Chapter 12
"The fact that you doubt it means you might finally be ready," Hale said, finishing his coffee and tossing the cup into the trash can. "Keep scrubbing. You’ve still got thirty days left."
During the final month, a regional typhoon struck the coastline, bringing torrential rains and seventy-knot winds that flooded low-lying operational warehouses and severed electrical power to the base hospital annex.
While special operations teams remained sheltered inside concrete barracks awaiting emergency deployment orders, Support Services mobilized every available worker to sandbag fuel storage tanks and generator stations along the pier.
Ethan worked thirty-six hours without sleep, carrying ninety-pound burlap sandbags through knee-deep seawater under howling rain that tore branches from trees and battered the industrial seawall with massive white waves.
He saw Marcus Reed and Mason Grant standing beneath an overhang near the operations center, wearing dry foul-weather jackets, watching the work crews struggle against rising seawater in the dark.
Mason waved at Ethan, but Ethan didn't stop to look. He heaved another sandbag onto his shoulder, charging into the freezing surf to reinforce a breach that threatened the emergency backup generators.
When a temporary wooden seawall collapsed, pinning an enlisted technician under heavy beams in freezing water, Ethan dove into the flooded ditch without pausing to consider the danger to himself.
He forced his shoulders under the saturated oak beam, muscles tearing in his back as he strained against the weight, lifting the wood just high enough for two technicians to drag their friend out.
His hands were bleeding and his dungarees were torn to shreds when Chief Rodriguez finally ordered the crew to stand down inside the warm maintenance barn at dawn after the winds subsided.
Rodriguez handed Ethan a dry wool blanket and a thermos of soup. "You did good work out there, son," the chief said quietly. "You saved that kid's legs, and you saved those generators."
"Just doing my job, Chief," Ethan mumbled, his teeth chattering from hypothermia as he wrapped the rough wool around his shivering shoulders and leaned against a tractor tire to rest.
"No," Rodriguez countered, looking at the exhausted officer with deep respect. "You were doing everyone's job. There's a difference, and everybody on that pier saw what you did today."
On day ninety, Ethan was summoned back to Administrative Suite B. He arrived wearing a fresh pair of working khakis provided by supply, still devoid of any insignia, nametag, or ribbons.