The Black Bullet

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

At five minutes to six p.m., the Channel Nine control room filled with people. The general manager stood in the back of the room with the news director, group vice president, and the executive producer. They watched the monitors as the camera focused on the anchor team fitting earpieces in their ears, checking copy for last minute changes.

“Coming to camera one, ten seconds,” said the director. “Roll opening.”

“Rolling,” said a technician.

“Standby Mark and Angela,” said the director into the small microphone that fed the tiny earpiece in the news anchors’ ears.

The general manager leaned toward his news director and whispered, “This is going to be Peabody Award stuff.”

“Five seconds,” barked the director.

The anchor team said, “Good evening, I’m Mark Linsky.”

“And I’m Angela Franklin.”

“We have breaking news tonight.”

“This story sounds like a Hollywood script, but it’s real. We have dramatic pictures, images from the bottom of the sea taken inside a German U-boat that’s apparently been on the ocean floor since World War II. Was that U-boat carrying enriched uranium, the material used to make a nuclear bomb? Susan Schulman will tell us what her investigation is uncovering in terms of the potentially dangerous cargo. Amber Rothschild is at the University of Florida, where she has a historical perspective on the time the U-boat went down and how it may have gone down. Todd Knowles is at the Navy base in Jacksonville where he’ll have a report on what the Navy is doing about the situation, as well as what Homeland Security is saying tonight. But first let’s go to Susan Schulman.”

“Mark and Angela, the sub is said to be off the coast of Daytona Beach down about ninety feet,” Schulman began her report. “We want to show dramatic pictures of canisters stamped as U-235. This is a name enriched or weapons-grade uranium was called before the cold war had ended. The label was known to people working on the Manhattan Project, the top secret work done to build an atomic bomb to bring World War II to a fiery close. What was this dangerous material allegedly doing on a German U-boat just found off the coast of Florida? That’s the question a lot of people would like to have answered tonight. As Channel Nine first reported, Captain Sean O’Brien, Nick Cronus, and a college student hired as a deckhand, Jason Canfield, were fishing in the Atlantic, somewhere in the Gulf Stream, when they got their anchor caught on something. O’Brien and Cronus dove down to free the anchor and found it caught on some twisted metal from a German U-boat that one member of the crew, Jason Canfield, told us was blown apart. Here’s some of what they found ….”

O’Brien stood in Dave’s salon with Nick and Dave, watching as the news reports unfolded. The images were of the pictures he’d shot on the sub. Nick stood, his black eyes tired, his voice a grunt, “We’re screwed.”

Susan Schulman’s report continued, “These are pictures taken by Captain O’Brien. The canisters are labeled U-235. The outside of the submarine is marked 236. There are human remains on board. The sub also was carrying parts of what is believed to be M2 German fighter jets. Where’s all this potentially disastrous cargo right now? Still out in the ocean, east of the world’s most famous beach, Daytona Beach. Cronus said he knows the location.”

The video cut to Schulman’s ambush interview with Nick.

Cronus: “I can take you there, sure. Come on, TV gal.”

Schulman: “Perhaps Mr. Cronus isn’t fully aware of the magnitude of this find. Nonetheless, Captain Sean O’Brien told us yesterday he didn’t find the U-boat. When presented with pictures we managed to obtain from Canfield’s girlfriend, Nicole Bradley, a Channel Nine intern, the dam of secrecy broke apart. And Captain O’Brien is none too happy about it.”

O’Brien: “Seems to me, Miss Schulman, you are the one compromising the safety of the nation by your zeal to be the first to put this on television rather than to be responsible and shut the hell up.”

Schulman: “Mark and Angela, Captain O’Brien says he did not bring up the canisters marked U-235. So, as far as we know, they’re sitting out there where they’ve been hidden since World War II. We spoke with a physicist at nearby Lockheed Martin, and she told us it would take about two-thousand pounds of enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb the size of the one that leveled Hiroshima.”

Anchorman: “Thanks, Susan. Before we go to Todd Knowles’s report, a programming note, Susan will be appearing via satellite on CBS national at nine o’clock tonight fielding questions. Now, let’s go to Todd in Jacksonville.”

Dave Collins turned to O’Brien and Nick. “Not good gentlemen. The woman’s obviously very subjective. What she’s managed to do in three minutes is pop the top on a sixty-seven-old secret and place you two and Jason in the middle of what she’s painting as something almost akin to smuggling nuclear weapons.”

“Well fuck you very much,” Nick said toward the television. He shut off the sound. “What are we gonna do now? I feel like a wanted man, a freakin’ criminal, and we haven’t done anything wrong.”

Susan Schulman appeared live on CBS, in a news/talk show format that was broadcast nationally. Sean O’Brien, Nick Cronus, and Jason Canfield’s faces, along with the underwater photos O’Brien took, on television for the world to see. In addition to Schulman, the host’s guests included a U.S. senator to hypothesize, a retired Pentagon general to “put things in perspective,” a doomsday minister to lose perspective, and a Columbia University physicist to tell how nuclear bombs are made. O’Brien and Nick left, Nick swearing he’d never watch television news again.

Dave poured a scotch and wondered how long it would take before he got the first phone call.