Page 105 of Everything You Hate
That’s the right call — Zade as the brake, Dean as the one already past caring. Keeps Dean’s protocol-vs-the-person tension live without making him the one who has to recite the numbers. Here’s the exchange:
Zade’s Coast Guard jacket is dark with rain, hood up, his face sharp under the dock lights. “Shea called, said Abel claimed you were hurt.” He scowls. “You don’t look hurt.”
“That’s because I’m not. It was a setup. Abel lured Scarlett out onto the water.”
“On whose vessel?”
“One of Jasper’s runabouts.”
“Fuck. This storm will rip that boat apart.”
“It already is. Abel called in a Mayday. Two miles northwest, engine failure, taking on water.”
Zade looks out over the harbor at the whitecaps slamming against the breakwater. “We won’t get to them by boat.”
“Then we call the station. Get the helo up.”
He checks his watch. “Winds are at forty, gusting fifty-five. That’s past launch threshold, Dean. They won’t authorize it.”
“I don’t give a shit about the threshold.”
“I know you don’t.” He says it flat, not arguing. “Doesn’t change what the duty officer says when I call.” He exhales a long, slow breath. “But I know a pilot crazy enough to attempt it.”
The Coast Guard base sits a quarter mile north of the marina. We run. Boots on wet asphalt. Rain in our faces. The base gate is manned by a kid in a rain slicker who takes one look at Zade’s credentials and waves us through. The hangar bay doors are open. Inside, the helicopter sits on its pad, rotors still, lights dim. Crew Morrison stands under the tail boom with a clipboard, arguing with someone on his radio.
“—understand the conditions, sir. I’m telling you we have a Mayday with two souls?—”
Zade takes the radio from Crew’s hand. “This is Master Chief Haven. I’m authorizing the launch. Paperwork to follow. Morrison, preflight. Now.”
“I’m going,” I say.
Crew looks at me, and his eyes widen under the brim of his U.S. Coast Guard ball cap. “Dean? I thought your swimming days were behind you.”
They’ve never been behind me. I still train daily, rain or shine. I still see the ghosts of every goddamn search and rescue that went wrong. “I’m going.”
Crew holds up his hands. “Far be it from me to tell the great Dean Kinsella what to do.”
Then he turns and starts barking orders at the two crewmen by the fuel pumps. The hangar erupts into motion. Someone hands me a drysuit that’s too small. I cram into it anyway and strap on a harness. Zade throws me a helmet. The comms unit crackles to life as Crew climbs into the pilot’s seat. Zade takes the hoist operator position. I strap into the jump seat behind them.
The aircraft lifts. The floor falls away. My stomach lurches. The hangar doors slide open, and the storm hits us like a wall. Rain hammers the windshield. The helicopter tilts, corrects, pushes into the wind.
“Whew, she’s angry today, gentlemen,” Crew calls into his headset. “This is gonna take more than a bit of sweet talk.”
I stare at the black, churning water below. Scarlett is down in that. In a boat taking on water. In the dark. She’s?—
No. I lock down the panic and focus.
We clear the harbor in under two minutes. Crew takes us out low and fast, hugging the black line of the coast. Every time the wind shifts, the bird jitters under us. I grip the harness so hard the webbing bites my palms. Zade’s on the radio, voice steadyas he coordinates with the district desk and the search vessels already scrambling in the Sound.
“Visual on the target?” Crew barks, flipping toggles. The rain turns the glass into a Jackson Pollock. “I can’t see shit.”
“Nothing on FLIR,” Zade says. “Try the northwest quadrant again.”
The ocean below is chaos. Whitecaps explode against one another, then vanish, then return, a battlefield of moving targets. I search for any sign of the runabout—a reflection, a sliver of hull, anything—but all I see is water and more water and?—
A flash of blue.
“There!” I shout, pointing. “Port side, eleven o’clock.”
