Between Here and the Horizon (19 page)

“Jesus, Sully. Let him go!” I didn’t expect my voice to make an ounce of difference to the ex-soldier trying to choke out Michael on the pier, but the moment I shouted his name, Sully froze, his hold falling slack. On his back, panting, he stared up at me like my presence was a complete surprise. Shock was written all over his face. Michael disentangled himself from Sully’s arms and staggered to his feet, growling under his breath.
 

“You’re a fucking asshole, Fletcher,” he said, spitting onto the decking. “A real fucking asshole.”

“Yeah,” Sully agreed, still out of breath and still staring at me. “I know.” He rose quickly, brushing himself off. The ambulance guy he’d just knocked out wasn’t even stirring.
 

“Why the hell would you do that?” I snapped, pointing at him. “What do you mean, he was supposed to call you?”

“I’m voluntary coast guard,” he snarled. “I’m supposed to be out there, saving them.”

“You don’t have a boat, Sully. How can you be fucking voluntary coast guard without a goddamn boat?” Michael was still red in the face. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, scowling.
 

Sully just shook his head, glaring at the other man. He started striding off back toward his truck.
 

Michael seemed to take this as a bad sign. “You can’t be
serious
, Sully. You’re a fucking mad man. You cannot go out on that water with a goddamn Zodiac. It can’t handle the swell. You’ll drown right along with them if you try.”

“Then I’ll die out on the water with them, won’t I? At least I can say I
did
try.”

“You’re not in the army anymore, Fletcher. You don’t have a team of guys to pull this off. You heading out there isn’t noble or admirable. It’s
reckless
.”

“Go home, Michael.”
 

“Be
reasonable
, Sully.”

The people gathered on the dock hadn’t chased after Michael and Sully like I had; they’d remained rooted to the spot, watching the scene unfold with a mix of horror and intrigue on their faces. Now, amongst them, I saw Robert Linneman, a head taller than anyone else, his arm around a much shorter, much plumper woman who was standing at his side—his wife, presumably. Linneman broke free and headed for Sully’s truck, meeting him there.
 

“What do you intend to do, Mr. Fletcher?”

“I intend to go out there and get those guys out of the water. If you don’t like it, I suggest you get out of the way and let me do what I have to do.”

“On the contrary. I was wondering what I could do to help.”

I must have heard him wrong. Linneman? Mr. Robert Linneman? The crane-like, stoic, dour man who handled Ronan’s affairs, offering to help Sully with what already sounded like a horrible plan that was unlikely to work. I had no idea what a Zodiac was, but it sure as hell hadn’t impressed Michael.
 

Sully opened the back gate of his truck, working quickly, hauling a metal frame down out of the bed. “Best thing you can do to help, Mr. Linneman, is to help keep everybody calm and keep yourself safe on the beach.”
 

“With all due respect, Sully, you’re one man, and this doesn’t appear to be a job for just one man. My brother-in-law, Ray, was on the Sea King, and I mean to do my best to make sure he finds himself back on dry land as soon as physically possible.”

Sully stopped what he was doing and looked at Linneman finally, sizing him up. “All right. But if you go overboard, that’s on you. You copy?”

“I do indeed.”

“Then help me get this thing inflated and in the water.” He began unraveling a huge bundle of gray plastic, unrolling it onto the sand.
 

I finally understood what he was doing, the kind of craft he was preparing to take out onto the choppy ocean, and my stomach rolled. “Sully? Sully, you’re
not
thinking straight.” It wasn’t my place to tell him what to do. I shouldn’t care at all, really, but I couldn’t hold my tongue. I’d do the same for anyone. If I thought someone was about to risk their life on a suicide run, then I had to say something. Sully dragged what looked like a small generator out of the back of his truck and put it down in the sand.
 

“Sully, please, just stop for a second and think—”

He took hold of a twine cord attached to the generator and pulled on it, arm raised high over his head, and the thing roared into life, growling, drowning out my words. Sully looked up at me, defiance and madness in his eyes, daring me to do something. It wasn’t like I could tackle him and put an end to his crazy plan; the guy was much taller than me, and his broad frame was packed with muscle. Michael was ripped, and even his attempt to ground him had been rather ridiculous—Sully had looked like he was swatting at a fly.
 

“Mr. Linneman, please…” I turned to the other man, hoping he’d see sense, but Linneman shrugged helplessly.
 

“This is probably the most foolhardy thing I’ll ever do in my life, Ophelia, I know it, but sometimes you just have to risk all in the face of uncertain odds. People’s lives
depend
on us.”

I could barely hear him over the roar of the wind, and the choking, coughing, rattle of the generator, but I could see that he’d made up his mind, and there was no point in trying to dissuade him. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his wife sniffling into a handkerchief, leaning against the shoulder of another middle aged woman in a house coat, who was trying to comfort her.
 

“Look on the bright side, Lang. If this thing goes down and I die, Ronan’s kids will finally get the house. You can stay there and live in it with them forever. That’s something to be cheery about, right?” Sully said, grinning.

“You’re right. Why don’t you do us all a favor and toss yourself overboard then,” I snapped. “See if I care. Or anyone else on this island for that matter.”

Sully barked out laughter. “Atta girl.” He attached a hose from the gray rubber to a small black pump at his feet, and the rubber began to inflate rapidly, expanding and growing quicker and quicker until the items in front of him were no longer bizarre unfamiliar shapes in the darkness, but the counterparts of a small, inflatable boat that simply needed lashing together.
 

“That’ll never hold,” I heard someone say behind me. “First wave he tries to bank in that will swallow them whole.”

“
Arrogant bastard. Why can’t he listen…?”

“Someone should call the police.”

“These Fletchers are all far too ready to die. It’s in their bones.”

There was no way Sully could have heard them, standing so close to the generator. He didn’t even seem to know they were there. He worked quickly, hands lashing and tying, grabbing extra lines of rope from his truck. He pulled a large metal stand from the vehicle and attached it to the front of the boat he’d just put together in less than five minutes, securing a large, high beam lamp to the prow.
 

“All right, Linneman. Let’s get her in the water.” The two men picked up the boat via the plastic strapping on the side of the vessel, and then hurried it down to the water. “Lift!” Sully yelled. “Walk her out past the break!”

That made sense. The waves were still high, still rough. If they tried to drive the boat out, they were going to be smashed back time and time again. With the boat hoisted above the water, resting on Sully and Linneman’s shoulders, they lifted it every time a wave crashed against the shore, threatening to push them back inland. Soon they were shoulder deep in water, out past the break, and they lowered the boat into the water. Sully vaulted into the boat, holding out his hand to help Linneman in after him.

“Be careful!” Linneman’s wife shouted. And then, under her breath, “Lord, please be careful. I don’t think I can watch.”

Sully levered the boat’s small engine down into the water and cranked it; I couldn’t decide whether the fact that it started immediately was reassuring, or if it would have been better for the thing to have failed and left them sitting there on top of the water.
 

Sully was a machine. Efficient. Fearless. Determined. He didn’t look back at the shore once. They tore off away from land, the boat bouncing along the water like a skipping stone every time it hit a patch of rough water. Mrs. Linneman started crying.
 

I ran back to the car as quickly as I could—the children were both still passed out, thank god. I grabbed Connor’s old binoculars and then raced back to the shore, frantically scanning through the lenses to find Sully and Linneman, but all I could see was roiling, angry, gray sea, and roiling, angry, gray sky, and my heart wouldn’t stop hammering in my chest.
 

Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. Twenty.
 

No sign of the boat. No sign of anyone in the water. Michael and his friend were helping Ambulance Guy, who had finally woken up and was swabbing the cuts on his face from a medical bag at his feet. Nausea twisting through me like a snake, I headed down the pier again, counting the steps, trying not to panic.
 

“How deep is the water?” I demanded. “They’re not that far out. Why haven’t any of the men been able to swim back to shore yet?”

Michael opened his mouth and then closed it again, apparently frustrated. “It’s not that simple, Ophelia.”

“The water’s very deep,” the guy cleaning his cuts said. “The whole island was volcanic. The land falls away straight down underneath the water. Cliffs, dropping for hundreds of feet. And how far can you swim, Miss?”

“I don’t know. Over six hundred feet, that’s for sure.”

“In open water? In a storm? In the freezing cold? And in the dark? I don’t think so.”

That shut me up pretty quickly. He was right. Maybe in a swimming pool I could swim for six hundred feet. Further. But with conditions the way they were out there…

“If the men went into the water, they probably would have tried to swim into shore, but they never would have made it. The water’s too rough, but more importantly it’s freezing cold. You can only survive a matter of minutes in water like that.” Whoever this guy was, his attitude stank. He barely looked at me as he spoke, dabbing a cotton pad angrily against his lip. He was around my age, late twenties, and his Boston accent told me he wasn’t a local.
 

Michael put a hand on my arm, warning me with his eyes—
probably not a good idea for you to be here right now.
If circumstances were different, I’d give this guy as good as he got, but I was exhausted. And looking for Sully and Linneman was far more pressing a task. I slipped by the men and walked all the way down to the end of the pier, holding each breath for five steps, holding each breath for as long as I could, as if that might somehow help.
 

I peered through the binoculars, scanning the sea, and I waited. The gray and white and black stretched on forever. Eventually, I saw something moving through the water. A boat? No, a rock. No, definitely…it was the boat. Tearing inland, I couldn’t track it well enough at first to see how many men were on board. And then I could make out the shape of one man. Just one. The boat was too far out to tell who it was: Linneman, Sully, or someone else entirely. I took off at a sprint, crashing down the pier, past Michael and the other two guys, back down onto the beach.
 

The boat was coming in fast. It slowed as it approached the shore and the break, but it was still traveling at a rate of knots. Cutting through the white caps and the rollers, it almost rocketed straight out of the water when it hit land. Linneman was first over the side of the boat.
 

“Quickly. Get them out,” he yelled.
 

Hands everywhere. Bodies, pushing and shoving. Ice cold water spilling over into my shoes, feet instantly tingling with pain. Water up to my knees, and then up to my waist.
 

“Ophelia, get back. We can handle it. We’ve got them.
Please
!” Michael, shoving me back to the shore. I stumbled, fell down in the wash. Hands helping me up, and then bodies being lifted over the side of the boat.
 

Cold.

So cold.
 

Soaked.
 

Lifeless.
 

“Does anyone know CPR?” Linneman was shouting. “Someone, start checking for pulses.”

Then Sully.
 

He was drenched, hair plastered to his head, breathing hard, his thin white t-shirt stuck to his check, rucked up at the back, exposing two long, bloody scrapes, and a patch of angry red skin. He jumped over the side of the boat, and then somehow managed to lift another man out behind him, throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of wet cement. The moment he saw me, he started to run through the water in my direction.
 

“Don’t just stand there, Lang. Come on. Rally.” Grabbing me by the arm with his free hand, he started dragging me out of the water after him. I tripped and stumbled, barely kept up, but then I was on my knees in the sand, ears full of water, and Sully was taking my hands and placing them on the lifeless man he’d laid out in front of me.
 

“Like this,” he said. “Link your hands together and compress. Up and down, up and down. Don’t stop until I get back.”

I pumped my interlinked hands up and down on the guy’s chest like he showed me, stunned, unable to breathe a word, and Sully ran back the way we’d come. His shoes were gone, feet bare. Had he taken them off in the boat? Had he lost them in the ocean? There was blood on my arm. Blood on the sand next to me where he’d just been standing.
 

One, two, three, four.
 

One, two, three, four.
 

One, two, three, four.
 

One, two, three, four.
 

I kept up with the compressions, not daring to stop. The roar of the boat’s engine shuttered into life again, and when I twisted, looking back over my shoulder, Sully and Linneman were already lifting the boat on their shoulders again, heading back out past the break.