Doctor Who_ Rip Tide - Louise Cooper [56]
The radio crackled and Adam crouched over it, striving to make out what was coming through. Nina heard snatches of his replies: 'Receiving, boathouse; over ... OK ... five minutes, it?' ... what? Say again, Paul, over!' More crackles, then: 'Yeah! Me and Geoff ... What? He can't have!'
Oh, hell, Nina thought. This is it ...
'Understood, Paul. Over ... Yeah ... will do! Over and out!'
Adam screwed round and stared at Nina for a single second. Then he shouted at the top of his voice to Steve, 'Paul says Geoff's just shown up at the boathouse!'
'What?' Steve visibly started. 'Then who –' He too flung a look at Nina; she met his gaze – and his eyes widened as he saw her face through the visor.
'Bloody hell!' His voice rose to a roar of fury. 'What the blazes do you think you're doing?'
'I had to!' Nina shouted, pleading and defiant together. 'It's the Doctor who's in trouble – I couldn't explain, Steve, you wouldn't have understood! But I had to come!'
'Had to? Like hell! I'm turning around, and I'm taking you back!'
'No!' she screamed. 'You can't – the rescue –'
'There won't be a rescue with you on board! You don't know what to do – you'd kill the lot of us!'
'I wouldn't! The Doctor's there, Steve, he can help! And there's someone else trapped – he was trying to get to her when he fell!' She had just one chance to get through to him, and she shrieked in his face: 'It's Ruth!'
Her brother's fury collapsed, and a violent clash of reactions flicked across his face. All the ingrained instincts of his training were telling him to take Nina straight back to shore. No matter what might become of the trapped man, she was a potential danger to the rescue; she was also his sister, and he couldn't stop himself from caring more for her safety than for that of a stranger. And — though it was a lesser factor for him — he would be breaking every rule in the book by taking an untrained, inexperienced, under-age individual on a shout. No matter that she had tricked him; he knew now, and the responsibility was on his shoulders. But Ruth ... Ruth was in danger ...
Nina saw that he was in a dilemma, and pounced desperately on her last, slender hope. 'Steve, Ruth needs help!' she begged. 'There isn't time to go back! I've handled other boats, I won't screw up — please, Steve!'
The lifeboat was still on her former heading, but she was pitching less violently now. Suddenly Adam said, 'Steve — can't we chance it? If the guy's on a ledge ... the tide's rising! And Derry's Head's lee of the wind — the sea won't be so big there ...'
Nina gave Adam a look of dazzling gratitude but he didn't see. Steve hesitated. 'You reckon we can do it?'
'Yeah. I reckon.'
'Then ...' Steve drew a deep breath. 'All right! Get on the radio, tell coastguard we've got seconded crew. It won't stop the flak when we get back, but it's something ... Nina! Hold tight, do exactly what I tell you, when I tell you ! Shit, I must be mad!'
Nina would never forget the wild run to Derry's Head. The details were a blur in her memory, but the sensations of the streaming wind, the flying spray, the vibration of the lifeboat and the slamming impacts on her body as they raced on the swell, all combined into a single adrenaline rush of fear, awe, exhilaration. She felt, too, a new level of love and admiration for her brother, who steered them on with a calm confidence that betrayed none of the emotions that he must have been suffering. She tried, once, to tell him what had happened to Ruth and to the Doctor, but Steve did not want to know. All that mattered was to reach them