9
Tahiti:
'To every action, there is always opposed an equal reaction'. When Gordon hurled the girl up and over the gunwale, the unstable speedboat rocked a bit; down and sideways. TinTin didn't go as far as he'd hoped, consequently.
Everything arrowed down to the ditching plane, choking and guttering horribly as it dove for the restless sea. Gordon made ready to jump, just as the stricken aircraft augered in, propellor blades crumpling back, wings deforming, water bulging away on all sides like a rushing tidal wave.
The boat was lifted, stood on end, and flipped completely over. He got clear somehow, feeling/hearing through the turbulent water the shock of the wreck settling to the bottom with an almighty, tearing whump.
A hundred impressions at once, in flying shards like a broken mirror: Something was wrong with his mask. He kept having to clear it, but the rebreather worked. From overhead, the brilliant disk of the sun wavered and danced on the heaving surface. Sand, and darting fish..., the upside-down interior of the boat (Absolutely, Jeff was going to kill him). Churning legs silhouetted against sharp light... TinTin... and over there, Alan. His brother looked down into the water, wide-eyed and anxious through the glass half-mask. Two less to worry about.
The blizzard of sand began to settle, allowing him a first glimpse of the downed plane, on its nose at a fifty degree angle, maybetwenty feet below the surface. He saw movement.
Signaling to Alan, Gordon released air from his buoyancy control vest, and dove for the wrecked plane. At the back, two small faces were pressed to the glass. A little girl, screaming and pounding at the window as she fought to hold herself and a crying baby above the rapidly rising water. There was no rear door.
The pilot-side door was jammed shut, crumpled in by the force of the crash. The other one, passenger side, yielded at last to a tremendous, adrenaline-fueled heave. There was a woman in the right seat, tugging feebly at her restraints. The pilot, a man, lay slumped over the controls, a cloud of wavering black blood obscuring his head and face.
Gordon found his buddy breathing attachment, and thrust the mouthpiece at the female passenger. A moment later, with a great rush of hissing clicks, she'd begun to breathe.
Alan had somehow fought his way down to the wreck, though he wore no weight belt. He started working at the woman's straps, but Gordon tapped his shoulder and signaled, 'no'. She had air, and the pilot might well be past caring. The children, though, were in desperate straits.
Cursing the lack of space, Gordon used both arms to shove himself past the front seats and up into the shrinking silver air pocket that held two terrified little ones. Flailing legs, the whipping straps of an empty baby seat, jabbing arm rests, and then he was there.
"Mummy, help me! Mummy... please!"
The girl was shrieking, as the water rose past her chin. She'd pushed the baby up a bit higher, where he could find a few last gasps. Gordon seized them.
"Deep breath, Angel," he told her. She nodded desperately, clutching him close as she sucked in a huge lung full. "Hold tight t' th' babe."
With water almost to her nose, now, the brown-haired girl pulled the wailing infant down against her neck.
Gordon shifted his grip and maneuvered them down and around, past the front seats, to Alan, who was on his last reserves. The younger boy took the children, shot out of the crumpled cabin, and kicked for the surface.
Gordon then freed his dive knife and sawed through the woman's restraints. She'd been trying, weakly, to insert the buddy-breathing apparatus into her husband's mouth, but in vain. He didn't appear to be conscious.
Decision time. Get the woman to the surface? Or, try to free the pilot as well, and bring them both up at once? She was alive, but injured, and losing blood, herself. It all came down to time, measurable in each sudden, pulsing gush of dark blood. Time, and triage. You save the ones, first, who have the best chance of survival.
Alan hadn't returned yet, but TinTin, miraculously, was there, hauling herself along the fuselage on a lung full of hoarded air. Gordon handed her the injured woman through a smokey halo of blood and long hair, then turned to free the pilot.
The retrieved buddy-breather he pushed into the man's slack mouth, only to have the thing drop free and drift away. So..., a few quick slashes, and a heave ... but something caught. The man's left leg was jammed between the seat and instrument panel.
With difficulty, Gordon rotated himself, got his own legs braced against the overhead, then pushed down against the seat cushion with one hand, while pulling at the man's flowered shirt with the other. There was so much blood in the water, now, that it was getting hard to see.
Everything... the stick, the throttle, arms, a floating purse, kept jabbing at him. Then Alan was back, reaching in through the passenger door to help free the trapped man. (Not 'the body'; not yet. There was a chance, still. There had to be.)
He got hung up himself, once, when his weight belt caught on an arm rest, but a swift twist settled that. Freed, he followed the pilot's limp form out through the door, and up.
They broke water into dazzling-harsh sunlight, Alan gasping wildly for breath, the pilot grey, and weakly oozing. TinTin had managed to get the woman and children onto the capsized boat,and a launch from thedistant boathouse was already on its way.
Gordon directed Alan to a set of metal rungs at the stern meant to allow water skiers to climb into the speed boat. His brother nodded, heaved himself onto the convex hull, then turned to help wrestle the comatose pilot out of the water.
"Daddy!" The little girl whimpered. TinTin turned from assisting the mother and hushed her, saying something calm and soothing that the others didn't quite catch. She then exchanged places with Alan, very carefully, and began CPR.
Alan had lost his snorkel, and a lot of his self-assurance. Wriggling his way forward along the capsized boat's exposed bottom (no barnacles, thanks to inhibiting paint and regular dry-berthings) Alan got to the mother and children. The woman was too groggy to do much worrying, so he concentrated his wet and bedraggled charm on the kids, instead. Putting an arm around the girl, he asked,
"You okay, Sweetie?"
She nodded, her large, green eyes filled with tears. Shifting the fussy baby, she whispered,
"Will daddy be all right?"
Alan glanced over at TinTin, still laboring over the motionless pilot. What was he supposed to say? Gordon would have come up with something smart and comforting, but Gordon was still in the water, probably not wanting to upset the balance of those already clinging to the boat. The launch, meanwhile, had grown from a speck, to the size of his hand. Rico was really pouring it on... and dang, that sun felt hot! Alan felt the first stabs of a major headache.
"Uh..., sure, he will. That girl over there? Her name's TinTin, and she's an expert at first aid. For real." Then, to distract the girl, "I'm Alan Tracy. What's your name?"
She sniffled, but managed a bit of a smile, nevertheless.
"Emma Farleigh," She told him. Holding out her tiny brother, in his soaked blue terry-cloth singlet (he had a double handful of her long, brown hair, and was thoughtfully gumming it), the little girl added politely,
"This is Michael Farleigh, Jr., and we're terribly pleased to make your ac- acquaintance, Mr. Tracy. That's my mum. She's Angelina Farleigh, but she's from Cornwall, and things are different, there."
As though that explained everything. Alan gave her a dazzling smile.
"Came to Tahiti on vacation, huh? Nice, dramatic entrance, Chica, but there's better ways to, like, skip all the airport security crap."
That got a small laugh. The baby boy grabbed blurrily for his shell necklace (donned well clear of the island; Jeff Tracy did not believe in jewelry for boys).
Then, Rico, Marie and the boathouse crew drew up alongside in the big launch. Help, at last.
Alan breathed a sigh of relief, and hugged Emma closer.
"It's gonna be okay, Sweetie," he told her, giving the baby his necklace.