a bar in the kitchen where an old, black lab slept on a cushion below. The bar had opened cans of sardines, beans and crackers. A tomato was sliced on a paper plate, a fly crawling across it. Oil paintings hung on every wall. O’Brien could see most of the paintings were signed by the same person. “Who did the paintings?” O’Brien asked.

“My wife, Nancy. She began painting when she turned sixty. She always took exception to any birthday with a zero in the second digit. She said when that happened, it was time for self-reflection, see where you were and where you wanted to be.”

“I heard that an artist mixes a little of his or her soul on the palette with the paint.”

Ford stared at a painting of an old windmill under the moonlight. “Yeah, she did … lot of her is in them.” He turned to O’Brien. “How can I help you?”

“I’m investigating a murder. It was a murder you investigated in 1945.”

Ford’s bushy left eyebrow cocked. His mouth turned down. “What murder?”

“Billy Lawson.” O’Brien watched every detail of the old man’s reaction.

Ford looked at the floor, memories firing and misfiring in his aged brain. He crossed his arms and grunted. He looked over O’Brien’s shoulder, his eyes clinging to one of his wife’s paintings, his thoughts like a stiff deck of cards that hadn’t been shuffled in sixty-seven years. He said slowly, “What about the killing?”

“You remember it?”

Ford nodded.

“What can you tell me about the night you found Billy Lawson?”

He sighed, the sound a release of tension more than air. “We got the call from his wife … can’t remember the lady’s name ….”

“Glenda.”

“Yes, that was it, Glenda. She called dispatch, said her husband had been shot. It was in a phone booth off A1A by a bait and tackle shop that’s been long gone. He was dead when I got there. I found his truck parked about three-quarters a mile north. Keys still in the ignition. Motor was off, but the engine was warm. Weren’t any signs of anybody either. We had no witnesses. No weapon was recovered, and as far as we could tell, that boy, Billy Lawson, didn’t have any enemies.”

“Glenda said she told you that Billy said he saw men, German sailors, burying something on the beach. Near or on Rattlesnake Island.”

“Yes, I remember. There was a nor’easter that blew through that night. We combed the place in the morning. Couldn’t find one print in the sand. Dug up lots of turtle nests looking for whatever Billy saw, but we found nothing.”

“How about the Navy base in Jacksonville, weren’t they alerted that there was a German sub off the coast?”

“It was called in. They sent out a couple of planes and scoured the coast from near the St. Augustine lighthouse to Ponce Inlet in the south. We heard that one of them thought he spotted a U-boat, dropped some depth charges. Next day the Navy said they couldn’t find a thing.”

“Was an autopsy done on Billy Lawson?”

“You’re talking 1945. They didn’t do autopsies unless they had no damn idea how somebody died. In this case, it was obvious. He died from a gunshot wound.”

“Why did your report indicate he was shot once when a post-mortem done after the body was exhumed today revealed Billy had been shot three times?”

Ford was silent; his nostrils flared slightly, the carotid artery jumping beneath the sagging turkey neck skin. “I didn’t have much of a choice in those days.”

“What do you mean?”

“The investigation wasn’t compromised … at least I don’t believe it was.”

“How could that be true when you lied on the report?”

“War was still going on. The FBI came in and took over the investigation. They found evidence that Billy was shot with a bullet, or bullets, from a nine millimeter. Probably a German Luger.” Ford paused, his mind drifting off somewhere. Then he came back. “Because the country was at war, and because Billy had told his wife he saw the Germans and Japs diggin’ on U.S. soil, and the Japs escaping, the FBI thought it would be smart to hold their cards close to their chest. They were investigating all kinds of espionage at that time. Japs, communist groups, Russians stealing secrets … you name it.”

O’Brien said nothing, only nodding.

“I remember them telling me and the sheriff that if we let the public know that the Germans pulled a U-boat up to our shores, dropped off Japs, possible saboteurs, it could cause widespread panic. They were especially concerned because this country was in the eleventh hour of a top-secret mission to end the war. Today, I know that was the Manhattan Project, the dropping of the atomic bomb over Japan.”

“What happened to the Japanese that Billy Lawson saw that night?”

“I heard they were eventually caught and put to death in the electric chair, just like the Germans caught landing a U-boat in East Hampton, summer of forty-two.”

“So, Billy Lawson’s widow, a woman who delivered his baby six months after his death, never had closure. Never knew that her husband was killed by Germans.”

“Many a day went by that I thought about that. And I don’t feel too damn good about it. But, we were told things had to be that way because of national security. When everything had played out, we could have gone back and said we believe he was killed by Germans, but we really couldn’t prove that either. So the investigation remained open. You’ve come along to close it. I’m glad.” His voice trailed off.

“Mr. Ford, who in the FBI worked the case?”

“Can’t remember all their names. I do know it went as far up as J. Edgar Hoover. I think, by and large, he might have been calling the shots. The man who was the field agent … he was a real smart feller. Talked fast. He had his own way of doing things. I know he didn’t spend a whole hellava lot of time on the German connection.”

“Does the name Miller ring a bell?”

The old man’s eyes ignited. Even through the cloud of cataracts, a spark burned. “Yep, Robert Miller. Never particularly cared for his style. He was the one who said it was a federal case. Told us to back off and for our report to say Billy Lawson was killed from a.38 caliber bullet. Shot by a mugger.”

“Did you ever see Miller again after the war ended?”

“No, but I followed his career, best I could. Miller was on a fast track with the FBI and what was then the OSS, before they were called CIA. He was one of the agents that busted communist sympathizers. He brought down a Russian spy exchanging money for atomic secrets. They executed the Russian in a federal electric chair. I remember it because my oldest daughter was born in ‘51. And I remember the Russian’s name … on account it rhymed with Sputnik … you know, the first Russian satellite. Man’s name was Borshnik … Ivan Borshnik.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

O’Brien backed his Jeep out of Brad Ford’s driveway, stopping at the mailbox. He opened his laptop and logged online. In less than five minutes, he traced much of the public history surrounding Ivan Borshnik. He called Lauren Miles. “The name you gave me, the real name for Volkow, you said it was Borshnik, right?”

“Yes.”

“What was his father’s name?”

“I have to check the dossier.”

“In 1945, FBI agent Robert Miller was the courier between Ethan Lyons, he’s the former physicist, the one who did twenty years on espionage convictions-”

“Okay-”

“He handed off his dirty little secrets to Agent Miller who, in turn, sold some or set up a Russian spy. A guy named Ivan Borshnik.”

“What?”

“If Volkow is the son of Ivan Borshnik, he’d be in his late fifties.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the elder Borshnik was a Russian spy. Sentenced to death in 1951. If he was married or had a girlfriend, the last time they could have been together was in 1950. Factor in nine months for a pregnancy and you could have the birth of a baby. In this case, Borshnik would be the son of the only Russian to have been put to death in an American electric chair.”

“Oh my God,” Lauren said.

“Which means, our rouge weapons broker, Yuri Volkow, may be Boris Borshnik. And he’s here to avenge the death of his father. I want to know how he got here so fast to steal the HEU. If Robert Miller’s alive, could he answer that question?”

“Miller’s alive. Lives in the Olde Club Condos in New Smyrna. Although he’d retired twenty-five years ago, the official notice of his departure from the bureau was death caused by a massive heart attack. He’s one of the old timers that entered what is essentially a witness protection plan. But rather than change the ID and relocate a witness, in the case of deep cover people like Miller, a death was plausible. What crazy irony-”

“Nothing ironic about it. It’s planned, Lauren. I’m going to New Smyrna.”

“You’ll never get in to see him.”

“I’ll figure it out … maybe it’ll close more than six decades of mystery.”

“But we’ve got less than twenty-three hours before the auction, and we’d like to find Volkow, or whatever his name is, before his buyers do.”

“Call me when you get a specific address. Lauren …?”

“Yes?”

“How long has Mike Gates been with the bureau?”

“I think he’s coming up on this thirtieth year. Why?”

“See if he knew or trained under Robert Miller.”

“Sean, for Christ sakes! What are you suggesting?”

“Tell him you reached me and I had asked you if he, Gates, had worked with Miller. Try to gauge his reaction, however microscopic it might be.”

“Sean-”

“See if you can find Miller’s report of Billy Lawson’s death.” O’Brien disconnected and called Dave Collins. After he’d finished telling Dave about Yuri Volkow’s history, he said, “Maybe it’s not Hunter … maybe its Mike Gates. I’m convinced someone inside has an ear to the wall and he or she is passing the information to Yuri Volkow, Mohammed Sharif, or maybe playing them both.”

“Gates? He’s a living legend within the bureau.”

“He could be living a lie. What if Volkow, whose real name is Boris Borshnik, is Ivan Borshnik’s son? There’s your motive, Dave. And if junior recruited Mike Gates, maybe we can tie it back to Robert Miller who may have trained Gates. Take it back to what he knew and what he did from the time Billy Lawson saw the Germans and the mystery man on the beach that night. Let’s take it through the conviction of the physicist Ethan Lyons, to the execution of Ivan Borshnik in an American electric chair.”

“Sean, how in God’s name, in the middle of this terrorist manhunt … how can we investigate Mike Gates?”

“By finding and tricking Robert Miller into admitting what happened.”

“I don’t know-”

“Listen! It’s our best shot because if it’s Gates, he’s responsible for the deaths of Jason’s girlfriend, the storage manager, the four FBI agents, the two state troopers … and Jason if we don’t find him. We stop what’s happening by trapping Gates.”

“What can I do?”

“I need you to find Ethan Lyon’s address?”

“If he’s alive-”

“He should be. His death would probably warrant an obit. Text the address to me when you get it. If you can find a phone number, call him.”

“And tell him what?”

“Tell him you’re an editor with any news organization you want to use, and you have a reporter in the area who’d like to stop by for a brief comment.”

“Why would this reporter want to stop by?”

“I’m sure he’ll want to know, and he might even have something to say when you tell him why I’m seeking a comment.”

“Why?”

“Because FBI agent Robert Miller never died. He’s alive and we’re working on a story about the Manhattan Project, we thought Lyons might share his remembrances.”

“He might not have anything to say.”

“Possible. But he’s in his mid-to-late eighties. If he thinks Miller is alive and well, there could be some smoldering animosity inside Lyon’s gut. He may want to talk.”

“Hold on, Sean. I’m pulling his address up now … just a sec … it’s 574 °Cardinal Circle in St. Cloud, Florida.”

“Thanks.” O’Brien disconnected.

Dave Collins almost didn’t answer his cell phone. He didn’t recognize the number. On the fourth ring he answered. It was Eric Hunter. “Dave, we need to talk.”

“Okay. What’s this about?”

“Sean O’Brien.”

“What about Sean?”

“Not on the phone.”

“Is he on his boat or back at his river house?”

“I haven’t seen him.”

“Where is he?”

“Don’t know. Look, Eric-”

“We’ll be on your boat in a half hour.”

“Who’s we-“

Hunter was gone.

CHAPTER SEVENTY

O’Brien parked near a large banyan tree adjacent to a city park and a lake. He could see the old man standing next to the water’s edge on a peninsula-strip of land that jutted into the lake like a large thumb.

O’Brien kept his eyes on the man who was feeding ducks pieces of bread. As O’Brien got closer, he could hear the quacking that the ducks made each time the man tossed a sliver of bread onto the water’s surface.

Ethan Lyons looked up when O’Brien approached. He wore thick glasses, his face withered from age and sun. He wore a baseball cap with the NASA logo on it, and beneath it protruded pieces of thin white hair that resembled broken cobwebs floating in the breeze.

“Do you have enough bread for all of them?” O’Brien asked.

“Hope so. I try to scatter it pretty well so the little ones get some, too.”

“I’m Sean O’Brien. I appreciate you agreeing to meet with me.”

“Your editor said you wanted to talk about Robert Miller.”

“Yes, we’re trying to get a little more background information. After all these years, his life will make a good story. I understand he played a principal role in your conviction. Can you paint a picture of those times? How’d Agent Miller catch you?”

“Let’s sit on the bench behind me. My legs aren’t so good anymore.” Lyons threw the remaining pieces of bread to the ducks and sat down. O’Brien sat a few feet away from him. The old man’s eyes looked toward the lake, following a small sailboat on the horizon. “All these years, I thought he was dead. Not that I feel angry he’s alive, if that makes sense.”

“I understand.”

Lyons sighed then inhaled though his nose like the breeze across the lake would clear his sinuses. He began slowly, voice throaty, a strained whisper. “During the war, Russia was our partner … part of the Allies fighting an enemy of diabolical cleverness and resourcefulness. I was young, saw the world through rose-colored glasses. At first I had no intention of selling or sharing our Los Alamos diary, if you will, to Russia.”

“What happened?”

“Bob Miller, happened, that’s what. He said he remembered me from Harvard. Met me a few times for a beer. I didn’t make much money working for the government. He always had money, and he was a G-man. We had lots of evenings, not only me, but other physicists … we gathered with Miller talking about philosophy, drinking, and trying to make sense of the times. We worked hard to try to beat Germany or Japan to the punch with atomic weapons. But I never liked the fact that America would have all of these world-annihilation eggs in its basket alone. Neither did Miller. When Robert Oppenheimer, he was in charge of the Manhattan Project, saw the first test in the desert, I remember him saying “Now, we become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” He said it was a quote from a Hindu scripture. Anyway, Bob Miller said we didn’t have to provide the Russians with every detail, only such things as our capacity for U-235 production on a monthly basis, plutonium levels and so on. We could give them just enough to let their scientists figure it out, thought it was a fair way to usher in this very dangerous new weaponry. We didn’t want to see something happen in America like what we’d just witnessed in Germany … power-hungry politician turned dictator, tyrant and killer. So it made sense to bridge the gap with the Russians, our allies, so they could develop their own atomic bombs ensuring that we, or no one else, would use them.”

Lyons raised his disheveled eyebrows and turned his body toward O’Brien, his fingers splayed on his knees. “Bob Miller always laughed and called it mutually-assured destruction, and that’s what it was.”

“How did he work as a courier to take the information from you to the Russians?”

“We’ll, he’d meet me in a bar or its parking lot. I’d give him an envelope, whatever information they were asking for-”

“Such as?”

“Let me think. They wanted to know about such things as fission burn rates, compression, and production methods of centrifuge.”

“How much did you make?”

“Not as much as I was promised. I had a new wife. We needed the money desperately. Bob said the Russians would pay five-thousand dollars for information I delivered twice a month.”

“What’d you get?”

“Varied. Sometimes I got around a thousand for each delivery, sometimes less.”

“Where was the rest of the money?”

“Good question. Bob told me the Russians were starved for cash, they had a hard time converting to the dollar and I was lucky to get what I received.”

“Do you know who he was working with in Russia?”

“Wasn’t somebody in the Kremlin, at least not directly. Was a Russian spy named Ivan Borshnik. I didn’t know it at the time, the Soviet counterpart was always Mr. X. But, during his trial, he said he’d paid Bob more than a half-million dollars for the information. Our government said that was a lie. Hoover called it a joke, but I don’t know. Why would Borshnik have lied about the amount? America’s security was compromised.”

“Do you think Miller took a cut of the money?”

“I do. People like Klaus Fuchs and David Greenglass went to jail. But Bob Miller, who was the one who arranged the meetings on both sides, he was dealing in cash. His hand could have been in the till.”

“Why couldn’t you just quit?”

“Because Miller said he’d turn me in, report everything, and I’d be looking at the electric chair. He was the one who kept extracting information, coming back for more water after the well was dry. I’d given out and given up.”

“No one could help you?”

“The FBI. Hoover, G-men everywhere. I tried telling my side of the story, but no one in any position believed me. Miller said he’d ask for prison time rather than the electric chair if I shut my mouth. I did. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg didn’t, and they were electrocuted. The Russian, Borshnik, followed them.”

O’Brien watched a mother duck lead three ducklings across the lake. “Did Miller ever contact you in prison?”

“No.”

O’Brien was silent.

“Put this in your story: tell the people we might have won the war, but in the long run, we lost the battle. Not just America, but mankind. I’m not bitter with Bob Miller, not anymore. I’m angry with myself. You know the worst part Mr. O’Brien?”

“What’s that?”

“I’m one of the apocalyptic bastards that delivered Armageddon to Earth, and one day we’ll open the package on a global scale.”

As O’Brien drove east on State Road 46, his cell rang. “Mr. O’Brien,” said the man in a slight German accent, “I have restored the Luger. It is a beautiful gun. You can pick it up anytime you like.”

“How late are you open?”

“Until seven.”

“I’ll have the police pick it up.”

“The police? Why?”

“It may be a murder weapon.”

O’Brien called Detective Dan Grant. “Can we do a ballistics test?”

“What are we testing?”

“That German Luger. Last time it would have been fired was 1945.”

“I can’t wait to test it.”

“It’s at the gun shop you recommended, restored. Ready to be fired. Please pick it up, Dan, and test it with one of the black bullets the gun shop owner has.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

It was about 5:45 p.m. when Eric Hunter arrived at Gibraltar with Lauren Miles and Senior Special Agent Mike Gates. They got to the point quickly with Hunter leading the questions. “How much of Sean O’Brien’s history do you know?”

“What I’ve told you,” Dave Collins said, speaking in a measured tone, holding back any animation in voice or body. “He was an extraordinary homicide detective with Miami-Dade. Married for a few years until cancer took his wife. Did a couple of tours of duty in the Middle East. Delta Force. Guy can swim like a dolphin.”

Mike Gates said, “You know anything about his background in Pakistan?”

“Pakistan? No.”

“He was so covert, even we had a hard time getting our hands on everything he did, primarily because after the service he stayed over there.”

“So, what the hell does that have to do with anything?”

“Come on Dave,” Hunter said, “you were in the Agency too long not to be curious as to why a guy, top of his class, trained to be the best-of-the-best, doesn’t come home after a long tour of duty and re-connect with friends … family.”

“His parents are dead. Raised by an uncle who is dead. No siblings. He hadn’t met his wife yet. Not a lot to re-connect to.” Dave turned to Lauren. “You know Sean well. What’s this all about?”

“I don’t know, Dave, some things have come up.”

“What things?”

“Bad things,” Gates said. “We believe O’Brien worked as a mercenary, a hired gun, if you will, ostensibly for the Trident Company. They’re a multi-national corporation primarily hired by companies like Halliburton, Shell and others to keep the peace, to make sure their workers aren’t hurt in those global hotspots they do business.”

Hunter added, “O’Brien was in and around the Afghanistan-Pakistan border for three months, unaccounted for.”

“Says who?” Dave fired back.

“Says the top people he reported to at Trident.”

“You can’t rely on that, and you know it. If a contract employee goes MIA, they either don’t acknowledge he was on the payroll or certainly don’t broadcast his last whereabouts. I’m going to need more than that.”

“Okay,” Gates said, pinching the bridge of his nose, his eyes heavy with fatigue. “We believe O’Brien was recruited or sold his expertise to supply terrorists groups along the Afghan border with U.S. troop information, movements, insurgent levels, whatever- we don’t believe he ever fully left their payroll when his services were up.”

“So,” said Dave, weariness and anger in his voice, “O’Brien hung up his Soldier-of-Fortune card and decided to become a Miami cop to gain a little respectability all the while hanging out as a plant or a homegrown G.I. Joe sleeper cell just waiting to spring a big ol’ nine-eleven again.”

“Something like that, my friend,” Gates mocked, “but this time he was springing weapons-grade uranium from a German U-boat and finding the stuff buried on the fucking island. Come on, pal. Nobody’s that good! We think he’s in a position to make it look like an innocent find while he was working with Mohammed Sharif, probably getting a huge ‘finder’s fee,’ and then along comes a badass Russian weapons broker who’s screwed up the big plans and is as mercenary as O’Brien. So now O’Brien has a big dilemma … he’s got to find a way to retrieve the HEU, and do it while acting like his goal is to keep alive a kid who he could care less about saving. Like I say, nobody’s that good. O’Brien has stepped in shit no al Qaeda camp could have prepared him to handle.”

“That good?” Dave raised his voice. “He’s that unfortunate! Training camp? For crying out loud, Sean’s not a terrorist anymore than he’s a treasure hunter. That stuff has been hidden out there for decades. To find the remaining canisters on the island, he used the directions a dying man gave his wife in 1945, and I tapped in an old friend, someone with Remote Viewing talents, to help. Between the two, we came close enough for Sean and Nick to use a magnetometer to get a hit. O’Brien gave you guys the goods to use as a bargaining chip for a kid’s life. You lost it. Now you’re blaming him for being too good at what he does!”

No one spoke. The only sound came from the breeze causing the spinnaker rigging to clink against the mast of a sailboat across the dock.

“What is it he does?” Gates asked.

“He finds things … he finds people … dead or alive. And that’s what you and your fucking task force should be doing up there in that great big command center right now rather than pointing fingers at O’Brien.”

Hunter stepped to Gibraltar’s open sliding glass doors. He turned back to Dave and said, “Mohammed Sharif admitted he had O’Brien on the payroll.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Because we cut a deal with him.”

“What deal?”

“Offered him the location of the HEU in exchange for the name of the person we suspected might be an agent or even a double agent.”

“Do you know the location of the HEU?”

“No, but Sharif doesn’t know that yet. He named O’Brien.”

“Bullshit! Told who?”

“Me.”

“That’s interesting, Eric, because O’Brien is suspect of you and your motives.”

“Of course he is. Deflect suspicions to anyone he thinks could get in his way.”

Dave said nothing.

“I’m sorry,” Lauren said.

“What do you want me to do?” asked Dave.

Gates said, “Bring O’Brien to the command center.”

“Why?”

“We need to capture or kill as many as we can-Islamic extremists or Russians that are part of this power play. They’re all terrorists on American soil. The deal we cut is to have Mohammed and his fanatics go to where Yuri Volkow and his group are hunkered down with the HEU. If we can lead him to the location, we’ll have the perimeter surrounded with the best snipers we have. We know that Mohammed will try to take out Volkow. All we have to do is make sure, when the smoke clears, we take no prisoners. Then we’ll secure the HEU for disposal. We get two for one.”

“You think this is some kind of a fucking video game!” Dave yelled. “You can’t predict what’s going to happen, if anything. In the meantime, the Russians are going to hold an international auction.”

“Bring O’Brien to us,” Gates said.

“Why should I?”

“To alleviate suspicion on his part. We can arrest him-charge him as an enemy combatant. Try him in a military tribunal. I think you know the outcome of that. Or we can send him to fight for Jason Canfield’s life, and let the chips fall where they may.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means O’Brien, the traitor who finds things, can find his own way out.”

“Or it means he gets caught in friendly fire and your team takes him out.”

“Either way,” said Gates, “he has a better chance than facing a tribunal.”

Lauren said, “That’s murder!”

“And this is war! Nobody likes it,” Gates barked. “But O’Brien made these choices. He can take his chances. He could come out alive.”

“Maybe,” Dave said, “or Sean and Jason will both be hit with so many rounds you won’t even recognize their bodies.”

“Don’t get an overactive imagination,” Gates said. “Bring him in at eight tomorrow morning or we go find him.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

Detective Dan Grant loaded eight black bullets into the clip and slid it in the Luger. He was in the Volusia County Sheriff’s forensics lab in a room where a steel-lined, three-hundred gallon water filled tank sat in front of him. Grant called O’Brien and said, “I’m about to fire one of the black bullets through the Luger. If this thing blows in my face, tell my wife I didn’t commit suicide.”

“It’ll fire,” O’Brien said. “I have faith in the old German gun shop owner.”

“Only one way to find out.” Grant pointed the barrel toward the center of the tank and squeezed the trigger.

The water exploded. “Bull’s-eye!” Grant said. “Hold on, Sean.” He set the Luger and phone on a table and then used a net on a long handle to retrieve the bullet. He picked up the phone and said, “The bullet’s a heavy sucker. We’ll compare it to the one removed from Billy Lawson. Just eyeballing it, I can tell it’s a match. I’ve never seen bullets like these.”

“The Germans were resourceful. How quickly can you compare the bullets?”

“Joe ought to nail this one without much trouble. Where are you going to be?”

“South of you.”

“Okay, so that would be where?”

“Hopefully, with the guy who knew about these black bullets sixty-seven years ago.”

Dave Collins waited at least ten minutes after they left his boat before he called O’Brien. He climbed up to the fly bridge and used his cell. “Sean, where are you?”

“Heading to the location south of you.”

“You managed to do what few people, at least people in this country, do … you’re wanted by every government intelligence agency at the same time.”

“Should I feel honored or paranoid?”

“They want me to bring you into their command post where, for all practical purposes, you’d be a sacrificial lamb.” Dave told O’Brien everything that was said on his boat and he added, “We need to come up with a plan.”

“I may have one.”

“I’m listening.”

“I believe that one of the reason’s Mike Gates wants my head on a platter is because he knows I’m about to deliver his. I will call you back shortly. My phone will be on speaker, so don’t say a word. Feed the audio into your laptop, record an MP3 file. Make copies and hide them.”

“Why? What are you doing?”

“Just do it, Dave. If we’re lucky, it’ll be a confession that is long overdue.”

O’Brien drove around the perimeter of the Olde Club Condominiums in New Smyrna. The covered parking lot was filled with Mercedes, Jaguars, BMWs, and SUVs larger than some kitchens. He watched an older man and woman, both dressed in beach clothes, use a side entrance to enter the six-story building. The man had used a key, holding the door open for his wife.

O’Brien drove off the lot and headed to a grocery store across the street. His cell rang. It was Agent Lauren Miles. “Sean, I dug up a buried and still classified FBI report on the death of William Lawson, age twenty-one. Died May 19, 1945. Report reads that, I’m quoting here, ‘Lawson was shot and killed as he made an alcohol-induced telephone call to us wife. In an incoherent manner, he is reported to have told her he saw something strange on the beach. Subject, in a delirious state-of-mind, said German soldiers were invading the beach. Subject may have been suffering from a warfront related psychosis or paranoia. He died as a result of an armed robbery. Subject expired from a single.38 caliber gunshot wound to the chest. No suspects could be produced, and there is no indication his story of invading German soldiers was real. Until further notice, the case is closed and remains a homicide.’ The report was filed by Agent Robert Miller.”

“Excellent! Nice work. Tell Dave everything you told me.”

“Sean, Mike Gates has you in his cross-hairs. I believe his attack dog is Eric Hunter. They’re moving fast.”

“I’ll have to move faster.”

“Where will you be?”

“If you don’t know, they can’t force it out of you.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

There was one outdoor guest parking spot left when O’Brien returned to the Olde Club Condos. He parked and waited. His cell rang. It was Dan Grant. “Bingo,” Dan said. “Joe says the two bullets found in Billy Lawson’s body and the one I shot in the tank were fired from the same pistol: the Luger.”

“Thanks, Dan. Gotta go.”

“Sean, wait a second-”

O’Brien disconnected. He could see the pool behind an ornate fence, the beach at the base of the seawall, the breakers less than fifty yards away. An older woman opened the pool gate and sauntered with a slight limp to her car. She opened the trunk and removed a straw handbag. O’Brien got out of his Jeep, lifted two paper bags of groceries, and headed toward the side-entrance door. He watched the woman out of the corner of his eye, adjusting the speed of his walk with her pace as she approached the same door. O’Brien fumbled with his keys, holding the bags.

“Let me help you,” the woman said, using her key to open the deadbolt.

“Thank you,” O’Brien said smiling.

“I haven’t seen you here before, new owner?”

“Just a weekend guest. But I could be in the market. Is your unit for sale?”

“Oh, no. Harry and I love it over here.” She entered the posh lobby with O’Brien following. “We keep our Orlando home, but it’s just a matter of time before we stay here permanently. I believe the salt air is healthy for you. At least it makes you feel better, and that’s half the battle.” They stopped at the twin elevators. She pressed the button, the doors opening. Then she touched the button to the third floor. “Which floor?”

“Sixth,” O’Brien said. “If I did purchase, I’d like to get on the very top floor, maybe I could see Spain from my balcony. Are any units for sale on the sixth floor?”

“Marge and Gene Jawarski have been talking of selling.” The woman lowered her voice. “Marge, poor thing, since her cancer returned, Gene’s been taking her to Jacksonville’s Mayo Clinic for chemo. They have a corner unit, 6024. It’s beautiful.”

On the third floor, the woman smiled and got out of the elevator. As the doors were closing, she said, “Some friends are meeting for cocktails by the pool in an hour. Come join us.”

“Thank you.” On the top floor, he got out of the elevator and called Dave. “Can you hear me?” O’Brien asked in a whisper.

“Yes.”

“Good. From here it’s all listening and recording on your part.”

“Be careful. Miller probably can still shoot your lights out.”

O’Brien was silent, clipping the phone back to his belt as he walked down the marbled hall to condo unit 6016. He tapped on the door, heard shuffling and sensed someone was looking out the security glass eye.

The voice said, “What do you want?”

“Grocery delivery for the Jawarski’s.”

“Not in this condo. Down the hall, 6024, I think.”

“I tried there. No answer. Their daughter in Orlando called, placed the order, and asked us to deliver these. Said her parents should be here by now. They were returning from the hospital in Jacksonville, and she wanted the groceries to be there for them. I believe Mrs. Jawarski is ill, chemo treatments, according to her daughter. I’d hate to leave the food outside their door. The steaks might spoil. Do you mind taking them? I’ll put a note on their door.”

“Just a minute.”

O’Brien could hear the locks turning then the door opened. Robert Miller didn’t look like a man in his mid-eighties. He was younger in appearance. Thick white hair, neatly combed. Few wrinkles on his tanned face. Trimmed alabaster moustache. Gray-blue eyes that looked like they were carved from ice. He wore a Tommy Bahama silk shirt, khaki shorts, and in his dock shoes he stood at least six-one.

O’Brien smiled. “May I set these in the kitchen?”

“Be quick.” Miller gestured with his head to the left. O’Brien stepped inside as Miller stood by the open door. “It’s to your left, toward the balcony.”

The condo smelled of money. Old World imported furniture. Crystal. French oil paintings that gave the place the intimacy of a private gallery. There were framed photographs of Robert Miller standing next to presidents from Truman to George Bush Senior. Fox News was on a fifty-inch flat screen mounted on the wall.

“Thank you,” O’Brien said. He could tell that Miller was a man used to giving orders. In the stylish kitchen, O’Brien set the groceries down and took his Glock out of one bag. He opened and closed the refrigerator door, then entered the living room and pointed the pistol directly at Miller’s head. “Close the door.”

“You’re making a very stupid mistake,” Miller said, his voice calm, like a man who just said he was taking his dog for a walk.

“You made a mistake in 1945 when you lied about how Billy Lawson died.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

Miller’s eyes narrowed, icy gray now hard as medieval armor. “Who the fuck are you?”

“I’m the ghost of Billy Lawson, you asshole. I just may be your worst nightmare coming to haunt you. But to be haunted you have to have a conscience-something you sold to the devil a long time ago.”

“Whoever you are, you have a choice. You can put that gun away and walk out of here and, maybe, you’ll live to be as old as me. Or you can stay, but be advised: you will be hunted down like a dog. Hunted by men who have a license to kill insurgents like you. And, I promise you, no one will ever find your body. What will it be? You have five seconds to decide.”

“Don’t need five seconds. Is that the spiel you used on Ethan Lyons when you blackmailed him, sold out our nation’s security, pocketed money, and used your cover and plausible denial to achieve the American dream by cheating?”

“You have no idea what you are talking about.”

“I have more than ideas. I have evidence and answers to your injustices and lies. You wrote that Billy Lawson died from a single.38 caliber gunshot wound. When, in fact, he was killed by three gunshots, and the bullets were from a German Luger, an officer’s special edition. Bullets pulled out of Billy Lawson’s exhumed body matched the gun I found in that German sub. So we had a young man, back from fighting overseas, he calls in to report a U-boat sighting, and he’s killed by the enemy on U.S. soil-and it’s covered up. Why?”

Miller said nothing.

O’Brien aimed the Glock in the center of Miller’s forehead. “Tell me why!”

“You have nothing!”

“I have your lies on a sixty-seven-year-old FBI report. Tell me why!”

“National security.”

“Bullshit!”

“We were at war. If the general population knew the Germans had landed a sub on American shores, off-loaded two Japanese spies, and hidden enriched uranium somewhere, there would have been wide-spread panic.”

“The average American had never heard of enriched uranium. The bomb had yet to be developed or dropped. There would have been no reason for panic. The real reason you hid the truth is because you wanted it buried with Billy Lawson.”

“You’re insane!”

“Billy Lawson saw a third man that night. But this man didn’t get off a German sub. He got out of an American car, met with the Germans, and allowed two Japanese spies into this country. You left the HEU in the hole because you knew the man you sold it to, Russian agent Ivan Borshnik, would never live to get it. Why’d you leave the HEU in the hole? Why didn’t you go back and get it?”

Miller was silent. His lower jaw tightening, arms locked across his shirt. He said, “Russia had paid me, they simply never took delivery-those under Stalin, the regime I was working for, they were all killed. The war ended. Japan was in ruins. So was Russia and much of Europe. The commercial market for HEU today is far greater than it was in those days. Russia was my original buyer, and they got knocked out of the game. As time went by, I didn’t want to risk digging up the stuff, storing the canisters for God knows how long, and trying to fence the merchandise for sometime in the future. So I left them there. Besides, I’d made my money. Today, of course, Iran, Iraq and a dozen other countries would love to have it. But I grew too old to care one way of the other.”

O’Brien said, “Sit!”

“You don’t order me around.”

“Sit! Or they’ll smell your body before they find it.”

Miller sat back on his leather couch. “How much do you want?”

“Is that what you asked Mike Gates when he found out?”

Miller said nothing.

“He trained under you the last two years you were a field agent. While you recruited Ivan Borshnik, his son, Boris Borshnik, later recruited Gates … told him everything his father had told his mother before his death. And guess what, Miller? The damage you did in 1945 had its ugly scab knocked off. Borshnik’s son is here. He’s got the HEU, and believes he has ownership because the motherland paid for it. Paid you for it! You give the Russians the fucking recipe for nuclear disaster, and now they have the ingredients to make the bomb. You had the German sub bombed, men who probably were going to turn themselves in anyway, like their sister U-boat did ten days earlier. Germany had surrendered, but the Soviet Union was trying to arm itself with atomic bombs. Lucky for the U.S. the Russians couldn’t get their hands on it then. ”

Miller stared at the Atlantic Ocean beyond his sixth floor balcony, the fight gone from his face, eyes softer, shoulders rounded. Defeat opening sealed pores. He turned and looked at O’Brien like he would view a body in an open casket, eyes dispassionate. “I’m an old man. They found two spots on my lungs last month. I have one kidney left. There’s nothing you can do to me. You want money?”

“I want the truth!”

“You’re the type with illusions! I had to leave that kind of baggage at the door in a covert world. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have lived long.”

“Miller, the only difference between you and Stalin is you spoke English. At one time, you may have convinced yourself that being a double agent was about the distribution of power. Although delusional, as a young college kid, you could convince yourself it’s idealistic. So, then, you get a taste of the nicer things in life, and you justify selling out your country for the money. But, in reality, it’s always been about control-you’re nothing more than a power hungry asshole.”

“You mind if I pour myself a scotch?”

“Don’t move.”

“It’s right there on the bar, in the decanter. I don’t have a gun hidden in there.”

“I’ll get it.”

“While you’re at it, have one for yourself.”

O’Brien poured about an inch of scotch in a heavy lead crystal glass and handed it to Miller. He sipped, savoring the taste for a moment, exhaled like his lungs hurt, and said, “I used Borshnik like he tried to use me. Sure, I sold him secrets from the Manhattan Project. They would have acquired them anyway. The whole damn Manhattan Project was fueled, in part, by German HEU that Robert Oppenheimer took off the U-boats. America was crawling with Russian spies. Most of them had their aliases compromised when Meredith Gardner figured out their encryption during the Venona Project. He was one smart bastard.”

“Spell Venona.”

“What?”

“Just do it?”

“V-e-n-o-n-a.”

O’Brien stared hard at Miller. “How’d you know about the U-boat?”

“Navy knew another one was out there. They’d radioed us. We told them they could surrender at Mayport near Jacksonville, but when I heard they had two Japs aboard, two who would have committed suicide had the Germans formally surrendered, I instructed them to drop off the Japanese on a remote strip of beach. They had information I needed.”

“What happened to them?”

“They were eventually executed.”

“How convenient. What about the U-235?”

“We figured they were carrying some, just like the sub that we took in Portsmouth. German Admiral Otto Heinz spoke English. I told him to off-load his cargo with the Japanese south of Fort Matanzas. Bury the stuff, and we’d take it from there.”

“Why was a German shot and buried in the hole?”

“One of Heinz’s men protested. Said he couldn’t surrender. He was silenced.”

“Why was their sub hit with depth charges?”

“Because of Billy Lawson. He saw too much. We didn’t know who he had spoken to before he was killed, but he became, as they say today, collateral damage.”

O’Brien held back his anger as he watched the old, arrogant man sip the expensive liquor, eyelids half closed.

O’Brien said, “What I do know without a doubt is, it wasn’t about the war, the one in ‘45 or the approaching Cold War. Power was your drug of choice so that you and others like you could run amuck in the world. Did J. Edgar Hoover know, or was he in on it?”

“Hoover told President Truman what he wanted Truman to hear.”

“So you drift along three decades, about ready to retire until a young agent named Mike Gates trains under you. The poetic justice comes when Borshnik’s son manages to get in the game with Gates and tips him his cards. All Gates has to do, at that point, is blackmail you. Figures a guy like you-never married, no children, probably has stashed away enough of the motherland money to live well without raising suspicion. FBI fakes your death and obit. Knowing you’re off everyone’s radar, Gates taps you for hush money. He continues his pen pal relationship with Borshnik junior, and along comes the buried treasure, the HEU when my crew stumbles across it.”

Miller swirled the scotch in the bottom of the glass. “You never told me your name. I thought you were delivering groceries, but you just delivered a death sentence.”

“Six decades too late.”

“Your name?”

“O’Brien, Sean O’Brien.”

“Mr. O’Brien, I suppose you just caught the oldest spy in our nation’s history. And I was beginning to think I’d take it to my grave. All this time, no one really knew.”

“Gates knew.”

“But he didn’t learn it on his own. As you just said, he was tipped off. You managed to discover him, too. Gates would have gotten caught, sooner or later.” Miller sipped his drink. “When you’re not delivering groceries, what do you do?”

“I fish, but I’m not very good at it.”

“Let’s see how good you are at proving all this. I won’t live long enough to be brought to trial, not that you have anything tangible. I know you’re not wearing a wire. The T-shirt, shorts. No place for it. So what you heard was the hallucinogenic ramblings of an old man taking morphine washed down with very fine scotch. Maybe you’ll have better luck with Gates. Too bad I won’t be here to see that. He’s an incompetent idiot.”

O’Brien unclipped the cell phone from the back of his belt, adjusted the speaker phone button and asked, “Dave, did you get that?”

“Loud and clear. All recorded in digital sound.”

Robert Miller stared at the cell phone. The light flickered and faded from his eyes. They became hard, the cataracts like two diffused crescent moons floating just beneath the veiled surface of a turquoise sea.

“Dave,” O’Brien shouted. “If you spell Venona backwards you get a-n-o-n-e-v. Anonev.com is the website where we saw the hostiles holding a knife to Jason’s throat.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

It was almost ten when O’Brien returned to the marina. Nick Cronus, bottle of beer in one hand and a long fork in the other, was turning a steak over on his small grill perched in the cockpit. O’Brien could see him chatting with Max like she could understand every word.

Nick looked up though the thick smoke and poured some beer on the coals to douse flames. “Sean, where the hell you been? Man, you look like shit. When’s the last time you slept?”

Max barked and ran to where Sean was stepping from the dock into the cockpit. She danced around O’Brien’s legs, tail blurring. He bent down and lifted Max. She ran her tongue over his unshaven face. “Is Dave on his boat?”

“Saw him about an hour ago. He looks like somebody told him his ex-wife is in town. What’s gonna happen? We got no idea if Jason’s still on God’s earth.”

O’Brien scratched Max behind the ears as she watched the steak cooking.

“Why are you cooking so late?”

“Couldn’t eat earlier with all this stuff goin’ on … worried ‘bout Jason.”

“Me, too. Thanks for keeping an eye on Max.”

“No problem. Women love her, especially the outdoors types, you know?”

“I have to talk with Dave.”

“How ‘bout a steak?”

“Don’t have time.”

O’Brien stepped on Gibraltar’s cockpit and heard jazz coming from the open sliding-glass door.

“Come on in, Sean,” Dave said. “Hello, Max.”

O’Brien stepped into the salon, eyes taking a second to adjust to the reduced light. Dave was hunkered over his laptop, staring at text on the screen. He leaned back and looked above the top of his reading glasses. “I’ve been digging in a few Agency drawers and discovered some Yuri Volkow socks mated with Boris Borshnik socks amongst the soiled underwear.”

“What’d you find?”

“After listening to Miller’s confession, I started scratching at old files. By the way, here’s a flash drive copy of your conversation with him. Your cell had amazing clarity inside that condo.” Dave lifted a flash drive off his desk and handed it to O’Brien. “Ivan Borshnik, father of the man holding Jason, spent seven years undercover in the states. He, like the German would-be saboteurs caught in ‘42 after they disembarked from the two U-boats, got justice in front of a military tribunal. The only witness in Borshnik’s case was none other than Robert Miller, whose testimony nailed the coffin for Borshnik. Verdict was delivered in less than fifteen minutes. He was executed three days later.”

“Does it say anywhere in your CIA sock drawer how much money Borshnik paid Miller, ostensibly the FBI, for the HEU?”

“No. Here’s how a guy like Robert Miller could manipulate the system. The system was all about finding communists, the witch-hunt fire that Joseph McCarthy brought to a boil. Miller was acting as a double agent in the early saber rattling rounds of the Cold War. Now we know he indeed was a real double agent. Stalin, one never to trust Americans, had spies coming out of the woodwork over here. The Venona Project, that Miller alluded to, was a secret program, a precursor of the NSA, where our best cryptographers deciphered Soviet cables trying to attach real identities to fake names. They used the cover name of Kapian for President Roosevelt. The Manhattan Project was labeled Eormoz. We managed to catch a few covert operatives. They included people like Alger Hiss and Klaus Fusch.”

“Class acts.”

“Indeed. Young Congressman Richard Nixon, acting on information from the FBI, pushed for indictments, especially in the Hiss case. But it was the husband and wife spy team of Jules and Ethel Rosenberg who got the death sentence. They were the only Americans executed as Soviet spies during the Cold War. Both were strapped to the electric chair, as was Ivan Borshnik. He’d been in the states, undercover, as a record producer, working with some of the Big Band and jazz artists.”

“Robert Miller had a Tommy Dorsey tune playing in his condo.”

“Yes. From what we know, the Venona Project indicated that a lot of the big fish got away. Names we couldn’t decipher. We do know considerable damage was done to our security, especially in the atomic arena.”

“And much of that courtesy of one Robert Miller.”

Dave nodded. “One of the ones that got away.”

“Not completely. So, in his final years in the FBI, a rooky agent, Mike Gates receives training from Miller.”

Dave nodded. “Miller taught Gates fieldwork operations because Gates was being assigned to our embassy in Moscow.”

“Where he was recruited by Boris Borshnik, the single child of the only Russian ever tried by a U.S. military tribunal and executed. Wonder if Miller has spoken to Gates?”

“You mean since he retired?” Dave removed his glasses and rubbed his temples with the palms of his hands.

“I mean today, after I left him.”

“I don’t know how we’d find out.”

“I do.”

“How?” Dave asked.

“You’re supposed to bring me to the command center at eight in the morning. That’s when we’ll know.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

With Max half asleep in his arms, it was five minutes after midnight when O’Brien unlocked the salon doors on Jupiter. He ate a banana and called Lauren Miles. “We got Miller, and more importantly, we’ve got Mike Gates. He’s your double agent. In the pockets of the Russian Volkow, a.k.a. Borshnik, and Mohammed Sharif.”

“My God … are you sure, Sean?” she said.

O’Brien told her the story. “I’ve got the flash drive with his confession. I’m coming in tomorrow morning to hang Gates. I’ll try to get from him the location where Borshnik is hiding.”

“What can I do?”

“If I can’t get him to admit it, do what you have to do.”

Lauren was quiet a beat. “I hope you can get a few hours sleep.”

O’Brien pulled his last Corona from the refrigerator and took it in the bathroom with him. He set the Glock on the back of the toilet seat, turned on the shower, climbed in and closed his eyes as the hot water pelted his shoulders and the back of his neck. Exhaustion pooled around him like dark clouds. He braced his hands against the walls of the stall, his thoughts focused on Robert Miller’s face.

He stepped quietly into the master stateroom. Max was sleeping in the center of the bed. She barely opened her eyes as O’Brien slipped from the room into the salon. He saw a blur, a quick flash of muted color through the starboard porthole. A large cat jumped from a fish cleaning station, its mouth clamped on a discarded fish head.

Lying on his back, he could see clouds through the skylight. He watched them ride the wind like ghosts performing a nocturnal ballet against an inky backdrop.

Then O’Brien dreamed he heard a noise.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Max uttered a low growl. “Shhh,” whispered O’Brien. He sat up, reaching for the Glock on his nightstand. He stood, the glow from the moon falling softly through the Plexiglas skylight. Max growled again. “Don’t bark,” O’Brien whispered.

O’Brien held the Glock up and stepped into the short passageway from the stateroom to the salon. He could see a silhouette on the other side of the blinds in front of the salon door. He walked back in the stateroom, closed the door, stood on his bed, and slowly opened the skylight. Max whined. “Shhh … I’ll be right back.”

He quietly pulled himself straight up and through the open skylight. He could hear the breakers across the road and the rumble of a storm somewhere over the Atlantic. O’Brien held the Glock and stepped in his bare feet down the center of the bow, and inched his way around the catwalk beam until he was almost to the cockpit. He heard the man picking the lock. Just as O’Brien cleared the exterior of the salon, the man opened the lock and entered.

Max.

It would be a matter of a few seconds before she barked. O’Brien slipped down from the beam and silently followed the intruder. The man slowed. He stepped without a sound through the salon. A moving shadow. O’Brien saw the pistol in the man’s hand.

Max scratched the closed stateroom door.

The man extended his pistol arm and stood ready to kick open the door.

“Another step and you’re dead,” O’Brien said, touching the Glock’s barrel to the back of the man’s neck. “Drop the gun! Slowly raise your arms.” The man released the gun and started to raise his hands.

“Can I turn around?”

O’Brien recognized the voice.

Eric Hunter turned around and half smiled. “Nice job, O’Brien. Surprised you heard me. Must have been the dog.”

O’Brien was silent. He suppressed the urge to slam the pistol grip in Hunter’s teeth. “I should put one between your eyes.”

“I have no doubt you could, considering your background. Was it Afghanistan, that where they got to you? Selling your conscience, your soul.”

“Conscience? You break into my boat. Gun in hand, and you want to analyze me? Fuck you, Hunter, or do I call you Wes Rendel?” O’Brien shoved the Glock under Hunter’s chin. “You enjoy lying to Maggie Canfield and Jason?”

“I’ve never lied to them. Frank didn’t die immediately in the bombing. He died in my arms. I promised him I’d keep an eye on his family.”

O’Brien pressed the gun barrel deeper into Hunter’s skin. “Who’re you working for? Tell me!”

“The U.S. government. Who’re you working for?”

“An eighty-eight-year-old lady and her granddaughter. On top of that, I’m trying to keep Jason Canfield alive, and I never met his dad, but I care about his mother.”

“How much did Mohammed Sharif pay you?”

“What?”

“Money, O’Brien. Sharif says you’re the mole.”

“And you’re incompetent!”

“I spent two years infiltrating them. He says you sold out to him, gave him the location of the U-boat before you had to retrieve the goods. He said I’d have to go through the gates of hell to make you admit it. And that’s what will happen. You’ve been classified as an extreme enemy combatant. They’ll use a blowtorch on your back to convince you to talk. When did they recruit you, O’Brien? Was it when you were in Pakistan?”

O’Brien shoved Hunter across the salon and into the couch. “Sit down! I’m not your double agent. It’s Mike Gates!”

“What?”

“Mike Gates. Sharif played one on you. Gates of hell. He was talking about Mike Gates.”

“You’re out of your mind!”

“Am I? Here’s a quick history lesson for you, Hunter. Mike Gates trained under an agent named Robert Miller. Miller was directly responsible for the death of Ivan Borshnik during the cold war. Ivan was Yuri Volkow’s father. Volkow’s real name is Boris Borshnik, and he’s here to avenge his country and his father’s death by execution in America. Mike Gates was recruited by Boris Borshnik because Borshnik knew of Gate’s tie to Miller.”

“Miller probably trained a lot of agents through the years.”

“But not any as money hungry as Gates. He looked for the chink in Miller’s armor and found it-the cover up of Billy Lawson’s murder, the covert corruption during the Manhattan Project, culminating in the selling of secrets to the Russians and sending Ivan Borshnik to the electric chair. Miller’s the oldest living double agent in America. It was Miller who met the Germans that night when they were burying the HEU. He had already sold the Russians the “how to” and now he had cut a deal to sell the stuff to Ivan Borshnik. But he kept the money instead while he pushed to have charges brought against Borshnik in front of a military tribunal.”

“If this is true, why’d Volkow or Borshnik, if that’s his name, wait until now to avenge his father’s death or retaliate for his country being ripped off?”

“Maybe he thought Miller was dead. Miller had been deep, so deep that the bureau faked his death rather than retire him. Obit column in the Washington Post said he died as a result of a coronary, two months before his retirement. And Miller was the only one who had a clue where the HEU was until Nick and I stumbled upon it.”

Hunter said nothing, looking down at the salon floor.

O’Brien heard Max whining. He picked up Hunter’s pistol off the floor, pocketed it and turned to open the door. Max scampered out as Hunter reached inside his pant leg and pulled a.25 caliber Beretta out of a holster.

“My orders are to take you dead or alive,” Hunter said. “I have a pistol pointed at your spine. Drop the Glock and turn around slowly.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

“That little gun won’t do much against this shotgun. Drop it!” Dave Collins stood in the open door of the cockpit, a 12 gauge shotgun aimed at Hunter.

Hunter looked hard at Collins. He slowly lowered the pistol. “Kick it to the center of the floor,” Dave ordered.

“You’re making a big mistake, Dave,” said Hunter.

“Do it!”

Hunter did as ordered, and O’Brien turned around. He said, “Your timing couldn’t be better.”

Dave nodded. “Light sleeper. I heard a cat in the trash by the cleaning station and woke to see someone approaching your boat.” He stepped into the salon. “Eric, I overheard some of the conservation from the open window. Everything Sean told you is the truth. Gates has breached. He did it a long time ago. We recorded Robert Miller admitting it.”

O’Brien said, “Gates is good. Very smart. Maybe smarter than anyone in the bureau for years, because he’s been doing this for years. Miller admitted Gate’s connection to Borshnik.”

Dave said, “We didn’t know Gate’s tie to Sharif until he tried to frame Sean. A plan, no doubt, laid by Gates to get Sean out of the picture. Only a fool would underestimate Mike Gates. He’s brilliant.”

Hunter shook his head, eyes focused beyond Jupiter’s porthole, gazing at the lights of the marina. He said, “We had our suspicions. Gates leaves no trails. I can’t imagine the damage that’s been done.”

“That’s nothing compared to the damage that will be done if they can turn the HEU into a real bomb,” Dave said.

“What do we do?”

O’Brien set his Glock on the bar. “We use Mike Gates just like he’s used and abused the trust of the people he swore to protect, the American people. Tomorrow the breach is broken. But, right now, we can set the trap for Gates.”

“How?” Dave asked.

“Borshnik may have removed the tracking devices from Jason’s mobile, but the phone can still receive text messages, which Borshnik will no doubt read. Let’s send him something that will hit him right between the eyes.” O’Brien punched the keys on his cell phone and read aloud as he wrote: “Borshnik, yes, I know your real name because I got it from the man who set up your father, Ivan. His name is Robert Miller, alive and well. Can you guess who also knows this? Mike Gates. Have a nice day!”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

O’Brien and Dave got to the federal building at 8:00 a.m., cleared security at the front door and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. O’Brien said, “I’ll use this opportunity to get closer to freeing Jason, but I won’t let Gates take me out.”

“Remember, Gates thinks they’ve convinced me you’re a mercenary.”

“We don’t know what Gates thinks or why. But I’m exposing him.”

A Volusia County Sheriff’s deputy stood guard outside the door leading into the task force command center. FBI, Homeland Security, ATF, U.S. Marshals and people O’Brien assumed were CIA, NSA or a combination of each, entered and left the room constantly. O’Brien and Dave Collins approached the guarded door.

“ID please,” requested the deputy.

Dave handed a picture ID to the guard. The deputy studied it a moment, his eyes glancing from Dave to the photograph. “Says this expired in ’03.”

“We’re consultants,” Dave said.

“You’ll need somebody with a current valid ID to-”

“This is current and valid,” said Lauren Miles, coming up behind O’Brien and Dave, holding her ID between the two men. “They’re with me.”

“No problem, Ms. Miles.”

“Gentlemen, please follow me.”

Inside the cavernous room was a huge bank of phones, computers, long white boards, flat-screen monitors, and makeshift desks. Four boxes of doughnuts, a few eaten, were on the first table. Agents worked the phones, typed keyboards, and drank coffee.

Mike Gates, cell phone in his ear, sleeves rolled up, tie down, sweat stain growing like a blooming flower in the center of his blue shirt, looked up as O’Brien entered.

“Have a seat over there in the corner,” Lauren said.

They walked by a wall that displayed photographs of the four slain FBI agents and the two state troopers. The photographs were of the agents in suits, smiling like they’d graduated from the academy, the troopers in their dress blues. Above the pictures was a large digital clock, the time, down to the second, flashing in bright red.

“Coffee or anything?” Lauren said before she sat at the table.

Dave grunted and shook his head no. O’Brien said, “Sounds good.”

Lauren smiled and went across the room to pour two cups. Dave said, “Gates looks like he smelled a fart.”

“So does Paul Thompson,” O’Brien said as he watched Thompson at the white board glance his way, cap the black marker and approach Lauren. While he spoke to her, he looked at O’Brien, again, then turned back to face Lauren. She sipped coffee from one of the Styrofoam cups, eyes darting toward O’Brien.

“I wonder where Eric Hunter is,” Dave said, eyes scanning the room.

O’Brien was silent. He watched as Gates ended his call, glance at the clock on the wall, and approach Lauren and Thompson. They huddled; Gates had his arms folded across his chest.

A minute later, Lauren returned to the table and sat down. “Careful, coffee is a bit hot.” She lowered her voice. “We’ve got to stop Gates before this thing goes to hell.”

“Then do it,” O’Brien said.

“The audio recording from your meeting with Robert Miller, it’s more than enough for me, but I’m not a grand jury. Defense might say it’s the ramblings of a sick old man without all his faculties. If we could get something else to corroborate it-”

“Not easy,” Dave said. “Considering the situation.”

O’Brien looked across the room at Gates who checked his watch against the clock on the wall. “Is the HEU auction still supposed to happen at 4:00 p.m.?”

“Yes,” Lauren said.

“If we can nail Borshnik, have him implicate Gates, we’d have something else.”

“Or even Sharif,” Lauren said. “If Gates is that good, playing both of them-”

“He’s apparently that good,” Dave said.

“Officially, we don’t plea bargain with terrorists.”

“I don’t plan to,” O’Brien said.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

Abdul-Waahid backed the catering van up to loading docks at the rear entrance to the federal building. Drivers in two other vans did the same thing. They began unloading the large stainless steel containers filled with hot food. The caterers put the containers on rolling tables and waited for a deputy to electronically unlock the door. There was a loud click and a long buzz sound. The door opened and the catering team made its way slowly through the building labyrinth.

One man wore a white chef’s uniform and carried a clipboard in a meaty hand. He waddled with the gait of a weightlifter on steroids. No neck and a head like a fire plug on massive shoulders. He moved his Buddha body in a stiff, all shoulders march, barking orders at his cooking staff. Two women from prep joined them, pushing bowls of salad to go with the shiny, food-filled containers.

As they waited for a service elevator, the man in the chef’s outfit looked over at Waahid and asked, “You cold, guy?”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re wearing that windbreaker. At least it’s white. But when we start serving, lose it.”

“I understand,” Waahid said.

The two large service elevators opened, and the crew loaded the food inside. The chef said, “I appreciate you filling in so fast to cover for Bobby. It’d be like him to find help to take his place if he got sick. He knows this is a big account for us. As long as the hunt for these dudes continues, we’re serving three squares a day in here.”

The elevators opened, and they made their way down the long hallway.

Mike Gates, Eric Hunter, and Paul Thompson approached the table and sat near Lauren, opposite from O’Brien and Dave. Gates said, “Here’s the situation: our agents and the troopers were killed by men who follow a Russian who’s been going by the name of Yuri Volkow.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell,” Dave said.

Hunter said, “Volkow, no doubt, has more than one alias.”

“Who is he?” O’Brien asked.

Gates smiled. “He’s the kind of guy who can as easily slip radioactive thallium in your tea as he could drop the stuff on a major city. He was mid-level KGB before the name change. We strongly suspect he did contract killings for the Kremlin, could knock off an outspoken journalist, whatever was needed.”

“What’s the plan for getting Jason back alive?” O’Brien asked.

“You’re the plan, O’Brien,” said Gates. “They know you and Nick Cronus from all the insane media coverage. They know of your association with Jason Canfield. Probably know you’re ex-police. It would be a natural instinct for you, a man not connected officially with the government, to take off and look for your young friend.”

O’Brien said nothing.

Dave said, “Well, now, there’s an obvious change of plans. We had a deadline to find the remaining HEU and exchange it for Jason’s life. So, besides what we already know-Sean and Nick found the stuff, the Russians stole it and put it up on the web for auction-by now Jason’s lost value to them. And, if he’s seen their faces ….”

“What can I do?” O’Brien asked.

Gates raised his eyebrows. “We’re going to be the highest bidders, under an assumed name that’s part of their member’s only club.”

“What name?”

“Zuhair-Rafi,” he was hand-picked by bin Laden before we took him out.”

Lauren said, “Could be a problem. How do we know that Mohammed Sharif isn’t next in line? What’s to keep him from protesting if he feels he’s being outspent by a fellow al Qaeda member?”

Hunter said, “Because the way the auction is set, in non-traceable IP addresses, each player is guaranteed anonymity. So none of the bidders will specifically know who has the highest bid. But they’ll be able to see the numbers-each successive high bid. If Mr. X is at two-mil, for example, the player who wants to push the envelope a few hundred-thou higher can type it in with his code, and it’s officially registered. Volkow will collect the twenty million or so for passing go. The other three or four in the auction, we don’t think it will be more than that, will either stay at the poker table or they’ll fold and get out of the game. They won’t leave a trace of their presence to us or anyone who can take a seat at their Tehran fold ‘em game.”

Gates said, “For a guy like Mohammed Sharif, this would be a supreme test. Score enriched uranium on American soil, package it for delivery and let her fall over someplace like Times Square or Independence Avenue. O’Brien, we need you to be one of the team members who infiltrates Volkow’s hideout right after Mohammed Sharif’s people enter the premises.”

“How do we know they’ll enter?” O’Brien asked.

“We don’t,” Hunter said. “We’ve learned that Mohammed has received information that can lead him to Volkow’s location. We think Mohammed is planning to hit Volkow before the auction, kill everyone, including Jason, and take the HEU.”

“So what are we supposed to do?” O’Brien asked. “We can’t sit in some car like detectives staking out a crack house. We need an idea of what, when, how, and where.”

“We can answer most of those,” Gates said. “We believe Volkow is hiding somewhere in Jacksonville. Their online site is routed to half dozen different IP’s. Some in Egypt. Our tech guys can say they’re somewhere in the Jacksonville area, we’re just not sure exactly. We think he’s holed up in there with at least half dozen men, maybe more, the HEU, and the kid.”

Lauren said, “And because we have no clue where Mohammed Sharif and his group are hiding, this is an opportunity to get two birds with one strike force.”

“Why do you want me part of it?” O’Brien asked.

Gates smiled and said, “Because we’ve read your profile. You’re an expert at finding people. We know you just might be the one to find Jason alive amongst all of this. And, with your background in hostage negotiations, should it get to that, you might be quite effective at getting the kid released.” Gates looked at the digital clock. “O’Brien, finder of lost souls … see if you can find Jason Canfield.”

“I found Robert Miller. He sends his regards, but not his regrets.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Andrei Keltzin smoked a cigarette outside the old warehouse, pacing nervously, glancing up at the second floor and wondering if Yuri Volkow was looking down at him beyond the glare and dirt on the glass. Keltzin propped his AK-47 against the building and dialed his cell. Mohammed Sharif answered. “Yes.”

“I will give you the location. The rest of the money when you arrive.”

Deputy Ronald Hobbs opened a door leading directly from the serving room to the command center. O’Brien looked up, seeing the movement of the caterers in the background, the smell of red pepper and Cajun sauces floating in the air. Over Gates’ shoulder, he saw a cook in a light white jacket.

Gates looked at O’Brien without any noticeable reaction and said, “Robert Miller, what a career. We could use his expertise today. If you see Bob, give him my regards.”

“When I see Boris Borshnik, a.k.a. Yuri Volkow, shall I tell him the same thing?”

Gates’ jaw muscles popped, his eyes had a snake-like coldness, no emotion beyond indifference and a minuscule allusion of subliminal madness. He smiled and said, “I’ll ignore that comment because I know you’re under extreme duress to find your friend, Jason, and to recover the HEU that you introduced to the crazies.”

“One of those crazies is your contact Mohammed Sharif. You’re busted, pal-”

“And you’re under arrest!” Gates looked at his watch and then the digital clock. “Hold him, Eric. I have to take a conference call with the director and the vice president. I’ll address your comments in fifteen minutes. In the meantime, Sean O’Brien, you’re in federal custody. Do not attempt to leave this room or you will be shot.” He stood to leave, his eyes holding onto the movement of the caterers through the open door in the adjacent room. He licked his dry lips and left through the main entrance.

Lauren said, “Okay, now what?”

“He knows Borshnik personally,” O’Brien said.

“But you can’t prove that.”

“He just did,” Hunter said.

“You agree?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah, I do. Gates is very good, but there was something in the way he looked, or maybe it was the way O’Brien was looking at him, but the truth was hitting Gates right between the eyes, and he flinched.”

“Now,” Dave said, “what are you going to do about it? Arrest him?”

“Let’s bring in Robert Miller,” Lauren said.

O’Brien said nothing. He watched the door that Gates had exited. Then he looked at his watch. 11:56 a.m.

Lauren said, “Food smells good. My blood sugar’s down. I need a quick bite.” She smiled, got up and walked into the serving room, followed by a few agents.

Hunter said, “O’Brien, how long have you suspected Gates?”

“How long have you been watching him?”

“Was it that obvious?”

“Only once.”

Hunter smiled and shook his head. “And one day you’ll tell me when, right?”

Dave said, “Maybe you can talk Sean into joining the Agency.”

O’Brien said, “Right now we’ve got to find Borshnik. For all I know, Gates is outside, smoking a cigarette and calling Borshnik-” O’Brien felt his words tighten in his throat. From across the room, under the flat light of the fluorescents, he could see directly into the service room. The man in a white windbreaker turned and looked up at the ceiling, his body facing east. O’Brien saw the man talking to himself. Or was he praying? Praying to Allah.

“NO! DOWN!” O’Brien yelled.

“What-” Dave uttered.

“There!” Hunter pointed.

Lauren came across the threshold, a plate of food in her hands, a smile on her face. O’Brien felt the world stop. Time measured in disjointed increments of human movement. The numbers on the digital clock-frozen.

The click of Lauren’s heels-silent.

The drone of the command center-gone.

The man in the white jacket opened his eyes. Prayer finished. His right hand slipping inside the jacket in a faltering movement, like film caught in the gate.

Lauren’s smile dropped. Her mouth made an O. She turned her head to look behind her as the jacket disintegrated into a ball of white heat. The explosion turned the wall separating the rooms into dust. The force of the bomb knocked O’Brien to the ground, heat radiating through the command center like a blast furnace.

O’Brien was flat on his back, ceiling tiles raining around him. Electricity arching through shattered wires, fire sprinklers gushing water. The smoke billowed forcefully as if it were an angry cloud in extreme weather. Visibility zero. Pain seared from his left shoulder, the heat of his blood trapped between skin and clothes.

O’Brien could hear nothing. Then a ringing swelled in his ears. It faded and he heard the sounds of agony, pain and imminent death rise up from the smoke and charred furniture, walls and floor. A woman made inhuman grunts and shrieks. A man whimpered and begged for his mother. Sobbing meshed into wailing. O’Brien crawled on his hand and knees. He found Dave Collins knocked out cold. A pulse, but faint, blood oozing from his forehead.

A cough. Eric Hunter held his shoulder with one bleeding hand. His hair was covered in a white powder, pieces of dry-wall sticking to it.

“You okay?” O’Brien asked.

“Think so,” Hunter said.

“Dave’s out. He’s breathing, but his pulse is weak.” O’Brien kept low, face near the floor, crawling in the direction he’d last seen Lauren. His hands slipped in blood and wet brain matter scattered like red oatmeal on the floor. He could smell coppery odors mixed with the scent of C-4, gun powder, and burning electrical fires.

A woman moaned. “Lauren! I’m here!” O’Brien crawled fifty feet though rubble and the sticky heat of blood and body parts. Lauren was on her back, one leg bent at an awkward right angle. Her white blouse ripped, the remaining fabric soaked red.

O’Brien knelt over her. His hands trembled as he wiped the blood from her face, gently pushing hair from her eyes. Her breathing raspy. She looked up at O’Brien, her eyes filling with tears. “Hold me, Sean. I can’t feel my legs … hold me.”

O’Brien lowered his body to hers, his cheek touching her face, his hands holding her shoulders. He could feel the warmth of tears run from her eyes and down to his lips. He could hear the labored breathing, the erratic muscle spasms of her body.

Sirens screamed in the distance. “Hold on … help’s coming. You’ll be in the hospital in a few minutes.”

“Sean, it’s okay-”

“Just breathe … easy … you’ll be fine-”

“I can’t see you. Sean ….”

“I’m here. Just breathe easy. They’re coming. Stay with me, Lauren!”

She coughed. O’Brien leaned up and wiped blood from her lips. “Don’t let Gates get away with it. He’s hurt too many people ….”

“Don’t talk … rest.”

She reached up with one hand. O’Brien held it, squeezed gently, hoping to somehow squeeze full life back into her body. “Find Jason ….” Her smile quivered. “You’re a good and decent man, Sean. You care about people … and I’ve always cared deeply for you and ….” Lauren’s chest heaved, gasping for air.

“No! Help’s coming! Lauren! Just breathe easy. Fight it!”

She stopped breathing, her blue eyes open, the light fading in the dust and smoke.

O’Brien held her hand. He leaned down to kiss her forehead, a single tear falling from his eye and mixing with her blood.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

Mike Gates drove the speed limit, stopping for the convoy of police and emergency vehicles streaming toward the federal building. The only visible anxiety was the size of the sweat stain, which had grown into large, dark patches on his blue dress shirt. The odor of garlic from last night’s meal mixed with adrenaline and rose in an acrid blend from his pores. The taste in his mouth was like metal, hard water and rust. He used his cell phone.

“Yes,” Boris Borshnik said.

“I’ve been exposed!”

“How?”

“O’Brien! The fucking ex-cop! I don’t know how. I have to leave the country within the hour. I need asylum in Russia, with a guarantee I’ll be left alone.”

“No problem. You can be on an Aeroflot jet and routed from Miami to Moscow.”

“I’ll need papers, passport and money.”

“I understand. Meet me at the warehouse. You can obtain the money there. I’ll have the papers ready for you at Miami International.”

“Outside only.”

“Pardon.”

“Outside, meet me outside with the money, money still owed to me.”

“Certainly.” Borshnik disconnected. He turned to Zakhar Sorokin and said, “Gates will be arriving momentarily. Ambush him.”

“Shall I kill him?”

“No, bring him to me.”

Robert Miller sat in an opulent bar in the Ritz Carlton overlooking the ocean. He nursed a glass of Jameson and watched a news bulletin that appeared on the wide screen above the bar.

A female reporter stood in front of the federal building and began talking. Her brow wrinkled, face animated. Behind her were dozens of fire and rescue vehicles, smoke filtering ghostlike from three blown-out windows on the top floor.

“Turn it up, please,” Miller said to the bartender.

The news reporter pulled a strand of hair behind one ear and said, “The questions investigators now are asking is how did a suicide bomber get access into the federal building and who was he? It’s believed that the bomber is connected to a radical Islamic Jihad sect that may have the highly enriched uranium missing from the German submarine and the cache found on Rattlesnake Island. The body count is reported at nine now with at least a dozen people injured, many critically ….”

Miller sipped his drink and stared at the screen. His cell rang. Mike Gates was furious. “What’d you tell Sean O’Brien?”

“Nothing he didn’t already know.” Miller’s voice was filtered through Irish whiskey.

“You old fool! You didn’t have to say anything. There is no proof.”

“Don’t blame me for your mistakes. The only reason O’Brien found out was due to your carelessness-”

“I leave no trail!”

“Borshnik found you.”

“And O’Brien found you! You’ve cost me everything. I can’t even tell my wife goodbye. I no longer exist.”

“I’m sitting here watching your fuck ups. Half a dozen agents blown to hell and back. Your mistakes are massive, resulting in loss of life and property.”

“That was no mistake.”

“Then you’re sub-human. You belong in-”

“You fucking old hypocrite! You sold this country’s ass to Russia as Hitler was going down. You may be personally responsible for the deaths of thousands, from Korea to Vietnam, and you have the sanctimonious balls to lecture me. Go to hell!”

“I’d say we’re both almost there. It was your choice long ago. It’s a lonely life playing the game. But when you step out of the boundaries, you step into a house of mirrors. What you see reflecting back is whatever illusion you’ve created. Forever begins now, Gates. Hold that point up to the light from hell and leave me alone-”

“They’ll come for you, too. You just got away with it longer. You’ll go down as this country’s worst traitor! They’ll write the name Benedict Arnold over your damn grave. Do you hear me Miller? You fucking hear me!”

The phone went dead in Gate’s hand.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

Mohammed Sharif sat in the back seat of the rented SUV and spoke Arabic into a satellite phone. “Salaam alaikum,” he said. The SUV stayed below the speed limit as the driver’s eyes darted from the road to the mirrors. Another man sat in the front, one in the back next to Sharif, and two minivans loaded with heavily armed jihad soldiers followed.

“We’re within two miles of the U-235,” Sharif said. “Borshnik does not suspect we are en route because he is not aware we know his location. Abdul-Waahid is a martyr. He is in paradise. His death bonds the umma, the brotherhood. He walked into the face of the infidels and removed at least nine of them. The FBI, CIA and the rest are in a state of chaos. I have given orders for the girl to be taken alive today. Her father will do as we order. Within a few days, we will have an atomic bomb here on American soil. Now they will learn a lesson as we do much more than bloody their noses, the same noses that they stick in the world’s affairs, hamdulihhah.”

Sharif nodded, listened in silence for a half minute and said, “Inshallad, it will be done. Allah akbar.”

O’Brien and Eric Hunter watched EMTs load Dave Collins in an ambulance. Dave, conscious, one eye swollen, with its surrounding area the size and color of a plum, looked at O’Brien and asked, “How many dead?”

“I don’t know.”

“Lauren ….”

“She didn’t make it.”

Dave closed his eyes for a long moment, his barrel chest rising and falling. “I’m sorry … find them Sean. You and Eric make a good team. Be damn careful. America’s never experienced anything like this before. It could make 911 look like boy scouts. Bring in Gates if you can catch him.”

“Get well,” Hunter said.

As the paramedics closed the ambulance doors, one of a dozen ambulances carting the injured, O’Brien said, “Let’s move. My Jeep’s in the lot.”

“I’m parked near you. I’ve got a pretty fair arsenal in the trunk. Plenty of rounds. Let’s stop there first. Got a feeling we might need the firepower.”

More than two dozen television satellite trucks lined the parking lot. A herd of reporters and onlookers were kept behind the yellow tape. O’Brien and Hunter had to walk through the pack to get to their vehicles.

Reporter Susan Schulman stepped in front of O’Brien. A cameraman rolled, the tiny red light on the camera an unblinking Cyclops’ eye. She gripped the microphone with one hand, red fingernails like talons of a hawk holding something dead. “Mr. O’Brien, we understand the casualty number could reach as high as perhaps a dozen people. Can you give us a short soundbite? What did you see?”

“Fuck you. Is that short enough?” O’Brien and Hunter continued walking.

“Asshole!” Schulman shouted, turning to her cameraman, “Cut.”

Mike Gates drove across the Fuller Warren Bridge into the heart of Jacksonville. He punched the car’s radio station selector trying to find a newscast. There was an odd sound, like static created by approaching lightning. The sky was clear.

“Bastards!” he grunted. He turned off the exit into West Bay Street and parked his car in the lot adjacent to the Omni Hotel. Gates got out and walked up to a taxi, the driver reading the paper. “Can you take me to JaxPort?” Gates asked.

“Sure, get in.”

Gates got in the backseat and the driver asked, “Where to at JaxPort?”

“The old Pier 13 … should be a warehouse near there.”

“I have an idea where it is,” the cabbie said, pulling out of the hotel lot. “Place is in a rough part of the docks.”

“I’m representing a developer. We’re looking at it purely as a speculative buy. Condos could be in there in a couple of years.”

The cab driver pulled into a service road that led down to Pier 13. He drove slowly past a discolored Chiquita Banana sign, long ago faded from salt air and time.

“Park by the dumpster,” Gates said. “I’ll be down by the water. Wait for me.”

“I can’t stay too long, understand? Got other customers-”

“Here’s a hundred.” Gates tossed the bill on the front seat. “Wait for me. I won’t be long. Then you can take me to the airport.”

The driver stuck the money in his shirt pocket. Gates climbed out of the car and walked toward the rusted and broken Pier 13. The place looked creepy, he thought, including the old pier, which slept derelict-like by the dark water. He glanced at his watch, lit a cigarette, and watched a tanker leave the port across the wide river, heading for the Atlantic Ocean.

The cab driver watched him. He pulled the hundred dollar bill out of his pocket and held it up in the fading sunlight.

There was a noise. Maybe a rat in the dumpster. The cabbie looked toward Gates standing by the dock as the rubber lid on the dumpster flew open. A shotgun blast fired directly into the open window of the cab. The cabbie’s face was blown off. His jawbone propelled out the passenger window.

Zahkar Sororkin pointed the barrel at Gates. “Hands up! Drop your gun!”

Gates did as ordered. Sorokin climbed from the abandoned dumpster, 12-gauge shotgun aimed at Gates’ chest. “Kick the gun away from you.”

“No! What’s going on? Borshnik and I have a deal.”

“Kick the gun!” Sorokin yelled, stepping closer. “Do it or this shotgun will take your head off. They will find pieces of it in the river. The catfish will eat the soft parts.”

Gates dropped his pistol. “I want to see Borshnik.”

“And he wants to see you.”

Mohammed Sharif and his caravan were less than five miles from the docks. He made a call. “The boat must be there in half an hour. The Americans will block all roads. They will not think to monitor their ports and Intracoastal Waterway … they never do.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

O’Brien drove his Jeep up I-95 at almost ninety-miles-per hour. Hunter sat in the passenger seat, holding the GPS in his lap. He said, “There is no movement from Gates’ car. He’s in downtown Jacksonville, near the river.”

“Maybe that’s the location. Could be something there, a building, store, auto body shop, whatever.”

“Or he could have found out we’re tailing him and left his car in a parking lot.” Through his dark sunglasses, Hunter looked at the GPS screen. He punched in a satellite image of a map, scaled closer. “Looks like Gates is at Riverside Avenue. I’ll start making the calls. We’ll bring in F-16’s if we have to … they won’t crawl out of there.”

“First, we bring Jason out alive.”

Robert Miller had just ordered his third Irish whiskey when his cell played the first few bars from Mozart’s Requiem. He lifted the phone from the bar, looked through his bifocals and saw that it was security calling from his condo. “Mr. Miller, this is John in security at-”

“Yes, what is it?”

“You’d asked me to call, sir, if anyone was inquiring about you.”

“Yes, what do you have?”

“Well, sir, two men were here. Said they worked for the government, but they didn’t show ID. Looked like FBI types. Told them you weren’t in, and they left”

“When?”

“About ten minutes ago.”

“Thank you.” Miller pressed the disconnect button and looked up at the bartender, a woman in her mid-thirties. He asked, “Do you have children?”

The bartender smiled. “Yes, a son. He’s seven.”

“What’s his name?”

“Andy.”

“As you raise him, give him confidence and humility. It’s often difficult to do. Many people can’t connect the two. But, together, they are powerful attributes.”

The bartender thought for a beat. “Yes sir, they sure are.”

“Can you make arrangements for me to stay here tonight? At my age, capacity for fine drink isn’t what it used to be. A nice sleep would make a world of difference.”

“Would you like a lower level room, or something near the penthouse?”

“Why go near the penthouse when you can go to the penthouse?”

“I agree.” The bartender smiled.

Miller slid a platinum America Express card toward her. “Put everything on there, and while you’re at it, give yourself a two-hundred dollar tip.”

“Yes sir! Thank you!”

“Oh, by the way,” Miller gestured toward the pool beyond the smoked glass windows of the bar. He looked at an older woman sitting alone at a table beneath an umbrella surrounded by royal palms in a lush tropical setting. She had long gray hair, which she wore in a braid over her shoulder. “The lady out there, the one about my age ….”

“Yes sir?”

“Do you know her?”

“Yes sir. That’s Mrs. Lewinski. She lives in one of the condos across the street. Comes over here sometimes. Husband used to come with her. But he died about three months ago. She always orders a mint julep. She likes a view of the beach. Nice lady.”

“I imagine she is,” Miller said, watching the woman under the umbrella. “Send her a dozen of the hotel’s finest red roses mixed with sprigs of mint. Put it on my card.”

“Yes sir.”

Miller entered the penthouse, the Atlantic wide and blue beyond the large veranda. He fixed a drink from the bar and opened the French doors to the veranda, the salty breeze from the ocean warm against his face. He set the drink on a glass table near fresh-cut flowers, and braced his hands on the railing. He glanced at his hands. They looked like old claws with age spots the size of dimes. The taste of diseased tissue rose from his lungs to his throat. The wind tossed his white hair as he stared out across the Atlantic. Heat lightning pulsed through a tumbling stretch of purple clouds over the horizon.

“You do give up your dead sometimes,” he mumbled. He looked down at the parking lot twenty-five floors beneath him. Robert Miller climbed on a chair and stepped up onto the ledge, felt the wind in his face, looked at the sea one final time before plunging off the balcony and free-falling like a fledgling bird toward the dark asphalt.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

A glass of cold water splashed across Mike Gates’ face. His head pounded. Gates was groggy, his vision blurred as if he’d opened his eyes wearing a dive mask underwater, a surreal perspective around him. He was strapped in a metal folding chair, stripped to his underwear, his feet in metal buckets filled with water. Wires ran from his ankles and wrists. He shook his head. This wasn’t happening.

Standing in front of him was Boris Borshnik. Seven heavily armed men stood at the windows and doors. Two men sat at folding tables, three laptop computers on the tables, the canisters of HEU lined on the wooden floor, a small video camera trained on them. Twenty feet to Gates’ left, Jason Canfield was tied to a chair. The kid had dried blood around his mouth, one eye swollen shut.

Gates looked up at Borshnik and said, “We had a deal! We had an agreement!”

“So did my father with your FBI in 1951!” Borshnik roared.

“That had nothing to do with me.”

“Yes it did! Because the man who lied to my father trained you, and you lied to me about Robert Miller. You told me he died of cancer. Now I know otherwise. You denied me that retribution years ago.”

“I’m more valuable to you alive than dead.”

“You have no value. You made a mistake, said something that should only be said if the other side knows it. You understand the game, but in your haste, you told me you had been exposed. The only value you have to your government now is in making you an example. I shall save them the cost, most generous of me. Don’t you agree? Probably not, because for you, it has always been about the money.”

Borshnik pulled a roll of one hundred bills out of his pocket, shoved them between Gate’s teeth and tied the bills in his mouth using a small piece of rope like a bit and bridle for a horse. He nodded and one of his men plugged the wires into a 210 volt power outlet. The force of the electricity threw Gates back in the chair, his head slamming against the brick wall.

Gates screamed, his voice like frightened growls from a muzzled dog. His body convulsing and shaking as the electricity burned into his nervous system. Smoke coming from his wrists. His neck corded in veins and muscles. His heart pumped in erratic beats, his bladder collapsing and urine soaking his underwear.

Jason Canfield looked the other way, tears seeping from his swollen eyes.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

Andrei Keltzin stood by a dirty window on the north side of the room, looked out and saw Mohammed Sharif’s three vehicles turning into the parking lot. He said nothing as he watched Borshnik move away from Gate’s body and speak to one of the men sitting behind the bank of laptop computers.

Keltzin stepped back from the window. “Shall I dispose of the corpse?”

Borshnik looked at Gates burned body. “I wonder what they did with my father’s body. Probably fed it to American hogs. Yes, remove it.”

Keltzin nodded, began untwisting the wires from the charred flesh. “Could Zahkar help me?”

Borshnik said, “Be quick.”

On the ground floor, Keltzin said, “We can carry him to the end of the dock and let him go in the water. It is probably deep. The body should stay down for a while before it floats. You will be back in Russia by then.”

“And you return to New York to await further instructions?”

“Yes. Let us share a cigarette first. I have some very good ones made in Pakistan.” Keltzin reached inside his jacket and pulled a knife, the movement a half second blur. He sank the knife to the hilt directly into Sorokin’s heart. The man fell like a steer in a slaughterhouse.

Keltzin turned and waved toward Mohammed Sharif’s vehicles, directing him to park on the far side of the warehouse. Sharif got out of the car, nine men following him.

“We can go though the freight elevator entrance,” Keltzin said. “I just took out one of his men. That leaves seven including Borshnik. They are on the third floor, the northeast corner of the building. Go up the steps and turn right at the top. The room will be less than twenty meters down the hall.”

Sharif gestured with his head and one of his men handed Keltzin an oversized black attache case. Keltzin lowered it to the ground and opened it. The case was filled with stacks of hundred-dollar bills. Sharif said, “We do not have time for you to count it.”

Keltzin grinned. “I trust you.”

Sharif touched his cheek and said, “That will be your last big mistake.” One of his men raised a Beretta with a silencer and shot Keltzin through the back of the head, blood and brain matter scattering across the green of the money.

Sharif looked across the river. “Our boat is approaching. Proceed upstairs. You know what to do. Today, some of us will enter paradise. Inshallad.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

Eric Hunter nodded his head, anxious for the caller to finish. “Thanks,” he said disconnecting.

O’Brien asked, “What do we have?”

“Cab dispatcher said his driver reported that he’d taken a customer to Pier 13 on Jacksonville’s northeast side, not far from JaxPort. It’s a warehouse area.”

O’Brien squealed the tires racing out of the parking lot, almost hitting a man unloading golf clubs from the back of a car. “Did the driver leave after he dropped off the man?” O’Brien asked.

“Dispatch doesn’t know. The driver isn’t answering his radio or his cell.”

“Which means we can’t get a description of his customer.”

“Yeah.”

“How far is this place?”

Hunter looked at the GPS. “About eight miles. Take Bay to 95, then to 105 and follow it to Hecksler. I’ll start calling for backup as soon as I get a satellite image of the area.” Hunter punched in the coordinates for the Pier 13 area and watched a satellite image appear on his hand-held screen. He zoomed in to about five-hundred feet above the buildings. “If they’re in a warehouse directly in front of the pier, we can have the snipers on the two buildings to the east and west. Maybe catch the hostiles in crossfire. Plenty of cover even for ground forces.”

O’Brien shook his head. “To catch them in crossfire is to wait for them to come out. They’ll be more cautious leaving. We don’t know if the winning bidder will come there to pick up the HEU, or if Borshnik’s men will leave it in storage for the buyers, especially if the winning bid is from overseas.”

“Could be from Mohammed Sharif’s camp. And they are somewhere in Florida.”

Hunter made a quick series of calls, creating a plan of attack with federal agents and local SWAT. “Remember, chief, there can be no sirens. Nothing but stealth, and we’re calling the shots.”

Mohammed Sharif used hand signals to direct his men as they came closer to the door. Each man carried a side weapon and held Berettas or modified AK-47 assault rifles. At the door, he reached down and carefully turned the handle. It was not locked. The Russians expected no one. Sharif pushed open the door. They stepped in, firing.

Two Russian guards died instantly. The rest returned fire. Bullets ripping through flesh, splattering blood across the gypsum walls of the old warehouse.

Jason looked in horror as a bullet hit one Russian in the throat, his body falling across Jason’s lap and tumbling to the floor, the sound of gurgling drowned by gunfire.

Two of Sharif’s men died within five seconds. But the Russians, caught off guard had nowhere to retreat. Bullets exploded the computers, ricocheting off the brick on one wall. Borshnik fired three bursts from his Makarov before a bullet caught him square in the chest, his body falling against the chair where Gates was electrocuted, water from the buckets splashing across the floor.

In less than a half minute it was over. Eight Russians lay dead. Three jihad members were dead. Sharif’s shoulder was bleeding. Heavy smoke and the smell of gunpowder, blood and death seemed trapped in the room.

Sharif looked at the HEU canisters. “Take them to the boat. We must be out of here in seven minutes.” Sharif stepped over to Jason. “Are you Canfield? Are you the son of the American hero who lost his life on the USS Cole?”

Jason looked up at the man through puffy, swollen eyelids. “Yes.”

Sharif’s dark eyes radiated hate. “Do you have a brother or sister?”

“No.”

Sharif pulled a knife out of his belt. “Infidel. When I cut your head off, it will be to remove your father’s seed and yours from the face of Earth.”

Jason’s hands trembled, his breathing rapid, bile rising in his throat.

Sharif touched the blade to the center of Jason’s throat. He smiled, his teeth wet with saliva. His men watched him for a moment, the only sound coming from a blowfly hovering and buzzing above Borshnik’s body.

He lowered the knife. “There will be a better time for your death,” he said, placing the knife in the sheath. “Perhaps you will be the young man who is there when the atomic bomb detonates in this country. It will be an explosion heard around the world. They will call you the ultimate suicide bomber. But I do not believe paradise will await you, Jason Canfield.” He turned to his men. “Take the infidel to the boat.”

In less than ten minutes, the ten U-235 canisters were loaded on the forty-five foot Sea Ray at the end of Pier 13. Sharif looked at two of his men standing on the dock and said, “Rayhan, you and Nasif take the SUV. Proceed to Savannah. We will contact you before we arrive at the docks. Meet with Hashmin and Yasir. They are holding the professor’s daughter in the house we rented. I will speak to the professor directly. I feel positive that he will be most cooperative.”

The men nodded and ran back to the Ford Navigator. Sharif boarded the boat with the rest of his men. “Cast off!” he yelled. They untied the stern and bow ropes. “Go! Go! Now!” Sharif ordered. The man behind the wheel gunned the big diesels and within a minute the Sea Ray was on plane, the pilot heading for the channel markers.

“Set a course to Savannah, Georgia. Up the river from there is a place-the Savannah River Site. It is America’s largest facility for the manufacture of nuclear bombs. And near there lives the man who will make ours.”

Sharif glanced at Jason, bound and lying on the salon floor. He said, “Your time is short Canfield. Admit and recant all of the atrocities your country does, on video, and perhaps you will live. Or you will die strapped to an atomic bomb.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

O’Brien pulled onto a service road. The chain on the gate had been cut, the gate partially open. “Follow the yellow brick road,” he said.

“Don’t follow it too far,” Hunter said, reaching into the back seat for two assault rifles. He put one on his lap and the second between the seats. “Backup’s coming. We have two choppers in the air-”

“Tell them to stay back. Stay back far enough so Borshnik can’t hear them. All he needs is an excuse to slit Jason’s throat.”

Hunter hit numbers on his cell. “Keep the birds back … yes … at least half a mile, maybe more if they’re coming over the river.”

Three vans of federal agents and six SUVs filled with SWAT team members pulled up behind O’Brien. Hunter and O’Brien got out of the car and briefed the men. O’Brien said, “We’ll look for the most obvious point of entry in relation to wherever the hostiles have their vehicles. Cab driver is a non-hostile. A twenty-year-old male is being held hostage. His name is Jason Canfield. I will need four men to follow me. Hunter can use that many on the rear and sides of the warehouse we enter. The rest of you spread along the perimeter of the buildings.”

Hunter said, “We’ll leave the vehicles here. Follow the tree line down toward the water and then separate.”

O’Brien hid behind a tall growth of weeds next to a fence and looked at the scene less than one-hundred feet in front of him. He could see at least three bodies. Something in his gut told him there would be more.

Was Jason alive? His thoughts raced, trying to suppress the images of Lauren Miles dying on the floor. “I have a visual on what appears to be three dead hostiles,” O’Brien whispered into the small microphone.

“It’s time we paid our respect to the dead,” Hunter said in O’Brien’s earpiece. “Gents, cover Sean and me as we run for the cab on the east side of the warehouse.” From where Hunter lay in cover, behind a partially crumbled seawall, he watched as O’Brien used a hand signal for the two of them to move forward. Both men ran hard, heads down, zigzagging toward the parked cab.

Except for the slight sound of a chopper in the distance, silence. O’Brien rose to look in the taxi window. “Head’s almost gone,” he said in a low voice.

“Look ….” Hunter mumbled, pointing toward two bodies. “Man, what the hell did they do to Gates?”

“Borshnik electrocuted him. Same fate his father got in 1951.”

“Eye for an eye. The second body, it’s one of Borshnik’s men. I recognize him from the Chapman’s Fish House camera. What the hell’s going on, Sean?”

O’Brien was silent for a few seconds. “Gates was killed in there, where there’s electricity … this guy was probably taking the body out for disposal … maybe to dump it in the river but never got that far. Somebody nailed him in the back of the head.”

“Maybe it’s Mohammed … or one of his guys.”

“Gates was a big man. Would have taken two of Borshnik’s men to carry him down to the river.”

“Which means-”

“Borshnik has a defector. Eric, tell your men we’re working our way around to the other side of the building. The main entrance.”

Hunter relayed the information, and requested four SWAT members for backup. He and O’Brien kept low, hugging the exterior wall. O’Brien peered around the edge of the building. “Another down. Looks dead.”

Hunter used a hand signal and four members of the SWAT team converged next to them in seconds. They approached the body.

“Even without a forehead,” Hunter said, “this guy looks like the second man in the Chapman’s video. Why is he here and Gates and the other Russian back there?”

O’Brien knelt down for less than five seconds. Then he rose and motioned for the men to come to the partially opened wooden door. He whispered, “Blood splatter was blocked by something with a corner side, like a box. Maybe a briefcase. Whatever it was, it’s gone. So are the guys who did it. I think he met someone here. Could have been a payoff. We might find a lot of blood in there.”

O’Brien and the men moved stealth-like though the rooms and halls. They followed blood splatter on the floor to a room with an open door and cautiously entered. The smell of gunpowder, blood, and burnt electrical wire was in the air.

“Holy shit …,” mumbled one SWAT member.

“It was a fuckin’ slaughter,” said another.

They counted nine bodies. Hunter knelt by Borshnik and looked at the bullet hole in the center of his chest. “Looks like the auction is off,” Hunter said sarcastically. “He’s the oldest here … the son of the only Russian spy ever killed by execution in America. He carries out his own revenge and gets a bullet through the heart. Ironic-it’s not by us, but by a new breed of spies-Islamic jihad extremists.”

“The hate is the same,” O’Brien said, looking at Borshnik’s body. “They took Jason. Mohammed Sharif has him.”

“Looks like Sharif had the same idea we had. But he was faster.”

“That’s because he knew the location before we did,” O’Brien said. “And I’m betting the reason why is that dead man in the front lot, he sold out. O’Brien walked to a window facing the front entrance. He studied the area while the men checked the bodies for signs of life. Then O’Brien stepped across the room, trying to avoid pools of blood, and looked out a window facing the wide river. He watched as a Navy Blackhawk helicopter hovered near Pier 13. Hunter joined him at the window.

“We’ll get Jason alive,” Hunter said. “I’ll have the choppers fly the main roads.”

“What are you going to look for?”

“They don’t have a long head-start. We’ll watch for fast driving with an emphasis on trucks and vans. Probably crated the uranium in a truck or a cargo van and are on their way to someplace like the Port of Miami … or they may be near here, right under our noses at Jax Port.”

“Maybe,” said O’Brien. “But, what if they have no intention of exporting the stuff? Why head south when you can go north.”

“Where would they go from here?”

“The closest place to make an atomic bomb.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

The taxi driver with no face rose from the cab’s front seat, sat up, placed both hands on the wheel and slowly turned his head toward O’Brien. Greenish yellow blowflies fed on the blood from the eye cavities.

O’Brien was in the old warehouse looking out toward the river. He watched the black helicopters in the distance hover then sweep down above the surface. They looked like giant black prehistoric birds, predators ready to scoop prey out of the dark water.

He awoke from a deep, erratic sleep, sat straight up in a strange bed and stared at a clock on the nightstand: 3:57 a.m. He sat there for a minute, the sweat dripping through his chest hair, the images of the dead fading in the dark, the sound of a passing car outside the motel.

O’Brien sat on the edge of the bed for a few seconds trying to clear his head. Think. He got up, turned the light on and walked into the bathroom where he shook three aspirins from a bottle he’d bought earlier. He filled a glass with water and chased down the aspirins. O’Brien looked at himself in the mirror. Eyes red. Lips chapped. Hair matted. A four-day growth on his face.

He flashed back to his dream, to the Blackhawk helicopters flying over the river. “The river …,” he mumbled. “A perfect escape … if they had a boat.” O’Brien splashed water on his face, dressed, shoved his Glock under his belt and walked to his Jeep.

He stopped at pier 13, got out and turned on his flashlight. Pockets of mist drifted up from the river’s surface, like ghost couples entwined in a silent dance across a black marble floor. He heard the drone of a tanker moving upriver. He walked down to the edge of the dock, slowly panning the flashlight across the concrete for clues. O’Brien leaned over the edge, shined the light on the big rubber bumper guards protruding from the dock.

Blood.

Just above the water line, in the center of the cement joint. A spot the size of a dime. The tide was rising and O’Brien could tell by previous waterline marks, it wouldn’t be long before the blood was washed away. Was it Jason’s blood? Was one of Sharif’s men wounded? He looked at the last piece of physical evidence leading to the river. The escape was done in a boat. Why? He looked up at the river, the twirl of mist in the foreground, the silence of dark water moving toward the sea.

On the way back to the motel, O’Brien called Hunter and told him what he found and what he thought.

“Gimme a second,” Hunter said, his voice heavy with sleep. “Could have been fish blood for all we know. Maybe somebody had been fishing there earlier.”

“No. There are high-water marks on the bulkhead. Tide was probably going out when Mohammed hit Borshnik. Tide’s been rising all night. At high tide it’ll cover the bumper. I could see the blood was fresh. It dripped there today.”

“How far are you from the motel?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“I’ll start the calls now. Coast Guard and Navy are all over this place. Mohammed could have been in the Atlantic in a half hour from Pier 13. Depending on the speed of their boat, they may have headed south toward Miami or north. They have a big head start.”

“I don’t think Sharif plans to export something he’d kill to have imported into this country. Where is he going to get the stuff packed and made into a real bomb that will work? If we can figure that out, we might have a chance of stopping him.”

CHAPTER NINETY

It was early morning when the 45-foot Sea Ray turned portside from the Atlantic and slipped into Wassaw Sound east of Savannah. The pilot followed the channel markers. Small fishing boats and jet skiers buzzed across the wide bay.

Mohammed Sharif sipped a dark coffee. He had not slept in two days. He knew there would be no sleep until the work on the bomb was underway. That would be very soon. He watched as they passed Sister Island on the left and the opulent homes of the Wilmington Island Club on the right. An attractive blond woman in a tiny bikini stood at the end of a dock and applied sun screen. Mohammed stared at her, watched her rub sunscreen on her breasts, felt the movement in his loins and disgust in his heart.

The pilot looked at his gauges and said, “We will have to refuel in about an hour.”

“They will be waiting for us in a cemetery next to the river,” Mohammed said. “It is called Bonaventure Cemetery, and we will see the road next to the river. This road is Mulryne Way. We will load the truck. You will go on farther, perhaps three kilometers to dock in Savannah off East River Street. Leave the keys, walk away, check into a hotel and wait for instructions. You will fly the plane. You, Anwar, will be the man who releases the bomb on America.”

“It is my honor … my duty and destiny. Allah Akbar. ”

O’Brien pulled into a McDonalds restaurant parking lot. He turned on his laptop and found a signal.

“What are you doing?” Hunter asked.

“If they went south, assuming the boat even had twin diesel tanks, they’d probably be looking to refuel somewhere in the Fort Pierce area. If they went north, Savannah might be as far as they’d get. Now what would be-” O’Brien stopped in mid-thought, his eyes burning into the satellite image of Savannah.

“What is it?” Hunter asked.

“Is Dave Collins out of the hospital?”

“Don’t know.”

“Can you have a chopper waiting for us?”

“Yes, Sean. But I need to know why.”

“It’s a hunch, but I need to Skype in Dave to make it happen.” O’Brien made the Skype connection, glancing at his watch. Nick Cronus appeared on the screen and said, “Hey, buddy. You okay? Where the hell are you, Sean?”

“Where’s Dave? Is he okay, Nick?”

“For an old dude, he’s all right. Got his shoulder in a sling. Picked him up from the hospital last night and brought him back to his boat-refused to stay there overnight. Right now he’s lying down, maybe sleeping.”

“Get him, Nick. We have a hell of an emergency here.”

“Hold on.”

O’Brien pinched the bridge of his nose, his scalp tightening, head pounding. He looked over at Hunter and said, “If my hunch is right, we need to head north.”

“Sean,” said Dave on screen. “What’s the situation?”

O’Brien said, “I’m here with Eric Hunter, near Jacksonville. When you were talking about Remote Viewing, you mentioned a physicist. Believe you said he worked at the Savannah River Nuclear Site.”

“Yes, name’s Lee Toffler. Why?”

“You’d said he had a daughter who was just killed in a car accident.”

“Awful. From what I read she died in a car fire. Burned beyond recognition.”

“Did they check dental records?”

“Don’t know. Probably not if it was her car.”

“Was another car involved?”

“A second car? I remember the story … said she’d lost control and hit a tree.”

Eric Hunter looked at his watch and asked, “Sean, where the hell are you going with this?”

“Maybe to one of the most dangerous places in America.” He glanced at the computer screen. “Dave, when was the last time you saw Toffler?”

“Not since the ‘90s when we hired him as a consultant for the Remote Viewing.”

“Do you have his number?”

“Probably in my files. Toffler is the kind of guy that’s lived in the same house for thirty-five years. Drives the same car until the engine dies. Frugal and very smart.”

“Call him.”

Dave sipped his coffee. “Okay. But what am I going to ask him? ‘Hey, Lee, are you sure you buried your daughter. Hell of a conversation opener.”

“No, you won’t have to ask him that because by now he probably knows his daughter is alive and being held hostage.”

“What?” Dave asked.

“When you had mentioned Toffler to Nick and I and then said his daughter had just died, it was about the same time Sharif thought he’d have his hands on the HEU. Kidnap the renowned physicist’s daughter and you raise red flags. Fake her death, nobody remembers in a few weeks. Sharif probably called her father a day after the funeral, put the terrified daughter on the phone a second and then started making demands. Toffler keeps his mouth shut and does what the terrorists want.”

“In this case,” Hunter said, “you get him to take the HEU and make it go boom.”

“Jesus,” Nick said, taking a sip of black coffee.

“Nick,” said Dave, “hand me the Rolodex on the desk, next to the laptop.”

O’Brien said, “After you touch base, ask him who’s holding his daughter.”

Dave nodded. “I’ll put him on speaker. Jump in, Sean, wherever you want.”

In two rings, a fatigued voice answered, “Yes?”

“Lee, this is Dave Collins, CIA.”

“Oh … Dave. I can’t talk right now … ”

“Have your daughter’s kidnappers approached you?”

Silence. Then, “How’d you know she was kidnapped?”

“We didn’t for certain, Mr. Toffler,” O’Brien said.

“Who are you?”

“My name’s Sean O’Brien. Old friends with Dave. I’m helping the FBI and CIA find the people who took your daughter. Do you know where they are holding her?”

“I can’t risk my daughter’s life. They said they’d cut her head off if police-”

“We’re not police. We’re the people who can get your daughter back alive. But we can only do it with your cooperation.”

“I’m sorry.” The phone disconnected.

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

Lee Toffler drove slowly through the northwest Savannah neighborhood of 1960’s ranch-style homes. Toffler, with his wide forehead, graying hair and thick wrists, looked more like a retired football coach than a nuclear physicist. He stopped in front of 2973 Sycamore Drive, backed up, and pulled his twenty-year-old Land Rover into the drive next to a dark blue van. He knocked on the door and waited. A man with dark features answered. In perfect English he said, “Professor Toffler, we’ve been waiting for you.”

“Where’s my daughter?”

“She is downstairs. I believe you call it a basement. She is there with the rest of the things you said you needed. The spark gaps, oscillator scopes, casing, all the wiring, everything on your shopping list.”

The man opened the door, and Lee Toffler entered the home.

Across the street, Myrtle Birdsong peeked out of an opening in her drapes. She sipped a diet coke and watched the man enter the rented house. He’d parked his green car next to the blue van. Who were they? Burglars? Maybe terrorists like what they’ve been saying all morning on the TV news. Call the police. The phone rang. It was Alice, the sister with all the issues. She was going through a divorce, and Myrtle was the only one who really understood.

“Daddy!” Lisa Toffler sobbed when she saw her father come down the stairs. She was in a chair, hands bound behind her back. Jason Canfield, tied to a second chair, sat a few feet away from her.

Toffler ran to his daughter and wrapped his arms around her. Tears streamed down her face.

Sharif walked into the large room. “Enough!” he shouted. “There is important work to be done.” He gestured to a long wooden table, the U-235 canisters laid side-by-side, the wires, detonators and other materials stacked on one side.

Toffler stood, his eyes moving across the table. Sharif said, “It is all here, the items you said we must procure. It is very convenient being close to the largest nuclear plant in America. I was surprised at what money can buy.”

“Let me see the HEU,” Toffler said.

“Absolutely.”

Toffler carefully examined one canister. He said, “I’ll need to wear the protective gear. Everyone must leave this room.”

“How long will this task take you?” Sharif asked.

“If all is here, not too long.”

“Good, very good.”

“Then you said you will release my daughter.”

“I am a man of my word.”

“Who’s he?” asked Toffler, looking at Jason.

“This is Mr. Jason Canfield. He is going to make a video with us, a most exciting video for the world to watch on the Internet.”

O’Brien looked out the side window of the Blackhawk helicopter and saw at least two-dozen SWAT members and police officers waiting on the ground. He rode in the backseat with Hunter, the co-pilot and pilot were hovering the chopper about five-hundred feet over the Statesboro, Georgia, airport before setting down.

Hunter said, “We’ve got Toffler’s address, not that he’ll be there. He drives a 1990 olive green Land Rover. Wife passed away six years ago. Never remarried. He raised his only daughter through her teenage years. So somewhere out there Lee Toffler and his daughter are in a room with the most ruthless men on the planet.”

“The airport where we’re landing … is it the only one between here and Savannah?” O’Brien asked.

The pilot said, “Couple of small airstrips, mostly for crop dusters and a few people who hanger small planes in what is essentially farmland.”

O’Brien scanned the countryside. “Eric, see if your people can find out if anyone has rented a plane, probably a twin engine, in the last twenty-four hours. Also, check to see if someone has reserved one.”

“What if Sharif isn’t going to drop the bomb from a plane? What if the fucker, and his camel-breath followers, just strap the bomb in the front seat and drive a truck into the Jefferson Memorial?”

“It’s a hell of a lot easier to hit almost any target in America by air. From here D.C. is only two hours in a twin engine. They may not have Washington as a target. What’s the most densely populated, probably one of the least protected big cities in the nation, a city that’s a half hour away by air?”

“Atlanta.”

“Bingo. Whoever you call to put the F-16s on alert from Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, better start calling them right now.”

Mohammed Sharif stood Jason up against a wall in the living room of the house. One of his men pointed a light in Jason’s face and clipped a microphone to his blood-stained shirt. They placed the video camera on a flimsy tripod and nodded.

Sharif said, “Jason Canfield, before we turn the camera on, let me make one thing very clear to you. We do not have time to edit this. You get it right the first time.”

“People will know you forced me to say it.”

“Abdul, produce the knife for Mr. Canfield-the knife he has was used to remove six heads.” Abdul reached behind his back and retrieved a hunting knife with a serrated blade. “That,” said Sharif, “will be the knife we use to remove your head, and we will do it on video if you do not cooperate. The blade is sharp, but small. The victim can feel the steel and the four to five cuts it takes to sever the spinal cord. It is a slow death.” Sharif grinned, his eyes dancing. “Abdul told me after he removed the head of an infidel, he held it in his out-stretched arm, and the eyes of the severed head blinked for a few seconds. What do you imagine, Canfield, the dying brain was thinking?”

Jason said nothing, his eyes on the blade. Sharif said, “Turn on the camera.”

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

O’Brien and Hunter drove a rented Toyota 4-Runner from the airport. Plenty of room for the assault rifles. He was still carrying the Luger along with his Glock.

Hunter’s cell rang. “What do you have?” he asked. He listened, nodding his head. “Send back-up. No sirens.”

“What is it?”

“We got an address: 2973 Sycamore Drive. Turn left at the next light.” Hunter quickly entered the address in the GPS, then added, “A neighbor-lady across the street apparently saw five, I’m quoting here, ‘five bin Laden types’ get into a large blue cargo van and leave with something wrapped in a quilt. One of the men looked American-a young guy who was walking with a limp.”

“How far is Sycamore Drive?”

“GPS says twenty-five miles. When we get there, Sharif will be long gone.”

“We’ll start helicopter surveillance for a blue cargo van.”

A SWAT team surrounded the home on Sycamore Drive, a green Land Rover still in the driveway. O’Brien and Hunter, along with four FBI agents went through the front door. The men cleared each room.

O’Brien motioned to a smaller door behind a kitchen alcove. He slowly turned the handle, the smell of sulfur-gunfire and blood was at the top of the steps.

“Jesus Mary ….” a younger agent said.

“Oh, God,” whispered another.

Lisa Toffler had been shot through the forehead. Her father’s headless body was on the floor, the bloody head propped in the dead girl’s lap with a note stuck in the mouth. Hunter pulled it out and read, “‘America, your children carry the weight of your mistakes. Your doctrine was not written for the world … Mohammed Sharif.’”

The younger agent opened a door to the backyard. He vomited in the shrubbery.

Hunter’s cell rang. “Yes!” he barked, closing his eyes to try to hear over the agent’s heaving outside the door. “How far is that?” he asked. “Excellent! Give me choppers. Deploy the F-16s! Move!”

The agents turned toward Hunter. He said, “A small airfield outside of Augusta. Sort of an executive airport. A mechanic was closing when he saw a blue van pull up and men get out. Didn’t think much about it until he saw that one of the men had his hands tied behind his back. The mechanic spotted him when the other guys left the rear doors open after they off-loaded something in a blanket.”

“Let’s roll!” O’Brien said, taking two steps each up the stairs. “Where is the mechanic now?” he asked. “Sheriff’s dispatch has been trying his cell. No answer.”

“Not good,” O’Brien said. “Not good at all.”

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

One of Sharif’s men measured the bomb under the quilt and then measured the cargo area of the plane. “We’ll have to remove the two back seats,” he said.

Sharif looked at his watch. “Hurry!” he shouted. “The Americans might be close. He looked at Jason in the van. “We will videotape you getting on the aircraft, taking your last ride as you and Waahid bomb the city of Atlanta. I know the history during your Civil War, which I believe has never ended. General Sherman marched through Atlanta, almost burned it to the ground. We will do what the general failed to do. I hear Atlanta is the home of Coca Cola … the real thing, no?”

“Might as well kill me now,” Jason said. “No way in hell I’m going to drop a nuclear bomb on an American city.”

“You and Waahid will not ‘drop’ the bomb. You will crash the aircraft into the heart of the city. You are part of the bomb! For Waahid, it will be the threshold to paradise. Masalaama. For you, and your narrow-view religion, it is the end.”

O’Brien drove as he and Hunter listened to the FBI analyst on the speakerphone. She said, “The airport is between Highway 17 and 37 in southern Madison County. Have a satellite aerial. We count six people. Not known if all are hostiles. They are outside a building. There are five buildings, two large enough to be hangers. Hostiles are in front of the second large building to the right of the entrance drive. Some may be in the building. One person is in a prone position. Assumed dead. You can approach from the service road and drive up to the rear of the hangers to minimize the risk of a visual. There are two large trees that might offer cover. ”

“Thanks, Patti,” Hunter said. “Give me an open channel to Mark and the team.”

“Stand by.”

O’Brien said, “We need to surround these guys and avoid crossfire.”

“Understand,” Hunter said.

“Channel is open,” said the analyst.

“All units,” Hunter said, “follow us through a spur road leading to the rear of the airport. From there we’ll have teams of two fan-out and cover the perimeter best we can. Hostiles are in front of the second hanger to the right. Some could be in the building. The goal is to keep the twin-engine Beechcraft from taking off.”

“Roger,” said a voice on the speakerphone.

Sharif’s men entered a hangar and began searching for tools. “This should work,” said one man lifting a red toolbox off a bench. We can have the rear seats out in a few minutes. Come, Samir, you are good with your hands.”

“Abdul, go to the aircraft. Stand guard.” Sharif punched numbers on his satellite phone, waited for the connection as he stood in the wide hangar door and watched the men unbolt the rear seats. In Arabic he said, “The hour is here. We will have the plane in the air within five minutes. The great American city of Atlanta will go down in a ball of heat … yes … Allah has led us here … Allah akbar, hamdulillah!”

O’Brien drove down the dirt spur road, careful not to stir dust. Three SUVs loaded with federal agents followed. They parked beneath two large live oaks about one hundred feet from the rear of the hangars.

O’Brien said, “Remember, they’re holding a hostage. You all have the description of Jason Canfield. He needs to walk out of here. His father died on the bombing of the USS Cole. This one is for Jason’s dad! Let’s make sure his son lives.”

Both rear seats were on the tarmac to the left of the Beechcraft. The men removed the quilt from the bomb and walked it over to the open doors on the plane. The bomb was like a fat torpedo. More than four feet in length. Two feet thick. Ugly gray, a dark tapered point. Twin fins on the tail. It took five men to lift it into the plane.

One man held a video camera recording everything. Three others stood guard holding AK-47 assault rifles. Sharif and Rashid Aahmed were at the hangar door. Sharif just ended a phone call while Rashid scanned the area for intruders. “It is time,” Sharif said, walking toward the plane. “Bring Canfield.”

In front of the plane, Waahid-Barak dropped to his knees, body facing east and lowered his forehead to the ground. When he stood, Sharif kissed both of his cheeks and said, “You will be the martyr all our children’s children will respect. You are mujaddid. You were chosen by Allah. You will have a special place in paradise. Salaam alaikum.”

Waahid bowed his head. The men watched as he climbed in the pilot seat.

Two men lifted Jason who screamed, “Shoot me now assholes! I’m not going on your bombing mission!”

One man hit Jason in the jaw with the butt of his pistol. Jason dropped to his knees. The man with the video camera zoomed in closer on Jason’s face. Sharif shouted, “Jason Canfield! The choice is yours. Renounce the atrocities of your government and you live. If you do not, you will have a front row seat to the greatest explosion ever to happen on American soil.”

Jason was silent.

“Renounce the hypocrisy of the Unites States … the land of the free!”

“Fuck you!” Jason yelled.

Sharif kicked Jason in the face, the blow knocking him back on the runway. “Load the infidel into the aircraft!” shouted Sharif. The men loaded him in the front seat, hands bound behind his back.

They slammed the door as Hunter whispered in his radio, “Let’s take ‘em!”

“Hands up!” Shouted an FBI agent as they fanned out from the building.

“Get down! Down! Down! Faces on the Ground!” ordered another.

“Depart!” shouted Sharif, waving his arms. The pilot started the plane amidst Sharif’s men firing rounds from their AK-47s. They ran for cover behind the van and planes.

O’Brien heard a bullet wiz above his left ear as Sharif sprinted to the hangar.

“Jason’s in the plane!” Hunter shouted. “Shoot the tires!”

The automatic rounds from Sharif’s men ripped through the corrugated aluminum hangars. The agents returned fire, killing two men in seconds.

O’Brien turned, running full bore to the parked SUV. He grabbed a 30.06 scoped rifle and bolted toward the old flight tower. He keyed his mic. “Cover me! I’m climbing the ladder to the tower. I’m going to try to take out the pilot before he gets in the air!”

The agents released a barrage of bullets at the two remaining terrorists. One saw O’Brien climbing the tower and rose to get off a shot. Hunter fired a round and the man’s head exploded. The last man hiding behind the van threw out his rifle and shouted, “I surrender!”

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

The Beechcraft was at the end of the tarmac, engines revving, the pilot moving down the runway. O’Brien stood on the platform fifty feet above the ground. He used the railing to steady his rifle and followed the small, twin engine plane through the scope. The sun was setting directly behind it, pushing light through the window. In the profile, he could see Jason looking out the window, a horrific expression, a plea on his young face.

O’Brien would have to shoot through Jason’s window to hit the pilot. O’Brien stood, waving his arms, gesturing for Jason to duck down.

Jason saw the man on the tower in the last rays of sunlight, waving his arms, then signaling in a squatting-like motion. “Sean ….” whispered Jason, under the drone of the engines. He leaned down, touching his forehead to his knees.

“You sick? Sit up!” ordered the pilot.

O’Brien looked through the scope as the plane moved at least forty miles an hour, its wheels bouncing off the ground.

One shot.

One second to take it.

Hunter stared up from the ground. “Come on O’Brien,” he whispered. The rest of the agents watched, each man holding his breath as O’Brien aimed.

O’Brien exhaled slowly. He stopped breathing. He had the pilot’s profile dead center.

NOW.

He squeezed the trigger. The window above Jason head exploded. The bullet struck the pilot in the temple. He slumped back in his seat, the left side of his head blown off.

Jason used his feet to maneuver the controls on the plane’s floorboard and managed to use one knee to back off on the throttle. The plane, swerving and rocking, taxied to a stop ten feet from entering the highway.

O’Brien and Hunter jumped in their SUV and drove to the end of the runway. O’Brien opened Jason’s door and helped him out. Hunter checked the pilot. “Dead! That shot might make some kind of world record.”

Jason tried to stand, knees wobbling, his voice coming in an emotional burst. He leaned back against the plane. Through streaming tears he said, “Sean, they were gonna kill millions of people … millions.”

O’Brien hugged Jason as three F-16s roared overhead. “Stay here, Jason!”

“Where are you going?”

“This isn’t over.” To Hunter, he said, “Cover me. Have the men cover the exits from the hangar. Mohammed may be hiding in there. O’Brien sprinted around a half dozen idle planes. He darted behind a dumpster, zigzagging toward an open door to the hangar. He ran past a classic Triumph motorcycle parked next to the door, the ignition keys winking in a ray of sunlight.

O’Brien stepped over a man’s body lying just inside the door. He was dressed in blue coveralls. Shot in the back of the head. The mechanic. Mid fifties. Probably his motorcycle out front. O’Brien tried to control his breathing as he reached for the door handle. He opened it just enough to see inside the hangar. A plane and a Learjet were inside. A bumblebee hovered over a doughnut on a paper plate beside a coffee stand. A sparrow flew between the rafters, the movement just enough to break the silence.

The jet moved. Slightly. Someone inside. O’Brien burst through the door and rolled up behind the jet. “Come out Mohammed! It’s over!”

Three shots were fired from an opening where the jet’s door was ajar. One bullet hit the propeller a few feet from O’Brien’s face. The second nicked his left shoulder. In the earpiece, O’Brien heard Hunter. “Sean, what’s the status in there?”

The jet’s engines started, the whine deafening in the hangar. The Learjet began taxing, easily pushing through a flimsy bay door.

Eric Hunter and the men scattered off the runway as the Learjet plowed through the hangar door. One man aimed toward the front section of the jet. “Hold fire!” Hunter ordered. “We don’t know if O’Brien’s in there.”

As the Learjet taxied farther down the tarmac, O’Brien straddled the motorcycle, bringing the engine to life. He roared through the gears, quickly gaining on the jet.

Mohammed looked out the pilot’s window. A man was approaching the jet on a motorcycle. He laughed. “Sean O’Brien. You are a boy on a toy.” Mohammed accelerated faster, the jet engines screaming. He watched O’Brien steer with one hand, blood staining his shirt, while pulling a pistol from his belt. “And now you are a boy with a toy gun. We shall meet again, infidel.”

The jet was seconds away from becoming airborne. The motorcycle ten feet from the tip of the left wing on the pilot’s side of the jet.

“Come on, Sean …,” Jason said. “Don’t miss.”

O’Brien was approaching eighty miles an hour. As the jet was lifting off, O’Brien aimed the Luger and fired. The single bullet ripped through the metal surrounding the cockpit burying deep into Mohammed’s chest. Mohammed glanced out the window in horror, fighting to control the jet, the world going dark all around him.

One of the wings clipped the runway causing the jet to flip end-over-end like a metal garbage can caught in a hurricane gust. It exploded in a ball of orange flames. O’Brien could feel the heat on his face, the Learjet disintegrating before his eyes, a plume of black smoke rising high like an oil well fire. O’Brien dropped the Luger and hit the brakes. The motorcycle was moving too fast, right toward the wall of flames. O’Brien laid the motorcycle down, sparks flying as metal tore into the asphalt runway, the motorcycle coming to a stop about fifty feet from the inferno.

“Call the paramedics!” shouted Hunter. “O’Brien’s got to be in bad shape. Call the fire department! Looks like all hell just popped out of the earth.” The men jumped into their vehicles and raced toward the end of the runway.

O’Brien tried to stand, his legs unsteady, heart slamming, blood seeping from the wound on his shoulder, the heat like a blast furnace off his skin. He limped backward, his right ankle broken, ribs shattered. He bent down painfully and picked up the Luger in his bloodied right hand. He turned back to see the jet burn, the acrid smell of melting rubber, fuel, human skin, and black smoke billowing toward the perfect blue sky.

“A black bullet to paradise …,” O’Brien said, his voice a whisper beneath the roar of fire, popping glass and cooking metal.

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

The following week a memorial was held for Billy Lawson at his gravesite. Two gray squirrels chased each other around a live oak as the people arrived in the cemetery. Soon, the two rows of folding chairs were filled. Glenda Lawson and Abby sat in the center of the first row. A dozen members of the U.S. Army, including the Secretary of Defense, were in attendance.

O’Brien, foot in a cast, bruised and sore, stood under an oak tree and watched the service. Abby reached for her grandmother’s hand, the dapple sunlight filtering through the live oaks and Spanish moss. A soft wind carried the scent of honeysuckles and oak. A dark blue butterfly alighted on the mound of fresh earth atop Billy’s grave.

Secretary of Defense Lewis Whitney and General William Wilson stood, approached the color guard where PFC John Lewis handed General Wilson a folded American flag. Secretary Whitney and the General stepped in front of Glenda and Abby. General Wilson said, “Mrs. Lawson, this flag is presented to you on behalf of a grateful nation and the United States Army as a token of appreciation for your husband, William Lawson’s, honorable and faithful service to the United States of America. Private First Class, William Lawson, died a war hero.”

Secretary of Defense Whitney said, “Mrs. Lawson, and Abby Lawson … on behalf of the President and the United States’ Congress, it is our honor to bestow a posthumous symbol of our appreciation, the Congressional Medal of Honor, for William James Lawson who displayed immeasurable heroism in the last stages of World War II. Our nation owes him a debt and our gratitude.”

Glenda Lawson and Abby stood, Abby holding her grandmother’s arm. Tears welling in Abby’s eyes, spilling down her cheeks. They accepted the flag and the medal.

“Thank you,” Glenda said. She and Abby stepped to the grave. Glenda gently set the medal on top of Billy’s headstone. The two women held hands. Their thoughts silent, their bond forever. In the distance a cardinal sang as Glenda Lawson told her dead husband how much he was loved.

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX

O’Brien walked with Max down to his dock on the St. Johns River. The sun was warm and a dragonfly hovered just above the dark water. A young alligator crawled on a cypress knee. It had been almost a month since the funerals for Billy Lawson, the FBI agents and Lauren Miles all were held. Besides Billy and Lauren’s, O’ Brien couldn’t bring himself to attend any of the other funerals. There were too many. He’d seen enough suffering and pain. He knew that Jason Canfield would suffer post-trauma for years, maybe the rest of his life. He would spend time with the kid and do what he could to help him.

Dave Collins had healed well, a metal screw forever in his right shoulder, a dull pain when he lifted something. Dave rationalized it would give him a legitimate excuse to enjoy a few more dry martinis.

Eric Hunter had testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Hunter’s identity long since compromised. The Department of Energy had taken the bomb to the Savannah River Nuclear facility and dismantled it. Officials said that physicist Lee Toffler had wired the bomb in a way that would have kept it from detonating.

O’Brien thought about that as he looked toward the front of his home and watched a blue Chevy slow down as the driver approached his driveway. The car turned onto the dirt drive, the sound of popping acorns and cracking oyster shells carrying down to the river.

Max barked and trotted up the dock a few feet. O’Brien stood as the woman walked around the side of his house and down his sloping yard to the dock.

Maggie Canfield wore a wide-brim hat with a yellow ribbon on it, beige shorts, and a white blouse. A gold necklace winked in the golden light. She flashed a smile and carried a wicker picnic basket. O’Brien could tell she looked rested. Max bolted to the front of the dock to greet her.

“Hi, Max,” Maggie said, bending down to pet her. Max sniffed the picnic basket and ran in a tight circle. “What a sweet welcome!”

“She knows you are bearing gifts that she can eat,” O’Brien said.

“This is so beautiful. I love your old home and this property. The river is like a painting. It’s everything you said it was. Am I on time?”

“Perfect timing. The sun makes long, luxurious sunsets here.”

Maggie set the basket on a bench and stood next to O’Brien. He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s good to see you, Maggie.”

“Thank you for inviting me out here. And, I’m amazed I found it without my GPS. I gave it to Jason.”

“How is he?”

“He still has trouble sleeping at night. But he’s looking forward to going back to college. I really appreciated you coming to see him the other day. You’re his hero, you know, you and his dad. Oh, and Wes, too,” Maggie laughed and added, “I guess you know him as Eric.”

“Jason’s a good kid.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving.”

“Good. We can sit right here on the bench, a great spot for a picnic. I made tiny doggie bites of turkey for Max that I’ve put in a plastic bowl.”

“She’ll love you for life.”

Maggie smiled as she unwrapped a sandwich for O’Brien and took the plastic top off the bowl for Max, setting it on the dock. She said, “I have potato salad, two kinds of sandwiches, havarti cheese, some fruit and a bottle of chardonnay that’s still cold, and brownies. All are homemade, except the wine, of course. Would you do the honors?” She handed O’Brien the wine bottle and a corkscrew. He removed the cork and poured wine into two glasses that Maggie took out of the basket.

“Let’s toast to life and a beautiful sunset,” Maggie said, raising her glass to O’Brien. They touched glasses and began eating. Max finished her food and waited patiently for a tidbit more to make its way to the weathered dock.

“I can see how you love this place,” Maggie said, her eyes moving from the fiery clouds to the deep cherry red reflecting off the surface of the river. “It’s so quiet, so beautiful, and even primordial. Look! There’s an eagle.” A bald eagle dropped out of the sky and snatched a fish from the burgundy surface. The bird flapped its powerful wings and flew to the top of a dead cypress tree to eat.

O’Brien saw the sunset in Maggie’s caramel eyes, her face full of life and awe as she watched the colors change across the sky and water. She smiled with her eyes. That’s what he remembered most about the times they’d spent together long ago. It was her passion and appreciation for the simple, natural things in life. And this was what he had loved so much about his wife, Sherri, before her death. O’Brien glanced at the sunset and back at Maggie. He thought her profile was as beautiful today as it was the time he first saw it more than twenty years ago. Her chestnut hair was thick and soft and seemed to trap the golden light. She turned and met his eyes. “Maggie … I don’t know if ….”

“Shhh, Sean. We don’t need to say anything right now. Let’s give nature a chance to do the talking. No words can describe this beauty.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

After dinner, Maggie closed the picnic basket, and O’Brien refilled the glasses. Max jumped up on the bench and lay down next to O’Brien while the sun melted into molten gold and merlot colors across the surface of the river. The sky was painted in wide brushstrokes of scarlet and deep purple. A white pelican sailed across the river.

Maggie said, “I know it’s been more than twenty years, but I’m comfortable here with you. It’s as if time has been some invisible milepost, a vapor that’s gone out of a bottle, and here we are today. I hope that didn’t sound presumptuous. If it did, I apologize.”

“No reason for you to apologize.”

Maggie laughed. “Sean, do you remember that time we first walked on the beach? You reached out and held my hand. It caught me by surprise for a moment, and then it felt very much a part of that moment in time.”

“I remember.”

“Would you hold my hand again? Maybe for old times’ sake, I’d like to remember this beautiful moment in time, too.”

O’Brien reached over and held Maggie’s hand. They sat there in silence, the three of them. A breeze blew up river causing the surface to ripple in a tapestry of indigo and mauve. Max rested her chin on O’Brien’s thigh, the moving colors of sky and water dancing in her half closed eyes.

Across the river, O’Brien heard a nightingale begin to sing, its first song sweet as the smell of honeysuckles in the evening air.

Content

Tom Lowe
The Black Bullet

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

CHAPTER SIXTY

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

CHAPTER SEVENTY

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

CHAPTER EIGHTY

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

CHAPTER NINETY

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

CHAPTER NINETY-THREE

CHAPTER NINETY-FOUR

CHAPTER NINETY-FIVE

CHAPTER NINETY-SIX