‘I’m going to walk up to whoever’s in charge of the base, surrender, and tell them any damn pack of lies I can come up with to keep them all occupied long enough for your friends to sneak in and, with luck, spring Kip Mayer.’

I remembered to close my mouth. ‘And that’s actually going to work?’

‘I don’t know,’ Howes replied. ‘But if they’re as dumb as I think they are, the Patriots are all going to be too busy following orders – either looking for Vishnevsky, or guarding the transfer stages. I don’t think they’re expecting anyone to try and rescue Mayer, especially not if they’re sure he can’t get off the island any other way.’

‘Sounds dangerous,’ I hazarded.

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘That’s why you’ve all got guns.’

I nodded, embarrassed.

Howes stood carefully. He was steady on his feet despite his injury. ‘Anyone with a desperate need to take a shit, do it now,’ he announced. ‘Otherwise, I think it’s time we got moving.’

TWENTY-TWO

I’d been trying hard to think of some way we could maybe drive up to the shipwreck without running into any more trouble, but I kept coming up blank, particularly since everything with four wheels had been appropriated by the Patriots. That seemed to leave the four of us little choice but to walk the whole damn way across the island and take our chances, regardless of how long it took, or the danger of being spotted by another Patriot patrol. I explained my concerns to Rozalia as we all hustled back out of the Mauna Loa.

‘Why don’t we just go by boat?’ she suggested, once Howes and the others had slipped off in the direction of the compound.

I came to a halt, wondering how I could have been so dumb as not to think of anything so obvious. We were on an island, after all, and our destination was just a few kilometres up the coast. It wasn’t even as if I lacked sailing experience of my own.

Yuichi and Oskar became excited at the prospect.

‘Sounds great,’ I said, ‘but where the hell are we going to find a working boat?’ All I’d seen were a few dilapidated rowing boats down by the harbour that looked as if they’d disintegrate the moment they hit the water.

‘There’s an old Chilean Navy Coast Guard station at the harbour’s edge,’ Rozalia explained. ‘There’s a search-and-rescue dinghy in there that’s easily big enough for all of us, and it’s in good condition as well. There’s also a slipway leading straight into the water, and nobody’ll be able to see us while we’re working inside the station.’

‘Shit, yes,’ said Yuichi. ‘You were fixing that boat up with Nadia, said you were going to take some of us out in it some time.’