The Laughing Falcon (44 page)

Civilians? Who else was out there?

Though she was frantic, Maggie managed not to stumble upon the unevenly spaced steps as she led her protector to the river, finding her way in the patchy moonlight. He was holding her hand, firmly but not roughly, all the while muttering.

“How the hell did they follow me? This smells like fresh shit, not overripe cheese. Benito better run out of ammo before those clowns waste him. They find that
moto
, Walker’s going to think I stole all the loot and I’m in cahoots with the guerrillas. He’s into new warfare options – shoot first, questions later. We have to find a way out of here. What’s with Benito — he didn’t take his medicine?”

“He says it clouds his mind.” His reasoning powers had been acute enough.
They will come with
asesinos.

They jumped off the last step and scrambled to the river’s edge, then stood catching their breath. He retained her hand in his, which felt strong and callused.

“Have you been here before?”

“Yes, a couple of times. With Halcón.”

“Is that right?” He seemed displeased, as if he had tuned into her feelings. When Slack sent a beam from his flashlight on an arc across the river, it settled on an inflated air mattress wedged between rocks. “What’s that doing here?”

“I’m not sure.” She assumed, however, that Halcón and Glo had fetched it from the house for their trysts here, on the soft
sand, where he had spurned Maggie’s clumsy advances. The memory seared.

Slack pulled the mattress out. “Hello. Reinforced vinyl – and we have rope.” A length of it was looped through two holes at the corners. “You swim?”

“Perfectly well, but if you’re thinking we’re going to ride down that river on that …”

“It’s what I’m thinking.” He pulled a knife from his belt, prowled around the riverbank, slashed at low branches of a palm, and returned with two thick bracts. “Paddles,” he said. He made a few knots in the rope, and passed her an end. “You hold that. You’ll be on top of me, on my back, and I want you to hold on tight, both arms around my neck. It will be like a water slide – pretend you’re in a fun park.”

Maggie was hesitant about joining in this enterprise; they would be shooting rapids in the dark, without helmets or life jackets.

“You hold on to the flashlight. Keep your head up. Watch for any stray rocks. The tricky ones make rooster tails in the water.” He pulled her gently into the chilly, fast-moving stream and offered his broad, muscled back. “I’ve been down this stretch a couple of times. It’s not much of a river, it’s not the Sarapiqui. Fast and narrow, though, class three bordering on four. Twenty minutes of that, then it’s a doddle. Class five, I wouldn’t risk at night. Six is your basic Niagara Falls.”

The prospect of rushing headlong down this raging stream was turning her knees to jelly. But the alternative of staying was more perilous; she had to trust that the kayak man knew what he was doing; he had vast expertise.

“Never shot fast water at night before, though.”

She blanched. More gunfire came, followed by Chuck Walker’s distant muffled voice through the bullhorn, demanding surrender, and she also thought she heard him call out Slack’s name.

“They must have found the Honda; they know I’m around and not going far fast. Let’s get a wiggle on.” Men were shouting now, closer to the house.

When she lay on top of him, he hooked her ankles with his feet. She extended the flashlight with one arm, wound the other around his neck, gluing her body to his, her face against his thick, sinewy neck. There was a husky smell to him, a scent of recklessness, but she was heartened by his seeming confidence.

“Viva la revolución,”
he said, and pushed off against a rock into deeper water.

And suddenly they were twisting down a swift cataract, turning sideways, glancing off a stone ledge, plummeting downriver again, into a four-foot drop that nearly flipped their flimsy craft. But it did not founder, and Slack, paddling ferociously, manoeuvred them into tamer water where the river was wide and shallow.

“That was not the ultimate experience,” Slack said.

The current had slowed, the mattress bumping over submerged stones. Beneath her, Slack was resting, letting the river carry them. She continued to hug him tightly, chest to back, pelvis to buttocks.

“When we drop another few hundred feet, I’m in home waters.”

“A few hundred
feet?”

“Enjoy it while it lasts; this river will be a trickle in a few years after they divert it for hydro. You care about that sort of thing? Damming up the rivers, screwing around with nature?”

“Of course I care.”

“You’re a birder, that’s what your mother told me. In ten years another fifty species will have vanished into avian history. Soon there’ll just be crows and pigeons; the Buff-Breasted Blue Warbler will be a dimming memory. I read the draft chapters you left behind at the lodge; I like your style,
but I prefer the original concept. I do a bit of writing myself, poetry, mostly.”

The man was remarkably verbose, considering their circumstances – but perhaps he was just rambling to ease her tension. They were moving faster now, though the mattress insisted on drifting sideways.

“Let’s avoid that crease over there; we want the main channel. Oh, by the way, your parents are in good health, keeping up their spirits. Oops, watch this stopper.” They slipped to the side of a rock, then became wedged, but he pushed them free and they accelerated downriver. “They’re sharing a hotel room and have been seen holding hands.”

Maggie held her breath until they surged into an eddy and slowed. Slack’s gladdening information, along with his aimless chatter and indifference to the hazards of the river, began to lessen her fears. “Did you have a talk with them as I asked?”

“I just let the tropical air spin its sultry magic.” He squinted at some rapids below them. “It’s been ten years since I was last up here, but I remember a vertical just ahead.”

“What do you mean by a vertical?”

“A falls. There’ll be a hole under it; we may encounter a bit of a reversal this time of year, with the water up.”

“A reversal?”

“A backwash at the bottom that wants to suck you around in a circle, up and back. That’s why I asked if you could swim. Only the keepers are dangerous.”

“Keepers?”

“Yes, so grip me tight. Okay, we want to avoid that boil on the left; that’s a submerged rock; we’ve got to hit the chute dead centre … Hang on!”

The banks of the river closed in on them, and as they sped through the narrowing channel all thoughts were blanked by the grinding thunder of the falls. Suddenly, they were somersaulting through the air, and she was flung away from him, her
legs flailing wildly. She hit the water rear first and plummeted into the deep pool hollowed by the waterfall. She was swept to a sandy bottom, then carried to the surface, but the backwash pulled her under the falls and down again – this
was
the dreaded keeper. She gasped for air as she rose, before being sucked under a second time to begin another cycle.

But this time Slack’s arm circled her waist. He tugged her through the powerful grip of the backwash, then kicked and vaulted her to the surface, close to a half-submerged ledge. She was shaking and gasping as he lifted her onto it and boosted himself beside her. “I should have explained – you stay down, go with the outflow. We call it getting Maytagged.”

She dared a glance over her shoulder at the waterfall — she had just survived a fifteen-foot drop into a boiling keeper. She was proud that she had not panicked and was grateful for her guide’s cool head and bravery. Though she was cold in her sopping T-shirt and ripped panties, her heart was racing with the thrill of her risk-filled ride.

“I lost the flashlight.”

“We’ll use the moon.”

It had risen above the trees and in its light she could see the air mattress being battered by the falls. She could also make out Slack: a tall brawny, greying redhead, weathered skin, rugged features. He was shaven and had recently cut his hair; the rendering was a vast improvement over the televised versions she’d seen.

“That’s the worst of it,” he said. She was shivering, and moved closer to him. He didn’t seem anxious to set off again, but bent on making conversation. “Where did we meet, Maggie?”

“We didn’t.”

“I’m an unsavoury character in your book, the Quepos town drunk. How did you come up with such a perceptive portrait?”

“From gossip I heard.” She was uncertain if she should apologize. He was also reputed to be a rowdy, but he seemed most gentle now; she hoped she had not insulted him.

“I’m not particularly handsome, and I’d like to think I’m not an arrogant snob. Otherwise, you have created a picaresque portrait of the drunken lout.”

“You’re very defensive.”

He grunted. “I have every reason to be. Heads are going to roll over this fiasco, and one of them could be mine. I ought to warn you that I’m almost as paranoid as Benito Madrigal, but in my case it’s justified. I have one reliable ally, and he’s waiting downstream. If I sound like a jabbering idiot, take it as a compliment; usually I become tongue-tied with women.”

“Well, that hardly describes you right now.”

“Maybe you’re easy to talk to.” He said this gruffly, then rose and worked his way over the rocks to the falls and pulled the mattress up the bank.

Maggie felt somewhat assured by this odd, meandering conversation that she could place faith in Slack Cardinal and comfortably pass on Halcón’s message. As he was about to step into the river, she held him back.

“I need to settle something with you, Mr. Jacques Cardinal, or whatever your real name is. What’s your role in all this? Glo told me you used to be a spy.”

He answered with a shrug but no hesitation: “I was shanghaied. It was either that or a long stretch — a political thing, seditious writings. I ran off to Cuba … It’s a long story, but I’ve been dragged back in to play Stuntman for the free world, and right now I’m not sure who I’m rooting for; I’m having trouble deciding who the good guys are.”

“You have to let everyone get away.”

“That’s the plan. I have the money.”

She was surprised by this blunt announcement and heard truth in it. “Halcón gave me a message to be passed on only
to you – he doesn’t know your history or your role in this, but for some reason he trusts you. Swear to me you will tell no one else.”

“Can I tell Frank?”

“Who?”

“My main man.”

“Only him. Sloth Park in Limón at nine p.m. tomorrow – that’s what he wanted me to tell you; that’s where he’ll be.”

“Halcón
told
you that?”

“He confided in me a great deal.”

“That is remarkable.”

“We became friends. It’s hard to explain; Halcón is … well, he’s different. Glo kept a greater distance at first, but …” Maggie was unable to complete the thought, her ire at Glo welling. “I suppose she tried to put the make on you.”

“She came on like a runaway train. You two didn’t get along?”

“I took care of her; we had a sensational friendship, but … I can’t explain it. Glo is a very …”

“Lusty woman.”

“Yes.”

He nodded, seemingly satisfied with that. “All aboard. Couple of small adventures ahead, one we call the bucking bronco, then the loop-de-loop. After that it’s child’s play.”

Though there were no more chutes, holes, or keepers, Maggie endured a frothy whitewater journey for about a mile, clinging anxiously to Slack, two wet bodies in absurd, intimate contact. Twice they spilled as their mattress bounced off boulders, and once they became tangled in the branches of a fallen tree. They found many eddies, however, rest stops where she recounted her seven weeks as a captive: the long treks through the jungle, life at the Darkside. She was too embarrassed to admit her infatuation with Halcón, but told him of her growing attachment to his idealistic soldiers. They shared their concern over Benito Madrigal. “He insists Walker has a secret army and wants to take over the world.”

“I’d feel safer if Benito took it over.” Electric lights began to show through the trees. “All right, we want to take the left tongue at the top of these next rapids.”

They did so without spilling, and Maggie could see an old bridge silhouetted in the moonlight. They were swept down a last cataract, and here, where the river widened and slowed, a portly gentleman was sitting on a rock with a fishing pole, staring intently at Slack Cardinal and his bedraggled rider.

“Bienvenido,”
he said.

Slack thought there might be roadblocks, so he took the wheel, he knew a back road that swung over the hills to the Savegre, and now they were twisting south and east, between hills and rocky pastures, toward the coastal plain. He could see the farms of the lower Savegre valley now, a mile away, moonlight dancing on the river, high
cerros
still on either side.

He was feeling on top of things, a rare burst of optimism, Plan B was still in effect despite a day’s delay and tomorrow’s detour to Limón. And one rescue was already well accomplished, Maggie Schneider beside him, dozing, wrapped in a blanket, her short hair wet and flat. She looked like a leggy bird, a graceful, long-necked heron.

The Suzuki rental didn’t have a radio, thieves in San José had popped it out, so they couldn’t catch the latest bulletins. But reporters had been at the scene, Frank had seen a parade of them pour across the bridge on the road to the Darkside.

“One presumes the first of these vehicles, a Toyota Four Runner, was occupied by Senator Walker and the small force that you have described. Ten minutes later, I counted some six vehicles, among which were two television vans, one with satellite equipment.”

These were the civilians Walker had ordered to return to the road. The colonel had brought the world along to witness
his dramatic rescue of his glamorous wife, a John Wayne movie, the federal marshal stomping into a saloon for the media event of the century. Pull it off, and Chuck could start thinking about naming his cabinet. He has the right stuff, he stands up to terrorists.