by Eric Walters
ELEVEN
We spent the day going down the river. I used one of the oars as a rudder when I had the engine off to keep us in the middle of the river. Sometimes the river was wider and slower, and at other times, much narrower and faster. Sometimes I used the engine and sometimes I let us drift. The gas tank was still about one-quarter full, so I wasn’t too worried. I was pretty sure we’d covered much, much more than half the distance. It would have been better if I knew exactly how far we’d gone or how much farther we had to go or even what the river looked like ahead. Or, for that matter, how long we’d been traveling and what time it actually was. I guessed we’d been traveling for about four hours, so it was somewhere around ten or eleven… or nine…or noon. We were lost in space and time.
“That was the last of my water,” Alejandra said, holding up an empty bottle.
“I’ve got a little bit left in my second bottle,” I said. “Would you like it?” I offered her the bottle.
“No, you should save it for yourself.”
“We can share it.” I handed her the bottle, and she took a small sip, handing it back to me.
“It’s strange that we’re on a river and we don’t have any water to drink,” I said.
“There are things in the water—parasites—that would not be good.”
As the sun climbed it became brighter and stronger, and the heat continued to build. At one point I considered moving closer to the shore so that we could take advantage of the shade cast by the trees. But then I thought better of it. I didn’t know the water or where rocks might be, and the center of the river was likely deeper.
“It is so hot,” she said.
“You could dangle an arm in the river to cool you down,” I said.
“That would be very stupid. It is like dangling bait for a caiman to either rip your arm off or pull you in and kill you.”
I hadn’t even thought of that possibility. “I haven’t seen any of them in a while.”
“Just because you cannot see them does not mean they are not there. Do you know how long a caiman can stay underwater?” she asked.
“No idea. How long?”
“Umm…I am not sure, but I know it would be long.”
I heard the sound of a motor. I looked up and scanned the sky. Was it a plane? Was it my grandpa’s plane?
“There is a boat!” Alejandra yelled, pointing behind me, upriver.
I spun around. The boat had just made the curve in the river. It didn’t look much bigger than ours, and it held four or five people. It was close enough for us to see that much, but far enough away that we couldn’t tell anything about them. It did look like it was moving pretty quickly…and from this distance, it looked similar…similar to the one we’d sent into the river. My first thought was, Is it them? And my instant reaction was to try to make sure they couldn’t get close enough for me to find out.
I yanked on the starter cord, and the engine roared to life. “Hang on!” I gave it full throttle, and the engine screamed as the front of the boat lifted out of the water. Despite my warning, Alejandra almost toppled out.
The little boat zipped along, skimming the surface of the water. At this speed, it was even more important that I keep an eye on what was ahead of us, to look for rocks and logs, but I couldn’t help spinning my head around to see the boat behind us.
“Is it them?” Alejandra yelled.
“I don’t know. It could be anybody!”
I kept the throttle wide-open, and we rounded a curve in the river. The boat behind us disappeared from view. Maybe they weren’t following us, and they were going to stop—but then the boat reappeared around the bend…traveling faster than I would have expected. They were gaining on us.
Alejandra looked worried as she peered past me to the trailing boat. I noticed that she was now holding her gun again.
“Can you tell if they have guns?” I asked.
“I cannot see any, but that does not mean they do not.”
“They could just be in a hurry to get downriver,” I said. Was I trying to convince her or myself?
“There are four of them. Four men,” she said.
“Are they the men who were trailing us?”
“I cannot tell.”
I glanced over my shoulder again. They were much closer now, and the man at the front began waving his arms at us. It looked like a couple of them were yelling, but I couldn’t possibly hear their words over the roar of the engine.
“They are getting closer!” Alejandra said. “You need to go faster!”
I had the throttle completely open. There was nothing else I could do to get more speed. I’d just have to shorten the distance. We were coming up to the next curve in the river, and I angled toward the side, cutting down the distance I needed to round the bend. I made the turn, and the other boat disappeared again—but reappeared a few seconds later. They’d cut the bend as well.
There was nothing more I could do. They were gaining, so close now that I could see them clearly. All four of them were gesturing and yelling.
They kept edging closer, almost pulling alongside us.
“Do something! Do something!” Alejandra screamed.
There was only one thing I could do. I turned the engine and we swerved to the side, and I bumped our boat into their boat. We bounced to the side. Alejandra screamed, and the men in the boat yelled at me.
“What are they yelling?” I asked.
“They want you to stop, to pull over…but do not do that!”
I tried to zigzag again, but they were almost right beside us, and they had us trapped against the shore. Their boat bumped into ours, and one of the men grabbed on to the side of our boat. A second man got to his feet and tried to balance himself—wait, was he going to try to jump into our boat?
I reached down and grabbed my gun. I spun it around so I was holding it by the barrel, and I smashed the handle down on the hand of the man holding our boat. He screamed and let go, and the two boats separated. I eased off the throttle, and the other boat raced forward ahead of us. Now we were behind them as they zigged and zagged, and I tried to stay right behind them. I managed the first few turns and then they picked up speed, pulled away and completed a long curve until they were behind us again. They’d come at us soon enough, but this gave us a little space and time. I expected them to circle back, but they didn’t. They kept going until they were now headed upstream, away from us.
“What are they doing?” Alejandra asked.
I shook my head. “I have no idea. I think they’re going—they’re leaving.”
I was going to slow down again but thought better of it. We needed to keep distance between us and them. I kept looking behind us, waiting for them to come back, but they didn’t. They were heading away, leaving us alone. But why? Had the sight of my gun scared them off?
Finally satisfied that they were gone, I eased off the throttle, and the engine settled down—and then stopped completely.
“Why did you turn the engine off?” Alejandra demanded.
“I didn’t. It died.”
“Start it. Start it quickly,” she ordered.
I stood up to grab the cord and was just going to crank it when I realized what the problem might be. I lifted up the gas tank. It felt light. It felt empty. I shook it. There was nothing inside. “We’re out of gas, but we’re okay as long as they don’t come back. We’ll get there. The current is moving us along pretty fast.” Actually, we were moving too fast.
I took another look back. The men weren’t behind us—they weren’t even in sight. They weren’t the worry now. The river was closing in, and on both sides the banks were rising up. It was like we were going into a canyon.
And then I heard it—the sound of rushing water. We were heading into a set of rapids!
TWELVE
I tried to think. There had to be something we could do. We had to get to shore, but without power that wasn’t possible. What if we jumped out and swam? No, we’d just be swept downriver without a
boat. There was only one choice.
“Hang on. We’re going through,” I said.
I shifted from the seat to the bottom and reached out so I had one hand on each side of the boat. Alejandra did the same, but instead of facing forward, she sat so she was facing me and the back of the boat.
“I do not want to see what is coming,” she explained without my asking.
I understood.
“It’s going to be all right,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I was. “I’ve ridden through rapids before.”
“You have?”
I nodded. Of course, it had been in a kayak, with a helmet and life jacket and experts right there to spot and save us if there was a problem. Here, we had no helmets, no life jackets, and the only “experts” who could spot us in the water were caimans, and they weren’t there to save us.
We hit the first drop, and we both flew up a few centimeters. Alejandra squealed. I was too shocked to utter a sound. Water sprayed over the sides, soaking us. I was going to yell for her to hold on when we hit a second drop and then a third and a fourth. We bounced up and down, and on the fourth bump she lost her grip on the boat. I stuck my legs out and tried to pin her to the bottom. There was a gigantic crash, and we both tumbled forward and landed intertwined in the very front of the boat.
I scrambled and pushed off, fighting my way to the back of the boat as it thumped against another rock, and I was thrown into the air and again landed on top of Alejandra. I tried to get up, but we smashed into something else and then dropped and spun around. We were going backward down the river through the rapids! We were sideways as the boat continued to spin and then pointed forward again.
I sat up so I could look ahead. I could see a large area ahead where the river flattened out, but there was another set of rapids before we’d reach that. Once again the bottom dropped out of my world and I became airborne, landing back in the boat but just barely, my side hitting against the side of the boat. This time Alejandra grabbed me so I wouldn’t topple over and out. There was another crash, which knocked us and the boat to the side, and then the sound of grinding, ripping metal. We were bounced around the boat, together, then apart, and then finally it stopped.
I sat up. We were spinning slightly, but we were through. All around us was flat water. The river had widened out so much that it looked more like a lake than a river.
“We made it,” I said. I turned to look upstream at the rapids and realized we had lost our motor. We weren’t just out of fuel. We were motorless.
“DJ…the boat…there is a leak.”
We were soaked and sitting in a puddle in the bottom of the boat. I knew that. What I hadn’t realized until she mentioned it was that water was bubbling in through a gash on the side of the boat, just above the bottom.
“We’re going to sink!” she exclaimed.
I looked around for the oars. There was only one. The other must have gotten tossed out by our ride through the rapids.
“I’ll paddle! Start bailing us out!”
“With what?”
“Use your hands!”
She put her hands together like a scoop and started throwing water out of the boat. I dug in with the oar and began paddling. I dug in again and again. We were moving, but not very far or very fast, and the shore was far away.
Water continued to pour in through the gash. It was clear that the water was coming in faster than she could bail it out, and as it did, the boat was becoming heavier and harder for me to move.
I continued to dig in but at the same time tried to figure out how far away the shore was, how fast we were moving, how much water was flowing in and whether we’d make it to the shore before we made it to the bottom. Then I noticed the caimans.
There was one in the water off to the side, and then a second head popped out of the water, and then a third appeared directly in front of us. Ahead, on the shore, were three or four others, basking in the sun. Even if I got us there before we sank, we’d just be home-delivery fast food.
Wait! The guns! We still had the guns—we could shoot the caimans. Desperately I searched the boat for the weapons. There they were, side by side, on the bottom of the boat, under the accumulated water. They were useless as well.
“Alejandra,” I said.
She stopped bailing and asked, “Why are you not rowing?”
“We’re not going to make it. We’re going to sink before we get there, and there are caimans on the shore and in the water.” I pointed to a big one just off to the side, its head above water, staring at us.
“We will kill them—we will shoot them.”
I pointed to the submerged guns.
She reached down and snatched one of them. She aimed at the caiman and fired! A bullet hit the water beside it, and then a second seemed to hit it as the caiman jumped and disappeared.
“But how? The gun was under water!”
“A Glock can fire even if it is under the water. Paddle, keep paddling—we will make it!”
As I went to dig the paddle in again, I noticed we weren’t alone. A large boat was zipping across the water right toward us. Either we were going to be rescued or kidnapped. I reached down and grabbed the second gun from beneath the water. It didn’t matter if it was the caimans or the kidnappers. I wasn’t going down without a fight.
A voice was coming from a loudspeaker on the boat. The man was speaking in Spanish, and I had no idea what he was saying. Then I read what was painted on the boat. In big red letters it read POLICIA. Even with my limited Spanish, I knew who that was.
“We are saved!” Alejandra cheered. “We are saved!”
THIRTEEN
Alejandra’s grandfather and my grandpa came back into the room. Her grandfather looked angry enough to explode.
“We just got off the radio with Berta to let her know that you both are fine,” my grandpa said.
Alejandra’s grandfather started yelling at her in Spanish.
“Juan, Juan,” my grandpa said, putting his hands on Juan’s shoulders. “The most important thing is that they’re both fine.”
Juan turned and continued to talk excitedly in Spanish with my grandpa. Whatever my grandpa was saying seemed to be calming him down. Thank goodness.
“English, Juan, let’s speak in English so everybody can understand.”
I was the only person who didn’t speak Spanish, and I was happy enough not to understand or be part of the conversation.
“Fine, fine, fine,” Juan said. “I will speak in English. Why would you two do what you did?” he demanded.
“We were escaping the kidnappers,” Alejandra explained.
“There were no kidnappers.”
“If there were no kidnappers, why was there so much gunfire?” she said.
“And explosions,” I added. “It sounded like they were blowing up the walls of the compound.”
“That was fireworks,” Juan said.
“Fireworks?” Alejandra and I said in unison.
“It was a surprise I had arranged for you two. Didn’t Berta tell you there was going to be a surprise?”
She had. I remembered her saying that. I even remembered Alejandra trying to convince her to give us that surprise.
“But there was pounding on the door of the safe room. Somebody was trying to get in,” Alejandra said.
“That was Berta. When she could not find you, she tried to get into the room. She knocked and then tried to remember the combination,” Juan explained.
“But if no one was trying to harm us, why did men try to shoot us by the shelter at the river?” Alejandra asked.
That was a good question.
“They were not firing at you. They were firing at the jaguar that was in the brush by the shelter,” Juan said.
I gasped. “Jaguar?”
“It was stalking the two of you. They saw it and tried to shoot it. They missed, but they were able to chase it away.”
Alejandra and I exchanged questioning looks. Had this all been nothing
but us running from our imaginations?
“Wait, there were those men in the boat before we went down the rapids,” she said. “How do you explain them?”
“Those were simply local fisherman who tried to stop you from going through the rapids,” Juan explained.
“They were trying to save us?” I asked.
“Yes, and for their trouble one of them ended up with two broken fingers,” my grandpa said. “Who was it who smashed his hand?”
I raced my hand slightly. “I, um, hit him with the gun.”
“I guess we should all be grateful that you didn’t shoot him,” Grandpa said.
“I wouldn’t have shot him!” I exclaimed. “I’m just so sorry, really.”
“I had one of my associates speak to him,” Juan said. “He understands, and he has been compensated.”
“Compensated?” I asked.
“His medical expenses were paid,” Grandpa said.
“As well as additional money for his pain and suffering and to not press the matter with the police,” Juan added.
“Thank you. Thank you so much for doing that.”
“You are my guest,” Juan said. “As well, I suspect that one of you has much more blame for all of this.”
I looked at Alejandra. I expected her to look downcast or scared or sorry. Instead, she looked angry, her eyes blazing.
“No, I’m just as responsible for this as she is. It’s not her fault,” I said.
Her eyes softened.
My grandpa laughed. “Juan, I see so much of your late wife when I look at Alejandra.”
“As do I,” Juan said. “She is like her grandmother, my dear departed wife, in so many ways.”
My grandpa walked over and stood right beside Alejandra. “Young lady, there is hardly a compliment anybody could ever give you greater than comparing you to your grandmother. She was one of the finest, most charming, most beautiful, most adventurous women in the entire history of the world.” He turned to Juan. “And somebody who led you into more than a few misadventures, my friend.”
“The best adventures of my life. Now we have to decide what to do with these two,” Juan said.