1 – In the Dark
Most of the shellers had departed the ocean side of Portsmouth Island on the ferry to Ocracoke Island and then on to the mainland in Carteret County, North Carolina. Transportation to and from this popular barrier island is easy and fast if you have a boat and can spare 20 minutes. Ferry hopping, on the other hand, can take hours. Howard “Hatch” Delaney had the rest of his life to spare and would not be jockeying with the tourists filling the ferry. Being a homeless veteran, Hatch had no agenda beyond hitting the beach early to beat the ferry dropping of the daily shelling frenzy. He had his small boat moored on the sound side of the island adjacent to his camp to travel back to the mainland. After a bountiful day of shelling, he would head back to Ocracoke Island and through the inlet to Beaufort to the shops where he sold his treasures to shopkeepers to satisfy the eager tourist trade. Tonight, he would camp at his site and make the trip after an early morning hunt for the best shells left on the beach by the Atlantic overnight. Little did he know his trip off the island would not be by his boat but by a Coast Guard helicopter.
As he walked north along the beach, slow rollers chased crabs up the beach as the surf unfurled in foam. He loved this time of day when the sun had given up and settled into a final act to light up a few wispy clouds with another fantastic sunset. The abandoned village of Portsmouth on the northern edge of the island was where he had set up camp on the western side of the ghost town. He had over a mile to go when he saw something drifting in the waves floating toward the beach a hundred yards ahead. The closer he got, the more defined it became as it bobbed to the beach. When he finally reached where the package had come to rest, he could see it was about the size of a bag of charcoal wrapped in black plastic with duct tape generously applied at the ends and around its girth in several places. His first thought flashed through his head: Was this a bale of something valuable tossed off a boat to avoid capture by the Coast Guard? Was he looking at something worth more than a dump truckload of seashells?
His heart quickened as he dragged the package up the beach to get it out of the water. When he squatted down next to it, he took off his backpack and began to poke and prod to guess what was inside. He paused to look around to see if he had been observed quickly. The beach was deserted to the north toward his camp, and the only thing to the south was the Cape Lookout lighthouse on South Core Banks flashing every 15 seconds. The dunes to the west, covered in seagrass, were also empty. The plastic was too thick to rip with his fingers, so he used a small penknife to stab into the contents. When he withdrew the knife blade, it revealed a white powdery residue, and he knew he had just stabbed the motherload of cocaine.
“Holy shit!” Hatch uttered to no one, hefted the package up, and guessed it must weigh at least twenty pounds. Doing the math, he knew he held nine or ten kilos of coke. Tossing the package over his shoulder, he began to hurry northward to his camp for a closer inspection. Despite being clean for nearly three years, he knew this would be the ultimate test to staying that way. It had been a long, hard road, and he pondered if his willpower would be as strong as his recognition of an impending epic fail by giving into temptation. He quickened his pace, knowing another half mile or so was between him and the relative safety of his camp. About 70 yards ahead, he caught a brief flash of light offshore and a faint, low rumble of a powerboat. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the boat was approaching the beach or had already stopped and idled about 50 feet from shore, where the beach dropped off sharply to hide the rip currents he knew were always there. Was it the owners of his treasure, or was it the Coast Guard? Hatch stopped and watched to determine what his next move should be. Should he drop the treasure and run? Hide in the low dunes in the seagrass? His gut said this was not going to end well.
The decision was made for him when high-intensity beams from tactical flashlights illuminated as two men ran toward him. Intense beams of light swept over the sand as they came closer. He had nowhere to run. A heavily accented Hispanic voice called, “Amigo, you have retrieved my lost luggage. Muchas gracias, Amigo!”
As they neared him, both men shone their lights in his face, and he was effectively blinded and dropped the package to shield his eyes. Hatch said, “Hey, man, I found this on my beach, and it don’t look much like luggage to me.”
One of the men laughed and said, “Eduardo, did you know this beach belongs to this gringo?”
The other man shined his light away as he laughed, and Eduardo’s face was revealed briefly as he replied, “Amigo, this is not your beach. This beach belongs to us and that luggage,” he shined his light on the package lying at Hatch’s feet, “belongs to us too.”
Hatch held his hands up slightly, palms facing the two men, “Guys, I don’t want no trouble. If this is your luggage, you can take it. Weren’t nobody around, so I just picked it up and…”
A blinding flash of brilliant white light came from behind Hatch and painted both faces of the men confronting him, followed by a short blast of a siren. A Coast Guard cutter was racing toward them about a quarter mile away from the south with a powerful spotlight trained on them. The rumbling engine of the idling boat erupted with a short blast as someone in the boat goosed the throttle briefly. Hatch could see that it was a sleek, black cigarette boat with gold lettering on the stern that said SnowWhyte. Someone yelled from the boat, “Vamos, date prisa que es la polizia!” (Come on, hurry, it’s the police.)
“Pick up the luggage, gringo, you are coming with us,” said Eduardo.
“No, man, I don’t want none of this,” Hatch protested.
“Then I will kill you right here,” he said, pulling a handgun from his waistband.
“No, no, don’t shoot me. I’ll go. I’ll go with you,” Hatch pleaded and bent down to pick up the package.
Hatch was a survivor, and he knew outrunning a bullet was not an effective defensive strategy; there had to be a better opportunity to switch to something more offense-oriented if he could remain patient…and alive. He had seen too many reckless reactions, getting people killed while he led his squad in Afghanistan. Being too eager to kick a booby-trapped door had taken so many warriors unnecessarily. Those he had lost would always be part of his dreams, haunted by his being too slow to issue a warning. He swore to himself to remember and follow the Marine mantra: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast.
With one man in front of him and Eduardo behind and shoving Hatch with the muzzle of his pistol, they sprinted toward the fast boat now idling parallel with the shoreline in three to four feet of water about 50 feet from the beach. They plunged through the water and arrived at the boat where a third man waited, anxiously looking over his shoulder at the Coast Guard cutter plowing through the ocean, coming straight at them with a brilliant searchlight covering their escape. Both men climbed into the boat, and Hatch vividly saw himself eating a bullet at close range.
“Alejandro, who the fuck is this gringo?” barked the man in the boat as he reached down and plucked the package off Hatch’s shoulder.
“He’s nobody, but he’s seen us. We can’t leave him here,” explained Alejandro as he reached down and grabbed Hatch by his shoulders. They dragged him into the boat. “Go, go! Go north, Roberto, away from the Coast Guard.”
Roberto spun the wheel and jammed the throttle forward, and the powerful engine howled, and the boat wheeled around and cut through several small waves before streaking into open water, showering them with spray. Hatch stumbled as the boat accelerated sharply and fell to his knees.
“Eduardo, soluciona este problema, atarle las manos! (Fix this problem, tie his hands!),” screamed Roberto as he steered away from the pursuing cutter.
Alejandro grabbed Hatch’s left wrist, pulled him to his feet, and tried to wrench his arm behind his back. Hatch fought against him, whirled, and chopped his throat with the edge of his right palm, crushing his larynx and dropping him to the deck. Eduardo jumped over the package and clubbed Hatch on the side of his head.
Hatch never saw the blow coming as Eduardo crushed the butt of his pistol on the side of his head. Everything went black, no stars, no flashes, just blackness, and Hatch collapsed, draped unconscious over the boat’s transom. The cutter bore down on the fast boat as it accelerated hard to the north. The abrupt motion of the accelerating boat pulled Hatch over the transom. He never heard the splash of his body hitting the water or the gunshots aimed in his direction as the momentum hurled him from the rear of the speeding boat, where he flopped limply over the surface of the chilly Atlantic like a skipping stone. He began to sink when his forward motion slowed, and water soaked into his clothing to pull him into the deep. The chill of the ocean water shocked his body, and he became conscious enough to realize his greatest fear – drowning.
A former Marine, Hatch instantly remembered his most hated training, Marine Swim Advancement Training (MSAT), and decided that this was not his night to drown. The water was black, and he was disoriented from the impact of bouncing across the water for fifteen yards. Don’t panic! Think! Which way was up? His drill instructor always gave them one piece of advice before any water exercise – bubbles up! He released some air and could barely see the bubbles in the darkness, but they told him which direction to swim.
The rip current typical of the Outer Banks was strong, pulling at him faster than he could swim. His training kicked in and told him to swim with the current and to keep swimming up if he wanted to live. He made slow progress toward the surface but ran out of air faster. His lungs burned as he tried to fight the overwhelming desire to gulp in a deep, saving breath. He failed and simultaneously felt the chill of his last conscious breath of salty Atlantic Ocean water that gave him the confirmation of his greatest fear. His arms stopped flailing, and his legs stopped kicking just shy of the surface. So very close and yet so very far.
Being only a couple of feet from sweet air, Hatch’s upward momentum breached his body to the surface as the Coast Guard cutter pulled alongside. Two rescue swimmers instantly entered the water and brought his lifeless body to another Coastie on deck, reaching down to pull Hatch from the ocean. Lawrence E. Smith, a Health Services Technician (HSs) onboard, immediately checked the airway, breathing, and pulse, finding none of the ABCs before defaulting to emergency CPR. While doing chest compressions, the HSs noticed the severe head trauma and questioned if he should even continue with CPR. The skull was clearly fractured, and he decided to stop CPR. Hatch involuntarily coughed and vomited seawater onto the deck. The HSs felt for and found a faint pulse and shallow, labored breathing. “He’s back with us!” yelled the tech.
“Good job, Smitty! said Ned, one of the rescue swimmers. “Keep him warm; I have a Life Flight chopper en route to get him to Carteret County Memorial. I’ll call ahead for the Trauma team at the hospital to meet the copter. Got vitals I can pass along?”
Smitty instructed, “Just get them on the radio, and I’ll give them what I got. He’s not looking good with the head trauma. He’s not responsive, but he’s alive. It could be a severe concussion, but I’m no doctor. I do CPR, hang nails, blisters, and Band-Aids.”
Hatch heard their conversation but was confused. He could not move. He could not speak. He could not open his eyes. Was he paralyzed from the head injury? They seemed concerned by what they saw. How bad was it? And why was it so dark? They said he was alive, but why was he stuck in the dark? Was he dead? Dying?
Coming later this fall, “Dead Thoughts,” the fourth and final book in the series, delves into how (or if) dream-capture technology can record brain activity during the brief time gap between life and death. From the moment of flat-line on an EKG monitor showing no heartbeat to the brain ceasing to function can be five minutes or so with no oxygen to the brain. Degradation begins in four to six seconds, so the gap is small. However, the average person entertains 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts daily, 2,500 to 3,300 thoughts per hour, or up to 55 thoughts per second. What thoughts or memories could be “scraped” in four to six seconds? Logic says something should remain behind, and the CSU team labels them as dead thoughts.
What could be gained, and who would be in a position to give a rip? The team envisions using Dreamscape 3.0 and AI to “scrape” residual memories from the mind of someone unable to speak. They surmise success could help family members communicate with someone unconscious or in a shallow, comatose state and have access to their last-moment thoughts before brain death is complete. In other scenarios, like law enforcement investigators, five minutes could reveal significant insights before the victim expires, and thoughts and memories are unwittingly discarded. A flat-line on an EKG monitor shows the heartbeat has ceased, but does not mean the brain is dead. There is a gap of four to six seconds where the mind functions without oxygenated blood being pumped to the brain, and five minutes or so before degradation shuts it all down. A functioning brain holds thoughts and memories that the research teams’ AI is fast enough to extrapolate brainwave patterns into dialogue. Why abandon Dead Thoughts that will be lost forever?
My hope is for readers of my work to enjoy themselves. gdogwise@live.com