fluttered down and dotted the surface.
Finally, after nearly a minute, the Rinker’s propeller reversed and began churning. The boat began backing out. Sam and Remi waited until the bow swung around and the Rinker began moving away before resurfacing. They caught their breath and watched as the boat disappeared around the bend.“They didn’t get him, did they?” Remi asked.
Sam turned and smiled at her. “That’s my girl. Animal lover until the end. No, he got away. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
CHAPTER 17
SUKUTI ISLAND
“THERE!” REMI CALLED FROM THE BOW. “ALL STOP! BACK SLOW.”
With his view blocked by the mast, Sam throttled to neutral, let the dhow drift a bit, then reversed and eased backward around the knob of shoreline they’d been following.
“That’s good,” she called. “They’re about a mile ahead of us. Another ten minutes and they’ll make the turn north.”
Forty minutes earlier, after beaching their dhow in the cove, they’d wasted no time in getting under way. Sam and Remi hoped the Rinker was on a route that would take it along Sukuti’s southern coast and back to Okafor’s docks, as their planned approach would take them around the northern side of the island. They were anxious to reach the relative safety of the inlet that separated Little Sukuti from Big Sukuti-providing that, too, wasn’t on the Rinker’s route.
While a straight shot along the southern coast would have been the quickest route to the docks, it would also have left them exposed to any observant eyes and ears. By following the inlet north and shadowing the coast around to the western side, they would be invisible to anyone not standing atop the escarpment.They sat in silence, watching the sun on its slow downward arc to the horizon, until finally Remi checked her watch and said, “Slow ahead.”
Sam started the engines and goosed the dhow’s throttle, easing them from behind cover. On the bow, Remi lay on her belly with the binoculars trained along the coast.
“They’re gone,” she said. “We’re clear.”
Sam shoved the throttle forward, and the dhow surged ahead. Another ten minutes passed. Remi called out: “There it is.”
Sam leaned sideways over the rail until he could see, a couple hundred yards away, the mouth of the inlet. No more than fifty feet wide, the channel looked as much like a tunnel as it did an inlet, its banks overgrown with jungle and trees arcing over the water to form an impenetrable canopy, save a patch of ten-foot-wide sky down the center.Sam eased the dhow’s wheel to starboard. The bow came about.
Remi walked aft, ducked under the boom, and dropped to the deck beside Sam. “Jungle Cruise,” she said.
“Pardon?”
“The inlet. Remember the Disney World Jungle Cruise? That’s what this reminds me of.”
Sam chuckled. “My favorite ride as a kid.”
“Sam, it’s still your favorite ride.”
“True.”
Within minutes they’d closed to within a hundred yards of the inlet’s mouth. They felt the dhow shudder beneath their feet, and it leapt ahead, picking up five knots in as many seconds.“Good call,” Remi said to her husband.
Having already experienced the power of the current off Zanzibar, Sam had earlier worried about similar conditions here. Positioned as it was along the coast, with the tide surging from the south, the mouth of the inlet was a hydraulic vacuum, sucking ocean in from the south and spitting it out to the north.
Sam switched off the engine to save gas and gripped the wheel tighter. He said, “The good news is, we probably don’t have to worry about running aground. This current’s digging a pretty deep trench in there.”
The dhow bucked to the side and the stern slipped sideways. Sam corrected first to starboard, then to port, and the bow realigned on the mouth of the inlet. With both hands clamped on the rail, Remi was leaning over the side, a smile on her face, auburn hair streaming behind her.“How fast are we going?” she called.
“Ten, twelve knots,” Sam replied, laughing. This close to the water’s surface it felt much faster. “Better make your way forward. I’m going to need your eyes.”
“Aye, captain.” She made her way to the bow. “Fifty yards to go,” she called. “Steady on.”
To starboard Sam watched a four-foot wave crash over an exposed sandbar. “Surge coming,” he warned Remi and turned the wheel a few degrees to meet it. The wave hit them on the starboard bow, pushing the dhow sideways. The bow started to swing around off course. Sam muscled the wheel hard to starboard, compensating until the surge passed and the bow found the line again.“Looking good. Steady on,” Remi called. “Twenty yards.”
Sam leaned over the starboard rail and looked down. The indigo water was thirty to forty feet deep, but six feet to the right he could see the white sand bottom through the turquoise water. He leaned to port and saw the same.“We haven’t got much room to spare,” Sam called forward. “How does it look ahead?”
“Narrower still. Want a little drag?”
“Sure.”
Remi shimmied around on her belly, retrieved the Danforth anchor from its mount, tossed it over the bow, and let the line stream between her hands until she felt it skipping along the bottom. She hauled in a few inches of line and secured it to the pulpit rail. The dhow began slowing until they were moving in a jerk-and-surge fashion.“Ten yards,” Remi called.
And then, as if the sun had suddenly been eclipsed, the dhow slipped inside the inlet. To the left and right, walls of green closed in around them; above, a ragged ribbon of blue sky. Sam looked aft and felt a surge of vertigo as the entrance to the inlet seemed to close like an iris door on a spaceship.
“Turn coming up,” Remi called. “Forty-five degrees to starboard.”Sam faced forward again. “Ready when you are.”
“Three . . . two . . . one . . .Turn!”
Sam gave the wheel a quarter spin to port and held it.
“Starboard turn!” Remi shouted.
Sam spun the wheel again.
“Hold it there,” Remi ordered. A few seconds passed. “Okay, start easing back to port. Keep going . . . more . . . Good. Steady on.”
As if on cue, the current died away until the dhow was skimming ahead at a walking pace. The inlet widened out slightly, leaving fifteen feet on both beams.
“Haul anchor,” Sam called. “I think we’re okay.”
Remi retrieved the Danforth and returned to the cockpit. From the banks came the sounds of the jungle easing into twilight: the plaintive squawks of parrots, the croaking of frogs, and the buzz of insects.“It’s so peaceful,” Remi said, looking around. “A little spooky but peaceful.”
Sam grabbed the map from its compartment and unfolded it on the roof of the cabin. Remi clicked on a flashlight. Sam skimmed his index finger around the island. “We need the circumference.”
Remi retrieved the dividers and walked them around the coastline, occasionally marking headlands and landmarks with a pencil. Once done, she scribbled some calculations in the margins, then said, “Big Sukuti is nine miles, give or take. Little Sukuti, about five.”
Sam studied his watch for a moment. “We’ll reach the other mouth in twenty minutes. If that Rinker makes another patrol right away, it’ll be passing the northern side of this inlet about twenty minutes after that. If it doesn’t show up, it probably means no more patrols for the night or they’re only doing them every few hours.”“That’s a big if,” Remi replied. “If the latter, it means we might run into them somewhere along the coastline. We’d better hope we see them before they see us.”
Sam nodded. “Do me a favor. Find every nook and cranny along the coast. We’ll need to be ready to hide on a
