After a minute in the relative safety of the raft her panic ebbed and her heart rate slowed. She took stock of her position. First of all her injuries: besides the damage to her teeth she had a dull ache on the side of her head. She was fully conscious and unless she developed a blinding headache in the next day, she may as well assume her skull had not been damaged too seriously. Her right arm throbbed where Carson had hit it but despite the pain she could move her hand and fingers freely; nothing was broken. She looked down and wiggled her right foot, winced from the pain in her thigh, but decided that at least her ankle was only lightly sprained. She pulled off her shoe rubbed the joint and then lay back and stared up at the sky while her breathing steadied, occasionally spitting out the salty taste of blood and seawater from her mouth and snorting through her nose.
‘Help me, in God’s mercy, help me,’ came a faint cry.
Ali Hamsin? Alive! How could that be? She had been trying to free his foot when the water had snatched her away. Now she remembered him clutching at her before the water had washed him down the fuselage. Surely he had drowned. She rolled on to her front, pulled herself up against the side of the raft and peered across the sea.
‘I’m over here!’
Under the dull moonlight she saw him clinging on to a seat cushion. He lifted an arm and gave a brief frantic wave and then clutched desperately at the cushion which barely supported his weight. How was she going to reach him? She did not want to leave the safety of the raft.
‘Gerry, help me!’
‘Oh shit,’ she muttered. She grabbed hold of one of the straps and then slithered over the side back into the sea.
‘Swim towards me,’ she called. ‘I don’t want to let go of the raft.’
‘I can’t swim! The water’s dragging me down.’
‘Come on, you have to swim!’ she called back. She looked up at the raft and then back at him. Then she saw a line trailing in the water alongside her. She grabbed hold of it and found that it was attached to the raft. ‘Hold on, Ali. I think I can get to you.’ She wrapped the trailing line around her wrist and then paddled towards him trying to ignore the pain in her leg. She was still two metres away when the line brought her to a halt with a sharp tug at her wrist. She swam awkwardly round until her legs trailed towards him. ‘You’ll have to swim and grab my legs.’
‘I can’t!’
‘You must! Go on, trust in God.’
He let go of the seat cushion and took some frantic strokes towards her as the sea closed over him. She suddenly felt him grab her foot and she heaved her legs up and stuck her hand down, felt him grasp hold of it and then she pulled him up to the surface. He clutched on to her until their faces were nearly touching.
‘I’m sorry to be holding you this way,’ he spluttered.
‘Never mind that now, Ali!’
She took hold of the line and began to haul the pair of them back towards the raft, their combined weight straining her arms but at last they were both able to reach the straps that ran dangled down the side of the raft.
‘I don’t have the strength…’ he gasped, ‘to climb in.’
‘Listen; you’re only a light weight. I’ll hold on to these straps and lower myself down. Then you kneel on my shoulders and you’ll be able to climb in.’
He stared at her for a moment wondering what she meant, and then nodded. ‘As God wills it,’ he said in Arabic.
‘Let’s hope so.’
She wrapped the straps round her wrists, took a deep breath and sank below the surface. She felt him struggling into a kneeling position on her shoulders. She gritted her teeth as his knees ground against her shoulders while he pulled himself up into the raft and then one of his flailing feet kicked her in the side of the head. She took a minute to gather her strength and then pulled herself on board next to him. ‘How did you get out?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know. I was struggling under the water when my foot came free and then I bumped into you. I remember being whirled around and around until I found myself floating on the surface and I grabbed the cushion. It was the will of God.’
‘The aircraft must have split apart as it sank.’
‘Perhaps. Anyway somehow we are both alive.’
They were alone on a life raft in the Atlantic Ocean. Only yesterday morning she had woken up in a comfortable hotel room, gazed out of the window and enjoyed the sight of the waves lapping gently onto the shore and thought about going home. Now she was surrounded by the sea and unless a miracle occurred she would die out here. She stared up at the cloudy sky and occasionally glimpsed stars through breaks in the overcast. She thought about her daughter growing up under the care of another woman but after a few seconds she ordered herself to get a grip, to stop wallowing in self-pity. She thought about Ryan Carson with whom a few days ago she had been chatting happily at dinner.
‘Bloody bastard!’ she called out, her voice sounding weak against the surge of the waves along the side of the raft.
‘What did you say?’ Ali called out.
‘You’re awake?’
‘Of course.’
‘How are you feeling?’ she asked.
‘I feel like shit!’
She felt a flash of amusement despite their situation; it was the first time she had heard him come close to an oath of any sort.
‘Yuh, me too.’
To confirm her words she felt a sudden acidic surge and vomited up some sea water and the remains of her last meal.
‘Gerry, are you alright?’
She snorted through her nose and coughed and spat. ‘Just throwing up,’ she mumbled.
‘We’re in a bad way here.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘That pilot, did you kill him?’
‘Yes. He got hold of some kind of crowbar. It must have been in the flight deck somewhere, maybe part of the aircraft equipment. Anyway I managed to get it off him.’
‘He was the man who took me to Guantanamo Bay years ago,’ said Ali.
‘What… Ryan Carson? The pilot?’
‘Yes. He was the one who turned up at the prison in Abuja with some other American soldiers and escorted me to the airport. I was put on a plane and flown to the prison camp. I didn’t see him again until I was taken away from the camp yesterday and put on that aircraft.’
‘So it was Carson! Was there an English guy with him at all?’
‘There was, but I haven’t seen him since.’
‘Describe him, then’
‘Come on Gerry, it’s been years. I only just remember Ryan Carson because he is such a handsome type.’
‘Can’t you try?’
‘Well he was very smart, short hair. I suppose he looked like another military type actually.’
‘Old or young?’
‘Oh probably the same age as Carson, I would have said.’
‘Vince Parker,’ Gerry muttered to herself. ‘I bet it was bloody Vince Parker, always turning up. Those bastards are the ones who killed Philip, it was those two pieces of shit.’
There was no more to be said for the moment. The two of them lay slumped in the water that swirled around in the bottom of the raft. Fortunately the night was mild and apart from the occasional shiver she mostly felt clammy and sweaty. And thirsty. She sunk into a torpor while the long Atlantic rollers slowly heaved the raft up and down and despite her anxiety, her exhaustion lead to periods of fitful sleep until the dawn began to lighten the sky to the east.
She gazed over at Ali Hamsin slumped against the side a couple of feet away from her. ‘Are you awake, Ali?’