Breacher (Tom Keeler Book 2) by Jack Lively (reading well TXT) 📕

the salvaged nuclear submarine lying in a deep water trench up here. There was even more reason to believe that Zarembina had moved from Energy to Nuclear, and that her and George Abrams had been investigating what I had just found. Add to that the boat that George had rented, which came back without him. They were pieces of a puzzle, that was for damn sure.

There are no coincidences.

And there was literally nothing left in the tank when I surfaced.

I took a look around. No sign of the zodiac. I flipped myself over the cable. The Sea Foam was four hundred yards out. I was not wearing a watch, so I didn’t know how long I had been gone. When the skiff came, I waited until it was pulling the net at full tension. I detached from the security fence and swam out. I saw Hank looking at me, then looking away, concentrating on the task at hand. I dropped my gear into the skiff. Then hauled myself in and landed on my back like a beached shark. Hank glanced at me. He looked tired and wet. He was wearing a baseball cap and his face was red, which is how I knew he’d been helping Guilfoyle with the net.

When we got back to the boat, Hank handed off the net to Guilfoyle, who snapped the connector into the winch. We came around and tied up to the stern. Down in the engine room, I stripped out of the dive gear and back into the fishing rubbers. The winch motor came on and the diesel smell was strong.

Up top, Hank and Guilfoyle were stacking the net, coming over the top of the winch wheel above. Pulverized chunks of Cordova-red jelly fish were raining down on their covered heads. Each molecule of Cordova-red contains a tiny protein spring that literally embeds into skin. The constant rain of poisonous jelly fish bits is like having a thousand little wasp stings per minute. After you experience that for the first time, you tend to cover up.

I took my place on the stern and looked over at Hank. His face was a rash of red. But now he was wearing that old SEAS baseball hat.

I yelled at him over the noise from the winch. “Told you people end up wearing baseball hats out here.” Hank grimaced in response. He concentrated on his work. I watched him for a moment, the kid was tougher than he looked.

Thirty-Three

By the time we were motoring back to Eagle Cove, the sun was kissing the horizon. The water was calm, and golden light pierced through the gaps made by dozens of islands that dot the inside passage. Guilfoyle piloted the boat while I cleaned up with Hank. The deck had to be thoroughly hosed down and all the equipment cleaned and put away in the right place, in the right order. The work is never done on a fishing boat, and when we finally got out of the wet gear, Hank slumped on to the net pile, exhausted.

I said, “Go lie down, buddy. You look like shit.”

Hank went in and lay down on the galley bench. He was sleeping five minutes later.

I climbed up to the wheelhouse. Guilfoyle waited for me to sit down. I took a seat on the bench behind him. He said, “So, what happened out there?”

“Never made it to the island. They have a security net blocking off access.” Guilfoyle whistled. I continued, “I went over that, and then I saw what they had at the floating dock.”

“What, a sub?”

“Yes, an old one. A salvage.”

“That’s interesting. You see markings?”

“Just the identification number. K-349.”

Guilfoyle’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “Holy shit, that’s not ours. It’s theirs.” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, across the Pacific to the Asian continent.

“Russian?”

“Hell yes. Ours are all USS prefix and theirs are K. So they’ve got a salvaged Russian submarine out there on Bell Island. I’ll be damned. Was it big?”

I told him what I had seen. The size, big, the apparent age, old, and the fact that the hull had looked crushed in some places from the depth. Guilfoyle nodded. He said that after a certain depth the water pressure will crush any structure, so subs are always rated to what they call a ‘crush-depth’.

He looked over at me, appraising. “Given the size, it’s likely the sub is nuclear.”

“Which means what?”

Guilfoyle looked through the wheelhouse window. We were approaching Port Morris. The town’s lights were a cloud of pin points in the dark. He said, “I don’t know. Could mean a couple of things I guess. You have to check out if there’s any information around on that hull identification. K whatever.”

I said, “K-349.”

“K-349.” Guilfoyle glanced at me. “You want to tell me what’s going on, Keeler, give me the big picture?”

“Sometimes Guilfoyle, what you don’t know can’t hurt you.”

He was looking at me, and now his eyes dropped and settled on the steering wheel under his hand. Polished mahogany, a classic and timeless object. Connected to the rudder, steering true through the Pacific waters. A stable and unchanging object in a chaotic world. He was captain of the Sea Foam, and I had served under him as a guy working the boat. But we weren’t working the boat anymore.

He said, “You got a point there.”

I said, “Keep it simple, captain.”

He chewed his beard for a moment, looking out again at the diminishing daylight. “You just let me know what I can do to help.”

“Will do.”

He said, “I think I’ll kick off tomorrow, after breakfast. You know, get one more of those breakfast rolls in me before I end the season. If you get this wrapped up by then, you might think of joining me for the trip down.”

I nodded. “Copy that.”

Guilfoyle looked at me, unsmiling. “Good, because I’m not going to say it again.”

I smiled for us both. Up in the North Pacific I had noticed that many people like to keep their conversation