The Last Run

by Todd Lewan

  And then he thought he saw something.

  It was a twinkle, a weak point of light—like seeing a lightning bug on a muggy night from several hundred yards. That’s no wave crest, he thought. He adjusted his night-vision goggles.

  Again he saw the blink.

  “I think I see something,” he said.

  “Where?”

  “Take us forward and left.”

  The next time it took him more than thirty seconds to spot the twinkle of light. That’s an EPIRB all right, he thought. Maybe some big ship dropped it. I hope so. I hope this is the end of the case so I can go home and crawl into bed beside Carin and hug her and hug her and hug her.

  They pounded on, yard by yard. Twice more Adickes spotted the blink. And then he saw blurs—squiggles, to be more precise, like those in a night photograph of cars driving with their headlights on. There’s something down there, he thought. It could be a raft. It could be people in the water. It could be debris from something that fell overboard a ship. It could be the boat sinking. But dammit, there’s something there.

  Then, as the cone lights from the aircraft’s belly brushed the blackness below, he saw pairs of the squiggly lines moving together, from side to side —the reflective tape on the shoulders of a survival suit.

  His jaw tightened.

  “There are people in the water.”

  “Don’t you ever quit whining?”

  “All I’m saying is—“

  “Oh, shut up,” Gig Mork said. “Shut up!”

  “But-”

  “Shut the fuck up!”

  The four of them had managed to hold on to one another since the rogue wave took David Hanlon. Bob Doyle was struggling to keep Mark Morley on his chest. The man felt heavier somehow. He was listening to Gig Mork and Mike DeCapua sniping at each other.

  “We should have gone,” he heard DeCapua say.

  “Shut up!”

  “We should’ve pulled the gear—“

  “If you hadn’t noticed—“

  “—and gone in. Why didn’t we?”

  “—we’re in the fucking mess together!”

  “Why?”

  A curler with a barrel big enough to carry two Winnebagos slammed them. When they came sputtering up, the first thing Bob Doyle heard from DeCapua was:

  “I hate this shit!”

  “I hate you!” Mork yelled right back. “I’m letting you go.”

  “Wait, Giggy—“

  “I’m letting you go!”

  “No, don’t!”

  “Well, then,” Mork said, “you shut—”

  “Okay!”

  “—the fuck—“

  “Okay!”

  “—up! Bob, I’m gonna kill this—“

  “OKAY!”

  They lost count of the waves. And in a way, they were also losing perspective on their universe. They’d been sucked into so many wave troughs, buried by so many breakers, blinded and gagged by so much wind, sleet and spray that they no longer fully appreciated how remorseless nature had turned or how horrible their predicament had become. Everything had gone so cold and bleak, the roar of waves now reverberated round them in so many dimensions, that it was as if all grace and gentility had withdrawn from the world. Past and future had no meaning. Time hung absolutely still. Sight, smell, touch, taste —except, perhaps, the taste of salt and vomit—were being stripped away, one sense at a time.

  And yet as monstrous as the swells grew, as many times as the combers left them breathing seawater, there was nothing more horrible than the rogue waves. Some of the swells they were able to stay on top of, and ride to great heights. Not the rogues. They made no sound, gave no warning as they stealthily approached, and they crushed them with such absolute force that when Bob Doyle popped back up through the surface he wondered, briefly, if he had died and his spirit left to drown in the seas for the rest of eternity.

  After one of those rogues, Gig Mork screamed out:

  “Where are those goddamned Coasties?”

  “Coming,” Bob Doyle said. “You’ll see a C-130 first.” He didn’t believe it when he said it, but hoped he’d been convincing.

  “What’s that?”

  “A big plane.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then comes the helicopter.”

  He couldn’t picture a helicopter flying in such conditions. Maybe a C-130. But not a helicopter. They’ll circle us all night, he thought. They’ll stay with us until morning. Maybe. But what good will that do? We aren’t going to make it until the morning.

  He wondered what was going on at the air station at that moment. I’ll bet they thought our distress signal was a mistake, he thought. No one is coming out in this shit. Would you? Would you fly out here in this shit? Maybe I would, he thought, but not to save anybody like me.

  A wail from Mark Morley startled him.

  “Tamara!”

  He had passed out for a few minutes, and just as suddenly snapped awake.

  “Tamaraaaaaaa!”

  “No, Mark! It’s me, Bob.”

  “Bob?”

  “Yeah, it’s Bob.”

  “Oh,” Morley said. He was slurring his words now. “I have a kid and a wife and I ain’t gonna make it.”

  “You will.”

  A wave buried them. When they resurfaced Morley asked him, “Where are they, Bob?”

  “They’re coming.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what, Mark?”

  “Tamara, I love you,” and again he began sobbing.

  He’s losing it, Bob Doyle thought. Say something. Say anything. “Listen, buddy, you’re gonna see her tomorrow. Tomorrow.”

  “Tamara?”

  Another wave pummeled them into frigid black. When they popped up, Bob Doyle pulled Morley back up on his chest. The skipper’s teeth were chattering, his body jerking. “I hope we’re rescued soon, Bob. I’m not doing too good.”

  “Keep trying, buddy. We’ve all gotta keep trying.”

  “I need to… my… my… kid …”

  Bob Doyle put his lips next to Morley’s ear. “You’re going to see him,” he said. “You’re gonna be the first one up in that chopper. You just got to hang on till the Coasties come.”

  He had begun to shiver himself now that water was getting between the seal of his hood and his cheek. It was as though ice was being dragged along his skin, slowly, down his spine, across his buttocks, down his legs. Each drop that entered his suit seemed to mushroom as it slid down his body and gathered in his suit legs. The sensation of pinpricks around his ankles was fading now; his feet were deadening.

  “You… you got… great kids, Bob,” Morley said. This guy’s amazing, Bob Doyle thought. He’s trying to talk to stay alive. Don’t tune him out. Talk to him.

  Bob Doyle said, “Our kids will play together someday. You’ll see. We’ll laugh about this.”

  “Where are the Coasties?”

  “Coming.”

  “How… how long we been …”

  I don’t know and I don’t want to know, Bob Doyle thought. He did not answer.

  “Bob?”

  “What, Mark?”

  “I can’t… see …”

  Bob Doyle felt a sting of panic in his throat. Was the loss of eyesight on the checklist of symptoms for advanced hypothermia? He wasn’t sure, but it might have been.

  “None of us can see. None of us.” That much was true, he thought.

  “I’m dying, Bob.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I sank it,” Morley said. “I was the skipper… and I… sank it.”

  “Stop talking like that.”

  “They’re gonna… sue me,” Morley said. “Dave is… gone and… I’m —I’m right behind him.”

  “Stop it.”

  “I’m dying. And I hate it.”

  “You got to fight. You hear me? Think of your kid. Remember? You’re going to have a kid.”

  Morley’s head went forward and his shoulders began shaking. He was sobbin
g again.

  “I hate it,” he said.

  Just then they saw the light in the sky.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Everything was jumping around the cockpit: binoculars, flight manuals, maps, the pilots. Dan Molthen did his best to read his instruments. But with the helicopter bouncing as it was, the dials were a constant blur.

  “How many are down there?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Bill Adickes said. “Maybe four, maybe five people in the water.”

  “I can’t believe it.”

  “There could be more,” Adickes said. He flipped up his night-vision goggles. “There could be as many as eight. Give me the binocs.” He held the binoculars to his eyes, and then lowered them. “I can’t see shit with these things. There’s no way I can be sure. But my guess is there’s four or five.”

  The moment he heard Adickes say he had spotted reflective tape, a wild excitement had rushed through Molthen. He still felt it, actually. He could not control the emotion.

  “Rich!” Molthen barked.

  “Sir?” said Rich Sansone.

  “Get dressed out. Prepare to deploy.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sansone undid his gunner’s belt, knelt on the cabin floor and unzipped his nylon bag. He started pulling out his rescue swimmer’s wet suit.

  Adickes looked at Molthen sharply.

  “No, no, no, no,” Adickes said. “We are definitely not going to do that. We are not putting anyone out in this.” He turned on his intercom. “Rich,” he said, “there is no way in hell you’re going out that door. Sit down.”

  Sansone let go of the bag. “Yes, sir.” He took his seat again. Molthen said nothing. He was looping them back around to the last recorded position of the distress beacon. Why did I have to say that? he asked himself. Of course we’re not going to stick Rich in the water. What’s wrong with you?

  “Bill,” Molthen said, “I don’t know why I —”

  “Forget it,” Adickes said. He had seen this thing happen to many men under pressure and he had learned how to amputate the emotion before it took over an aircraft. “You just keep flying this thing the way you’re flying it.”

  Molthen said nothing.

  “Dan,” Adickes said, “we need to start the hoist checklist.”

  “Right,” Molthen said. He took a breath. “Cabin crew,” he said over the intercom, “rescue checklist, part two.”

  Adickes said to Sansone, “Rich, it’s about time to let somebody out there know there are people in the water and that we’ve seen them.”

  “Mr. Adickes,” Sansone said, “we’ve lost comms.”

  “I know that,” Bill Adickes told him. “Try every frequency. Have you tried eleven megs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you tried eight megs?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, go to five megs. Keep calling. Make calls in the blind if you have to. Just because we can’t hear anybody doesn’t mean someone’s not hearing us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dan,” Adickes said to Molthen. “I’ll keep an eye on the radar altimeter. You just try to get us in a hover over the survivors.”

  “How high you think?”

  “How about a fifty-foot hover?”

  “No,” Molthen said. “We shouldn’t drop any closer than a hundred feet.”

  Adickes smiled to himself. The man’s got his confidence and judgment back, he thought. “Fine. Our drop limit will be a hundred feet. I’ll follow your inputs on the controls.”

  “We’re going to get those guys,” Molthen said. “I know it.”

  “Sure,” Adickes said. “Only let’s not kill ourselves trying.”

  Sean Witherspoon was at the cabin door with his hand on the door handle. They had just completed the second part of their rescue checklist.

  “Ready for the hoist,” he said.

  “Begin hoisting,” Molthen said.

  Witherspoon threw open the door to a blast of snow and ice. It stung his face. A chill shot through his body.

  “Arrggghh!”

  He lowered the visor on the top of his helmet and, grunting, thrust his head out the door. Ice, snow and sleet pelted him. Then he saw it.

  Holy shit.

  All of Witherspoon’s calculations, all of the mental buildup, all of the plans he had made on the flight out were gone. He had not seen the ocean until now. He had been plotting his moves, thinking out the hoist from beginning to end, in careful detail. But now all the moves were gone. They had sailed clean out of his head the moment he made direct contact with the churning, heaving atmosphere.

  He hesitated.

  Off to his right, in a trough between two enormous swells, he saw two arms, lined in reflective tape, waving. He shut his eyes.

  So this is what it comes down to, Witherspoon thought. All of the training and everything you’ve ever done in your life —this is what it comes down to. One pivotal moment. What are you going to do?

  He opened his eyes. His visor had fogged. He flipped it up. As soon as he did, sleet clawed at his eyes and forehead. He wiped his eyes, pulled the visor down. Panting, he said, “I see two guys down there.”

  “There’s at least four, maybe five,” Adickes said over the intercom.

  “Oh.”

  “I want a DMB out there right away, Sean,” Adickes said. “Let’s get that out, now.”

  A data marker buoy was a radio float that transmitted a 121.5-megahertz signal. They would lock the drop position into the computer and measure the speed and direction of the current by following the DMB’s drift. Witherspoon pulled out the float, activated it and hurled it out the jump door.

  “DMB’s out!”

  Adickes recorded the position. “Good. Got it, thanks.”

  Witherspoon reached a Mark-25 flare down off the wall rack. He set it on the deck near the door. The Mark-25 was a salt-water-activated flare. It floated and shot white light. It would burn for about twenty minutes. Witherspoon peeled the lid off the flare and popped the top. Sleet and snow were blowing around the cabin. It felt like working in a locust storm.

  “Okay, sir,” Witherspoon said, huffing. His breathing was coming faster. “I got a flare ready.”

  Adickes’s voice crackled over the intercom. It was a cool voice, free of fear. “Whenever you’re ready, Sean.”

  “Flare’s away!”

  Witherspoon did not see the flare hit the ocean. He had shoved the steel cylinder pitchpoling out the door when the gust hit them. It was a savage gust, well over 110 knots, and it sledgehammered the aircraft. The next thing Witherspoon knew he was halfway out of the cabin, gripping the jump-door frame.

  The aircraft was hurtling back and down, nose up and tail pointed toward the water.

  “Nose it over!” he heard Adickes shrieking at Molthen. “Nose it over, dammit!”

  “I’m trying! I’m trying!”

  “Nose it over!”

  “I’m doing it!”

  “We’re backing down!”

  “I know!”

  Then he heard a sound very few airmen in an H-60 have ever heard—the sound of one force being overcome by a greater one, the sound of two General Electric T-700 1,900-shaft horsepower engines spooling down. It was an odd, agonizing drone, like the wail of a wounded coyote. Then he heard the stutter of hail on the fiberglass airframe and the moan of wind in the rotor head. The cockpit lights dimmed. In the flickering light everything seemed to move in slow motion: Molthen and Adickes pulling power on the sticks, Sansone slamming into the rear wall, the aircraft tilting until it seemed to stand on its tail. Witherspoon swung his head. A swell was cresting less than twenty feet below.

  If a wave catches our tail, he thought, we’ll spin into the sea and sink.

  “UP!” he screamed. “UP!”

  At first, nothing happened.

  Then, slowly, grudgingly, the engines responded. The turbines groaned back to life, the cabin floor leveled off sharply, the altitude indicator on the cabin display
stopped falling, and he sensed they were climbing skyward …

  When a second gust caught them.

  This one made them twist and sway, gyrolike —yet somehow, they kept rocketing up and up and up, all the time swaying and gyrating in the wind. They went up as high as three hundred feet before the aircraft stabilized.

  Adickes pulled up their position. In fifteen seconds, the twenty-one-thousand-pound Jayhawk had been blown backward just under a mile. He and Molthen looked at each other.

  “You ready for more?” Adickes asked.

  Molthen took a deep breath and nodded his head.

  Fifteen minutes of bucking, pitching and scampering about the sky, and the Jayhawk was back over the dimly blinking beacon.

  “Let’s get another flare out there,” Adickes said. “That first one’s almost out.”

  “Roger that,” Witherspoon said. They had two more Mark-25s and a Mark-58, which would burn for a good forty-five minutes. He grabbed a Mark-25, popped the tab and heaved it out. The flare ignited downwind.

  “That helps,” Molthen said. Without the flares, the sea to him was nothing but a great, sweeping blob of blackness, streaked with foam. Now at least he had some reference for the ocean’s movement.

  “Okay, Sean, let’s hoist.”

  “Roger.”

  On his knees, wheezing now, Witherspoon clipped the cable to the ring on top of the basket, lifted the cage and, with both hands, pitched it into the wind.

  “Basket’s away!”

  But instead of dropping down, the forty-pound basket flew straight back toward the tail rotor. Witherspoon stared at it, dumbfounded.

  “It’s going straight back!” There was a panicky timbre to his voice that made Adickes nervous.

  “Hey, Sean, take it easy.”

  “It’s going straight back!”

  “Calm down and pull it in.”

  Witherspoon threw the winch in reverse and line came steadily in sweeps onto the reel. When he heard the basket rapping the frame alongside the jump door he reached out, grabbed it and hauled it inside.

  Breathe, he reminded himself. Breathe and think about what you need to do here. You need to get us forward of the survivors so that when the wind blows the basket it will blow it back to them. Do that.

  He started shouting instructions to Molthen. “Forward two hundred!”