“Wind’s blowing out of the northwest at twenty-two knots,” a guardsman said. “Waves cresting at four feet.”

Martinez began pulling away from the pier. “That’s the problem with the bay,” he said to me. “The waves are too close together so you never get a good rhythm like you do at sea. I’m sure you’re aware that we could get diverted. There’s no other patrol boat out, so something goes down out here, there’s no one but us.”

We began slowly passing old homes with widow’s walks and bowling greens.

“Someone needs rescuing, we got to go,” he went on as a member of the crew checked instruments.

I watched a fishing boat go past, an old man in hip-high boots standing as he steered the outboard motor. He stared at us as if we were poison.

“So you could end up on anything.” Martinez enjoyed making this point.

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” I said as I began to detect a very revolting smell.

“But one way or another, we’ll get you there, like we did the other doctor. Never did get his name. How long have you worked for him?”

“Dr. Hoyt and I go way back,” I said blandly.

Ahead were rusting fisheries with rising smoke, and as we got close I could see moving conveyor belts tilted steeply toward the sky, carrying millions of menhaden in to be processed for fertilizer and oil. Gulls circled and waited greedily from pilings, watching the tiny, stinking fish go by as we passed other factories that were ruins of brick crumbling into the creek. The stench now was unbearable, and I was certainly more stoical than most.

“Cat food,” a guardsman said, making a face.

“Talk about cat breath.”

“No way I’d live around here.”

“Fish oil’s real valuable. The Algonquin Indians used cogies to fertilize their corn.”

“What the hell’s a cogy?” Martinez asked.

“Another name for those nasty little suckers. Where’d you go to school?”

“Doesn’t matter. Least I don’t got to smell that for a living. Unless I’m out here with schleps like you.”

“What the hell’s a schlep?”

The banter continued as Martinez pushed the throttle up more, engines rumbling, bow dipping. We sailed by duck blinds and floats marking crab pots as rainbows followed in the spray of our wake. He pushed the speed up to twenty-three knots and we cut into the deep blue water of the bay, where no pleasure boats were out this day, only an ocean liner a dark mountain on the horizon.

“How far is it?” I asked Martinez, hanging on to the back of his chair, and grateful for my suit.

“Eighteen miles total.” He raised his voice, riding waves like a surfer, sliding in sideways and over, his eyes always ahead. “Ordinarily, it wouldn’t take long. But this is worse than usual. A lot worse, really.”

His crew continued checking depth and direction detectors as the GPS pointed the way by satellite. I could see nothing but water now, moguls rising in front, and behind, waves clapping hard like hands as the bay attacked us from all sides.