Val helped with aim and showed everyone how to load the weapons. The boom and ding of bullets put Serina on edge.

“They’re terrible,” Anika said, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared at the women training.

“We’re all new at this,” Serina reminded her. “It will take time. We’ll get there.”

“We don’t have time,” Anika replied. “A week at most.”

“That’s not our only problem,” Val said, approaching them. “There’s only so much ammunition… if we want to have enough to subdue the guards on the prison boat, we can only train like this once or twice more.”

“But no one is hitting the targets!” Anika exclaimed. Her words were punctuated by the percussion of gunfire.

“How many guns do we have?” Serina watched the women shooting. The concrete wall was quite pockmarked by now, but the circles Val had drawn on it had alarmingly few dings inside them. Maris hit the target a couple of times. Val was right—she was doing well.

“These four, plus forty or so more in the compound,” Val said. “But we’ve only got enough ammunition for three or four rounds if we use them all at once. Doesn’t leave much for training.”

Serina didn’t say anything for a moment. She pictured herself back on the cliff watching Nomi’s boat arrive, its steam engines slowing, the shriek as it ran along the concrete pier. The two guards jumped out. How many guards had there been when she herself arrived? Four or five on the boat? And then a couple on the dock to meet them.

“This doesn’t have to be a large battle,” she mused, playing it out in her mind. “There are four or five guards, and they’re expecting a couple of island guards to meet them. Right, Val?”

He nodded. “Four or five guards, plus two sailors. Six men, maybe as many as eight, if there are a lot of women to transport.”

“If there are no guards waiting on the pier when the boat docks, what would the men do?” Serina asked, trying to work through the possible scenarios.

Val scuffed his boot against the rough volcanic ground as he thought. “They’d disembark maybe, try to figure out what’s wrong.”

“So they wouldn’t assume they were under attack right away? They wouldn’t use the prisoners as shields or anything like that?” Serina waited while he considered. The day had turned hot and dry, the screaming winds blowing the sulfuric smoke of the volcano in their direction. It was giving her a headache.

“I don’t think so. Not at first, anyway,” he said at last.

“What are you getting at?” Anika asked.