The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

The crab claw was an ancient sail, used for over a thousand years and very effective at propelling small boats without being ungainly. Ahead of it Kurt’s addition to the raft billowed in a ten-foot arc. The more modern-looking sail was a makeshift version of a spinnaker. It acted something like a wing and allowed the raft to sail closer to the wind.

Behind him, four similar rafts followed them. A flotilla from Pickett’s Island.

The plan was to sneak aboard and take over the floating island. With eighteen men plus Leilani and himself, five of the Pain Makers and forty rifles—the extras being brought along to arm the prisoners Kurt hoped to set free—it would almost be a fair fight, providing Kurt could lead them to the battleground.

He lowered the sextant.

“Any luck?” Leilani asked.

“No,” he said. “We’re sailing blind.”

Kurt stepped back from the bow and put the sextant away. He turned to Tautog. “Let’s stay on this heading for now.”

Tautog nodded. He and his nephew Varu were guiding the boat.

The fleet had been sailing for five hours. They’d been making good time because the winds had reversed direction, the way sea and land breezes alternated as day turned to night on the coast. The pattern was helpful, though it shouldn’t have been occurring in the open ocean. Kurt put it down to Jinn’s weather manipulation.

“You’re worried,” Leilani said, moving closer to him.

“I may have just sailed us all into oblivion.”

Kurt turned his gaze back to the John Bury’s old charts. Pickett had determined the island’s exact position and marked it on the map where there had been nothing but blue ocean. He’d also marked the other two islands and drawn a circle around them. The Bury Archipelago was scribbled in faded pen along with the letters U.S. It seemed Pickett had claimed them for America.

Leilani looked over his shoulder. “Where are we?”

“Roughly here,” Kurt said, pointing to a spot on the map.

“And where’s Aqua-Terra?”

“That’s a very good question,” he said.

After discovering the Pain Maker, Kurt had immediately gone to the charts. After a series of estimations and calculations, he’d guessed at Aqua-Terra’s location, assuming, perhaps foolishly, that it would remain in the same general area. Judging from the wind and the distance from Pickett’s Island, he calculated that they could just about reach Aqua-Terra before dawn if they left right away.

Any real delay would have made it impossible and meant waiting until the next night, since approaching the island in daylight would have been suicide. And that twenty-four-hour hold meant leaving Paul, Gamay and the others in Jinn’s clutches. It meant another day for Jinn’s scheme to play out or for him to leave the island behind and disappear. Kurt considered those possibilities unacceptable, and the fleet had moved out with great haste.

As it turned out, the small boats had sailed better than Kurt thought they would, enjoying more favorable winds along the way. They were well ahead of his schedule, but also it seemed on the verge of being lost.

“When we last saw Aqua-Terra, it was sitting idle right here,” he said. “If it stayed that way, we should be right on top of it.”

“I see light,” Varu said. “Light off the port bow.”

All eyes swung to port. There, perhaps three miles away, was a dimly glowing apparition. It almost looked like a ghost ship floating in the fog, but it was Marchetti’s island. It was running dark, with only a few lights turned on here and there.

Leilani smiled. “You were saying?”

Kurt grinned. “Let’s turn to the northeast,” he said to Tautog and then pointed. “That way.”

Tautog and Varu shifted the rudder and the sails. The boat came around to a northeasterly heading. The rest of the fleet matched the turn.

“Why not sail toward it?” Leilani asked.

Kurt kept an eye on his bearings and began counting. “A half mile to the northeast and we can turn and run almost straight downwind toward the island. It’ll give us more speed and better maneuverability.”

“What if they spot us?” she asked.

“The island is two thousand feet long and twenty stories high in places and we almost missed it. We’re on a dark raft, with dark sails and coming at them in the middle of a foggy night. Even a lookout won’t be able to see us until we’re right on top of them. And according to Ishmael, Jinn has no more than thirty men on board, at least half of them have to be asleep. The chances of anyone noticing us are slim.”

KURT WAS THREE-QUARTERS CORRECT. Twenty of Jinn’s thirty men were asleep. A few others manned the brig and still others worked on the damaged engine room with the traitors from Marchetti’s crew. Only two lookouts were posted. They patrolled the island, but there was no way they could adequately watch what was essentially a mile of shoreline and a dozen acres of deck.