Chapter Nineteen
Hawkeye
With Cooper running at his heels, Hawkeye dashed toward the waterline, the surfboard under his arm.
Hawkeye knew his dog.
When they were in mission mode, Cooper was the tip of the spear. He intuited the need and acted.
As Hawkeye sprinted into the frothing water, lifting his knees high to maintain his momentum, he pulled the board around, diving onto the surface. He looked over his shoulder to see Cooper extending his forelegs and leaping after him, landing between Hawkeye’s legs.
Cooper moved up until his front paws extended over Hawkeye’s shoulder.
Hawkeye didn’t realize how much that would help him balance the board and plow through the water until Cooper did that. “Good job, buddy. We’re going on a search. Cooper, search.”
Hawkeye was digging deep.
Halo, raised on Australian beaches where surfing was a way of life, slid up beside him. “Bloody hell, mate,” he called. “It’s a bleeding inferno out there. No one’s survived on that boat. I’m going west to the boat, then peeling north if you want to head south from here.”
“Wilco. Hey!” Hawkeye lifted his voice in warning.
Halo tipped his chin to see Hawkeye.
“The guy I had on the beach smelled of diesel. Keep an eye on the water. If the fuel gets on you or the board—”
“Poof,” Halo said. “Stay out of the fuel ring.”
Hawkeye should have said that before he hit the water. There were a lot of moving parts. A lot of details.
Details were survival.
“Diesel in the water!” Hawkeye called out.
“Diesel in the water,” Levi and Ash called from behind him.
With that out of the way, it would take some time for Hawkeye to paddle out. He’d use the time to his advantage. He went back in his memory and tried to recall the details of the first wave.
There was the man who fell from the jet ski onto the boat. Without a helmet, it was unlikely that he’d stayed conscious after hitting.
Next, the boat rolled, tossing the passengers into the swell.
Hawkeye didn’t see the impact of waves two and three. But, in one way or another, most of the people landed on the shore.
From the age of the two crew members who made it to the shore in the next cove, they were servers and probably out on the deck. Two crew members were still missing. Hawkeye thought one was probably a cook and was trapped in the galley.
Could be the fire started there? Hot grease, propane, and the severity of the tilt.
Could be the fire started with the impact of the jet ski?
Knowing the origin of the fire was useless to him. The whole damned boat was aflame.
Hawkeye figured the other crew member might be trapped in the wheelhouse. Not having seen the configuration of the boat, it was speculation at best.
That would account for three of the five missing. Then there were the two other passengers. With a high percentage making it to the shore, what could have happened to the others?
Could be in the latrine. “If anyone had been hitting the head, they were shit out of luck.” Hawkeye looked over his shoulder and said, “Gallows humor.”
Cooper didn’t care; he was hard-focused on the water.
There should have been at least two more people in the water.
Why?
Three possibilities—killed or injured, someone with a disability, someone who didn’t know how to swim, or didn’t trust their swimming skills to make it to shore.
If alive, Hawkeye thought he might find them clinging to the side of the boat below the fire line or maybe they found something buoyant.
Yes, that was his best guess.
He had used the first wave to make it to shore, and the others probably made that distance because they used the waves to their advantage.
But why were the crew at the second cove?
If it were Hawkeye, he’d have a sense of responsibility. He would have tried to make sure everyone was safe, tried to get to his coworkers.
Hawkeye bet that by the time the third wave hit, they decided they’d done what they could. And he bet they’d somehow angled differently.
If he was right, and the current pulled them farther south—not much farther south, but enough—then his search should be south, not seaward for this point.
When Hawkeye looked over his shoulder, Halo and Max were in view. “I’m turning here.”
Max was up on Halo’s shoulders. And, like Cooper, had his nose down, chuffing air, searching for the scent of a human under the water.
It was so strange to be in the pristine clarity of the water this morning and to have visibility change so drastically in such a short time.
As he turned back to the boat, Hawkeye saw that the anchor line was down.
“Halo!” Hawkeye called with a hand cupped around his mouth. The winds were high and strong, and he was covered in goose flesh. “Anchors down! Check to see if anyone is clinging to it. Bobbing into the water so they aren’t in the fire. Someone who can’t swim.”
“Wilco. Heading there now.”
Hawkeye could feel a shift in the water and wondered if they were now moving into low tide. And while that might help him get out to the boat, it would make getting back in that much harder.
Stilling for a moment to consider the position of the boat and the direction of the ripples, Hawkeye saw something in the distance farther out to sea.
He squinted at it using a technique from his days as a Green Beret when he willed his brain to make sense of a shape. It often brought something into relief. Hawkeye would swear there was a bobbing white cube—cooler?—with something dark draped over the top—person? It seemed to be floating away from them out to sea.
He spun his surfboard around. Halo was closest, but not in a direct line of sight. If he was checking the anchor, he might miss this. And the person might float past the horizon line.
“Halo!” Hawkeye bellowed, letting the water carry the sound of his voice. “Around the back of the boat, your eleven o’clock.”
“My eleven. Wilco!” Halo tucked his head, his hands stabbed into the water as he propelled himself toward the mark.
Cooper scrambled to Hawkeye’s other shoulder, whining and crouching as if to dive into the water. Hawkeye wondered if the smell of the fire and the burning chemicals was frightening him. Their surfboard might be as close to the inferno as Cooper could stand it.
Pressing his clawed paws into Hawkeye's back, Cooper released a series of barks that set Hawkeye’s limbic on fire.
His body was moving with purpose and power that came to him only in times of extreme need.
The tone of Cooper’s barks pressed Hawkeye’s throttle wide open, and he was gunning toward nothing obvious.