Page 58 of Fire and Rain
And yet knowing Sean was out there made it impossible to stop.
* * *
Sean grabbedthe strap and dragged both Trey and the survivor into the cabin. Then he worked to free Trey so he could start treating the man, who was clearly in bad shape. “The Wiggy’s bag is ready.”
“Thanks, man.” Trey turned to the survivor, shouting to be heard over the noise of the helo. “Were there other people on board your vessel?”
The survivor struggled to speak. “Th-three…m-m-more…”
“We’ve got three more PIW,” Trey told James. He took off the man’s life jacket and cut through his survival suit and the clothes beneath it. “Do they have strobes?”
The man nodded, his eyes closing.
“We’re looking for them.” Sean moved back to his position by the door, his infrared goggles on the water.
Three heat signatures. Three tiny dots of light amid fog and rain and churning seas. It might actually be easier to find a needle in a haystack.
Then he saw them. “Two strobes, low one o’clock. We’re almost on top of them.”
Spurrier brought the helo around. “I see them.”
Sean prepared the cabin for another hoist. When it came to severe hypothermia, seconds mattered. “You want to use the strap again?”
It would be hard for Trey to put a semi-conscious person in the basket in rough seas. But using the strap meant leaving one survivor alone in the water, something no one wanted to do.
Trey got himself back into the strap. “I don’t think we have a choice.”
Sean did the safety check. “Safety check complete.”
“Begin the hoist.”
“Swimmer is leaving the cabin.” Sean lowered Trey to the water once more. “Swimmer is in the water. Swimmer is okay.”
Sean saw both survivors grab hold of Trey, their panic putting the hoist at risk. “It looks like the survivors are in a panic.”
Trey seemed to calm them down. Then his voice came over the radio. “I’m sending them both up together.”
“Roger that.” Sean waited for Trey’s thumbs-up. “Survivors are in the strap. Survivors are on their way up. Survivors are outside the cabin.”
Sean again dragged them inside. But the two young men didn’t know their way around rescue gear, and they started to panic when he tried to take them out of the strap, legs and arms thrashing. “It’s okay. You’re okay. I need you to move into those two troop seats so I can retrieve the swimmer. Stop struggling!”
“I d-don’t w-want to f-fall out!”
“You won’t fall out if you calm down and let me remove the strap.”
Trey was out there, his second time in the water on this mission. His survival suit would keep him safe—but only for a while.
The survivors seemed to calm down at the sight of their friend, allowing Sean to remove the strap and prepare for the final hoist of this evolution. He checked the strap again. “Ready to retrieve our swimmer.”
“Roger that.”
Sean leaned out the cabin door, scanned the surface of the water—but Trey was gone. Adrenaline punched through him. “I don’t see our swimmer anywhere.”
“How in the hell did he end up there?” Spurrier banked the helicopter. “He’s a hundred yards out at our nine o’-clock. And it looks like he’s got our fourth PIW.”
The first survivor they’d rescued almost sobbed with relief. “M-my s-son.”
When the aircraft was in position, Sean lowered the strap a third time. In a matter of minutes, Trey was back in the cabin with a teenage boy, who was barely conscious.
