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

  Walsh, along with his wife, Abby, had a special permit to be there, one granted by the Corporation at the request of the Environmental Impact Lab at New Haven University in Connecticut.

  Walsh grinned as he tossed back the last of his beer. The forged papers had worked perfectly.

  Speaking of his wife, where was Abby?

  He pushed off the upright intending to go find her. He turned from the spectacular sunset and jumped back with a start. Captain Bill Roberts, a broad-shouldered, fire plug of a man stood blocking his path.

  The old dive master’s features were brown and leathery, deeply etched from a lifetime spent in the harsh outdoors. Wisps of gray-black hair curled out from under his cap and white, three-day old stubble covered his lower face, making it impossible to guess the man’s true age.

  He reminded Walsh of Quint from the movie Jaws.

  Captain Bill as he liked to be called knew the local waters better than anyone—according to him. The owner/operator of a dive shop and maritime equipment rental business out of Portsmouth, he took divers out on excursions and had come highly recommended to the Walshes as the go-to guy for all their dive needs. Point in fact, he had been quite helpful.

  “Easy, son,” he said, his voice gruff. “Didn’t mean to spook you.”

  Walsh gave him a weak smile, taking a minute to let his skipping heart settle back down. “No sweat, Captain. Didn’t hear you come up on me, must’ve been mesmerized by the sunset.”

  “Probably the cicadas.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The cicadas. They’re loud as the dickens this time of year. Maybe why you didn’t hear me.”

  Walsh nodded. “That must be it.”

  Sure the chirping of what had to be thousands of cicadas and other buzzing and annoying insects was louder than Walsh could ever remember hearing, and a bell clanked crisp and regular from a nearby buoy in the channel. Still there’s no way he’d have missed hearing the stocky, old guy approach him on the wide, hardwood porch—unless Captain Bill had intentionally snuck up on him.

  From the hotel, a screen door banged shut.

  Both men turned.

  “There you are,” Abby said, crossing the porch to join them. Her flip flops snapped with each step on the dry, creaking wooden boards.

  See? Impossible, Walsh thought with a wary eye on the captain.

  Abby had her long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and had changed out of her yellow bikini and cover-up from earlier. Now she wore a pink Cape Cod hoodie and white slacks. In one hand she had two full bottles of Sam Adam, held by their icy long necks. Draped over her arm was a jacket for him. Walsh accepted the jacket, put it on, and then took the cold bottle of beer she held out to him.

  He drank.

  “I didn’t realize you were out here, Captain,” Abby said. “I would’ve brought you a beer, too.”

  Captain Bill bowed and touched the tip of his cap. “Appreciate it, Ms. Walsh, but I’ll be shoving off the island momentarily. Best to have a clear head about me, making the crossing.”

  “I wasn’t interrupting anything, was I?” Abby asked.

  “Admiring the sunset was all.” Walsh put his arm around her shoulders.

  “Sorry I missed it.”

  “A stunner. As they often are.” After a thoughtful minute, Captain Bill added, “The truth being, your husband was fixing to tell me about the treasure you two are here to find.”

  Abby gave Walsh a quizzical look. “He was, was he?”

  “I was not,” Walsh said. “I mean what treasure?”

  They’d been careful to tell no one of their true purpose for being on the island, and for very good reason. He certainly wouldn’t have gone blabbing it out to this old...seadog.

  Captain Bill appeared amused. He rubbed a hand over his grizzled chin. It made a scratching sound. He waved the hand dismissively. “I ain’t interested in your wild goose chase. After all these years, you think I can’t spot a couple of treasure hunters from a nautical mile away. It’s fool’s gold. Trust me.”

  “We’re not treasure hunters,” Walsh insisted. “While it’s true we might have….”

  “Mislead you,” Abby provided.

  “We do really work for the government,” Walsh said, offering up their backup story. “The Department of the Interior and—”

  Captain Bill waved his hand. “Save it for somebody who’ll buy that line of bull-hockey, son. Whose treasure you after? Let me guess. Blackbeard’s?”

  “Of course not.” Walsh frowned, on the verge of being insulted. “Everybody knows the stories of Edward Teach burying his treasure on Star Island are rubbish.”

  “Are they?” Captain Bill asked.

  “Absolutely. We’re after John Quelch’s treasure,” Walsh blurted out.

  “Benton!” Abby shouted.

  Captain Bill roared with laughter. “Quelch, you say. John Quelch left no treasure in the Shoals, buried or otherwise. Do you even know Quelch’s story, lad?”

  “Of course I do.” Walsh’s faced burned red. “John Quelch went out to sea on the Charles, an 80-ton brigantine, on a mission to combat French privateers. That was until he commandeered the ship, killed the captain, and tossed the poor man’s body overboard. Which part came first, the killing or the tossing overboard, is up for scholarly debate.

  “After nearly a year at sea, during which time Quelch earned quite the notorious reputation for himself as a ruthless pirate, attacking and capturing many ships, most notably nine Portuguese ships off the coast of Brazil, Quelch returned to Marblehead, Massachusetts, with a hold full of plundered gold dust and coins, bounty worth around two million dollars today.”

  “What you say is true, but what of how John Quelch met his fate then?”

  The cat out of the bag, Abby jumped in. “He was arrested for piracy in Boston where he was put on trial, found guilty, and hanged on June the fourth, 1704.”

  “On Boston’s Scarlet Wharf,” Captain Bill concurred, seemingly impressed with their knowledge. “He and five others were left to hang, on display for the span of three high tides. Left to be pecked at by gulls and to rot in the harsh summer heat until nothing remained but the bones.”

  Abby visibly shivered from the gruesome imagery.

  “What was left of Quelch’s plunder was recovered upon his arrest.” Captain Bill folded his arms over his chest. “The gold shipped to England where it was melted down and turned into currency. If there was any that had not been confiscated,” he waved his hand in the air, “I assure you, it did not end up on Star Island.”

  Walsh jumped at the chance to one up the old dive master. “On that we can agree, Captain. Except, as you say only five men were hanged along with John Quelch, yet the Charles sailed with a crew of forty-four. Some were apprehended later, but still over half his crew escaped. Each of those men paid in stolen Portuguese gold, coins, and other valuable trinkets.”

  “And it’s that which you’re after?”

  Abby answered. “At the time of Quelch’s arrest only about half of his plunder was recovered by the authorities in Boston. His crew fled, many of them to Salem, only to then be pursued to the Isles of Shoals by a man named Samuel Sewall. On Star Island he captured a small band of Quelch’s men, but others escaped.”

  “And while some gold was confiscated at the time,” Walsh added, “Sewall did not search the island for more.”

  “So you think treasure was left here, abandoned, and never recovered?” Captain Bill asked.

  “No,” Abby said. “We think the ship that took Quelch’s men from Salem, Mass. continued on after its brief stop here on Star Island. We believe that ship sank in a storm somewhere in the Shoals, with as much as half of Quelch’s stolen treasure still on board.”

  “And,” Walsh smiled proudly, “we know where.”

  -----

  THE NEXT MORNING, a red dawn broke—sailors take warning—as Benton Walsh donned his wetsuit: black with neon yellow racing stripes down the arms and legs, leaning against the
swaying gunwale of their rented 25-foot Chris Craft Lancer. It had a cuddy cabin and swim platform, perfect for their needs.

  “Do you want me to run through it one more time?” he asked while Abby did a last minute check of his tank and gear. They’d spent the last two weeks doing a systematic grid search of the waters northwest of Star Island. Two days ago they’d hit paid dirt, at least Walsh thought so. Today they’d know for sure if he was right.

  “No,” Abby said with a patient smile. “You’ve shown me how the air compressor works a hundred times.” She wore the same skimpy, yellow bikini and sheer cover up as she’d worn the day before. She stretched up on her tippy toes and kissed his cheek. She smelled of coconut suntan lotion and citrus shampoo. “Now stop worrying and go find us some treasure.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a mock salute and a smile.

  Gulls flew overhead, circling and cawing for food. The boat rocked.

  He spit into his facemask, slicked up the glass, and flicked his Esky submarine light on and off, testing it. It worked perfectly.

  Walsh stepped off the swim platform with a wide scissor kick of his black finned feet and splashed into the bracing Atlantic Ocean water. He resurfaced and swam back to the platform.

  Abby handed him two mesh goodie bags, then a hand fan that he would use to wave silt away or like a scoop to dig into the sand. He clipped these to his weight belt. Finally, and most importantly, she gave him the nozzle end of a long, coiled hose attached to the air compressor strapped to the aft section, which Abby would operate while Walsh was below.

  “Good luck,” she said. The boat rocked, slapping the water. Abby grabbed hold of a cleat to steady herself.

  With the nozzle tucked under his arm, Walsh put his regulator in his mouth, gave her a thumbs up sign, and slipped under the undulating waves.

  All sound was cut off to him except for his muffled, heavy breathing. He hung motionless a few feet under the surface, orienting himself. He turned on his light, located the bright yellow guide rope they’d run along with the anchor line and began his descent.

  As he swam downward, Walsh reflected on their conversation with Captain Bill the night before.

  He’s spent the night awake, kicking himself for his big mouth. Still he hadn’t revealed the most important pieces of the puzzle; the actual location where the ship had gone down or why Walsh was so confident it contained Quelch’s stolen treasure.

  When Walsh was a child, his grandfather had in his possession a weathered and water-damaged, old, leather-bound logbook that Gramps swore had once belonged to a real life pirate. Walsh remembered thinking even as a kid, Gramps was full of it. But still, it had been fun to page through that old journal on Gramps’ front porch overlooking the marina in Buzzards Bay and reading the entries made in the neat, precise penmanship common in the day. His imagination had run wild.

  Over the years since, Walsh had forgotten about the old book.

  But when Gramps passed away Walsh became interested in the logbook again when he discovered, as executor of the estate, Gramps’ final wish for the book was that it be bequeathed to the Peabody Museum in Salam, Massachusetts. The arrangements had already been made with the curator years prior to Gramps’ death.

  Convinced it held some value he’d missed up until then, before turning it over to the museum Walsh had meticulous photographed every page of the book with his smartphone. He’d studied those pages since and could recite every entry from memory.

  The author of the logbook was a man named Nicholas Lawson, the captain of a small, single-mast sloop called the Robert Koch. Gramps had insisted it was a pirate ship and that it had gone down in a storm off the coast of New Hampshire.

  While Lawson made no mention of pirate booty in the logbook, what Walsh discovered during his investigation was that from July 1703 until May 1704, Lawson served as Sailing Master, more commonly known as the ship’s navigator, on the Charles, under the pirate Captain John Quelch.

  It had taken Walsh, with a lot of Abby’s help, two years of researching old newspaper articles, pouring over local fishing websites and national dive magazines, tracking down records through various maritime museums and dozens of historical societies along the northeast seacoast, even the National Archives and Records Services out of Washington, D.C., to discover and search through old newspapers, shipping logs and original maritime insurance documents, and cross-reference those with all manner of legends, myths, and old wives’ tales that involved stories of pirates, treasures, and shipwrecks in the area to determine with certainty the stories were true: Captain Nicholas Lawson, along with a substantial amount of Quelch’s plundered gold in his ship’s hold, went down with the Robert Koch in these waters in the summer of 1704.

  For two summers, Walsh and Abby had spent their vacation days mapping and running grid searches of the waterway between Star Island and the rugged coast of Maine and New Hampshire until the New England waters grew too cold and too rough to dive.

  And finally, two weeks earlier, they’d done it.

  With the combined use of towed side scan sonar, a dragged magnetometer, and a depth recorder they found a wreck they believed to be the Robert Koch a mile and a half northwest of Star Island in relatively shallow water, sixty feet below the surface.

  On his initial dive, Walsh had discovered the buried, curved timber of the ship’s stempost along with a large section of its single mast. The iron collar—called a mast band—was what had caught the magnetometer’s attention. On subsequent dives, he used the airlift hose—the same that he dragged down with him now—to clear silt away from sections of the ship’s buried skeleton and found two standing blocks, a broken twelve foot section of the mast, various rigging components, and part of the ship’s wheel.

  They’d had the items inspected and every expert they’d consulted agreed: the items were from the time period in question. There was no doubt. Still the recovered artifacts did not prove the shipwreck to be the Robert Koch.

  Walsh didn’t let that stop him. Over the moon with excitement, he now dived deeper, determined to not leave again until he had irrefutable proof he was right.

  The water turned colder the deeper he dove. He kept the flashlight on and dragged the hose behind him, careful to keep the guideline visible in his peripheral vision. He shivered but continued to scissor kick his way to the ocean floor.

  Walsh bled more air from his buoyancy control vest until he achieved neutral buoyancy, floating over the rock outcropping where the Robert Koch had settled on the ocean floor over three hundred years ago. Particles danced in the white-blue water illuminated by the underwater light. Careful to not stir up any more silt than was necessary Walsh gave the hose two sharp tugs—his signal to Abby to start the air compressor.

  He waited a minute, about to tug again when the hose vibrated in his hand and began to spew a jet of bubbly air. Walsh moved in closer to the hole he’d dug under the rib timber the day before and went to work clearing the sandy brown silt away, expanding the hole. When he had it large enough, he hovered closer, using his light to inspect what he’d uncovered.

  The hole opened up into a large black void, a pocket of space under where the ship had come to rest on the ocean floor. He panned the flashlight beam and saw an assortment of items poking out from the gritty, sandy bottom. Pay dirt!

  Walsh grinned around his regulator sending a column of air bubbles billowing toward the surface.

  He reached inside the hole. Using the tin, handmade fan like a shovel, he scooped up blade full after blade full of sand and trinkets, dumping them into his mesh goodie bags without wasting time examining them.

  With the bags full to bursting he pushed away from the hole, feeling giddy over their success.

  Suddenly the hose tucked under his arm jerked, pulling him violently back.

  Walsh glanced around and then up, following where the hose ascended toward the surface to see if it had snagged on something. His blood run cold at the thought that a large, predatory fish had brushed agai
nst the hose and now curious, might eye Walsh as a nice, early morning meal.

  A shadowy form swam past him. Very close. Too close.

  Walsh swallowed hard and raised an arm…

  But the attacking diver was too fast. With a large rock gripped in his fist, he swung.

  The rock struck Walsh just above the ear and sent him reeling.

  He let go his grip on the air hose—it flailed around ejecting air bubbles all around them—and cupped his ringing ear.

  The diver swam at Walsh again. He’d dropped the rock and now aimed both of his hands at Walsh’s throat. His intention clear. Strangulation. Murder.

  The expelling air bubbles and stirred-up clouds of brown silt obscured Walsh’s vision, making it impossible to identify his attacker’s face behind his facemask. Walsh brushed the man’s arms away. He twisted and kicked out attempting to swim away.

  The diver grabbed Walsh’s shoulder, forcing him toward the ocean floor.

  Walsh’s air tank hit the ground hard and sent a jarring pain up his spine.

  Looming over him, the diver got a hand around Walsh’s throat. He squeezed.

  Walsh batted at the thick arms but the diver’s grip was too strong. With the metal blade-like hand fan still in his hand, Walsh swiped it at the man’s right leg. The edge of the tool sliced through the neoprene wetsuit and cut deep into the skin underneath.

  Instinctively, the diver released his grip on Walsh’s neck and grabbed for his wounded leg, covering the cut even as a ribbon of blood colored the water red. Before he could renew his assault, Walsh grabbed his attacker’s air hose, pulled it taut, and using the hand tool like a knife to cut the hose, severed it in two.

  With the hose spewing air bubbles, the diver kicked Walsh away and made a desperate surge for the surface, kicking his finned feet hard.