Cave Rescue Courtship Read online

  Cave Rescue Courtship

  a US Coast Guard romantic suspense story

  M. L. Buchman

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  About This Book

  Petty Officer Vera Chu lives her dream of serving aboard a US Coast Guard cutter. Newly assigned to patrols of the treacherous Columbia River Bar only affirms her resolve.

  Lieutenant Hammond Markson flies his Dolphin rescue helicopter as if it’s a part of himself.

  Only when a desperate rescue on the storm-tossed Oregon Coast cliffs throws them together do they find out how truly exciting life can be.

  1

  “You are officially the Chief Loon on this boat,” Petty Officer Vera Chu slid out of her upper bunk and did her best to repress a shiver. As fast as possible she stripped out of her sleeping sweats and pulled on “The Blue”—technically the ODU, Operational Dress Uniform, which sounded far too fancy for the standard Coast Guard working uniform. Blue cargo pants (over long johns), topped with a long-sleeved blue t-shirt, and blue overshirt. Her last gesture after pulling on the blue ball cap was to rub her name stitched over her right breast pocket. USCG to the core just like her parents. Dad always insisted that Mom would have been so proud of her and that was enough—almost.

  “What took you so long to figure that one? I mean we’ve known each other like two whole weeks already.” PO Hailey Beaumont mumbled from where she stayed tucked under her covers on the lower bunk.

  The fifty-year-old USCG Steadfast wasn’t exactly a warm ship, so it was hard to blame her. The cutter had a lot of quirks, but she was indeed a steadfast craft and had already proven it several times since she and Hailey had come aboard. Crossing the violent Columbia River Bar off the Oregon Coast to rescue endangered boats and their crews, the old ship had definitely proven that she still had what it took.

  The two weeks had also proven that, despite any momentary lack of even implied sanity, Hailey was a good crewmate to have by your side in a tight spot.

  “Perhaps I’m a slow learner. I determined you were insane last night when you returned to the ship at oh-three-hundred hours this morning singing Little White Church.”

  Hailey pulled down the covers enough to expose her dark curly hair and one bleary eye. “I didn’t. By Little Big Town?”

  “You did. And yes. If you find it to be of any comfort, you were mostly on key.”

  She pulled the covers back over her head and Vera could barely hear her. “Who knew that country music was so dangerous?”

  “Or handsome Coast Guard helicopter pilots?”

  This time when Hailey emerged, she was smiling. “Okay, you got me. Sly was awesome. We slow danced until they shut down the bar. I thought you hooked up with his copilot, the dark but dashing Chief Warrant Hammond Markson. Ham left like minutes after you did. Figured you were doing the whole discreet gorgeous-Asian-chick thing.”

  “No.” Last night had been the wedding of Sly’s and Hammond’s back-seat crew. The rescue swimmer and crew chief from the HH-65 Dolphin helicopter were now gone on a two-week honeymoon to Hawaii.

  We’re planning to swim somewhere warm for a change, the groom had announced after the wedding. Offshore Astoria, Oregon was many things, but warm ocean it wasn’t. Time span to hypothermia in the summer was twelve minutes. Except this was the day after Christmas, so it was closer to four.

  When the party had moved to the Workers Tavern dive bar, she’d departed to return to the ship.

  “Who did you hook up with?” Hailey shoved aside the blankets, dumped her t-shirt to the deck, and began scrabbling through the clothes in her half of the inset drawers.

  “No one.” Which was technically true. She hadn’t hooked up and had sex with anyone.

  However, she’d glanced back at the bar after a block to spot Hammond standing outside the bar’s door with his fists rammed into his jacket pockets, just watching her.

  When she didn’t move off, he’d come up to join her and offered to walk her back to the ship. The long, cold mile should have taken fifteen minutes. Instead it had taken most of two hours. No handholding. He hadn’t even shot for a goodbye kiss. Instead he’d stood and watched until she was up the gangway, like a real gentleman.

  Actually well past that. She’d peeked out from the flight deck, which was her and Hailey’s domain, just making sure everything was where it should be before bunking down for the night. Hammond had still been there, a dark silhouette, still watching the gangway. He’d stood there another ten minutes before finally turning on his heel and walking back the way he’d come.

  She still didn’t know why the walk had taken so long, or why she hadn’t been cold…until this morning. Major brrr!

  “Where’s the fun in not hooking up with someone after a wedding?” Hailey yanked on a doubled sports bra and a t-shirt, then kept layering up. She didn’t have the decency to shiver even once.

  Vera felt as if she’d been born cold. Only at the peak of Detroit summers had she been truly comfortable. The winters there were…harsh.

  “As I said, you’re a loon, Hailey. And who will you be hooking up with tonight?”

  “No one but the deep sea. We’re headed back out.”

  Vera could feel the low thrum of the idling engines vibrating through the soles of her feet against the chilly deck plates. She shifted to stand on Hailey’s jeans where she’d dumped them on the floor last night. Surprise inspections were clearly not Hailey’s friend.

  Standing on her bunkmate’s clothes probably wasn’t the best form. So instead, she sat on the rumples of Hailey’s vacated bunk to pull on her boots.

  “But after that, Sly will be waiting for me.”

  Vera offered her an eye roll, but Hailey just shook her head.

  “No, really. I’ve never just known a guy was a contender. Actually, I’ve always just known, but in the other direction—like some guy will be fun but no way more than that. This time I totally know Sly is it and that he feels the same.”

  “That’s why you were singing Little White Church when you came in this morning?” Vera had never “just known” with a guy either and didn’t expect to any time soon.

  Hailey stopped pulling on her ODU. “Shit! Country music is so freaking dangerous.”

  Vera would take that as sound advice and stick with her Detroit fusion techno-funk.

  As they headed to breakfast, the deck began swaying beneath their feet. They were off dock again and headed once more across the Colombia River Bar. Only two weeks aboard, but Vera now knew exactly what that meant: rough ride ahead.

  2

  “Is he always like this?” Tad called over the intercom from the back of the thrumming HH-65 Dolphin helicopter.

  “No,” Ham sighed. “Usually he’s worse.”

  Lieutenant Sylvester “Sly” Beaumont sat in the right-hand pilot’s seat and he was in full-on cheery Gloucester fisherman mode. Actually, that was his normal state, this was something “other” but Ham didn’t want to spook their substitute rescue swimmer. With Harv and Vivian off to Hawaii—lucky sea dogs—Tad and Craig were filling in.

  Seven years together flying for the Coast Guard, and he’d never seen Sly both so cheery and flying so clean. Normally Sly was a rougher pilot. Not sloppy, but more as if he was always thinking about every moment. Suddenly he was flying like it was the most natural thing in the world.

  Ham couldn’t imagine how else to describe it. They’d always had fun flying together, but suddenly Ham was all Mr. Smooth and Grace, like he’d just
gotten another ten years of flying skill out of nowhere.

  Surely not because of some lady.

  Ham knew better. He’d been Dear Hammed twice—once at the altar. Both bitches had kept the ring as well. Next time he wasn’t buying the ring until after the goddamn wedding. Charice still wore the diamond that he’d given her, probably because her banker husband had considered it a wise saving of his Long Island capital. Hot Haitian babe and Mr. Conservative Too-goddamn-cheap New York banker, who’d have ever thought.

  Evengie had hocked his second ring, along with three others he hadn’t known about, and bought a ticket to Japan. The black bitch of Tokyo. Made even less sense than being a black dude in Astoria, Oregon—according to the census, there were two black families in the whole town, though he had yet to meet any of them. Hailey’s and Vera’s arrival had definitely raised the town’s diversity.

  “Winds kicking thirty, heading for forty offshore,” Ham reported. A small storm by Pacific Northwest standards, but still a challenge. The clouds had rolled off the ocean in layers. Two days ago high horsetails at sunset. An overcast mid-altitude blanket yesterday. Today, low dark and nasty. It was mid-morning, but the day was so dark that even the Douglas fir woods that lay just a kilometer from the Coast Guard hangar seemed utterly featureless. Just a wall of green rather than ten thousand trees.

  “Sounds good.” Sly called for clearance from the Tower then signaled for Ham to take them aloft; Ham was pilot-in-command for this flight. Sly was a good captain and shared his airtime, unlike some bastards. One of the many reasons Ham liked flying with him.

  Twenty-five knots of ugly slapped at their bird before they were fifty feet up. The high whine of the twin turboshaft engines deepened a little as they took up the load. The hull creaked for a moment as the load on it shifted from squatting on three wheels to dangling from its main rotor.

  Sly usually loved nothing so much as grousing about flying through shitty weather—as if that wasn’t a major part of their life in the two years since they were posted to Oregon.

  But not today.

  “Who the hell drugged you, dude?”

  “Curvy little chick, totally five-by-five.”

  “About five-foot-five. Gotta be broken to see anything in you.”

  “You’ll find out, Ham.” Man couldn’t even be insulted by Ham dissing his girl.

  Crap! What did it take to get a rise out of him? He needed Harv and Vivian to help him straighten Sly out. Anyone talked shit about Vera Chu, and they’d find themselves looking for a new face. He glanced toward the mouth of the Columbia River and there was her boat in mid-channel, bucking over the big waves of the Bar.

  He and Sly had been flying together for seven years. Suddenly, the guy’s brain goes AWOL? He’d never fallen so hard, so fast. And that so wasn’t what Ham himself had been doing last night standing like a doorpost off the Steadfast’s gangway. He wasn’t sure quite what he had been doing; he just hadn’t wanted to leave. He liked being around Vera Chu.

  “I’ll find out what? What a fling feels like?” Not that he’d even touched Vera. She was absolutely not a fling sort of woman, and he and Sly were most definitely fling sort of guys. Or they had been, before Sly’s libido had been attacked by a seriously cute and curvy petty officer newly assigned to the Steadfast.

  “Nope, buddy. It’s the real thing.”

  “Coke already has the trademark on that. Buck-fifty outta the machine; works just fine for me.”

  Sly just laughed.

  This was gonna be a long-ass day.

  3

  Vera hated the S part of SAR, especially nearshore SAR. Search-and-Rescue from aboard the Coast Guard cutter in high seas was bad enough. Out there, every spare hand was set to rotating on the watch. Often nothing showing in the chaotic waves other than a life preserver…if you were searching for one of the smarter ones. Otherwise, it might just be a floating body, less visible than a drift log in the rough waters.

  She and Hailey had two typical duties: Landing Safety Officers and Gunner’s Mates. With no helicopter landing on the Steadfast’s afterdeck and no one to shoot at, SAR meant that they were issued binoculars and set to watch: two hours on, one hour off.

  Near to shore, it was the same drill, except the deep ocean swell built to double the height as they became waves ready to crash on the land. Also, rather than traveling a grid pattern perpendicular to the swells, the cutter’s search pattern was parallel to the coast where it was feared someone was lost.

  That meant the cutter was typically broadside to the new-and-improved swells rising to crash onto the land. Black-and-blue marks were just part of the day as they were tossed against stanchions and railings like human beach balls.

  They’d found a spot to brace themselves against the RB-S, the Response Boat-Small. The twenty-three-foot inflatable was stowed midships just forward of the rear flight deck that stretched half the length of the two hundred and ten-foot cutter. It gave them a spot out of the bitter wind, mostly. They could also rest their elbows on the inflatable’s side tube to steady the binoculars, not that it was doing them any good.

  A party of four in two double kayaks had gone missing just south of Seaside, Oregon. Reported over an hour ago, they were long dead if they were still in the water. Their only hope was if they’d made it ashore and were up in the cliffs.

  “Couldn’t have been north of Seaside. Oh, no,” Hailey shouted loud enough to be heard over the increasing storm.

  That would have been too easy. From the resort town of Seaside all the way up to Astoria, there was nothing but long sandy beaches. But the beach patrols weren’t reporting any bodies. That left the cliffs to the US Coast Guard.

  With ten people watching the shore, there’d already been four false alarms.

  Each time, the bright orange streak of an HH-65 Dolphin would slide in to inspect the find more closely.

  Each time they waved off. Flotsam tossed up on the rocks, no sign of the missing adventurers.

  “Is that your boyfriend?” Vera teased Hailey to break up the monotony of the long watch in the bitter cold.

  Hailey’s binoculars swung aloft for a moment as the Dolphin flew slowly south on search. “Yep! That’s his tail number. Looks like your boy is doing the flying today though.”

  “Not my boy.” Despite herself, Vera swung up her binoculars to look at the helo. The copilot in the left-hand seat had his hand on the controls. Between helmet and glasses, there was little to see, but what showed of his face was far darker than the pilot’s. Yes, Hammond was at the controls. The pilot in the right seat was holding binoculars of his own looking down—at them. He waved, then turned his attention back to the surf line.

  Vera admonished herself and did the same. Even braced against the inflatable’s hull, this was becoming hard. The powerful binoculars that let her inspect every rock, had seemed light four hours ago. Now they felt heavy as lead. And her left shoulder kept threatening to cramp. The pitching had gotten worse, and there was often green water up to the deck below theirs. Even on the lee side of the ship, they were often eating spray.

  “Tide’s rising,” she called out to prove that she wasn’t thinking about Hammond.

  They’d met a couple of times over the last weeks, maybe more than that. He wasn’t chatting her up, that she was ready for. Instead, every time there was some sort of gathering, he’d just end up near her. He was pleasant, well-educated, and well-read. In groups, he and Sly were often at the bantering center of attention. But then later she’d find the quiet, thoughtful version of him sitting quietly beside her.

  “You sure?”

  About Hammond? Not at all. Oh, about the tide. Vera closed her eyes as they caught another dousing. Once her eyes cleared, she checked the beach of a small cove.

  “Check out the high-tide line,” she told Hailey, though that wasn’t how she knew. Through her binoculars, she could see that the high limit of the seaweed drift line was indeed getting caught up in the storm’s wave action. It had been well
above the waves when the storm started.

  But Vera knew the timing because she was endlessly amazed by the huge tides here and had looked at the tide table this morning, just as she did every day.

  Detroit mostly had ice and storms. Lake Erie might not kill as many as Michigan or Superior each winter, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. But its tides were under two inches.

  The Oregon Coast had twelve-foot tides.

  Twelve-foot tides?

  That’s when Vera saw it. Not through her binoculars, but it was just as clear.

  “They’re not on the cliffs,” Vera shouted.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  “They’re in the cliffs.”

  Hailey pulled aside and looked at her strangely. “I thought I was supposed to be the crazy one.”

  “Trust me, you are.” Then Vera turned and charged down the afterdeck.

  4

  “The way I see it, Ham, your brain is broken.”

  Ham considered what it would take to dump Sly out of the helo. Release his harness, open his door, shove—hard. Yeah, totally possible.

  “You seem to think that women are fun.”

  “Hello, duh! So did you two weeks ago.”

  “Seeing it all from the next level up, buddy. Next level up. Yessiree.”

  “Why is a Gloucester fisher-twerp suddenly talking Texas?”

  “That’s not Texas. That’s the Duke.”

  “Trust me, Sly. You are so not John Wayne.”

  “You’re just jealous,” Sly kept scanning the surf.

  “Of you, not a chance.” Though he had to admit, Hailey was really something. Almost as dark as he himself was, built, sassy, and seriously amazing at her job.

  “What about that Vera? You should go for her.”