The Oceanic Princess (Brice Bannon Seacoast Adventure Book 2)

by David DeLee

  She returned to what she’d determined to be a passenger section before it was subjected to an unfinished guy job. A quick count of the slotted rows told her the room had once held seating for three or four hundred passengers. But what the ship’s function was or had been didn’t matter. Her first order of business was to get a message to the outside world. Alert the Coast Guard. Get word to Bannon that she was alive, if not necessarily okay.

  Also, Bannon needed to know about Faaid. The last time they’d tangled with him, surface-to-air stinger missile weaponry had been involved. She didn’t know what Aziza Faaid was up to—not yet—but it didn’t take a scholar to know it wasn’t good. The man had proven to be dangerous. Whatever he was up to had to be stopped. He had to be stopped. Permanently.

  She moved forward and stepped through a curtained archway that took her into the first-class section of the ship. While the rows of seating in the forward cabin had been removed as well, unlike the midsection this space didn’t look like a half-finished construction teardown. The walls were paneled with new paneling and teak trim. The floor was black marble tile. There were a dozen cream-colored leather sofas and glass-topped coffee tables throughout. The room came to a point, following the bow of a ship and provided a one-hundred-eight-degree view of the ocean ahead.

  Tara took it all in and then dismissed it as irrelevant. Her only concern was finding the bridge, or at the very least a radio room. She crossed the room and climbed the open staircase she found going up. She coiled the chain still attached to her right hand. With the rifle strapped across her back and the knife gripped in her left hand, ready to strike, she ascended the stairs.

  At the top, she stepped quickly into a small galley kitchen. No one was there. For that she was grateful. She’d not eaten and had had very little to drink since being held captive. Shaky from lack of food and water, and achy from all she’d endured since being brought onboard—being chained up, the beatings she’d taken, and her fight to escape—all she wanted to do was slip into bed at home, slide between her cool, Egyptian cotton sheets, curl up and sleep for a week.

  Since that wasn’t an option, not for the time being anyway, she pulled open cabinets until she found a stack of protein power bars. She wolfed three down and then pulled a bottle of water from a refrigerator and gulped that down, too.

  There were two doors leading out of the galley, facing forward. She smiled reading the brass plate: Bridge. She moved toward the one door but paused, listening. She heard footsteps and voices. They came from the lower deck. At least two people, coming upstairs, speaking Arabic.

  Tara crouched below the half-wall that enclosed the stairwell and unrolled the chain a short length. She held her breath and waited.

  The stairwell was narrow. Only one person could come up at a time.

  A man dressed in a brown tunic and slacks, like the man she’d already killed, stepped up into the galley. His attention was down the stairs, still speaking with his companion.

  Tara jumped up and snapped the chain out. It lashed around the man’s neck. She stepped in behind him and pulled. He gurgled, clawing at the chain around his throat. Tara pulled harder, yanking him back, off his feet. The sense of déjà vu was not lost on her.

  The second man, on a lower step, paused. He stared at them with his mouth agape.

  “Nahuel!” The man Tara was choking squawked, slapping at the chain around his throat.

  Tara kicked her foot out and drove it into the lower man’s gut. He groaned and doubled over, clutching his stomach as the wind was driven from his lungs. Tara spun the man she held and shoved him face first against the bulkhead. His nose hit the wall, breaking with an audible crack.

  She pulled him back as the other one tried to straighten up and catch his breath. He balanced precariously on the edge of the lower step. Tara shoved the man she held at him. They crashed together. The lower man’s foot slipped and he fell back, waving his arms. He gave out a sharp cry of surprise as he lost his balance and tumbled down the stairs.

  The racket was louder than Tara would’ve preferred, but by the time he hit the bottom his head rested at a peculiar angle, making it obvious his neck was broken.

  No one came running, so all’s well that ends well, Tara thought. For her anyway.

  She cinched the chain tighter around the first man’s neck, redoubling her efforts to end him, too. It didn’t take long. When he was dead, she uncoiled the chain from his throat and let his body collapse into a pile on the floor.

  Breathing heavily and more tired than she’d care to admit, Tara cautiously stepped through the door into the bridge. There was a single person present. A young man dressed in the same style brown tunic as the others, and like the others Middle Eastern. He sat in the captain’s chair. With his feet up on the console in front of him, he listened to a pair of headphones.

  Apparently, he’d heard nothing of the struggle in the galley.

  Tara came up behind him and placed the blade of her knife to his throat. His eyes snapped open, but otherwise he didn’t make any attempt to resist.

  “Don’t hurt me,” he pleaded.

  “You speak English.”

  “Of course. I’m from Brooklyn.” He cast his wide eyes in her direction. “Please don’t hurt me.”

  “Do exactly what I tell you to do and you’ll be fine.”

  He eyed her with suspicion but said nothing.

  “Activate the ship’s SART.”

  “What?”

  “The search and rescue transponder.”

  “I know what it is. I can’t.”

  Tara pressed the knife harder to his throat. “I’ve just killed three of your shipmates. Don’t think I’ll hesitate to kill you, too.”

  The young man visibly blanched, but his eyes hardened with defiance. “It’s not that I don’t want to. I can’t. The transponder. It was disabled. And before you ask, the SAT-AIS has been destroyed, too. Captain’s orders.”

  The IMO required all international travelling ships over three hundred gross tonnage and all passenger vessels to be equipped with a Satellite Automatic Identification System. The device transmitted a unique identifier as well as position, course, and speed at regular intervals, allowing ships to be tracked by a marine traffic controller. With it disabled, the ship was untraceable by base stations dedicated to monitoring such traffic.

  “What about the satellite EPIRB?”

  The Emergency Position-Indicating Radio Beacon, a tracking transmitter that could be triggered during an emergency. A humanitarian consortium of treaty-based, nonprofit, intergovernmental rescue services from forty-four nations and agencies called COSPAS-SARAT monitored for such radio beacons, ready to forward such alerts to over two hundred countries around the world.

  He shook his head and swallowed hard. “Destroyed.”

  “What about the damn radio?”

  The young man pointed at it. The mic had been removed, preventing any outward communication. “Mr. Faaid’s got it,” he explained.

  She pressed the blade harder against his throat.

  He quickly added, “There’s, there is a portable EPIRB onboard.”

  “Where is it?” she asked, hopeful.

  “Mr. Faaid’s got that, too.”

  Frustrated, Tara spun the chair around. “So, what, you’re just a pilot?”

  “What? No. I don’t know how to drive this thing. The ship’s automatic navigational system’s on.”

  “Then what are you doing up here?”

  “They told me to look for ships and listen for incoming calls. If I hear or see anything, I’m supposed to tell the captain.” The young man couldn’t be over twenty years old. “No. Don’t.”

  She tore the headphones from around his neck. She pressed one cup to her ear. She heard an Arabic voice talking. A propaganda-filled recruitment pitch. Today’s terrorist, indoctrinated via podcast. She tossed the headphones to the console.

  “How many personnel onboard?” She added, “I dare you to lie to me.”

 
; “Twenty-five including the captain and Mr. Faaid.”

  Twenty-two since she killed three people getting up to the bridge. Twenty-one if one counted Reza. There had to be a way to get a message out, a distress signal, something. “What about a sat phone? Anyone onboard have one?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “A satellite phone. Connects to a satellite instead of a cell tower.”

  “I know what it is,” he said. “If someone’s got one, I haven’t seen one. They took our cells and all our electronic devices before we boarded. Can’t even get Netflix.”

  A shadow passed by the window in the galley door, catching her eye.

  She took a step back and twisted the radio operator in his seat before yanking him to his feet a split second before the glass shattered. Tara ducked behind the young man.

  “No! No, no, NO!”

  Someone opened fire with an automatic weapon. The young man’s body shuddered and jerked as he was riddled with bullets. The sound was deafening. Bullets hit the panoramic windows sending cracks racing through the glass. Bullets pinged off the metal consoles. Glass screens shattered. The console popped and sparked.

  When the shooting stopped, Tara dropped the lifeless body and darted to the back of the bridge. She ran for the rear door and yanked it open. Any hopes she harbored they hadn’t discovered she’d escaped were now dashed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  OUTSIDE. NIGHTTIME.

  Bannon stood under the overhang that extended from the Keel Haul. The bar occupied the end unit, one of dozens of seaside shops, T-shirt stores, food vendors, and arcades. He leaned against the side of the building. A beer bottle dangled from between his fingers, undrunk after the first sip. Hampton Beach police cars lined the street. Emergency lights flashed, painting the beach community with pulsating electric blue and white light. The blast of radio traffic punctuated the quiet lapping of the nearby waves and the low murmur of the gathered crowd. As many people on the street as there were during the hot summer days or when the band shell was rocking.

  The cops kept them behind barriers across the street.

  Bannon thought he’d been achy, tired, and sore before. He had no words for how drained and beat up he felt now. His eyes still teared from the CS gas. It clung to his clothes like dust. Blood covered his hands, matted his hair, and stiffened his clothes as they dried. He held a cell phone in his hand. It was smeared with CS dust and blood.

  A black government SUV allowed through the roadblocks pulled up in front of the Keel Haul. Elizabeth Grayson got out of the back seat.

  “Brice. Are you all right?” Her concern for him was both genuine and deep. “What the hell happened?”

  Dressed in jeans and a blousy white top, Bannon wondered if he’d ever seen her in anything but a pantsuit or her Army uniform before.

  Bannon stared off at nothing, barely acknowledging her presence. “They came for her.”

  “Zayd? That’s impossible.”

  Bannon shrugged, still kind of out of it. “A hit squad of some kind. We killed seven of them. There were at least eight or maybe more, all armed with automatic weapons, CS gas canisters, and grenades.”

  “Grenades?”

  He nodded. “Grenades. Like a damn army. The ones we killed are Middle Eastern. All men. But there was a woman with them. She got away.”

  “A woman?”

  “A redhead. I didn’t see her. McMurphy did.”

  He looked at Grayson for the first time. “How’d they know Zayd was here?” If his voice sounded accusatory, he didn’t care.

  “They couldn’t have,” Grayson said. “Is everyone okay?”

  Was she avoiding the question? He squared her with a look. He trusted her, but bureaucrats couldn’t help but be bureaucrats. Their traits, they’re infectious. Like a disease. Grayson wouldn’t have been the first leader Bannon followed, that he liked and respected, that changed over time. For the worse.

  He answered her question. “McMurphy took a blow to the head. Concussion, maybe. The EMTs are checking him out. Reyes took a bullet to the gut. He’s been transported but is expected to be fine. Johnson’s a little banged up but otherwise good, too. O’Neil…” He choked up. “O’Neil died, saving my life.”

  “Oh, Brice.” She touched his arm. He didn’t react.

  “How did they know she was here?” He asked again. “Pierce? I had a run in with him at the Harbor. Could he have put it together? Any of the agents we encountered snatching her, could any of them have learned it was us?”

  “No. There’s no leak, Brice. Everyone’s convinced it was the terror cells we’re chasing.” She took a moment to look over the crowd, the police moving in and out of the bar. “This didn’t come from them.”

  Bannon pushed off the wall and walked over to a trash can. He lifted the lid and slammed his full beer into it so hard the glass bottle exploded. Grayson jumped. He stood looking down at it for a moment then he moved toward the bar. She met him at the doorway to the Keel Haul. He handed her the cell phone.

  “What’s this?”

  “Troy O’Neil’s phone. The last call on it, an hour before he died, was to his mom.” He went back into the Keel Haul.

  Grayson looked at the blood-smeared phone then followed him inside. She stopped short seeing the wreckage. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Forensics people were moving through the upended tables and chairs. The gray, powdery dust coating the floor had been turned into a wet paste by the sprinkler system. Standing puddles of water were trampled through. Soggy napkins were strewn about, stuck to the floor, some with their edges burned. There were blast marks where the grenades had exploded. The splatter of mustard, ketchup, and cocktail sauce from exploded condiment bottles reminded Bannon of when they used to go and play war at the paintball park. A haze of smoke hung in the air. It stung Bannon’s eyes.

  Cops in uniform and detectives milled around, moving into and out of the kitchen. They spoke with Johnson who stood with his back to the kitchen door frame. McMurphy sat on the edge of a booth, an EMT fussing over his cut forehead and trying to keep him from drinking a beer.

  Bannon had draped O’Neil’s body with a sheet from his upstairs apartment. Blood had soaked the white cotton red. The bodies of dead terrorists littered the front half of the Keel Haul. Two more were on the tile floor in the kitchen, killed by McMurphy before he got conked on the head and got knocked out.

  At the bar, Kayla Clarke had cleared a spot and was working on a laptop computer. She had been Bannon’s first call after Grayson. She lived nearby and had been the first to arrive after the cops.

  “Someone told them she was here,” Bannon said. Like a dog with a bone, he couldn’t let it go. “It had to be the FBI.”

  “There could be another explanation,” Grayson offered gingerly.

  Bannon stared at her. She recoiled at the anger he projected. “No way.”

  “I’m sorry, Brice. It’s the only thing that makes sense,” she said, not backing down.

  He shook his head. “No. She’d die first. Besides, we didn’t grab Zayd until after Tara was gone. She’d have no idea we did that, much less give us up. No.”

  “Before we could get on top of it,” Grayson said, “news got out there’d been a disturbance at the federal building. If the terrorists got wind of that…if they told Tara that…she’d know it was you. She’d know you’d bring Zayd here.”

  “You’re assuming she’s been compromised or that they even watch the news. We don’t know that. Maybe they still think she’s Zayd.”

  Even before he said it, he knew that wasn’t true. If Tara had successfully maintained her cover, they wouldn’t have come after Zayd at all. They wouldn’t know to. He was grasping at straws, any straws. No, Tara was compromised. She was their prisoner, probably tortured, possibly, maybe, already…

  He couldn’t finish the thought.

  “What now?” Grayson asked.

  “We fix this,” Bannon said. “We figure out a way to win. I made a p
romise.”

  “Hey, guys,” Kayla called out. “You’ll want to see this.”

  Bannon and Grayson crossed over to where she stood at the bar. McMurphy stood up, too. When the EMT tried to sit him down again, McMurphy brushed him aside. He joined them, crowding around Kayla’s laptop.

  On the screen was a picture of a large, white and red passenger transport size catamaran, the kind that ferried people and vehicles. From the image on the screen, Bannon guessed the catamaran had a length of one hundred meters with a thirty-meter beam, two vehicle decks, a passenger deck, and the bridge deck above the twin hulls.

  “I was going over the evidence the police collected from Tumandar’s attic apartment. Most of it was what you’d expect. Bomb-making material, receipts from places where he bought the stuff he used to make his bombs, pro-radical propaganda nonsense.” She looked at Bannon. “The brochures you found of potential targets. Except for the harbor, all of them were places he’d rejected for one reason or another, thankfully.

  “The cops downloaded a ton of stuff off his computer. I cloned it and have been going through it, looking for anything that might help us, when I came across this.”

  “Which is what?” Bannon asked. His tone was sharp with impatience and frustration.

  Kayla shot him a look, but then went on. “I give you the Jean-Paul Dauphin. It’s currently docked at Boston Harbor.”

  “And why do we care about a French ferryboat?” McMurphy asked, sipping his beer.

  “At first, I thought maybe it was a potential but ultimately rejected target. A ship capable of carrying a thousand passengers and almost five hundred vehicles, with a crew of twenty-five, makes sense as a target, right? Now I’m not so sure.”

  “Why not?” Grayson asked.

  “Because it’s not part of any regular ferry service. It’s not here to pick up or drop off passengers, vehicles, or anything else that I can find. In fact, I can’t find out why it’s here at all.”

  If there was anything out there to find, Kayla would have found it. Tracks were being covered.