“Kill them both, brother,” she snapped. “And make sure they’ll never be found.”
He grinned a little and said, “That part’s easy. We’ll just cover their bodies in bacon grease and leave them for the grizzly bears, the wolves, and the ravens.”
Chapter 86
It was nearly four p.m. on our second full day on the river. The rain was letting up. The skies were clearing.
We’d floated almost nine river miles and were nearing Big Salmon Lake. I was rowing while Sampson peered downriver, searching for any sign of the helicopter or of people camped there.
Near the confluence of Big Salmon Creek, I brought us in on the west bank. We pulled our raft high out of the water and climbed farther up the bank to see a white outfitter’s tent by an old cabin surrounded by scattered trees. We scanned the area, saw no one.
“Hello!” I shouted. “Hello!”
We waited and heard no one. Sampson ran over to the wall tent, looked inside, then shook his head at me. He tried the old Forest Service cabin. No luck.
John returned, said, “We can camp here and hope someone comes along with a satellite phone, or we can keep going and get three or four more miles downriver before dark.”
“Let’s keep going,” I said. “We could overtake someone ahead of us who has a satellite phone. At the very least, we’ll be closer to the pullout.”
Sampson nodded. “My turn to row.”
“I’m not arguing,” I said, massaging my sore shoulders.
A few minutes later, we pushed off with the sun warming our bones after the long day in the rain. We passed Big Salmon Creek and entered a thousand-yard straight with high rock walls on both flanks.
We rounded the far bend about twenty minutes later and found ourselves in a lazy S. In the middle of the S, about two hundred yards away, two blue rafts similar to our own and loaded with gear were pulled up on a gravel beach.
“I’m not seeing anyone,” I said, peering through my binoculars.
“Someone is on that sandy hill above the rafts,” Sampson said.
I looked, saw a man up there, and threw my binoculars on him. He had his hand to his brow and was looking our way. Then he dropped his hand and I caught his face.
“Son of a bitch!” I hissed to Sampson. “That’s Raphael Durango! Emmanuella Alejandro’s brother! Get us out of sight!”
Sampson started rowing maniacally toward the east shore while I went for the Ruger. I no sooner had it in my hand when I heard a familiar buzz.
“Helicopter!” I said.
Before John could reply, I saw it coming from half a mile downriver. The same chopper from the day before, the same spiderwebbed windshield on one side.
“We’re toast!” Sampson yelled. “Get in the river!”
We were both about to jump over the side and swim for shore when the helicopter suddenly swung toward that hill. Two men hung out either side of the helicopter and started shooting at Durango and another man, both of whom started shooting back with their own automatic weapons.
Then more shots came from the other side of the river and I could see three cartel men there with machine guns, all firing at the helicopter.
“What do we do?” Sampson said.
“Keep going!” I said. “They’re occupied!”
“You’re insane,” John said, but he spun the raft so his back faced downriver and started to pull hard on the oars to take full advantage of the current.
We gathered speed. As the battle raged between the helicopter gunmen and the five cartel men trying to bring them down, I scrambled past Sampson to the rear of the boat and got the Ruger set up over the top of our gear.
We were sixty yards from the middle of the S when the man with Durango was hit. The helicopter swung about over the river and hovered, nose facing west toward the three cartel gunmen.
The belly of the helicopter was no more than eighty feet overhead when we passed under it and went by the rafts. The big black man hanging out the left side and the smaller Latino on the right opened fire on the three cartel men on the other bank.
I thought about shooting up at one of them. I thought about shooting the rafts as well. But I did not want to attract attention. We floated beyond them as the battle raged.
The cartel men emptied their weapons at the helicopter with Durango doing the same from the east side of the river.
I could hear metal smacking metal and saw the Latino gunman above me flinch hard and disappear inside the helicopter, which banked away, then flew back at Durango. The big black guy in the chopper and the cartel boss were firing at each other.
When a chunk of the windshield gave way, the helicopter finally pulled off and headed straight west, up and over the nearest mountain. Looking back through my binoculars from a hundred and fifty yards downstream, I saw Durango stare after us and then disappear, running downhill toward the rafts.
Chapter 87
We rounded another bend in the river. Sampson was sucking wind from rowing so hard.
“Gotta rest,” he said, gasping.
“You rest. I row,” I said. “Durango saw us. He’s coming after us.”
Sampson moved off the rowing bench and let me take his place. I put my back into it and got us going at a good clip downstream before I said, “I think those were M’s men in the helicopter.”
“Yeah, coming back after us. But Durango and his men were too good to pass up.”
“It cost them. That helicopter’s like swiss cheese.”
“So how did both of them find us? And how did the cartel know to wait in ambush for us there?”
“Like I said, we didn’t remove our phone batteries a couple of times, maybe that’s it,” I theorized, sweat pouring off my brow as I kept rowing.
“Maybe, but it doesn’t explain Durango and his boys. He knew we were coming downriver.”
I wrestled with that for a moment before it dawned on me and I stopped rowing to look down at my belt. “It has to be,” I said, yanking it off and tossing it to John.
“What has to be?” he asked as I started rowing again.
“The GPS transmitter Mahoney made me put in that belt. Durango had to have known I was wearing it when he ran a wand over me. He probably got its frequency.”
“Which means they can still track us,” Sampson said, cocking his arm to pitch the belt.
“Don’t,” I said.
Before he could ask why, we both heard a roar ahead of us.
“We’ve got quicker water coming at us. Spin the raft around and slow us down. You’re going to want to see where you’re going.”
As I turned the raft, I said, “Look on the OnX map. I remember seeing creeks coming into this stretch on both sides.”
Sampson studied the app on his phone and said, “Helen Creek on the east and Snow Creek on the west. Both about four miles downstream.”
“Gets dark soon, but we’ll make it. Which side has more cover?”
“Snow Creek,” he said.
“Good,” I said as the current began to quicken and the roar of the first rapids intensified. “Now get that transmitter out of my belt and find my empty Nalgene bottle.”
Two hours later, with the sun gone behind the mountains and the shadows lengthening, I took the Nalgene bottle with the transmitter inside and set it in the fast water. It quickly disappeared from sight downstream.
We dragged the raft fifty yards into the woods there, went back to the tree line with our guns, and waited. I figured they’d come through before dark, and we’d have a chance to turn the tables on them.
But I could barely see my hands much less the front bead of my shotgun when I heard voices in Spanish and the sound of oars in the swift water. The raft made squeaking noises brushing rocks, but I could not see it.