The Last Run (38 page)

Now they were starting to get forward airspeed in addition to the winds coming at them. Zullick heard screams: the wind, the turbines, his flight mechanic, Windnagle, who was fighting to bring in the rescue basket now whipping like a snapped kite and thudding along the airframe just feet from the tail rotor.

“SHEAR!” Zullick screeched. “SHEAR! SHEAR! SHEAR!”

“I can get it in!”

“SHEAR THE CABLE IF YOU HAVE TO!”

“I can get it!”

Holding the collective back, feeling the sweat sting his eyes and the spasmodic lurch of the helicopter as it ripped free of the downward smothering draft, Zullick heard it—an erratic, stuttering
thump-thump, thump-thump-thump
through the airframe and then a door slamming and a sudden, heavy quiet.

Windnagle punched the rescue basket. Then he stowed it and the hook and slumped back into his seat.

“We
left
them,” he said.

Zullick looked over, and seeing Durham, coldly wet and hollow-eyed, perspiring heavily, he said vaguely, “I have the flight controls.”

He leaned forward and checked their altitude. They were up to five hundred feet.

“We left them,” Windnagle said again.

“Chris,” Zullick said.

“No, no.” He let out a big sigh. “We left them.”

“Chris, if we stayed any longer we were going to be—“

“We left them,” Windnagle said. “And they were still alive.”

After the hammering clatter of the rotors faded and the last of the smoke flares had burned out, Bob Doyle closed his eyes and pulled Mark Morley higher up on his chest so that his mouth was against the skipper’s ear.

“Mark?”

“I gotta,” Morley mumbled, the words slurry, as if he had been heavily sedated, “… I gotta get…”

“Can you hear me?”

“… on it…”

“The helicopter’s gone, buddy,” Bob Doyle said into the skipper’s ear. “It flew back to get some gas. But there’ll be another one. I swear.”

“… got to …”

The skipper’s head flopped forward.

“Hey,” Bob Doyle said. “Hey.” He reached around and, clasping Morley’s forehead gently and easing it back, pulled the skipper’s nose out of the water.

“Mark?”

The combers were coming faster now, no more than ten seconds apart. Bob Doyle never saw them coming. But he knew when they were approaching because his body would suddenly lose its heaviness and begin to rise, as a leaf rises in a breeze just before a downpour, and although he knew he was no lighter he kept rising and hearing the hollow, sickening rush of water and then a wave would explode. When it came down on him everything lighted up in flashes and wheeled around and blacked out, and then the next thing he knew he was coming up through the surface and breathing spray and seeing white and hearing only the air-splitting howl of wind.

Then he would claw through the hilly darkness, eyes on fire, head pulsating, stomach bloated with seawater, to search for his skipper. Each time he found Morley floating, head flopping, arms flung out and loose as strands of kelp, breath coming in quick, whining rasps, he would drag the big man up onto his own chest and lie back and pray that his inflated suit would keep them afloat until the next breaker.

Now he, too, was fast taking on water. It had filled the lower legs of his suit and was halfway up his thighs, and each time a wave rolled him he could feel the water slosh against his crotch, sending a horrific, stabbing shock through his testicles that lighted flashes of light in his eyeballs and left him gasping, shivering from the pain.

Stop shivering, he told himself. Goddammit. Stop and stop and stop and stop. You are
not
going to shiver. You can’t. Okay, you can quake a little. Go ahead and quake. But no shivering. You can’t shiver.

The cold was all through him now, the heavy cold that had numbed away his feet and ears and snaked through the rest of him like a steel, flexible snake, a snake that slid and curled down his throat and down through his chest and stomach to his ankles. Each time a wave spun him or flipped him, the snake coiled firmer and colder in his chest until it felt as though a slippery, freezing eel was slapping around inside of him. He was becoming afraid of the cold now, even though it had been in him for some time, and he wondered what it would feel like to pull a dry warm blanket over his feet and legs and chest for just a minute. But he knew that this was not possible, that there was nothing to do about the cold but take it and take it and take it, and he tried to take his mind off it by thinking about Morley’s suffering. I’m so glad I’m not him, he thought. I’m so glad for that. God, I’m glad I’m not him. The cold is bad in my legs and in my nuts and some now down my back but he lost feeling in his lower body hours ago and he is still fighting it. I wonder how long it takes before you have to amputate a limb or a finger because of hypothermia. Don’t think about that, he told himself. Don’t think about that. But this guy is dying a creeping death. He’s hoping and fighting, but he’s dying even as he’s hoping. Just look at him fight. He’s being frozen alive and still he won’t give up.

He shook Morley by the shoulder.

Oh God, he’s not shaking anymore. He’s beyond the shakes. That means his core temperature is below eighty-five. I think that’s right. Well, whatever it is, it’s bad. When you stop shaking you cross a line and he’s stopped shaking. His heart could stop any moment. Oh,
goddamn
those helicopters. Why couldn’t they get a basket near us? Now he’s going to have a heart attack. Maybe it’s the best thing. I don’t know. I can’t stand watching him go through this, agonizing like this.

What a lousy, shitty thing to think. What is the matter with you? You’ve got to save him. You’ve got to get him into a rescue basket so he can be hoisted up to one of those helos. You’re going to have to wake him up to do it. There’s no way you’re going to be able to push him up into the basket. He’ll be too heavy, with all that water in his suit. You’ll need him to help you. You’ll need to wake him and keep him thinking clearly until he’s in the basket.

Christ, this water is cold.

Stop thinking about it, he thought. Think about the helicopter. Didn’t that second helicopter come real close to buying it, though? Especially that one time the rogue climbed up the hoist cable and took a swipe at them. I don’t know how that wave didn’t catch the belly of that thing. And Giggy, wasn’t he funny screaming at the helicopter like that?
Send the fucking diver down! Send the fucking diver down!
And you were pretty funny, too. Yelling out your name.
Hey, it’s me! Bob Doyle!
Real funny, all right. Hilarious.

“Giggy!”

Out of the darkness he heard Mork answer: “What do you want?”

“How’re you holding up?”

“Not good. I’m still stuck with this asshole.”

“Hey, Mike!”

Mike DeCapua groaned.

“Mike!”

“What?”

“Give me your lighter.”

“What?”

“I said give me your lighter.”

“What the fuck for?”

“I want a cigarette.”

“You’re fucking cracked.”

“No,” Bob Doyle said, “I just want a cigarette. Giggy, give me a cigarette?”

“Kiss my ass.”

A swell lifted them and sent them tumbling into a trough. When he came up for air, Bob Doyle yelled out: “I know one of you bastards took my cigarettes! Who took them?”

He heard nothing.

“Bastards! Who stole my cigs?”

DeCapua shouted back, “I ain’t giving you shit.”

“How about you, Gig?”

“Get your own cigs.”

“Aw, come on, Giggy. Give me a cigarette. Just one lousy cigarette.”

Another wave buried them, and then another. When they came up, Mork shouted: “Bob, if we get out of this I’ll buy you a fucking carton of Marlboros.”

“Luckies,” Bob Doyle said, “I want Luckies.”

“Bastard,” Mork said. “Hey, Bob, where are those goddamn Coasties?”

“They went to cash my retirement check” —Bob Doyle gasped for air —“so we can have beer money once we get back.”

When he said it, Morley laughed.

“Hey, man,” Bob Doyle said to him. “Welcome back.”

The skipper didn’t stop laughing. His laughter had an artificial sound to it, an accent of drunkenness, a shrill overtone of idiocy. It was eerie. It made Bob Doyle think of people in smocks behind bars with mad-dog eyes and chains fastened to their wrists.

“Hey, hey,” he said, “stop it, Mark. Stop it.”

And Morley stopped, just as quickly as he had started.

“Take it easy, man,” Bob Doyle told him. “Just take it easy, okay?”

“You know, Bob… you need to know it, man … I want you to know it.”

“What, Mark? Know what?”

“You’re a good man.”

“Sure, sure. You just hold on, now. I got you.”

“You are. You’re a good man.”

“You just hang in there, Mark. You’re going up first. You hear me?”

Morley said, “Listen, Bob. You tell my son. You tell him that I love him.”

“Shut up,” Bob Doyle said.

“You tell him. You’ll tell him, won’t you?”

“No,” Bob Doyle said.
“You
tell him. Hear me? We’re getting you in that basket and —”

Morley went limp.

“Hey!”

He shook the skipper.

“Hey!”

He could hardly feel his hand in the lobster fingers of the survival mitten, but Bob Doyle curled up a fist, as tight as he could make it, and drove his knuckles into Morley’s face.

“Wake up!”

He hit him again.

“Fight! Fight, you bastard!”

Crying, socking his skipper, again and again, he suddenly heard Mark Morley groan.

“There,” Bob Doyle said, “there, that’s better. You wake up. Mark? Mark? Hey, skipper, listen to me. Listen. The helicopter’s here. It’s
right
behind us.”

Groggily, Morley said, “Where?”

“Right behind us,” Bob Doyle lied. “Pretty soon they’re gonna send the basket down.”

This was how the four men talked to one another as the ocean raged and they waited for a light to pierce the swarming darkness.

This sea can look so much like a snake, Bob Doyle was saying to himself. The way it undulates, twists. The way it rolls over and strikes. Maybe a python. It’s got the green of a python. Are pythons green or is it cobras? Who knows. In the light of those smoke flares it sure looked green, though. That pale, pretty green. She sure is pretty when she’s angry, this sea. Like the spray. Looks just like a storm of fireflies, I swear to God. Millions of them. No, it’s more like each wave was a huge sparkler, or fireworks showering a field in Vermont with white sparks. On a summer night. Sure. On July Fourth. Showering the sky with diamond sparks. Diamonds and sapphires and emeralds. That’s it. The curling part of the waves—they’re green, like fiery emeralds.

Christ, you really
are
losing it, Doyle, he said to himself. Getting all weird thinking. That’s the hypothermia, he thought. That’s what that is. The cold. It’s making you see things, say things. Just pray it doesn’t make you start doing things.

He lowered his head and said a prayer.

When he finished he looked up and saw his little one, Katie, sleeping under rumpled, white sheets, her blond hair spread over the pillow.

Go ahead, he thought. Talk to her.

Katie? Katie? I’m in trouble, baby. If you can hear me
—
I know you’re sleeping, but if you can hear me, honey, Daddy is in a lot of trouble. I don’t want to scare you, honey. But wake up. Please wake up and tell Mommy that Daddy’s in the water.

The girl did not stir.

All right. I’ll figure out something, baby. I’ll try to figure it out. But just let somebody know Daddy’s in trouble, baby. And please hurry, Katie. We’re going to die soon.

Then, suddenly, he saw long prongs of light—the beams of headlights—and he was certain he was riding a highway in California. Hills of grass went slipping past, brown grass, the kind that hugs the California hills in the fall, and he knew he was doing a hundred along the San Jose highway. The sky was black. Chipped diamonds, loads of them, lay scattered about everywhere in the sky and he had the radio on and the wind was howling off his side-view mirror and the car racing faster and faster, up and down the hills.

He then saw the wave approaching.

It rose up and over the four of them and came down with a deafening crash and he was twirling in the sea again, wrapped in cold black.

Now it was as if he was looking through a fog. Then the fog parted into shreds of bright blue and he was gazing up into unending sky. He was looking up and there was black soil on both sides of him and at his feet. And then he was staring down at a cemetery. He was looking down at a neatly rectangular pit and he saw his lovely ones, Katie and Brendan, sobbing, their hands caressing the casket, and he knew he was in it but could not understand how he could be looking down on it from above.

Katie’s hair was a brilliant, frosted white, tucked partially inside of a beret. Beside Katie stood his mother, and alongside her his kid sister, Sally, who looked no older than nine. Behind them stood his brothers and his father and even his uncle Jim, who looked like he did before the cancer, and every one of them was staring blankly at the casket in the pit. He told them in his mind that he loved them all and how badly he felt for having died on them, and how it had not been his idea to die and that if he could have died any differently he would have.

And then he noticed Rick Koval, standing over his casket.

You bastard,
he cried out.
You smug bastard.

Koval was standing over the grave leering with those pig eyes of his and laughing—that boorish, insidious laugh of his, the laugh he so hated. And then he saw Koval rest one hand on Katie’s shoulder and, with the other, give his casket the finger.

His head snapped back.

Bob Doyle knew where he was. He knew he was in the ocean, frigid, yet alive. He heard a comber barrel toward him but he did not worry about it.

You, he said, having taken the wave, spinning now in the blackness, are going to survive. Nobody, least of all that bastard, is going to take Katie away from you. You are going to goddamn fucking survive.