Dawn Patrol (39 page)

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 stance.

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.

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.

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.

“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.”

Hang was inconsolable. Sat in a chair with his head down, staring at the floor. Dave squatted next to him and said, “Boone’s too stupid to die from a few blows to the head. If Silver had clubbed his
ass
, then we’d have something to worry about.”

“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
.”

Dave’s still there that afternoon when Boone says, “I have to get up.”

“You have to lie down,” Petra says. “You have a major concussion.

They want you to stay here at least two more days for observation. They’re going to run some tests, see if you have brain damage. Although, how’d they tell …”

“There’s something I have to do,” Boone says. He forces himself to sit up, then swings his legs out and puts his feet on the floor. It’s sketchy, but he manages to get his legs underneath him and stand up.

“Boone …”

He’s not listening. He gets dressed and walks down the hall toward the lobby. The nurses ignore him—they have their hands full with people who want help and have no time for people who don’t. Johnny follows him in case he falls, but Boone doesn’t.

Petra’s out in the hallway. “Dave, don’t let him be an idiot,” she says. “Bring him back.”

Dave opens the door for Boone and follows him out.

They drive south on the 101.

Boone sits in the passenger seat and looks out the window.

Beautiful, beautiful day.

Deep blue ocean.

Deep blue sky.

The big swell is almost over.

“So?” Boone asks.

They’ve been friends forever. They’ve ridden a thousand waves together. They’re going to tell each other nothing but the truth. Dave tells him all about his work for Red Eddie.

“Did you know?” Boone asks. “About the kids?”

“Not until that night,” Dave says. “I called Johnny. I didn’t know what else to do.”

Boone nods.

They both know what to do now.

Boone paddles out.

Eddie’s on the line on the inside shore break.

“Yo, Boone Dawg!” Eddie yells. Then he sees Boone’s head. “What happened to you, my
bruddah
?”

“A little aggro.” Boone juts his chin to the outside reef. The waves aren’t giant anymore, but they’re big, and they’re breaking outside. “Let’s go outside, Eddie! You got the balls?”

“
Dangling
, brah!”

They paddle out, side by side, then pull up along the shoulder beside the break.

“We need to talk, Eddie.”

“Talk.”

“The girls,” Boone said. “That was your operation.”

“No, brah.”

“Yeah, it was,” Boone says. “The whole story about Dan owing you money was bullshit. You were just trying to cover your pathetic ass.”

Eddie’s not used to being talked to like that. His eyes get hard. “Watch yourself, Boone.”

“You broke your word to me, Eddie,” says Boone. “You told me you’d leave Tammy Roddick alone.”

“Hey, that was Dan, not me,” Eddie says. “I didn’t promise anything about Dan.”

“You’re dirty,” Boone says. “And you make everything and everyone around you dirty. I brought you into The Dawn Patrol and you made it ugly. You destroy everything around you, Eddie, just like you took those little kids and destroyed them. I’m sorry I met you. I’m sorry I pulled your son out of the water, if he grows up to be anything like you.”

“
You
ever going to grow up, Boone?”

“Yeah,” Boone says. “I am.”