Ten seconds later, he burst out of the underbrush into a small clearing on the bank of the river. Framed by a black mass of lowlying trees, the shadowy silhouettes of two human figures were outlined fifty yards upstream against a silvery expanse of rushing water, grappling with something between them. As he stopped short, he realized that the something had to be Gutter. The dog simultaneously yelped in pain, and then there was a metallic clank from the riverbank, a sound Train recognized as that of a boat sliding over some rocks. He raised the Glock way above his head and fired two rounds into the air, making his own ears ring.
He ducked behind a tree trunk to take stock, not knowing if Karen was up there or not, then realizing. he had to get closer. At that instant, an outboard motor lit off, and then there was a loud splash.
He started running through the underbrush along the water’s edge, just in time to see a small boat careening upstream, with either one or two dark figures crouching low.
He aimed the Glock out over the water, but he held back as the sound of the engine dwindled. What if they were just a couple of fishermen who had been terrorized by a large dog and’s , ome nut shooting at them? And where the hell was Karen? In the boat? He swore out loud in frustration.
Then Gutter barked from the edge of the riverbank and limped over to Train on three legs. Train put the Glock back and reached for the dog, but Gutter grabbed the wrist of his sweater instead and pulled back, a gentle but firm grab Come here. Come this way. Now. Train stumbled forward into the low rocks and fallen tree trunks along the riverbank, but Gutter kept pulling, down to the edge, backing into the water. Train pulled back. n he looked out onto the river and What is it, dog?” Then he caught a glimpse of something in the river toward shore in the current, sweeping gracefully downstream toward the cataracts.
Karen heard the two shots. She still did not know where she was or what they were doing with the bag, but the two Pops in quick succession did penetrate through the bag and the cotton in her ears. The zipper had come open enough to expose her face down past her chin. She could smell the cold, wet air of the river. They had been moving the bag from the cart, seeming to take some care doing it, dragging I its lower end across some rocks, when something large and alive caromed off the side of the bag.
After that, everything had happened very fast. There was some kind of intense struggle practically on top of her, and she tried to roll over in the bag to protect herself. Something heavy and squirming fell on the top half of the bag, making her ears ring. She would have sworn she heard a growl or a bark. Was it some kind of animal? A dog? Gutter?
Whatever it was, her captors had their hands full in a fight right on top of the bag. Then she thought she heard the animal yelp in pain, and everything was still for about two seconds.
Then she was being dragged again, this time with no pretense of care.
The bag was twisted around roughly, and then there was an odd feeling that she was falling. She tensed her body for a landing, but the sensation was wrong, all wrong. She was failing, and then there was a shock of cold water on her face. She was bounding upward again, and then she knew, with a cold fist of fear squeezing her heart, that she was in the river-still in the body bag, in the river. She felt the sudden cold along her back, and this time she struggled in earnest, giving way to her panic, thrashing and pulling against the tape, breath hissing through the holes in the tape, eyes streaming behind the gauze taped across her eyes.
The bag just rolled indifferently in the water, submerging her face again for an instant, and then the current had her.
The dog pulled once more on Train’s wrist, then let go and whirled out into the water. But the leg injury quickly brought him floundering back into the shallows. Train got the picture: The dog wanted that thing that was floating down the river. But what the hell was it? He hurried downstream along the bank, pushing his way through beached snags, muddy underbrush, embedded beer cans, and wet rocks. The main current was visible fifty feet offshore, creating swirls over submerged rocks and raising a gray bow wave along a stranded tree trunk. He realized he was losing ground in his attempts to keep up with whatever that was, but the dog persisted, splashing through the shallows, halfswimrmng, half-leaping, trying desperately to keep up with that thing out there.
The river was a couple of hundred yards wide, with a long, low island running down the center. The Maryland shore was visible only as a darker line beyond the island.
Train finally gave up trying to get through the tangle along the shore and jumped down into the water, which shocked him with its icy grip. The bottom felt like gravel, but there were unexpected potholes, and he lurched along like a drunk, head and eyes down to see what he was stepping into, trying to keep upright while catching up with whatever was out there. The dog: Where was Gutter?
He looked up and saw Gutter out in the river now, paddling furiously toward the thing, his head bounding in and out of the water as he flailed his way out into the channel.
Train stopped, then pushed forward as he realized how fast that main channel current was. He was already twenty feet behind the action out there, but try as he might, he couldn’t go any faster, and he knew that he would never last in that cold if he tried to swim out there. To retrieve what? He still didn’t know, but he trusted the dog’s instincts.
He wished he could see the damn thing, but it was indistinct, loglike, but glistening in the silvery starlight reflecting off the channel currents. The rushing noise of the river drowned out his own breathing as he swatted away overhanging branches, trying to keep up while not stepping into the potholes in the gravel shelf that ran along the bank.
As he pushed through the tendrils of a leaning willow tree, he thought he heard a distant engine sound, but he ignored it, keeping his eyes on the dog.
Gutter was catching up with the thing, but the cold water was also catching up with the dog. He kept going, paddling hard, but the shiny black head was coming up out of the water less frequently. Then Train’s right foot stepped off into nothing at all and he was underwater, swimming hard to escape what felt like a small whirlpool, the black water shocking him again with its icy grip. He surfaced some twenty feet away from the bank and felt a moment of panic as he sensed the strength of the current, but then he saw Gutter’s head bound out of the water about fifty feet ahead of him, eyes white, no longer in pursuit of the thing, but swimming for survival. He thought he saw the thing hang up on the white branches of a snag.
He yelled to the dog to hang On, more to let Gutter hear the sound of his voice, and then he began to swim in earnest.
He was not going to lose Gutter. The effort of swimming was staving off the cold, although he knew that was an illusion, that the energy equation would very soon be working to kill him in this icy water. Then he heard the engine noise again, and suddenly the river’s surface was awash with light, light streaming down from above. He stopped swimming and looked up to see a helicopter flaring out above the water downstream, perhaps a hundred Yards from him. Then the helo disappeared in a cloud of its own downwash, a billow of spray that was rapidly advancing up toward him and already enveloping the struggling dog. The pilot evidently saw what was happening and lifted out of ground effect as Train swam harder, his energy galvanized by the appearance of the helo.
After sixty seconds of hard going, he drew abreast of the dog, and he finally could see what they had been pursuing.
It was a bag of some sort, rolling slowly against the snag in the current. Rubber, from the looks of it, its sides puffing out as if it had air trapped in it. He closed in on it as the helo came back, the powerful blue-white spotlight hurting his eyes as it dazzled through the cloud of spray. He collided with the submerged trunk of the snag and reached out and grabbed the bag, then reached for Gutter, who was on his last reserves of energy. To his astonishment, something inside the bag moved, and then it moved again. Then he recognized what the thing was: a god damned body bag.
n? Great God, was Karen in there?
He momentarily lost his grip on’ the dog’s collar, then launched back out into the current to retrieve the struggling animal. He had to fight like hell to pull them both back upstream to the snag. He caught a glimpse of a face at the top of the bag, but the features were missing.
Was she dead?
He ended up holding on to the dog’s collar with one hand and to one of the straps on the bag, whose buoyancy acted like a long, slippery life preserver, with the other while his body straddled the trunk of the snag.
The helo swept closer, the noise and the dazzling light almost overwhelming his ability to think. The cold had him now that he had stopped swimming, and he sensed that the dog was choking in his grasp.
He tried to change his grip on the dog and lost his hold on the bag again, going under with the sudden weight
