Salma took a knife to the Kenga Maritime Security emblem painted on *Sahani*. Wind carried the scraped flakes into the dark water.
“I thought the mark protected me,” she said. “It only proved my boat belonged to the debt.”
The harbor lights fell behind them. Waves rose beneath the fishing boat, and Biko sat beside the engine trying not to watch the black water. Khamis connected his receiver to the small panel. Rehema read the frequency. The four knocks grew stronger as they crossed the current.
Salma knew the route because Yusuf had used it with her before. He once told her the sea would need a witness, not merely a captain. The statement had sounded like one of his radio phrases then. Now it described the work in front of them.
The engine coughed, struck metal, and lost power. Salma cut the throttle before the propeller could lock. Khamis and Biko pulled the emergency line while she kept *Sahani* from turning broadside toward the rocks. Rehema protected the panel and continued calling the frequency aloud so the signal would not disappear inside the noise.
The engine returned at half strength. Salma listened to its uneven rhythm and ordered Biko to open the cover without moving his fingers near the belt. A loose fuel tube shook under Khamis’s torch. They secured it with emergency wire. It was an imperfect repair, but it moved the boat without inventing a rescue from nowhere.
“This boat was built to reach the market,” Biko said, “not chase a barge.”
“We are not chasing it,” Salma answered. “We are finding what was tied in its path.”
Yusuf had drawn a mark beside the compass years earlier, when he and Salma repaired fishermen’s radios near the buoy. The knocks, her route memory, and that mark converged on the same patch of water. Khamis explained the route over the open radio so listeners would know why they turned east.
Juma called Asha. Kenga had announced that Radio Bahari was closed and guards were searching for hotline callers. Khamis had a choice: wait to return with the buoy video, allowing Kenga to call it an edit, or open the boat channel now and reveal every move. He chose the public channel.
Rehema warned that Kenga would hear them. Khamis answered that so would everyone else. They would not claim secrecy and authenticity at the same time.
Salma recorded a statement. She had considered selling the beacon location to settle her debt. She never handed over the device, but she had told Kenga enough to follow Yusuf after the last boat trip. Yusuf’s death had left his question in her dreams: whose silence would she purchase with freedom from debt?
Asha asked whether Salma wanted the confession recorded. She said yes, gave her name and time, and refused to remove the part that made her culpable. She was no longer a source controlled by Khamis. She was a witness choosing responsibility.
The signal disappeared for thirty seconds. Rehema did not guess. She restored the original frequency and calculated drift against the compass. Salma lowered the engine noise. Khamis removed one receiver filter. The knocks returned off starboard, weak but stable. They had corrected toward the beacon; luck had not delivered it.
Biko read the radar. *Malkia-7* had changed its angle by twelve degrees and was taking the inside approach to Dock 14. He saved the screen and reported the device number without broadcasting his name. Two coastal receivers confirmed they were recording the team’s signal.
The storm intensified. Biko slipped against the rail, and Khamis clipped him to a safety line. Salma ordered everyone low while *Sahani* cut across a wave. They redistributed weight and covered the panel with Asha’s coat. No one challenged the sea through courage. They followed the captain’s knowledge.
Salma taught Biko three hand signals for when wind erased speech: hold the line, kill the engine, turn. Asha wrote them down and repeated them over the channel. Khamis tested the diving rope with his own weight. Rehema set a timer and agreed on two pulls if he stayed underwater too long. Biko tied an emergency knife to the rail.
At 03:42, the beacon had less than an hour of battery. The knocks no longer sounded like a supernatural call. Khamis explained that Yusuf and his father used four knocks to mean another witness was required. The code had forced them to work as a group.
The beacon lamp appeared once ahead. In the same instant, *Sahani*’s generator died. The receiver went black, and darkness swallowed the boat.
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