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?”