Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

“Hole,” Bowie shouted. “Big fucking hole.”

He glanced downstream, and saw Raintree watching with interest, Dove wading toward them-wading toward him — and Farrengalli standing on shore lighting a cigar.

Bowie knew this hole, but the current had changed since his last run here eleven years ago. He cursed himself for his overconfidence. Rule number one was “Know the river.” Rule number two was copped from Clint Eastwood: A man’s got to know his limitations.

Bowie had broken both rules. The hole lay at the bottom of a shelf of rock, but an eight-foot drop awaited first. The last haystack led to a short run of quiet but fast river as the current squirted them toward the waterfall. “Hold onto your asses, gentleman,” Bowie said, as calm as any Titanic officer.

“Only fucking natural,” McKay said in mockery of Farrengalli.

“Shit,” was all Lane said as the raft slid over the slick rock and dumped itself toward the hole. Bowie had released his paddle and Lane’s caught water, flipped up, and banged off Bowie’s helmet. He sucked in a moist piece of air and braced himself for impact. They were airborne for what seemed like full seconds, and the spray dancing in the sun was like a rain of soft jewels. Then all was tumble and roar as the bow met the spinning current below and pulled the craft and its occupants underwater.

Once submerged, Bowie let go of the grab loop. The cold punched him like a hundred fists of ice. Millions of years of erosion had cut a deep groove at the base of the waterfall, causing the current to swirl like a washing machine’s spin cycle. With luck, it would kick them all out to the quieter water, but it could just as easily suck them down and continue drumming thousands of gallons of water onto them.

Despite his PFD, Bowie felt as if were wearing cement clothes. He opened his eyes and saw the dim gleam of the sun on the surface of the river six feet above. Not much in a swimming pool, maybe, but the river was hungry today.

One foot touched bottom and he used the contact to push off, this time cupping his hands and stroking. Against the pressure of a river, a swimmer’s stroke was nearly useless. Bowie was determined not to go gentle into the river’s belly. But now he needed air. His lungs were hot bricks in the oven of his chest. The book on river suction was to relax your body and let the current push you to safety instead of trying to fight it. But instinct required a struggle.

Eyes closed, he touched something soft and yielding, realized it was the raft, and felt along the bow for the grab loop. He should have held onto the raft in the first place, but he hadn’t yet developed faith in the Muskrat. He doubted even Lane would bet his life on the latest ProVentures design if it came down to it.

Finally, his head broke surface and he drew in a breath that tasted of pine, fish, and mud. Farrengalli shouted something from the shore, but Bowie couldn’t make it out because of the foam crackling in his ears. He shook his wet hair from his eyes. Lane bobbed ten feet away, head hanging limply to one side. McKay was nowhere in sight.

Go down for McKay or check on Lane? Triage-who’s in the most immediate danger?

Though McKay was fit and had some white-water experience, he might have underestimated the suction of the hole.

No, YOU’RE the one that did the underestimating, asshole. Already trying to duck responsibility?

Raintree swam toward Lane, with Dove right behind him, so Bowie fought around the lip of the hole, where the current was less powerful, until he was upstream of the waterfall. Then he eased along the base of the rock shelf until he was under the wet sheet of water. The filtered light gave the cavelike space a gray, funereal quality.

McKay clung to the rock face, grinning. He shouted over the continuous liquid thunder. “Some ride, huh, Captain?”

“This isn’t a game. I thought you were under.”

“I’ve had worse.”

“You’ll probably get worse, before this one’s over.”

“I just thought I’d rest here a second. Too much peace and quiet will drive you batty.”

“Lane may be hurt.”

“Screw him. Leave him for the buzzards. What do you think of Dove Krueger? I think Farrengalli’s working her.”

“I hadn’t noticed. Come on. We’ve got to regroup.”

McKay smirked. “Aye, aye, Captain. It’s only fucking natural.”

“Look, you want to play kissy-face with death, go for it. Just don’t do it on my time.” Bowie hugged the base of the rock a moment, then dog-paddled along the edge of the current into the sunshine.

According to the maps that Jim Castle had recovered from The Rook’s backpack, only one major trail wound along the northern shore of the Unegama River. With daylight, he was better able to orient himself, and upon reaching the river’s edge he was faced with a decision. Ace Goodall and his companion either had forded the river to reach the trail system on the other side, or had followed the water downstream. If they had crossed, Castle would have little chance of finding them, because the trails branched off toward a number of peaks and scenic overlooks. The pair (and he now fully believed Ace had a partner, willing or not-after all, why else would he carry a condom?) could evade detection for days or weeks on the south side of the river.

Castle placed his bet on Goodall’s desperation. No doubt The Rook would have said desperation didn’t fit the assessment, not after all the cold-blooded attacks the man had committed. But The Rook’s education and behavioral interpretations hadn’t done him a bit of good. After all, The Rook had been plucked into the sky by a creature that Freud wouldn’t have acknowledged in any mortal nightmare, much less in the real world. Castle was coming to believe the real world no longer existed; in his exhaustion, the Unegama and the surrounding cliffs and forest had become an illusory landscape that had little use for humans and their philosophy.

Goodall would head downstream, seeking the straightest and surest escape route. Despite the Biblical clues the mass murderer had dropped during his eighteen-month reign of terror, the Bama Bomber wasn’t seeking persecution, and clearly wasn’t ready to lie down spread-eagled and allow the nails to be driven into his palms and feet. No, Goodall’s survival instinct was as strong as that of any rodent or cockroach. The Rook’s textbooks had no chapters that spoke in plain language, but Castle was sure the bomber was as shallow as the lowest car thief or child molester.

Take the easier, softer way, the path of least resistance.

Shit, Castle had been doing it for years. He could have been a senior agent by now, behind a desk somewhere and building political capital, remaining neutral until a group from either political party got a hammerlock. Then he could have slid into their envelope, turned up in the right filing cabinet, and then sat around polishing his brass and assigning blame for the rest of his career. Now, he had no one to blame but himself, because Goodall had tricked him and nature had yanked his underwear into the crack of his ass, he had a hangover without the benefit of Scotch, and he was pulling a blind tail on one of the country’s ten most wanted.

“Hello?”

Castle was so deep into his own ruminations that he thought at first the voice was that of The Rook, who had been a disconcerting presence in his head for the last few hours. “Shut up, Rook.”

“Oh, no. He’s one of them, Pete.”

The Rook speaking in a female voice? Castle looked up from the damp, stone-pocked sand of the shore. A man and a woman stood among the gold-dappled shrubs of the forest edge. Castle had his Glock raised before he realized the man wasn’t Goodall.