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dscooperbooks

~ author D. S. Cooper

dscooperbooks

Monthly Archives: November 2015

Corsair Canyon

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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Amazon Kindle, Coast Guard Rescues, Sea Stories, Writing

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When quartermaster Tom Hamblin awakened Melinda with an intercom call just after three in the morning, she pulled on her Coast Guard sweatshirt and went straight to the pilothouse.

“What have you got?”

The interior of the Tuckernuck was full of shadows and the dim glow of red night-lights, except for the fluorescent lamp over the chart table.

“I overheard some radio chatter from the Rescue Coordination Center in Boston, Captain. One of our Pelican helicopters is missing.”

Melinda felt the emotion rising in her chest. When she sucked in a deep breath to hold her feelings down, it pinched her heart. But she held fast.

“No distress call?”

“No. The last thing Boston heard, they were getting ready to hoist a sick crewman off a Taiwanese long-liner. That was almost an hour ago.”

“Did you copy a last known position?”

He swept his hand towards the outer margin of the chart and stopped at a spot on the edge of the Continental Shelf, where the shallow water of George’s Bank dropped off into the abyss of the deep sea.

“Corsair Canyon. Too far offshore for us, but I thought you’d want to know, since your husband …”

“How are the wind and seas out there?”

“The automated weather buoy is reporting ten-foot swells.”

“Right.” Melinda bit her lower lip in a moment of hesitation. She stepped out of the pilothouse and looked around at the calm water of the boat basin and into the sky, which was being swept by fast moving clouds. When she leaned back into the pilothouse, her mind was made up.

“Go ahead and wake up the crew, Tom. We’re getting underway.”

Quartermaster Tom Hamblin dove into the passageway leading below decks and began turning on lights and rousting the crew. A few moments later, Ensign Nichols and Senior Chief Johansen joined her at the chart table.

“That’s way outside of our patrol area,” the ensign dutifully observed.

“Our patrol area boundaries are just lines on a chart, XO.”

“They can’t send us way out there,” Dag Johansen complained. “That’s nuts!”

“Boston hasn’t given us orders to go.” Melinda said. “My decision.”

Johansen gave her a sideways look and asked, “Is Kyle on that helicopter?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Does it matter, Senior Chief?”

“Nope.” Johansen turned and dove down the passageway into the boat, saying, “You’ll have engines in five minutes, Captain.”

A few minutes later, Ensign Nichols took the helm and backed the Tuckernuck away from the pier. They idled out of the boat basin and past the little lighthouse on Race Point and came up to half speed between the jetties. Then Melinda pushed the throttles down all the way, and they rocketed into the night with spray flying off the bow and the diesels thundering.

“We should slow down, Captain,” Ensign Nichols suggested as they rounded Point Rip.

“Hold your speed, XO.”

The seas grew larger as they approached the edge of the North Atlantic Ocean until the Tuckernuck was vaulting over gray rollers in Great Round Shoals Channel. With each airborne leap, the boat’s contents went weightless, and then slammed down when the hull landed into succeeding waves with explosions of spray. The cups and plates in the galley, the tools in the engine room, and the crew’s personal items in their lockers all rattled and shook, each adding their distinctive sound to the cacophony.

“Captain, we’ve got to slow down,” Nichols said, holding onto the console and the helm to keep from falling down. The lights of Nantucket were disappearing in the shifting mountains of waves surrounding the Tuckernuck.

The ocean ahead was a black abyss.

“There’s no point in going if we don’t get there in time to help,” Melinda told her second-in-command.

“Captain, the air station has launched another helicopter to rescue any survivors. And there is a C-130 aircraft circling overhead by now. They don’t need us out there.”

“I’m aware of that, XO. Helicopters and airplanes get the glory and the headlines, but somebody always has to get down and dirty between the waves with a boat to finish the job. That’s us.”

“Captain,” Nichols pleaded, “we can’t go on like this. The boat won’t take it!”

“Stand down, XO,” Melinda calmly said. “Quartermaster Hamblin, take the helm.”

“Aye aye,” the quartermaster said, taking the helm from Ensign Nichols, who stood aside and held onto the chart table to keep from being knocked off his feet by a steep train of waves. By then the Tuckernuck’s bow was knifing into fully developed ocean swells, throwing huge plumes of dark-green water aside.

“Captain, I have to formally object to this course of action. We should slow down and return to our patrol area immediately.”

“That’s fine, Ensign Nichols. Since you’re no help here, please remain in your stateroom until I have a chance to address the matter.”

When Nichols went below, Melinda and the quartermaster were left alone in the wheelhouse.

“So,” Tom Hamblin gave her a wry smile as a big wave tossed the boat and they both hung on. “How do you like command at sea, so far?”

Excerpted from the novel ROYALS ALL THE WAY!

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Night Flight

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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Amazon Kindle, Chappaquiddick Incident, Flying, Old Cape Cod, Writing

Billy Coates

After a few glimpses of lights on the island and a few minutes of dead reckoning, he turned east and descended through the clouds and into the mist until the rotating beacon of Katama Airport came into view.

Billy Coates came over the beach at ninety miles per hour, seventy-five feet over the dunes. He pulled the throttles back and turned slightly to get the runway directly under the beams of his landing lights. When he was just above the grass, he held the nose up and gave a shot of power to slow his glide.

Touchdown.

The grass runway was smooth and groomed and he rolled easily to the dark restaurant at the far end. When he turned around and cut the engines, a car which had been parked nearby with the lights off pulled alongside his wing.

Three men got out of the car. Two of them wore dark suits with narrow ties. The middle man of the trio was stumbling and the other two in suits held him up as they approached the right wing.

Billy never got out of the airplane. By the time he opened the door the men were up on the wing and shoving their charge into the back seat. Under the glow of the cabin dome light, Billy saw a good looking young man with a prominent brow and flowing hair.

The senator, he immediately knew. He’d never met the man, but everybody had seen him and the other members of the famous family around Cape Cod.

So that’s what this is about, Billy thought. The party must have gotten a little out of hand.

One of the men settled into the back seat with the senator while the other took the right seat up front.

“I’m Billy Coates.” He offered his hand to the middle-aged man at his side.

“Okay, let’s go,” the man said, ignoring Billy’s hand without introducing himself.

“Yeah,” Billy drawled as he recovered his hand. “Fasten your seatbelts, please.”

Billy started the engines and lined up with the runway. There wasn’t much wind, so he’d takeoff over the water. When he turned around to check on his important passenger, he saw the other man in the back seat putting a black pill into the senator’s mouth.

“How about we get a seatbelt around the senator?” Billy tried to be diplomatic.

“How about you just fly the damn airplane, kid. We’re fine back here.”

Yeah, Billy thought. If this takeoff goes wrong and we crash into the ocean, the seatbelts won’t make much difference. We’re dead either way, you arrogant prick.

He pushed the throttles forward and the Apache jostled along the grass runway. The dark ocean ahead offered no discernable horizon so Billy relied on the instruments right away, trusting the fates of all aboard to the spring-loaded needles and wobbly old gyroscopes of the gauges on his panel. By the time he had the airplane turned back towards Falmouth, they were above the haze and the clouds. The moon, when it rose above the cumulus, was new. Only a sliver of the orb was illuminated.

The man in the right seat leaned towards Billy to be heard over the engines.

“Where is Falmouth?”

“About ten miles on the nose,” Billy said.

“You’d better know what you’re doing,” the man growled.

“Yeah. You’ve got that right.”

Or what? Billy thought. You should have though of that before you got into my airplane on a foggy night and started issuing demands.

Billy caught a glimpse of the lighthouse at Nobska Point through the broken clouds and he pushed the nose down as he turned along the coast south of Falmouth. The lights of houses and roads vanished and then reappeared in patchy fog. The landing gear came down after he turned inland over Waquoit Bay and crossed Route 28. Then he turned left and pulled the throttles halfway back when the church steeple was under his left wing.

The runway lights at the far end came into view first, but its near end was masked by trees until the Apache was skimming over the branches.

Billy pulled the throttles all the way back and dropped the airplane onto the narrow airstrip. He had them stopped before they rolled past the hangar, just beyond mid-field. He pulled up to the office and there was a sudden silence when he shut down the engines.

“Let me get that,” Billy said when the man in the right seat hastily tugged at the door latch. He had almost broken the handle before Billy reached past him and easily released the door. Then the three passengers hustled out of the airplane.

A black Cadillac appeared from out of the shadows and the senator was shoved into the back seat. Billy was left standing next to the Apache at the deserted airport. Fog was rolling in over the trees.

“Remember our deal.” The man pointed at Billy as he got into the front seat of the Caddy. “This never happened.”

I don’t remember agreeing to that, Billy mused.

“Yeah. So who do I invoice for this flight?”

“It’s all set. You’ll be taken care of.”

I’ve heard that before, Billy thought. Most of us write our own checks, but the really rich guys have aides who never seem to get around to paying the bills.

And good luck getting in touch with these guys after their tail lights disappeared down the gravel road through the pines.

Excerpted from the novella  FLIGHT FROM KATAMA by D. S. Cooper

Read the eBook for $0.99 at http://amazon.com/dp/B00QKOJBR8

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The Sailmaster

02 Monday Nov 2015

Posted by Doug in D. S. Cooper Books, This Writer's Life

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Amazon Kindle, Hitler Youth, Sailing, Square Rigger, USCGC EAGLE, Writing

“So you’re back,” Barlow stated in a quiet voice, as he stood behind the helm and raised his binoculars to the horizon. “I knew you would sail on the Eagle again.”

“I had to come back this summer.” Riley stood to the rear of the squad of cadets on steering detail, with his hand on the spokes of one of the Eagle’s three teakwood wheels. “Especially this summer.”

This was the first midnight watch out of New London. Boatswain Barlow had given the helmsmen the command to sail Full and By. To keep the bellies of the square sails filled with air while holding a course as close to the wind as possible.

“Then you know?”

“I know,” Riley admitted. “They are forcing you to retire.”

“Pipe down, shipmate. We don’t want everyone to hear.”

Boatswain Kurt Barlow had sailed on the Eagle longer than anyone, even Captain Ross. The Coast Guard Academy the sailmaster aboard year after year for his unique knowledge of America’s Tall Ship, and because his enthusiasm for the sea and it’s lore had become an inspiration to generations of young officers in training. At a full fathom in height, with a climber’s lean frame and powerful forearms and hands, Barlow was the epitome of a sailor.

Most of all, he loved the Eagle.

“What will you do?” Riley wondered.

“I haven’t given it much thought.”

“But you’ve made a career out of the Eagle. The ship is all you’ve ever known.”

“That’s true,” Barlow muttered. But what would Riley know of such matters? He is still a teenager, after all.

Riley was silent as Barlow scanned the moonlit edge of the sea with his binoculars. Until the young sailor finally said, “Will you ever tell me your thoughts about that day, Boatswain?”

“You know that we never mention that day.”

“But this is your last chance. If you leave the ship I may never see you again.”

Then Riley leaned close behind Barlow, hanging from the spokes of the wheel.

“What do you really remember of that day, Kurt?”

Kurt Barlow lowered his binoculars.

“The blood,” he whispered.

The words were spoken without his turning towards the young sailor, in a low voice free of emotion or doubt, as if he were speaking to the cold dark sea itself.

“The blood. There was so much blood. Until that day, I never knew that. I never knew how much life could bleed out of one person.”

Excepted from THE SAILMASTER

Original cover art by Dane at eBook Launch

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