“Rick! Damn it! Hold on! Don’t let go!” Drew looked behind him where the medic was working frantically to rig a safety line. “Get me a rope!” Drew screamed into his headset. “Damn it! I got a man down! I need help! Now!”
Vaguely, he was aware of someone moving behind him. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the safety line fall short. He heard savage cursing. The pain in his arm from holding Rick was tremendous, but Drew swore he’d let his arm break before he let go.
The muscles in Drew’s arm quivered and cramped. He was vaguely aware of the smoke and wind and rain pummeling him. The roar of the engines punctuated by the whop-whop-whop of the rotors overhead. He could feel Rick’s wet suit slipping over his skin at his elbow and cursed the oil.
He looked into Rick’s eyes. “Don’t let go, damn it!”
“Drew! I can’t hold on!” Face contorted with the effort of holding on, Rick’s tortured eyes met his. “Take care...Alison and Kevin...”
Someone tossed a second safety line. When Rick reached for it, he unlooped his arm from Drew’s—and missed the safety line. Rick’s body jolted once, then plummeted down.
“Rick!” Horror and disbelief sent Drew scrambling to his feet. He stood at the hatch and stared down at the black water below. “Man down!” he shouted into his headset communication gear. “Man down!”
“Easy, Drew,” came the copilot’s voice. “I’m on the horn. There’s another chopper standing by. Rick’s got priority.”
Drew swallowed equal parts panic and bile that had gathered at the back of his throat. “I’m going down! Give me a damn suit! I’m going down to get him!”
The captain came out of the cockpit. “Lieutenant Evans!”
He looked up, found himself staring into the angry eyes of his captain. Joe “Domino” Saratoga was the size of a warhorse. Older. Experienced. He’d fought in Panama and the Gulf War. He’d paid his dues and Drew had always liked and respected him.
At the moment, he wanted to punch him.
“With all due respect, we can’t leave that man behind to die!” Drew flung open the aft cabinet in search of a wet suit and tank. He knew he was losing it. He could feel his control slipping the same way he’d felt Rick slip away just a few seconds earlier. But there was no way in hell he could stand by while they left Rick behind.
“Son, we’re following SOP. There’s a PJ RTG on the second chopper. He’s fresh and suited up.”
Through his communication gear, he heard the pilot receive the order to return to base. Because he couldn’t meet the other man’s gaze, he turned to lean against the cabinet.
The captain put his hand on his shoulder. “They’ll find him and bring him home.”
Drew opened his eyes only to realize his vision was blurred with tears. Tears of anger and frustration, but most of all grief. “Damn it!” He slammed his fist through the cabinet door.
Pain sang through his knuckles and up his arm, but Drew barely noticed. He heard Joe speaking to him, but couldn’t understand the words. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Couldn’t believe they were going to leave Rick behind. That he could be dead.
“He was burned,” he heard himself say.
“He’s strong.”
“I dropped him.”
“Don’t go there, Drew.”
“I let him go—” The next thing Drew knew, he was being spun around and shoved hard against the panel.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Joe said. “Now pull yourself together. We’ve got civilian casualties to tend.”
Giving him a final, hard look, Joe shoved away. Drew leaned against the aft panel for several long seconds, his head reeling, his heart feeling as if it were about to explode. Vaguely, he was aware of the medic getting one of the subjects into a litter and starting an IV drip. The crackle of the VHS radio coming through his headset comm gear. The rank smells of crude oil, singed hair and scorched clothing. The little girl crying for her mommy.
Numb with the remnants of adrenaline and horror and grief, he walked over to the hatch and looked out at the driving wind and rain and the churning, black water below. In the distance the fire lit up the horizon with unnatural yellow light. But it looked small and inconsequential from this far away.
He couldn’t believe Rick was still out there. Injured. Maybe dying. Drew closed his eyes against the brutal slice of pain. He thought of Rick’s wife and wondered who would tell her. He wondered if she would blame him. If she would hate him.
Responsibility for what had happened settled onto his shoulders with the weight of a Navy ship. The guilt that followed crushed him.
Sinking to his knees, Drew put his face in his hands and wept.
Four years later
Emerald Cove, Florida
Drew Evans stepped out of his small office and squinted against the bright morning sunshine, trying hard to ignore the headache grinding his brain into little pieces. The aspirin he’d downed with a cup of yesterday’s coffee sat in his stomach like a handful of rocks. He felt as if he’d gotten into a fight with a Mack truck and lost. He didn’t even want to think about how he looked.
He had a vague memory of a thatch-roofed bar, a pretty bartender who’d evidently flunked out of bartending school, the sound of reggae mixing with the sound of the surf, and the smooth burn of Puerto Rican rum. He’d been a goner in less than an hour.
That had been two days ago. Forty-eight hours lost and hardly missed. One of these days he was going to learn the slow crawl out of the bottle was a hell of a lot harder than the plunge into it.
Shoving his aviator’s glasses onto the bridge of his nose, he started across the gravel lot toward the dock. Around him, the South Florida morning dazzled like a big, gaudy emerald, beckoning him to notice. Because he did—he always noticed how beautiful the mornings were in the Keys—Drew smiled in spite of the headache. He’d lived in plenty of places in his thirty-five years—San Diego, Hawaii, Germany, Norfolk—but none of those places could compare to the magic of the Florida Keys.
He glanced over at the windsock a few yards from the maintenance hangar near the water and gauged the wind speed and direction. The wind was below ten knots and coming out of the south. Perfect for flying, but he knew there would be storms later. Pilots had radar when it came to predicting weather. In the Keys, the storms came like clockwork every afternoon during the summer. Brief downpours that turned the air to steam. Drew had every intention of being back long before the afternoon thunderstorms started.
Standing at the end of the dock, he looked down the narrow gangway where his seventeen-passenger Grumman Mallard seaplane rocked gently in the surf. The quick swell of pride made him smile. An F-18 she wasn’t, but she was
