Has it really been just two days since I left Jayapura? What have I got myself tangled up in?

This alternative reality was fast becoming a waking nightmare, and she was nowhere near the border.

Mia did the best she could to clean up Goki’s wounds using bottled water and antiseptic. Clipping away the hair with surgical scissors, she closed the ugly split on the back of his head with adhesive strips, then wrapped his head in a bandage as gently as she could.

Goki groaned softly as she finished the taping up.

‘Can you hear me?’ Mia asked in ragged Indonesian. ‘You’ve been in an accident. Shall I get Sura to translate?’

On hearing that name, Goki flinched. He groped clumsily behind his back for a moment, then the effort overwhelmed him and he slid back into unconsciousness.

Mia realised he’d been looking for his knife.

One quarter of the stricken Albany was fully aground, and the several metres of exposed red waterline at her bow indicated the challenge they faced trying to get her off.

‘What do you think?’ Nash asked Kaboro, who was gauging their depth amidships to stern with a lead line. ‘Is the channel deep enough?’

‘Perhaps,’ he frowned. ‘Our draught is 1.75 metres. If we unload the cargo, we might get her off tomorrow on the last vestiges of the high tide. But if the propellers or their shafts are damaged, we’re going nowhere.’

Nash nodded. Going nowhere was not an option. Not with God only knew what trouble brewing. While the chopper was an escape route, it could only take four at a time, and he was not keen on abandoning 175,000 dollars’ worth of high-tech dive gear. Kaboro had said the boat would be picked clean within twenty-four hours once the locals found it.

He looked down at the murky water and tried not to dwell on what it contained.

‘I guess there’s only one way to find out.’

Thanks to Kaboro’s lashings, Nash’s gear was mostly secure, but the Indonesian’s scattered, jumbled equipment was blocking access to his rack of scuba tanks. Working together, Nash, Kaboro and Douglas began refilling spilled crates and stacking them out of the way.

‘What do you need pumps in a cave for?’ Nash stopped to ask, as they heaved the second of two high-pressure models to one side.

‘Not to mention a couple of hundred metres of heavy-duty PVC pipe.’ Douglas indicated the heavy rolls, still wedged in the angled bow cavity. ‘Are they planning on pumping the bloody Hoosenbeck out?’

There was a trunk holding heavy 1500-watt portable lights; another contained truck batteries, two generators and a plastic barrel full of cables. When they uncovered the oxyacetylene kit, the growing doubt in Nash’s stomach ballooned into a fully fledged conviction.

‘They’ve been having us on. This was no film shoot.’

Douglas wiped the sweat from his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’