The Recruit

23. Cruise

Ash and Serena stood on either side of the outboard motor with their palms pressed against the back of the boat. It had taken a succession of almighty shoves to nudge the bow over the edge of the riverbank.

"We should have emptied everything out first," Serena said, wiping a gallon of sweat off her face.

"Not worth it now," Ash puffed. "I think the next one will do the trick. Ready?"

They pushed the hull past its centre of gravity. It tipped forward and began sliding. A backwash ran up the shallow embankment, the muddy water swirling over the toes of their boots.

Water surged over the bow as the boat punched the water. For a second, they both thought it was going under. When the craft stopped rocking, the rim of the hull was only a couple of centimetres above the waterline. Each swell in the river splashed a drop more water over the side. The river wasn't deep enough to put the boat beyond rescue if it sunk, but the engine and half their equipment would be wrecked, along with any chance they had of making the next checkpoint.

Serena waded in up to her waist and grabbed a can of fuel out of the boat, being careful not to lean on the hull. Ash positioned himself nearer to shore, took the can off Serena and hurled it towards dry ground.

Once they'd pulled out their sodden packs, fresh water and fuel cans, the boat sat higher in the water.

"Phew," Ash gasped. "That was too close."

"Brilliant time-saving idea," Serena said furiously. "I told you we should have taken the stuff out."

"You didn't," Ash said. Ash was nearly right. Leaving the stuff in the boat was his idea, but Serena's objection had been on the basis that they wouldn't have the strength to push it, not that the extra weight might make the boat sink when it hit the water.

Ash grabbed a couple of cooking pots from the shore and they bailed out all the water. When the bottom of the boat was dry, they turned to the fuel and equipment scattered along the embankment.

"I suppose it's the same as yesterday," Serena said. "What do we need? What can we leave behind?"

It made Ash queasy when he thought about how close they'd come to failing on the ninety-eighth day out of a hundred. Failing this close to the end of training would completely do your head in. The boat was now trundling upstream, against the current. Their sodden packs and equipment were spread over the deck, drying in the morning sun.

The river varied in size. Some places, shallow water stretched over thirty metres wide. They had to go slowly, with Ash leaning over the bow, shouting directions so that Serena didn't ground the hull. When things got desperate, Ash used a wooden oar to nudge them away from disaster. In the narrow sections, the river was deeper and the currents stronger. Trees and bushes loomed over the water and they had to duck under low branches.

When it was plain sailing, Serena would open up the throttle and the gentle put-put of the engine turned into a whine, accompanied by thick blue exhaust fumes. She stayed on the wooden bench near the outboard motor, making gentle adjustments to their course and marking off progress on her chart. Ash's job was more physically demanding; but even though the sun was fierce and working with the oar strained his shoulders, he preferred it to taking responsibility for navigating them safely through the dead ends and tributaries leading towards the lake.

It was the hottest part of the day when they broke on to open water. The lake ran further than you could see through the glaring sun. Ash abandoned his oar and sat on a fuel can in the middle of the boat, occasionally bailing out the water sloshing around the hull.

"Can you see the trawler anywhere?" Serena asked. "If I've read the German in my briefing right, it's on a mud bank at the north end of the lake, marked by three red warning buoys."

Ash stood up, squinting in a vain attempt to cut out the glare off the water. It was a pity they didn't have sunglasses.

"I can't see squat," Ash said. "We'll just have to keep cruising around the edge until we spot it."

Serena looked at her watch. "We've got two hours until the deadline, but the sooner we get to this checkpoint, the longer we have to reach the next one."

There was no other traffic on the lake. The fishing wharves, shacks and warehouses along the shoreline were desolate. There were well maintained roads and even a couple of telephone boxes, but no people anywhere. Red warning posts were hammered into the mud every few hundred metres. The writing was in Sarawak, so Ash couldn't read the words, but the yellow and black stripes and the bolts of lightning sent out a message that was clear in any language: stay the hell out of here.

"This is freaky," Ash said. "What's going on?"

"According to this map, they're building a giant dam upriver," Serena said. "I guess this whole area is going to be flooded. Everyone's had to leave, which makes this the ideal spot for us to train without any locals sticking their noses in."

Ash toppled backwards as Serena put on full rudder and opened up the throttle. For a couple of nervous seconds he thought he was going over the side.

"For god's sake," Ash shouted furiously. "Tell me before you do that next time."

The boat bounced over tiny waves towards the silhouette Serena had spotted in the distance. The rusting trawler was about fifteen metres long, leaning on its side in the mud. Another boat, identical to their own, was tied to the metal deck rail.

Serena bumped the boat into the mud bank. Ash hopped over the bow and tied it off.

"Anybody in there?" Ash shouted.

Brendan stuck his head through a window. "What took you two so long?" Brendan asked.

The exterior of the boat was crusted in bird crap. They tried not to touch it as they crawled through a lopsided doorway into the bridge. There were masses of holes and hanging wires. Everything of value had been stripped for salvage, including the navigational equipment, the glass in the windows and even the seat cushion off the captain's chair. Brendan and Shauna looked muddy and tired. They had maps and briefing papers spread out over the floor.

"How long have you been here?" Serena asked.

"Twenty minutes or so," Shauna said

"Any sign of Dustin and Clemont?"

"They'd been and gone before us," Shauna said. "They left the envelope from their dossier on the floor. Yours is over there as well."

Serena grabbed the padded envelope, tore it open and handed Ash the half written in French.

"So we're running last," Ash said.

"We've already worked out most of ours," Brendan said. "Maybe we can help you two catch up."

Ash thought it was a kind offer, but Serena took it the wrong way.

"We're quite capable of working it out for ourselves," she said indignantly. "We've all come from different camps and we're all going to different places. Maybe we had a longer first stint and a shorter second stint. I don't see how anyone could have done the journey much faster than we did."

"We wasted a good half hour when we nearly sank the boat," Ash said.

Brendan laughed, "How did you manage that?"

"It was loaded up when we pushed it off the embankment."

"God," Shauna gasped. "You never would have got up the river if you'd flooded the engine."

"I know you guys are on a different route to the final checkpoint," Brendan said. "But if your briefing is the same as ours, it tells you to take a different route back towards the sea and get to the third checkpoint, less than fifteen kilometres away, by 2200."

Serena had done a quick skim through her briefing and nodded. "Different route ... Fifteen kilometres by 2200 ... That's more or less what it says here."

Ash broke into a grin. "Fifteen kilometres in nine hours. That's easy."

Brendan, Shauna and Serena all stared at him like he was a total idiot.

"Oh," Ash said, when it clicked into place how dumb he was being. "There's going to be some kind of catch, isn't there?"