Chapter 11

CHAPTER 11

IT WAS LIKE magic.

As soon as land came into view from the cockpit, the sky started to turn blue. Over the next few minutes, the sea settled down and smoothed out, like God had ironed it flat. By the time we were about a hundred yards offshore, the sun broke through. I stood at the prow, getting my first real look at the island. From this angle, it looked pretty bleak. No dock. No shelter. No people.

"Drop anchor!" Kira called out.

I reached down with both hands and released the line, then leaned over the pulpit to make sure the chain was clear of the hull. The water was so clear I could see a puff of sand when the steel flukes hit bottom.

When I turned around, Kira was inflating a small rubber dinghy with a gas canister. The tiny boat flopped and unfurled on deck like a creature coming to life.

"We're going ashore here?" I asked.

Kira stared at me. "Why else would we sail twelve hundred miles?"

I helped her lower the inflated dinghy over the starboard side. She climbed down the ladder and hopped in. I followed right behind her. The dinghy was low-tech. No motor, just a set of wooden paddles. We knelt on either side of the rubber gunwales and started paddling. Kira angled her blade to turn us to the left, cutting across the current.

"Harder!" she yelled.

For a few minutes, we struggled to move parallel to the shoreline, heading east. The line of foliage and sand gave way to black rocks and then a huge bluff rising hundreds of feet straight up from the water. I could see Kira squinting along the base. She leaned forward in the dinghy and pointed.

"There!" she said. "See those four lines?"

Directly in front of us, the rock striations on the face of the bluff formed four vertical shapes, like fingers reaching down toward the water.

"Now!" Kira called out. "Straight in!" She turned us toward shore. It was an easy glide the rest of the way.

We jumped out about ten feet from the beach, then pulled the dinghy ashore. Kira tied a line to the base of a thick bush.

"This way," she said, turning east.

I looked up at the rock face. Even in broad daylight, it looked inky and forbidding. Like a wall of doom.

"Do we need a map?" I asked.

"Got one," Kira said, tapping her temple. "Right here."

We moved along the base of the bluff until we reached a big shard of rock projecting out of the sand. To the left was a small depression in the cliff side. It looked like a closed door. Kira stepped into the depression. Her eyes lit up. I leaned in to see what she was looking at.

About ten feet above ground was a rough opening, about four feet across. A hole in the wall. Probably carved out by millions of years of wind and waves.

Kira started climbing the cliff. She was strong and nimble. She jammed her toes into small crevices and used her hands and arms to pull herself up the rough stone. When her head was even with the opening, she looked back down at me.

"Doc!" she said. "This is it!"

She muscled her way up and started through headfirst. Suddenly, she disappeared—as if she'd been swallowed whole by a rock monster.