The can hit the wooden jetty and exploded into a wall of flame that spread right across the opening — on the wood, on the concrete, on the water in between. Anastasia risked a dash back and round into the raised wheelhouse, three steps up from the deck where Esan was helping Ado pull Celine to her feet. She glanced around the familiar little space in the flickering dazzle of the flames behind her. The windows were gone. So was most of the equipment. It looked as though the radio was defunct. Its guts lay scattered everywhere; and so did those of the venerable GPS. But the wheel was intact. So were the levers controlling the diesel. All she had to do was turn the key in the dashboard and pray. She did — and, not for the first time that night, her prayers were answered.
Anastasia held Nellie’s head as far across the current as she could while she eased the grumbling motor up to speed, feeling the single shaft shaking in its tubular bedding beneath the deck with the soles of her bare feet, feeling the propeller grip with all the vividness of a fisherman sensing a bite on his line, and finally feeling the battered, flat-bottomed hull attain steerage way. Without the GPS for positioning and the radio for help, she would find it hard to get Nellie to the dock at Malebo. But that had to be her immediate destination. There was at the very least a clinic in the little riverside township where Celine’s condition could be assessed. Then it would be downriver to Granville Harbour, get some help, tool up and get back upstream to kick some serious butt. And, talking of butt…
‘Esan,’ called Anastasia. ‘Can somebody bring me my jeans? I want to give you a great big thank-you hug, but I’ll be damned if I’ll do it like this. You’ve earned quite a lot, boy, but there are limits.’
Ado came in a moment later, her feet crunching on the shattered glass, and handed Anastasia her jeans. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Could you hold the wheel for a moment while I climb into these?’ As Ado did what she asked and Anastasia slid on her jeans, she asked, gently, ‘Are you OK, Ado?’
‘Thanks to you,’ said the young woman quietly. ‘Thanks to you and to Esan.’
‘Don’t do yourself down, girl,’ said Anastasia, buttoning her fly and tightening her belt. ‘You were doing a real good job yourself. Wasn’t it here or hereabouts they had an army of women warriors? Only women? Wiped the floor with the French for years. Amazons for real?’
‘I have never heard of such a thing,’ Ado answered.
‘Well I’m pretty sure I’m right. And I’ll bet some ancestor of yours was at least a sergeant in that army! Hell —’ she laughed, looking out into the velvety, tree-lined darkness of the south bank — ‘I bet she’s still out there, with the rest of your ancestors in the forest.’
Ado smiled.
‘How’s Celine?’ asked Anastasia, taking back the wheel.
‘Nowhere near better yet.’
‘I’m planning to get her to the clinic in Malebo. I’d be happier if it was me that was wounded and Celine was doing the tending. She’s one hell of a doctor.’
Ado said, ‘If you had been the one who was wounded and Celine had been the one who was well, then we’d all be dead now. Or still being raped in that place. Celine would never have done what you did. You saved us. It was not your ancestors who were warriors. It is you. You are a warrior.’ And she walked out.
Anastasia was still crying like a baby when Esan came in five minutes later. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked. ‘Are you hurt? Is it shock?’
‘It’s just a girl thing,’ answered Anastasia. ‘Nothing a soldier-boy like you would understand. Climb up on the top of the wheelhouse and see if you can get the searchlight working, will you? I’ll need to see where I’m going if we’re ever to have any chance of making Malebo. And the moon’s just not up to the job tonight.’
For the rest of the night, Anastasia followed the big pool of brightness the searchlight cast on the river’s surface downstream and across the river to the north bank. Every now and then she sent Esan clambering aloft to swing the golden beam from side to side until she managed to make out some half-familiar landmark, then she knew where to make for next. As the dawn slowly gathered behind them and the sun came up over the jagged peaks of the volcanoes far inland, so she at last let the exhausted boy join Ado and Celine where they lay asleep in the cramped little cabin below.
It was only when at long last Anastasia saw the familiar jetty reaching out from Malebo and steered towards it, shaking with a potent combination of exhaustion, relief and early-morning chill, that she realized she was still naked from the waist up. Naked and thickly coated with congealed blood. She called to the others but they made no response, so she ended up easing Nellie forward until her bow just kissed the pier’s outer end, then she quickly moored her in place and let her swing with the current while she ran lightly to the stern where she knew there was a bucket on a rope.
She looked around, but it was too early for the township to be stirring yet. The little boats and occasional pirogues tethered to the lower sections of the jetty were all empty — there had been no fish here since the nineties. There was no one about. She stripped off, glorying in the warm caress of the early sunlight, in the golden veil of mist it raised along the shoreline and in the fragrant breath of the dawn wind, flowing gently down towards the sea. She dropped the bucket overboard and pulled up clear, clean water. It took half a dozen chilly bucketfuls to get her anywhere near clean. Then she stood, with her arms raised, letting the sun and the warm breeze dry her.
She had no sensation of being watched at all.
After a few moments, she stepped back into her jeans — noticing for the first time how bad they smelt, then she ran light-footed below, searching for something to put on. It was close to a miracle that the shattered glass hadn’t cut her feet to ribbons — but it was a miracle she could no longer rely on. She found an old pair of flip-flops that only stayed on when she clenched her toes round the piece of rubber between them and a My People T-shirt with an outline of Africa on the front, the familiar shape of the continent framing the frowning face of a boy who looked a lot like Esan. She slipped it on without registering that it was many sizes too big for her and turned to wake the other three.
‘What’s the plan?’ asked Esan, blinking himself awake and nudging Ado who was wrapped around him.
‘Get Celine to the clinic and call for all the help we can raise.’ Anastasia looked across at the woman sleeping restlessly in the other bunk. Through the semi-transparent cloth of her blouse it was clear that the makeshift T-shirt bandage was stained with more than just blood from her wound.
Esan frowned. ‘What about me?’ he asked. ‘Anyone you call up to help you is likely to come after me too. I am Army of Christ the Infant.’
‘We have to think of a way round that,’ said Ado forcefully, untangling herself and sitting up, her face as fearsome as his. ‘Esan saved us.’
‘You’re both right,’ agreed Anastasia. ‘But I don’t think you need to worry yet. There’s no police station or military camp in Malebo. Even so, I think you should stay aboard, Esan, while Ado and I take Celine to the clinic. All I’m planning on doing after we check her in is trying to get hold of a cellphone or a radio that will get me in contact with Granville Harbour. I want to warn them about what’s happened. Tell someone where Celine is and how she is. I suppose there’s an outside chance the authorities would send a chopper up for us but I wouldn’t bet on it. Even though Celine’s the president’s daughter she says she and her father don’t talk. Haven’t talked for years. He wouldn’t lift a finger to help her any more than my father would help me. No. I plan that we’ll stick together and go on downriver if we can. There may even be someone in town who can help us with Nellie so we don’t have to do all the driving. Does that sound like a plan?’