Hindsight

by AA Bell

  ‘Whose death?’ Gregan demanded, and when she stammered over her reply, Lockman saw Greppia’s expression change as if assuming the worst for himself. ‘Send me down first,’ he told the captain, ‘and drink an extra glass for me with my son when he gets back out here.’

  ‘But, sir,’ argued the trawler captain. ‘Torpedo silos have a maximum capacity of thirty. After this one, they’re full.’

  ‘Then hold position,’ Gregan said. ‘If Kitching wants him, I’ll send it back up for him. I don’t want him breathing my air.’

  ‘Will do, sir. Get comfortable,’ said the captain, and Lockman noticed one of the six crewmen approaching with a mini-oxygen tank and torch. ‘One tank is enough for two people,’ he said as he handed it to Greppia. ‘From splash to delivery, the transit time is only ten minutes and the air tank lasts for thirty, but the lining is rubberised to minimise rattling, so we still have to mark you like this …’ He peeled off a long yellow magnetic strip from the side of the crane and adhered it around the cylinder beside the open lid. ‘That’s so they know to open it immediately upon receipt. Otherwise they’d never hear you.’

  Greppia checked the strength of the magnetic adherence, then complimented the captain on the arrangements and laid down flat with his torch and mini air-tank. ‘When my son returns, tell him I’ve gone to make new arrangements for the next shipment.’ Then he glanced from the captain to Lockman. ‘Bind that dog tight. If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, shoot him.’

  The captain nodded and issued orders for his men to wrap Lockman in preparation for their marine postal service, but the moment he was sliced free from Mira, he shoved two crewmen off balance, stole the flare gun from her and fired it through the upper window of the captain’s bridge. A crewman at the helm screamed as his clothes caught alight, and Lockman screamed too, ordering Sei to get Chiron overboard while he grabbed Mira and ran for the nearest cover behind the cylinders, using surprise and confusion as his primary weapon. Gabby took her cue too, jerking up with her knee and driving it home into the horny bear’s groin, sending him backwards through the gate and overboard.

  The deck heaved, and as crewmen fired warning shots and ran to recapture Lockman and Mira, the open cylinder rolled, closing the lid as it headed for the open gateway.

  Pinned down between racks, Lockman looked up and through the stack of cylinders, wondering if he could unleash more to roll about as distractions, and as he glanced sideways to the gate, he saw Gabby plucking off the magnetic strip as Greppia’s cylinder rolled past her into the water.

  ‘Gabby, jump!’ he shouted, but she only waved to him as six armed crewmen closed in around him and he realised she was using the distraction to get to Ben and Tarin. Uno and Cinq were already there, fighting with the winch to the lifeboat, while Pobody stood guard over them and Patterson signalled out to sea with his arms as if directing a plane to land; a style of semaphor that was basically calling for a hosedown of the deck.

  Four crewmen dragged Lockman into the open and forced him to lay face down. Mira tried to cling to him, but the captain cut their binding finally and she was dragged away from him, screaming. Behind her, he noticed that Tarin, Ben and Gabby had disappeared, along with Uno and Cinq, leaving the jammed lifeboat and nobody to help protect Mira aside from the traitorous sergeants, Patterson and Pobody, who’d already betrayed her twice.

  ‘Shoot him!’ Greggie screamed down from the window of the burning bridge. He was up there with a fire extinguisher and another crewman, trying to douse it. ‘Shoot them both and toss them overboard!’

  ‘No!’ Mira screamed, but Patterson raised his hand and then bodies fell all about the deck like flopping fish — all dead or dying, with single shots to their heads or chest, including the captain.

  Long-range snipers, Lockman realised at once — at least six, and considering the continuing pitch and yaw of the vessel, he guessed they had to be the very best of the best snipers, even if they were land-based. The nearest point of contact was over a kilometre away.

  ‘What took you so long?’ he shouted, but Patterson and Pobody were too busy to reply, caught in a chattering exchange of weapons fire with the two or three men who kept to their cover on the burning bridge.

  Lockman scrambled to pull a body off Mira and get her to safety, but as he rolled the big man aside, he found her face was covered in blood, and she was crying and straining, unable to shift the body herself.

  ‘Mira …?’ he called, wiping her face and straightening her glasses. ‘Are you hurt? Are you okay?’

  She came to her senses, reaching for his voice and latching her arms around his neck. ‘What’s happening? Where’s Ben?’

  ‘Safe. He’s overboard already with Tarin and Gabby.’

  Bullets stung the deck around them, and in reflex, he grabbed the nearest Uzi and returned fire, silencing the chatter of machine guns from the bridge.

  ‘Thanks a lot!’ Patterson shouted as he came to their side. ‘The goal was to capture them. All of them, but then you had to go and force my hand, you bloody loner. If I hadn’t enjoyed it so much I should have dropped you too.’

  An explosion ripped through the bridge, rocking the ship, and in the flickering light, Lockman saw the dark outlines of two people on the move up there. A flash of lightning revealed them to be Tarin, still aboard and stalking Greggie through the flames with a knife, but Lockman didn’t dare to go after her, even if he could spare the time to get her to safety too. He knew she needed to take care of her own demon.

  ‘This way,’ Lockman said, ushering Mira to the nearest lifeboat — one glance at the pulley revealing why the others had abandoned it; rusted solid.

  A short distance away in the froth-crested waves, he heard the others swimming, calling out to each other, and Gabby shouting for help to keep Ben’s head up from the waves.

  Another huge explosion rocked the trawler, as if the flames had worked their way down inside the vessel to the waterline and spewed up debris like an erupting volcano. Lockman swung his body to shield Mira, but fell, taking her to the deck with him. Blood streamed from the back of his head, more down his back, and dazed, he knew dimly that he’d been hit. He felt no more pain and couldn’t summon his body to move or even roll away from her.

  Distantly, he heard Mira screaming his name, patting his face, exploring his body with those sweet magical hands — then tugging him, hauling him, rolling him over the damp deck and falling with him through the open gate into the water.

  Winded as he struck the surface, he submerged for the longest moment, his lungs burned for air until he popped like a cork to the surface, face-to-face with her, and realised that she’d threaded her arms tightly through the sleeves of his fishing vest, locking her hands behind his shoulders for the fall. She cried out in pain between waves, and kicked away from the sounds of the explosions. Just in time; the trawler groaned and belched as it began to sink. Three more loud splashes disturbed the waves as a final explosion rocked the trawler, also showering them in more debris.

  ‘I’ve got you,’ she promised between her own gasps for air, but as she tried to pull one hand free of his vest, trying to swim, he knew groggily that something else was very wrong with her — and with him. He could taste his own blood in the water.

  ‘Leave me,’ he tried to say, fearing a new danger from below. ‘You have to … get away!’

  A wave doused them both unexpectedly; her lifejacket barely managing to keep them both afloat in the churning swell. She surfaced again, bedraggled and coughing, and crying out in pain and desperation as she strained in vain to keep his head above water. One arm remained hooked through his vest, and he realised dimly that it caused her more pain with each ebb of the water.

  ‘Wave,’ he said, warning her just in time to take a breath before they were both swamped again.

  Surfacing, a halo of light found her pretty face and he saw her skin glow — her sunshades gone — and her eyes sparkle briefly, like diamonds.

  ‘Ahoy!’ sh
outed Finnigan, and through a haze like a dream, Lockman saw the sniper-medic leaning out from the hold of a Blackhawk that swung in overhead and hovered like a dark angel. More searchlights sparkled like fallen stars around them, and he heard more familiar shouts nearby — Detectives Symes and Moser fishing the others from the water onto the lower deck of a gleaming fishing cruiser, while civilian fishing boats of all shapes and sizes raced towards them to join in the search for survivors.

  Dimly, as Lockman sensed himself slipping in and out of consciousness, he realised Sergeant Brette had joined them in the thrashing water, and with two others from his team they were striving to disentangle him from Mira, while also masking the taste of his blood with the sweetest oxygen.

  ‘No!’ Mira pleaded, resisting them and thrashing wildly as they tried to fit her with a mask. ‘Don’t smother me!’

  ‘She’s delirious,’ said one.

  ‘She’s blind,’ said Brette. ‘We’ve got you, ma’am. We’re here to help you.’ Lockman sensed her relax a little, though she still didn’t release his fishing vest, as if she couldn’t.

  ‘I got you, buddy,’ Brette said as they tried to peel Mira away from him, but she screamed out in pain again as well as fear as they fastened a harness around her. ‘We’ve got a lot of blood here!’ Brette shouted. ‘Stay alert up there!’

  Lockman felt a heavy thud against his leg. Shots fired, spitting fury at the waves as a winch engaged, lifting Mira away from him.

  ‘Easy, easy!’ Finnigan shouted. ‘Bring her up gently, lads. She’s busted her shoulder.’

  Lockman stared skywards, watching her dissolve into the light, and as he slipped back into his own darkness, his last thoughts were of her and how badly he wanted to stay with her.

  PART TEN

  Snap

  We die as often as we lose a friend

  Publius Syrus

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  After a week of living alone in Ben’s home, Mira had lost weight — not because she couldn’t care for herself. Even with her left arm and shoulder bandaged for the first three days, she’d been cooking healthy meals every evening for Gabby using groceries from the fridge and cupboard as a show of appreciation for driving her to the mainland daily to visit Ben and his mother in hospital.

  Still, they both refused to see her.

  So much for family and togetherness, she thought bitterly. Ben had promised that she’d never need to feel alone, through good times or bad, but now she felt so alone it burned inside like a fever. She could hardly blame him, but she needed to talk to him about it; totally ached for it. She’d tried so many times to break into his ward during Gabby’s visits, the nurses had taken to calling police and banning Mira from the floor and later the building. She’d spent most of her past few visits outside by the road, staring up at his fourth floor window, and if she’d called out more than once, the police would shift her from there too, tearing her apart as they tore her further away from him.

  Bodies healed faster than minds, the doctors had warned her during the first attempt, but Ben’s mind wasn’t just bruised or broken like the rest of him. His name may have been cleared finally, but he could no longer bear to look at her without reliving the agony of each and every injury being slowly and maliciously inflicted upon him. Same for his mother, who’d been beaten without ever knowing the real reason. Yet they’d both recovered sufficiently to be sent home with a part-time nurse — and in caring for each other, doctors hoped to accelerate the other healing processes.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ben had written to Mira on a crumpled scrap of paper. He’d left it by his bedside for Gabby to take and read as his messenger — scrawled painstakingly with his broken fingers. ‘We need time. You’re better off with Lockman anyway.’

  Better off? The words tormented her. Lockman had vanished, whisked away by the same Blackhawk that delivered her back to the airbase hospital. She’d feared far worse for him, since she’d overheard his medics fussing over the shrapnel that had struck him in the spine and skull. She’d tried to convince herself that his fate didn’t matter. He’d told Greppia how little she’d meant to him — and his allegiance was to Garland, while hers was with Ben, at least for as long as it took to regain her independence. Part of her still longed to spend more time with him. Logic told her Lockman should have been as dead to her by now as if he’d drowned in her arms. Yet she mourned for him as much as she yearned for Ben.

  It pained her even more to think of Ben struggling to write such a thing — every word etched with the agony of his heart as well as his body — and of him needing more time away from her, more time than the past week. She ached to be with him, needed to help him recover as much as he’d helped her in escaping her own demons at Serenity, but her pleas had all fallen short; passed on by Gabby, or the same doctors and nurses who’d coldly refused her admittance to his room.

  Now the only way she had of helping him was by leaving. Her clothes waited on the sofa, a pile stacked neatly alongside her books of Braille poetry and The Scarlet Pimpernel; her belongings so meagre that she could fit them all into one small bag. She was taking the toothpaste dispenser; her only thoughtful token from Mel, now one of her most precious possessions. It sat on the piano like a plastic pet bird, alongside Ben’s note that she’d stained yet again with fresh tears. As much as it hurt, she’d tried to glimpse the future; tried to see him fit and well with her living again under the same roof, but her tears came too easily, permitting only brief glimpses ahead too far through the centuries, and often the visions seemed contradictory anyway. His home seemed as likely to become ruins between dunes as a mining museum.

  Mira waited for the sun to rise upon her last day in his home, and played the same haunting notes over and again from Ode to Joy.

  Standing alone as the last note died under her fingers, she’d never felt so unsupervised, and yet so lost and defeated.

  Outside, she heard the familiar patter of a diesel engine arrive, then shift into neutral and idle expectantly in the driveway.

  ‘Ready?’ Gabby called, as she entered through the front security screen using Ben’s key. ‘I can drop you off at Serenity on my way to collect them.’

  Mira closed her eyes, hardly able to bear it. The further she’d travelled from Serenity, the more she’d sensed her shadow stretching back to it like elastic. The snap seemed more than a week overdue, but all her calls to Matron Sanchez kept diverting to her mobile phone, which remained unanswered, and if she couldn’t speak to Maddy, there was no other staff who knew her secret. She didn’t want to speak to any of them.

  ‘You’re welcome to stay with me on my sloop,’ Gabby offered, ‘and before you remind me about your seasickness, remember I also rent a cheap van with a carport for my car and other gear. It has its own bathroom and kitchen, and I could certainly do with a van mate to share expenses for the next six weeks while I’m suspended from duty.’

  ‘I wish I could.’ Mira closed her eyes as she closed the cover on the keyboard. ‘Unfortunately … ha, there’s a word, I can’t even afford to buy a cheap pair of sunglasses.’

  ‘You’re rich, I heard? Fifty or sixty million?’

  ‘Technically, maybe. Oh, Gabby, please believe me. I’d pay to replace the Edukitty if I could — I’d do anything to help you get your job back sooner than Garland can, but I can’t access any of my money. I’ve even lost all my pocket change.’

  ‘You make it sound like you’re a vagrant.’

  ‘Worse. I’m dead, officially. And even if I wasn’t, I’d need someone else’s signature before I could withdraw so much as five cents.’ Mira collected her clothes, feeling miserable to the depth of becoming numb. ‘There’s only one place for me, and I suppose the sooner I go back, the sooner Ben and Mel can come home to recuperate.’

  ‘You haven’t heard from Lieutenant Lockman?’

  ‘Lance corporal,’ Mira replied mechanically. ‘I had as much luck finding out what happened to him as we did trying to find which vet had the joey — if any. And even
if he is still alive, he’ll be stationed hours away by now, on the far side of the ranges with the only two doctors who’ve ever been able to help me.’

  ‘Wow, really?’ Gabby opened the door as she led the way outside. ‘That’s not what I heard.’

  Mira froze in the doorway, fearing the worst. ‘What did you hear?’

  ‘I quit,’ Lockman answered from the driveway. ‘Although discharged is the official story.’

  Relief overwhelmed her at the sound of his voice, and yet she remained overshadowed by the guilt of all the hardship and injury she’d caused him. Now this. ‘You’ve lost your job too?’

  He chuckled and approached slowly, his stride betraying a limp. ‘I needed more time for fishing.’

  ‘Time to recuperate, you mean. How badly are you hurt this time?’

  ‘No worse than my last brush with Kitching. Don’t blame yourself. I wasn’t discharged for medical reasons, Mira. I asked to leave, and General Garland bent a few rules to oblige me.’

  She grinned to hear her own name on his lips, and with no hint of resentment after all the trouble she’d caused him. ‘You left the army voluntarily?’

  ‘With an honourable discharge,’ Gabby added. ‘It’ll be headlines by tomorrow. He’s being hailed as a hero, and rightly so.’

  ‘That’s mainly politics,’ Lockman said, taking Mira’s free hand gently in his and rubbing it. ‘No big deal. Hail a hero while hiding the dirty secrets. I’ve been a scapegoat before, so I know how it works. At least this time I wasn’t charged with any murders.’

  ‘Murder?’ Gabby and Mira asked together.

  ‘At Chloe’s penthouse, I was luckier than I deserved to be. Private property and I wasn’t authorised to be there, but Tarin Sei and Emmett Patterson both testified that four of Greppia’s men killed themselves before I got there. Tarin wouldn’t mind coming to visit you both, by the way, just as soon as she’s out of hospital.’