She was just finishing her hasty cleanup when a shadow fell across the doorway. Mira gasped and reached for the flare gun, the closest thing to a weapon that she had, but it was Dane's lean, naked figure that came in, dripping.
"It's definitely them," he said. He was breathing hard; he must have swum at top speed all the way back. "The Colonel and a squad of men, probably his hand-picked loyalists. I counted eight, although it was hard to tell. I was having to stay low and use my sonar."
The fact that he even had sonar was still hard to wrap her mind around. Mira shook her head and kicked dirt over their campfire, scuffing it out. "How soon will they be here?"
"Just a few minutes. What are you doing?"
"I'm getting our stuff together and trying to make it look like no one's been here." She slung the bag over her shoulder and hefted the flare gun. They had two flares for it. It was a pathetic weapon, but better than nothing. Maybe from a distance it would look like an actual gun.
Yes, and theydohave actual guns,she told herself.Probably a lot of them. And they turn into bears.
She could see no way they could possibly win this, but she wasn't about to admit defeat.
"Dane, you should leave," she said suddenly. "Swim away. I'll hide on the island. Maybe I can get a chance to steal their boat, or just try to hide and—"
Dane caught her by the shoulders and looked her in the eyes. "I'm not leaving you. I did that once, although I didn't mean to, and they caught you. Never, ever again."
"We can't fight all of them," she argued. "But you can escape."
"Not without you," Dane said flatly.
Mira had a brief, wild thought of escaping the island riding on his back, the same way they had arrived. But she abandoned it immediately. There was no way an orca with a passenger could outrun a speedboat.
"There is one thing I can try," Dane said. "If I can get to it before they reach the island, I might be able to capsize their boat from underneath."
"Would they drown?"
"Probably not; they can shift and swim ashore. But they'd lose their gear."
"Do it," Mira said firmly, and tried not to think about the awful possibility of being stranded on the island with a bunch of bears and lions. At least they wouldn't have guns. "Maybe if you can flip the boat, we could retrieve it afterwards, leave them here, and escape ourselves."
As she said it, she realized that it was a plan. Maybe not a great plan, but better than nothing.
Dane gave her a firm kiss. "Yes. Let's try it. Stay out of sight if you can."
He left the bunker, ran down the beach with a glorious twinkling of naked buttocks, and threw himself into the water. Mira shook herself.You'd think I would be developing an immunity, but apparently not.
She took a final, quick look around the bunker to make sure she had everything, snugged the bag over her shoulder, and left.
She found a hiding place for the bag between two rocks. With their gear stashed, encumbered with nothing but the flare gun, she started to climb the boulders and immediately ducked down.
The boat was close now. It had motored up near the island and then throttled back. She could hear the voices of the men on it. Standing up a little, she risked a peek to see what they were doing.
The boat rolled on the waves offshore. The men were arguing. It looked like they were having a disagreement about how to approach. The island did seem hard to get to, now that she was examining it from a boat captain's perspective. There were a lot of hidden rocks, visible by the way the waves broke over them. She could see that the men didn't want to risk their boat being holed on the approach.
From here she could recognize the Colonel by his head of silver hair. All of them were wearing similar dark combat gear.
Abruptly the boat rocked as something hit it from underneath.
Mira covered her mouth to smother a laugh. The men on the boat staggered wildly in all directions. She couldn't help thinking of old episodes ofStar Trekwith the actors swaying and stumbling in exaggerated ways as they pretended their ship had been hit by a missile.Photon torpedoes, Captain!she thought. Except in this case, the photon torpedo was an angry orca.
The boat lurched again, yawing so far to the side that it nearly flipped over. One of the men actually fell off this time, going into the water with a tremendous splash. A moment later, he surfaced as a strongly swimming bear.
By now, however, the remaining men in the boat were starting to recover from their surprise. The Colonel snapped an order, and the man at the controls did something Mira couldn't see from here.
She could sense the effects, however. There was a sudden, painful feeling of pressure on her eardrums, and an eruption of splashing near the boat.
They're using the sound thing on him again!she thought in fury. It must be portable, or they had a portable version of it.
