The Oceanic Princess (Brice Bannon Seacoast Adventure Book 2)

by David DeLee

  Bannon shook the captain’s offered hand. “He didn’t. That’s what matters.” He looked around. “Your crew really stepped up, Captain. You should be proud of them.”

  Herron beamed. “Yeah they really did. We train for this sort of stuff, but most of ’em, they never imagine they’ll ever use it. We deal with seasickness and drunken idiots mostly.” He nodded. “I am.”

  To McMurphy and Tara, Herron said, “I can’t thank you two enough for what you did. By getting people away from the port side of the ship before the attack, you saved hundreds of lives. And your help afterward, dozens more.”

  “Glad we could be here to help,” McMurphy said. They each shook the captain’s hand.

  “You have a casualty count yet?” Bannon asked.

  Somber, Herron said, “Seventeen crewmembers, nine passengers, and three unaccounted for. The injured list is holding at a hundred and two. Search and rescue are flying the most serious back to the mainland now. None of those appear to be life threatening.”

  Bannon frowned. “We’re sorry for those you lost.”

  “If not for you all, it would’ve been a lot, lot worse. On a positive note, TSB’s onboard and they’ve declared it’ll take a while and some work, but they believe the Oceanic Princess will live to sail another day.”

  Another round of handshakes and the captain backed away, returning to the job of tending to his ship, his crew and his passengers, and to account for the last few missing.

  Grayson approached them, pocketing her phone as she did so. She glanced at the damaged Marine helicopter but didn’t mention it. McMurphy turned away and took a healthy gulp of whatever it was he was drinking.

  “That was the President. He’s asked me to extend my congratulations to you all. Job well done.”

  “They polishing up our commendations?” McMurphy asked.

  She looked at the helicopter, frowning this time. “You know that’s not how this arrangement works, Chief.”

  McMurphy cleared his throat. “Yeah. Right. All guts, no glory, and a phone call atta boy from POTUS.”

  “So what now?” Bannon asked, trying to save his friend from digging his hole any deeper with Grayson.

  “The Coast Guard cutter Defiant reported in,” Grayson said. “They’ve boarded the Dauphin and taken the crew into custody without incident. The FBI’s sending Laboratory Services personnel out from Quantico to gather whatever evidence, forensically or otherwise, they can from her before she sinks.”

  Bannon wished them luck, but didn’t hold out much hope they’d find much.

  Grayson looked at Barnes sitting with her head hung low.

  “We begin talking to this one,” she said of Barnes. “And to you, Ms. Sardana.”

  “Me? About what?”

  “Ghaazi Alvi. Your brother.”

  “There is nothing to say. It is a name my brother assumed when we needed to…disappear.”

  “When you became Tara Sardana?” Grayson clarified.

  “Yes.” Tara stared at her. Defiant. “Whoever she’s talking about, he is not my brother. My brother is dead.”

  Grayson let it go, for now. But Bannon knew it wasn’t the end of the subject. Not for any of them.

  “We’ll be talking at length very soon, Ms. Barnes,” Grayson said. “But for now answer me one thing.”

  “Give me my deal,” Barnes said, looking up. Her jaw was bruised, her mouth still caked with blood. “I’ll tell you everything.”

  “There’ll be time for that,” Grayson said.

  “Now or I say nothing.”

  McMurphy grabbed her by the collar and hauled her to her feet.

  “Hey! Let go!”

  He half-carried her to the side of the Oceanic Princess. Barnes squirmed in his powerful grasp but had no more luck breaking loose than kitten caught by the scruff of the neck did.

  “Answer the nice lady or I toss you in,” McMurphy said. “Handcuffed.” He hauled her precariously over to the railing. “Oops, terrorist overboard.”

  Barnes twisted in his grip. She looked to Grayson and the others. “You can’t let him—”

  In unison, the three of them turned their backs.

  McMurphy shoved her closer to the railing. “Say hi to what’s left of Faaid down there.”

  “Okay. Okay!”

  McMurphy dragged her back to the others and tossed her down so she rolled across the deck and stopped at their feet.

  Grayson looked down at her. “Tell us about Ghaazi Alvi, whoever he is, what is he planning next?”

  “This.” Barnes struggled to get back up into a sitting position. She turned looking one way and then the other, indicating everything around them. “All this was simply a test. A test to prove the railgun could operate as promised.”

  “Faaid said much the same thing,” Bannon said. “Did you think you would get away? That you’d get another chance to use it?”

  “We didn’t have to.”

  “Why not?” Grayson asked.

  “Because it’s not the only one.”

  Bannon felt his stomach hollow. There were more of them. Out there where?

  “Zayd wasn’t brought here just to bring this weapon online,” Barnes explained. “She was here to demonstrate its ability to destroy this ship and everyone on board, yes, but more importantly, she was here to show others how the weapon worked.”

  “Guess she won’t be doing that,” Bannon said, sounding more confident than he felt.

  McMurphy chimed in. “Not with half of her fish food and the other half scrapped off the hull into a Tupperware evidence tub.”

  “You’re all so arrogant and foolish,” Bridget said. “While she was on the Dauphin, she recorded everything she did. She created a complete how-to instruction podcast that she transmitted to Alvi before we left. You lost before we ever left the Dauphin. He has everything he needs.”

  “To do what?” Bannon asked.

  Barnes sneered. “To strike again. There are three more railguns. In the hands of people who have the knowledge and means to use them. You won the battle, but the war’s already lost. They cannot be stopped. Munaqadh cannot be stopped.”

  EPILOGUE

  Three days later

  THE SKY WAS APPROPRIATELY overcast. The priest read a prayer, standing at the head of FBI Agent Trejo’s open grave. The ground around it and the nearby pile of dirt were covered with carpet remnants of green Astroturf. Beyond the crowd of mourners stood four cemetery workers casually leaning on the big tires of the backhoe that had dug Trejo’s final resting spot. One smoked a cigarette.

  In addition to family, friends, and casual acquaintances, those gathered to mourn Agent Trejo’s passing were law enforcement personnel from every federal, state, county, and local police agency all the way from Maine and as far south as Pennsylvania and beyond.

  Not among the crowd were Brice Bannon and Skyjack McMurphy.

  When he’d heard they planned on paying their respects, Agent Dan Pierce formally, and forcefully, requested that they not attend the service, or the one for Agent Acosta earlier in the day. Pierce had eventually learned it was Bannon and McMurphy who’d broken into the federal building. That they’d kidnapped Safiyyah Zayd and left him and his team spinning their wheels for the next three days, looking for an escaped terrorist and leaks in their organization that didn’t exist. He’d made it clear he didn’t blame them for Trejo and Acosta’s deaths.

  He just didn’t want to ever see either one of them again.

  Bannon suspected the agent feared their presence would remind him of how badly he’d screwed up. That it had been his poor decisions and his rushed actions that caused the deaths of his men. That was a burden he would have to shoulder for the rest of his life.

  Too damn bad.

  Like at Acosta’s service earlier, Bannon and McMurphy came dressed in black suits and remained back by the line of cars. But, they were in attendance. This day was about remembering two brave men and the ultimate sacrifice they’d made, not their supervisor’s
bruised ego.

  When the priest finished speaking and the family began to toss flowers into the grave, Bannon and McMurphy turned and left. They had one more funeral to attend.

  -----

  IN HIS WILL, SEAMAN Troy O’Neil had stipulated his desire to be buried in Massachusetts National Cemetery, adjacent to Joint Base Cape Cod, his home for the past year. In attendance was every Coastie not on duty from Maine to New York City. Other branches of the military were well represented, too, as were others of law enforcement personnel.

  When the Coast Guard Chaplin finished speaking, the rifle party fired a three-volley salute. A woman close to the casket cried. Then a lone bugler stood on a nearby rise and played taps. The men and women in uniform presented their final salute while the mournful notes played. A six-member honor guard removed the flag draped over O’Neil’s casket. They folded it thirteen times into a tri-cornered shape and presented it to CPO Johnson in his dress blues. He turned smartly and knelt on one knee before Troy O’Neil’s mother. With a white gloved hand over and under the flag, he presented it to her.

  “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Coast Guard, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.”

  Too upset to take it, her husband leaned over and took the flag from Johnson. He gently laid it in the woman’s lap.

  Johnson returned to attention, snapped a salute, and smartly turned away, effectively ending the service.

  Bannon, McMurphy, and Kayla were in their dress whites. Tara wore a simple black dress. Grayson remained beside the Chaplin, wearing her Army Service Uniform, a midnight blue coat and skirt. She’d delivered a beautiful eulogy about heroism and young men and women that didn’t leave a dry eye. As the mourners slowly, reluctantly it seemed, began to disperse, Chief Johnson came over to Bannon. He touched Bannon’s arm, getting his attention.

  “Commander,” he said. “Seaman O’Neil’s parents would like to meet you.”

  “Of course.” Bannon excused himself from McMurphy, Tara, and Kayla and followed Johnson back to where the couple remained by the casket, but now on their feet.

  Mrs. O’Neil clutched the flag to her chest with two hands.

  “Mr. and Mrs. O’Neil,” Johnson said. “This is Commander Bannon.”

  Bannon shook their hands. “I am so sorry for your loss.”

  Mr. O’Neil nodded. “We understand you were with Troy when he…when he died.”

  “Yes, sir, I was. I had the great fortune of meeting your son, serving with him side-by-side if only for a little while. He was a good man. A brave man. He saved my life.”

  “Commander—”

  “Brice, sir. Please.”

  The older man forced a smile “Brice. Ever since Troy was a little boy, he loved being around water.”

  “That boy came out of the tub all pruned up, he was in there so long,” Mrs. O’Neil added, dabbing a tissue to her eye.

  Bannon smiled.

  “He had it in his head to join the Coast Guard since the day he learned how to swim,” Troy’s father said. “I don’t know where he got that from. I didn’t serve, I’m sorry to say.”

  “No need to apologize, sir.”

  He nodded, and gave Bannon a sad smile. “I’d never seen that boy happier than the day he graduated from boot camp. He…I…I’ve never been prouder of him.”

  Bannon placed his hand on the man’s shoulder as he bowed his head to cry.

  “He exemplified what it meant to be a Coast Guardsmen. He died a hero, saving not only me, but protecting thousands of others.” Bannon waited until they both looked at him again. “I can’t go into details, but believe me when I say that’s no exaggeration. You should be proud of him. We are.”

  Bannon glanced over at Johnson, who nodded his agreement.

  Mr. O’Neil nodded. “Doing what he loved. Guess you can’t ask for more than that.”

  “Respectfully, sir, you can. You can make a difference. That’s what you son did. He made a difference.”

  Grayson walked over and again extended her condolences to the grieving parents. When they walked away, she said, “I’ve done this hundreds, thousands of times. It doesn’t get any easier.”

  “Let’s hope not. I never want to be that numb,” Bannon said.

  They joined Tara, Kayla, and McMurphy and together they stepped carefully through the wet grass as they made their way back to the line of cars snaked through the hilly cemetery. It would take a while to clear the cemetery of traffic and truthfully none of them was in much of a hurry.

  As they walked toward Bannon’s F-350 and Grayson’s government SUV, she pulled a letter-size white envelope from the inside pocket of her dress coat.

  She handed it to McMurphy. “Might as well give this to you now.”

  He took the envelope from her. His name was written in pristine handwriting across the front. Her handwriting. Chief John “Skyjack” McMurphy. He opened it and shook out the single piece of paper inside.

  “What is it? I win the lottery or something?’ he asked before reading it.

  “Not exactly,” Grayson said. “It’s a bill from Uncle Sam.”

  McMurphy knotted his bushy red eyebrows. “A bill. A bill for what?”

  “For the CH-53 King Stallion helicopter you destroyed.”

  He stopped walking and silently read the invoice.

  “One hundred twenty-two million dollars! Are you serious?”

  He looked up with his mouth hanging open. The others had continued walking, smiles on their faces.

  “You can’t be serious,” he called out. “I didn’t even total that bird.”

  They kept walking toward the cars.

  McMurphy continued to shout. “I can fix it. The skid, it’s just bent. Easy. And the bullet holes…a little putty and some paint.” He shook the paper over his head. “Oh, come on. Lizzy? guys!”

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  STRIKE OF THE STINGRAY

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  Five Years Earlier

  Outside Kandahar, Afghanistan

  The sun hung high in the bleached out sky. A white orb searing a stretch of paved road running through the barren landscape south of the NATO controlled Kandahar Airport. The acrid desert rolled out on either side of the road like a lumpy dirt carpet of brown, the dreary monotony of bumps and berms only occasionally broken up by patches of sage bush and brushwood and ribbons of dark rocky ridges.

  Nothing moved until a desert-tan, high mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicle, commonly referred to as a Humvee, sped along the highway at a steady thirty-five miles per hour clip. Mounted with a M2 Browning .50 caliber machine gun, it crewed with four personnel. The gunner was in position wearing a dark ballistic vest, a tan camouflage helmet, and large orange-shaded googles. The vehicle provided security for the close-column convoy that followed.

  Traveling forty meters behind their security escort, a light-armored vehicle served as convoy lead to three medium tactical vehicles, one M925 5-ton cargo truck. The trail vehicle was a second Humvee.

  Sergeant Josh Starling drove the trail vehicle with Specialist Jon La Rosa riding shotgun—literally. Born in Sedona, Arizona, Starling was no stranger to temperatures that could reach a hundred and four degrees Fahrenheit and an unrelenting barren desert that offered no relief from the broiling sun and searing heat. Beside him, La Rosa, an olive-skinned Puerto Rican kid who’d lived his whole life in Miami complained insistently about the heat. Like it would change the more he whined about it.

  “How ain’t you hot, Sarge?” he asked again, w
iping a rolling drop of sweat from his temple.

  “Use to it.” Starling sped the Humvee up, closing the gap between them and the last tactical vehicle, the M925. A blunt-nosed truck it was capable of transporting ten-thousand pounds of cargo in its seven-by-fourteen foot bed, had hinged side racks and tailgate, troop seats, and a tan canvas cover that sagged between its supporting ribs that wobbled as the truck barreled down the road.

  “They say it’s different,” La Rosa said, making conversation.

  “What’s that?” Starling asked, not caring what La Rosa had to say or thought.

  “Dry heat verses tropical heat,” La Rosa said. “It’s all friggin’ hot, you ask me.”

  Starling didn’t respond. That didn’t stop La Rosa.

  “Least where I’m from,” he said, “you’ve got lots of water to jump into. Cool yourself off, you know what I mean?”

  Before Starling could reply, he heard the split second whine of an RPG and saw the streak of a white contrail flare across the barren landscape ahead of them. A thunderous explosion of sound followed. The blast obliterated the lead vehicle, a light-armored vehicle. In it had been their company commander and Starling and La Rosa’s platoon leader. Oily black smoke billowed into the sky. Proof to Starling there’d be no survivors.

  Small arms fire opened up on the convoy from the low desert berms.

  The radio crackled with frantic voices, calls for assistance and airstrikes. Curses were shouted over the static as the convoy vehicles moved forward and in reverse, each driver indecisive as to whether to drive ahead out of the kill zone or to back away.

  A second shoulder-fired anti-tank missile struck one of the tactical vehicles up ahead.

  The impact lifted the truck up onto two wheels before it slammed down again, righting itself. Two soldiers leapt from the cab. They run for cover away from the burning truck and dove into a low gully beside the road.

  An exchange of small and medium arms gunfire raged up ahead.

  Over it, Starling could hear the rapid spitfire of the lead Humvee’s .50 caliber machine gun.