Crux

62 UP THE COAST

Wednesday October 31st

Sam pushed through hard seas Wednesday night. Four days she’d been traveling now, moving the little stealthed boat at night, hiding during the brutally hot days. Her shoulder, tended with a continuous supply of fresh bandages, antibiotic cream, and abundant food, was healing.

The weather had started calm, but grown rougher each day as she moved further north. Tonight was the worst. The waves tossed her little boat around. She secured the weapons and extra fuel and food and water and surveillance gear as best she could, but inevitably they crashed from side to side as well. The wind died down around midnight, and she made great time after that.

She found a small, unlit island before dawn, settled into a narrow cove for the day. She’d made seventy miles that night. She was now just thirty miles from Apyar Kyun.

Sam ate all she could, cleaned her shoulder wound, then forced herself to sleep. Slumber came slowly, and when it came, she dreamt of Sarai, of Jake, of death.

Sam woke gasping, had to jam her own hand into her mouth to silence herself. It was only noon. There would be no more sleep.

She readied her gear instead, stripping it down, cleaning it, assembling it, testing it. Rinse. Repeat.

The sun dropped lower in the sky. It was Thursday afternoon now. She could reach Apyar Kyun before midnight, spend this night studying the island, scanning it with the high-powered scope and infrared imagers Lo Prang’s men had provided, find a way to get her kids back.

Sam steered her little smuggler’s boat out of the cove, out into the water. It was rougher away from the island she’d spent the day at, but the engines kept her moving forward. The waves buffeted her, rocked her, but she endured.

She fought the wind and waves for four hours, pushed within ten miles of Apyar Kyun. The winds died, and Sam quietly rejoiced, and progress got easier. She was just a mile from Apyar Kyun, a few hundred yards past a final tiny unnamed island, when the storm came back with a vengeance.

The big wave hit her from the port side, from out in the deeps, and battered the little boat to the side. The force of the blow snapped an anchor point, loosing a strap. Gear she’d secured came free. A pile of water jugs toppled to the bottom of the boat. More anchor points failed. A stack of food collapsed. A box of ammunition flew across the cabin and struck the far side.

The boat tilted precariously, up at thirty degrees, forty-five degrees, sixty degrees. Sam threw herself at the rising side, grabbed a strut, hauled her body in to counterweight the boat. It teetered on the edge of capsizing then fell back into place with a shuddering crash into the next trough.

Sam grabbed for the controls, scrambled to turn the boat into the next wave. She got the nose around as the next wave hit her hard, sending the loose gear flying. Something hard and metal struck her in the head.

This was crazy. She had to take shelter until this passed. She fought to turn the boat between deadly waves, get its prow pointed back at the tiny island she’d just gone by.

The boat shuddered as she steered. There was a beach ahead. Three hundred yards. A gentle slope, with tall palms above it, their leaves crazily shaking in the wind. Two hundred yards. She pushed her thrusters forward towards it. One hundred yards.

And then a massive wave struck her boat from behind, lifted her up, and threw her forward at the island. The beach surged forward at her. Sam had time to catch her breath. And then her boat struck the beach at full force.