Queen Conch

By Eric Douglas

Queen Conch is a protected species in the United States, but smugglers are catching them close to Withrow Key for restaurants in Miami. In the process, they are tearing up the coral reefs and creating an environmental disaster. It is up to Jackson Pauley and Randy Littlebear to determine if this is simply an illegal fishing operation or if there is something bigger going on. Is someone making a land grab to build condos on Withrow Key?

This is the fifth Withrow Key thriller short story. Set on a bypassed key in the Florida Keys, life moves a little slower and a little weirder.

Each Withrow Key thriller short story features scuba diving, adventure, boats, the ocean and mystery along with beautiful locations and scenery. Jackson Pauley and Randy Littlebear get a visit from Mike Scott, international news photographer and the main character from the Mike Scott adventure series. This story also introduces a character featured in the Mike Scott novel Wreck of the Huron.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eric Douglas
• Release date: Oct 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310481949

Eric Douglas

Life is an adventure for Eric Douglas, above and below the water and wherever in the world he ends up. Eric received a degree in Journalism from Marshall University. After working in local newspapers, honing his skills as a story teller, and following a stint as a freelance journalist in the former Soviet Union, he became a dive instructor. The ocean and diving have factored into all of his fiction works since then.As a documentarian, Eric has worked in Russia, Honduras and most recently in his home state of West Virginia, featuring the oral histories of West Virginia war veterans in the documentary West Virginia Voices of War and the companion book Common Valor.Visit his website at: www.booksbyeric.com.Eric talks about adventure and taking time to be creative, along with diving and writing, on his blog at www.booksbyeric.com. He would love it if you dropped by to say hello.You can also follow him on Twitter, get in touch on Facebook or through Google+. Lastly, you can always send him an email: [e-mail]

Book preview

Queen Conch

A Withrow Key Thriller Short Story

By Eric Douglas

Queen Conch

By Eric Douglas

Copyright. Third Edition 2015 by Eric Douglas at Smashwords

Second Edition 2013 by Eric Douglas. First Edition 2010. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of Visibility Press, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a newspaper, magazine or journal.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

This is a Visibility Press original.

Copyright © 2015 Eric Douglas

All rights reserved.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

About the Author

Chapter 1

Jackson Pauley was working hard. The bubbles from his exhaled breaths were rising quickly in front of his face, making it difficult to see very far, in spite of the exceptional visibility. He could see more than 100 feet in every direction, but neither Jackson nor his friend, Randy Littlebear, were thinking about the scenery. Or at least not directly.

Jackson adjusted his own buoyancy as he swam forward pushing the load. Littlebear hovered about eight feet above him, controlling the lift bag’s buoyancy. They wanted to get the large concrete block into place. It was to be the anchor for a new mooring ball they were installing. Rather than risk dropping an anchor on the coral bottom, Jackson would only take divers to sites that had a mooring ball. Now that he owned the dive shop and could make the decisions for himself, he had gotten permission from the Coast Guard to place several more mooring buoys so he would always have a good selection of dive sites.

Jackson and Littlebear had already placed two anchors, but they had gotten an early start so it was still just the middle of the morning. The concrete weight had to be heavy enough to hold a large dive boat in place against a moderate current. It was always possible the ocean conditions could change while divers were in the water but the boat still needed to be there when the divers surfaced.

Littlebear signaled to Jackson where they needed to go to set the concrete block in place. He could see better from his higher position. Both divers were careful to aim for a sandy area with plenty of room around it. They didn’t want the anchor to be dragged up against the corals. They made slow progress, feeling the gentle wave action from above moving them back and forth.

Swimming forward, Jackson glanced up to check on his friend and saw exactly what he did not want to see. The strap connecting the weight to the lift bag was slipping. The bag itself was fully inflated, straining with its 500 pounds of lift. The concrete block weighed slightly more than 500 pounds, but the buoyancy from the water made it almost perfectly neutral.

The strap continued to slip and Jackson