Shielding Instinct, page 14
Next, the boat rolled, tossing the passengers into the swell.
Hawkeye didn’t see the impact of waves two and three. But, in one way or another, most of the people landed on the shore.
From the age of the two crew members who made it to the shore in the next cove, they were servers and probably out on the deck. Two crew members were still missing. Hawkeye thought one was probably a cook and was trapped in the galley.
Could be the fire started there? Hot grease, propane, and the severity of the tilt.
Could be the fire started with the impact of the jet ski?
Knowing the origin of the fire was useless to him. The whole damned boat was aflame.
Hawkeye figured the other crew member might be trapped in the wheelhouse. Not having seen the configuration of the boat, it was speculation at best.
That would account for three of the five missing. Then there were the two other passengers. With a high percentage making it to the shore, what could have happened to the others?
Could be in the latrine. “If anyone had been hitting the head, they were shit out of luck.” Hawkeye looked over his shoulder and said, “Gallows humor.”
Cooper didn’t care; he was hard-focused on the water.
There should have been at least two more people in the water.
Why?
Three possibilities—killed or injured, someone with a disability, someone who didn’t know how to swim, or didn’t trust their swimming skills to make it to shore.
If alive, Hawkeye thought he might find them clinging to the side of the boat below the fire line or maybe they found something buoyant.
Yes, that was his best guess.
He had used the first wave to make it to shore, and the others probably made that distance because they used the waves to their advantage.
But why were the crew at the second cove?
If it were Hawkeye, he’d have a sense of responsibility. He would have tried to make sure everyone was safe, tried to get to his coworkers.
Hawkeye bet that by the time the third wave hit, they decided they’d done what they could. And he bet they’d somehow angled differently.
If he was right, and the current pulled them farther south—not much farther south, but enough—then his search should be south, not seaward for this point.
When Hawkeye looked over his shoulder, Halo and Max were in view. “I’m turning here.”
Max was up on Halo’s shoulders. And, like Cooper, had his nose down, chuffing air, searching for the scent of a human under the water.
It was so strange to be in the pristine clarity of the water this morning and to have visibility change so drastically in such a short time.
As he turned back to the boat, Hawkeye saw that the anchor line was down.
“Halo!” Hawkeye called with a hand cupped around his mouth. The winds were high and strong, and he was covered in goose flesh. “Anchors down! Check to see if anyone is clinging to it. Bobbing into the water so they aren’t in the fire. Someone who can’t swim.”
“Wilco. Heading there now.”
Hawkeye could feel a shift in the water and wondered if they were now moving into low tide. And while that might help him get out to the boat, it would make getting back in that much harder.
Stilling for a moment to consider the position of the boat and the direction of the ripples, Hawkeye saw something in the distance farther out to sea.
He squinted at it using a technique from his days as a Green Beret when he willed his brain to make sense of a shape. It often brought something into relief. Hawkeye would swear there was a bobbing white cube—cooler?—with something dark draped over the top—person? It seemed to be floating away from them out to sea.
He spun his surfboard around. Halo was closest, but not in a direct line of sight. If he was checking the anchor, he might miss this. And the person might float past the horizon line.
“Halo!” Hawkeye bellowed, letting the water carry the sound of his voice. “Around the back of the boat, your eleven o’clock.”
“My eleven. Wilco!” Halo tucked his head, his hands stabbed into the water as he propelled himself toward the mark.
Cooper scrambled to Hawkeye’s other shoulder, whining and crouching as if to dive into the water. Hawkeye wondered if the smell of the fire and the burning chemicals was frightening him. Their surfboard might be as close to the inferno as Cooper could stand it.
Pressing his clawed paws into Hawkeye's back, Cooper released a series of barks that set Hawkeye’s limbic on fire.
His body was moving with purpose and power that came to him only in times of extreme need.
The tone of Cooper’s barks pressed Hawkeye’s throttle wide open, and he was gunning toward nothing obvious.
Chapter Twenty
Hawkeye
Up ahead, Hawkeye spotted the smooth curve of a man in a deadman’s float.
Hawkeye hoped like hell the guy was just conserving his energy and would turn his head to take a gasp of air.
How long had he been face down?
The boat rescue had been going on for a while now.
It could be that this guy had stayed upright and breathing most of that time.
Dead or on the cusp?
As he got closer, Hawkeye was debating best practices when, in fact, he had none.
Earlier, when he’d come upon Roy, Hawkeye had reviewed the few ways he’d seen rescuers get people onto a board. And he wasn’t satisfied with any of them under these circumstances.
On his belly, this man would be a recovery. There was no way he’d make it to shore alive. Of course, that might be true no matter what Hawkeye did next.
If Hawkeye somehow got an unconscious man faced up and held in his legs the way he’d done with Roy, it wouldn’t be the same outcome.
The guy would be dead long before they reached the shore.
What this man needed was CPR. And that was impossible on the water without a hard enough surface to use to compress his heart and pump his blood manually.
Still thinking the situation through, Hawkeye drew up beside the man. “Cooper, jump.”
As the words left his mouth, Cooper was in the water, paddling up to the guy and nudging him.
Hawkeye appreciated the sharp barks because they would alert people on the shore that there was a find.
As Hawkeye got into the water, he flipped his surfboard upside down so the fins were facing skyward. Immediately grabbing the man’s wrist, Hawkeye pulled it across the board and flipped the board back upright.
It was an easier maneuver than he’d imagined.
A child could have done that, he thought, as the board was once again turned down.
The man was on top, face down.
That was the problem with that particular technique.
If there was any chance of surviving, the man needed air.
Without mouth-to-mouth, there was zero chance for this guy. The distance to shore was too many minutes away. Minutes equal brain cells.
The guy’s wedding ring glinted from hands bloated by sea water as Hawkeye dragged the man’s arm above his head.
It wasn’t pretty what came next.
Hawkeye grunted, pushed, and tugged.
An arm here, a foot there. A head lolling. A leg in the water.
Yelling, “Come on! Come on!” as he worked and maneuvered, knowing that time was tick-tick-ticking.
Finally, Hawkeye had the man on his back. He peeled back the guy’s eyelid and touched his eyeball to check the corneal reflex, and by God, the man blinked.
Hope!
With his knees on either side of the man, contorting his body to align himself, Hawkeye did his best to give a first breath.
Then he untethered the board from his Ankle and held the cuff out to Cooper.
“Cooper, dude, get us to shore. Find Reaper. Cooper, pull. Find Reaper.”
Trusting his dog, Hawkeye hunkered forward, performing the possibly life-saving breaths, hoping someone back on the beach would see this and get involved.
Cooper had been trained on how to drag something in the water. But that had been in the Cerberus pool, or a few times on a lake.
He’d pulled a lightweight raft and a swim ring, nothing as heavy and cumbersome as two men on a surfboard. And certainly not through an agitated sea.
But Cooper knew what was needed of him.
There seemed to be a point on the beach that Cooper had targeted, and he was swimming with all his might.
Hawkeye kept up the breaths—pinching the man’s nose, sealing the lips, exhaling smoothly until he saw a rise of the chest. Turning his head and taking in more air, Hawkeye had never done this in real life. He’d practiced it on the vinyl dummies.
But never this long. Never in dire circumstances.
Like Cooper, Hawkeye just did the best he could with what he knew.
Reaper was calling something.
The sound carrying over the water was a staccato string of vowels and consonants that Hawkeye couldn’t make sense of.
Hawkeye rose up momentarily. He needed to make sure there wasn’t a warning in those words.
As Hawkeye rocked back on his heels, the man beneath him suddenly coughed and then was puking up lunch and seawater.
Hawkeye’s fingers fumbled and slipped as he tried to get the guy over to his side so he wouldn’t aspirate his vomit.
The volume coming out of this man’s mouth was mind-boggling like he’d tried to drink the entire sea.
Hawkeye knelt on one knee, his foot planted on the board, holding the man in place as Cooper paddled along.
Suddenly, people were crashing in the water toward the surfboard, coming to lend a hand.
As soon as they reached him, Hawkeye fell backward into the water, letting the others take control.
By the time Hawkeye walked out of the surf, Cooper was on the beach, shaking off. Then, Cooper spun and jogged to Hawkeye, who rounded down to give him a whole-body hug and gratitude scritches.
That’s when Hawkeye became aware that the phone in his waterproof carrier was ringing and ringing.
By reflex, he swiped and answered, “Hello?”
“Hello, is this Hawkeye? Man, where are you? Miss Armstrong is having an emergency. Did you get her message?”
“Petra? Emergency?” Hawkeye panted for breath. “Let me…One second.”
Someone pressed a towel into his hands, and Hawkeye sent them a grateful “Thank you.”
Hawkeye opened the messages app, swiping the screen, while movement pulled his gaze seaward.
The rest of Cerberus was heading to shore.
Halo had two people on his board. Levi had one.
Ash knelt on all fours, head down, as Hoover dragged him to shore.
There were citizens in the water ready to assist them, too.
That freed Hawkeye to read. Man in a blowhole? Won’t survive long.
She was at an emergency. She wasn’t the emergency. The relief that swept over Hawkeye was disorienting.
Petra needed him. She trusted him.
Per the message, he tapped the link to check the map showing where this guy was waiting, then Hawkeye lifted the phone to his ear. “Stay where you are, I’m on my way. Ten minutes tops.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Petra
The tide receded.
“Terry! You aren’t going to hear me for a minute. I’ve figured out how to get you out, but I need more equipment. My being gone is me getting you help faster. Do you understand?”
“Helping me. Hurry. Please.” There was a sob. “Please.”
“You’ll be back with Melissa very soon. Hang on.”
Petra tipped her head and called up the chimney, “Okay, bring me up.”
Even tethered the way she was, even braced with back pressed into the chimney opening and feet shoving her into place, the tide here was exhausting.
She was exhausted.
As inch by careful inch, the bystanders above pulled her up, Petra pressed against the stone wall realizing how smooth it was comparatively speaking. The sea buffed down the edges with the continual pounding of surf.
Hands reached under Petra’s armpits to help her the last of the way up and out.
Sopping wet, Petra sat on her butt, hands under her thighs, breathing heavily.
“Terry?” Melissa was on her knees in front of Petra, her hands clasped as if in supplication.
“Talking. Able to do math.” Petra loosened her helmet and held it in her hands, looking it over.
“Math?” Melissa whispered in confusion.
Petra didn’t mean to be mean, but “Melissa, can you go away for a minute? I need to think about what I saw and what can be done, and I need my whole brain to do that right now.”
Melissa blinked with her eyebrows held so high up on her forehead that the skin rippled. From a crouch, she backed away.
Could Petra have been nicer about it? More empathetic? Sure.
Did she have time for that right now?
Terry didn’t.
Normally, Petra's head swirled with ideas that tried to catch her attention. It often made her feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed, even in the great outdoors.
But when the chaos of a crisis rose and those around her lost their minds in panic, she was calm, methodical, and able to function.
Petra always seemed to be experiencing the opposite of those around her. It was like she was in some kind of parallel existence where her rail held a reverse charge. Her brain was anxious and overwrought on the daily, and calm in crisis. Others were calm on the daily and panicked in crisis.
If Petra had to choose which rails to ride, she’d rather have everyday anxiety and clarity in a crisis than the other way around.
With people’s lives on the line, that’s when Petra wanted to be performing at her best.
In those instances, something in Petra’s brain usually found the best possibilities for a successful outcome and lifted it into her awareness like a lantern being held aloft in a twilight wood, exposing the right path home.
But her brain needed both space and quiet to work through the data she’d collected in her descent.
The problem was that there was a tunnel that inclined from the sea to what she thought was a small cave. The water never fully emptied. Based on the cave entrance, it was a big enough space to shove a man inside. But Terry’s silence followed by sputtering after a wave rolled in, meant that he was probably underwater with each wave. Then he’d use the time after to gulp at air and, to some extent, communicate.
There was something that was stopping Terry from coming out of the cave, at least to the area below the chimney.
Petra suspected a lack of a mental picture of what he was up against and a lack of air.
If she was chronically oxygen-deprived, it would be hard to prime her body to explore.
Right now, Terry knew he had access to air.
He didn’t know how far under the rocks he was, how far it was to the shore, how the chimney worked where he could hear the voice instructing him.
When the water came in, possibly because of the slope, these waves seemed more forceful than she would have expected.
Terry might well have tried to escape his cave only to be further battered and pushed back.
Beans stood silently by her side.
“Do you know how long it is to low tide?” Petra asked.
“A half hour maybe more.” He caught her eye. “Too long, right?”
“Too long.” Petra looked down at her helmet. She was thinking of all the ways she could try to get a line down to Terry, but all of them presupposed that Terry didn’t have broken arms, had the space to maneuver, and had strength left in his body.
But what if she affixed a rescue line to the top of the other helmet?
Petra tried to imagine what Terry’s experience might be like. She imagined being in the cave, grabbing the helmet. Surviving a tide. Gasping for air as shaking, waterlogged fingers trying to get the clasp attached.
Then what would happen?
The tide comes in, and the tide goes out. Terry feels a slight pull to show him the exit.
He realizes that he is right next to the chimney.
Tide comes in…
If he held the rope—no. If Petra tied knots in the rope and he gripped above each knot, then she could help him stand up in the chimney and hold him in place as the tide came in.
Would it bash him?
At least somewhat. Yes, of course.
Was it better to come in from the front by the sea and try to send something in with a wave? Maybe something on a flotation so she could guide him out to the surf instead of up into the chimney?
Petra hadn’t tested the way in. She didn’t know if it traveled in a straight line.
If she had time, she could run experiments. But time was at a premium.
Up the chimney, then.
And the helmet seemed the most doable. But the timing had to be impeccable.
Petra called the rope team over, and she explained her thoughts.
Everyone had a clear idea of how this was going to work.
She readied herself to go down again and was surprised that convincing herself to make the descent the second time around was harder. Well, now she knew how claustrophobic and violent it was down there.
Petra let her gaze run along the cliff's top, wishing Hawkeye would suddenly appear. His rescue expertise and steady nature would be very welcome right about now.
She probably didn’t make Melissa feel any better about the plan when she said, “Well, Terry, beggars can’t be choosers.”
Over she went.
Down. Down. Down.
“Terry, I’m here. We’re going to get you out. We have a plan.”
“Help.” His voice was almost inaudible.
“Lower the helmet!” Petra called.
Here came the second helmet tied securely at the top with a rope.
Did she want Terry to dangle from his neck?
Heck no.
She’d at least get him into the chimney; they could add a harness under his arms from here. The helmet was to guide him out of the cave.
Please don’t have broken arms, Terry.
Petra quickly called the plan to Terry so he knew what was expected of him.
