Sandy Cove
Sandy Cove is a warm, shallow body of water on the eastern edge of Sahara Square, held between Sandy Ridge's red rock and the ocean beyond it. It is flat and sheltered, with a freight terminal and a few working boats on it, and for most of the series it is only a name on the city map. It first appears in the W-Series, when the charter bringing Luther home from Vladifrostok is put down on it.
Description
The cove lies beyond the Tundratown weather wall, on the hot side of it, where Sandy Ridge divides the Canyonlands from Sahara Square. The ridge closes the water on three sides. It is eight to fifteen feet deep across most of its area, the water sits at about eighty-one degrees, and its long axis gives roughly four miles of open water. A freight terminal on it shuts at five in the evening, and after that the traffic is a handful of working boats. Delphine Roux, a honey badger, was working the near end of the cove before the terminal was rebuilt, and her workboat, the Marie Delphine, runs out of it with a young jackal for a deckhand.
The Sandy Ridge landing is a concrete slip, bollards and a shack on it, close enough to the yards that a shift change can walk down to the water. Above it, the Sandy Ridge coast road runs along the top of a seawall, water on one side and red rock rising on the other. This stretch of coast is Station 118's ground.
History
W-Series
In "Souls on Board", the cove is where Luther lands an airliner. TransZoo 106, a Department of External Relations charter bringing him, Reacher's team and the recovered Perkins and Botasky home from Vladifrostok, loses both pilots to sabotaged oxygen and then loses its hydraulics, its trim and its elevator to a cargo fire, and by the time it is through the second weather wall it is falling too fast to reach the airport on the southeast coast. Approach controller Ines Baruk offers the cove instead — flat, shallow, eighty-one degrees, sheltered by the ridge, with the freight terminal shut for the day. With TransZoo chief pilot Odalys Kranz talking him down and Neagley holding the wings level from the left seat, Luther flies the last minutes on the thrust levers alone and puts the tail in at 6:02pm. The aircraft slews fifteen degrees left and settles by the tail in fifteen feet of water, nose high, right wing submerged. Reacher pulls the forward door, the slide-raft inflates off the sill, and all ten survivors leave the aircraft. Delphine Roux is first alongside in the Marie Delphine and takes nine of them off the raft; Reacher is too heavy for it, so he swims and comes over her stern rail on his own. On the deck, purser Odile Ripley counts ten where there were eleven, and Reacher goes back into the water for the body of First Officer Ansel Quirke in seat 11A. Fire service holds the coast road and marine units hold the water while the boats bring everyone in at the Sandy Ridge landing, where Chimney and Hen of Station 118 run triage on the slip and Pawbert waits at the tape at the top of the ramp.
Notable Events
- TransZoo 106 is ditched in the cove at 6:02pm and settles by the tail with its nose above the water
- The Marie Delphine takes nine survivors off the slide-raft and Reacher swims to her; he then dives for the eleventh mammal, who is dead in seat 11A
- Station 118 runs triage at the Sandy Ridge landing, and Luther and Pawbert meet at the tape