Don't Look Back (33 page)

She went back to the water’s edge, unfolded the raft, and assessed the two-foot slash that al-Gilani’s machete had left in the yellow vinyl. Gathering the glossy material around the slice, she wound it up with the leather reins and tied off the split fabric like the end of a balloon. She knotted the strap again and again until her forearms ached. Not exactly airtight, but it was the closest it was going to get.

Will and Claire sat in the mud, watching her work. Ruffian, back up on his hooves, grazed on a spray of elephant grass at the tree line. Eve unfolded the dry bag, removed the foot pump, plugged it into the valve on the side of the raft, and stomped to inflate. At first it seemed to have no effect, and then the yellow vinyl crackled and sighed to life, rising with maddening slowness. For every two measures of air she got in, it seemed that one leaked from the imperfect seal around the gash. Ten minutes in she switched legs, and sometime after that it was engorged enough to bear them.

In addition to the other supplies, the dry bag had been able to fit only two life vests. Eve wrestled them free and tossed them to Will and Claire, then waded out until she was thigh-deep with the raft, holding it in place so they could pull themselves on. Moments later they were floating downstream, leaving the unrestrained burro contentedly lapping from the water’s edge. She watched Ruffian until he drifted out of view and felt tears well in her eyes. It felt wrong, her reaction to saying good-bye to the mute beast that had helped them get this far, crying for him as she could not cry for Fortunato and the others.

She sat at the hull near the tied-off gash, squeezing it with both hands to prevent extra leakage. The raft seemed to be retaining air decently. The dry bag sat at her feet, now folded down and snapped closed to make it fully waterproof—the last remnants of civilization, stuffed into a compressed nylon sack.

They were well upriver from the zip line and al-Gilani’s canyon, and for a moment Eve felt not entirely unsafe. The sun couldn’t break cloud cover, but the morning warmed nonetheless. Turtles rose like halved coconuts from partially submerged rocks. Hummingbirds strobed among wildflowers. At first the beautiful surroundings seemed a mockery, but as the raft floated along, Eve gave herself over to the scents and the lazily passing view. Will kept his bad leg propped up on the tube, his head tilted back to the spot where the sun lightened the clouds.

Huddled into herself, Claire glared at him. “What are you looking so content about?”

He kept his eyes closed, basking in the faint glow. “If this is all we have, I want to be thankful.”

“There’s a man trying to kill us. Your leg looks like a mosaic. And you’re
thankful
?”

“For this?” He glanced at the river, the trees. “Yes.”

The tributary quickened. Eve tried to gauge their progress but found she couldn’t; the hiding place she had in mind could be a mile away or around the next rocky outcropping.

A ripple vibrated under them, and then Eve heard it. Rushing water ahead, a deep subwoofer rumble. She tensed in the raft, rising to a half crouch. They slid past the outcropping, and she saw, down and ahead, a spot where the tributary narrowed into a flume between boulders.

An oar would have been unwieldy to travel with, and besides, she hadn’t figured on needing one. Leaning over the edge, she began paddling toward shore furiously with her hands.

“I’ll help,” Will said. “Flip me over.”

Claire turned his hips, and he grunted with pain, and then all three were paddling, their motions growing more frantic as they were sucked into the current, the scenery spinning around them faster and faster.

Will shouted, “If we go over, get on your back and keep your feet up and in front of you!”

The boulders swept into view, and Eve fought centrifugal force to lean over and snatch the dry bag. She clutched it to her chest, realized too late she’d forsaken the tied-off gash in the tube, and they struck the first boulder, the raft giving out a
thwack
like a dropped jug of milk. Something flew up and caught her across the eyes, and when she grabbed at it, her hand came away with the loose leather reins.

They shot the flume on the deflating raft, leaning toward the center to dodge the boulders ripping past on either side. The tubes turned to puddles, and then there was nothing but the drop-stitch floor, riddled with holes for self-bailing, undulating beneath them like a not-so-magic carpet.

They spilled, peeled out in various directions. The sky turned to white foam and then brackish water. The sudden cold knocked the air from Eve’s lungs. She clawed back to the surface, one fist locked on the dry bag. Using an arm for a rudder, she swung herself around onto her back as Will had suggested, and elevated her feet until they were bumps gliding above the surface. A backsplash caught her square in the face, forcing its way up her nose and eyelids and down her throat. She gagged. Her view plunged underwater again. The dry bag struck a boulder, buffering her impact, and then she spun away and into a flash of air that she grabbed before going under again. She flipped once, a full rotation, and came up in water that was suddenly, miraculously calm.

Treading, she drew air, looking back up the flume in time to see Claire tumble down the last fall, her hair pasted across her face, hiding her features. She landed near Eve, leading with her hands and knees as if expecting solid ground. Digging in the clear water, Eve hooked Claire’s armpit and hauled her up sputtering and gagging.

Eve sidestroked them toward shore.

“Will!” Claire shouted. “Where’s Will?”

They looked back at the boulders and the white ruffled carpet of the flume, but there was nothing flesh-colored, only browns and greens and grays. Eve swung her head to the far shore, where the deflated raft was pasted to a waterlogged tree trunk.

The muffled voice came from behind them: “Here.”

Will lay on his stomach, having dragged himself up onto the pebbled shore. His face, darkened with stubble, aimed back at them over the knob of his shoulder. His arms stayed flat at his sides, the flippers of a sunning seal. The bandage had come partially unwound, but he seemed more exhausted than in pain.

The grainy bottom finally came underfoot. Claire pushed away, and the women clambered onto shore and lay beside Will. Eve knew he should be screaming right now, that he wasn’t only because his leg had gone numb. The good news was actually bad news.

Will shoved himself over onto his back. They panted up at the sky.

“So,” he said. “That went well.”

Eve laughed first, and then Claire, and they sprawled side by side in the grit, smiling and staring at the churning clouds.

Claire said, “I see a steak sandwich.”

Will pointed. “I see a satellite phone with full bars.”

Eve said, “I see a Red Cross helicopter, coming to save us.”

“Red Cross?” Claire said. “In Mexico?”

“Hey. It’s my fantasy. I can have the Royal Canadian Mounted Police if I want.”

“No one’s coming to save us,” Will said.

Eve’s grin went cold on her face. She shoved her fingernails into the mud, felt the give of the earth beneath her matted hair. She became aware of another sound above the rush of the flume, coming from behind them. Louder and deeper.

She rolled onto all fours with a groan. Got one foot beneath her, then braced her hands on her knee and shoved herself up.

Through a strip of dividing jungle, a white wall of water was visible—the giant cascade, tumbling into the natural pool. Beneath it the underwater channel led to the grotto, the best hiding place Eve knew of in the jungle.

If they could get there.

Chapter 44

Treading water in the emerald pool, the dry bag pulling heavily at her shoulders, Eve regarded the majestic rise of the cascade overhead. Will and Claire paddled awkwardly on either side of her, the crashing water blasting mist across their faces. Eve remembered being afraid to brave the underwater passage last time, how she’d been unwilling to take the risk. Today the swim didn’t break her top hundred concerns.

She noted Will’s grimace. Navigating the twenty yards across the jungle ridge separating the tributary from the cascade must have been enough to break through the numbness at the wound’s periphery and introduce a fresh hell to the surrounding nerves.

“Can you make it?” she asked.

“It feels like the entire Inquisition took place in my leg,” he said. “But yeah. I have to.”

Eve swung to her left. “Claire?”

“I’m good in the water,” she said. “It’s
you
I’m worried about.”

Eve tugged on the dry bag’s straps, tightening them around her shoulders. “Let’s go.”

A deep breath and then she was immersed in a sudden underwater calm. Ahead, the water spun with the force of the waterfall, a glimmering white steamroller drum. Eve breaststroked toward it, diving to get beneath the churning water. Still, it tore at her clothes and the dry bag on her back.

The underwater passage loomed, black and forbidding, and as she swam beneath the rock shelf, claustrophobia seized her. What if the promised grotto was too far? What if her lungs gave out? What if it dead-ended in a cul-de-sac of stone?

The darkness became pervasive, her hands little more than flares of white on the backstroke. The temperature dropped, not by degrees but in a sudden lurch. Her chest burned. Her arms ached as she began to pull with desperation.

At once the water above took on a different shimmer. She kicked up, breaking free, gasping in damp air, the screech of her inhale echoing off the sweating stone walls.

The grotto rose maybe two hundred yards, an egg-shaped chamber. At one side of the oval, the stone had chipped away to unveil a near-perfect circle of sky. Vining plants had squirmed through the hole, reaching down the dark walls like insect legs. The beam of light looked tangible, a white cone ending on a stone ledge that stretched to meet the water.

Eve kicked to the ledge and pulled herself up. She dumped the dry bag, her T-shirt shifting over the fitted tank top beneath, her skin steaming in the wet heat. Her fingers were pruned and pale, the gold band on her right ring finger loose around the knuckle. She watched the water anxiously. A moment later Claire popped up onto the ledge beside her. Together they stared at the dark water, waiting. Nothing but ripples. Eve stood up, stamped her bare feet, searching the murk for Will. She’d just stepped forward to dive in when he surfaced with a splash.

“Help me,” he said, scrabbling to get a handhold on the slippery rock. “Help me.”

Each woman grabbed an arm and hoisted him up. Groaning with pain, he sprawled on the stone, a few dry sobs racking his chest. “I had to kick,” he said. “I tried not to, but my lungs were giving out.”

“Must’ve hurt like hell,” Claire said.

Will pressed his palms to his eyes. Wisps rose from his face, his arms. He was fevering, his teeth chattering. “It
redefined
hurt.”

Eve unsnapped the dry bag and laid out the items for them. Cheese, protein bars, canteens, tiny mezcal bottles, matchbooks. The humble mound looked pathetic, dwarfed by the ring of light thrown through the hole above. Rationed, the food might sustain them for three days, four max.

Will’s eyes darted about. Distressed, he overturned a canteen, searching beneath it, then grabbed the dry bag and felt inside. “The flashlight? Where’s the flashlight?”

Eve and Claire helped look, though there weren’t many places to revisit. He’d kept that flashlight close at hand since Jay’s disappearance; from his expression it seemed that the loss of it might be insurmountable.

“We must have dropped it somewhere,” Claire said.

For an awful instant, Eve thought Will might break down. But then he took a deep breath, seating his shoulders lower. “Light is overrated.” He mustered a grin. “Who needs light?”

“We
have
light.” Eve swept the food aside, clearing space in the illuminated ring of the beam. “Let’s pull your leg over here.”

“No one’s
pulling
anything anywhere.”

“Bad choice of verb. We’ll guide it. Gently. Come on, now.”

Will gripped under his thigh, using both hands to lift the leg, and Eve helped steer it gingerly into the light. She unwrapped the wet bandage. The swelling was even worse, fresh blood leaking from the puncture. A pinch of his toe brought no response.

“How bad?” he asked. Before she could answer, he said, “I want an answer. I don’t want nurse bullshit, and I don’t want vagueness. An answer. I want an answer.”

Amplified dripping vibrated the air around them. Way up by the opening, a few bats were clustered on a bulge. Water ran down Eve’s back, mixing with her sweat. She looked past his supine body at Claire, and Claire bit her lip.

Eve returned her gaze to Will. “You’ll probably lose the foot.”

They let him cry. Not rending sobs but quiet, desperate sounds that moved off the walls and came back like whispered fears. One of his hands turned to a fist, and he beat at the rock under him once, twice.

After a time he pushed himself up. “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

Eve’s knee throbbed where it pressed against the stone. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“That’s like a whole other life. I mean—
amputated?
”

“Only if we’re lucky,” Claire said, without malice.

They were quiet there on the hard stone, Will flat on his back, Eve and Claire kneeling over him. They did not look at one another. Claire’s frank assessment had defined the situation, however imperfectly. Had made what they were up against real.

Eve cleared some of the blood from the puncture, revealing tiny white beans deep in the cut.

They were squirming.

Will noticed her face and then looked down. He jolted back on stiffened arms as if shocked. “Oh, my God. Maggots— Are those…? You have to get them out of me! You have to—”

“No,” Eve said. “Let them work. They only eat necrotic tissue. They’ll clean out the wound.”

Will swallowed, his head bobbing forward with the effort, as if he were forcing down his revulsion. “Could they save my leg?”