You’ll be crushed under the rig, he thought and then the rig broke free and threw him; he cartwheeled past the edge of the crumpling trailer.
Air. He opened his eyes, falling, and saw the swelling river beneath him, rushing toward him.
Water. Cold beyond reason and dark.
Earth. His shoulder scraped the river’s stony bottom.
He kicked toward the surface, broke into air. Just long enough for a gulp.
Then the chains weighed him down.
Fire. Heat, surging through the river like a pulse. The current yanked him forward, the force of a blast pushed him into sweet oxygen again and he saw gray sky, dawn fighting to pierce the clouds.
Then the maddened river took him.
10
Luke kicked to the surface as the river swept him downstream, sinking again, fighting to rise. He rode the river’s raging current for what seemed an eternity. It was a constant ordeal to keep head above water, to breathe. He gathered the chains close around him, terrified they would snag on rock or sunken tree and yank him downward to death. The weight of the chains was like hands pulling him down to the sleeping depths. A sudden bend in the river twisted ahead of him and the current battered him into the shallows, cypress and pine lining the banks. Then he spun away. He struggled, tried to swim. The river hurried him close to shore again, and he spotted a black shape, toppled into the water. A rotting tree. Branches stuck out like spikes.
Luke gathered the last of his strength and tossed the chain over one of the trunk’s branches.
He stopped. He could breathe. He lay in the water, head above the surge, greedy for air. Slowly he pulled himself close to the tree. He used the chains to loop onto branches closer to shore and he collapsed onto the cold mud.
He became aware of a fresh onslaught of rain. The pain in his arms, in his chest, brought him back to his senses. He got to his feet slowly and staggered into the heavy growth along the bank. Arches of cypress and pine spread above him, sheltering him from the worst of the downpour. Behind him the river was sick with rain, beige with muddy runoff. Chunks of white floated in the brown water; packages of shrimp and fish, fresh from the Gulf.
The truck’s cargo.
They’ll be looking for you.
He hurried up the rolling incline that led from the river and staggered into the deep cover of the pines.
Please, God, he thought, let the trucker have gotten out alive.
Luke headed away from both river and road and deeper into the woods. As he walked he took an inventory of himself. Pants caked with mud. Shirt torn open, buttons gone, ripped by the force of the river. He glanced down: the silver of the Saint Michael medal glinted on his chest. Thank God, he thought, he hadn’t lost it. He’d lost one shoe and sock but the mud felt soothing against his foot. His wallet and money were back in the cabin. His wrists were bloodied and scored raw from the shackles.
He walked. Listened for the sounds of pursuit but heard only the soft hammering of the rain.
Mouser and Snow were from the Night Road. It existed, as a vicious force beyond his database of potential malcontents. It was real. He was convinced of it. Their talk of casinos being bombed. His mind spun. They said they were from his stepfather. It didn’t make any sense. They couldn’t be from Henry and also from the Night Road.
The realization hit him like a stone dropped from the clouds. Could Henry be involved with the Night Road? It didn’t seem possible. But Henry refusing to ransom him didn’t seem possible, either.
Who is your client for this project? he’d asked Henry. What are you doing with this research? Henry had smiled and dodged and maybe bribed him with a lucrative job offer to stop him from asking questions.
Luke had given him the discussion-group postings and the names, and a way to contact hundreds of people who might be extremists. He’d handed them to Henry on a plate. God only knew who his client really was.
He had to find a phone. Call the police.
Suddenly he stumbled into a clearing in the pines. A tidy little cottage stood in the glooming rain. White paint, a back porch that faced the river, a swing and wicker chairs, empty of cushions. A small fishing pier jutted into the river.
He ran to the cottage’s back door and knocked, but there was no answer. The curtains were drawn on all the windows. He listened at the glass; no sound came from within. He walked around the porch; on the other side was a small one-car garage, a dirt road driveway leading down to it from a paved road, and a tool shed.
A lock bolted the tool shed door shut. He got a rock from the flowerbeds and smashed down on the lock with four jackhammer blows. But the lock held.
He ran back to the cottage. His conscience made him hesitate at breaking and entering. But he was desperate and this was his new reality. He had to adjust to it.
He broke the window. No screech of an alarm accompanied the tinkling glass. He fingered the lock, twisted it, and stumbled inside.
He shivered and turned on the central heating. It vroomed to life and the vents perfumed the air with a dusty burnt smell. The cottage was well furnished; someone’s riverside weekend getaway, he decided. He wanted food, a shot of whiskey to warm him, and to be out of his filthy sopping clothes. But most of all he wanted to be free of the shackles. He searched the kitchen and in a drawer he found a ring of keys.
He hurried back out to the tool shed and tried the keys. The third opened the lock, chalked with dust from his earlier attempts.
The orderly wall held a nice array of tools. He saw what he needed: a power drill, nestled in its charger.
He inserted the drill’s bit into the lock; he had to hold the drill at an awkward angle. It revved to life and bit into the lock’s mechanism. Metal ground, hissed, and began to shred. The shackles shook, dancing to the bit’s beat, and the lock gave way. He uncuffed his right hand and felt the delicious feeling of the weight dropping away. His skin under the cuffs was raw, bloodied, swollen. He freed his left hand in short order.
Luke put the tools back into place and relocked the tool shed door. He threw the shackles into the kitchen trashcan.
No phone in the kitchen. He searched the rest of the vacation home, found two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a den, and no phone. Bizarre. But this was a world choking on cell phones, so maybe the owners didn’t feel the need for a landline for their weekend house.
He went back to the curtained window. No sign of pursuit; no Snow or Mouser emerging from the dripping pines. He was safe, but God knew for how long.
He kept the lights off. He stripped off his ruined clothes and stood in the stinging spray of the shower. He scrubbed himself raw, hating to leave the reviving heat of the water. When he was done, he wrapped a towel around himself. In the master bedroom closet he found men’s clothes. Luke was six-two and the man’s jeans were surprisingly a bit too long and too wide in the waist. But better, he decided, than too small. He found a gray long- sleeve T-shirt, a flannel shirt and a jacket. He found no shoes but galoshes; he put them on, with a pair of white socks he found, in case he had to leave quickly.
In the bathroom he slathered antibacterial gel on his hurt hands and wrapped them with gauze. He looked like he was hiding an attempt at slashed wrists. But he felt human again. The medicine cabinet held a few prescription bottles in the name of Olmstead. He was hiding in the Olmsteads’ house. He hoped the Olmsteads were nice, understanding people. A sharp, sudden hunger – dulled for long hours by adrenaline – punched his stomach. He hadn’t eaten since lunch the day he dropped Henry off at the airport, which felt like a lifetime ago.
He found scant offerings in the fridge – a jar of strawberry jam, expired containers of milk and sour cream, a few bottles of beer. In the pantry he found peanut butter and canned vegetables and soups. In the freezer were several packages of steak, a loaf of bread and two vegetarian pizzas. The steak would take too long. He heated tomato soup and put one of the pizzas in the oven.
He stood over the soup, the mist of it warming his face, and, in the distance, under the fading thunder, he heard the chop-chop-chop of a helicopter. There and gone by the time he got to the window.
