The Black Bullet so-1 Read online

  “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.