Driftwood (20 page)

“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 lights 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.”

“God almighty. And yet…he came back for you. That part's true.”

“Yes. He came back.” Flynn drew a shuddery breath and pressed a little closer to Tom. “I don't know why he risked it. I'm not sure… I'm not sure my life would have been worth a day's purchase, if I hadn't woken up without a single memory in my head from the whole fucking thing, except for the ones he sat by my bed and implanted, day after day. He told me I'd lost control of her. He was kind, when everyone else around me could barely bloody look at me, no matter how hard they tried. Even the doctors. He was there every time I opened my eyes. He said he would look after me.”

Tom kissed his brow. “All right.” Gently he wiped away the fresh tears with the pad of one thumb. “I'm guessing that's when he came into his family fortune.”

“Mm-hm.” Flynn nodded, making a dreadful attempt at a smile. “That's when four-by-fours and private doctors started to rain down from heaven. I suppose they made it worth his while. He'd never mentioned his family to me before then, but suddenly there they were. Knightsbridge Tremaines, and old money.”

“Flynn, do you know who he really is? I mean, where he comes from?”

“Yeah, of course. Just like you did, thirty seconds after you met him. Three people told me he was Bobby Tremaine from the Sankerris council estate during the first week I was here. God, Tom—did he think I was going to judge him? My dad's an electrician from Derby. I know what it's like, being officer class in the Navy, if you're not descended from the bloody admiralty.”

“Why did you let him carry on lying to you?”

“I don't know. He was really cagey about it. I suppose he was worried I'd ask him about the money, but I wasn't likely to do that, was I? I'd been quietly taking it for far too long. I was ashamed. I even passed his lies on to you, though I was pretty sure you'd recognised him too.”

“Flynn, love, surely you've worked out by now you've got nothing to be ashamed of?”

“I don't know. When I think about that night off Portsmouth—knowing I didn't kill all those men, all our friends, by some stupid pilot error—I feel like my heart's going to explode with relief, even though none of them are any less dead because it wasn't my fault. And yet when I look back over two whole years, dormant, hypnotised, eating out of Rob's bloody hand, letting him—own me, screw me… Learning to like getting beaten down and fucked, because that was what I deserved.”

“Flynn…” Tom shook his head, briefly unable to bear it. He lifted a hand to cover Flynn's mouth—felt its palm kissed, his wrist seized, as if Flynn too wanted to be silenced. Stopped. They watched one another mutely for a long while. Then Tom said, turning his hold to a caress, fingertips over Flynn's salt-blistered lips, “He tried it again, didn't he? Tonight?”

“How… How could he leave me to think it was my fault?” Flynn whispered. His face was white with anguish, as if he had only just realised for himself the enormity of it. “He must have known I was living in hell.”

Because he was an evil fuck
, Tom thought succinctly, but kept it quiet. Perhaps the loss of him, with all his faults, was too fresh to Flynn for him to be able to withstand much condemnation from anyone else. “I don't know,” he said. “But—ultimately, everything he did was to keep you close to him. He risked his whole game to spare your life.”

Flynn snorted. The sound of it warmed Tom's heart with its vigour, its ordinary derision—told him that Flynn would get over Rob Tremaine, and maybe the process wouldn't take long. “Not tonight, he bloody didn't. He shot out my collective. He just went and stood by the hatch and took aim. It was seeing him get up and walk away that finally broke down the memory block. I thought he was gonna put a bullet in me, and…I just didn't care. Then he jumped.”

“Charlie Mitchell says you made a textbook job of putting her down.”

“Mitch said that?” Uncomplicated pleasure lit Flynn's face, an airman's pride in his work. “I could, Tom. I could do that, take her down nice, and do my evac like I was in the training pool at Hawke, because I knew, I was fairly sure, that they'd all got out in time. They lived, so I could live too. And—I
wanted
to. For the first time in years. All I could think about was how much I wanted to see you again.” He shivered, shook his head. “I can't believe you came out to find me.”

Tom swallowed hard. “I'll always find you, love.”

The storm was almost spent. Tom, on his knees, held Flynn's face with desperate tenderness between both his hands—kissed him and kissed him, as the motion of the swell beneath the raft lost its rage, became a rocking. Tears forced themselves from beneath his closed eyelids, stinging the windburn and healing cuts on his face. Flynn's arms were passionately laced around his neck, his face tipped up as if to the sun. When at last Tom couldn't breathe and stars were bursting over his dark field of vision, he broke away. “Stop,” he rasped, chuckling. “I have to go check on poor Victor.”

Flynn nodded. He was smiling dazedly. When Tom let him go, he subsided against the life raft's hull. “Okay,” he said, putting up a hand to shield an enormous yawn. “If you need me to take a spell at the rudder…”

“Oh, yeah,” Tom said, leaning over him to check the pulse at his throat. It was strong, but too fast, his system revving in its struggle to evict the deadly cold. Tom wrapped Victor's waterproof tightly around him. “We'll be sure to do that. You just stay curled up there. Keep breathing. Try and get some sleep.”

When Tom stumbled out into the light, he found Victor quietly plying the raft through a new world. The storm, with Cornish thoroughness, had given way to a dawn whose shades of rose and delicate green denied that its fury had ever existed or been unleashed along this coast to the peril of so many lives. Far off to the south, Tom could see the weird architecture of the Morvah cliffs, blades and pinnacles catching the first rays of sun. His watchtower was almost visible from here. He tried to remember when he had left it, and remembered with a shock that it had been a week ago, in another different world.