Between Here and the Horizon(45)

“Fucking *! You’re meant to call me. You’re meant to f*cking—” He stopped shouting to smash his fist into the guy’s face. The guy, crumpled in a heap on the floor, didn’t stand a chance. Sully landed three more catastrophic blows to his face with one hand, grasping hold of ambulance guy’s shirt in the other. The guy went limp, just as Michael barreled into Sully, taking him to the ground.

“Get off me, Michael. Get. The. Fuck. Off. Me.” Sully rolled underneath him, wrapping an arm around Michael’s throat, wrapping his legs around his waist and locking them out at his ankles. He squeezed, and Michael, still doing his best to try and pin Sully down, began to turn purple.

“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 f*cking *, Fletcher,” he said, spitting onto the decking. “A real f*cking *.”

“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 f*cking 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 f*cking 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.