Tonight, they’d moored the boat in a small cove, ringed with mangroves. The wind was out of the east, so Reel Thing had her stern toward the small opening to the channel. Not that there was anything to see, but it gave them a view of the heat lightning blooming on the horizon.
“Know what heat lightnin’ is, Bobby?” Red asked.
“Yeah. Lightnin’ that comes from heat.”
“No, it ain’t. It’s ordinary lightnin’ comes from so far away, you can’t see nothin’ but the reflection of it. Ain’t no such thing as heat lightnin’.”
“Why the hell d’you bring it up then?”
“Just tryin’ to educate your dumb ass, is all.”
“I ain’t so dumb.”
“Only guy I ever knew saw a family reunion as a chance to meet girls.”
“You sayin’ it ain’t?”
“Bobby, we had a class of five hundred and thirty-seven seniors graduate.”
“Yeah?”
“You did not graduate in the top five hundred and thirty-six.”
“And your point is? Grades don’t mean nothin’ in my book. Look at us. We’re doing pretty damn good, I’d say. Couple of dumbass crackers sitting on top of the whole damn world. Look at that ring. What’s it say?”
“NCAA National Champions.”
“Bet your ass.”
Earlier that afternoon, Bobby and Red had given up on marlin fishing and found a little cove to put up for the night. At sunset they’d sat out on deck, drinking beer and casting into the mangroves. Didn’t hook a snook or any other kind of damn fish for an hour or so and gave up when it got too dark to see.
They had two big sirloins sitting out on the counter down in the galley but they’d pretty much forgotten about them. They’d wolfed down some boiled shrimp earlier. Good shrimp, too, from the Publix supermarket down the street from the Bahia Mar Marina in Lauderdale.
Red and Bobby had been down here scouring the Exumas and Bahamas for fish for about ten days. Red had been wearing the same T-shirt every day. It said, “My Drinking Crew Has a Fishing Problem.”
That sentiment pretty much summed up the entire voyage. They hadn’t caught a hell of a lot of marlin, but then again, as Red had often pointed out, they hadn’t caught a hell of a lot of hell from their wives either.
Red, who was sitting in the fighting chair on the stern, took a big swig of his Bud and said, “Bobby, lemme ask you another goddamn question. How many fish we catch this week? Total.”
“Three,” Bobby said. “Maybe.”
“And how many beers you reckon we’ve had all week?”
“Hundreds. Maybe a hundred and fifty.”
“So, let’s go with a hundred and fifty. Now let me ask you another question. How many times does three go into a hundred and fifty?”
“Shit, I dunno. What do you think I am? A human calculator?” Bobby burped deeply and tossed his empty over his shoulder.
“Hell, Bobby, it ain’t like I’m asking you to divide goddamn Roman numerals! It ain’t rocket surgery! It’s simple damn arithmetic. You’re a car salesman. You ought to be able to do the calculation. Three goes into one-fifty, lemme see now, fifty times.”
“Sounds about right.”
“My point is, we’ve achieved about fifty-to-one beer-to-fish ratio. And I think that’s pretty goddamn good, considering.”
“Considering what?”
“Considering the fact that I like Budweiser a hell of a lot better than I like fish. I’m going to tell you a secret I’ve never told anybody else. I can’t stand the taste of fish. Hate it. You ever tell my wife, Kathy, that, I’ll whup your sorry ass.”
“Well, that’s good, Red, that you don’t like ’em,” Bobby said. “ ’Cause if them damn helicopters and search-and-rescue boats are back here in the morning, your chances of catching any marlin’ll be about the same as they were today. Shitty.”
“I was monitoring channel sixteen earlier, up on the flybridge. I think they gave up on whoever or whatever was missing out there. We should be all right for tomorrow.”
“Maybe.”
“I will eat a tuna fish sandwich,” Red allowed after a long silence. “Long as it’s got a lot of mayo. Mayo I can eat out of the jar.”
“Hell, I’ve seen you do it.”
“How many times America save France’s ass, Bobby?”
“Least twice. And what’d they ever do for us?”
“That’s my point. The frogs invented mayo. In my book that just about evens things up.”
“Good point.”
“Hell, Bobby, I’d eat a mud sandwich, you put enough mayo on it. Hey. You hungry?”
“Could be. You want, I’ll go put that cow meat on the griddle?”
“I could eat—damn, it’s late—what the hell time is it?”
“Gotta be getting close to midnight,” Bobby said. “You want yours rare or—holy goddamn Christ! Red, what the hell is that?”
“Hell is what?”
“Look out there in the channel! Off to starboard. See it? Looks like the whole damn ocean is exploding!”
Red leapt out of his fishing chair and ran to the stern rail. Bobby was right. Something was going on out there. “Sonofabitch! Hand me them damn binocs, Bobby! Hanging right there by the tuna tower ladder.”
Red put the binocs to his eyes and couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The sea was exploding. About a thousand yards off the Reel Thing’s stern, out in the middle of the dark deep channel.
“Shitfire, Red! Lemme see.”
He handed Bobby the binoculars.
“Jesus,” Bobby said. “What is it, Red?”
“Whale? How the hell do I know? What am I, a goddamn oceanographer?”
A huge mound of boiling white water was growing in the midst of the inky waves of the channel. It became a mushroom shape, rising and growing, and then the roiling sea did explode and a massive sharp-edged black snout emerged, surging majestically into the midnight sky at a forty-five-degree angle. Black and white seawater was pouring off her sleek dark sides in sheets.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Bobby,” Red said, passing him the binocs just as the strangely shaped hull finally broke the surface.
“A goddamn living breathing submarine!” Bobby said.
Red looked at it, shaking his head in wonder.
“You ever seen a submarine look like that, Bobby?”
“I ain’t never seen a goddamn thing looked like that. Sweet Jesus. Looks more like a UFO than a submarine.”
The thing was still rising at an impossible angle. Then the triangular-shaped bow came crashing down into the boiling sea and the bizarre craft began a slow turn toward one of the many islands on either side of the channel.
Red couldn’t believe his eyes. The hull was in the shape of a giant delta wing and what looked like some kind of weird conning tower was now rising from the apex of the two hulls. The sub was literally as broad abeam as an aircraft carrier.
“That’s the biggest, craziest-looking damn submarine I’ve ever seen,” Red said. “Hell, it looks like one of them stealth bombers and it’s as big as a goddamn battleship!”
“It ain’t natural-lookin’, Red,” Bobby said, staring at it. “Something spooky about it. Like it’s from goddamn Mars or something.”
“Shitfire. Aliens in submarines,” Red said. “What’s next?”
“Yeah. You always wondering ’bout flying saucers. Well, maybe here’s your goddamn answer!”
Water broke over the huge sub’s bow in great white torrents, and, with the binocs, Red and Bobby could make out the silhouettes of three small figures appear atop the now fully exposed conning tower. Someone raised a fluttering flag to the top of a tall post capped by a red light.
A powerful searchlight on the sub’s portside was switched on and swept the sea immediately around the sub. Just when the broad white beam was about to reach the opening to the little cove where Reel Thing was moored, it stopped and started back the other way. Deep in the cove, they would be pretty hard to see anyway.