Reel Thing, a brand-new fifty-foot Viking sport-fishing boat, was swinging on her anchor in the dark of a small cove. It was a hot moonless night, and only the lights of a few dim stars were visible. The cabin lights were all off below and above decks, and the sounds of the Allman Brothers came softly from speakers mounted throughout the boat.
The owner, Red Wallace, and his best fishing buddy, Bobby Fesmire, were sitting in the stern drinking Budweiser in the dark. Red was the biggest Ford dealer in South Florida. Bobby was his sales manager. Red and Bobby went way back. They’d gone to Florida at Gainesville together, pledged Kappa Alpha together, and played on the national championship Gator football team together. Both of them still wore their big gold NCAA rings with all the diamonds on their pinky fingers.
They took this little fishing trip to the Exumas as often as they could, which was once every two or three months. Sometimes they took clients so they could write it off, most often they’d bag the clients so it was just the two of them.
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 Things 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.
“Look at the flag. It ain’t Russian, is it, Red?” Bobby asked. “I mean, it is one of ours, right?”
Red had the binocs trained on the conning tower.
“Naw, it ain’t Russian,” Red said, studying the flag. “Then again, it ain’t American either.”
“Well, what then? Mars?”
“I seen that flag around here before. I just don’t exactly remember which one it is. Jamaica?”
Bobby spewed beer all over the deck, he was laughing so hard. “Jamaica? Jamaica! They ain’t got any damn submarines in Jamaica, Red.”
“Well, you’re so smart, go down in the cabin and bring me up that atlas. We’ll look her up. Use a flashlight. And turn off that damn stereo, too. Maybe we’re not supposed to be seeing this.”
Bobby went below to get the book and Red stood staring at the sub, transfixed by it. He knew subs were down here in the Caribbean; hell, they were everywhere. But he’d never dreamed of eyeballing one up so close. Especially such an otherworldly machine.
The sub’s searchlight flashed three times, two short and then one long. Then it was extinguished. Some kind of signal? Had to be.
In the last long flash of the searchlight, he’d seen three people come out of the woods on one of the little islands, just to the west. They were dragging a big inflatable across the beach, with an outboard on the back. Red saw them put it in the water. Then he heard the engine sputter and start, and then the raft was moving at high speed toward the submarine.
Drug deal. Goddamn drug deal. Colombians, probably. Shit, he should get on the radio and call the Coast Guard. It was a good thing that searchlight hadn’t spotted them. But what if it was some kind of naval exercises thing? Top secret experimental shit. A joint U.S. war games thing with some allied country. Hell, where was Bobby with that atlas?
“It’s Cuban,” Bobby said, coming out of the dark cabin. He had the book in his hand. “I looked it up.”
“Cuban?” Red said. “Cubans ain’t got any goddamn submarines.”
“Yeah, well they do now. Look on page sixty-two,” Bobby said, handing Red the book and the flashlight. Before Red could make a move, Bobby started climbing like a drunken monkey up the ladder of the tuna tower.
“Bobby, goddamn you! What the hell you doin’? Come on back down here!”
Bobby, upon reaching the top of the tower and laughing like a madman, turned on the powerful spotlight and aimed it right at the submarine’s conning tower.
“Jesus Christ, Bobby! They’ll see us!”
“See the flag?” Bobby shouted down. “Now turn to page sixty-two and look at the flag. Then tell me it ain’t Cuban!”
Suddenly, the sub’s searchlight flashed on again. This time it didn’t stop short of the Reel Thing.
Red put his hand up to his eyes. The light was blinding. He didn’t know what the hell was going on but he did know one thing. He was getting his brand-new goddamn fifty-footer the hell out of there. Colombians and Cubans didn’t much care for Americans and vice versa. He had a twelve-gauge Remington above his bunk, but the rusty old pump action wouldn’t do much against a goddamn giant submarine.
He ran inside the darkened cabin and cranked up the twin five-hundred-horsepower Cummins diesels. Then he got on the radio to Bobby up on the tower.
“Bobby, now you listen to me. I don’t know exactly what’s going on, but something tells me we ought to skedaddle on out of here on the double. You get your ass down on the bow and get that anchor aboard. Right now. You hear me?”
In five minutes, Bobby had hauled the anchor aboard. Red went back on the stern and looked for the sub, but they’d turned the searchlight out and all he could see was blackness. Shit. Were they just waiting for him to come out?
Back at the wheel, he flipped on the flashlight and looked at his chart. He’d keep all his running and navigation lights off, run out of the cove fast as he could, put her hard over to port, and head for open sea. Full throttle. He wanted as much water between him and that damn sub as he could get.
Reel Thing was capable of a top speed of thirty-five knots. Once safely outside the cove, Red leaned hard on the throttles and headed for the wide open spaces.
Man, what an adventure, he thought, popping a Bud. He turned on his radar, fishfinder, and GPS and was comforted by the green dials lighting up and showing his position and speed. He looked for a blip of the sub on the radar screen. Nothing.
He considered calling the Coast Guard on sixteen, then thought better of it. It was, after all, none of his damn business. He just wanted to get back to Lauderdale and sell a few more goddamn Explorers. Now that most folks had forgotten about that goddamn tire fiasco, he was selling cars again.
Reel Thing was up on a plane, throwing masses of white water to either side of her bow. After a few minutes of high speed and cold beer, Red started to calm down. He throttled back a little. The engines were brand-new and he knew he shouldn’t be running them at such high RPMs. Hadn’t seen the sub on the radar anyway. Lost the sucker.
Then he had another thought, not as comforting. Hadn’t seen it on the radar because it had submerged.
“Whoo-ee,” Bobby said, lurching into the cabin, spilling beer on the carpet. “That was something.”
“Why the hell’d you turn that light on, Bobby? Goddamn. All we had to do was sit there and mind our own damn business.”
“I wanted to show you that Cuban flag, amigo. That’s all. What the hell’s wrong with you? Big old sub scare your ass?”
“Hell no.”
“Then what’d you run away for then?”
“Bobby. Do yourself a favor. Shut the fuck up.”
“Uh-oh. He’s mad. Well, guess what. I’m going back up top that tuna tower, put on some Waylon, and have a couple of cold beers. So I won’t be in your goddamn way, oh mighty Captain … Kangaroo.”
Bobby pulled a six-pack out of the fridge and slammed the cabin door shut behind him.
Red settled back in his captain’s chair, eased the throttles until they were at cruising speed, and picked up the sat phone. It was only around midnight. Maybe Kath would still be awake and they could have a little chat. He’d tell her he was all fished out and headed home. Tell her about the amazing encounter with the submarine.
He started to punch in his home number.
“Uh, Red?” he heard Bobby say over the speaker.
“What the hell you want now?” But he didn’t like the sound of Bobby’s voice as he finished dialing up his number on the sat phone.
Kath picked up on the first ring. Her voice was sleepy. He’d woken her up.
“Hey, Red, you might want to—”
“Hold on, Bobby, I’m talking to my damn wife! Hey, babe, sorry to wake you. How you doing?”
“You might want to come on up here, little buddy.” Bobby’s voice on the speaker.
“Sleepy,” Kath said. “It’s almost two in the morning, Red.”
“Red? You coming?”
“Sorry, hon, my watch must have stopped. Hold on. I won’t be a sec,” he said into the phone.
Then, into the mike, he said, “Come up there? Goddammit, Bobby! Why the hell would I do that?”
“Something weird going on out here. I don’t know what it is. Off our port beam. Long white thing in the water. Like a trail. Headed in our direction. Looks like it’s coming right at us.”
Red was just sober enough to understand this instantly.
“Honey, something crazy’s going on,” he said to his wife. “Lemme check it out. Hold on.”
He dropped the phone and ran to the portside window. A trail of white, maybe a hundred yards away. He had time enough to say just one word.
“Shit.”
The Soviet Mark III torpedo was traveling at a depth of thirteen feet. It was running at over sixty miles an hour and leaving a huge white wake. The nose of the torpedo was packed with enough explosive to level a city block.
It took only seconds for the torpedo to reach its target. It hit the Reel Thing dead amidships.
Red, Bobby, and the Reel Thing vanished. They had been atomized.
In Fort Lauderdale, Red’s wife hung up the phone, having heard a fragment of loud noise and then silence. She shook her head, thinking of how much fun Red and Bobby had on these little getaways. Then she rolled over and went back to sleep.
The fire caused by the explosion was climbing into the blackness of the night sky. It was visible for four miles.
Less than a mile away, a man with his eyes glued to the periscope lens of the Josй Martн witnessed the destruction with grim satisfaction.
Commander Nikita Zukov of the Josй Martн removed his eyes from the rubber eyepiece of the periscope and allowed a wry smile to cross his face.
A fishing boat. He’d just sunk a stupid fishing boat.
He shook his head and flipped up the handles on either side of the periscope. There was a hiss of hydraulics as the tube slid into the deck. Then he turned to face his new crew of would-be submarine officers.
“Direct hit,” he said nonchalantly in Spanish. “Target destroyed.”
The Cuban officers standing around him in the dim red glow of the sub’s control room burst into applause. They brought the scope back up and each took a turn at the eyepiece, watching the orange sky lit by fiery debris falling into the black sea. They were laughing, shouting “bravo,” and clapping each other on the back.
Zukov stood back and watched them in disbelief. The former cold warrior could not decide if he was amused or humiliated by this scene and what had just precipitated it.
His first kill. After a brilliant twenty-year career. His first kill was a fifty-foot sport-fishing boat festooned with outriggers and fishing rods, instead of cruise missiles and eight-inch guns. With a crew of perhaps two men aboard.
The communications officer monitoring all radio transmissions announced that only one call had gone out from the boat and it wasn’t a mayday. The Martн’s position had not been revealed before she had sunk them.
Good.
Two American fisherman. Aboard a rich man’s fiberglass toy. Nothing to write home to Moscow about, but it was perhaps a start. First blood, at any rate.
Two figures stepped out of the shadows. It was Admiral de Herreras and the Russian Golgolkin, who’d stood silently by while the officers celebrated.
“May I have a look?” de Herreras said.
Zukov stepped back and let him use the periscope. The admiral studied the flaming debris pool for a moment, then swiveled the eyepiece ninety degrees left and stopped, grunting with satisfaction.
“Comrade Golgolkin, have a look. Is that it?”
Golgolkin put his eyes to the rubber cups, sweat stinging his eyes. His hands were shaking badly and he couldn’t seem to focus the blurry image.
“Is that it,” the admiral shrieked, “or is it not?”
Golgolkin nodded yes and stepped away from the periscope.
“So. Our next target, Commander Zukov,” de Herreras said, grinning with satisfaction. “Have a look.”
Zukov put his eyes to the scope and focused. It was beyond ridiculous. Impossible. A large private yacht, huge, over two hundred feet. Brightly lit. With a massive British flag fluttering in the breeze at her stern. Zukov took a deep breath, remembering Manso’s admonition on the beach early that morning.
“It’s not possible, Admiral,” Zukov said.
“Why not? Comrade Golgolkin here has just informed me that Blackhawke is the ship of the man who betrayed us to the Americans. My sources in Washington say he’s aboard. I wish to destroy him.”
“A small fishing boat is one thing. Accidents happen. But this. The loss of life. It would be considered an act of war by the British, Admiral! A huge international incident! Surely you don’t want to—”
“I am the fucking chief of naval operations, let me remind you! Are you refusing a direct order, Commander?”
“Sir, in good conscience I cannot—”
The Cuban admiral unfastened the leather holster that held his sidearm and raised the pistol. It was a silver-plated Smith & Wesson .357 magnum.
“I asked you a question, Commander. Are you refusing a direct order?”
“I am.”
The explosion was instant and deafening inside the cramped control room. A fine red mist erupted from the back of the Russian commander’s skull as brains and bone spattered all over the periscope. He swayed on his feet for a second, then collapsed in a heap on the deck. All of the men, both Russian and Cuban, looked on in horror.
“I am a firm believer in summary justice,” the admiral said. “The man was a traitor. I am now in command of this vessel and I want that boat sunk. Is that clearly understood?”
No one said a word. The silence was as deafening as the gunshot. The already fetid air reeked of cordite and the coppery smell of blood. The Cuban admiral stepped over the body and stared hard at the shocked faces of his crew.
Golgolkin leaned back against the bulkhead and breathed a sigh of relief. Only an hour earlier, he had slipped into Zukov’s quarters and rifled through his orders. Zukov had orders to kill him once the mission was completed. Now that Zukov was dead, perhaps he was safe. He stepped back into the shadows, removed a silver flask from his pocket, and drained it.
“I want someone to take a bearing on this target and sink it,” the admiral said, his face turning bright red. “Now!” he bellowed.
No one moved or spoke. After an endless minute, an officer who had been standing by the ballast control panel stepped forward. He moved slowly through the reddish smoky light, eyes riveted on the Cuban with the pistol in his hand. He dropped to his knees beside the fallen captain.
There, kneeling beside his oldest and dearest friend, he looked up at the glowering admiral with tears of rage in his eyes.
“I am the boat’s executive officer, Comrade Admiral,” he said in Spanish. “Vladimir Kosokov, second in command. This man you have murdered was my boyhood friend in Cuba. I have been his XO in the Soviet Navy for ten years.”
“Very well. I order you to sink that vessel!” the admiral roared.
“In my cabin are orders given me by Commander Zukov. They come directly from General Manso de Herreras. They are explicit, Admiral. They say that if anything should happen to Zukov, I am to assume command, offload you at Staniel Cay and return the submarine immediately to base.”
The Cuban regarded him in shocked silence. His own brother! Manso would pay for this humiliation.
“Fine. You can die beside your traitorous friend.”
“I would be honored. But I must warn you. This is the most advanced submarine on earth. And I am the only one aboard now capable of getting it safely home. And the only one who knows the codes for fire control sequencing of all weapons. Kill me, and you render the submarine useless. And condemn every man on this vessel, Russian or Cuban, to certain death.”
The admiral raised his pistol once more, his countenance aflame with righteous anger. The crew waited in silence for their death sentence, every eye focused on the finger that would squeeze the trigger.
A tall, thin man emerged from the shadows, shot out his hand, and gripped the admiral’s wrist.
“Give me the gun, Carlitos,” the man said quietly, and the admiral, eyes blazing, did as he was told.
It was the man the crew had been whispering about during the entire voyage. The man who seldom left his cabin and never spoke. The new Cuban head of state security. Rodrigo del Rio.
The man with no eyes.