Coast Guard Sweetheart

Sawyer had spent the past twenty-four hours on patrol, boarding and citing a plethora of recreational boats on this last official weekend of summer. Citations included reckless endangerment due to excessive speed in the harbor and/or alcohol, which didn’t mix with driving a boat any more than it did with driving a vehicle. Too many vessels also lacked mandatory safety equipment—like life jackets—on board.

Midday Saturday word came of a collision out in the channel beyond the Kiptohanock marina. Sawyer and his crew launched the twenty-four-foot Special Purpose Shallow Water craft and arrived on the scene ten minutes after the call. They found two mangled Jet Skis dead in the water.

A charter captain Sawyer recognized from the Sandpiper had witnessed the accident and called it in. The captain and several other good Samaritans who’d stopped to offer assistance dog-paddled in the water near the wreckage tending to the injured. Sawyer came alongside with the rescue boat.

“One Jet Ski carried a single rider.” The captain kept a firm grip on an unconscious man in his early twenties floating on his back. “The other ski contained two. A male and female.”

The crew pulled the more injured man from the water immediately. Reaves went to work on the unresponsive jet skier. Sawyer and Wiggins secured the remaining two college-aged kids on board. The female clutched her arm like a broken bird wing to her chest.

“Make sure EMS is waiting on the dock,” Sawyer instructed. “Reaves?”

On her knees bending over the first victim, she shook her head. “He’s breathing. I put a neck brace on him, but I suspect some degree of head injury. We need to get him to shore like yesterday.”

“Roger that.” With all souls accounted for and safely aboard, Sawyer hit the throttle and chugged the boat toward Kiptohanock.

The waves were choppy, though the incoming storm was still well out to sea somewhere off the Carolina coast. Like him, the crew felt the tension, their nerve endings thrumming at the palpable change in the air. Urgency mounted in Sawyer’s chest to get the injured to shore while not jarring any more than necessary the unconscious man, who might also have spinal injuries.