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

  Walsh tried to follow but the blow to his head made him sick to his stomach. Disoriented, he shook his head to clear it but that only made it worse. He slowed his ascent and by the time he broke the surface all signs of his attacker were gone.

  He spit out his regulator, spotting the rented Chris Craft a hundred yards to his right. He inflated his BCD to compensate for his weight belt and the drag of the two heavily loaded goodie bags and swam for the boat.

  He reached the swim platform. With his head throbbing, Walsh unhooked his weight belt and with great effort he tossed it angrily, along with the two bags leaking sand through the mesh, onto the teak platform.

  “Abby.”

  He took off his fins—his vision blurry—and slapped them onto the deck. Abby still had not appeared, or even answered him. “Abby!”

  He jumped up on the deck, concern unnerving him. The compressor was still running. The smell of gasoline fumes and smoke fouled the air. Walsh climbed over the rolling, bucking gunwale.

  He found Abby lying in a crumpled pile on the deck. A puddle of blood pooled under her head.

  “ABBY!”

  ----

  WALSH SAT IN the empty hospital waiting room with his head low, staring at the worn brown carpet under his feet and not really seeing it. Or anything else for that matter. The loudspeaker had called for various doctors and other staff personnel throughout the day. A TV hung from the ceiling in the corner, its volume turned down low. The last time he’d looked, it had been on Fox News.

  “Excuse me, Mr. Walsh.”

  Walsh picked his head up.

  A man stood in front of him. He wore a crisp, white U.S. Coast Guard uniform. He held his hat—did they call them lids, or was that the Marines—tucked under his arm. “I’m not sure if you remember me, sir. I’m Commander Brice Bannon. I was in charge of the patrol boat that responded to your distress call this morning.”

  “Yes,” Walsh said, slowly. He nodded as it slowly came back to him.

  He’d run to the radio, slipped on the wet, bloody deck and fell. Pain shot through his knee. So bad he thought he’d broken it. He’d made a call out on the radio’s emergency frequency but didn’t wait for a response. He’d gone back to Abby. There he’d remained, cradling her unconscious and bleeding body in his lap, and waited until help arrived.

  “You were a bit shaken,” Commander Bannon said. “I wouldn’t be surprised—”

  Walsh stood up and grabbed the man’s hand, pumping it. “Of course I remember you. You saved my wife’s life. Thank you. Thank you.”

  When Walsh finally stopped shaking his hand, Bannon asked, “How is she?”

  “She’s…she…they don’t know.” Unable to form his own coherent thoughts, Walsh repeated what the doctors had told him. “She suffered a very bad laceration to the back of the head. That was where all the blood had come from. Head wounds bleed profusely. It took seventeen stitches to close it up. They’ve done CAT scans and MRIs and they’re all clear. They’re worried about a concussion. For some reason they don’t know, she won’t wake up.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I’m sure she’ll be fine though. The body has a way of protecting itself, doing what it needs to so it can heal.”

  Walsh nodded but didn’t respond.

  Bannon glanced at the chairs. “I realize this isn’t a good time, but do you mind answering some questions?”

  “Um, sure. I guess.” Walsh returned to his seat.

  Bannon sat next to him. “Can you tell me what happened out there? How’d your wife—”

  “Abby.”

  Bannon nodded. “How’d Abby get hurt?”

  “We were attacked, Commander.” Walsh pushed back his hair to reveal the freshly cleaned and stitched cut over his ear. Then he gave Bannon the blow-by-blow of what had happened.

  “Do you know why someone would do that?” Bannon asked.

  “I know why and I know who,” Walsh said with a hard stare.

  -----

  IT WAS AFTER ten that night when Benton Walsh found Captain Bill Roberts on his boat, a thirty-five foot Wellcraft Scarab, strapping dive tanks against the gunwale. He hadn’t been difficult to find. Roberts had a permanent slip at Great Bay Marine, a marina six miles up the Piscataqua River.

  It looked to Walsh as if the captain was preparing to take a crew out for a night dive.

  We’ll see about that.

  Walsh made his way down the wharf, not caring how much noise he made. The smell of diesel fuel and dead fish, because of his pounding headache and probable concussion, made him nauseous. The lapping green water glowed rainbow slick with oil. When he was within earshot, he called out, “Roberts, you son of a bitch!”

  Captain Bill straightened up and gave Walsh a cursory look. He crossed over to the metal gangplank bridging his boat and the dock. He limped, favoring his right leg.

  “What are you going on about, son?”

  If he intended to block Walsh from boarding the boat, it wasn’t going to happen. Walsh pushed past him and dropped onto the deck of the Wellcraft. He withdrew his hand from his right pocket and fisted it. “You put my wife in the hospital. Bashed her head in and she hasn’t woken up yet.”

  “I don’t know what you’re yammering on about.”

  Walsh balled up the front of Captain Bill’s red and white striped shirt in his two fists. “You attacked us!”

  “You’re crazy.”

  “Because you thought we were after sunken treasure.”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Stop denying it!” Walsh pushed the man to a padded bench. “I cut you!”

  “What are you—”

  “I cut your leg. Take off your pants.” Captain Bill wore a pair of worn blue denim jeans.

  “You’re daft!”

  “Take ’em off or I will.”

  Captain Bill huffed but with a shake of his head he tugged the legs of his jeans up over his right calf. He had a white bandage taped to his hairy skin.

  Walsh ripped it off. Gray hairs stuck to the adhesive.

  Captain Bill screamed. “You bas—”

  The wound had only been closed with butterfly bandaging. Not professionally. No hospital record. It began to leak blood.

  Captain Bill snatched the bandage back and redressed his wound. “I did that freeing a fishing net from a friend’s propeller this morning.”

  “Yeah, sure you did.”

  Walsh stomped around the boat, opening up cubbies and cabinets. He tossed items out onto the deck. He moved on to the next potential hiding spot.

  Captain Bill rolled down his pant legs. “What are you looking for?”

  “Your wetsuit.” Walsh found it stuffed in the bottom of a closet. “Ha. Got it.”

  He pulled it out, along with a BDU, and a regulator. Both the wetsuit and the regulator hose were cut exactly where Walsh knew they would be. He held up the cut end of the regulator hose. “Cut that freeing up your friend’s propeller, too?”

  Captain Bill ground his teeth behind his tight, stubble covered jaw.

  “Tell me a police lab won’t find my wife’s blood on this, too.” He shook the BDU he clutched in his hand. “Or your blood and DNA on my hand fan. The one that cut your leg.” Walsh got into Captain Bill’s face. “When Abby wakes up, she’ll ID you as her attacker. You’re done, Captain Bill.”

  “You come waltzing in here and think you can steal my treasure and I’m done!”

  Walsh gave him a sideways glance. “Your treasure? You told us there was no treasure.”

  Captain Bill launched to his feet, listing on his hurt leg. “Well there is. I’ve searched for it for decades. That treasure’s mine.”

  “That’s why you attacked us? Why you hurt my wife, tried to kill me, to protect your claim to some sunken treasure?”

  “Of course. I’d do anything to get my hands on it. You know how many would-be treasure hunters I’ve chased out here? Idiots just like you and your conniving wife.”

  Walsh pulled his cell phone from h
is pocket and put it to his ear. “You get all that?” he asked without making a call. “It’s enough?”

  “Yes. It’s enough,” Commander Brice Bannon said on the other end. “We recorded it, too.”

  Walsh cut the connection and all around the boat emergency lights snapped on, electric blue and flashing. Two police cars were parked on the wharf. Three uniformed police officers stood on the dock at the aft end of the Scarab, their hands resting on their guns.

  -----

  AFTER THEY’D LED Captain Bill away in handcuffs, Bannon joined Walsh on the Scarab.

  “Just got word your wife’s awake,” Bannon said.

  “Yeah! Oh my God, that’s great.”

  “She’s asking for you. You should go see her.”

  “You sure you don’t need me anymore?”

  “Not tonight. In the morning we’ll get statements from each of you.”

  “Be happy to.” Walsh stepped up onto the metal gangplank bridging the boat and the dock.

  “I do have one question,” Bannon said. “All that talk about sunken treasure. Anything to it?”

  “He’d been ranting on about that since we got here.” Walsh shrugged. “Just crazy talk far as I could tell.”

  Bannon gave him a look that soured Walsh’s stomach. “So you and your wife aren’t here searching for John Quelch’s lost treasure?”

  “I told you, Commander. We’re here tagging lobsters. To study crustacean migration patterns. I don’t know a darn thing about sunken pirate treasure.”

  “Good to hear,” Bannon said. “That would complicate everything.”

  Walsh nodded and stepped off the boat. He waved. “See you in the morning.”

  As he walked away, he fingered the pitted, gold Portuguese coins in his pocket, the ones he’d found in his goodie bags before the Coast Guard cutter had arrived that morning.

  He wondered, how much treasure could he raise before sunrise?

  A lot of it, he thought with a triumphant smile. A lot of it.

  ###

  BLUE CHARLIE FOXTROT

  CHAPTER ONE

  AT LEAST THE water pressure’s decent, one-time Army Specialist Richie Sadler thought as the lukewarm shower spray pelted his grime-covered, naked body. It sluiced away the three days of living-on-the-street grit and homeless dirt he’d accumulated since the last time he’d been to the Shepard Homeless Shelter & Rescue Center.

  He didn’t like living in the shelter, but being homeless in Southern New Hampshire in the winter, it couldn’t be helped. The temperatures could regularly dip below zero and seasonal snowfall accumulations averaged fifty-five inches, and as much as a hundred inches wasn’t unheard of. A person couldn’t survive in that for very long. Not even an ex-soldier trained to live in the outdoors like he was. It just wasn’t humanly possible.

  He ran his hands through his scraggily mane of tangled brown hair, pressing the shelter provided body soap (he didn’t have shampoo) from the limp, wet, stringy tendrils that reached down to his shoulders. He rubbed at the three-day-old stubble on his face. He hated the itchy feel of facial hair and shaved every chance he got. Even panhandling on the street corner—he had a spot, where Amherst Street curved and became Main Street, holding his handmade, raggedy-edged, cardboard sign scrawled with HUNGRY HOMELESS VET – PLEASE HELP on it in black crayon—he’d never let himself deteriorate into that bearded mountain man look.

  As the warm spray cascaded over his head and down his emaciated body, Sadler watched the brown water swirl around the floor drain and wash away.

  Rinsed clean, he was reluctant to turn the water off. He didn’t know when he’d get to shower again. But he had an appointment today and he intended to keep it.

  Gotta keep moving, soldier.

  He stepped from the shower and grabbed for the towel stamped “Property of SHSRC.” He was alone in the shower room. The rest of the residents had finished and were off to chow, mandated group, or back out on the streets begging and scrounging for food, booze, or drugs.

  Sadler dried himself off, wrapped the towel around his impossibly narrow waist, and slipped his feet into shelter provided flip flops.

  He shuffled across the concrete floor to a row of sinks. From the bank of windows, gray daylight glowed through panels of frosted, wire-embedded glass. Overhead, florescent bulbs buzzed with an unforgiving harsh light. At the sink, he wiped a thin film of fog from the mirror with his hand and examined the skull-like face that stared back at him. He barely recognized himself.

  His once bright and clear eyes were dull and bloodshot. Rimmed with dark shadowy half-circles from lack of proper sleep, he looked like a feral raccoon. His cheeks were sullen, hollow. Twenty-nine years old and he felt a hundred times older than that.

  At nineteen, like his father and his grandfather before him, he’d joined the Army and for the first time in his life left the Granite State. He did basic training at Fort Benning in Georgia and his AIT, advanced individual training, at the Transportation School in Fort Eustis, Virginia. After six years of service, with two rotations in the Persian Gulf, he got out.

  He couldn’t re-up, he wouldn’t. He was done.

  Three years ago, honorably discharged, he came home, even though he had nothing to come home to. His parents had died while he was overseas, his mom from cancer, his dad in a drunk driving accident. His father was the drunk.

  Sadler had no siblings.

  He’d had a fiancé before his deployment. Cindy McKinnon. His high school sweetheart.

  Her Dear John email came when she’d learned his unit had been redeployed, remaining in the sandbox rather than rotating home, the way they’d been promised. It was her last straw.

  He didn’t blame her.

  He came home a changed man. Irritable, angry, suspicious of everyone and everything. He couldn’t sleep for more than three hours at a time, and when he did, it was restless, full of nightmares. Unable to get or keep a job that paid enough for food or rent, within a year he’d lost everything and was living on the streets when he wasn’t forced into the shelters by cops or the weather.

  “But that’s all gonna change now,” Sadler told his mirror self.

  He ran hot water in the sink and filled his hand with cheap shaving cream from a pressurized can. He covered his face with the white foam and dragged the plastic safety razor through his thick stubble. The razor scratched nosily as he scraped the three-day-old whiskers away.

  At some point while he was shaving, Sadler realized he was whistling.

  He’d lost everything. He’d come back to nothing. He had nothing.

  Yet, today, he found himself whistling.

  For the first time in a long while he felt hopeful. Things were going to change.

  He finished shaving, wiped the last of the cream from his face and turned his head one way and then the other, inspecting the job he’d done, and smiled.

  He actually gave a crap for a change.

  Satisfied, he turned from the mirror and jumped back, startled.

  A figure stood in front of him, invading his space.

  Sadler swallowed. “Jesus, you scared me. What are you doing here?”

  His answer was a hard punch in the face.

  Sadler staggered back, covering his injured eye with his hand. He grabbed for the sink behind him. The towel around his waist unraveled. It fell to the floor. “What the hell, man!”

  His assailant wore a pair of black leather gloves. He grabbed a fist full of Sadler’s hair.

  Stunned by the punch, Sadler grabbed at the man’s arm, struggled to pull his hand away but the grip on his long hair was too strong. And painful.

  Damn his long hair.

  Sadler was dragged to the shower stall he’d just come from.

  The floor was wet.

  Sadler’s feet slipped. He lost a flip flop and fell painfully to his knees.

  His attacker pulled him back to his feet by his hair.

  He pressed Sadler’s face against the hard, slippery tile wall. Bigger, stronger
than Sadler, he easily dealt with Sadler’s pathetic effort to break free. He pressed his gloved hand against Sadler’s face, muffling the homeless man’s ability to scream.

  With his free hand he drew a gun.

  Sadler’s eyes widened at the sight of it. It was his. An old combat .45 he’d hocked at a pawnshop last year for a hundred bucks. One of the last things he parted with. It had been his grandfather’s from when he was in Vietnam. Sadler’s dad had passed it down to him when Richie told him he’d joined the Army. One of the only times in his life his dad was actually proud of him.

  It had broken Richie’s heart to sell it but he needed to eat.

  The muzzle pressed against Sadler’s temple. The metal hard. Painful.

  Against the gloved hand, Sadler mumbled, “Please. Don’t do this, man.”

  A tear ran down Sadler’s cheek. Today everything was going to change.

  It did.

  The man pulled the trigger.

  The gun banged in the echo-y shower room. All muzzle flash and hot, burnt gunpowder.

  Richie Sadler’s brains splattered against the wet tile. His blood, bone, and brain matter ran red down the wet wall and sluiced toward the floor drain, washing away.

  Richie Sadler slipped to the wet tile floor and died.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ELEVEN O’CLOCK IN the morning. Time to open the Keel Haul bar, located on Ocean Boulevard along the Hampton Beach boardwalk.

  Brice Bannon turned the lights up from their lowest setting, but not too bright. The day drinkers hated having it too bright. Designed to feel like the interior of the sailing ships of old, the Keel Haul walls were polished knotty pine, the ceiling had thick timber ribs. Lighted lanterns hung from the beams, candle-like scones glowed over the booths, and scattered throughout the bar were lashed wooden barrels, sea chests, ropes, anchors, pulleys, fishing nets, and period-appropriate coastal maps and globes. The scent of teak oil filled the air.

  Bannon loved that smell.

  He lifted the hinged section of the bar and propped it open before winding his way through the dark wood tables and chairs to the front door. Solid wood, it had a large brass porthole complete with dog ears and nuts. It even opened on a hinge. He’d salvaged the door from the wreck of an 18th century British frigate he dove a hundred and fifty feet off the Rye Beach coast a few years back. He’d had the door refurbished and restored to near pristine condition.