He Gave Our Helicopter Away, So I Stopped Waiting to Be Rescued novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Bunker

In the station bunker Lena makes Damon say it on speaker in front of the staff, and Fraser's tower log shows an order to hold the contractor that Damon swears he never gave.

The station was a low concrete block with a radio mast, and it held eight people and a smell of wet wool.

They were the night crew, two fishermen from the north village, and a woman holding a toddler asleep on a cot.

Nobody asked who I was. They moved over on a bench and someone put a towel in my hands.

Fraser took Tilda from me while I dragged the harness off.

"She's soaked through," I said. "The bag has a dry sleeper, the blue one, and a bottle of formula."

"Got it."

He laid her on the bench and did not look at me while he worked.

He peeled her out of the wet things in the warm light of a heater, dried her with a clean towel, and zipped her into the sleeper.

Her face went from pink to a calm, offended red.

Then she saw the rabbit and went quiet.

I sat down on the floor with my back against the cinderblock and held out my arms, and Fraser put her in them.

"She's fine," he said. "Nothing wrong with her lungs."

"She hates the rain."

"She's in good company."

His hands were shaking, a little, now that the work was done, and I noticed it and looked away.

"You came for us in a storm," I said. "I would have paid you."

"I know you would have. I don't want it."

He turned and went to the radio desk, and a younger tech slid over to give him room.

I fed Tilda her bottle and she watched me over the nipple with her whole attention.

My phone had eight missed calls, six of them from Damon.

I turned it over on my knee and looked at them.

The seventh was from my mother, and the last was a text from her: Trust your numbers. Call me when you can.

I typed back: Safe, concrete building, north tip. Will call at light.

Then my phone rang in my hand, and it was Damon for the tenth time.

I looked across the room at Fraser, who had stopped talking to the tech.

I answered and put it on speaker.

"Lena." Damon sounded hoarse. "Thank God. Where are you? Corinna says the villa lights are off."

"I'm in the marine station on the north tip with Tilda. We crossed the causeway in the surge."

"You crossed it? You could have been killed."

"I could have been waiting on the pad for a contractor who can't take off."

Nobody in the room moved.

"The regional field closed at twenty-five to three," I said. "You knew that when you told me he would be with me within the hour."

"I didn't know it, I was told he was fueling."

"Who told you?"

"Operations."

"Operations is a person, Damon. Which person?"

A pause. In the background I heard a generator and a woman's voice, soft, asking someone to pass her a blanket.

"Lena, this isn't a conversation for a bad line."

"It's the only one I have."

I didn't raise my voice. I did not need to. Eleven strangers were listening to my husband breathe.

"Was the second helicopter ever going to come?" I said.

"Yes. Yes, of course."

"Then why did Corinna text me wheels up at ten past three?"

"Because that was the plan we gave her."

"What plan? Who made it?"

"Corinna ran it. She ran all of it, Lena, she's been running the whole night."

Fraser had come away from the radio desk and was standing very still beside the bench.

He did not look at me. He had a printout in his hand, a long strip of paper from the tower feed, and he held it flat against his leg.

"Corinna is the one who sent my daughter and me to stand in the rain, then," I said.

"That's not what happened."

"Then tell me what happened."

Damon did not say anything for so long that I thought the line had dropped.

"I wanted our aircraft here," he finally said. "Her aircraft. I didn't say that to anyone. I never gave that order."

"You gave it to the pilot of the aircraft that flew past me."

"I gave the order about the aircraft. I never told anyone to stop the contractor. I never cancelled anything."

"Nobody said you cancelled it."

The words sat there.

He heard it too. I could hear him hear it.

"I didn't mean that. I meant I would never, Lena, the contractor was always supposed to come."

"Okay," I said.

"Okay what?"

"Okay, I heard you."

I ended the call, and the only sound was the generator and Tilda's small wet swallowing.

Fraser crossed the room and crouched beside me. He held out the paper strip.

It was a radio log, in tight black type, with times down the left edge.

He put a thick finger on one line.

02:15 REGIONAL APPROACH / CONTRACTOR A/C - HOLD AT FIELD, PER OSTBY OFFICE. DO NOT LAUNCH UNTIL FURTHER ADVICE.

I read it three times.

It was twenty-five minutes before the helicopter flew past me, and long before Damon told me any plan had changed.

"That's the pilot's call sign," Fraser said. "He relayed it from the field on the island net. I logged it because I log everything on that net."

"Per Ostby office."

"Someone in his office said hold the contractor, Lena. Before your husband even told you the plan had changed."

I put my hand flat on Tilda's back, and I could feel she was warm.

"He just said, on speaker, in front of you, that he never told anyone to hold it."

"Yes," said Fraser.

"So either my husband is lying to me," I said, "or someone else in his office speaks for him."

He didn't answer, and he didn't need to.

Outside the north wall, the sea broke against the building, and the first gray stripe of morning had not yet come.

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