“He slowed beside us, then parked and got on the radio.”
Sam started the engine. They sat in silence for a few minutes.
“What exactly are we doing?” Remi asked.
“Giving him a chance.”
Remi caught on: “If it’s official business, he’ll stop us here. If not . . . ‘note-and-notify.’”
“Right.” Sam put the Rover in gear. “Time to play navigator again, Remi. We’re backtracking.”
“To where?”
“Hopefully, nowhere. If he doesn’t follow us, we’ll turn around again.”
“And if he follows us?”
“Then we’re on the run. We’ll be needing one of those unnamed roads you mentioned.”
“WE’RE ON THE RUN,” Remi announced a few minutes later. Facing backward, she’d been staring through the rear window since they’d left Manjakandriana. “He’s a mile back.”“We’ve got some dips and turns coming up. Let me know each time you lose sight of him.”
“Why?”
“If we sprint while he’s watching us he’ll know we’re running; this way we may be able to get some distance before he realizes it.”
“Tricky, Fargo.”
“Only if it works.”
“What if he tries to stop us?”
“I don’t even want to think about it.”
FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES Sam followed Remi’s cues, flooring the gas pedal for a ten count when Remi said, “Go!,” before slowing back down to the speed limit. Slowly but steadily, they put an extra half mile between them and the Passat.“Are any of those roads not gravel or dirt?” Sam asked.
Remi studied the map. “Hard to tell, but this one coming up looks a tad thicker than the others. So far on this map, that’s usually meant blacktop of some kind. Why do you ask?”“No dust trail.”
“From a quick turn,” Remi said. “That could work both ways.”
Sam frowned. “Good point. Tell me when the turn’s coming up.”
For the next few minutes Remi matched passing roads and signs against the map’s markings. “Should be the next turn to the south.” She measured the distance with her fingernail. “A quarter mile, give or take. Should be just over this hill.”“How’s our friend?”
“Hard to be sure, but it looks like he’s picked up speed.”
They crested the hill and started down. Ahead, Sam saw the turnoff Remi had indicated. Sam jammed the accelerator to the floorboard, and the Range Rover surged forward. Her eyes wide, Remi braced herself against the dashboard. A hundred yards from the turn, Sam switched his foot to the brake, pressing as hard as he dared without skidding, and brought the Rover down to sixty-five kilometers per hour, or forty miles per hour.
“Hang on,” Sam said, then slewed the wheel right. Despite the Rover’s high center of gravity, the tires clung to the road, but Sam could see he’d overshot the turn. He eased the wheel left, then tapped the brakes and jerked the wheel right again. The Rover’s tail whipped around. The driver’s-side rear tire slipped off the shoulder. They felt the Rover tipping sideways. Sam resisted the impulse to correct right and instead steered into the skid, dropping the driver’s-side front tire off the shoulder. Now even with each other, the two shoulder-side tires bit down together. Sam gunned it, jerked the wheel to the right, and the Rover vaulted back onto the road.“Sharp right!” Remi called, pointing at a gap in the foliage off the shoulder.
Sam reacted instantly, braking hard. The Rover shuddered to a stop. Sam switched into reverse, backed up ten feet, switched back to drive and turned into the gap. Shadows engulfed them. Foliage scraped the car’s sides. He eased forward a few feet until the bumper tapped a wooden cattle gate.Remi climbed over the center console into the backseat and poked her head up so she could see out the side window.
Sam asked, “Are we off the road?”
“Barely. He should be along anytime now.” Thirty seconds later: “There he goes.” She turned around in the seat, slumped back, and exhaled. “Can we sit here for a-”
From down the main road came the shrieking of brakes, then silence.
Sam and Remi froze.
In the distance an engine revved and tires squealed.
Sam groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Buckle up, Remi.”
THE ROAD, while in fact blacktop, was narrow and winding, with no centerline and with ragged shoulders. With the Range Rover at top speed, they gained a half mile before they heard the Passat skid into the turn behind them. As they rounded the next corner a sign flashed past.Remi caught it: “Narrow bridge ahead.”
Sam gunned the engine, eating up the straightaway before the bridge. On either side, the jungle seemed to close in around them. The green tips of branches lashed the side windows. Through the windshield, the bridge appeared.“They call that a bridge?” Remi called.
Spanning a narrow gorge, the bridge was anchored to each bank by a pair of steel cables, but there were neither center stanchions nor support pylons. Fence-post-and-rope handrails lined each side. The bridge’s surface was little more than parallel twelve-inch planks with nothing but air and the occasional crossbeam between them.
Fifty yards from the structure, Sam slammed on the brakes. He and Remi glanced out the side windows; there was nothing. No breaks in the foliage, no turnoffs. Nowhere to hide. Beside them, a sign read, in French: SINGLE VEHICLE CROSSING ONLY. BRIDGE SPEED LIMIT-6 KPH. Essentially, a walking pace.Sam looked at Remi, who forced a smile. “Like a Band-Aid,” she said.
“Don’t think, just do it.”
“Right.”
Sam aligned the Rover’s wheels with the bridge’s planks, then stepped on the accelerator. The Rover rolled forward.
Behind them came the sound of tires squealing. Remi turned in her seat and saw the Passat skid around the corner, fishtail slightly, then straighten out.
“Ten to one he was counting on this bridge.”
“No bet,” Sam replied, fingers white on the steering wheel.
The Rover’s front tires thumped over the bridge’s first crossbeam and onto the planks. The wood groaned and creaked. The Rover’s back tires crossed over.
“Point of no return,” Sam said. “Is he slowing down?”
Still turned in her seat, Remi said, “No . . . Okay, he is. He’s not stopping, though.”
Sam depressed the accelerator. The speedometer needle rose past twelve kph.
Remi rolled down her window, stuck her head out, and looked down.
Sam called, “Do I want to know?”
“It’s about a fifty-foot drop into a river.”
“A lazy river, right?”
“Whitewater. Class 4 at least.” “Okay, sunshine, enough narrative.”
Remi pulled her head back inside and took another look through the rear window. “He’s almost on the bridge. Clearly, the sign doesn’t worry him.”
“Let’s hope he knows more than we do.”
They crossed the halfway point.
A moment later they felt the Range Rover dip slightly. Now double loaded, the bridge began undulating like a jump rope being flicked vertically at both ends. While the movement was but inches, the differing weights and positions of the vehicles began to feed upon each other.“Interference wave,” Sam muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Physics. When two waves of disparate amplitude combine-”
“Bad things happen,” Remi finished. “I get it.”
The Range Rover was rising and falling erratically now, six inches in each direction, Sam estimated. Remi felt her stomach rise into her throat.
“Do we happen to have any seasickness pills?”
“Sorry, my dear. We’re almost there.”
