“Son, we’re following SOP. There’s a PJ RTG on the second chopper. He’s fresh and suited up.”
Through his communication gear, he heard the pilot receive the order to return to base. Because he couldn’t meet the other man’s gaze, he turned to lean against the cabinet.
The captain put his hand on his shoulder. “They’ll find him and bring him home.”
Drew opened his eyes only to realize his vision was blurred with tears. Tears of anger and frustration, but most of all grief. “Damn it!” He slammed his fist through the cabinet door.
Pain sang through his knuckles and up his arm, but Drew barely noticed. He heard Joe speaking to him, but couldn’t understand the words. He couldn’t believe what had just happened. Couldn’t believe they were going to leave Rick behind. That he could be dead.
“He was burned,” he heard himself say.
“He’s strong.”
“I dropped him.”
“Don’t go there, Drew.”
“I let him go—” The next thing Drew knew, he was being spun around and shoved hard against the panel.
“It wasn’t your fault,” Joe said. “Now pull yourself together. We’ve got civilian casualties to tend.”
Giving him a final, hard look, Joe shoved away. Drew leaned against the aft panel for several long seconds, his head reeling, his heart feeling as if it were about to explode. Vaguely, he was aware of the medic getting one of the subjects into a litter and starting an IV drip. The crackle of the VHS radio coming through his headset comm gear. The rank smells of crude oil, singed hair and scorched clothing. The little girl crying for her mommy.
Numb with the remnants of adrenaline and horror and grief, he walked over to the hatch and looked out at the driving wind and rain and the churning, black water below. In the distance the fire lit up the horizon with unnatural yellow light. But it looked small and inconsequential from this far away.
He couldn’t believe Rick was still out there. Injured. Maybe dying. Drew closed his eyes against the brutal slice of pain. He thought of Rick’s wife and wondered who would tell her. He wondered if she would blame him. If she would hate him.
Responsibility for what had happened settled onto his shoulders with the weight of a Navy ship. The guilt that followed crushed him.
Sinking to his knees, Drew put his face in his hands and wept.
Four years later
Emerald Cove, Florida
Drew Evans stepped out of his small office and squinted against the bright morning sunshine, trying hard to ignore the headache grinding his brain into little pieces. The aspirin he’d downed with a cup of yesterday’s coffee sat in his stomach like a handful of rocks. He felt as if he’d gotten into a fight with a Mack truck and lost. He didn’t even want to think about how he looked.
He had a vague memory of a thatch-roofed bar, a pretty bartender who’d evidently flunked out of bartending school, the sound of reggae mixing with the sound of the surf, and the smooth burn of Puerto Rican rum. He’d been a goner in less than an hour.
That had been two days ago. Forty-eight hours lost and hardly missed. One of these days he was going to learn the slow crawl out of the bottle was a hell of a lot harder than the plunge into it.
Shoving his aviator’s glasses onto the bridge of his nose, he started across the gravel lot toward the dock. Around him, the South Florida morning dazzled like a big, gaudy emerald, beckoning him to notice. Because he did—he always noticed how beautiful the mornings were in the Keys—Drew smiled in spite of the headache. He’d lived in plenty of places in his thirty-five years—San Diego, Hawaii, Germany, Norfolk—but none of those places could compare to the magic of the Florida Keys.
He glanced over at the windsock a few yards from the maintenance hangar near the water and gauged the wind speed and direction. The wind was below ten knots and coming out of the south. Perfect for flying, but he knew there would be storms later. Pilots had radar when it came to predicting weather. In the Keys, the storms came like clockwork every afternoon during the summer. Brief downpours that turned the air to steam. Drew had every intention of being back long before the afternoon thunderstorms started.
Standing at the end of the dock, he looked down the narrow gangway where his seventeen-passenger Grumman Mallard seaplane rocked gently in the surf. The quick swell of pride made him smile. An F-18 she wasn’t, but she was a pretty little thing and fun as hell to fly. He’d earned his water landing and takeoff certification right out of the Navy. In the four years since, he’d tried very hard not to look back.
Drew had spent the majority of those years building Water Flight Tours into the small, but lucrative business it was today. He’d turned an idea into a reality and made it work. Pouring his life savings into a charter plane service had been a huge risk. He’d worked weekends and holidays, forfeiting sleep and peace of mind for a stab at success and the American Dream. But it was a risk he’d been willing to take. A risk that, in the end, had paid off.
He liked to think he worked so hard because of his love of flying, his inherent independence, because he was ambitious. But sometimes his mind strayed a little too close to the past, and he wondered if maybe he worked so hard because he didn’t like the taste failure had left at the back of his throat. Maybe his foray into the American Dream was his escape. Maybe he’d spent the last four years running away from a mistake he would never live down. From ghosts he would never forget no matter how hard he tried.
Shoving thoughts of the past aside, Drew started toward the Mallard. Beyond, Emerald Cove inlet shimmered prettily. On the dock, brightly dressed tourists flocked like colorful wading birds fishing for baby shrimp. They came from all over; he’d seen the license plates in the gravel lot behind his office: Georgia, Ohio and a dozen counties right here in South Florida. He would give them what they came for. An aerial tour of one of the most breathtaking sights in the world: the Florida Keys.
He would start right here at Emerald Cove, which was situated just north of Key Largo and boasted some of the best fishing in the world. Then he would fly low over an aircraft salvage yard, known by the locals simply as “the graveyard” and the sunken sailboat just south of the reef where barracuda and shark converged to feed. From there, he would take them south, over John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park, south to Key West, then to the Dry Tortugas to the west, and finally back home to base. If all went as planned, he would be home in time to watch the storms roll in.
Holding that thought, Drew headed toward the group for his preflight check, a quick overview of the rules and then he would begin the boarding process. Just another day in paradise.
He could feel the tourists’ eyes upon him as he approached and smiled at the floppy hats, sunburned noses and silly T-shirts. Families. Couples. The occasional retiree out to break the routine. Most of them, he knew, had never met a pilot or flown in anything other than a Boeing 727. The Mallard seaplane was different, particularly the water takeoffs and landings. Drew didn’t offer peanuts or martinis during the flight. He didn’t have to. The scenery beyond the windows held his passengers rapt. Thanks to Mother Nature and some hardworking coral, his customers always got their money’s worth.
Drew loved flying more than anything else in the world. Being a pilot defined who he was, and he couldn’t imagine doing anything else. Flying was the ultimate freedom and the supreme challenge rolled into a single feat that never ceased to take his breath away. Flying was the one thing in the world Drew felt passionately about. Four years ago, it had saved him from despair when nothing else could.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, stepping onto the concrete floating dock. “My name is Drew Evans and I’ll be your pilot and