Carlyle checked their life vests, pushed his boat into the current ahead of the others, and let the river drag them toward the Narrows. They picked up speed. “As soon as we turn this corner, the current’s going to try to slam us into a boulder on our left.”
“What’s it look like?” asked the guy in front of him.
“From where you’re sitting, like one of Godzilla’s turds.”
The Narrows resembled an enormous washing machine on steroids. Tightly packed rows of white pine, ash, and maple plastered the sheer cliffs. As the river slithered over and around sub-surface boulders, it sounded like a child’s anguished screams. The Hudson, dropping into the gorge at two hundred feet a minute, swallowed Carlyle’s cries of “Forward! Forward!”
Ahead of them were six corkscrewing waves, each ten feet tall. The gorge had no room for all that water. It slammed into the walls of the canyon, reversed direction, and came barreling back at them.
The crew hesitated for an instant, and the boat immediately lost momentum and hung motionless at a forty-five-degree angle. In seconds, they would flip backwards and find themselves in near darkness, surrounded by paddles spinning like propeller blades, moving helplessly toward the next set of rapids.
Carlyle shouted, “Come on, damn it! Pull us over!” His refusal to let them capsize worked. The boat mounted the first crest, dropped into the trough, and rushed toward the next crest. Sheets of water as fine as mist, but hard as marbles lashed Carlyle’s face. “Together now. Pull! Pull!”
They still had five waves ahead of them, a hundred yards of whitewater dropping almost vertically out of the gorge. Carlyle pushed his foot into the restraining strap, leaned out over the stern and, fists planted in the river, steered them toward the middle of that vortex. After ten seconds, time he measured only by his labored breathing, the raft freed itself from the Hudson’s grip and slid into a large tree-lined eddy.
Water streaming from their helmets, the crew slapped hands, pounded their paddles against the sides of the raft, and grinned at each other like chimps in a banana plantation.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Carlyle said. “There’s three more miles of this ahead of us.”
Because Carlyle had passed the point of exhaustion, his movements became almost robotic when they entered the Hudson again. He steered them around Big Nasty and through a seemingly endless series of turns in Mile Long Rapid.
A half-hour after they entered the gorge, they neared Givenny’s. One-hundred-and-fifty yards of narrow channels and pounding waves lined the only safe route through the rapid. The river then funneled them toward Soup Strainer, the one hydraulic on the Hudson that scared even experienced guides.
“Slow down!” Carlyle yelled. “I need time to see what this sucker looks like.” The current kept driving them toward the hydraulic, however. “All back two.” The raft pivoted and slid across the lip of the big wave coming off Soup Strainer. “We made it,” Carlyle said. “Now forward hard.”
After ninety seconds of furious maneuvering, the boat juking left and right, Carlyle pulled into a large eddy just above Gun Sight Rapid, and the other rafts followed. They were five hundred yards from Harris.
Carlyle said to Nash, “I need a minute.”
“It’s your call. Just give us the word.”
Pretending he was adjusting his foot strap, Carlyle thought about the past two weeks. The incident in Harris four days ago proved that Marshall’s enemy was a highly skilled boatman, but he had managed to conceal his responsibility for the deaths of Sanders and Blake.
“You ready?” Nash said.
“Gimme another second. I’ve got to check these PFD’s again.”
“Come on, man. We’re waiting on you.”
“Okay, I’m set. Sayers, you want to take over now?”
“Screw you all. I’m done fucking around. There’s an abandoned logging camp just beyond the trestle. I’ll meet you all at the Boreas.” Sayers pushed his boat downstream toward Harris.
“Sutcliffe,” Carlyle said. “I guess it’s your turn.”
“Fine by me.”
“You sure about this?” Carlyle said.
“It’s not Niagara. Why the hell not?”
“What are you doing?” Nash said. “We don’t know this guy.”
“You heard Betts,” Carlyle said. “It’s my show today.”
“For Christ’s sake, tell me what’s going on,” Nash said.
“I’ll explain when we get to North River.”
“Keith,” Betts said. “Let’s listen to Carlyle for once.”
“I can’t just sit here any longer,” Sutcliffe said. “See you gents later.”
As the convoy prepared to move out, Sutcliffe grinned at Carlyle and turned his raft hard left, away from the route outfitters used, as he disappeared into the maelstrom.
“What the hell’s he doing?” Betts said. “Nobody runs it that side. We’ll be right under a sheer cliff the whole way down.”
“Be quiet a minute,” Carlyle said.
“Don’t tell me to shut up,” Betts said. “I’ve never even seen that side of Harris.”
Carlyle stood in knee-deep water as he steadied his raft. There could be only one reason why Sutcliffe changed course from the path that Marshall and the other outfitters habitually took, the one Sayers had just followed.
“What’s going on?” Betts said.
“Listen to me,” Carlyle said. “I want you two to follow Sutcliffe.”
“That’s a kayak route,” Nash said as they stared at the drop-off. “It’s all holes and rocks.”
“Trust me,” Carlyle said. “I know what I’m doing here.”
“You’re crazy!” Nash yelled. “We’ll all get trashed if we follow him.”
“I’m through arguing with you,” Carlyle said. “Just do as I say. I’ll explain everything when I meet you.”
“Where the hell are you going?” Betts said.
“To see what happened to Sayers.” Carlyle tightened the straps of his life vest and turned to his crew. “Listen up. We’ve probably got a crew in trouble just downstream. You’ve got to pay attention here.”
As Carlyle’s boat approached the drop-off into Harris, one of the clients shouted, “You sure this is the right way?”
“Just trust
