Killer Summer

The copilot clearly wanted to stop him from speaking but was too taken by what was being said.

“Okay, then,” the copilot said, “get into the raft.”

“Our hands? We won’t make it around the first bend with our hands tied. We’ll come up against the Widow Maker, and that’ll be all she wrote.”

“You’ll have your hands free.”

The raft was eased out into the current. The copilot motioned the two into it and they waded out and climbed in awkwardly. The pilot waded out with them and untied their hands while the copilot kept the gun on them. Kevin wondered if the copilot had the nerve to shoot them, if he could aim well enough to hit them at fifteen feet. The cowboy was probably thinking the same thing.

And then, with a push, they were off, into the churning current, into cooler air and a slight breeze not felt on shore.

They moved downstream quickly, coming up even with the camouflaged jet sitting at the end of the airstrip. The pilot and copilot watched them.

“Have you ever rafted?” the cowboy asked, climbing past Kevin, immediately all business.

“Couple of times.”

“I’ll take the stern and steer. You do as I say the minute I say it. You got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Stay on the right for now. They’ll be two commands: paddle forward, paddle back. I’ll do the rest. There’s a number four ahead. Won’t be so bad this time of year with the low water and all, but it’s no picnic… especially in this light.”

“We can’t leave her,” Kevin said.

“Well, we have. First real chance at getting out is two days downriver, and that would mean a forty-mile hike. They were smart. We’re stuck on this river for the next couple of days.”

“There’s got to be a way back to the ranch.”

Then the cowboy barked some paddling instructions, and Kevin responded. The last glimpse of the jet slipped past, the rock wall rising quickly.

“I’ll jump,” Kevin said. “I’m not leaving her.”

“Settle down, kid. This river is nothing to mess with.”

“What if I climb the wall?”

As he said this, he saw how quickly and steeply the wall rose.

“We’re not doing anything with them watching us. Now, paddle forward!”

“And when they’re not watching…?” he said over his shoulder.

“There is one possibility. It’s called Mitchum’s Eddy, but we call it the Widow Maker. The river swings left up ahead. Mitchum’s Creek dumps into it there at the Maker. There’s a waterfall made by the spring creek ru

“So, I can swim,” Kevin said.

“The currents, boy, are wicked. A couple died there about ten years back. It’s nothing to mess with.”

“But if we made it, if we could do it, we could follow them. Catch them.”

“They won’t leave any climbing gear behind, count on it.”

He barked more instructions.

Kevin saw the bend in the river looming before them, maybe half a mile downstream. White water foamed at the base of the rock wall where the eddy pounded into it.

“What those fellas apparently don’t know, or didn’t think about, is that there’s a zip line-a chair-that crosses the river about three-quarters of a mile upstream. It’s how we provision the ranch. We keep an ATV hid on the east side to cover the twelve miles to the nearest road. We could cross at the chair, head upriver, and cut back across at a similar line three miles up. We’d be back on their side of the river then. We’d have a shot at them. At the girl.”

“We’ve got to do it.”

The sheer rock face at the turn grew closer. Kevin realized there would be little time for more discussion or pla

“We have the one chance,” the cowboy said, “and the currents are mean. Once we’re out of this raft, that’s it. We make the shore or we’re thrown back into the river without the raft.”

“Then we can’t let it wrap,” Kevin said. “If we miss the shore, we have to have at least a chance of catching back up to the raft.”

“Dump the cooler,” the cowboy said.

Kevin did as he was told. The cowboy maneuvered the raft expertly, holding to the center of the river. He simultaneously tied a line to the cooler’s handle and knotted it tightly.

“The cooler floats,” the cowboy explained. “But it can also fill up with water and act as a kind of anchor, maybe slowing the raft down and giving us a chance to catch it. But I gotta tell you, with no vests, no helmets, this is not to be taken lightly.”

“We can’t leave her,” Kevin said.

“There’s a fine line between nobility and insanity, son. Don’t let your balls speak for your brain. This is no video game. If the eddy wins, we lose. And that eddy has won more often than not.”

“I get it.”

“Water’s cold enough to steal your breath. You gotta be ready for that. You gotta swim harder than you know how. Got that? The eddy curls counterclockwise toward the rock, then back upstream. You fight it, you lose. The trick is for us to start high, to make it to the far current and let it carry us to the base of the falls. You fight that current, you’ll tire out. You’ve got to work with it, not against it. Understand?”

He threw the cooler overboard. The raft lurched, and Kevin nearly went over the side.

“If we’re doing this, it’s now or never,” said the cowboy, pulling off his boots and slipping out of his jacket. “Strip down, boy. You want to be as light as you can get.”

Kevin pulled off his sweatshirt but left his sneakers on.

“If you end up in the river,” John said, “you’ll want your feet aiming downstream-”

“And your hands covering your head,” Kevin completed.

In the glow coming from the sky, he saw fear in the old guy’s face for the first time.

“You don’t have to do this,” Kevin added, “I can do this by myself.”

“I’m in no mood for four days on the river,” John said, working the paddle to steer the raft closer to a current. “Okay… You first… Go!”

Kevin hesitated, judging the distance, marking the location of the small waterfall in his mind’s eye.

“GO!” the cowboy repeated.

Kevin swung his feet over the side of the raft and slid down the rubbery fabric into the cold river water.

78

The water was icy cold. Walt was in up to his knees, wading across a small tributary that fed the Middle Fork, leading his gelding by the reins, the creek bottom too uneven to risk riding across.

“How far?” he called ahead.

“The ranch is one-point-two miles due west,” Brandon answered. “It’s closer to three miles, if we turn south and head for the put-in.”

“Keep it down!” his father called out.

“Shut up,” Walt called back to him. “We’re working this out.”

His father had been acting the taciturn, grumpy old man all night, preferring to ride ahead and keep to himself, believing, no doubt, that riding ahead meant he was the leader. He hadn’t been out in the field for nearly twenty years. Walt could understand it if his father were reliving the manhunt for D. B. Cooper, which had both defined him and limited his advancement at the Bureau. He’d gone on to do great things, was considered a leading expert on counterterrorism, but bringing home Cooper and the money would have turned him into a legend. He’d been churning inside over it for thirty years. He’d been taking it out on his family the whole time.

Garman continued his overflights of the ranch, at an altitude and in a flight pattern that kept him invisible from the ground. But soon the rising sun would catch the plane. There was time for only a few more passes.

Walt had made several calls to Kevin’s phone, left three messages. Then Garman had flown in a pattern that allowed Kevin’s phone to be logged on to the repeater for a full fifteen minutes. That, in turn, let the GPS track the cell phone. The coordinates placed it at Mitchum’s Ranch.