Chapter 7 #3
They were at half power, moving as fast as they could, the very little rest for the last eighty-four hours taking its toll.
He wanted to sleep so badly that he felt like screaming.
But he and Fisher were already at their boat, the rest of Boat Crew Two dropping in behind, Jameson, Barnhardt, Chase, and Bhandari.
Hatch and Ramirez were gone. One broken, one rung out.
Bear had said nothing when they’d gone, just a slow nod that had felt like mourning.
Cormac ran a palm over the boat’s side. Cold rubber. Familiar.
“Boat up!” Barnhardt barked, and the men lifted, stumbling through the surf until the water swallowed their knees. His arms trembled under its weight as they heaved it toward the surf. The Pacific looked endless, a sheet of pitch under a pewter sky.
Bear stood waist-deep at the edge, hair plastered dark against his skull, eyes unreadable. “Stay tight, Boat Crew Two. Keep rhythm. Keep each other alive.” His voice was quiet enough to make them listen.
They climbed in, paddles poised.
The order came.
Go!
They dug in.
The first shock of cold stole his breath. Then came rhythm. Paddle, drag, breathe. The boat leapt forward, muscles finding memory.
Fisher set the cadence. “One! Two! Three!” The shout rose and fell with the surf. Spray burned their eyes. Cormac’s vision tunneled as the edges of the world dissolved.
They paddled north up the Strand, the coastline lost behind a curtain of fog. Only the phosphorescent gleam of breaking waves marked direction. Every few minutes, lightning forked somewhere inland, white and soundless.
Fisher squinted into the dark. “You see that?”
Cormac grunted. “See what?”
“Zeus. Bastard’s tossing bolts right at us.”
Cormac snorted through cracked lips. “Tell him his aim’s shite.”
“I swear it! Right over the bow!”
“Then row faster, Bolt.”
Fisher blinked. “Bolt?”
Cormac grinned, half-delirious. “Aye. Everything you do is electric; you streak through the water like a bolt.”
Jameson growled. “But do you sizzle with the ladies with your shaft of light? Let’s hope you’ve got more staying power.”
“It’s not in the strike, but the thunder after,” Cormac shot back.
Low chuckles rippled through the crew.
“Hey, we’re trying to row here. Don’t make us laugh and think about sex at the same fucking time,” Chase groused.
“A sponge would make you think of sex, man.”
More laughter.
“The universally recognized symbol for high voltage,” Barnhardt said between strokes. “Warning of potential danger and in some cultures, protection. You earn the name. Indigo Fisher…Bolt. That’s a callsign.”
Bolt laughed once, a hoarse bark swallowed by wind. “Now I’m gonna have to get a tattoo.”
“In some traditions,” Bhandari intoned, muscles flexing, “lightning means overcoming obstacles. Our leader is right. It’s a fitting callsign.”
“Always find the four-leaf in a bed of three,” Cormac muttered. “It’s me curse. Luck I can’t lose.” He hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud.
Out of the blue, Chase said, “Lucky Charms was my favorite cereal growing up.”
Cormac looked at him. “Keep rowing, Chase. My lucky charms are reserved.”
Bhandari laughed. “Saving yourself?”
“Oh yeah, he’s a paragon of virtue,” Bolt said.
“I loved all those marshmallows,” Chase said wistfully.
“Yeah, magically delicious,” Jameson sighed.
“So many shapes,” Chase murmured like he was watching them dance on the water. “Hearts, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, unicorns, rainbows, red balloons.” He stopped paddling. “Hey, do you guys see that?”
Cormac squinted out to sea. “There’s nothing out there.”
“Yes, there are…pandas, man. They’re so round and black and white, like Oreos. They’re doing kung fu. I didn’t know pandas could be marshmallows.”
“You’re a panda,” Cormac said. “Now there’s a callsign for a SEAL.”
Bhandari laughed. “That one fits, too.”
Cormac nodded, then blinked a couple of times. He wasn’t sure if it was Panda’s hallucination that brought it on or his own delirium.
Something small and bright bobbed beside them, a shimmer of green riding the black water.
A man no taller than Cormac’s knee knelt astride three interlocking clover leaves, the stems braided like rope, the whole thing glowing faintly as it rose and fell with the swell.
He wore a soaked forest-green top hat with a tarnished gold buckle, a red beard that flamed even in the storm light, and tiny pointed boots that did a little jig against the leaves as he paddled with a twig no bigger than a matchstick.
Gold coins spilled from a pouch at his belt, spinning away into the dark.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Cormac breathed. “He’s paddling a shamrock.”
“Who?” Bolt wheezed.
“The leprechaun.”
Bhandari muttered, “He’s gone. Mind’s broke.”
He couldn’t look away. As a kid, leprechauns had been half joke, half warning—spirits you never mocked, because they’d twist your luck until you didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Somewhere between the mischief and the menace, he’d learned how to live, learned that humor could charm fate into letting you walk away from things that should’ve killed you. Maybe that was why he grinned now.
“Little bastard looks like my great-uncle Eamon,” he muttered. “Same beard, same temper.”
Bolt wheezed, “You’ve lost your mind.”
Cormac cackled softly, voice cracked. “He’s paddling faster than we are! Gonna steal our Lucky Charms!”
Bolt groaned and nearly dropped his paddle, laughing. “You’re an insane shamrock.”
“Shamrock, maybe. But lucky, yeah.” Cormac spat salt. “Now row, Bolt. Zeus’s after you, we’ve got pandas ready to kick our asses, and I’ve got me lucky charms to protect from a leprechaun.”
“Fat pandas,” Panda muttered.
“You’re tougher than little green men,” Barnhardt said.
“And taller,” Bolt added. More laughter.
The cadence was now deep in his shoulders. “Maliciously delicious,” Cormac replied, teeth flashing white in the dark. “Keep paddling.”
Chase snickered. “Kung fu, baby.”
Fog thickened until sky and sea became one. The boat sliced through liquid glass, the only sound their ragged breaths.
They dug in harder, delirium turning into momentum.
Hours blurred. The world shrank to pain and motion. Muscles locked, hands bled, breath came in ragged grunts. Around them, other boats faded into fog. Only the slap of paddles kept time.
Bolt’s voice faltered, hoarse. “Can’t feel my arms.”
Cormac rasped back, “If your paddles are moving, they’re still attached.”
They were ahead by a mile. No other boat lights flickered through the fog, and no shouts carried across the water.
If they kept their pace, Boat Crew Two would take the win, the one every class talked about.
The promise of heat and food waited just beyond the finish line, hot chow, a shower that didn’t sting like needles, a dry rack, maybe a fistful of pain meds to quiet the fire in their joints.
But more than any of that, Cormac knew exactly where he wanted to be for the rest of his life.
Right here. Working alongside these amazing bastards who refused to quit.
They fed every ounce of need he’d ever had for connection, for shared suffering, for the kind of brotherhood you could bleed beside.
He could feel it even through the numbness.
This was the life he’d been chasing without knowing it.
The rest of the world could have its warmth and soft beds. This was where he belonged.
They rounded the point blind. The Pacific gave way to the slower roll of the bay, water flattening under their hull. A wind out of the east pushed against them, cruel, constant. Every stroke was defiant.
Cormac was the first to hear it. A thin cry, distant but real. He froze mid-stroke. “Hold.”
Bolt blinked. “What now?”
“Listen.”
The sound came again, faint, frantic. “Help!”
Bolt shook his head. “You’re still seeing your fairy.”
“Not this time.” Cormac’s gut twisted. He turned toward the noise. “Starboard side!”
Chase’s voice boomed. “Something in the water! Move!”
The boat veered. The fog parted just enough to show a flash of white, foam, board, a human form slipping under with a mop of copper hair.
“Man overboard!” Cormac’s shout broke loose, and he dove without thought.
The cold hit like a hammer. For a heartbeat, he couldn’t tell up from down, only the taste of salt and the thunder of his pulse.
Cormac hit the water before the thought even finished forming.
By now, swim buddy wasn’t a rule. It was ingrained.
A splash next to him told him Bolt was in the water too, watching his back.
The cold punched through him like a fist, stealing breath, erasing up and down.
Salt filled his mouth, and his ears roared with his own pulse.
The flotation vest jerked him toward the surface, twisting him sideways, fighting him every time he tried to dive.
Get off me, he thought savagely, shoving against it, kicking down through the drag.
The straps bit into his shoulders, stealing what little strength he had left.
He could feel how empty he was, lungs scraped raw, muscles long past shaking, heart hammering too hard for too long, but he drove deeper anyway.
A flicker below. Bright hair. A limp body sinking slowly.
He forced his arms through the resistance, the vest trying to yank him back to safety. Forty percent, his mind whispered, the instructor’s voice, Bear’s voice, his own, that’s all you’ve spent. The rest waits in the dark.
He pushed harder. Every kick was agony. The weight of the vest dragged him like an anchor, but he refused to let go. When his hand finally closed around the back of the boy’s wetsuit, the ocean tried to rip him away again. He locked his arm, bellowed underwater, bubbles streaming from his mouth.
Not today.
He kicked for the surface, dragging the kid with him. The vest fought, his body screamed, and the world narrowed to the burn in his lungs. Then they broke through, an explosion of air and rain and sound.
“Got him!” he rasped, voice shredded.
Bolt was there, eyes wide and wild, reaching through the spray. “Hold him up!”
Cormac shoved the kid forward, every movement an act of war against the cold and the weight and his own failing strength. His arms were gone, his legs numb, but he didn’t stop. The vest forced him awkwardly onto his back, the boy’s head against his chest, and he kicked, using what was left.
Bolt caught the kid’s wrist. Together they hauled him toward the boat, the current slamming into them. Jameson and Barnhardt steadied the boat. Bhandari reached out, Chase cursing under his breath as they dragged the kid across the gunnel.
Cormac hit the side, arms trembling too hard to pull himself up. Bolt grabbed his vest and lifted, while Chase pulled hard. The world spun as he collapsed into the boat, coughing, every muscle locking in pain.
The kid lay between them, still and gray.
Cormac leaned forward, breath ragged. “Come on, lad,” he whispered, his own pulse hammering in his ears. “You’re not done. Not yet.”
He was dead weight, head lolling, skin waxy in the gray light. Cormac ripped off his glove and pressed fingers to the kid’s throat. Nothing.
“Breathe, damn you,” he muttered. He tilted his chin, sealed his mouth over his, and gave a breath, then another. Salt water spattered his cheek. He coughed once, kept going.
Bolt steadied the boy’s shoulders. “Come on, Shamrock, work your magic.”
“Shut up and row for the beach. He needs a medic.”
Shamrock. He rather liked being called that. He breathed again, chest to chest with the boy, the boat rocking beneath them. A shudder ran through the kid's body. He jerked, coughed, vomited seawater across Cormac’s knees.
The sound ripped through them like thunder. Alive.
“Attaboy,” Cormac rasped, half laughing, half crying. “You’re not dying on me, lad.”
Bolt threw his head back and shouted toward the sky, “Zeus, no mortal for you today!”
They paddled hard for shore, the boy sprawled in the bow, shivering but breathing. The dawn broke slowly, a smear of pale gold across the fog. When the boat ground into sand, the men tumbled out, dragging the hull behind them.
“Medic!” Bolt shouted, voice cracking. “We got one breathing!”
Bear was already moving, silent and fast, water to his knees. He reached out and literally snatched the kid from the boat, carrying him to the beach. He knelt beside the guy, checked his pulse, looked up at Cormac. The faintest smile touched his mouth.
“Good work. All of you.”
Cormac slumped onto the sand, chest heaving. Bolt dropped beside him, eyes blazing under wet lashes.
“Lucky bastard,” Bolt said.
Shamrock coughed, grinning. “Told you. Always find the four-leaf.”
The medics, who were available for all the evolutions, ran to them and took over.
The kid was coming around. “Where am I? Who are you guys?”
“Coronado Beach, and you’re in violation of about six codes right now.”
“Well, now that I’m alive, you can arrest me,” the kid rasped, and even half-drowned he sounded cheeky.
The medics hovered, running vitals and barking readings, but Cormac barely heard them. The kid, Flynn, was blinking up at him, dazed but grinning through chattering teeth.
Cormac chuckled. “I like this one.”
“We’re Navy SEAL candidates,” Bolt said.
“What’s your name?” Cormac asked.
“Flynn Gallagher.”
Shamrock grinned. “Aye, a fellow Irishman. Cormac Kavanagh.”
He held out a hand, and Flynn’s slick, shaking one met it halfway.
Their palms slapped together, water and grit between them, the grip hard and sure despite the tremor.
For a second the noise, the medics, the surf all fell away.
Just two soaked, stubborn sons of Ireland grinning at each other like they’d finally found the other half of a joke only they understood.
“Glad you made it, lad,” Cormac said softly.
Flynn’s grin widened. “Me too.”
Even as the ambulance rolled up, and they hustled the guy toward the vehicle, Flynn’s questions flew.
The fog burned off as the sun climbed. Across the beach, the bell gleamed bright and clean. The boats lay in crooked rows, the men who’d survived standing like shadows in the light.
Bear watched them from the edge of the surf, water lapping his boots. For the first time in years, he felt it again, the pulse of belonging, the hum of something bigger than silence.
Out in the bay, the ocean rolled on, unbroken, carrying away the night.
Hell Week was over.