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 h
