Ruthless - [5]

Redmond’s face appeared above the surging waters, his eyes flickering open in panic, his mouth open too, whooping in a mouthful of air. He was shivering hard, and bleeding. Orla pulled him towards her.

‘Oh, holy Christ, Red-’ she sobbed.

The water was lapping over their mouths and they were slipping, sliding sideways as the plane descended into icy blackness. The aircraft tipped sharply again and Orla’s feet slid from under her. She tried to hold her breath, but her lungs were bursting with the effort and with the fear that at any moment she was going to die. She couldn’t get her balance. She floundered, stretched, grabbed Redmond’s arm and hauled herself up, coughing, choking.

The cockpit would soon be completely full of water, and what would they do then?

They would drown.

There was only a tiny air pocket left to breathe in, under the roof of the cockpit, and they were huddled there, gasping, as the waters rose and rose around them.

‘We have to get out,’ said Redmond.

Orla clutched at the roof and shook her head.

‘Before it sinks too far down,’ he insisted.

There were trenches in the Irish Sea thousands of feet deep. Long before they reached that depth, the water pressure would kill them. He was right. They had to get out.

‘Through the front. It’s the only way. The windscreen. Come on.’

Not giving her time to answer, Redmond took a couple of deep breaths and plunged under the black churning water.

Orla was left there, alone, the water lapping around her face. Terrified, she didn’t want to move. But she was alone here. She would die here. Redmond was gone.

She took a desperate, despairing breath and dived.

5

Orla swam, lungs bursting, pushing herself along to the front of the little cabin. In horror she saw with salt-stung eyes the dim outline of Fergal in his short-sleeved white shirt, his arms floating aloft, his hair billowing around his shocked, bug-eyed dead face. He was still strapped into his seat at the controls. She saw the hole where the windscreen had been. She couldn’t see Redmond.

She wanted, so badly, to breathe. Her head felt like a balloon, pumped full of air she ached to release. Just to inhale one wonderful mouthful of air… only she wouldn’t. If she breathed in, she would draw the savagely cold salt water into her lungs and that would be the end of her.

Somehow she reached the windscreen. Fighting against the downward plunge of the little plane she wrestled her way out through the gap and was suddenly in the open ocean, her ears hurting with the pressure, a strong current pulling her. All around her she saw only Stygian milky-green gloom. Above her… was it possible?… she thought she saw fainter light.

She glanced down in sick horror and saw the plane sinking, sinking, sinking down to who knew what monstrous depth. She turned, and kicked for the surface. She knew she wouldn’t make it. Her lungs were exploding with pain. Soon she would have to suck in that last, fatal breath. And Redmond was gone, swept away; he must be dead.

Despair grabbed her as she swam upward. She could see nothing, hear nothing but the bubbling rush of the sea. The current buffeted her. Soon she was too tired even to kick. Her limbs were frozen with the cold. She stopped moving and hung in the water, rising inch by inch. Heart bursting, lungs screaming, she surrendered. She lifted her head and opened her mouth and gave herself up to death.

But when she breathed in, she breathed in air.

She was on the surface, the wind knocking her from side to side, the churning waves tossing her left and right, slapping her in the face.

Orla gasped in mouthful after mouthful of incredibly sweet salty air. Shivering, sobbing, she looked around her. The moon was still up there, still casting its placid silvery glow over the turbulent white-capped sea.

She was alive.

But where was Redmond, where was her twin?

She tried to scream his name, but all that emerged was a breathless croak. The sea was too cold, the currents too powerful, constantly dragging at her, numbing her, filling her mouth with sickeningly strong salt water.

From time to time, over the pummelling waves and the relentless power of the sea, she could make out a low shape to her left, an outline of black against the dark grey of the skies. A long way away. Two hundred yards, maybe?

It took a while before she understood what it was.

‘Oh shit.’ She wept with weak gratitude, spitting out water, shivering with shock and cold.

It was rocks.

It was land.

Minutes later, the sea flung her on to the shore. Scraped and bloodied by rocks, she lay there as the foam surged over her, trying to lift her head, failing, gulping down mouthfuls of salt. She was gagging, vomiting, coughing. Slowly, painfully she dragged herself up the beach until at last she was lying on wet sand, and the water couldn’t reach her any more. Its roar, like an angry lion, filled her head. But she had survived. By some miracle, she had been spared.

Finally she was able to raise her eyes, look around her. The moon plunged behind clouds and then emerged again, illuminating the landscape. What she longed to see,