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.