“What do you think, Spence?” Prig asked him. “We had a few hiccups along the way, but we’re here.”
“I think it could have gone a lot worse, sir,” Spence said, chewing loudly. “Those guys in the camp are clowns. Guns and camo shirts don’t make you a military. Still, we’re lucky they wanted us alive for questioning. There were a heck of a lot of AK-47s in the camp.”
“Let’s just hope Fish gets back in one piece.” Prig glanced over his shoulder, made eye contact with Elna, then spoke a little softer. “I know he thinks he’s invincible, but he’s not. None of us are.”
Elna found herself standing awkwardly beside the sign, wondering what to do next.
I’m not going to be a pushover, she told herself, giving Malin a stern look. I don’t care who these people are.
3
With Marines standing on either side of him, Malin felt like he was in the center of a vise, just waiting for it to slam shut. They’d been nothing but friendly and grateful thus far, but the strangeness of their presence on the island was a lot more intense than he’d expected.
But what else were we supposed to do? They’ve got that weirdo in the wetsuit climbing into the drawbridge motor like a spider. We couldn’t keep them out, and they were being shot at.
He let his forearm brush the cold pistol at his hip. Not that it did him any good. He wasn’t going to draw a weapon on these guys. They’d all moved to a rocky shelf east of the road just above the shoreline. Looking through the telescope, Elna said she could no longer see Rod’s men.
“Maybe they retreated back to their camp,” she suggested.
Maybe we should take the sloop and sail off to another island, Malin thought. A passing thought, of course. No place that he knew of was safer than the island, even with this group of outsiders now milling about.
“I see your swimmer,” Elna said, the telescope pressed to her eye. “He’s coming fast.”
She handed the telescope to the staff sergeant, the slightly goofy, white-haired redneck who went by the name “Prig.” He took it, gazed off across the bay, and grunted.
“Yep, that’s Fish, moving like a fish,” he said, the words chewed up by his Southern accent.
A moment later, Malin spotted the little blotchy shape cutting through the water like a knife. Indeed, their comrade was like an Olympic swimmer. He was moving fast, a couple hundred yards out but closing in. Malin stepped up on a higher rock to get a more expansive view of the bay.
“Hell, we wouldn’t have made it out of that militia camp if it hadn’t been for Fish,” one of the other Marines said. Malin thought his name was Spence. The man popped Mentos like an addict, which meant he was always talking and chewing at the same time.
Prig made a subtle gesture at Spence that Malin read as “Stop talking. You’ll say too much.” Spence nodded.
Too late. He’d said enough to pique Malin’s interest. So, they’d come from Rod’s camp. What was the story there? How had a bunch of Marines found themselves in a ragtag militia camp? Questions for another time, perhaps, but if Elna didn’t ask, he was going to. They deserved to know the reason for the invasion.
Fish was close enough now that Malin could make out the strange pattern of stripes and swirls on his wetsuit. The guy had an impressive front crawl swimming style, though the big arm movements seemed like they must be exhausting. The dude had swum miles and miles back and forth from drawbridge to drawbridge and now all the way back to the island, and he hadn’t slowed down at all.
Impressed by this display of raw endurance, Malin only gradually realized that his eye had been drawn northward. He spotted what appeared to be a patch of dark water, as if somehow the deep green-brown of the bay had been discolored. Then he realized it had a distinctive—and familiar—shape, and that the tip of a dorsal fin could be seen breaching the rough water.
Malin immediately cupped a hand beside his mouth and shouted, “Shark!”
His sudden shout startled the entire group standing on the rocks. Prig stumbled to one side, as if Malin had tried to punch him. The others lurched or shuddered or swung around. Elna raised a hand, as if to ward off a blow.
Then she spotted the shark and her shout joined his. “Shark! Right there.”
The man called Fish was a couple hundred feet out now, but the shark was coming from the northeast, trying to cut him off before he reached shore. Malin wasn’t much of a shark expert, though years of surfing had attuned his gaze to notice and track them. This one seemed to be about fifteen feet long, though he wasn’t sure of its species.
“Fish, over your shoulder,” Prig yelled. “Look out!”
The swimmer broke stride just for a second, lifting his head above the water and looking back behind him. After a moment, he spotted the shark and made a little motion with his right hand, as if to shoo it away. Then he resumed swimming as he had before.
“Look at him, man,” Prig said, with a laugh. “He ain’t scared of that shark. He’s just coming straight on.”
The shark got directly behind the swimmer and seemed to lunge forward, its tail thrashing in the water. Malin could see it in his mind’s eye. It would grab Fish by the foot, drag him down into the murky water, and that would be the end of it.
This guy’s not brave. He’s an idiot.
But the shark turned suddenly to its right, circled around, and swam away.
“Too shallow,” Elna said. “The guy actually outswam the shark.”
The Marines began to whoop and cheer. Fish finally reached shallow enough water that he stood up, grimacing, and stumbled toward the rocks. He definitely had
