Chapter 5 #2
"It comes apart into three problems," he said. "And everybody in this room has been trying to solve them as one problem, which is why nobody's solved anything."
He drew a line down the concrete.
"Problem one is the ten men on your beach. Problem two is getting your twenty-two people out of this cove alive with what you need to live on. Problem three is getting to a door three hundred miles north in a city full of killers."
He tapped each. "Three problems. And it turns out that if you get greedy and try to solve all three with one plan, you fail. But there's an order to them, and the order is the whole answer."
"Go on."
"You don't fight the ten men," Liam said.
Petyr, who had drifted over to listen, made a disgusted noise.
"Petyr," Nell said.
"They took Cully."
"I know what they took."
"You said we were going to get him back and now this one says we don't fight."
"I said we don't fight them," Liam said.
"Here. On this beach. In daylight. Ten armed men in the open against twenty-two people with garden forks and one shotgun with two shells in it, and a rifle with fifteen rounds and one man who can shoot it."
He looked at Petyr, and he was not unkind about it.
"How many of yours die in that fight? You want a number? Six. Eight. And that's if we win. And the ones who die are the ones who charge first, and you'd charge first, because you're seventeen and you loved that boy, and I've been to a lot of funerals for people who charged first."
Petyr's chin came up.
But he did not answer, and Liam saw the boy's eyes flick to the babies behind the crates and away again.
"So what," Petyr said.
"So we skip them," Liam said.
He drew an arrow on the concrete.
"They came for cargo. Fish, water, whatever they take from you, and then they're gone north, and there's five cans of fuel sitting on that beach that tells us exactly how far north they mean to go."
He tapped the drawing. "Nell. If they show up in the morning and you open the door and you give them everything they want and you grovel like you always do. What do they do?"
Nell's eyes narrowed.
"They load up," she said. "And they go."
"How long?"
"Half a day. They'll be off the beach by afternoon."
"And they'll go out through the channel," Liam said. "The deep one. On the north side of the bar, tight against the rock, because it's the only way out."
"Yes."
"And they'll go north."
Nell Rook looked at the charcoal, and Liam watched her get there.
"You want to follow them," she said.
"I want them to pilot us," Liam said. "Nell, listen to me. That is a ten man crew with a loaded longboat and five cans of fuel who have been running these waters for two years and know every faction, every channel, every place on this coast where a boat gets shot at from the shore.
They are going to sail three hundred miles through the deadliest water in the world, and they are going to do it safely, because they know the way."
Isaiah's mouth was hanging open.
"Oh my God," he said.
"They're not our enemy," Liam said. "Not on the water. On the water they're our map."
Nobody said anything.
"We hang back," Liam said. "Two miles, three, out of sight, hull down. We follow them north, and wherever they go, we go, and whatever they avoid, we avoid. And they take us right up the Sound past every gun on this coast and they never once know we're there."
He set the charcoal down. "And they take us to Cully. Because wherever they're going with that fuel, that's where they've got him."
The fire cracked.
"That's mad," said Dawes.
"It's not mad," Isaiah said, and there was heat in it.
"It's the smartest thing I ever heard and I'm going to tell you why. Because we can see them and they can't see us. We've got the only optic on this coast. Liam glassed that boat at three hundred yards in pitch dark tonight and counted the men in it.
We can sit two miles back with the sun behind us and watch that longboat like it's on a table, and they'll be looking for a sail on the horizon with their naked eyes and they'll see nothing."
He was on his feet now, moving, gesturing.
"And they're a rowing boat with a heavy load," he said.
"Ten men on oars with cargo, that's, what, four knots? Five in a push? We've got thirty feet of hull and a mast. Nell, that boat can sail circles around them if we want to. Which means we control the distance. We can hang back as far as we like and still keep up."
Nell Rook stood.
She walked to the firing slit and looked out into the black at the beach she could not see.
"There's a problem," she said.
"Say it."
"Twenty-two people." She turned around. "Your boat is thirty feet. You can't put twenty-two people, plus food, plus water, plus gear, on a thirty foot sailboat and follow anybody anywhere. You'll swamp before you clear the bar."
Liam had already worked it.
"You've got boats," he said.
"We've got four. Two rowboats, a skiff, and my old crabber, and she leaks."
"Then we take all of them."
"They'll see us. Five boats going out through one channel in daylight, they'll—"