and grappled for the rope, but his fingers slid off the rubberized nylon. Bowie was stretched out behind the raft, bodysurfing, the Unegama battering his body as he clung to the grab loop with one bloody hand.
Just as Ace clutched the Python, the raft bounced against a protruding boulder, tossing Clara against him. He shoved her away. “Watch yourself, damn it.”
Ace yanked the pistol free. Clara wrapped her arms around him.
“Don’t shoot him,” she shouted.
“Whose side are you on, bitch?” He shoved her away.
Bowie, with only his head and one arm out of the water, opened his mouth to speak, but a spurt of storm- stained water splashed into his face and drowned his words.
Ace settled on his knees in the raft, which had taken on nearly a foot of water now. He figured another foot or so and the boat would swamp. That was okay, though, assuming the backpacks he’d swiped from the rafting group contained food and a means of lighting a fire. But there were only three of the backpacks left, including his.
He pointed the Python at Bowie. Feed the fishes or feed the angels, it was all the same to Ace.
“Let go,” he said.
“We need him,” Clara yelled, getting tossed against the side of the raft again. Ace held on with one hand gripping the rope, trying to steady the pistol. Along the riverbanks, large rocks, strips of vegetation, and the dark bones of giant trees sped by in a blur. The mist capped the top of the forest, obscuring the high walls of the gorge, but Ace could feel their weight, millions of years of God-stacked stone.
“You stupid bitch,” Ace yelled, letting go of the rope to wipe the drizzle from his eyes. No good, his sleeve was soaked. “We can’t trust him now. You seen whose side he’s on.”
“We can’t make it down the river without him.”
As if to second her words, the raft made a sudden spin, as if hung up on a submerged log. Bowie winced as his body slammed against something underwater. The raft jostled along a ribbed run of water, then reached the relative calm of an eddy. Here, with the roar of the river suppressed, Ace could concentrate on a clean shot.
Not that he cared if Bowie died bloody and ugly, drowning before his heart pumped out the last of its blood. No, he still had pride. The Dakota Sons of Freedom had trained him well, even if they’d eventually kicked him out for his radical views.
Well, fuck them, too. They didn’t have the guts to piss out the blood of tyrants and patriots alike, the way the Good White Man Thomas Jefferson had said. Revolution wasn’t a fixed event in American history. It was a constant turning of the wheel, with God pouring the gas. Some took it personally, others were just too damned gutless.
And bigger than the fight to keep America free was the war to keep God’s way.
The river divided into three channels, with dense, low growth clinging to the islands. A pebbly sandbar lay to the right, but without anyone working a paddle, they were at the mercy of the current. The raft skirled along a bladelike wave, pushing toward slower water.
Bowie, now able to touch bottom, said, “I guess you have to shoot me, because I’m not letting go.”
“The captain goes down with the ship, huh?”
“Ace?”
The bitch’s whining was getting on his nerves. Once they made it to the lake, he’d get rid of her. He wouldn’t have any trouble, once he stole a car, to find another starry-eyed cunt who wanted to rub against greatness. The next one probably wouldn’t be as good-looking or young (Clara was one of those precious gifts God granted him once in a while, the way a fat man might occasionally leave a bit of meat on the bone he tossed to his dog). But she’d have a warm, wet hole when he needed it and, most important, she’d be there to take the pain.
“Maybe I ought to just leave both of you here and take the raft myself,” Ace said to her.
Bowie rose higher out of the water. It was to his waist now. In the deepening darkness, he might have been a ghost formed from the surrounding mist.
“Ace, you can’t leave me,” she said. “Ever.”
Bowie was almost close enough to reach for the Python. Ace, in the calmer water, sighted down the barrel at the pale, river-drenched brow, right between the fire-filled eyes.
“See your ass on Judgment Day, except I’m figuring you’ll have a seat way in back,” he said to Bowie.
Clara leaped from the flooded bowels of the raft just as Ace squeezed the trigger. She didn’t knock his arm away, the way it happened in movies, because she wasn’t that fast. Still, the movement of the raft was enough to send the shot high and wide, its report booming up the river and reverberating between the slopes of the gorge.
As the shot died away, an even louder thunder sounded. “I’m pregnant,” she said.
Ace was trying those words in his head when the tail end of the gunshot’s echo changed pitch and gained altitude.
No, it wasn’t a final echo.
It was the trumpet blast of the angels, hidden somewhere high in the twilight mist.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
“This is getting way past old,” Farrengalli said, but Raintree was already launching himself against the slick cliff wall.
“The cave,” Raintree shouted. The lead rope, which he’d reeled up, lay in a coil around his shoulder, limiting his movements. But he scrambled like a monkey on an electric fence, moving to his right, taking him away from the planned route. But plans changed.
The keening wail came from above and below simultaneously, and Raintree thought the sonic phenomenon was caused by the reverberant cliffs. Then he realized two of the creatures were swooping, one from above and one below.
No time to set an anchor and drop a rope to the others. He’d be lucky to reach the cave. And he had no way to defend his back, because both hands were occupied with holding on for dear life.
“Bad news,” Dove said from the ledge below, as if she also realized what the dual attack meant. The creatures were growing smarter, learning about their prey.
Raintree wondered if he’d made a mistake, if they should have waited on the ledge with the others and tried to defend themselves with their backs to the wall. Too late to second-guess, because he was midway between the ledge and the cave, grabbing for the next handhold before he’d fully tested the most recent.
The twin shrieks changed pitch, became lower and more guttural. If the creatures had discussed strategy through whatever strange means in which they communicated, then they’d want to separate their prey, culling out the weakest first.
In this case, because he was by himself and exposed, Raintree was the evening’s choice entree.
Both attackers went silent, which was even more disconcerting than their bloodcurdling sirens had been. Raintree knew from the previous encounters that silence meant they were preparing for touchdown, most likely with talons extended for his exposed back. He froze in place, attempting to merge with the granite, to become rock.
“Find something to throw,” Dove yelled at Farrengalli.
Raintree felt the whisper of air as the creature swept past. He didn’t know if the creature had lost track of his location or had merely been making a test run to size him up.
Gripping an outcropping with one hand, the toes of his boots jammed into separate crevices, he fumbled toward his belt. His fingers touched the leather pouch and a hunger shot through him. If only he had taken that second amphetamine, he’d already have reached the cave. Of course, oxycodone wasn’t exactly known for its clarity-inducing powers, so there was more fog going on than just the stuff rising from the river.
He might have time to chew and swallow a handful of oxy before the creature struck, but no way would the massive dose of pharmaceuticals beat the pain it was designed to suppress.
He forced his fingers away from the pouch.
To the cool, wet steel of the piton in his belt.
The ProVentures Pocket Rocket, eighty millimeters of slender steel, was designed to be driven into rock or ice
