Cormac snorted through cracked lips. “Tell him his aim’s shite.”
“I swear it! Right over the bow!”
“Then row faster, Bolt.”
Fisher blinked. “Bolt?”
Cormac grinned, half-delirious. “Aye. Everything you do is electric; you streak through the water like a bolt.”
Jameson growled. “But do you sizzle with the ladies with your shaft of light? Let’s hope you’ve got more staying power.”
“It’s not in the strike, but the thunder after,” Cormac shot back.
Low chuckles rippled through the crew.
“Hey, we’re trying to row here. Don’t make us laugh and think about sex at the same fucking time,” Chase groused.
“A sponge would make you think of sex, man.”
More laughter.
“The universally recognized symbol for high voltage,” Barnhardt said between strokes. “Warning of potential danger and in some cultures, protection. You earn the name. Indigo Fisher…Bolt. That’s a callsign.”
Bolt laughed once, a hoarse bark swallowed by wind. “Now I’m gonna have to get a tattoo.”
“In some traditions,” Bhandari intoned, muscles flexing, “lightning means overcoming obstacles. Our leader is right. It’s a fitting callsign.”
“Always find the four-leaf in a bed of three,” Cormac muttered. “It’s me curse. Luck I can’t lose.” He hadn’t realized he’d said it aloud.
Out of the blue, Chase said, “Lucky Charms was my favorite cereal growing up.”
Cormac looked at him. “Keep rowing, Chase. My lucky charms are reserved.”
Bhandari laughed. “Saving yourself?”
“Oh yeah, he’s a paragon of virtue,” Bolt said.
“I loved all those marshmallows,” Chase said wistfully.
“Yeah, magically delicious,” Jameson sighed.
“So many shapes,” Chase murmured like he was watching them dance on the water. “Hearts, horseshoes, clovers, blue moons, unicorns, rainbows, red balloons.” He stopped paddling. “Hey, do you guys see that?”
Cormac squinted out to sea. “There’s nothing out there.”
“Yes, there are…pandas, man. They’re so round and black and white, like Oreos. They’re doing kung fu. I didn’t know pandas could be marshmallows.”
“You’re a panda,” Cormac said. “Now there’s a callsign for a SEAL.”
Bhandari laughed. “That one fits, too.”
Cormac nodded, then blinked a couple of times. He wasn’t sure if it was Panda’s hallucination that brought it on or his own delirium.
Something small and bright bobbed beside them, a shimmer of green riding the black water. A man no taller than Cormac’s knee knelt astride three interlocking clover leaves, the stems braided like rope, the whole thing glowing faintly as it rose and fell with the swell. He wore a soaked forest-green top hat with a tarnished gold buckle, a red beard that flamed even in the storm light, and tiny pointed boots that did a little jig against the leaves as he paddled with a twig no bigger than a matchstick. Gold coins spilled from a pouch at his belt, spinning away into the dark.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Cormac breathed. “He’s paddling a shamrock.”
“Who?” Bolt wheezed.
