The weather had started calm, but grown rougher each day as she moved further north. Tonight was the worst. The waves tossed her little boat around. She secured the weapons and extra fuel and food and water and surveillance gear as best she could, but inevitably they crashed from side to side as well. The wind died down around midnight, and she made great time after that.

She found a small, unlit island before dawn, settled into a narrow cove for the day. She’d made seventy miles that night. She was now just thirty miles from Apyar Kyun.

Sam ate all she could, cleaned her shoulder wound, then forced herself to sleep. Slumber came slowly, and when it came, she dreamt of Sarai, of Jake, of death.

Sam woke gasping, had to jam her own hand into her mouth to silence herself. It was only noon. There would be no more sleep.

She readied her gear instead, stripping it down, cleaning it, assembling it, testing it. Rinse. Repeat.

The sun dropped lower in the sky. It was Thursday afternoon now. She could reach Apyar Kyun before midnight, spend this night studying the island, scanning it with the high-powered scope and infrared imagers Lo Prang’s men had provided, find a way to get her kids back.

Sam steered her little smuggler’s boat out of the cove, out into the water. It was rougher away from the island she’d spent the day at, but the engines kept her moving forward. The waves buffeted her, rocked her, but she endured.

She fought the wind and waves for four hours, pushed within ten miles of Apyar Kyun. The winds died, and Sam quietly rejoiced, and progress got easier. She was just a mile from Apyar Kyun, a few hundred yards past a final tiny unnamed island, when the storm came back with a vengeance.

The big wave hit her from the port side, from out in the deeps, and battered the little boat to the side. The force of the blow snapped an anchor point, loosing a strap. Gear she’d secured came free. A pile of water jugs toppled to the bottom of the boat. More anchor points failed. A stack of food collapsed. A box of ammunition flew across the cabin and struck the far side.

The boat tilted precariously, up at thirty degrees, forty-five degrees, sixty degrees. Sam threw herself at the rising side, grabbed a strut, hauled her body in to counterweight the boat. It teetered on the edge of capsizing then fell back into place with a shuddering crash into the next trough.

Sam grabbed for the controls, scrambled to turn the boat into the next wave. She got the nose around as the next wave hit her hard, sending the loose gear flying. Something hard and metal struck her in the head.