Chapter 32 #2
“No, but I’m sure this is teaching moment. I’m paying attention,” Fly said evenly.
Concrete stepped forward, his weathered face unreadable.
“I’ll give you the snark because you earned it.
” He looked past Fly, his eyes moving over each member of the boat crew.
"That was a test," he said, his voice a low gravel that cut through the wind.
"Not the race. The response." He pointed a thumb at Fly. "We wanted to know what would happen when we took away his title. Question one was answered immediately. Any hesitation would have been equal to failure." His eyes were like flint. “Real leadership isn’t proven when you’re in charge. It’s proven when you’re not.”
Fly stood perfectly still, letting the cold wind pull the heat from his skin. He felt the crew's eyes on him, their confusion a palpable thing. Of course, he obeyed. What other option was there? To argue? To fail? That wasn't a choice. It was a non-starter.
Surf grinned, crossing his arms. "Question two. We were watching for sabotage. Would you pout? Would you poison the crew against Coates? 'This is bullshit, guys. Don't listen to him.' We've seen it a hundred times. Ego destroys more candidates than the cold ever will."
Fly almost laughed at the thought. Poison the crew? His crew? The men who trusted him to keep them upright and moving forward? He’d rather drown. To think they were that fragile, that easily turned. It was an insult to their character.
"No, Instructor Brah!" Miller shouted, his voice raspy.
"Never, sir!" Chen added.
“He told us to focus,” Reyes said.
Surf nodded slowly, his eyes back on Fly. "You didn't sabotage. You supported. You made your skipper look good. You put the team first."
Easy rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets.
"Which brings us to question three," he said, his voice deceptively calm.
"Does he still lead without the title? We saw it.
Quiet corrections. Confidence in your crew.
You didn't need the authority to be in charge.
That's not something we can teach. That's instinct. "
Fly absorbed that. Instinct. Maybe. It felt more like necessity.
The boat was drifting. Coates was hesitating.
Someone had to read the water and make the call.
It wasn't about wanting to lead. It was about not wanting to fail.
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
He met Easy's gaze, waiting for the catch. There was always a catch.
"It's also dangerous," Easy continued, his eyes narrowing slightly. "A good officer follows orders. A great one knows when to break them to save the mission. We need to know which one you're going to be."
There it was. The line. The one he'd walked before, the one that had cost him everything. He held Easy's stare, his expression giving nothing away. He knew exactly which one he was. He was the one who would break the order every single time if it meant his men came home.
"That brings us to the final piece," Shamrock said, stepping forward to stand beside Easy.
"Question four. Does the crew collapse or adapt?
They adapted. They trusted Coates because you trusted Coates.
They followed his lead because you followed his lead.
They became a stronger team because you allowed them to be. "
“With all due respect, Instructor Kavanaugh. We’d follow him in into hell or, in this case, Davy Jones’s Locker,” Reyes said.
“Ah, genius, we’d be dead if we followed him there,” Chen said with a smirk. There was laughter all around.
Fly felt a surge of something warm and fierce in his chest as he huffed a laugh. He looked back at his crew, at Vance and Miller, Chen and O’Malley and Reyes. He saw their trust, their resilience. He hadn't allowed them to be anything. They just were. That was all them.
"You didn't just win two races, Gallagher," Shamrock finished. "You passed a test you didn't even know you were taking. You proved you're not just a leader. You're a builder."
Fly looked at his crew, then at the instructors. He just nodded, a small, sharp gesture of acknowledgment. "Hoo-yah," he said, his voice steady and clear.
The crew echoed him, their voices a unified roar that cut through the sound of the surf. "Hoo-yah!"
“Permission to add Coates to my boat crew,” Fly said.
Fly felt the weight of their collective voice settle around him. This wasn't about him. It was about them. It was always about them.
Concrete tilted his head and stared at Fly. Then he nodded once. “Permission granted. You guys are done for the day. Go get warm and dry, extra chow. No inspection tomorrow.”
“So, it does pay to be a winner,” Fly murmured. Turning toward Coates who was offering his hand.
“Thank you, sir. I won’t let you down.”
Fly's gaze met Sham’s and his blue eyes twinkled.
Shamrock said, “You lead from wherever you are, don’t you, Gallagher?”
Fly shrugged, water dripping from his hair. “It’s not the rank or the seat,” he said. “It’s all about team, Instructor Kavanaugh.”
The new guy, Luther Moses, was a different animal from Murphy.
Where Murphy had been rangy and weak, Moses was compact, with a coiled energy that hummed just beneath the surface.
He was an Ivy Leaguer from Maine, a Black man with a background in broadcasting, and every time Than looked at him, he felt a thrum of recognition.
It was the same feeling he got watching a wrestler on the mat who had the fire but not the form.
Potential. Raw, untapped, and vibrating with a need to be shaped.
Than felt it in his bones, a pull that was both a challenge and a promise.
They were three days into a new evolution, IBS work in heavy seas.
The sky was a bruised, sullen gray, and the Pacific was a churning, malevolent beast. The wind whipped spray into their faces, stinging like needles, and the swell was a slow, relentless mountain range of water that lifted their small boat to the heavens before plunging it into deep, dark troughs.
Than was in the front right position, his knuckles white on the gunwale, his eyes constantly scanning the horizon, reading the water, feeling the rhythm of the ocean.
He'd misjudged a wave, calling the paddle stroke a second too late, sending a wall of frigid water crashing over the side and into Harris's face.
He'd corrected it immediately, his voice sharp and clear over the wind, adjusting the cadence, his body tense with the concentration needed to manage both the sea and the crew.
Santos and Keene were solid, their paddle strokes clean and powerful, their bodies moving with the boat. Rowe was quiet, his focus absolute, a small, steady presence in the chaos. Harris was a furnace, burning through his energy with a powerful, almost desperate aggression. Then there was Moses.
At first, Moses was good. His paddle stroke was strong, his timing nearly perfect.
But Than could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his eyes kept darting to the horizon, a flicker of fear that he was trying to mask with determination.
The sea was getting worse. The waves were growing, their crests foaming and angry.
The instructors, a quarter mile away, finally seemed to realize it.
They blew the recall, a long, mournful blast of the whistle that was swallowed by the wind.
"Turn it around! Paddle for the beach!" Than yelled, his voice ripped away by the gale.
They started to turn, the boat wallowing in the trough, vulnerable and exposed.
Than’s chest tightened before his mind caught up. The angle was wrong. The feeling was wrong.
That was when Moses lost his shit.
A wave, bigger than the others, reared up behind them, a wall of dark green water that blotted out the sky. For a split second, the sound dropped away, replaced by the dull rush of blood in Than’s ears.
He felt the shift in the boat, the sudden, panicked hesitation in Moses’s stroke.
“Paddle! Paddle!” Than screamed, forcing air back into his lungs, driving the moment forward, but it was too late.
Moses froze. Not past the wave, at it. Fear moved through the boat like electricity. Harris faltered, and Rowe cursed under his breath. The boat, already off balance, started to broach, turning sideways to the oncoming wave.
"Get your head in the boat, Moses!" Than roared, his voice a raw, desperate thing. He didn't have time for coaching, for gentle encouragement. He had a boat full of men and a mountain of water about to crash down on them. "Paddle!"
But Moses was gone, lost in the panic, his eyes wide with a terror that Than had seen before, but never in one of his own.
The wave broke, a thundering cascade of white water that slammed into the side of the boat, lifting it up and flipping it over with a violent finality that stole the breath from Than's lungs.
They were in the water, a tangle of bodies and gear, the cold a shocking, immediate assault.
Than fought his way to the surface, gasping, the taste of salt and sand filling his mouth.
He saw Moses, a few feet away, flailing, his movements clumsy and ineffective, his panic making him a liability in the water as well as in the boat.
Than swam toward him, his anger banked in a way that fueled him.
He grabbed the front of Moses's life vest, pulling him close, his face inches from the other man's.
"Look at me," Than snarled, his voice low and deadly, a stark contrast to the raging chaos around them. "You look at me. You breathe. You get your ass to the beach. You don’t quit. You don’t panic. You do your fucking job. Now swim." Into the rushing waves and churning sea, he shouted, “Buddy up! If I don’t see double, I’m going to kick ass and work you to death. Then I will come after you in the Great Beyond and bring you back to life. Now move your asses to the beach.”