River Run

by J. S. James

  “Not from Salem,” Jerzy said as they raced under the bridges, him pointing to Wallace Marine Park. The launch ramps and parking lot were as empty as a church on Monday. The next river access for a police boat was miles to the north.

  Grim questions streamed through her head. How long before Bastida figured out theirs was the only boat in the chase? Before he decided to hang a Louie and come at them? Or did he have something else in mind?

  The glance she stole at Jerzy confirmed he was worried, too. She adjusted the shoulder holster, making sure she could reach the S&W, wishing she’d strapped on her service auto as well, brought a shotgun, too.

  The boat they chased had grown from dot to pea size. She cupped her hand to her mouth, yelling across the aisle. “Can’t you get more crank out of this rat motor?”

  “You’re the boss.” The throttle was full ahead, so he tweaked the power trim. RPMs nudged into the red. Jackie’s speedometer needled up toward sixty before he shouted back. “We’re topped out at better than three-five knots. I figure the best he can do is three-oh or three-two.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “If Bastida keeps to the main channel, we could catch up before we have backup. Then what?”

  “Just don’t lose him.”

  * * *

  Ten miles downriver, Delia and Jerzy had closed to within two hundred yards of the Zodiac. Close enough to smell the hundred-plus octane exhaust from those high-performance Mercs. So close she unholstered the short-barreled .44 Mag. She’d left her service Glock in the car. She was one of those cops who’d suffered one automatic weapon jamb too many.

  A short way past Wheatland Ferry, the Zodiac dodged left and faded from sight. The rain made it look like it’d melted into the riverbank. Again, no backup boats could be seen putting in the water.

  Delia yelled across the center aisle. “Where’d he go?”

  She got back a shrug as Jerzy backed off on the throttle.

  They rounded a shoal of scrub willow thickets, which she figured had masked Bastida’s sneak move. Just beyond, a deep recess sank into the woods.

  Her six-two-plus boat operator was up on his toe tips.

  At first, all she saw was the flooded willow bar. Then behind that, a deep cleft in the tree line, like so many of the Willamette’s dead-end backwaters.

  “Is he boxed in?” She rose from her crouch.

  “Doubt it. Even so, a loose cannon in a box is never a good thing.”

  “If not, could he slip out the other end?”

  Jackie closed on the willow bar. The main channel broke right, merging with the rest of the river’s wide expanse. To the left, she saw the Zodiac’s wake had curled into the narrow offshoot that hung tight against the river’s west side.

  When Jackie broke off and started to angle out toward the river’s main arm, she reached over and spun the wheel back.

  “No, that way,” she yelled, pointing toward the backwater, hoping it was a channel.

  “Delia, I think that’s Grand Island. The inside channel’s like a three-mile moat for most of the year.”

  She motioned with her gun hand, the barrel leveled at the opening. “Don’t you dare lose him. Not now.”

  “It’s a minefield down there.” He geared the boat into neutral. “Choked with willow thickets, puckerbrush, and crisscrossed logs.”

  She nodded out toward the main river. “Say we go around. What’s to keep that Zodiac from turning back and sprinting out this end?”

  His head shook. “I’m just saying. Beating down that slough is crazy.”

  She leveled a full-strength glare on him, narrowed eyes and all. “Crazy didn’t stop our guy, did it?” She kept on staring, arching her brows in a barefaced challenge. “Hell, the day started out un poco loco and ran us downriver from there.”

  He fingered the controls.

  She jutted her chin ahead. “So, let’s get after him.”

  He was stalling, reaching around the windshield for something, a spare flotation cushion that he scooted under his rump. Jackie clunked into gear.

  “Brace yourself.” He rammed the throttle ahead.

  A mile into the side channel, Delia caught sight of the Zodiac and could tell it was better at dodging the floating junk. Its rounded boat sides dipped low then high, as if running a slalom course. But she figured Jackie’s welded hull was tougher. They cut a fast, straight line down that slough—straight, if she didn’t count the brutal ups and downs. All they had to do was hang on and close the gap.

  The windshield-mounted police flasher strobed crayon blues, reminding Delia to try the cell again—redirect backup. Nothing. She dumped the phone on the seat.

  Dusk wasn’t far off. That meant any backup might keep to the main channel, running up and down an empty river.

  Two hundred yards ahead, the Zodiac jumped skyward, disappearing on the far side of a thick screen of willows spanning the entire back channel. Had he made it? Delia glanced over at Jerzy, seeing no way past but over.

  At a hundred yards, they still had room to reverse course. Bump and thump back upstream. Jerzy had a questioning look on his face. In answer, she holstered her weapon and head-motioned downstream.

  At eighty she barely made out his shouted warnings as he adjusted his makeshift butt cushion. “More bend in your knees. Grab on tight. It’s gonna get hairy.”

  When she saw Jerzy slide his fingers along the cord running from his life jacket to the engine’s kill switch, she kissed her silver crucifix on its chain, tucked it back in, and latched on to the sides of the windshield.

  Sixty yards. Her white knuckles looked like Dollar Tree pearls. His too, one hand on the wheel, the other gobbling Jackie’s T-grip throttle.

  Twenty yards. Willow reeds walloped the hull like rifle cracks as the jet boat hurtled into the blockage. Bowed under strong winter currents, the wall of thickets bent downstream, forming a makeshift launch ramp.

  Zero yards. Jackie’s deck shoved Delia’s heels up near the backs of her thighs. Unburdened, the boat caught air and the engine roared on Jerzy’s mistimed backward yank of the throttle. The river boat sailed for a month of Sundays before crashing back down with a landing that jarred her bones. She almost toppled backward when Jerzy gunned the engine. Ahead, the Zodiac was scooting downstream.

  “You okay?” she shouted.

  He nodded, wincing as he stretched his left leg. “Football knees. I’ll pay for it in the morning.”

  “Then we’d better get him now.” She took out the short-barrel for a second time as Jackie sprinted down the widening slough. Never mind the lunatic speed or that they were chasing a fugitive from an elite killing force and likely off his nut, who might turn and wipe them out at will.

  What the hell. KOKO meet poco loco. She noticed Jerzy fine-tuning the power trim again. The RPMs crept into the red zone. A sliver above raging psychotic, she thought.

  The wind had quieted some, still whipping the surface into whitecaps. Barely two hundred yards out front, the wave-slamming Zodiac showed plenty of open space. Every hull lift meant lost headway, split seconds when the lighter boat’s twin props churned air instead of water.

  First the Zodiac, then Jackie rounded a dogleg in the slough. Dark surface bumps sprouted against a lead-dark horizon. They were low on the water and growing.

  Logjams? Likely. Would Bastida double back? Or had the high water given him a way out? Neither one, she hoped.

  Jackie had cut the distance by half. Close enough for her to pick up the driver’s shift in posture. He looked back at them, then seemed to search the bank off to his left. His arm poked out sideways, as if aiming at something on shore. That crooked-thumb hand position reminded Delia of a channel-surfing couch potato. Another backward glance and the arm dropped. Then he gave them his back and relaxed his stance, as if nobody was chasing him.

  “What’s that up ahead?” Delia shouted, her attention riveted on a broad curtain of spray that had sprung up just behind the Zodiac. A puzzling moment dissolved into the
excitement of the chase.

  They kept on closing.

  Barely three boat lengths in front of Jackie’s bow, she spotted what had caused the surface break: a horizontal sliver of brightness, vibrating just three feet above the water.

  Too late to yell, turn, or stop, Delia froze, mesmerized by the approaching glitter. In a flash, she envisioned the carnage on its way—Jackie’s low bow driven under that taut silver band, the boat’s momentum carrying the cable back with the screech of metal raking across the railing and up over the windshield, toward her waiting throat.

  A loud ping and the metal strand beheaded the beacon from its sucker mount, then hung up momentarily against the jutting windshield frame. During that microsecond of delay, Jerzy wedged himself in front of her, the spare life jacket cushioning his forward shoulder. In a wink, the cable swept Delia and Jerzy off their feet and dumped them back over Jackie’s stern.

  24

  Delia surfaced, coughing and sputtering, in the dim evening light. She was in the river. In the fucking river. Though in shock, she took in air to yell, but something jerked her back under, life vest and all.

  Fear surged through her as she struggled to hold her breath against her lifelong nemesis, a world of water that rushed over and around, pushing her deeper, as if she were getting towed. The river wanted inside her nose, her mouth, to squeeze into her lungs. Switch reason for terror.

  And it was getting there as she squirmed to work free and failed. Was this a river punishment for hating rivers? They’d gotten her family, and this one wanted Delia. Her lungs burned now, insisted on breathing in—air or water.

  Drowning was shitty. Mouth clamped shut, she screamed inside, her lungs ramping up to a gallop. But if the river wins, I won’t find Charlie’s killer, won’t catch the sheriff at what he’s up to. Won’t learn what Jerzy’s really like. Won’t—

  Pain.

  Not in her lungs. Something had cut into her ankle. Cut through the despair. Mustering strength, she curled forward against the rush of current, walked her hand down her leg to the thing that had sliced through her boot top—the cable that had knocked them out of the boat held her under. Giving the thin wire a vicious yank, she ripped it loose, popped to the surface, and reveled in the sting of chill air.

  Still frantic to keep her chin above water, she beat the hell out of every face-slapping wave the Willamette shoved at her. Kicked her legs at a syrupy thickness that wanted to suck her back down again. Fill her lungs with grit and silt and river.

  Realizing her thrashing was getting her nowhere, she stopped flailing to see whether the life jacket did its job. Okay, it kept her up.

  Then came more shock. The river was taking her somewhere. Not down to the bottom but downstream.

  Everything at eye level was in the river’s grip and moving with the current. The poncho was gone, wrenched off when she hit the water. Ten feet to her left, the beacon light bobbed along. Half filled and sinking, it still flashed gamely.

  Several yards off to her right, Jackie floated broadside to the wind. The kill switch must’ve worked. Though dropping, the light breeze pushed the boat downriver at a faster clip.

  Silenced and emptied, Jackie’s drifting outline shrunk away.

  Jerzy.

  Delia stiffened, her heart clenching with the dread of something found then lost in an instant. She pummeled the water, corkscrewing her body one way then the other in the failing light, craning to catch sight of him.

  “Jerzy!” She waited a beat. “Jerzy!”

  Drawn along under the silent power of an unstoppable force, she strained to hear. Something. Anything. A sign he was still alive. Seconds passed. Nothing. Even the wind had gone quiet.

  She cocked an ear upstream. Had she heard a splash?

  A lump took shape in the oncoming gloom. She faced upstream, waving, crisscrossing both arms back and forth. A part of the lump moved.

  “Jerzy. That you?”

  A muffled “me” carried across the dead air. Flutters of relief rippled through her. The wave-back he’d given was a paltry thing. Like hitting the Megabucks pick-six. At least they were on the same trajectory. Shared the same fate.

  Floating backward, she cupped her hands and yelled upstream. “Are you all right?”

  Again, a single hand-wave. He seemed to be sculling at the water with one arm. The other floated out from his side like an empty sleeve. The cable thing must’ve bunged up his shoulder.

  Thrashing the water to slow her drift, Delia shouted, “Just keep working toward me, and I’ll—”

  Something hard smacked the back of her head, dunking her face downward, forcing her to expel river water. At nearly the same instant, an object like a highway divider wedged itself between her legs, wishboned her thighs, and laid her out prone underwater. Brain-numbing silence became a breath-holding, roaring, gurgling crush of pressure as the top of her head took the brunt of the current’s force.

  The object had to be a tree sticking out from one of those snag piles. Its rounded thickness was half submerged and in constant motion. The water pressure would either wrench her over the tree trunk or draw her under the damned thing. Emptied lungs screamed “Over!” as she battled to right herself inside a snarl of thrashing branches and limbs.

  Breaking the surface and gulping air, Delia locked ankles beneath the trunk of her seesawing mount and waited out the rise and fall of a current surge. No way would the stinking river tear her off this perch. She might be riding a dunking stool, but Delia Chavez was done letting the Willamette treat her like so much floating garbage.

  She’d barely caught her breath when the crackle of a breaking branch pumped more adrenaline through her. It was Jerzy, slightly upstream, toward the end of the tree she rode. A current eddy twirled him in a slo-mo water dance while he seemed to keep time with a knobby branch that had broken off in his good hand.

  The river would sweep him on past, down into the darkness, if she didn’t make a try for him.

  “Grab something,” she yelled.

  He dropped the useless stick and took hold of another bough in the tangle of branches. It too, bent under the strain of his body. The small limb swung her way, halting his drift. She scooted as far along the smooth-bark tree as she could, reaching out just as the bough he clutched broke off.

  Of course, the chain on her crucifix picked that moment to hang up on a snag. Their fingers touched as he spun past the trunk’s jagged end.

  Yanking the chain loose, she flipped it over a shoulder, then lunged forward and made a last-ditch grab. She felt nylon mesh and clamped down. The sudden strain jolted her from fingertips to brain, sending sparks across the insides of her eyes. The trunk she rode bowed downstream and sank under the surging water.

  Delia sat up hacking and coughing but kept her leg-lock on the tree and a death grip on Jerzy’s life vest below an armhole, her fingers entwined in its side webbing. He fishtailed on his back, the river current plowing past and over his head. The strain on her grip was tremendous. Somehow she had to get both hands on him, but she couldn’t reach out far enough.

  She scanned back over her pain-racked shoulder. It only confirmed the obvious: they were way out on a limb, and nearly out of luck.

  “Grab this stick.” At Jerzy’s shout, Delia whipped her head back around and nearly poked herself in the eye on the second branch he’d broken off. Grasping it in his good hand, he thrust it toward her over the back of his head.

  Relying on her locked legs for stability, she took hold of his arm extension with her free hand and pulled. Nothing happened, except new pain. Putting her back into it, she gained some. Encouraged, she leaned upriver and gritted her teeth. The water’s pressure again pushed her downward. The river surged, sloshing around her neck, then receding. Her muscles cried for release.

  She strained harder, reefing on Jerzy’s torso, until the back of his head was against her left leg. Close enough. She let go of the branch, grabbed the far armhole of his vest, and heaved. Jerzy’s left shoulder blade gr
ound up over the log and her thigh, his left ear not far from her crotch. He dropped his end of the stick, reached backward around her middle, and latched on to the waistband at the rear of her Vector two-piece. His fingers protruded well into slap-you-silly territory, but it allowed her to relax her grip.

  Exhausted, she accepted his hoarsely grunted “Sorry about that” and let her upper body collapse forward, her face lolling above his collarbone.

  Spent from the dual effort, they puffed like toy locomotives. Neither of them moved or spoke for a while.

  He got his voice back first. The only warm thing out there, Jerzy’s heaving breath gusted past her ear. “Jesus, Delia. Where’d you … get those … strong hands?”

  She squeezed out an answer between chattering teeth. “Crush Ball gr-grip strengthener.” More clicking. “Uncle Tino hands me jars he c-can’t open.”

  Jerzy’s chest heaved as they shared a gallows laugh. Though chilled as freezer meat, it felt like her face belonged close to the crook of his neck.

  “I believe it. You must—” The tree took another dip and his words choked into sputters.

  She sat up, lifting the back of his head until their hobbyhorse cycled upward. “Come on, we have to work our way back before the Willamette turns us into a st-statistic.”

  In labored rhythm, Delia shimmied a few inches back, scrunched her partner close into her stomach, then repeated the move. Finally, the trunk widened, bowing less as the current eased. A mishmash of limbs kept them from working back farther. She relaxed only after Jerzy managed to wrap a leg around the base of a branching limb.

  She checked her old Timex Indiglo. Couldn’t believe they’d been in the water fewer than ten minutes. If they weren’t found in another twenty—

  A wave of uncontrollable shivering broke into that thought, and she hugged Jerzy closer.

  Minutes later, a low thrum played on her ears, adding itself to the light patter of rain on the river’s surface. The sound faded in and out.