“You know what it’s like having a bull’s-eye on your back every time you get on this river?”
“We’re going to catch this guy.”
“You think you’ll still be around to see that day?”
“What do you mean?”
Betts rose from his seat in the cockpit. “Marshall’s terminally pissed. You made him look like an idiot this morning with that boat-order stunt.”
“He can’t get rid of me just yet.”
“I wouldn’t turn my back on him.” Betts walked away from the raft. “I better get these schmucks back here. Nash looks like he’s getting ready to shove off.”
Despite a current that had grown in size and velocity as they got closer to the gorge, Marshall’s four boats made it safely through the Narrows and Mile Long Rapid. Around 1:30, with Nash providing hand signals to warn them of obstacles, they picked their way through two rock-lined channels in Gunsight Rapids. When their boat made a hard-right-hand turn at the end of Gunsight, Carlyle could see the top end of Harris Rift and, in the distance, the derelict wood and steel trestle spanning the Hudson.
Nash was fifty yards ahead of them when Carlyle leaned toward Betts. “Get going, will you. We need to stay close to him.”
“What’s the rush?”
“I told you all this morning. I want us within hailing distance. Just move the boat.”
Betts stood up on the back tube of their raft. “He’s almost over the edge. We’ll never get near him now.”
Avoiding a half-dozen recircs and hydraulics, Betts and Carlyle rushed down the right side of Harris. Four minutes later, they found Nash sitting in tall grass, holding a pressure bandage to his forehead. Blood ran down his face and hands. His life vest was gone and vomit was splattered across the front of his dry suit.
Carlyle jumped from his raft and rushed over to him. “What the hell happened?” he said, kneeling down in front of Nash.
“Everything was going fine, then just as I maneuvered us between those two boulders, we ran into something and, bam, we turned over. I got trapped under the boat, my right foot caught between the floor of the raft and the thwart.”
While Nash described his ordeal, two people from his crew, standing in current up to their knees, hooked a line to a D-ring on his raft and pulled it from the water.
Nash tried to stand up. “They’re not supposed to do that,” he said. “Get them out of there, will you?”
“I’ll take care of it in a second,” Carlyle said, “You have any idea how long you were under?”
“Long enough to think about how Blake died.” Nash took a couple of deep breaths and winced.
“How’d you get out?” Carlyle said.
Nash pointed to one of the women wearing a green and blue wetsuit standing next to the Hudson. “She slipped into the current, fought her way down to me, and slit the thwart. That freed my foot.” He looked straight at Carlyle. “How the hell did she know to do that?”
Carlyle turned and stared at the woman.
Nash’s hands would not stop shaking. “You also mind telling me why she happens to be carrying a six-inch knife?”
The woman who’d saved Nash was speaking quietly to the other members of her crew. The guy to her left began taking notes of their conversation.
“What’s going on?” Nash said. “They look like commandos, for fuck’s sake.”
“First tell me what you ran into down there,” Carlyle said.
“Look for yourself.”
Carlyle walked to the edge of the river. Looking down, he could see the shimmering outline of an aluminum canoe, like some huge silver marlin, wedged between two boulders.
Hernandez and then Marshall pulled into an eddy five yards upstream and rushed over. “Why’d you stop?” Marshall yelled. “What’s going on?”
“He did it again,” Carlyle said. “Laid a trap for us.”
“Tell him about the woman,” Nash said. “The commando, or whatever the hell she is, who saved me.”
“What about her?” Marshall said.
“You’re not going to like this,” Carlyle said. “She’s a cop.”
Marshall’s face turned red and he threw his guide paddle into the grass. “What’s a cop doing here?”
“Calm down,” Carlyle said. “Once DEC approved this trip, I convinced the agency that we needed people who could handle an emergency. Then I made sure they were in the lead raft with Nash. The one that would get hit first.”
“Are you telling me you knew about all this?”
“We were pretty sure that if our guy heard you were going out today, he wouldn’t pass up the chance to attack again.”
“Who approved this goddamn plan of yours?”
“DEC, Bognor, and the state police. They all signed off on it.”
“That’s why you changed the boat order this morning?” Marshall said.
“I wanted our best crew up front.”
“How many cops are with us?” Nash said.
“They’re all cops. Six are from a Coxsackie dive team, eight are detectives from Albany, and five are EPB.”
Nash looked confused. “EP what?”
“Executive Protection Bureau. The Governor’s bodyguard.”
“You used us as guinea pigs?” Nash said.
“No, I surrounded you with the best people we had.”
Betts stood up and adjusted the clasp on his helmet. “Don’t let me interrupt your little tea party.”
“What the hell are you doing?” Carlyle said.
“If some other boat comes through here, we could have another shit storm.” He dragged his raft closer to the submerged canoe.
Carlyle grabbed Betts’s arm. “Leave it for the dive team.”
“Get your hand off me. Someone could drown while you stand around.” He shrugged off his life vest, took a deep breath, and slid over the side of his raft into the water.
Nash stood up. “That’s crazy. He doesn’t have to do that.”
“Betts does what’s necessary, not what’s logical,” Carlyle said.
Betts fought his way down to the canoe, pulled a knife from his leg sheath, and cut through the lashing straps wrapped around the two boulders. When the canoe burst to the surface, he shoved it out of the current and dragged himself into the cockpit of his raft.
“Your right hand’s bleeding,” Carlyle said. “Let Marshall take care of
