by Glen Tate
“Slow down,” Grant said, knowing what the two taps meant. “Scotty has something to tell us.” Mark slowed down. Grant rolled down the window and stuck his head out so Scotty could talk to him.
“Boat launch,” Scotty said. That’s where the Chief must be. Pierce Point had a boat launch in the middle of the waterfront cabins. The Chief normally didn’t use it for operations that needed to be kept secret because there were too many eyes around. But there was no secret that they were looking for one of their people.
Grant told Mark to go to the boat launch and he roared off toward it.
“Slow the hell down, Mark,” Grant said. He was really worried about getting in a wreck. What a way to die, he thought. Make it this far and die in a car wreck because a freaked out guy was driving like a crazy man.
Mark seemed to be coming in and out of his trance. He must have heard Grant because he drove to the boat launch somewhat normally.
There was the Chief in his boat. The tide was out so he was far away, too far to shout to. There were two other boats there. Why weren’t they at Thanksgiving dinner? Then Grant remembered that they were at the first of three shifts of Thanksgiving dinner. A third boat was coming into the boat launch area. Some people were running toward the boat launch. They had binoculars and CB radios.
The Chief motioned for one of the people who were running up to get into his boat. She did. Once she was in the boat, the Chief jumped out and came ashore. He wanted to make sure someone was in his boat before he got out of it so it wouldn’t drift. He didn’t have time to anchor. They had to go look for Paul.
By the time the Chief got to shore, there was a small crowd of searchers. The Chief had done a thousand rescues before when he was in the Coast Guard, but this one was different. It wasn’t some drunken jackass boater. It was Paul.
“Okay,” the Chief said. “We’re using CB channel 7. I want teams to form up, each one with a radio. I want one person with a CB to stay behind and brief the others coming here.” The Chief proceeded to tell people where Paul likely was when he last called in a radio check, which was last night at midnight. The Chief described which way the current and tide were going then. With Mark there, the Chief was careful to talk about where to find Paul and pick him up. He didn’t use the word “body” to describe Paul, even though the Chief knew the odds of Paul falling into the water last night and still being alive were very slim.
“I found his boat this morning and it was here,” the Chief said, indicating a point on his nautical chart of Peterson Inlet, the body of water surrounding Pierce Point. “That is consistent with the current and tide I mentioned. So we’ll focus on this area and go get him off the beach.” The Chief was being vague: was getting him off the beach rescuing him or picking up his body?
The Chief looked at Grant and, because there was a crowd of people who didn’t know about Marion Farm, said to him, “Let our friends know we’re out on the water.” That was a good idea. They didn’t want the pickets and sentries at Marion Farm to shoot them, thinking they were a Loyalist recon or landing party. Grant motioned to Scotty who went out of hearing distance of the crowd and called it in to the farm.
By now, more people had come running up to the boat launch to help. One of them brought a gas can, which was worth its weight in gold.
“How many radios we got?” the Chief asked. Grant was realizing how valuable CB radios were. Sure, ham radios were better and had better range, especially when you hit a radio repeater and could talk to people far away, but CBs were so common. That meant lots of people had them. They were perfect for situations like this. Grant had always meant to get a CB radio as part of his preparations before the Collapse, but never got around to it. At least other people had.
Grant was also wishing right then that he had gotten his ham radio license—the test was easy—and a handheld ham radio. The radio was about the half the cost of a gun and Grant had plenty of guns. “Shoot, move, and communicate” was the military phrase for what it took to operate as a unit. Grant had the shooting down and was pretty decent at moving, but without the communications, the shooting and moving weren’t enough to stay alive, let alone win.
“I want a member of the Team on each search team,” the Chief said. He didn’t need to say it, but the Team was armed and there were still pirate threats on the water. The primary mission was finding Paul, but there was always a chance they’d have to fight off some pirates. There hadn’t been any pirate attacks yet, but Murphy’s Law meant it would happen when they were searching for Paul.
A member of the Team went over to each of the search teams forming up. By now, two more boats had arrived which totaled five boats, including the Chief’s.
The Chief pointed to Grant and said, “You’re on my team.” Grant nodded.
“Mark, you’re riding with me,” the Chief said to Mark who also nodded.
“That’s it,” the Chief said. “Let’s go find Paul.” The teams started walking, and then wading, out to their boats. When Grant got into his boat, the Chief said to him, “You’re doing comms,” and pointed to the CB in the small cabin of his boat.
Grant nodded.
“Get me a radio check,” the Chief said.
Grant got on CB channel 7 and asked each of the search teams to check in. Grant assigned each boat a code name—Team 1, Team 2, etc.—not to be secretive but to keep things straight. It was clearer to use “Team 2” than “Jimmy Bob’s boat.”
Mark just stood there the whole time, not saying a word. He was in that trance again.
The Chief was in agony, too, but just not showing it. He was replaying in his mind how many times he could have forced Paul to wear a life jacket, but didn’t.
“Here,” the Chief said to Grant and Mark and handed them each a life jacket, which they put on.
The boats headed out, toward the part of the inlet where the Chief thought Paul most likely was. The Chief was watching the other boats and making sure they were covering their assigned sector. He was very good at this.
They spent the next four hours looking for Paul. They landed a beach team and had people walking the beach. Grant and Mark stayed in the Chief’s boat.
No one talked. There was radio traffic and occasional questions about where to send a team, but no conversation; just silence. Mark continued in his trance. It was spooky. His mind had shut down.
A boat came out with some fuel. It was getting dark and was starting to rain. “We’ll gas up and head back,” the Chief said.
“No,” Mark said, the first words he’d spoken all day.
The Chief was ready for this. It happened all the time during a search. Loved ones would refuse to suspend a search. Sometimes they got violent.
“We’ll keep a beach team out tonight,” the Chief said. “But it’s too dangerous to have these amateur boaters out here at night. I’ll stay out because I do this all the time, but no other boats.”
“You’re not trying!” Mark screamed. All the emotion that he’d been bottling up during the day finally came flying out of him.
The Chief took a few moments before speaking. “We’ll have this vessel and a beach team out. We’ll find him,” he said.
“We’ll find him now,” Mark said with an almost childlike gushing optimism. “Just a few more minutes and we’ll find him.”
The Chief had been in this situation before where loved ones tried to negotiate with the searchers for more searching, even when searching was endangering the searchers.
“Two more minutes and then the other boats go back,” the Chief said.
“Five,” Mark shouted.
“Two,” the Chief said firmly. “I am in command of this search. Understand?”
Mark was stunned by the Chief’s firmness. Mark was snapping back into reality.
“Okay,” Mark said sheepishly. He felt a bit embarrassed that he had insisted on searching in the soon-to-be dark.
“Can your guys do an all-night beach patrol?” the Chief asked Grant.
“Yes
,” Grant said. “They’ll need jackets.” They had light rain jackets on, but it would get cold. It would be miserable outdoors tonight once the rain picked up.
“They have basic flashlights on them in their kit,” Grant said. “They could use their head lamps and their spare batteries.” The Team had not geared up for an all-night search.
Then it hit Grant. The whole Team couldn’t be out on a beach. What if there was a SWAT situation in Pierce Point or an attack on the gate while they were stranded on a beach?
“I’d rather not have the whole Team on the beach in case a situation arises in Pierce Point requiring them,” Grant said.
Mark exploded. “You don’t want to find Paul! You’re not even trying!”
Grant was genuinely scared of Mark right then. He was so erratic and not himself that Grant couldn’t predict what he might do. For the first time ever around his longtime friend, Grant was glad he was armed. He feared Mark might try to attack him. Mark, the jolly guy who had Grant over to countless barbeques, who would give someone the shirt off his back, who welcomed Grant to Pierce Point when he first got the cabin. That Mark was now scaring Grant. A switch had gone off in Mark’s brain. He was not himself.
“Pipe down,” the Chief said to Mark. “You’re making it harder to find Paul. Shut the hell up. Now.”
Mark did. Then he started crying. It was stressful enough for the Chief and Grant looking for Paul, but a crying man made it worse.
“Call half your Team in,” the Chief said. Mark continued crying. Grant got on the radio and made contact with each member of the Team. They were all on different boats or at different parts of the beach. He told them half of them would go back to Pierce Point and get together with the Crew and be on ready reserve for any trouble.
“Negative,” Wes said on the radio in his southern drawl. “I’m stayin’ on the beach.”
“Me too,” Bobby said over the radio.
“Yep,” said Pow.
“Not leaving,” said Scotty.
Ryan chimed in. “Band of brothers, dude.”
Mark stopped crying and was staring at the CB radio in hope.
Grant was shocked. The Team was telling him no? Not following his direction? Then Grant realized that this was actually a good thing. The Team was refusing to abandon a brother. Grant smiled.
“The Crew and the gate guards can handle anything that might happen,” Grant said to the Chief. He hoped the CB frequencies they were using weren’t being monitored by the Limas, who would now know Pierce Point wasn’t at full strength. Oh well. There had been no evidence so far that the Limas were monitoring the frequencies, let alone that they had the forces lying around to try to take down Pierce Point. They were busy selling booze, cigarettes, and stolen guns. “Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms,” Grant laughed to himself, used to be a government agency. Now it’s pretty much what the government did.
Grant was proud of his guys. They were staying out all night in the rain to look for Paul. He couldn’t ask for anything more. Grant would join them.
Grant and the Chief planned for getting the Team regrouped and then onto the beach. He was also working on getting jackets, headlamps and some food to the guys, dividing up the beach areas for both of the two-man teams, and making sure each two-man team had a radio and knew the frequencies they’d be communicating on. Grant, the fifth member of the Team, would stay on the boat with the Chief, but he’d still get rained on, so he was sharing the misery with the Team. And it was always dangerous being out on a boat in the dark. As Paul had seemingly found out.
“Mark, we’ve got it covered,” the Chief said. “You go back. We’ll keep you updated on the radio.” The Chief expected Mark to insist on staying on the boat, but he was in that trance again. He just mumbled. The Chief called in and had a boat sent out to pick up Mark and bring out the supplies the Team needed for the overnight search. Mark left the boat without saying a word.
After eating some dinner—MREs, which didn’t quite compare to Thanksgiving dinner—they were ready to go back and try to find Paul. They all knew that they were looking for a body. Mark was the only one who seemed to disagree.
During a lull in the search at about 11:00 p.m., Grant said, “Hey, Chief, we should award Paul a Purple Heart.”
The Chief nodded. “Some people will say this wasn’t ‘combat,’ though,” he said.
“Yep,” Grant said. “But the whole United States is basically a combat zone now. Very low intensity, but it is. Paul was doing something dangerous. He wasn’t shot by a bad guy, but he died while serving.” Grant had always thought that military accidents never got the respect they deserved. It seemed like only those people getting killed or injured in direct combat made a sacrifice that “counted” when, in reality, all of it counted.
The Chief was starting to get emotional. He had been occupied all day with the search and hadn’t let his emotional guard down. He loved Paul, who had become the son the Chief never had. They had spent hundreds of hours on the water together. They had done dangerous things together. He had watched Paul go from a fat kid with no self-esteem to an in-shape confident warrior.
“The worst thing,” the Chief said, choking back tears, “is that Paul was finally comfortable with himself. He lost all that weight. He finally knew he was good at something. He had Green Berets telling him how good he was at navigating the tides and currents. He built that steel gate. He had found his purpose.”
Right then and there Grant decided that they would write Paul’s name on the gate as a reminder of all he’d done for Pierce Point. He’d create a permanent monument.
“And little Missy, too,” the Chief said. “What a poor, sweet, little angel. Lost her mom to the drugs. And now she’s lost her dad. She didn’t do anything wrong.” There was a tear running down the Chief’s face.
“For what?” the Chief asked. “What did Paul die for?”
Grant didn’t have any eloquent answers. “Freedom” or “liberty” just didn’t cut it. Not now. It definitely wasn’t time for a political speech. Grant felt obligated to say something positive to help the Chief get through this.
“He’ll be immortalized,” Grant said. “People in Pierce Point, who never even knew he existed or maybe just knew him as the fat guy who played video games all the time, now know Paul Colson as a hero. That’s something. It’s not a good trade for dying, but it’s something.”
“Not a good trade,” the Chief said. “Not a good trade at all.” After a while he said, “But it’s something.”
The Team spent the rest of the night searching. This, too, was dangerous. The driftwood logs on the beach were as slick as snot in the rain. Stepping on one could easily lead to a face plant into a log. It wasn’t as dangerous as rushing into a house full of armed drug addicts, but it was still pretty dangerous. They had to watch the tide to make sure they didn’t go around a log sticking out in to the water, have the tide come in, and end up stranded. The Chief’s boat could always come in to get them, but they’d lose valuable time sitting around on a part of the beach they’d already searched.
They combed the beach in the area Paul most likely was and fanned out to the other beaches. They covered the beaches surrounding the whole inlet. They even went over to the other side where the houses weren’t part of Pierce Point. They were concerned they’d be shot by homeowners, so they turned off their headlamps and moved very slowly.
There was no sign of Paul. They had been operating under the theory that Paul had fallen overboard somehow and, without a life jacket, had drowned, but he would float and should wash up on a beach if that were the case. There had been two complete tide cycles since he was last on the radio. That probably would have washed him up.
Was Paul taken from his boat? By pirates? Or Limas? Did he board a boat trying to help someone who then took off with him? If he boarded a boat, he would have radioed. If pirates, Limas, or friendlies approached his boat, he would have radioed that in. Did he have the wrong frequency on his radio and radioed all this
in but no one ever heard it? Grant and the Chief talked about all the possible scenarios throughout the night.
Around midnight, Grant took off his tactical vest and reached in the inside pocket that had his emergency caffeine pills. He took one, which would make it possible to stay up all night. He ended up taking a second one at about 3:00 a.m. He offered one to the Chief, who was happy to take one due to the lack of coffee in that situation.
Soon, the sun started coming up, which meant it was about 8:00 a.m. The Team wouldn’t admit it, but they were exhausted. Walking the beach in the dark with kit and a rifle, and shivering in the rain all night, took its toll. The Chief and Grant were tired and cold, too. Everyone was famished.
“Time to pack it in,” the Chief said. Grant could only muster a nod. The Chief radioed to the Team that they would be picked up. They were too tired to insist that they stay out looking. They all knew the odds of finding Paul alive were down to about zero. Even if he made it to the beach alive, he had been in the cold and rain for over twenty-four hours.
There was barely enough room in the Chief’s boat for the whole Team. They went back to the boat launch, which had become the command post for the search. There was a small crowd there. It was raining so people had set a covered area up. When they pulled up to the boat launch, no one said a word. They all knew Paul had not been found. As the Team went under the covered area, people brought them food. People were thanking them, but it wasn’t jubilant thanks, it was more like solemn thanks. They wolfed down their breakfasts and got another one. They got in someone’s truck and went back to their cabins and slept.
The community organized daylight search parties for that day. They didn’t send out a night search party. The odds of finding Paul alive were too low to risk more accidents. That made sense to everyone.
Except one person.
Chapter 235
“Lil’ Sissy”
(November 29)
“There he is! There’s Paul!” Mark yelled.
