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The rain was persistent as ever. Actually it seemed to be coming down harder, streaking, and the wind made conditions worse. It had started getting stronger earlier that afternoon and by now it was almost up to gale force. It was the sort of deceitful wind that alternately lulled and gusted, blowing from seaward or down coast from the north or frequently, as though to demonstrate its perversity, from both directions at once.

The rain tatooed on the yellow raingear of the highway patrolmen.

The time was five-fifteen.

The rain rat-a-tat-tatted a slightly different sound on the beige-colored waterproof “turnouts” of the firemen. Four firetrucks — pumpers — had come from Laguna Beach. The Orange County Fire Protection Department had dispatched an aerial unit, more commonly known as a hook and ladder. Because the bluff was partly within the limits of Laguna Beach, that city's fire chief was in charge of the operation.

Fire Chief Croy.

His white helmet stood out. Only a chief could wear a white one. Other fire officers had red helmets and ordinary firemen wore black.

Chief Croy and his officer assistant, a man named Pinkett, stood on the shoulder of the highway, apart from their men, who had hurried and now had to wait for orders.

The chief was a thick-trunked man around five eight. He appeared strong, body and face. The butt of a filter-tipped cigarette, extinguished by the rain, was in the left side of his mouth — not forgotten, a comfort. He was a no-hands smoker.

He walked along the roadside and tried his best to conceal his incredulity. The whole goddamn bluff had broken away and dropped. Now it was like an isolated mesa a thousand feet long by a thousand wide, and there on its far edge was the supermarket.

Chief Croy called for and got a pair of binoculars. He focused on the front of the market. Through the rain, through the market's steel gate he saw people inside, like prisoners, close up to the grillwork, gazing out, some waving frantically as though fearing they might be overlooked.

How to get to them?

“We got the aerial,” Pinkett reminded.

“Yeah.” Croy thought about it. “What's the lowest angle we can get on it, thirty or what?”

“About thirty.”

Croy through more about it, grunting as he did. The aerial truck could be brought right to the edge. Its ladder could be extended sixty-five feet. At an upward thirty-degree angle that would just about put the tip of the ladder over the bluff. In this rain and especially with the wind that ladder would be swaying like a reed, and even if a man did manage to hang on all the way to the top, from there he'd still have to shinny down a hundred-fifty-foot line. Croy decided he sure as hell wouldn't want to try it. He also knew if he asked for volunteers he'd get them.

“Think of any other way?” Pinkett asked.

“Could be.”

Croy went to his municipal car, a bright red Buick. He lighted a fresh cigarette and got on the radio phone. He called the Marine Corps air station at El Toro, ten miles away.

The flight officer told him, “We're grounded here, not putting anything up.”

Croy explained the problem in detail.

The flight officer told him, “Hang on.”

Croy assumed permission was being asked from higher up — anyway, advice.

In a couple of minutes the flight officer came back on. “What's the minimum you need?”

Croy told him.

At that moment Captain Dodd arrived on the scene. Dodd was area commander of the highway patrol, headquartered in Santa Ana. A tall man, about six four, he had just turned fifty. He could quit anytime he wanted, was already in five years over the twenty required for retirement.

When Dodd saw the situation he seemed more angry than anything else. He mumbled to himself. He wasn't wearing any boots. He was the only man there without boots. And when Chief Croy went over to him, Croy noticed a snag tear in the back shoulder of Dodd's raincoat. Evidently Dodd wasn't personally prepared for such an emergency, Croy thought.

The two men exchanged nods and each other's names for hellos.

Captain Dodd was told the plan.

He made no comment, glanced dubiously upward, then down to the market, then turned his back to the wind.

“Not much daylight left,” remarked Chief Croy.

Twenty minutes later two helicopters came from inland, over Sheep Hills, low, noisy. They were HSL-l's with twinbladed, tandem rotating propellers fore and aft. The sort of choppers that had been used in Vietnam to evacuate casualties. These two might very possibly have seen action in Nam the way they were camouflaged, splotched green, brown, yellow. They were piloted by Marine Corps officers and each carried a contingent of six Navy medical corpsmen.

The choppers swooped out over the ocean at an altitude of a thousand feet, made a wide banking turn, descended to five hundred and came back, flying south to north, for a look at their objective: the paved open area of the supermarket's parking lot.

“Those guys got balls,” Chief Croy said.

Captain Dodd went closer to the edge of the breakaway to better examine it. He mentally bet it would still let go some. No telling how much or when. If the men in the choppers did what was expected of them, the rescue would take an hour, two at most. No more than two. Night was due at eight, and darkness would come even earlier because of the rain.

The choppers were coming in now. From seaward, one after the other. The closer they got, the more evident it was how little control the pilots had. The wind was fighting them, blasting from every which way.

The choppers gave up on two approaches before committing to a set-down. They hovered above the parking lot, reacting more like lightweight insects than heavy machines. They floundered, spun, bobbed.

Finally, one of the choppers managed to touch down.

The moment its landing gear came in contact with the blacktop a sheet of wind, more violent than any before, wrapped itself in under the chopper, and, at the same time, another powerful gust smacked it from starboard. The chopper was scooped up, flipped over on its side and for a moment was suspended mid-air.

The second chopper was about fifty feet higher and fifty away from the first, normally a safe distance. A tremendous gust caught it head on, forced its nose straight up.

Then, as though within the power of a pair of giant, invisible hands, the two choppers were slapped together. The explosion was instantaneous, a brilliant orange-and-red billow. Parts flew and fell and the fuselages of the two craft, melted together by the fiery impact, smouldered on the parking lot. No survivors.

Chief Croy went and sat in his red car.

After a few minutes he reported what had happened to El Toro.

The flight officer asked twice if there were any survivors. Out of habit he said, “Thank you, sir,” when he clicked off.

Captain Dodd got into the chiefs car.

“Fucking wind,” Croy said.

Dodd agreed.

“Got any ideas, Dodd?”

“A possibility.”

“We'd be over there by now if it wasn't for the wind.” Croy's cigarette between his lips went up and down in cadence with his words.

Dodd didn't believe a man could enjoy having smoke in his eyes most of the time.

“What's your idea?” Croy asked.

Dodd was picturing it.

“We can't use the aerial. We already thought of that.”

“I know.”

“Well, let's have it.”

Captain Dodd took out a note pad and a felt-tipped pen. He made a crude profile sketch of the breakaway, the chasm and the bluff. “We'll go man for man on it,” he said. “One of yours and one of ours.”

“Need the publicity?”

A bad joke, to relieve the tension, Dodd decided, giving Croy the benefit of the doubt. “Just that it's risky,” Dodd told him, and continued outlining his plan.

The fireman chosen for it was Ed Larrabee, who had had special instruction in scaling the coastal cliffs.

The highway patrolman chosen was Jack Madsen. He had done quite a bit of mountain climbing on his own time.

Both men, in their mid-twenties, were in excellent physical condition. While things were being made ready they talked together amiably. It was by no means a contest. They genuinely wished one another luck as they were about to go over the side.

It had been decided that rather than be lowered in tension they would repel down — that is, with a line around their hips, they would control their own rate of descent. It gave them greater freedom. They were each equipped with two-way constant walkie-talkies strapped to their upper arms, so at any time they could easily communicate with those above and with one another.

Over the edge and down the line they went, spaced forty feet apart. With the repelling technique they used their legs to brace and push off from the face of the newly formed cliff. They went down virtually in leaps and bounds, yelling to let out what was part apprehension, part exhilaration.

At about the hundred-foot mark they were across from the level of the bluff. At that point they moved laterally, searching.

“Something, here,” Larrabee said.

He kicked vigorously at the face of the cliff, causing considerable dirt to give way.

“No good,” he reported.

That same sort of hope and letdown was repeated several times by both Larrabee and Madsen. Finally, Madsen came across what appeared to be a really substantial outcropping — some kind of stratified rock, three or four tightly packed layers.

Madsen kicked at it. It didn't give, seemed solid. He called to Larrabee, who swung over. Together they stomped hard as they could, testing the outcropping. Then they worked on the dirt above it, causing the dirt to fall away. What they created was a small ledge.

Madsen would try it.

He rotated to be facing out from the cliff. He placed his feet on the ledge and gradually transferred his weight from the line until all one hundred ninety pounds of him was being supported by the ledge.

Larrabee added his two hundred.

“Got it,” he reported.

“Maybe,” Madsen added.

Above, the ladder was ready. A fifty-foot ground ladder that weighed two hundred twenty-five pounds. Under regular hurry-up fire conditions four men were assigned to carry it. Now, two lines were attached to an end of it and it was eased over the edge of the cliff and lowered, slowly, to within reach of Madsen and Larrabee.

“Little more,” Madsen told them.

“Another three feet.”

“Give us a few inches.”

“Keep tension until we give the word.”

Would the ledge support that much more weight?

Madsen and Larrabee guided the ladder to them, to the surface of the ledge. It required all their strength to keep the ladder close in. When they were sure they had it, Madsen said “Now!” and Larrabee said “Let's have it!” and the men on the lines above released all the weight of the ladder.

The ledge took it. And held.

Larrabee and Madsen gripped the ends of the ladder's rails, left and right, creating as much inward tension as they could, difficult with the ledge narrow as it was. When they agreed they were set, Larrabee shouted, “Let her down!”

The men above paid out their lines. The ladder came down diagonally. It quivered in the wind, rocked and was almost flipped over but finally it was there, horizontal. The outward end of it just did reach the bluff across the way by a foot or two.

Now came the tougher part.

Larrabee claimed, being a fireman, he was more accustomed to ladders.

Madsen stood on the end of the ladder to help balance it. Larrabee got down on all fours. He used the rails to crawl along, and at first he made good progress. However, when he was about halfway across the wind seemed to discover him. It hit him hard, swirled rain around him spitefully, rattled the ladder that was already bent some under his weight. To save himself, Larrabee had to go belly down on the rungs.

From there on he inched along. The closer he got to the other side, the more the wind seemed to resent him. It tried its hardest to rip him off, kept at it, and then, at the exact moment Larrabee reached the bluff, the wind gave up completely.

Madsen was hauled up.

Captain Dodd had laced black coffee and personal thanks ready for him.

Now rescue was imminent. A special line-throwing gun was put to use. It shot a projectile connected to a lightweight cord over to the bluff. Larrabee retrieved it. The cord, tied to a nylon line of five-thousand-pound test, was fed to Larrabee. He secured the line to the chassis of one of the cars on the parking lot.

By then numerous press people were at the site on the highway. Television dominated, of course. There were the familiar-faced reporters, many technicians, men with sixteen-millimeter-film cameras and portable video cameras harnessed to them. Everyone wet, dripping, told to keep out of the way, complying as much as their competitiveness allowed. Always nudging forward, not to miss anything. Some cameras, for vantage, were placed atop remote transmission vans.

From a distance, from out to sea looking coastward through the diffusing rain, this area of the highway glowed weirdly, near religiously.

In the banks of television lights Chief Croy's slick white helmet caused flaring blue aftertrails on the monitors each time he moved his head.

“Is there any doubt now about getting those people out?”

“I don't foresee any trouble.”

“How long will it take?”

Croy thought, seemed about to reply but didn't, committing the most awful sin of television reportage: silence.

“What's your guess, Chief?”

“Two, three hours,” Croy promised and hoped he looked confident. His eyes challenged all the cameras.

“Do you know yet if anyone down there is injured or dead?”

“No.”

For heightened drama behind those words the director cut to another camera hand-held on the ambulances parked in an orderly, ominous line. Ten, and more on the way from the nearby hospitals: South Coast Community, Hoag Memorial, San Clemente General. Some resident doctors of those hospitals had come with the ambulances, some on their own. Also nurses.