They gathered their packs and hiked the half mile back to their skiff, which they’d tied to a grounded cypress stump. Sam cast off and pushed the boat into deeper water, wading up to his waist, while Remi yanked the engine’s starter cord. The motor growled to life and Sam climbed in.
She turned the bow into the channel and throttled up. The nearest town and their base of operations was Snow Hill, three miles up the Pocomoke River. The B&B they’d chosen had a surprisingly decent wine cellar and a crab bisque that had put Remi in culinary heaven at the previous night’s supper.
They motored along in silence, lulled by the soft gurgle of the motor and gazing at the overhanging canopy. Suddenly Sam turned in his seat, looking to the right.
“Remi, slow down.”
She throttled back. “What is it?”
He grabbed a pair of binoculars from his pack and raised them to his eyes. Fifty yards away on the bank there was a gap in the foliage—another hidden inlet among the dozens they’d already seen. The entrance was partially blocked by a tangle of branches piled up by the storm.
“What do you see?” she asked.
“Something . . . I don’t know,” he muttered. “I thought I saw a line in the foliage . . . a curve or something. Didn’t look natural. Can you get me over there?”
She turned the rudder and aimed the skiff at the mouth of the inlet. “Sam, are you hallucinating? Did you drink enough water today?”
He nodded, his attention fixed on the inlet. “More than enough.”
With a soft crunch, the skiff’s nose bumped into the mound of branches. The inlet was wider than it looked, nearly fifty feet across. Sam looped the bow line around one of the larger limbs, then slipped his legs over the gunwale and rolled into the water.
“Sam, what’re you doing?”
“I’ll be right back. Stay here.”
“Like hell.”
Before she could say more, Sam took a breath, ducked underwater, and disappeared. Twenty seconds later Remi heard a splash on the other side of the branches, followed by Sam sucking in a lungful of air.
She called, “Sam, are you—”
“I’m fine. Be back in a minute.”
One minute turned into two, then three. Finally Sam called through the foliage, “Remi, can you join me, please?”
She could hear the mischievous lilt in his voice, and thought,
“I need you to come here.”
“Sam, I just now started to dry off. Can’t you—”
“No, you’re going to want to see this. Trust me.”
Remi sighed, then slipped over the side into the water. Ten seconds later she was treading water beside him. The trees on either side of the inlet formed an almost solid canopy over the water, enclosing them in a tunnel of green. Here and there sunlight stippled the algae-filmed surface.
“Hi, nice of you to come,” he said with a grin and a peck on her cheek.
“Okay, smarty-pants, what are we—”
He rapped his knuckles against the misshapen log he had his arm draped over, but instead of a dull thud she heard a metallic gong.
“What is that?”
“Not sure yet. Part of it—can’t be sure what part until I get down there and get inside.”
“Part of what? Get inside what?”
“This way, come on.”
Taking her by the hand, Sam sidestroked deeper into the inlet and around a corner, where the course narrowed to twenty feet. He stopped and pointed to a vine-covered cypress trunk near the bank. “There. You see it?”
She squinted, tilted her head left, then right. “No. What am I looking for?”
“That branch sticking out of the water, the one that ends in a T shape. . . .”
“Okay, I see it.”
“Look harder. Squint. It helps.”
She did, narrowing her eyes until slowly what she was seeing registered on her brain. She gasped. “Good Lord, is that a . . . It can’t be.”
Grinning from ear to ear, Sam nodded. “Yep. It is. That, my dear, is a submarine’s periscope.”
Or, Bondaruk thought, God not help them. No matter. Storms and disease and yes, even war, were nature’s way of culling the herd. He had little patience for people who didn’t have the sense or strength to protect themselves against the violence of life. It was a lesson he’d learned as a boy, and one that he’d never forgotten.