Lifeboat Love by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.

8

“Oh. My. God.”

“I don’t think God is helping much on this one,” Sarah answered.

She and Tabby were standing side-by-side on the flying bridge of the 47-MLB. Suzy was down below checking on the engines. The boat’s two rescue crew were down in the survivors’ cabin—a six-seat watertight compartment directly below their feet. They were fully dressed in wetsuits and probably playing their usual gin rummy despite the rough ride.

Sarah may have been last off the line by eight minutes, but she’d sliced such a line through the surf over the Columbia River Bar that in the half an hour from Cape D, she was the lead boat.

“Wreckage at ten o’clock!” Tabby shouted and pointed off the left bow.

“Good eye,” Sarah backed both engines hard. A container floated just awash, visible only as an incongruous flat spot in the wind-ripped water. “Swimmers ready?”

How was she supposed to know that?

Sarah had given them only minimal instructions as they’d raced aboard and yanked on their Mustang onsie float gear.

The orientation for their first real-world rescue had been brief and to the point. “Engineer got some bad fish and is blowing at both ends with food poisoning. Between you two, you’re covering. Suzy, just keep my boat running. Tabby, you’re my right hand. Don’t even think of doing something without clearing it with me. Either of you ever unhook both of your safety lines at the same time, I’m gonna leave you behind after you’re washed overboard.” End of conversation.

So, Tabby got ready to go find out if the swimmers were ready. They weren’t rescue swimmers like Tad—technically he was an Aviation Survival Technician. The only way the MLB’s swimmers were allowed off the boat was if they were tied to the MLB on a line. But they were still incredible swimmers.

She turned and would have fallen over backwards if she hadn’t been harnessed into her seat—they were both standing close behind her.

“They’re ready,” she reported.

Sarah may have smiled; she couldn’t have missed Tabby’s flinch.

“Let’s start with the rafts before one of them gets pancaked,” Sarah shouted over the grinding scrape of a container thrown out of a wave hard enough to peel open the container they’d almost hit. It sank before she could get a look at the contents.

Tabby held her breath as a sheet of spray plowed across the bridge. Once she’d wiped her eyes, she could see two rafts. The first was closer, and the other was being batted about a floating container. She automatically pointed to the second.

“I like your instinct,” Sarah shouted over the roar of the boat’s engines as she fought clear of another wave. “You do remember to think safety first, right?”

“Isn’t it supposed to be, ‘That Others May Live’?”

“That’s the swimmer’s creed, not the Coast Guards’. Of course,” Sarah aimed for the imperiled raft. “I’ve always liked that creed.” Her grin was wicked as she intentionally rammed the nose of the MLB into the container, then laid in full power to shove it clear of the raft.

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