Page 1 of Taming Her Bears

Lee

The whipping helicopter blades overrode the sound of the wind lashing the ocean into a fury as it circled around so close to the chopping water, it splattered up over the landing skids.

“Time to get your feet wet, seaman,” yelled Darkhorse in my ear.

I crossed my arms over the inflatable life-saver, squatted at the door, and turned a somersault into the ocean below. Even through my insulated suit, I could feel the water’s chill. I gasped as I came up for air, my nose red and cold. The released tube inflated automatically.

The fisherman had been treading water but was starting to panic. He’d been too long in the ocean, had swallowed too much of the salty surf that washed up over him. He saw the life-saving tube and began waving his arms up and down, drowning himself. I caught him in a half-nelson, from behind, hauling him toward the tube. Within seconds, the helicopter was hovering directly overhead, dangling a harness and ropes.

The fisherman clung to the tube, his mouth wide open and gasping for breath, water streaming from between his lips. I wrapped the harness around him, buckled him in, and gave a thumbs up to Darkhorse before I started looking around for other survivors. Roy was harnessing in a fisherman who was barely conscious. Blood gathered around an abrasion on his head. I saw one other survivor clinging to a plank and swam over to him, shouting over the roar of the storm and the helicopter’s blades, “How many were in your boat?”

I had to repeat myself before he caught it. “Four,” he shouted back.

Four. Shit. I scanned the wreckage area, trying to locate another body. Nothing. They weren’t more than a half-mile from shore, though. If the fourth man was a good swimmer, it was possible he had reached land. However, the weather wasn’t going to make it easy to find him. Rain was pelting furiously on the ocean and steaming up a fog on the mainland. I signaled for the harness and hitched up our third fisherman.

It was a story heard often in the dark, treacherous waters where the Pacific meets the Arctic. The fishermen had been several miles from shore when the storm began moving in. They had tried to reach safety, but their skiff was buffeted with the first winds, driving it toward a treacherous underwater rock cropping. The boat ground along the edge of a sharp rock, splitting the bottom through the middle. In the storm, they hadn’t been able to tell how far out to sea they were, or if there was any possibility of rescue.

“You were lucky the harbor master saw you out on the water,” said Captain Josh from the pilot’s seat. “He called you in.”

“I hope you find Harry,” said one of them miserably from under his wool blanket. “It won’t be the same without him.”

I put another blanket over him and handed him a cup of coffee. “You were close to shore. He could be there.”

“We were wearing vests, but they got shredded up on the rocks and weren’t much good anymore. Maybe Harry’s came out better.”

“Maybe it did. Your vests still saved you from the rocks.”

You don’t tell people to give up hope—not out here. Hope is the only thing that keeps everyone going. We hope for a better summer. We hope for a good hunt. We hope to survive the winter.

“I radioed for another chopper,” shouted Josh toward the back. “We’re taking the three of you to Valdez hospital. You need treatment for hypothermia.”

They weren’t well-positioned to protest. Two of them were under breathing masks. The third gentleman—the stalwart one who had clung to a piece of board and was now telling us their tragic tale—was shivering so hard, the floorboards clattered.

We had barely settled on the landing pad and delivered our fishermen to the waiting arms of the medics, and were thinking about steaks and show girls, when Captain Josh ordered us back into our seats. “Look lively, girls. They haven’t found the fourth fisherman yet. We’re doing a sweep of the coast.”

I stifled a groan. The fickle autumn weather had left us to deal with a flurry of incidents over the past few weeks—an oil barge that had been marooned off-course, a fishing vessel that had grounded, a plane that went down near the Aleutians. The winds had a will of their own, turning and twisting and snatching things right up out of the sky. We were out on assignment more often than we were on dry shore.

“Don’t worry,” said Darkhorse, slapping my knee. “Cindy Moore will be there when we get back. She dances all night.”

I shrugged. “She’s been talking a lot of weird shit lately. She says she can’t trust anyone because of Denisovich.”

“Who the hell is Denisovich?”

I spread my hands, palms out. “How the fuck should I know? She can’t trust me because she can’t trust anyone, so she can’t talk about him.”

“Does she know you’re Coast Guard?”

“That’s just it. She doesn’t trust anyone who makes a living piloting the ocean. That’s just how she said it, piloting the ocean.”

Darkhorse leaned back and folded his arms over his chest. “That’s stark raving cuckoo.”

The storm had let up enough along the coastline that the clouds were peeling back, revealing a solid wall of conifers marching up to a narrow, sandy beach. We fell quiet as we scanned the ground litter intensely, looking for a sign of the missing fisherman. We were about fifteen minutes into the sweep when Josh received a message over his headphones.

“They found him. About five miles north of here. He washed up on a shoal, unconscious but alive.”

He started to turn the chopper around, but then did a wide swing. “Is that smoke?”

He was pointing at one of the nearby islands that hung like jewels in the Valdez bay. Darkhorse grabbed a pair of field binoculars and leaned out the open helicopter door, only his hand gripping the metal rail to keep him from falling. “Affirmative. That looks like smoke. We should probably get the fuck outta the way.”

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