by Harper Fox
“Flynn,” Tom broke in, finding his voice at last. He could not let Vic ask it. “Flynn Summers. Is he—?”
“They’re gone. Him and Rob Tremaine. Dunno what the hell’s been going on all night. We… Christ almighty!”
Tom reached to grab him. He held him fast as a huge wave smashed across both boats. It swamped the smaller life raft, knocking one of the surviving crewmen casually overboard. Tom waited till the water’s fury was spent, and he had seen the others begin to haul their comrade back to safety, then he rasped, “Victor, help me get them on board here. Quick.”
The transfer took less than a minute. Tom saw blood, black in the Shellshock’s lights, and knelt instinctively beside the rescued crewman, beginning to examine his head wound. He was on autopilot. Behind him he could hear Charlie Mitchell continuing his story, in a shout over the wind, but he could not care. “We don’t even know what Flynn was doing flying her. He hasn’t logged a flight hour in two years. But our skipper—Tremaine—said there was nobody else. And he flew like a fucking angel, give him that. Got us out here so fast…”
“You were after the gun runners?” That was Victor, pulling poor shocked Mitchell back on track. Still Tom could not listen. He had nothing to treat this head wound with, but digging in one pocket, found a handkerchief—clean, of course, and scrupulously folded—and shook it out.
“No such thing as covert ops in bloody Cornwall, is there?” Briggs laughed unsteadily. “Yeah. Massive shipment. We were right above the coordinates, and suddenly Flynn tells us to bail. That he’s dropping the raft for us, and not to ask questions. I tried to see through into the cockpit, and…it was chaos. Rob Tremaine was out of his seat. I thought he had a gun in his hand, for God’s sake. I shouted through to him, to try to check the bail-out order, but it was like he didn’t hear. So I…I took my men, like Flynn had told me, and we bailed. I was last out. Christ. Last second before we jumped, I think I heard a shot.”
Tom turned around. He said to his patient, “Hold that in place until it stops bleeding.” He lurched to his feet and turned to face Mitchell. A shot. His world was darkening, closing to a tight black tunnel around Briggs’s last word. “Charlie. What happened to the helicopter?”
“She went down. I didn’t see—too busy swimming for the boat—but Jim said she didn’t just drop. Flynn can’t have bailed. Someone took her into the water like a real pro.”
“She didn’t crash?”
“No. But there’s no way she could’ve stayed afloat. And even if Flynn and Rob got out—”
Screw Rob. Tom was grateful for the seizure in his throat that kept that thought silent from Tremaine’s ASaC crew. He swung round to find Victor—who was one step ahead of him, already beginning to unlash the RIB from the lifeboat. “You lads keep this,” Victor yelled over his shoulder. “We’ll take the raft. Start making for shore before the storm gets any worse. You can radio for help, but it’s gonna be a while getting to you.”
“What?” Mitchell took a step towards Victor, but Tom intercepted him, putting him quietly out of his path to the other cable. “We’re not leaving you.”
“We’ll be okay. She’s manoeuvrable, and she’s got a good outboard. This one’s more likely to stay afloat with the six of you aboard.” Victor put out a hand, and Tom grabbed it, making what he knew was a poor leap for the raft and landing awkwardly, dragging himself immediately upright. “Get home!” Vic shouted, casting off. “Tell Hawke Lake we’re looking for your pilots. Go on!”
The RIB was matchwood on the swell, more fragile even than the lifeboat, but Tom was almost past feeling her lurches and leaps. He was almost past feeling. He knew that Victor was making the best of a bad job at the rudder, revving stolidly from crest to crest. He knew that they were systematically quartering the area in which the chopper must have gone down. He was clinging to the life raft’s searchlight rack, directing its solitary beam into the night with numb hands. Beyond the borders of these thoughts, there was nothing. Flynn, his mind said to him sporadically, each time bringing a flash of memory. A presence at his bedside in the hospital. Hitting the turf by the Lanyon road, the air leaving his lungs at the impact of another body on his. Of flesh that would immolate itself to shield him.
Flynn, in the rain, holding him out of the wreckage as his petrol tank caught fire. “Flynn,” he said aloud, unable to tell if the bitter salt taste in his mouth was seawater or tears. Once more, like a prayer, swiping his eyes clear with his sleeve. “Flynn…”
Another flash—this one in the world with him, here and now. Orange on indigo black—one glimpse, in a trough between two heaving waves. For a nightmare second Tom could not get air into his lungs to yell to Victor, then it came, abrading, scalding. “Vic! Vic, come about!” Vic turned to him, face an expectant blank, waiting for a direction, some degrees or an o’clock, but Tom’s brain would not supply him with such detail and he could only swing the searchlight round, throwing out its beam in silent gesture. “There!”
A buoy, or a fragment of wreckage. These possibilities rose up, frail shields, across the fire of hope. There was a third one too. Tom swore inwardly, to a god he had lost under the Afghan sun and rediscovered in the wreck of a Land Rover six days before, that he would not leave Rob Tremaine to drown. More specifically, that he would not reach out, cut the cords of his lifejacket, put a hand to the top of his head and shove him under to make sure. That he would not allow Vic, who had fewer scruples and had never taken a do no harm oath, to do it for him. The RIB clambered, motor roaring, to the top of the next wave, and there it was again. No, not wreckage. A human shape. Flynn.
He was blue to the lips, his face serene. The seawater cradled him. Tom could not know when he had stopped fighting it—saw, in a kind of streaking slow-motion as he reached out with Vic over the side of the raft, that his watch had stopped, blurred with water and steam. But it had been half an hour when they had found the ASaC crew. Flynn had been in the water too long.
Too long for life to be flickering still behind his peaceful mask. Everything Tom knew—about the sea, about human biology—screamed out against it, and he thought, hauling the poor lost deadweight into the lee of the raft, that he understood. Accepted. His own heart was drowned inside him and it could not make a difference. His fists closed alongside Victor’s in Flynn’s soaked flight suit. Together they dragged him far enough out of the water for Tom to get hold of his belt. The sea, remorseless, even now not sated with what it had taken, heaped itself up more and broke across them all, nearly sending the RIB under. Tom sobbed, choking, heaving Flynn halfway on board over the gunwale tube, and Flynn beneath his hands gave one enormous twitch and began to fight like a wildcat.
He was trying to finish a conflict whose beginnings Tom struggled to imagine, as he and Victor pulled him in and pinned him down on the life raft’s soaking deck. He was too waterlogged to get out more than a faint, rasped Rob, but the punch he threw was well aimed and sincere. Tom caught his fist. “Flynn. Flynn, love, it’s me.”
“Rob… Bastard, let me go…”
“Hush. Easy.” Tom heard his own voice, the shudder of laughter in it, the raw edge of tears. “Flynn, for God’s sake, it’s Tom.”
Flynn fought out of his grasp, evading Victor’s too, and bolted upright. The move threw him into Tom’s arms. Tom seized him tight, ignoring the convulsion that went through him. He wrapped one hand around the back of his skull. His hair was tangled and rimed with salt.
“It’s Tom,” he repeated, in a whisper against his ear, sealing the promise with a rough, clumsy kiss, rocking him. “I found you. Flynn, sweetheart. I found you. It’s me.”
Flynn went still. He stopped trying to tear himself out of Tom’s embrace. Tom felt his two fists, which had been balled against his shoulders, open suddenly up. Felt against his neck, indescribably, the astonished waking gape of Flynn’s mouth. The hands moved—reading him quickly like Braille, sweeping his shoulders, his hair. “Tom.”
“Yes. You’re okay.”
&n
bsp; “No. I must’ve died,” Flynn stated calmly. Tom fought laughter. He sounded so sure of himself, and unfazed, as if death, even his own, was just another aspect of rescue work to be dealt with. “That, or I’ve got the cold-crazies, because…”
“I’m sure you do have those.” The raft lurched, taking on another rush of water. Peripherally Tom saw Victor push upright and go aft. A moment later the outboard snarled, pushing them forward against the swell. He kissed the side of Flynn’s brow. “But you’re alive. Going home.”
“No. Because you just see what you want.” He paused, gasping, and Tom listened in concern to the half-drowned rattle in his chest. He struggled back a little, far enough to look into Tom’s face, his eyes’ sea-green burning eerily. “You just hear and you see what you want. Tom’s in hospital. Findlay said he’d be all right, or I’d never have left him.” He frowned, putting up an unsteady hand to brush Tom’s face. “I’d never have left you. Oh, Christ. Tom.”
“That’s right,” Tom said in relief, as the hypothermic body he held shuddered back to reality, at the same time registering at last how much water it had swallowed and inhaled. Flynn sucked a noisy breath and began to cough. “That’s right, come here. Sit forward.” Tom pulled him up onto his hands and knees, held him tight against the boat’s movement and his own expulsive spasms. When he could spare a hand, he tore off his jacket. It was soaked, next to useless, but on top of Flynn’s flight suit would give him at least one layer of protection against the remorseless, leaching wind. He wrapped it round his shoulders, and saw that Victor was shrugging out of his oilskin. “Ta, Vic.” He caught it as Victor threw it, and bundled that around Flynn too. “Okay, sunbeam. You done there? Your lungs clear?”
Flynn moaned. “Ought to be,” he managed, on a faint wry rasp between fits of coughing and retching. “Be okay, Tom. Core temp’s still over ninety. Organs are functional.”
“Oh, an expert patient. I love those. Come on.” He hauled him upright, aware of his own pain now only as background noise, a distant music he didn’t need to hear. “Your bloody organs won’t function much longer if they stay out here. Victor! You okay there?”
“Fine. Get him into the canopy. I’ll take us home.”
“Okay.” He paused, glancing at Flynn, who was on his feet but barely conscious, eyes fluttering closed. “Vic. Keep an eye out for…the other one.”
A vulpine grin lit Victor’s face. “Yeah. I’ll be sure to do that.”
“I mean it. We have to.” All kinds of reasons. The least of them was Tom’s oath, or the manslaughter by neglect a failure to search would amount to. Tom remembered a dream, in which Flynn had sat by his hospital bed and dismissed Rob Tremaine for a reason that made his heart heave with painful joy even now, but he couldn’t be sure. Not of what had happened, not what Flynn really needed. We have to try, for Flynn’s sake.
Tom got him under the life raft’s fabric canopy. It was a frail shelter, but the cessation of the wind, the minute easing of the sea’s unending roar, felt like a shadow of paradise, which Flynn completed for him on the instant, struggling up from the deck and into his arms. He caught him. “Flynn, love!”
“How did you… How did you find me? How are you here?”
“Ssh,” Tom advised him, smiling into his hair. He didn’t have a lot of body heat to give him, but he wrapped both arms around him, gasping in relief when, after a moment’s paralysed stillness, Flynn returned the embrace, bruisingly, frantic, around his ribs. Shivers were beginning to rack him—a good sign, a return to life. “Just breathe, all right? Hold on to me and get warm.”
“How the hell are you and Vic Travers on my ASaC raft?” He seemed to hear himself and got his head up. “Tom. God. My crew.”
“They’re fine. All safe—Charlie Mitchell and five others.” Tom said it to him straightaway and firmly, biting back a small sting of amusement. My raft. My crew. He did not know what had happened to Flynn tonight, but, even nine-tenths drowned, he was subtly altered. Tom sensed it like clouds burning off from the face of the sun. No, not altered—restored. A pilot, a leader of men. “You got them out.”
“You’ve seen them? How? Tom, how are you here? You were so badly hurt. You wouldn’t wake up.”
“I’m okay. I did wake up. I think it was the sound of the storm. Mike Findlay said Rob had come to get you. I was afraid. I…I didn’t want you flying with him. I went looking for you, but I found Vic instead. We heard Hawke Lake had lost contact with your team, and Vic brought me out here.” He smiled, shook his head. “In his new home-built lifeboat, if you’ll believe that. We came across your lads in the raft, and we swapped, so me and Vic could go on and search for you and…”
“And Rob.”
“Yes.” The clouds could return. Tom saw them gather in Flynn’s eyes. His gaze became unreadable, pupils dilating in shock. “We’re still looking, love. But if he went into the water the same time you did…”
“Yes.” Flynn swallowed. “Yes. Before. He jumped, after—after I dropped the others. He couldn’t have made it to the raft.”
“Then…”
“He’s gone.” The words fell out toneless, stones into still water.
“I don’t know. Vic’s gonna radio for help as soon as a search chopper makes it down from Devon or Exeter. But… Ah, Flynn. I’m sorry. I don’t hold out much hope.”
Flynn stared into the canopy’s shadows. His grip on Tom’s waist slackened. Then he said, so faintly that Tom could barely pick out his words from the sea roar, “Thank God.”
“What?”
“If he’s dead—oh, thank God. Thank God.”
He wept in silence. It took him a long time to wear himself out, and Tom, silent too, maintained a steadfast grip on him, staring unseeing over his shoulder. He was distantly aware that the storm beyond the life raft’s shelter began at last to abate, that the endless night was giving way, a thin dawn light gathering through the canopy. He pressed his mouth to Flynn’s skull, reading, as clearly as if he could see his thoughts, the war of shock, relief and sorrow being waged inside him.
When at last the heave of his ribs became less anguished, more a search for air, Tom eased him back a bit, letting him breathe. “Flynn… What happened tonight?”
Flynn coughed. He got his head up a little. “Oh, Tom,” he managed, his voice worn to rags. “How could I have believed him? How did I stay under so long? I feel like—I feel like I just woke up.”
“How did he get you to fly with him? Mitchell said he had a gun.”
“Oh, it wasn’t at gunpoint.” He sat up, and Tom, looking at him in pained amusement, wished that either of them had a dry bit of cloth between them to wipe his face. He undid a button or two at the bottom of his untucked shirt, and did the best he could with that until Flynn caught up and gently batted his hand away, shuddering with mortified laughter. “Stop that, you idiot. No. I went voluntarily. Two of the ASaC pilots are laid up after a raid at Lowestoft, and…he said there was nobody else.”
“Nobody else to fly?”
“Yeah. Yes. I said I’d go as his cable man, but not that. And he told me—how many lives I’d have on my conscience if I didn’t. The kids in fucking Basra who would end up buying the guns getting smuggled through tonight, if we didn’t stop them.” Flynn paused, lifting a hand to his mouth. “He reminded me about the men I’d already killed, back in Portsmouth when I ditched the Lynx. Asked me if I remembered their names. He said it was a chance to put it right.”
“Jesus, Flynn.”
“No. Don’t.” Flynn grabbed the hand Tom had been lifting, in shocked affection, to his face. “Let me tell you. Please. Something happened. I have to tell you. I remembered…”
He fell silent for so long that Tom realised he was becoming lost in the recall, and gently prompted, “Something about last time you flew. The crash.”
“Yes. Oh, God, you were right. It was something about lifting off, being in the pilot’s seat again. Getting a Lynx off the pad—like making a cow fly—or seeing the li
ghts drop down and away, or—rain on the cockpit glass. For a while I didn’t think I could do it, and then something clicked. Everything I loved about it before. Finding that place in the wind—I mean, they can train you and train you, but one day you find it by the seat of your pants, that…niche, that sweet spot where she’ll ride the gale for you and not get torn to shreds.”
Tom smiled, nodding. He would never need ask Flynn what his concept of God or religion might be. Even now, shaking with the remnants of near-fatal hypothermic shock, his face was rapt, the light of mystical experience filling his eyes. “Flyboy,” he said, affectionately. “Pure bloody flyboy. What did you remember?”
“The prep room at Portsmouth, two years ago. Strapping on Kevlar, loading up a semiautomatic. Feeling—different, free, because I’d told him…I’d told Rob that afternoon I didn’t want us to be lovers anymore. He was crushing the life out of me, Tom. Thought he owned me. Didn’t know the meaning of no—I had to fight him like a fucking cougar if I wasn’t in the mood. Though…” His voice scraped, and he tailed off, “Though I did fight him off then. I was a different man.”
“No. The same man, just—undamaged. What happened next?”
Flynn flashed a glance at him, a smile of gratitude for the cue. “He went up as my copilot. Dear God, Tom—he must have had a deal with them, some fucking devil’s bargain with the bastards we were after. I wonder—if I hadn’t dumped him, was he gonna try and cut me in on it?”
“Maybe.” Tom brushed his fringe back, kissed his brow. “Just think—you could’ve bought a real car.”
Flynn snorted. “Shut up. I love my crappy toy Mazda.”
“Yes. Me too. Go on. What happened?”
“Okay. It was so weird, like living in two time zones at once. Tom, he sabotaged that Lynx. He was quiet all the way out, and before we got into position he just got up, ripped his headset off, walked to the back of the cockpit and…cut the fuel lines. I’ve dreamed it over and over—seeing him pull the cover off the bulkhead, seeing his wire cutters flash. I didn’t know it was a memory. We dropped like a stone. I shouted through to the crew in the back, but it was too late—for everyone but him, because he jumped half a second before we started to dive. He was ready.”