Hawke

37

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 cha

“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 du

“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 cha

“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 cha

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 cha

“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 cha

“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 cha

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 co

“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!”