Stephen Leather - Breakout

However, as he moved down towards the end of the peninsula, there were a growing number of houses to negotiate and they were set closer and closer together, as if jostling each other for prime views of the lake. That made it increasingly difficult to work his way around them and in the end, to make any further progress without straying into people’s yards and small fields, he was forced to move down within a few yards of the road. He advanced at a wearyingly slow pace now, flattening himself in the ditch at the side of the road whenever he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle. He kept following the road, which was now dropping steeply, twisting like a snake as it ran down towards the lake.

At the water’s edge at the bottom of the last steep hillside, Harper could see the small town of San Pablo de Tiquina laid out along the eastern shore of Lake Tititcaca, and beyond it was its sister town of San Pedro de Tiquina, facing it across the water and what looked to be no more than eight hundred metres away. He left the road, slipped between two brick-built, workshop buildings that were locked and shuttered, perhaps for the siesta, and then crouched behind a low wall beyond them that overlooked the waterfront, allowing him to get the lie of the land and watch for potential dangers before approaching any closer. There were rows of houses on the hillside behind him looking out over the lake, and in the little town itself there were a couple of shops, a café and what looked like a small amusement park with a roundabout and some swings, and a stall selling toys, sweets and neon coloured kids drinks.

Vehicles and people were queueing to be carried across the water to San Pedro on a number of flat-bottomed barges, but the people were travelling separately from their vehicles. The pedestrians - and the drivers, once their cars were on one of the barges - used a concrete-surfaced, stone pier with a small wooden jetty leading off to one side of it to board their barges, while cars, buses and trucks were driven along a series of precarious ramps - thick wooden planks embedded in the shingle beach - on to the vehicle barges. Those had low gunwales on three sides but an open rear, allowing the vehicles to be driven straight on to the deck. Ferrymen with punt poles provided the motive power to push off from the ramps and through the shallows, and then an outboard motor drove the barge the rest of the way across the narrow strait.

A prominent sign at the landward end of the jetty ordered passengers to “Use salvavidas” - wear lifejackets. His jaw tightened as he spotted two men, leaning against the side of a battered white Landcruiser, who were scrutinising the faces of the passengers waiting to board the barges. They were both wearing jeans and black leather jackets and had the look and the arrogant attitude of sicarios. That impression was reinforced by the bulges he could see under the armpits of their jackets.

He shifted his gaze, looking across the water. If he were to move a couple of hundred yards along the shore in either direction, he would be out of sight of the sicarios and any onlookers in the town. He could then have slipped into the water and swum across to the other side, had it not been for one factor that made it inconceivable. He would not normally have hesitated for a second about making an eight hundred metre swim, especially across a tideless lake. It was well within his capabilities, for he regularly took swims of two or three miles in the sea off the beach at his home in Pattaya, but there was a crucial difference. In Pattaya he was swimming in a warm tropical sea, but this lake was at an altitude of almost four thousand metres and the temperature of the water, fed by snow melt from the Andean glaciers, was bone-chillingly cold. In such waters, without a wet suit, a man could rapidly become hypothermic and lapse into unconscious. Even so, Harper would have attempted it had he been in his normal excellent physical shape, but he had now been without food for five days and had barely slept during that period. He was close to exhaustion, his stores of body fat had been exhausted and his muscle mass was being rapidly depleted as his body drew on it to survive. Whatever means he was going to use to get across, it could not be by swimming the strait.

As he watched, a bus was being loaded that was almost as big as the barge that would be carrying it across the strait. As it was inched aboard, the gunwales of the barge sank dangerously close to the water level. The people on the shore, including the sicarios , now had their attention entirely focussed on the barge, watching as it creaked and groaned under the weight of the bus. That gave Harper his chance. He broke cover, ran down to the waterfront and slipped into the icy water of the lake, alongside the next barge in the queue. He swam to the end of it and then ducked under the surface, pushing himself off from that barge with his feet and using the momentum to swim underwater, only coming to the surface again as he saw the dark shape of the barge that was carrying the bus looming in the water above him.

He was now at the opposite end of the barge from the jetty and, providing he remained there, shielded by the bulk of the bus, he was out of sight of anyone on the shore, including the sicarios. However he knew that if he remained immersed in the water any longer, he would be in serious difficulties, so at once he hauled himself up so his body was half out of the water, hanging by his fingers, then swung a leg up, hooking it over the gunwale and rolled onto the deck of the barge under the front bumper of the bus. He huddled in the foetal position, conserving what body warmth he had, and was grateful for the heat of the still-warm bus engine just above him.

Within a couple of minutes he heard shouts and then felt the barge begin to move as the crewmen cast off from the shore. There were only two of them on the barge and both were busy at the stern, one using his punt pole to push off from the ramp and through the shallows, and the other steering and running the outboard motor. Harper was still soaked through and shivering from the cold, but he stayed where he was as the barge nosed slowly out into the deeper water of the lake and then increased speed, with the bow wave splashing on to the deck, making him feel even colder.

The barge soon reached the other side and the outboard’s engine note fell away as the crewman eased back on the throttle, letting the barge swing around on the current so it could again approach the jetty stern-first. Harper felt it beginning to turn and heard the other crewmen’s footsteps on the planking of the deck as he began to walk to the prow, carrying his punt pole, ready to push the ferry the last few metres to the jetty. At once Harper crawled further under the bus and, hidden in the gloom underneath it, he peered out at the shore, noting where people were standing in line for the ferry and how far he would have to swim to be out of sight of them. Any stray people further along the shore who happened to spot him would just have to be dealt with as the situation required.

As the barge bumped to a halt and he heard the crewman walk back along the barge, Harper slid out from his hiding place. Crouching low, still hidden from the shore by the bodywork of the bus, he rolled over the gunwale until he was once more hanging by his fingertips. At once the cold again struck deep into him, but he just gritted his teeth as the driver of the bus came on to the barge and slowly reversed his vehicle off. Then, before the vehicles began to be loaded for the return journey, and hoping that the bus driver’s manoeuvres would still be holding the attention of the watchers on the jetty and the shore, Harper let himself drop back into the water.

He worked his way around to the side of the prow, still out of sight of the people on the jetty, and then pushed off as hard as he could with his feet and swam underwater, away from the jetty and parallel to the shore. He kept swimming, using powerful strokes with his arms and legs, as his lungs tightened and the urge to breathe became almost unbearable, then released the last of the air in his lungs in a steady stream of small bubbles. When he could hold his breath no longer, he swung round towards the shore and broke surface just as he started to feel the sloping shingle beach against his chest. He crawled forward, hauling himself out of the water on his hands and knees, then raised his head a little and took a cautious look around.