Fear No Evil(Alex Cross #29)(77)

“You cost us at least a half a million dollars!” M roared.

Butler said, “With all due respect, the helicopter was your idea. And it’s not like you can’t afford the penalty.”

“It’s the principle,” M replied in a seething tone. “They should all be dead now.”

“But they’re not. And the helicopter can’t fly. Or at least, I won’t fly it again.”

For several moments, M was silent. Then he said, “You have options?”

“Two,” Butler said. “First one, we sit on the pullout and trailhead where Cross and the cartel men will have to take their rafts out of the river. But that almost guarantees witnesses.”

“And option two?”

“We get a good six or seven miles up the trail that parallels the river to a pinch point and rapids below Black Bear Creek,” Butler said. “Do you see it on your satellite image? Anyone on the river has to get through that spot.”

“I see it,” M said after a few moments. “It does look like a good place for an ambush, but it’s rugged country all the way up. How are you planning to get in there seven miles with that much elevation gain without a helicopter? Hiking? Horses?”

“E-bikes,” Butler said. “Purdy bought four of them today.”





Chapter





89




Sampson and I woke up at four thirty in the morning. It was cold as we wolfed down freeze-dried scrambled eggs and drank coffee while again studying the river on the OnX maps.

We had decided the night before that our best chance for survival was to get down and off the river as fast as possible. But we also understood that the cartel was downstream somewhere and perhaps M’s men were as well.

Sampson pointed to a spot about five river miles below our campsite, north of Black Bear Creek, near mile marker 63. “I’ve read about this. Biggest rapids on the float. Gets tight and fast before it finally spills out into calmer water. If I were Durango and I’d caught up to that Nalgene bottle and now knew you and I didn’t come through those narrows yet, I’d be up on the cliffs above the rapids or just below them.”

“It is the likeliest place if they’ve found the bottle and the transmitter,” I agreed. “And it’s upriver enough that no one will hear the shots.”

Sampson nodded. “And we’d be distracted getting through the rapids, unable to defend ourselves in an attack from above.”

“We could get out here above the rapids at mile marker sixty-four, say, find one of the bridle trails, and walk out the last six miles,” I said. “But we risk running into them.”

“True,” Sampson said, looking at the map and then over at the raft and gear. “But then again, maybe we want to run into them.”

“Explain that.”

John was quiet and then gave me a more in-depth description of his evolving idea, which I could see was the most aggressive alternative to running the rapids beneath the guns of the cartel men and possibly M’s people. His plan also gave us a semblance of control and the element of surprise.

“I like it,” I said. “It’s the way we want to go.”

While I packed my headlamp light, Sampson tested the linchpin of what lay ahead of us. He cut ten inches of rope and tied it between two saplings about an inch below the wick of one of the candles we’d brought in our emergency kits.

John lit the candle, checked his watch, and then joined me ferrying the raft to the river and our gear to the raft. On each trip he checked the candle and his watch.

Thirty-two minutes after he lit the candle, the rope burned apart.

“There it is,” he said. “Thirty-two minutes to the inch.”

“As long as the candle doesn’t go out,” I said, putting our dry bags into the raft.

“As long as I shield the flame, it won’t.”

Sampson and I were packed and pushing away from shore at the crack of dawn. Mist rose off the river in the cold morning air.

Near mile marker 67, a herd of cow elk with a massive bull trailing waded the river right in front of us, an awesome experience that kept us out of our anxious thoughts for the next three hours. Then, around ten that morning, masked by flotsam in a back channel, Sampson spotted the blue top of my Nalgene bottle. I got out and retrieved it, saw the transmitter still inside.

“They must have missed it and kept going,” I said, starting to unscrew the lid.

“What are you doing?” Sampson asked.

“Tossing the transmitter.”

“Don’t,” he said. “I think it could help us.”

At eleven a.m., below mile marker 66 near Hodag Creek, we pulled the raft over but did not drag it up the bank. Sampson jumped out and tied the front end to a sapling some ten feet from the water’s edge.

The raft swung on the current and stayed pinned to the bank, the rope stretched taut. I waded over next to it and found the life preservers, rain gear, and extra clothes.

I stuffed the arms and legs of the rain gear with the clothes and used the life vests to fill out the torsos. I even took the wool balaclavas we’d brought in case we faced a snowstorm, stuffed them with leaves and sticks from bushes along the shore, and fixed them beneath the jacket hoods.

Sampson stayed dry up on the bank, arranging the candle next to the rope and shielding it from the wind with layers of aluminum foil that he weighted in place with rocks.