The Dawn Patrol

by Don Winslow

  “Am I good enough?” she asked him out of the blue.

  But he knew just what she was talking about. “Totally good enough.”

  “I think so, too,” she said. “I’ve been thinking I need to get serious. Really get ready to take my shot.”

  “You should,” he said. “Because you could be great.”

  I could, she thinks now.

  I can.

  I will.

  There’s a knock on the door.

  She opens it and sees Boone standing there.

  114

  Dave the Love God launches the Zodiac into Batiquitos Lagoon.

  This is freaking crazy, he thinks, and he’s absolutely right. Heavy surf warnings are out, the Coast Guard has issued a small craft advisory, and if anything qualifies as a small craft, it’s a freaking Zodiac.

  He steers the Zodiac out of the lagoon toward the open ocean. It’s near to being closed out; it’s going to be tough busting out through the break. But Red Eddie is right: Dave knows these waters; he knows the breaks, the current, the sweet spots. If he can get out on a board, he can get out in a boat.

  He does.

  Takes an angle, drives through the shoulder between two breaks, gets outside, and points the Zodiac south. He decides to hug pretty close to the coast until he gets far enough south to turn seaward, toward the coordinates that Eddie had given him to meet the boat that’s coming up from Mexico with the cargo.

  115

  “I was just thinking about you,” Sunny says.

  “Bad stuff?”

  “No.”

  Sunny lets Boone in and he sits down on the couch. She offers him a cup of tea, but he doesn’t want anything. Well, he doesn’t want anything to drink, but he seems to want to say something and can’t seem to get there.

  She helps him out. “What happened to us, Boone?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We used to be great together,” she says.

  “Maybe it’s the big swell,” Boone says. “It seems to be bringing something in with it.”

  She sits down beside him. “I’ve been feeling it, too. It’s like how a big swell washes in and sweeps things away with it, and it’s never the same again. It’s not necessarily better or worse; it’s just different.”

  “And there’s nothing you can do about it,” Boone says.

  Sunny nods. “So this other chick …”

  “Petra.”

  “Okay. Are you and she …”

  “No,” Boone says. “I mean, I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t know, Sunny,” Boone says. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what I used to know. All I know is that things are changing, and I don’t like it.”

  “The Buddha said that change is the only constant,” Sunny says.

  “Good for him,” Boone says. Old dude with a beer belly and a stoned smile, Boone thinks, sticking his nose between me and Sunny. “Change is the only constant”—New Age, retro-hippie, Birkenstock bullshit. Except it’s sort of true. You look at the ocean, for instance; it’s always changing. It’s always a different ocean, but it’s still the ocean. Like me and Sunny—our relationship might change, but we’re always going to love each other.

  “You look tired,” Sunny says.

  “I’m trashed.”

  “Can you get a little sleep?” she asks.

  “Not yet,” he says. “How about you? You need your rest—big day coming.”

  “I’ve been hitting the chat rooms,” she says. “All the big boys are going to be there. A lot of tow-in crews. I’m going to give it a shot anyway, but …”

  “You’ll shred it,” he says. “You’ll kill them.”

  “I hope so.”

  “I know so.”

  God, she loves him for that. Whatever else Boone is or isn’t, he’s a friend, and he’s always believed in her, and that means the world to her. She gets up and says, “I really should be getting to bed.”

  “Yeah.” He gets up.

  They stand close for a few painful, silent moments; then she says, “You’re invited.”

  He wraps his arms around her. After today, after she rides her big wave, everything is going to be different. She’s going to be different; they’re going to be different.

  “I have something I have to do,” Boone says. “Tonight.”

  “Okay.” She squeezes him tightly for a second, feels the pistol. “Hey, Boone, there’s a few dozen bad punch lines here, but …”

  “It’s okay.”

  She squeezes him tighter for a second, then let go. Holding on, the Buddha says, is the source of all suffering. “You’d better go, before we both change our minds.”

  “I love you, Sunny.”

  “Love you, too, Boone.”

  And that’s a constant that will never change.

  116

  The small boat pitches and rolls in the heavy swell.

  Waves smashing over the bow, the boat slides into the trench and then climbs out again, threatening to tip over backward before it can crest the top of the next wave.

  Out of control.

  The crew has experienced rough seas before, but nothing like this. Juan Carlos and Esteban have seen The Perfect Storm, but they never thought they’d be in the fucking thing. They don’t know what the hell to do, and there might be nothing they can do—the ocean just might decide to do them.

  Esteban prays to San Andrés, the patron saint of fishermen. A fisherman’s son who found life in their small village too boring, Esteban went to the city in search of excitement. Now he fervently wishes that he’d listened to his father and stayed in Loreto. If he ever gets off this boat, he’s going back, and never take his boat out of the sight of land.

  “Radio in a distress call!” Esteban yells to Juan Carlos.

  “With what we’ve got down below?” Juan Carlos replies. They have thirty-to-life in the hold. So they keep banging north against the tough southern current, trying to make the rendezvous point, where they can turn over their cargo.

  The cargo is down below.

  Terrified.

  Crying, whimpering, vomiting.

  Up on top, Juan Carlos says to Esteban, “This thing’s going under!”

  He might be right, Esteban thinks. The boat is a dog, a bottom-heavy tub built for calm seas and sunny days, not for sledding down the face of mountains. It’s bound to capsize. They’d be better off in the lifeboat.

  Which is what Juan Carlos is thinking. Esteban can see it in the older man’s eyes. Juan Carlos is in his forties but looks older. His face is lined with more than the sea and the sun; his eyes show that he’s seen some things in his life. Esteban is just a teenager—he’s seen nothing—but he knows he doesn’t want to carry this memory on the inside of his eyelids for the rest of his life.

  “What about them?” Esteban yells, pointing below.

  Juan Carlos shrugs. There isn’t room in the life raft for them. It’s a shame, but a lot of things in life are a shame.

  “I’m not doing it,” Esteban says, shaking his head. “I’m not just leaving them out here.”

  “You’ll do what I tell you!”

  Esteban plays the trump card. “What would Danny say? He’d kill us, man!”

  “Fuck Danny! He’s not out here, is he?” Juan Carlos replies. “You’d better worry about not dying out here; then you can worry what Danny’s going to do!”

  Esteban looks down at the children below.

  It’s wrong.

  “I’m not doing it.”

  “The fuck you’re not,” Juan Carlos says. He whips the knife out from beneath his rain slicker and thrusts it toward Esteban’s throat. Two will have a much better chance handling the lifeboat in these seas than one.

  “Okay, okay,” Esteban says. He helps Juan Carlos unlash the lifeboat and swing it over the side. It takes a while because they have to wait several times as the boat slides and then crests, almost tipping over. He and Juan Carlos have to grip t
he rails with all their strength just to hang on and not be pitched into the sea.

  They swing the boat out, but they can’t climb into it because the boat rolls in that direction, almost lying flat on the water, the sea just inches from the gunwales. Juan Carlos slides toward the water but catches himself on the rail, his strong hands gripping for his life.

  Esteban kicks at the older man’s hands.

  Holding on himself, he kicks again and again as Juan Carlos screams at him. But Esteban keeps kicking him. Juan Carlos never breaks his grip, but Esteban’s feet break his fingers and the older man loses his hold and slips into the ocean. He tries to grab Esteban’s leg and take the boy with him, but his hands are too smashed to hold on and the ocean takes him.

  Juan Carlos can’t swim.

  Esteban watches him struggle for a moment and then go under.

  When the boat rights itself again, Esteban hauls himself up, staggers to the wheel, and turns the boat back into the oncoming wave. With his other hand, he unties his rope belt, then uses it to fasten himself to the column of the wheel.

  And prays.

  San Andrés, I have fallen so far into evil that I would sell children. But I would not kill them, so I beg you for mercy. Have mercy on us all.

  The sea rises up in front of him.

  117

  Dave can’t believe what he’s looking at.

  He crests the top of a wave and sees the boat sitting in the trench, sideways to the oncoming wave, dangerously low in the water, sitting like a log to be rolled. The lifeboat dangles to the starboard side on its davits, as if the “Abandon ship” order had been given but not executed.

  Where the hell is the captain? Dave wonders. What’s he thinking?

  Dave surfs the Zodiac down the wave, racing the break to the boat. He gets there seconds before, enough time to jump on, tie on, and hold on as the wave smashes into the side and knocks the boat on its side.

  Miraculously, it bobs back up again, and Dave makes his way to the wheelhouse.

  The pilot’s unconscious, lying on the deck, next to the wheel, blood running from a cut on his head. Dave recognizes young Esteban from several of these pickups, but what the fuck is the boy doing tied to the wheel? And where is Juan Carlos?

  Dave turns the boat back into the surf, locks the wheel on that setting, and kneels down beside Esteban. The kid’s eyes open, and he smiles.

  “San Andrés …”

  Saint Andrew, my ass, Dave thinks.

  Then he hears voices.

  It’s a night for weird voices. It could be the wind playing tricks, but these voices seem to be coming from below.

  He walks around and opens the hatch.

  Can’t fucking believe what he sees:

  Six, maybe seven young girls huddled together.

  118

  Dave gags.

  Even standing on deck in the sea air, the bottom reeks of vomit, urine, and shit, and Dave has to fight not to gag. Dave the Love God is seriously shaken up, maybe for the first time in his entire life. “Stay there,” he yells, shoving his palms out to make his point. “Just stay there!”

  He strides back to the wheelhouse. Esteban is picking himself up off the deck. Dave grabs him by the front of the shirt and shoves him against the wheel.

  “What the fuck?” Dave yells.

  Esteban just shakes his head.

  “I didn’t sign up for this!” Dave hollers. “Nobody told me about this!”

  “I’m sorry!”

  “Where’s Juan Carlos?”

  Esteban points to the water. “He fell over.”

  Good, Dave thinks. Adi-fucking-os. He’d just as soon toss Esteban over the side, too, but he needs him to help get these kids off the sinking boat and into the Zodiac.

  It isn’t easy.

  The girls are sick, dizzy, and scared to death, reluctant to leave what little safety they have on the boat for the pitching sea. It takes all of Dave’s lifeguard demeanor to calm them down and get them into his boat. He gets in first and stretches up his arms while Esteban hands them down one by one. He settles them into the Zodiac, carefully arranging them to balance the weight.

  The boat is going to be too heavy and sit too low in the water to be really safe, but there isn’t really a choice. He either leaves them out here or he does his best to get them all in. He’s not so worried about the open sea—the storm is calming down and he can negotiate the swells. The critical moment is going to be busting through the shore break, where the overloaded boat could easily flip or swamp. He doubts any of these kids are strong swimmers. If he doesn’t bring the boat in upright, most of them will probably drown in the heavy white water that comes with the big swell.

  Esteban hands the last girl down and then starts to climb in.

  Dave stops him.

  “You’re not on the list, pacheco.”

  “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Turn the boat around and take it back to Mexico,” Dave says. “What do you usually do?”

  “I can’t go back,” Esteban says.

  “Why not?”

  Esteban hesitates, then says, “I killed Juan Carlos. He was going to leave them out here.”

  “Get in.”

  Dave works his way to the aft of the boat.

  There’s no place for him to sit down, so he stands.

  119

  Boone pulls into Teddy’s driveway and gets out of the car.

  The night air is wet, somewhere between mist and gentle rain. The light coming from Teddy’s living room window looks soft and warm.

  Boone can see them through the window. Teddy’s at the bar, fixing a stiff and dirty martini. Tammy paces the room. He tries to give her the drink, but she won’t take it, so Teddy sips it himself.

  He looks startled when Boone rings the doorbell.

  Looks to Tammy, who looks back at him and shrugs.

  Boone waits as Teddy opens the door a crack, the chain link left on. Boone shoves the pistol through the crack and says, “Hi. Can I come in?”

  120

  Yeah, he can.

  A gun is its own invitation.

  Teddy unhooks the chain lock and opens the door.

  Boone goes in and kicks it shut behind him.

  Teddy’s house is as beautiful as he’d expected. Huge living room with a vaulted ceiling. Expensive custom paint with faux brush techniques. Expensive modern paintings and sculpture, a grand piano.

  The center of the room is taken up with a floor-to-ceiling column that’s a saltwater aquarium. A startlingly bright panoply of tropical fish circle serenely around the column. Tall green undersea plants stretch up toward the surface and wave like thin fingers in the mild, motor-driven current. At the back of the room, a slider gives a view of a huge spotlighted deck and, beyond that, the open ocean.

  “Nice,” Boone says.

  “Thanks.”

  “Hi, Tammy.”

  She glares at him. “What do you want?”

  “Just the truth.”

  “Trust me, you don’t want it.”

  “There’s a little girl involved,” Boone says. “Now you’re going to tell me the truth or, I swear, I’ll splatter both of you all over this pretty room.”

  Teddy walks back toward the bar. “Would you like a drink?” he asks. “You’re going to need one.”

  “Just the story, thanks.”

  “Suit yourself,” Teddy says, “but I’m sitting down. It’s been an exhausting couple of days, as you know.”

  He sits down in the large leather easy chair and looks at the fish in his tank. “Tell him, Tammy. It’s almost over now anyway.”

  Tammy tells her story.

  121

  Tammy grew up in El Cajon, out in East County.

  The usual stereotypical stripper back story: Her dad wasn’t around a lot; her mom made an unsteady living as a waitress in a local restaurant and usually stayed for a few beers after her shift was over.

  She was a lonely little girl. A latchkey kid who made herself
instant macaroni and cheese, which she ate while watching celebrity shows on television and dreaming about becoming one of the actresses on the red carpet. It didn’t seem likely then—she was skinny and gangly and had red hair, which the boys made fun of.

  They stopped making jokes around the time she turned fourteen. Tammy didn’t blossom—she exploded into a sexuality that seemed to happen overnight and was scary and confusing to her. Suddenly, boys wanted her, and she saw the way that grown men looked at her when she’d go to the restaurant to say hello to her mom. She wanted to say to them, I’m fourteen years old; I’m a kid. But she was afraid to speak to or even look back at them.

  A good thing. Men would see the intensity in those incredible green eyes and mistake it for something else.

  Okay, she learned to use it, she admits it freely. Why not? High school was a nightmare. She was never good at school—there were diagnoses of dyslexia and ADD—so being an actress wasn’t going to happen. She couldn’t read a script out loud and never got cast in the Drama Club productions. She thought about being a model, but you don’t exactly bump into Eileen Ford in El Cajon, and she couldn’t afford the money for photographers to create a portfolio. She did a little modeling for a local “sportswear” catalog and made a couple hundred dollars, but that was about it.

  Tammy graduated from high school with a C-minus average, and it looked like waiting tables was her future. She did it for a year or so, enduring the crappy tips, the leers, the comments, and the offers, and then one day when she was twenty, she was walking home in the hundred-plus heat along the flat sunbaked sidewalk and decided that she had to do something, anything, to get out of there. So she took her red hair, amazing green eyes, and long legs, got on a bus to Mira Mesa, walked into a strip club, and auditioned.

  She thought it would be hard, but it wasn’t so hard, taking her clothes off. Okay, so it wasn’t the red carpet; it was a platform and a pole. And yes, it was a cliché. But Tammy learned quickly that if she paused in her dance and cast those eyes out over the front row, she would get tips; if she picked out one guy and trained those cat eyes on him, she could easily get him into the Champagne Room, or the VIP Room, or whatever the hell room where the bigger money got made.