Facing the Storm (Brice Bannon Seacoast Adventure Book 1) Read online

  The hairs on the back of Bannon’s neck stood up, his warning signal. He indicated she should back away from the door, move deeper into the room. As she did, a thunderous bang reverberated from the other room.

  Bannon recognized the sound instantly. The door had been kicked in!

  “Get to the other side of the bed and get down!” Bannon hissed, pushing her away from the door.

  Footsteps charged through the apartment. Two people, at least. They were seconds from charging through the bedroom door. He thought about calling Tara but there wasn’t time.

  From the other side of the door, a voice said, “Bedroom.”

  Newkirk.

  Bannon looked around the room. His eyes landed on the glass of vodka on the makeup table. Next to it stood Sadler’s Army Zippo.

  The bedroom doorknob turned.

  The door started to open.

  A gloved hand holding a Beretta M9 eased through the opening door.

  The last thing Bannon wanted was a firefight. He grabbed the glass from the table and threw it, splashing the alcohol in Newkirk’s face.

  The Army captain cried out. “My eyes!”

  He wiped his gloved hand over his face. The gun in his other hand wavered.

  Bannon snatched up Sadler’s Army lighter, flicked it open, and as the flint ignited into flame, he grabbed an aerosol can of hairspray from the makeup table. He shot a steady spray at Newkirk’s face, touching the spray to the flame from the Zippo.

  A makeshift flame thrower.

  Fire spray hissed hot and bright into Newkirk’s alcohol-soaked face. Blue-white flame whooshed across his face and ignited his splashed coat sleeve and his glove.

  Newkirk screamed and stumbled back.

  He bounced into the wall behind him then staggered into the living room, slapping at his face, beating at the flames, screaming, “Help me! Help!”

  Bannon heard Yarber’s voice. “Holy—”

  He grabbed Sadler’s cell phone, ripped the charging cord from the wall doing so, and pocketed the phone as he drew his gun.

  “We have to go.” He grabbed Cindy’s hand and pulled. “Stay close to me.”

  He eased around the doorjamb.

  In the main room, Newkirk was on his knees still slapping at his face and screaming. Most of the flames were out but the smell of fire and burned flesh was strong and nauseating.

  Yaber stood looking down at Newkirk. His eyes wide with pity, but he made no move to help the man. He caught sight of Bannon and Cindy and raised his gun. An Army-issued Beretta, like Newkirk’s.

  The CID agent stood between them and the apartment door.

  Bannon aimed his Sig Sauer at Yarber. He pushed Cindy behind him, shielding her with his body. “Get out of our way, Yarber.”

  With Cindy behind him, he circled around Newkirk, who was on his knees, moaning and patting the last of the flames out. “My face! Oh, it hurts!”

  Bannon ignored Newkirk, noticing the muscles in Yarber’s gun hand tighten.

  Bannon fired first.

  The gun barked.

  Yarber ducked left. He dropped low behind an ottoman.

  That cleared the path to the front door for Bannon and Cindy.

  Bannon fired twice more, keeping Yarber pinned down as they sprinted past Newkirk.

  They reached the open door in seconds.

  Yarber returned fire, but missed.

  Cindy squealed and covered her head with her hand.

  Out in the hallway, they ran.

  They crashed through the door into the stairwell.

  Two shots rang out. Bullets dug into plaster.

  Bannon and Cindy made it into the stairwell unharmed. The fire door swung shut behind them. Bannon looked for some way to barricade the door but there was nothing at hand.

  They pounded down the stairs.

  Yarber would be fast on their tail. They’d just have to be faster.

  As they hit the landing between floors and spun around to go down the final section of stairs, ahead of him, Cindy stopped short with a sharp intake of breath.

  Bannon looked over her shoulder and froze as well.

  Kenny Douglason stood at the base of the stairs. A 9mm Glock aimed up at them in a two-hand grip. He grinned. It was not a pretty sight.

  Bannon grabbed Cindy by the arms and pulled her back as he stepped in front of her. “I should’ve known you were in on it, too. Can’t believe I missed it.”

  “Yeah, well, sucks for you, Coastie.” The former NCO fortified his aim.

  Bannon had his Sig in hand, but Douglason had the drop on him.

  The door above them banged open. Yarber was seconds away.

  They were trapped. Nowhere to go.

  Bannon’s mind raced. What to do? Tell them about the phone? Negotiate an escape, the phone for their lives?

  No need.

  The plate glass window next to the door behind Douglason exploded inward.

  A black metal garbage can flew into the lobby. It hit the wall with a metallic crash and bounced to the floor. The noise echoed like thunder in the confined space.

  Douglason ducked and fired off a shot that went wide.

  Bannon shouted to Cindy, “Get down.”

  She crouched. He leaned over her, protecting her. Behind Douglason, an arm reached through the broken window and opened the door.

  Above them, Bannon heard feet pounded down the carpeted steps. Yarber.

  Bannon twisted, aiming his gun up the stairs.

  Below him he heard footsteps on the broken glass. He heard the snick of an expandable metal baton. He smiled. Blades was in the house.

  Douglason shouted, “Oh, crap!”

  Bannon listened to the baton whistle through the air. He counted three baton strikes. Each followed by a grunt. After the third hit, Douglason’s body collapsed to the glass-littered floor.

  “Look out!” Tara shouted.

  Bannon appreciated but hadn’t needed her warning. He’d been tracking Yarber’s shadow on the far wall. Yarber poked his head out around the landing wall, his gun hand extended.

  Bannon fired a shot.

  It brushed Yarber back.

  “Go down,” he whispered to Cindy. “Blades will protect you.”

  Below them, Douglason was on the ground, out cold.

  Tara made her way up the steps, a look of determination on her face.

  Behind her, Tennant entered the lobby, his gun drawn. He took in the carnage with a grim expression. Bannon caught Tara’s attention and nodded toward Cindy. Even without words his meaning was clear: Take care of her.

  He headed up the steps.

  As he neared the landing, he went wide, away from the interior wall. His gun aimed ahead of him. He stepped onto the landing.

  Yarber fired. The gunshot reverberated in the stairwell.

  Bannon ducked. Plaster chips pelted his cheek. He returned fire.

  His bullet caught Yarber as the man tried to duck back. The CID agent twisted and cried out, grabbing at a bloody spot on his shoulder.

  Bannon rushed him and backhanded him across the face.

  Yarber stumbled back. His feet caught on the bottom step and he fell on his butt.

  “Drop it,” Bannon ordered. “Now!”

  Yarber removed his finger from the trigger and let the gun spin around his finger. With it held upside down by the trigger guard, he extended it toward Bannon.

  Bannon grabbed it while Yarber kept his hand pressed against the bullet wound in his shoulder. Blood soaked his suit jacket and shirt and leaked between his splayed fingers.

  “I’m bleeding.”

  “I see that.” Bannon called out, “Blades, you good?”

  “Never better.”

  “Tennant. Call for an ambulance,” Bannon said, breathing heavily. “Besides these two, there’s also a guy in Cindy’s apartment. He’s gonna need medical attention, too.”

  “See? I told you,” Tara said. “Shooting. There’s always shooting involved.”

  CHAPTER TEN />
  THE NEXT NIGHT at the Keel Haul, Bannon worked the bar with Tara, and business was brisk.

  Who was he kidding?

  There were five people in the place not including Floyd who was at his customary seat at the end of the bar. Reba McEntire sang about how the snow can blind you in New England. And through the big front windows, Bannon could see a light snow had begun to fall.

  Still, the pool table was in use. The rumble of billiard balls dropping into pockets was music to his ears. He couldn’t be happier.

  When he turned around from the register—smiling at the sound the register made when he rang up a sale—he found James Tennant seated at the bar.

  “Detective.” Bannon tossed a napkin down on the bar in front of him. “What brings you all the way out here to the sea coast?”

  “I heard so much about this dive of yours, thought I’d check it out for myself.” He looked around and nodded. “Not bad.”

  “Glad you did. What’ll you have? It’s on the house.”

  “Bourbon, neat.”

  Bannon grabbed a bottle of Jim Beam and a glass, flipped it over, and poured Tennant a double.

  Tennant caught Tara’s eye down the bar. She acknowledged him with a nod. He raised his glass and drank. To Bannon, he said, “She’s kind of scary, you know that, right?”

  “You have no idea.”

  “Oh, I’ve got an inkling.” Tennant rotated his shoulder as if it were sore.

  Bannon had suspected things gotten a little physical between the two of them, and not in a good way for the detective. He laughed. “That’s Blades on gentle cycle. Didn’t mean for it to come to that.”

  Tennant shrugged, winced, and rubbed his shoulder. “Comes with the job.”

  He drank and looked around the bar. “Nice place, but not exactly hopping.”

  Tara crossed behind Bannon to grab a couple of beers from the ice under the counter. “Keeps up at this pace, we’ll need to hire more help.”

  “Ha. Ha. It’s March. Our slow time.” Bannon grabbed a Coors Light from the ice and joined Tennant for a drink. “What’s the word?”

  “Yarber’s shoulder wound was a through and through. Stitched up and he’s fit as a fiddle. Newkirk? He’s another story. You lit him up good, pun intended. He’s in for a long haul of skin grafts. Blind in one eye, damaged the cornea in the other.”

  Though he knew all that already, Bannon reflected. He took no pleasure inflicting that kind of pain on anyone, but neither did he regret his actions. They came at him, intended to harm Cindy McKinnon. It was either him or them.

  It wasn’t going to be him, end of story.

  Tennant went on. “Just as you predicted, the government swept in like a swarm of locusts. DoD and Homeland Security and I don’t know who else. Snatched the three of them up before I could get near ’em.”

  Bannon hadn’t just predicted it, he’d arranged it.

  Immediately after Newkirk, Douglason, and Yarber were arrested, Bannon was on the phone to Liz Grayson, who contacted senior officials at the DoD.

  He refilled Tennant’s whiskey glass.

  The cop drank and winced. “I hate getting cut out like that. Not knowing the full story.”

  When Yarber, Newkirk, and Douglason were liberated from Nashua police custody, they’d been taken to a TSA facility at Logan Airport in Boston. There Bannon worked with hand-picked investigators and trained interrogators from CID and the Justice Department. Playing Yarber against Newkirk against Douglason, they broke the trio in less than an hour, had confessions from all three, and had the real story of what happened to Sadler and during the friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.

  Bannon told Tennant what he could. “Douglason and Newkirk were behind the friendly fire cover up from the jump. The original CID investigators were only too eager to not dig too deep and accept the findings fed to them by the Douglason, Newkirk, and the Night Wing Group.”

  “The investigators? They were sloppy, but not culpable?” Tennant asked.

  Bannon shrugged. “Overworked, stretched thin, pressured a little too hard by command to not find anything that would give the military or Night Wing a black eye. But, yeah, that’s how I read it.”

  A refill of drinks, and Bannon went on, “Douglason and Newkirk made sure everyone was onboard.”

  “Even Sadler?”

  “They fed him, and all the others, the ‘don’t rock the boat, no good can come from the truth getting out,’ party line. Nothing’s more important than loyalty to one’s sergeant, his commander, your unit and the U.S. Army. But the lie ate at him. Sadler had the evidence to set things right and it haunted him.”

  “The video on the phone.”

  “Yup. Iannuzzi, one of the kids killed in the raid, had been filming. Sadler found it. He took it and my guess is his intention was to forward it to the kid’s family. Figured there’d be pictures or messages or something on it they might want.”

  “But he discovered the footage instead.”

  “Right. Douglason and Newkirk had convinced him and the rest of his squad keeping quiet was for the greater good. He kept their secret, until he couldn’t. His mistake was that when he finally decided to take action, it was to call Douglason.”

  Bannon sipped his beer and whipped a cloth over the polished bar. “He told his old sergeant what he planned to do. Douglason convinced him to wait, to talk to Newkirk. They played like Newkirk was on his side, supporting Sadler’s decision to come clean. Figured Sadler would be more likely to turn the evidence over to them that way. They tried playing me the same way. It was all a game to get the evidence.”

  “And silence Sadler.”

  “That was Douglason,” Bannon said. “Newkirk thought he could talk Sadler down again. That was why he and Yarber were on their way up here form Virginia, but Douglason panicked.”

  “He’s the one actually killed Sadler?”

  “Yes. He assumed Sadler had the evidence with him. Where else would a homeless vet have it? But after he killed him, he couldn’t find it.”

  “He was the one rifled through Sadler’s possessions?”

  Bannon nodded. “That’s how you knew Sadler had been murdered?”

  “Suspected. That and the blood spatter on the boy’s face.” Tennant demonstrated by holding his hand up in the air. His thumb and forefingers stretched out. “There was a clear pattern on the side of his face where there was no blood. In the shape of a hand, like someone had held his face pressed against the tile wall.”

  Bannon nodded, impressed.

  “When I learned Sadler was with the 112th, I recalled the Night Wing incident. There were rumors even then it was a blue on blue charlie foxtrot.”

  In the service, Bannon had heard friendly fire incidents called blue on blue contacts. As for charlie foxtrot, that was the NATO phonetic alphabet for C F, or in this case, a cluster…

  Bannon smiled grimly. It had been that.

  Tennant shook his head. As if the whole thing was just too damn sad. “How’s Yarber figure into all this?”

  “Sadler didn’t trust Douglason and Newkirk, not completely.”

  “He did a run around and contacted CID independently,” Tennant guessed.

  “Right. Unfortunately, he got a hold of Yarber who made it his duty to protect the military, CID, the whole damn government, from embarrassment. To dredge up a three-year-old friendly fire incident now wouldn’t be in anyone’s best interest, in his opinion, so he took it upon himself to quash it.”

  “What happens now?”

  “There’s a new administration in Washington so the fallout’ll be mitigated. It’s being properly investigated, this time by DHS and DoD. Once the investigations are complete, an announcement will be made. Proper actions will be taken against all of those involved, including Night Wing. I have assurances.” Bannon smiled. “Dump any stock you have in them.”

  “Yeah, right. On a cop’s salary,” Tennant said, not sounding convinced. “Assurances like that would have to come from the Presiden
t’s lips himself for me to buy ’em.”

  Tara walked behind Bannon, nodding at him. “It did.”

  It took a minute for Tennant to follow then he arched an eyebrow. “Wait. What? You got assurance from…the President?”

  Tara patted Bannon on the shoulder. “Pays to have friends in high places.”

  In his pocket, Bannon’s phone rang. He pulled it out. Checking the caller ID, he said, “I’ve got to take this.”

  He walked to the far end of the bar, leaving Tennant looking at Tara. “The President?”

  She smiled. “Another drink?”

  “Make it a double.”

  With the phone to his ear, Bannon said, “Doctor Appel. How are you?”

  “Wondering if you’ll live up to your promise from yesterday,” she said without preamble.

  “Something’s wrong?”

  “I’ve got a patient in crisis. A Marine. He’s in a bad way and needs someone to talk to before he does something he can’t come back from. You interested or was that just talk?”

  “Give me his information, Doctor.” Bannon had already grabbed his coat. “I’m on my way.”

  ###

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  If you enjoyed Facing the Storm,

  you won’t want to miss the next adrenaline-fueled Brice Bannon Seacoast Adventure

  THE

  OCEANIC PRINCESS

  Here’s an exciting preview…

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE DARK TURQUOISE EXPANSE of the North Atlantic Ocean stretched out below them for as far as the human eye could see. Smooth and flat as a tabletop, the water reached to the ruler-straight line of the horizon, due east. The untouched sea swept past underneath them, fast and relentless, with only the gentle whitecaps and the bright sparkle of the glinting sun shimmering across its majestic surface to distinguish it from the azure sky. Pristine and unchanged since the oceans were formed, undisturbed by man this far from land.