Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [54]
'Docto-o-or!' Tears blinded her and she pounded the cliff edge with bunched, useless fists. She couldn't look, couldn't bear to see him smash on the rocks and be swept away. All she could do was cry; great, rasping sobs that tore her throat and shook her body from skull to toes.
Then: '... na! ... Nina!' Shocked, her eyes snapped open — and she saw him. He was on a ledge no more than ten feet above the surf, his back pressed flat to the cliff and his feet braced against a rock spur. His white face looked up at her and he shouted again: ' ... can't get back ... have to try —'
The rest was drowned by the shatter of another wave, and he ducked as the spray came flying. In the brief lull before the next onslaught Nina yelled, 'Stay there! Don't try to move!'
He shouted something else inaudible, then: '... get down, and into the cave —'
'No.' she cried. 'Don't try it, don't!' Then suddenly, as sometime happens in dire emergency, her mind was shockingly clear and she knew what to do. Filling her lungs with air she yelled at the top of her voice, 'I'm going for help! Stay where you are! Do you understand? Stay — exactly — where — you — are!'
He heard her, acknowledging with a quick and perilous wave of one hand, then ducked again, shielding his head with one arm as the next breaker attacked. But Nina didn't see. She was on her feet, running down the path, running with all the speed she could force from her muscles. As she ran she snatched out her mobile phone and punched in the 999 emergency code.
'Which service, please?' The signal wasn't good and the operator's voice crackled. But it was enough. 'Coastguard!' Nina gasped. 'I need the lifeboat — fast!'
TIDE-RACE
Nina heard the hiss and saw the smoking track of the first maroon as she pelted
down the last stretch of cliff path towards the road. Moments later the gunshot bang of the flare echoed above the beach, then the second maroon followed. Briefly slithering to a halt, Nina glanced at her watch. Five past seven – the crew's pagers would have alerted them a minute or so ahead of the maroons, but most were probably still asleep when the alarm sounded. She should have enough time to get to the boathouse before the first of them arrived.
She sprinted on, reached the boathouse and hid just beyond it as the sound of the first car engine approached down the road. A blue hatchback slewed to a stop and Paul, the Ops Manager, jumped out and came running. Paul would have had the first alert from the coastguards and had fired the maroons from his house at the edge of the village. She held her breath as he hastily unlocked the boathouse, then as he snatched a key from inside and hurried to the adjoining tractor shed she darted past him unseen and ducked into the boathouse. Squeeze past the lifeboat, get to the racks of dry suits hanging in their places ... She was of similar height and build to Geoff Parkes, one of the more experienced crew members, who hadn't yet shown up. Just pray he doesn't ... Two more vehicles revved outside; one sounded like Steve's van, and Nina snatched Geoff's dry suit from its peg and started to scramble into it. When Steve came running in, closely followed by a dark, rangy young man called Tim who usually drove the tractor, she had zipped up the suit, had crammed a helmet on her head and was flailing her arms into a crew lifejacket. All her brother saw was a ready crew member, anonymous in the gloom. He was about to say something but Paul intercepted him.
'Someone stuck on a ledge at Derry's Head,' he said. 'Too low down for the coastguards to get him from the top. Walker on the cliff spotted him.'
'Bloody hell!' Steve glanced outside to the beach and the sea. 'Cliffclimbing in these conditions?' He made an angrily despairing gesture. 'Mad!'
'Tell me about it!' Paul, too, looked out. 'I reckon that's a Force 5, gusting 7. It's right on the