Chapter Twenty-One
Petra
The tide receded.
“Terry! You aren’t going to hear me for a minute. I’ve figured out how to get you out, but I need more equipment. My being gone is me getting you help faster. Do you understand?”
“Helping me. Hurry. Please.” There was a sob. “ Please .”
“You’ll be back with Melissa very soon. Hang on.”
Petra tipped her head and called up the chimney, “Okay, bring me up.”
Even tethered the way she was, even braced with back pressed into the chimney opening and feet shoving her into place, the tide here was exhausting.
She was exhausted.
As inch by careful inch, the bystanders above pulled her up, Petra pressed against the stone wall realizing how smooth it was comparatively speaking. The sea buffed down the edges with the continual pounding of surf.
Hands reached under Petra’s armpits to help her the last of the way up and out.
Sopping wet, Petra sat on her butt, hands under her thighs, breathing heavily.
“Terry?” Melissa was on her knees in front of Petra, her hands clasped as if in supplication.
“Talking. Able to do math.” Petra loosened her helmet and held it in her hands, looking it over.
“Math?” Melissa whispered in confusion.
Petra didn’t mean to be mean, but “Melissa, can you go away for a minute? I need to think about what I saw and what can be done, and I need my whole brain to do that right now.”
Melissa blinked with her eyebrows held so high up on her forehead that the skin rippled. From a crouch, she backed away.
Could Petra have been nicer about it? More empathetic? Sure.
Did she have time for that right now?
Terry didn’t.
Normally, Petra's head swirled with ideas that tried to catch her attention. It often made her feel claustrophobic and overwhelmed, even in the great outdoors.
But when the chaos of a crisis rose and those around her lost their minds in panic, she was calm, methodical, and able to function.
Petra always seemed to be experiencing the opposite of those around her. It was like she was in some kind of parallel existence where her rail held a reverse charge. Her brain was anxious and overwrought on the daily, and calm in crisis. Others were calm on the daily and panicked in crisis.
If Petra had to choose which rails to ride, she’d rather have everyday anxiety and clarity in a crisis than the other way around.
With people’s lives on the line, that’s when Petra wanted to be performing at her best.
In those instances, something in Petra’s brain usually found the best possibilities for a successful outcome and lifted it into her awareness like a lantern being held aloft in a twilight wood, exposing the right path home.
But her brain needed both space and quiet to work through the data she’d collected in her descent.
The problem was that there was a tunnel that inclined from the sea to what she thought was a small cave. The water never fully emptied. Based on the cave entrance, it was a big enough space to shove a man inside. But Terry’s silence followed by sputtering after a wave rolled in, meant that he was probably underwater with each wave. Then he’d use the time after to gulp at air and, to some extent, communicate.
There was something that was stopping Terry from coming out of the cave, at least to the area below the chimney.
Petra suspected a lack of a mental picture of what he was up against and a lack of air.
If she was chronically oxygen-deprived, it would be hard to prime her body to explore.
Right now, Terry knew he had access to air.
He didn’t know how far under the rocks he was, how far it was to the shore, how the chimney worked where he could hear the voice instructing him.
When the water came in, possibly because of the slope, these waves seemed more forceful than she would have expected.
Terry might well have tried to escape his cave only to be further battered and pushed back.
Beans stood silently by her side.
“Do you know how long it is to low tide?” Petra asked.
“A half hour maybe more.” He caught her eye. “Too long, right?”
“Too long.” Petra looked down at her helmet. She was thinking of all the ways she could try to get a line down to Terry, but all of them presupposed that Terry didn’t have broken arms, had the space to maneuver, and had strength left in his body.
But what if she affixed a rescue line to the top of the other helmet?
Petra tried to imagine what Terry’s experience might be like. She imagined being in the cave, grabbing the helmet. Surviving a tide. Gasping for air as shaking, waterlogged fingers trying to get the clasp attached.
Then what would happen?
The tide comes in, and the tide goes out. Terry feels a slight pull to show him the exit.
He realizes that he is right next to the chimney.
Tide comes in…
If he held the rope—no. If Petra tied knots in the rope and he gripped above each knot, then she could help him stand up in the chimney and hold him in place as the tide came in.
Would it bash him?
At least somewhat. Yes, of course.
Was it better to come in from the front by the sea and try to send something in with a wave? Maybe something on a flotation so she could guide him out to the surf instead of up into the chimney?
Petra hadn’t tested the way in. She didn’t know if it traveled in a straight line.
If she had time, she could run experiments. But time was at a premium.
Up the chimney, then.
And the helmet seemed the most doable. But the timing had to be impeccable.
Petra called the rope team over, and she explained her thoughts.
Everyone had a clear idea of how this was going to work.
She readied herself to go down again and was surprised that convincing herself to make the descent the second time around was harder. Well, now she knew how claustrophobic and violent it was down there.
Petra let her gaze run along the cliff's top, wishing Hawkeye would suddenly appear. His rescue expertise and steady nature would be very welcome right about now.
She probably didn’t make Melissa feel any better about the plan when she said, “Well, Terry, beggars can’t be choosers.”
Over she went.
Down. Down. Down.
“Terry, I’m here. We’re going to get you out. We have a plan.”
“Help.” His voice was almost inaudible.
“Lower the helmet!” Petra called.
Here came the second helmet tied securely at the top with a rope.
Did she want Terry to dangle from his neck?
Heck no.
She’d at least get him into the chimney; they could add a harness under his arms from here. The helmet was to guide him out of the cave.
Please don’t have broken arms, Terry.
Petra quickly called the plan to Terry so he knew what was expected of him.
He was ready.
She was ready.
Timing was everything.
Above, they’d weighted the plastic helmet by adding a rock so she could get it past the cave’s lip.
Now, to test the theory.
With the next wave, Petra readied herself. As the wave receded, she dropped the helmet and released it to swing like a pendulum. The helmet skimmed the pool of water and under the lip.
It didn’t come back out.
“You have it, Terry? You’re putting it on?”
She didn’t get a reply. He might have been too focused on the task at hand to hear her.
Or perhaps there was something about the structure that she didn’t understand.
The wave came in.
The wave went out.
There was a hand on the line. An arm. A bright lime green helmet.
Holy shit. There was Terry.
In came the wave. Petra held the line tight. Terry’s head was near her thigh, so his mouth was out of the water.
“Hang on,” Petra encouraged. “We’ve got you.”
He reached for her leg, and Petra swatted him hard. “Don’t touch me. Terry, if you pull me down, no one is coming after us.” She believed that was true. After all, no one else had offered to go back down with the helmet.
Petra lowered the second rope and worked it over his arms in the front.
He was shaking with cold and fear.
Petra kept talking to him about Melissa and how many people were helping, and they just needed to wait for the pull of the tide to go out.
With a quick release of the rope attached to the helmet, Petra could get the lasso down around his chest and tighten the rope under his arms.
Was it the best way to get him out?
Absolutely not.
But it was the way they were going to do it.
“I’m going up. You’ll be right below me. We have you tied in. Here comes another wave.”
Petra had told the team about her fears about Terry grabbing onto her. There was only the breadth in the chimney for a single person to be rescued at a time. And she was on top.
These next few moments were the most dangerous.
“Apple,” she yelled the code word her team had agreed on. She didn’t want Terry to know what was happening next.
As soon as “apple’ left her mouth, she was snatched up the chimney so fast that she thought she was Santa’s elf riding a magical trail.
Not fast enough.
Even though Terry had his own line, a drowning man would pull a loved one under. It was the nature of the beast. This beast grabbed as her feet fell from the wall and extended outward. He clutched at her ankles.
And she kicked hard.
The borrowed tennis shoes came off in Terry’s hands as Petra was dragged from his reach.
She came up hyperventilating. Holy shit!
When they got Terry to the top, Petra saw he was in worse shape than she’d imagined.
His clothes were shredded, his skin abraded. He was slick with blood.
Melissa was bent in two, screaming.
Terry didn’t even look Melissa’s way. He was going into shock. This rescue wasn’t over.
Raw-skinned and broken, he needed to be at the hospital stat.
Petra looked at the cliff and at the people who were ready and willing to help, but how could they get Terry, in his battered state, from here to up there where they had vehicles?
It wasn’t coming to her right away.
What did come was a sense of gratitude that in a crisis, all these people risked being near a turbulent sea in the service of a stranger.
Could she contrive a way for these good people to get Terry to the vehicles?
What she needed was a medevac helicopter.
No, she amended, that spray and the debris storm that came with a helicopter’s downwash might be too much for Terry.
What she needed was the Cerberus team. After Levi had saved his fiancée, they had trained how to move people on steep inclines, and they’d know just what to do in a practiced formation.
Okay, Petra admitted to herself. While all that was true, she realized she just wanted to look into Hawkeye's eyes and know that he was there with her in the crisis because that had felt really good over the last couple of days.
“Hey!” Carlos called from the cliff. “Hey! Incoming!”
Petra whipped her head seaward.
The people here on the plateau couldn’t survive another rogue wave.