We need a hero? She knew that Sam felt like a complete fraud. After one terrible night of exultation and relief and that admission of stomach-wrenching fear, there had been nothing going on between the Merrills for almost a month. Zero sex. It was beyond strange for them, considering how they usually bounced off the walls when he was fresh home from sea duty. They had been lovers since high school. They were old pals together.

Perhaps this was why therapists were shoveled on practically everybody whenever there was a public disaster. Amy was not really worried – yet. The Coast Guard was more like the police than an army or navy. All Sam had ever wanted to do was sail, and the smaller the boat, the better. If a military-style boarding had frightened Sam into temporary incapacity, she could live with what it said about Sam’s true character. He would work his way through it. He wasn’t a tough guy, like the macho assholes of the DEA. If people thought the FBI and ATF were problems, DEA was the worst of them all, undertrained agents up to their necks in money and drugs all over the world with little or no oversight. This month had clinched it for Amy Merrill. Being a Coast Guard wife was as close to her own government as she ever wanted to get.

It must have been a slow news day: the television screen was showing a condensed, rapid-fire version of the whole long saga, starting with the computer generated recreation of the boarding of the ship – close enough, Sam had told her, except for the stormy seas, the first of the month of public relations enhancements, added whitecaps, spray and pitching deck – - the spidery computer-generated members of Sam’s crew swinging down into the hatches intercut with real footage of the bags of dope and money piled into the overhead, then the ketch in tow, arriving at Miami, the Coast Guard ceremony in the sunshine for Sam and his company, the images tumbling over each other, the media attention, the politicians latching on, Senator Ward actually elbowing a Coast Guard officer aside, all the way to the Rose Garden before lunch, the President playfully squaring off with Sam like a boxer at a weigh-in.

“Just a photo op, Sam,” Amy remembered hearing. “Then we’ll go upstairs for lunch.”

And at last, something brand new, the ceremony late this afternoon at the airport just down the road from this hotel. The quaint military band had been brassy and off-key in the well-worn uniforms nevertheless as bright as the tropical sky, the blinding white clouds and the shining, thrashing palms. Amy put down her toothbrush and spat into the sink. “Sam? Are you watching this?”