“I don’t know about you, Elna, but I’m ready for a nap when we get back,” he said, stepping into the water.
“Not sure I’ll ever be able to sleep again,” she replied.
As she waded into the water, she was struck again at how cold the bay was. It soaked through her clothes, and she immediately started to shiver. Spence and Golf were moving fast. She saw them in the distance, the water up to their chests. Malin was having trouble, wobbling from time to time, the pack threatening to fall into the water. Elna waded up beside him and reached up with her right hand, adding some stability to the pack.
“After all of this, if we don’t save at least one life with this stuff, I’ll be pissed,” he muttered.
As they approached the boat, she saw Raymond more clearly. He was standing at the railing, hands over his head, beckoning them. When Prig and Golf reached the port side of the boat, he tossed a small rope ladder over the side. Prig boosted his injured friend out of the water, then Raymond reached down to help him. With Prig pushing and Raymond using his good arm to pull, they managed to get him to the ladder. Even then, it took Golf a bit to grab hold of a rung, and even longer to climb up into the boat, even as Raymond continued trying to help. Finally, after almost a full minute, the injured Marine rolled onto the deck with a groan.
“We’ll be riding heavy on the way back,” Raymond said. “We need most of the weight on the upwind side of the boat or we’ll tip over.”
Prig climbed up next and, following Raymond’s instructions, moved to the starboard side of the boat, pulling Golf along with him. Spence had just started up the ladder when Elna heard some kind of commotion behind her. She looked back, but in the process, her hand moved away from Malin’s pack. He promptly dropped it in the water.
“Well, it was inevitable,” he muttered, fishing it out of the cold, salty bay water.
Elna’s gaze was drawn up the slope at the shoreline. Shapes rose from beyond the ridge: camouflage shirts and dark rifles. She caught a glint of metal on the cap of the tallest of the figures. A silver star.
“Guys, we gotta go,” Prig shouted from on deck.
Spence had just made it to the top of the ladder, and Raymond helped pull him over the gunwale. Archer came next, the pack still hoisted above her head. Spence reached down and grabbed it out of her hands, tossing it onto the seat beside the tiller.
“Hurry up, people!” Prig shouted. “Get in the boat.”
Archer had just begun to climb the ladder when gunshots rang out. It sounded like distant firecrackers, but then Elna heard sizzling in the water. She realized it was bullets hitting around her. A rush of terror flooded her body, giving her a burst of energy that caused her to surge forward. Spence and Prig still had the rifles they’d looted, and though they’d been soaked in the bay, they pulled them off their shoulders and took up positions in the middle of the deck, aiming back toward the beach.
A bullet punched a hole in the side of the cabin. Another cut a small hole in the patched mainsail. Archer was near the top of the ladder, pulling herself over. A third bullet caught her right between the shoulder blades. Elna happened to be looking directly at her when it happened. Her body lurched against the gunwale, and she gasped loudly. Then she slid off the ladder into the water, leaving bright smears of red against the gunwale and down the side of the boat.
Prig and Spence returned fire. Despite being wet, the AK-47s seemed to operate just fine, and they unleashed round after round in the direction of the slope. Raymond reached down and grabbed Archer’s wrists, trying to pull her up into the boat, but her head lolled back on her shoulders, eyes wide. She was already dead. Right through the heart. Fortunately, the militiamen had ceased to fire, and Elna could just make out their shapes ducking down beneath the slope.
“I can’t get her,” Raymond said, still trying to pull Archer into the boat.
All of his effort was causing the sailboat to tip dangerously to the port side. Prig finally backed up in an attempt to balance out the weight, but it wasn’t enough. Spence shouldered his rifle and approached Raymond.
“She’s gone. She’s gone,” he shouted, pulling Archer’s hands out of Raymond’s grasp. “Nothing we can do for her.”
“Attach a line to the body,” Spence said. “We can drag her back. She deserves a proper burial.”
“We’re under fire, Spence,” Prig said, sharply. “Let her go.”
As Raymond stumbled backward, Spence reached down under Archer’s collar and pulled something over her head. Elna heard a faint jingle and realized it was her dog tags. He pocketed them, then let her body fall back into the water.
“I’ll kill everyone in the camp for this, I swear to God,” he muttered. He pulled the rifle off his shoulder and took another shot at the beach. “Her life is worth a hundred of theirs.”
Archer was floating facedown, only her shoulders and the back of her head visible above the water. Malin had to push past the body to get up the ladder. He climbed on deck. Elna came last. As she did, her fingers brushed through the blood on the side of the boat.
“Die, scumbags, die,” Spence yelled, unloading the rest of the magazine.
More bullets came from the beach. Elna heard them sizzling in the air, hitting the water. One shot ricocheted off the water with a splash. She heard a bullet ring off the metal boom, another shattered the tiny
