Andrew stood to ask the question. “Sir,” he said. “How many people would you say you’ve saved over the course of your career?”
The redheaded chopper pilot was a lieutenant commander. Probably in his early thirties, still a few years away from making O-5, where he’d be forced into grad school and flying a desk more than his bird. He listened to the question, then leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds, moving his fingers over his thumb as if counting. After a moment, he looked up at Andrew and clarified.
“Do you mean pulled some retired granddad with a bad case of food poisoning off a cruise ship or literally plucked somebody from the jaws of a watery death?”
The cadet wannabes all chuckled.
“Let’s go with plucked from the jaws of death,” Andrew said, thinking maybe he’d hit a nerve.
The pilot gave a humble shrug. “Thirty-seven,” he said.
The room grew quiet as a church.
Andrew Slaznik returned to Boise, where, later that year, he received congressional nominations for both USAFA and West Point. He was formally accepted to each school. The Air Force Academy sent an early admission letter in an effort to preempt him from accepting another offer. But five weeks after he graduated high school, and to the chagrin of the Air Force liaison from Mountain Home, his parents dropped him in New London, Connecticut, for Reporting day—colloquially called “R-day”—at the United States Coast Guard Academy.
Cadet Slaznik memorized every word of Reef Points—the pocket-sized cadet bible of Coast Guard general knowledge—gritted his teeth through the seven-week horror show of “Swab Summer,” and plowed through the rest of his freshman year. Four years later, after learning not to be such a self-important ass, he graduated third from the top of his class with a degree in mechanical engineering—and a tolerance for boats.
With a fresh set of ensign boards on his shoulders, Slaznik’s academic standing opened the door to flight school, and, after a battery of rigorous physical tests and an in-depth background where OPM investigators asked with complete sincerity if his mother’s family had ever urged him to spy for the Canadians, he was admitted to rotary wing training at Naval Air Station Pensacola. He finished up training in his Coast Guard air frame in Mobile, Alabama.
And even now, Lieutenant Commander Andrew Slaznik got chills every time he walked with a swagger out to the flight line and his own MH-65 Dolphin, because few weeks went by that he didn’t have an opportunity to pluck someone from the jaws of death.
4
Dressed in his orange dry suit, Lieutenant Commander Slaznik logged in to the Aviation Logistics Management Information System across from the watch captain’s desk to check maintenance records. The air station had three MH-65s, but it was a rare moment when at least one wasn’t undergoing some kind of maintenance. The Coast Guard seemed to operate under the “have three to make one” rule when it came to helicopters. In this case, two birds were operational, so Slaznik flipped a coin and signed out 6521. He made a second call to the OPS boss, who’d already touched bases with JHOC and been informed there was also a forty-seven-foot response boat out of Neah Bay near the mouth of the strait, responding to the mayday. Copilot Lieutenant Becky Crumb was already outside doing the preflight and starting the helo. She was quick and efficient, which was good, because now that he knew surface assets were on the way, Slaznik’s competitive nature kicked into high gear. He knew the boat crews in Neah Bay, and they were every bit as competitive. Not a bad thing, really. The guy in the water didn’t much care who got there first.
Eighteen minutes from the JDO’s call, the two pilots walked through a steady rain and climbed into their orange bird—sometimes called “Tupperwolf” or “Plastic Fantastic” by other, less discerning pilots—and began their instrument checks. Slaznik preferred to sit in the left seat and run the radios while he flew, but Crumb was new and not yet hoist-qualified, so Slaznik took the right side. The flight mech and rescue swimmer got themselves situated in the back. Eight minutes after that, Slaznik flipped down his ANVIZ 9 night-vision goggles and called Whidbey Island Approach to request clearance to take off to the west, advising them he had Information Bravo.
With flight clearance given, he added throttle and pulled up the collective to bring the Dolphin into a hover. The seventy-mile-per-hour rotor wash drove the rain into the ever-present goose crap on the runway, throwing it into the upwash and spattering green slime across the windscreen.
“That is so nasty,” Lieutenant Crumb muttered, before depressing the microphone and transmitting to the JHOC.
“Rescue 6521 departing Air Station Port Angeles with four souls on board. ETA Pillar Point fourteen minutes . . .”
Lieutenant Commander Slaznik checked with the rest of his crew, who each gave him a thumbs-up. 6521’s tail came up slightly and she shuddered, like a racehorse in the gates. “Gauges in the green,” Slaznik said, performing one final scan of his instruments an instant before he eased the cyclic forward to scoot down the runway. “This looks, smells, and feels like a helicopter. We’re on the go.”
? ? ?
In the rearmost seat of Rescue 6521, mounted almost flush to the deck, Rescue Swimmer Lance Kitchen checked his gear for the second time since boarding the aircraft. He was five-feet-ten, 172 pounds. At twenty-four, and a recent graduate of the monumentally strenuous thirteen-week Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer School in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, he was in the best shape of his life. The darkness was nothing to him now. Dangling on a spinning cable above an angry sea was second nature. Black water and big waves called his name. What he feared was failure—more specifically, any failure brought about because of something he missed.
Unlike the other members of the SAR crew, Petty Officer 2nd Class Kitchen’s gear reflected the fact that he planned to get in the water. A scuba mask and snorkel were affixed to the top of his windsurfing helmet, along with a strobe that would allow the pilots to keep him in sight in heavy seas. His black Triton swimmer vest harness contained, among other things, a regulator and small pony bottle of air, a Benchmade automatic knife, a 405 personal locator beacon, and a waterproof Icom radio with an earpiece. An EMT paramedic, he’d leave the bulk of his trauma gear on the chopper to utilize once he got the guy in the basket and hoisted him up. Heavy rubber jet fins hung from a clip on his high-visibility orange DUI dry suit. He’d slip them on when they got to the scene, just before he attached himself to the hoist.
With the gear and mind-set checks complete, Kitchen sat back in his seat and looked at the Seiko dive watch on his wrist. Eleven minutes out. One man in the water. Simple. He could do this.