Greg Iles - The Quiet Game

“I said, take this rifle!” he yells.

Without hesitation, I throw myself onto the right gunwale of the kayak and press down with all my weight. Stone screams like a madman, but I ignore him, leaning harder and farther forward until the first rush of water surges over the side.

“Stop it, you damn fool!”

And then it is done. The inflatable tube that forms the right gunwale digs beyond the point of no return, and the river pours into the boat, swamping us in seconds. The shock of the cold water steals my breath again, but I roll over the side and into the main current.

The kayak is still floating upright-if mostly submerged-but Stone won’t be able to get it above water without my help. At last he heaves himself over the rear gunwale and into the river. As soon as he’s clear, the inflatable rises in the water. With a powerful wrenching move I flip it upside down in the current. When I let go, the buoyant craft rights itself as though nothing had happened.

“You stupid son of a bitch!” Stone appears beside me like a man in the last stages of drowning, his eyes furious points of light in the darkness.

I don’t reply. The water is driving toward the chute with the momentum of a locomotive, Stone and me and the kayak bobbing along in it like fishing corks. I’ve got to slow us down a little, put us a few seconds behind the kayak-

A sledgehammer blow to the chest stops me dead in the water. Purely out of instinct, I grab whatever hit me and reach out for Stone with my legs. An explosive grunt sounds beside me as Stone collides with the object, and I lock my legs around his waist.

It’s a tree trunk. A trunk the width of a man’s thigh and smooth as glass, wedged into a crack in the ledge from which it fell. The river is trying to rip Stone’s body from between my knees, but I hold him fast. With a supreme effort, I flex my stomach muscles and pull him higher in the water.

“Grab the tree!” I gasp. “Grab the tree!”

He drapes one arm over it, loses his grip, then at last manages to get both arms over the trunk.

“Can you hold yourself?” I ask, my legs burning from exertion.

He nods weakly, his face white.

As soon as I relax my leg muscles, the river sweeps both our bodies up onto the surface, holding us in near-horizontal positions. Forty yards away, halogen headlights illuminate a thirty-foot stretch of the chute like searchlights.

“Boat! Boat!” screams a voice from the roar at the end of the little canyon. A voice from the lights.

The illuminated water in the chute churns into boiling chaos as hundreds of bullets shred its surface. The kayak materializes in the headlights as though by magic and instantly explodes into confetti that sails through the bluish beams like the remnants of a child’s balloon.

“Christ,” Stone coughs.

“Listen,” I hiss in his ear, hoping my raft guide knew what he was talking about. “You go through feet first. On your back, feet first, okay? That cushions the rocks.”

He nods, his face looking bloodless in the dark.

“How long can you hold on?”

“Twenty seconds… maybe thirty.”

“Then we might as well go now. Save our strength.”

Stone nods, his eyes closed.

“Have you still got your pistol?” I ask.

“In my waistband.”

“Let’s do it. On three. One… two… three-”

Letting go of the tree trunk is like surrendering to a god, so mighty is the force carrying us down the chute. Yet the water around us seems placid. At the center of the channel there is no white water, no churning froth or spray, just a great black mass of fluid driving forward with unstoppable power. Stone falls slowly behind me as we hurtle toward the headlights, but I can’t worry about him now. I can’t worry about anything. I suppose I should pray or vomit from fear or see my life pass before my eyes, but I do none of these things. At some point, terror becomes so total and control so minimal that you simply shed fear like a coat.

I lie back in the water as though going to sleep, only my face above the surface, my arms held out from my sides like Christ on the cross as I rush feet first toward the great black door at the end of the chute. The inverted bowl of sky sparkles with more stars than I have seen in years, and I feel a sudden and absurd certainty that whatever is about to happen happened a long time ago.

As the headlights white out the sky above me, I expel all my air and let my head sink beneath the torrent. I am nothing to those above me, a ripple of water sweeping beneath them, a piece of driftwood borne on the flood.

Suddenly, the black tide swells beneath me, lifting me toward the sky like a magic carpet. Thunder roars around me, atomizing the water to mist. There is no air here, only different states of water. I am suspended long enough to hear bursts of gunfire behind me. Then a great fist slams me to the bottom of a well and holds me there, trying with all its power to bludgeon me unconscious. My lungs scream as they did the day I dragged Ruby from our burning house, but I dare not breathe. To breathe here is to join the hammering darkness.

As suddenly as before, the great hand hurls me up out of the well and onto the surface, which feels land solid after the vaporous thunder of the chute. I feel as though some great beast had sucked me into its maw, chewed me for a few moments, and, finding me distasteful, spat me out whole.

The air feels warm against my face. I probe my arms and legs, searching for broken bones. Remarkably, I seem intact. Turning back toward the thundering mist, I watch the exit of the chute, a white mouth spitting foam between two rock walls like the jet of a great hose. Surely Stone has passed through by now, though not, I fear, as invisibly as I did. The gunfire I heard must have been directed at him.

I try to tread water, but my strength is gone. I can only lie back and float, nose and mouth above the surface, waiting for some sign that Stone survived. An image of his bullet-riddled body bobbing up beside me flits through my head, but I quickly banish it. My odds of surviving the night up here without him are very low.

Stone will come. If anything, the ex-FBI man is tougher than I. He is nearly seventy, yes. And he’s wounded. But it’s not as though physical prowess of any degree could affect one’s fate while passing through that cataract. Stone’s fate is in the lap of the gods.

“Swim, goddamn it.”

For a dazed moment I think I am talking to myself, but I’m not. Stone has kicked up beside me like a shipwrecked sailor, looking more dead than alive.

“Did they hit you again?”

His eyes are only half open. “Kick your feet, Cage. We’ve got another half mile to go.”

“Why not get out here?”

“Too close… kick, damn you.”

I start kicking, and soon enough the current is carrying us along as steadily as it did behind Stone’s cabin, though more slowly. The river has spread out here. Shrubs and boulders sail past us in the moonlight, while smaller rocks abrade our knees and elbows. Stone grips my windbreaker and speaks as we drift along.

“Crested Butte is three miles south. We can’t stay in the river without the boat… too cold. And I can’t run. I’m not dying, but I can’t run. There’s a campground up here. When we get close, you’re going to get out on the south bank. Right now they’re stuck north of the river. Follow the river south, running as fast as you can, hugging the bluff for cover. When you see the lights of town, circle to your right and come in from the south, in case they’re waiting for you.”

“I’m not leaving you here. You-”

“We haven’t got time for this! You want a bar called the Silver Bell. It’s just off the main street, Elk Avenue. The bartender is a mountain of a guy called Tiny McSwain. In my drinking days we got pretty tight. Tell Tiny to take you to an airport. Any airport but the one you flew into. Still got your wallet?”