Chapter 2 - After the Room
The debriefing ended four minutes later.
Nakamura closed the room. He asked the five crewmen to remain and be interviewed one at a time. He asked Rusk to return to his office and remain available. He asked Eli and his grandmother to come with him to a small conference room down the hall.
And he asked Leah to sit in the crew lounge and not speak to anyone until he came for her.
She sat in the crew lounge for two hours.
The crew lounge was a room with a coffee machine and a television that was turned off and a couch with a broken spring and a window that looked out at the water. Leah sat on the couch with her hands in her lap and stared at the water.
She thought about Marcus Dawson.
She had heard his voice on the radio for eight minutes and forty-two seconds. She had heard him calm at first, then not calm. She had heard him tell her his coordinates. She had heard him tell her his son was aboard. She had heard him tell her his son's name was Eli and that Eli was ten and that Eli was a good swimmer and that Eli was scared.
She had heard him say, "Please hurry."
She had said, "Sir, I am coming. I am coming. Keep your son on the highest point of the vessel. Keep him out of the water. Keep talking to me."
He had kept talking to her.
And then he had stopped.
She had been eight minutes away when he stopped talking. The boat was doing eighteen knots through eight-foot seas and the helmsman was the best she had ever worked with and the radar was clean and there was nothing in front of them but black water. She had been eight minutes away.
If she had been given the correct coordinates at 21:47, she would have been at sector 2 at 21:55.
If she had been at sector 2 at 21:55, Marcus Dawson would have been alive when she got there.
She had not been given the correct coordinates at 21:47.
She had been given sector 4 at 21:47.
She had launched. She had been fifteen minutes into the transit when she heard the radio transmission again — the same voice, weaker, still giving sector 2 coordinates — and she had realized that the coordinates she had been given were wrong.
She had turned the boat.
She had broken radio protocol. She had told the watch officer, "I am redirecting to sector 2. The distress call is from sector 2."
The watch officer had said, "Negative, negative, return to sector 4."
She had said, "Sir, the distress call is from sector 2. I am redirecting."
The watch officer had said, "Brooks, you are going to be relieved."
She had said, "Yes, sir."
And she had gone to sector 2.
She had arrived at 22:11. Marcus Dawson had been in the water for twenty-four minutes. Eli had been in the water for nineteen.
Eli had been on the cooler lid. Marcus had not.
Leah had pulled Eli out of the water at 22:14. She had searched for Marcus for the next hour. She had found him at 23:16. He was face down and he was gone.
She had brought him home.
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She had brought them both home, one alive and one not.
And then she had been told, by her commander, in a debriefing bay, in front of her crew, that she had left a man behind.
