Don Winslow - Dawn Patrol

The last time you did this, he thinks, you got beaten half to death. He takes the pistol from his waistband and keeps it ready in his right hand. Pushing back reeds with his left, he plows ahead until he makes it to the creek.

He jumps in and wades toward the caves.

Sunny can't paddle into this surf.

The beach break is totally closed out. There isn't space enough between waves or sets to paddle out there, and the waves are too big to paddle over.

She comes out of the water and moves about two hundred yards south, between breaks, and paddles out onto the shoulder, then starts back north on the far side of the break. She's not alone in this maneuver-all the Jet Ski crews are out there making the same approach, buzzing around like giant, noisy water bugs. She paddles strong, smooth, and hard, her wide shoulders an advantage for a change.

The Jet Ski crews linger farther out, giving them room for the high-speed run-up into the wave.

The biggest wave Sunny's ever seen looms up behind her, with another after that. She paddles herself into perfect position for the next wave. It rolls toward her, a blue wall of water, its whitecaps snapping like cavalry guidons in the stiff offshore wind.

A beautiful wave.

Herwave.

She lies down on her board, takes a deep breath, and starts to paddle.

The shame is unbearable.

The Sakagawa family name is disgraced.

To think this was happening on my land, the old man thinks, in my fields, under my nose, and I am such a fool as not to have seen it.

It is intolerable.

There is only one way, the old man decides, to redeem the family's honor. He looks around the kitchen to find a suitable knife, then doubts that he has the physical strength to do what is necessary with a knife.

So he takes up the old shotgun, the one he uses against the birds.

It is not ideal, but it will have to do.

Boone crawls up the edge of the creek bed and looks over at the little clearing where he had his confrontation with the mojados.

Now Pablo's on guard, an ax handle in his fist, ushering about twenty field-workers into a ragged line in the clearing in front of the caves. One of the men who herded the girls walks up the line, collecting money. The workers pull dirty, wrinkled bills from their pockets, and don't look at the man as they give him the money. There are a couple of white guys in line. They don't look like farmworkers, just guys who like to do little girls.

The girls go into the little caves that have been chopped into the reeds. A couple of the girls sit down and just stare into nothingness; a couple of the others arrange their “beds.” Boone crawls to the far edge of the clearing and sees Luce take off her thin blue jacket, carefully spread it out on the ground, then sit down, one leg crossed over the other-a young female Buddha-and wait.

For waves of men to fall on top of her and break inside her and then recede. And then the next wave comes in, and the next, every morning, inevitable as the tide. A perpetual cycle of rape, for as long as her short life lasts.

There's a world out there you know nothing about.

Tammy steps into the clearing.

She comes from the other side, from the road by the motel, the way Boone tried to come before Pablo laid him out.

Luce sees Tammy, springs up, and runs into her arms. Tammy holds her tightly. Then she slides down, squats in front of the girl, and looks her in the eye. “I've come to take you away,” Tammy says. “Forever, this time.”

Good, Boone thinks. Go, take the kid with you.

Give each other some kind of life.

Then Dan Silver comes into the clearing.

Dan says, “So we have a deal?”

“I just want Luce,” Tammy says. “You'll never hear from me again.”

“Sounds good,” Dan says. He wears his trademark outfit-black shirt, black jeans, black cowboy boots. “Take her and go.”

Tammy puts her arm around Luce's shoulder and leads her from the clearing, through the path trodden in the reeds, toward the road.

Boone loses sight of them as they go into the reeds.

What he does see is Dan wait a second, then walk into the reeds behind them.

Sunny takes off.

She paddles hard, two more strokes that take her onto the lip of the wave; then she shifts to her knees, then smoothly into her squat as she Goes over the edge.

She's strong in the wave, beautifully balanced; she's picked the exact line, then A Jet Ski zooms in and swings Tim Mackie into the wave.

If Mackie sees Sunny, he doesn't acknowledge it. He cuts right into her line.

Sunny has to pull up. She drops to her stomach on the board, but she's off-line and it's too late to paddle back over the crest of the wave. She tries to duck her nose up and under, but the wave won't let her and it takes her backward.

Over the falls.

Her board squirts into the air as she falls headfirst.

Boone crashes through the reeds.

Toward the sound of footsteps.

He can't really see them, just vague forms through the reeds. Then he gets a glimpse of Dan, who pulls his gun from the waistband of his jeans and looks around to pinpoint the sound of the footsteps coming at him.

“Run!” Boone yells.

Tammy pushes Luce in front of her, turns, and sees Dan. Then, with a dancer's grace, she whirls, her long leg snaps up, and she places a kick into the back of Dan's head.

It sends him reeling, but he stays on his feet.

“Run, Luce!” Tammy yells. “Run and don't stop running!”

But Luce doesn't run.

She won't leave Tammy, not again.

Dan recovers the grip on his pistol and aims it at Tammy, who puts herself between him and the girl.

Boone's almost there.

Tammy's too close for Boone to risk a shot, especially on the run in the confused tangle of the reeds, so he just dives at Dan, who turns the gun away from Tammy and on Boone and fires just as Tammy kicks his hand.

Boone plows into him waist-high and drives him backward. Dan can't get his hand turned to press the pistol into Boone, so he clubs him with the butt, slamming it into the back of Boone's head and neck, again and again.

Boone feels a searing, burning pain.

The world turns red and he feels like he's somersaulting.

A bad, bloody wipeout.

Remember when you were a kid in the swimming pool and you'd see how long you could hold your breath underwater?

This isn't that.

Getting caught in the impact zone is different from holding your breath in a swimming pool. For one thing, you can't come up; you're being rolled over the bottom-bounced, somersaulted, slammed, and twisted. The ocean is filling your nasal cavities and sinuses with freezing salt water. And it isn't a matter of how long you can hold your breath; it's a matter of whether you can hold your breath long enough for the wave to let you up, because if you can't You drown.

And that's just the beginning of your problems, because waves don't come to the party alone; they usually bring a crew. Waves tend to come in sets, usually three, but sometimes four, and a really fecund mother of a set might bring a litter of six.

So even if you make it through the first wave, you might have time to take a gasp of air before the next wave hits you, and the next, and so on and so forth until you drown.

The rule of thumb is that if you don't manage to extricate yourself from the impact zone by the third wave, your friends will be doing a paddle-out for you in the next week or so. They'll be out there in a circle on their boards, saying nice things about you, maybe singing a song or two, definitely tossing a flower lei out onto the wave, and it's very cool, but you won't be there to enjoy any of it because you'll be dead.