Dark Heart by Peter Tonkin

that was what made the difference.
    It took longer to untie Esan from the oars, loosen his hands – though not his feet – and help him along the length of the boat – all the while keeping the AK trained on him – than it did for him to get the motor started. Then, as he sat back down in the bottom of the little craft, balancing Celine, with his shoulders at the bow, Anastasia tried to take them in a smooth arc away from the relentlessly approaching shore.
    But what seemed like a big step forward proved very nearly disastrous. Anastasia had never handled an outboard before and she couldn’t get used to the counter-intuitive way it seemed to work. To go right, she had to push the handle left, and vice-versa. All too swiftly she found that her attempts to break out of the current were simply pushing them more firmly into its rapidly tightening grip. The red cliffs of the shore seemed to exercise some kind of magical attraction for the little vessel. The persistent beating of the late-morning sun on her unprotected head simply added to the gathering feeling that things were slipping out of control.
    She had not panicked last night because she had felt confident with the AK-47; because she was focussed on rescuing Celine. She came close to panic now because she did not understand the boat or feel that she was really in control of it. But this time she was completely responsible for Celine and her continued welfare. Not to mention Ado and this strange boy-soldier. And it occurred to her now at the worst possible moment that if the boat went over, the tied-up boy would drown at once and Celine would not even be able to swim for safety with her shoulder in the state it was.
    So when a tongue of the shore suddenly appeared, stuck out in a low, curving hook that seemed little more than a sandbar just above the racing surface immediately ahead of them, she pulled the outboard’s rudder-arm firmly in to her side without a moment’s hesitation and ran the boat hard up on to it.

EIGHT
War-game
    R ichard ran up the gangplank on to Captain Caleb Maina’s command with almost boyish excitement. Unable to stop himself, he trailed his fingers along the sleek vessel’s side as he moved, making a deep and personal contact. The neat, spare ship reminded him vividly of Heritage Mariner’s
Poseidon
, for she was also basically a corvette. The immediate difference was that, as he reached the top of the companionway and turned to step aboard, he could see that on
Otobo
’s foredeck there was a 125mm naval gun in its grey-white pillbox housing instead of the bright yellow deep-sea exploration vessel
Neptune.
    A glance upward past this showed Richard enclosed bridge wings and the blank one-step design of the bridge-house front was pretty similar to
Poseidon
’s too. He had time to look around, for as he stepped down on to the weather deck at the head of the companionway, he was met by a small armed guard led by the man who was clearly the ship’s security officer – who handed him a plastic-coated ID badge complete with photo to pin on his lapel before allowing him to proceed. While he did all this, the captain waited courteously a few steps ahead. Then they were off.
    Aware of Robin, almost equally excitedly striding along at his shoulder, also securing her ID, Richard followed Captain Caleb along the familiar weather deck and in through the bulkhead door into the dark coolness of the air-conditioned bridge house. The captain swung round at the foot of the companionway, his long eyes crinkling into a smile. ‘I believe I may rely on you to know your way around,’ he said. ‘Now that you have your IDs, please feel free to proceed up to the command bridge while I return to the companionway and see to the greeting and disposition of the other, less shipshape, guests. This is A Deck, of course. The command bridge is on D. My watch officer, First Lieutenant Sanda, is waiting to show you