Island of the Sequined Love Nun

Kimi. He tossed Roberto into the air as the shark came into the boat. Roberto spread his wings and soared into the sky. Kimi reached down and came up with the rubber fuel line.
    Tucker looked for anything they could use as a weapon, then remembered the folding knife he had put in his pocket the night before. It was still there.
    Kimi was slapping the shark with the rubber hose and backing his way up onto the huge gas tank that made up the midsection of the boat. Tuck opened the knife, then lunged forward at the navigator. "Kimi!"
    Kimi reached back and Tuck fit the handle of the knife into his hand. The shark had worked half of its nine-foot body into the boat. Its tail thrashed at the water to power the shark up onto the gas tank. Kimi scrambled backward. Roberto swooped and screeched in the air above.
    Kimi's right foot found purchase on the screw cap of the gas tank and he sat up. Tuck thought he was going to strike the shark with the knife, but instead he cut the gas line and squirted a stream of gas into the shark's gaping mouth. The shark thrashed and slid off the side of the boat.
    Kimi brandished the knife in the air. "Yeah, fuckface, you run away. That not taste so sweet as Kimi, huh?" He fell back onto the gas tank and took a deep breath. "We show that shark who the boss."
    Tuck said, "Kimi, there's more." He pointed to a set of fins approaching from the stem.

20 – Leadership's a Bitch
    The storm had been easy on the Shark People. A little thatch lost from a roof here and there, a cookhouse blown over, some breadfruit and coconuts stripped from the trees, but not enough to cause hardship. Some seawater had washed into the taro patch, but only time would tell if it was enough to kill the crop. The Shark People went slowly about the business of cleaning up, the women doing most of the work while the men sat in the shade of the men's house, drinking alcoholic tuba and pretending to discuss important religious matters. Mainly they were there to pass the heat of the day and get good and drunk before dinner.
    Malink, the high chief of the Shark People, was late rising. He awoke shivering and afraid, trying to figure out how to interpret a strange dream. He rolled off of his grass sleeping mat, then rose creakily and ambled out of the hut to relieve himself at the base of a giant breadfruit tree.
    He was a short, powerfully built man of sixty. His hair was bushy and gone completely white. His skin, once a light butterscotch, had been burned over the years to the dark brown of a famished penny. Like most of the Shark men, he wore only a cotton loincloth and a wreath of fresh flowers in his hair (left there by one of his four daughters while he slept). The image of a shark was tattooed on his left pectoral muscle, a B-26 bomber on the other.
    He went back into the hut and pulled a steel ammo box out of the rafters. Inside lay a nylon web belt with a holster that held a portable phone, his badge of leadership, his direct line to the Sorcerer. The only time he had ever used it was when one of his daughters had come down with a fever during the night. He had pushed the button and the Sorcerer had come to the village and given her medicine. He was afraid to use the phone now, but the dream had told him that he must deliver a message.
    Malink would have liked to go down to the men's house and discuss his decision for a few hours with the others, but he knew that he couldn't. He had to deliver the dream message. Vincent had said so, and Vincent knew everything.
    As he pushed the button, he wished he had never been born a chief.
    The High Priestess was also sleeping late, as she always did. The Sorcerer jostled her and she pulled the sheets over her head.
    "What?"
    "I just got a call from Malink. He says he's had a message from Vincent."
    The High Priestess was awake now. Wide awake. She sat upright in bed and the Sorcerer's eyes fell immediately to her naked breasts. "What do you mean he's had a message from Vincent? I didn't give him any message."
    The Sorcerer finally looked up at her face. "He was terrified. He said that Vincent came to him in a dream and told him-get this-to tell me that 'the pilot was alive and on his way, and to wait for him.' "
    She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and shook her head. "I don't get it. How did he know about a pilot coming? Did you say something?"
    "No, did you?"
    "Are you kidding? I'm not stupid, Sebastian, despite what you might think."
    "Well, how did he find out? The guards