The Dawn Patrol by Don Winslow
His badge is clipped to his jacket, his service revolver in his hand.
Harrington and the county people are right behind him, but Johnny has demanded he go in first.
Family fucking honor.
He goes in hard and fast, unconcerned with safety. He heard a gunshot in the distance and doesn’t know what the hell is going on, but he hits the clearing ready for whatever it is.
Some of the men are already running. Others stand there looking startled and confused. Johnny doesn’t care about the mojados—he sees three younger guys, better dressed, running away toward a line of trees, and young girls, looking around, milling in confusion.
Then he hears another gunshot.
It sounds like it’s coming from the other side of the reeds, down along the river.
Johnny calls for an ambulance and sprints toward the sound.
144
Boone feels Dan’s grip loosen, then let go; then Dan’s body slides off him into the water. A slough of blood pillows around Boone’s face. He pushes to the surface and sees, like a weird dream, an old Japanese man standing at the edge of the river.
A shotgun in his trembling hands.
In the distance, Boone hears yelling, sirens … but maybe it’s his head playing games with him.
He crawls to the riverbank and pulls himself up.
Then he hears something else.
A woman crying.
A howl of ineffable pain.
145
Sunny looks up and sees that she’s going to have to take another wave or two on her head, but it’s okay, because she’s in a good spot, close to the base of the waves, away from the point of maximum impact. But now she does release her leash, because the board is going to go in with the wave and she doesn’t want to go with it.
She takes the two waves, then the set ends and Dave pulls her onto the Jet Ski.
“That kook,” Dave says, “jumped in on you.”
“I saw.”
He takes her onto the shore.
People are running up the beach, including some lifeguards with medical equipment. She waves them off. “I’m okay. I’m good.”
But Dave is already striding over to where Tim Mackie is running his pie hole to his entourage and some surf press.
“Yo, kook,” Dave says. “Yeah, you. I’m talking to you.”
“You got a problem, brah?” Mackie asks. He looks surprised. Like, People do not have problems with Tim Mackie.
“No, you have a problem,” Dave says. “You could have killed her.”
“Didn’t see her, bro.”
High Tide steps into it. “You should get your eyesight checked, then, bruddah.”
“You don’t do that shit on my beach,” Dave says.
“This is your beach?”
“That’s right,” Dave says. He moves in, ready to separate Mackie’s head from his body. But Tide steps in front of him. Sunny steps in front of both of them and pushes the boys aside.
“I can take care of myself. Thanks, but I don’t need you to big-brother me.”
“I’d do the same,” Dave says, “if it was Boone or—”
“I can take care of myself.”
Great, she thinks as the crowd stares at her. I wanted the wave of the day; instead, I got the wipeout of the day and a hassle with golden boy Tim Mackie.
“That wasn’t cool,” she says.
“Sorry,” Mackie says. “My bad.”
But he has this smirk on his face.
“A-hole,” she says.
He laughs at her.
There’s only one response to that. She picks up her board and starts back down the beach, to the point where she can paddle out again. She can hear the crowd murmuring words to that effect. “She’s going out again. Do you believe it? After that? The chick’s going back out there.”
Damn right, she thinks, the chick is going back out there.
Going back out there to take the biggest wave.
146
Johnny Banzai runs.
It’s tough going through the heavy reeds, which cut his face and slice at his arms as he tries to beat them back in front of him.
Then he hears, as if from a far distance, a woman’s keening.
147
Luce lies in Tammy’s lap.
Tammy strokes the little girl’s hair and sobs. Her hands are hot and sticky with the girl’s blood, which runs from the little hole in her neck.
“Stop it,” Tammy says. “Stop it now.”
Tammy presses her hand on Luce’s neck, but the blood bubbles around it. She feels stupid, and weak, and dizzy and there’s pain somewhere in her body, but she can’t figure out where, and Luce’s eyes are wide and she can’t hear her breath and the bleeding just won’t stop. She hears a man’s voice saying, “I’ve got her.”
She looks up and Daniels is there, trying to take Luce from her. Tammy holds her tighter.
“I’ve got her,” Boone says.
“She’s dead.”
“No, she’s not.”
Not yet, Boone thinks. The girl is in really bad shape—she’s bleeding out, going into shock—but she’s still alive.
It’s like a dream in the waking moments, part real, part illusion. Everything is still at a distance, as if from the wrong end of a telescope, and he feels as if he’s wrapped in cotton, but he knows he has to keep moving if the girl is going to live.
The old Japanese man is already taking his jacket off.
Boone takes it and wraps it around Luce. Then he kneels beside her, runs his hand up her neck, finds the little entrance wound, and presses his thumb into it. He picks her up with the other arm, cradles her against his chest, and starts to move back through the reeds, toward the road, where an ambulance can reach them.
“Stay with us, Luce,” he says. “Stay with us.”
But the girl’s eyes are glassy.
Her eyelids flutter.
148
Sunny wipes the spray from her eyes and looks again.
She saw what she saw.
About fifty yards out but coming fast.
Waves generally come in sets of three, and they’ve done the three. But every once in a while, a set has a fourth. This bonus wave is a freak—bigger, stronger, meaner.
A mutant.
Known among waterman as the “Oh My God Wave.”
Which is what Sunny says as she sees it.
“Oh … my … God.”
The wave of a lifetime.
My lifetime, Sunny thinks. My shot at the life I want, barreling right at me. I’m in the perfect spot at the perfect time. She rises up on her hips to look around and see what the Jet Ski crews are doing. They’re lying out on the shoulder, waiting for the next set.
Well, the next set is here, boys, she thinks as she sees Mackie’s Jet Ski start forward, easily fast enough to steal this wave from her. But then she sees High Tide paddle out between Mackie’s ski and her. Golden boy Tim is going to have to go through him, and he isn’t going to go through him. Not High Tide.
Normally, that would bother her, but she made her point on the beach and she’s over it. It’s only The Dawn Patrol looking out for one another and she accepts that.
This wave is mine, she thinks as she lies down on her board, turns it in, and points it toward shore. She starts paddling hard, looking once over her shoulder to see the big wave kick up behind her. She lowers her head as she feels the wave pick up the board, then lift it like a splinter, and then—
She’s on top of the world.
She can see it all—the ocean, the beach, the city behind it, the green hills behind the city. She can see the crowd on the beach, see them watching her, see the photogs aiming the big cameras on their tripods. She can see a little boat moving in, photographers on board, getting close enough for shots but staying out of her line. Overhead, a helicopter zooms in and she knows the video guys are up there, ready to get her ride.
If I ride it, she thinks as she gets to her knees, ready to push up into her sta
If hell.
No if about it.
Then she stops thinking.
The time for thought is over; now it has to be all instinct and action.
The nose of the board drops suddenly and she pushes up to her feet, planting them solidly, her calf muscles tensed. Time seems to stop as she’s suspended for a second on the top of the wave. She thinks, I’m too late. I missed it. Then—
The board plunges down.
She leans right, just enough to catch the line, not enough to tip her into the wave and a horrible wipeout. She throws her arms out for balance, bends her knees for speed, and then she’s off, down the face of this giant wave, her hair flying behind her like a personal pennant as she turns her feet right a little and cuts up higher into the wave, then plunges back down with incredible speed.
Too much speed.
The board bucks and bounces off the water and she’s in the air for a second, the board a good foot beneath her. She lands on it, losing her balance, going sideways, headfirst toward the face of the wave.
The crowd on the beach groans.
It’s going to be a bad one.
Sunny feels herself going, her shot getting away from her, and she cranks to the left, squats low, and rights herself as the wave crests over, and then—
She’s in the green room, totally inside the wave. There is nothing else, just her and the wave, her in the wave, her wave, her life.
The watchers on the beach lose sight of her. They’re holding their collective breath because all they can see is wave, the incredibly brave chick is in there somewhere, and it’s an open question whether she’ll come out.
Then a blast of white water shoots sideways out of the tube and the woman shoots out, still on her feet, her left hand touching the back of the wave, and the crowd breaks into a cheer. They’re screaming for her, yelling for her as she cuts back up on the top of the wave again.
She’s flying now and she uses the momentum to crest the top of the wave.
She’s in the air, high over the wave, and as she jumps off the board, she does a full somersault before she hits the water on the far side of the wave. When she pops up, Dave is there on a Jet Ski. She grabs onto the sled, pulls herself on, pulls her board on, and lets him take her in.
The crowd on the beach is waiting for her.
She’s mobbed by photographers, writers, surf company execs.
It was the ride of the day, they tell her.
No, she thinks.
It was the ride of a lifetime.
149
It’s surreal.
What Johnny sees in the reeds.
Boone Daniels staggers toward him, a girl in his arms, his chest soaked with blood, more blood running down the side of his head.
“Boone!” Johnny yells.
Boone looks at Johnny with glassy-eyed, faint recognition and stumbles toward him, holding the girl out like a drowning man lifting a child up toward a lifeboat. Now Johnny can see Boone’s thumb pressed deep into a wound on the child’s neck.
Johnny takes the little girl from him, replacing his own thumb for Boone’s. Boone looks at him, says, “Thanks, Johnny,” and then crashes heavily, face-first, to the ground.
150
Waves.
Alpha waves, energy-transport phenomena, gentle vibrations run through Boone’s jacked-up brain as Rain Sweeny paddles out through a gentle beach break, ducks under an incoming wave, and pops out the other side.
She shakes the water from her blond hair and smiles.
It’s a beautiful day, the sky a cloudless blue, the water green as a spring meadow. Crystal Pier sparkles in the shimmering sunlight.
Rain looks up at the pier and waves.
Boone stands at the window of his cottage, smiles, and waves back, and then he’s in the water, swimming toward her in smooth, easy strokes, the cool water sliding along his skin, a caress that eases the pain, which is swiftly becoming mere memory, a dream of a past life that seemed real but was only a dream.
Rain reaches out her hand and pulls him to her and then he’s sitting on his own board next to her, rising and falling in the gentle swell. The Dawn Patrol sits off behind them, farther out on the shoulder. Sunny and Dave, Hang and Tide and Johnny. Even Cheerful is out this morning, and Pete, and Boone can hear them talking and laughing, and then a wave comes in.
It builds from far away, lifts and rises and rolls as it seems to take an eternity to crest, and then Rain smiles at him again, lies down, and starts to paddle, her arms and shoulders strong and graceful, and she moves into the wave with ease.
Boone paddles after her to catch the wave and ride it with her, all the way in to the beach, except, as he looks ahead, there is no shore, only an endless blue ocean and a wave that rolls forever.
He paddles hard, trying to catch her, desperate to catch her, but he can’t. She’s too strong, the wave is too fast, and he can make no headway. It makes no sense to him: He’s Boone Daniels; there is no wave he cannot catch, but he can’t catch this wave, and then he’s crying, in rage and frustration, until his chest aches and big salty tears pour down his face to return to the sea and he gives up and lies on his board.
Exhausted, heartbroken.
Rain turns to him and smiles.
Says, This isn’t your wave.
Her smile turns to sunshine and she’s gone.
Over the break.
151
“Where did you go?” Johnny asks.
“I was just out surfing,” Boone says. “I saw the girl … Did she …”
“She made it,” Johnny says.
Boone smiles and lays his head back on the pillow. The pain in his melon is amazing, an evil combo plate of a vicious hangover and a board bounce off the skull.
“The doctors weren’t so sure about you, B,” Johnny says. “Whether you were going to come home from the Enchanted Forest. I thought I was going to have to do that paddle-out for you after all.”
It had been a hell of a scene out there.
Boone out on the ground.
The little girl in shock.
Tammy Roddick bleeding from a bullet wound. She had saved the girl’s life, absorbing most of the bullet’s force before it passed through her into Luce. Now Tammy’s in a bed down the hallway, not far from the little girl, and they’re both going to be all right.
They weren’t the only wounded. A couple of mojados went seriously John Woo on the snakeheads with a shotgun and a machete, though Terry Gilman didn’t think she had enough evidence to make an arrest for that, and, in all the confusion, the mojados managed to drift away from the scene.
Also on the plus side, Dan Silver with a hole in his chest you could push your fist through. Which was a temptation, except he was already DOA.
Grandfather, Johnny thinks.
I should have known Grandfather wouldn’t allow the family honor to be stained without doing something about it. And, boy, he did.
Harrington fixed the scene. Put the pistol in Dan Silver’s hand and asked Grandfather questions that would elicit only answers that pointed to self-defense. Which, in a roundabout way, it was. You take an old man’s honor, it’s as good as killing him.
“Hey,” Johnny says now.
“What?” Boone asks.
“Don’t go back to sleep,” Johnny says. “You have to stay awake.”
Boone opens his eyes and looks around the room. It’s crowded. Dave, Sunny, Hang, Tide, Cheerful. Pete’s there, too. The nurses had objected, of course, tried to get them all out of there. But Tide had plopped himself down in a chair and asked, “You gonna move me?”
“Not without a derrick,” the nurse said.
So the crew stayed. All through the long hours when it was touch-and-go, when Beth came in, took a look at Boone’s chart, and told Johnny not to get his hopes up, and one of the other doctors took Cheerful aside and asked him if Boone had a living will.
“A living will?” Cheerful asked. “He doesn’t have a checkbook.”
“I was mad at him,” Hang said. “He waved at me, but I blew him off.”
“He knows you love him,” Sunny said. “He loves you, too.”
Hang put his face into her shoulder and sobbed.
A few seconds later, Tide said, “Hey, not so loud—you wanna wake him up?”
Which at least made them all laugh. At some point, Sunny had left the room to go out and get coffee for people, when she saw Petra in the hallway. Petra saw her, started to walk away, but Sunny caught up with her. “Where are you going?”
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not,” Sunny said. “Come on, I could use some help.”
So the two of them went to the cafeteria, got some coffee and some junk food, and went back together to the room and waited together through the small hours, until Boone woke up and asked about the little girl.
Now he looks over at Sunny and asks, “You ride your wave?”
“You bet.”
“You’re a big star now.”
“I am,” Sunny says. “I’m surprised I’m even talking to you.”
Boone sees Petra. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
She looks him in the eye for a second, then looks away, afraid she might start to cry, or show a sudden shyness she’s never felt before.
Dave the Love God rescues her. He gets up, walks over to the bed, takes Boone’s hand, and says, “Hey, bro.”
“Hey.”
“You look like hammered shit.”
“That good?” Boone says. Then he adds something that convinces everyone but Dave that he still has one foot in the fun house. “Hey, Dave?”
“Yeah?”
“Eddie never saw The Searchers.”
152
Dave’s still there that afternoon when Boone says, “I have to get up.”