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The beat of the Dolphin’s rotors pounded into his body and Harvey Whitman did his best to tamp down the automatic adrenaline charge. The orange US Coast Guard HH-65C “Dolphin” search-and-rescue helicopter was hustling due west out of Astoria, Oregon and straight into the darkness of a Pacific Ocean nighttime gale. Blowing forty knots was so normal out here for a chill February night that the pilots hadn’t even remarked on it as they’d loaded up. Something about the wild smell, the taste of the salt spray that a good storm kicked up into the air, always charged him up.
“Sea state is very rough,” Vivian called out from her position as crew chief close behind the pilots but facing backwards into the cargo bay. A single strand of her dark curly hair had escaped the neatly formed bun to sho
