Willing Hostage (28 page)

“I don't think I'd be able to describe those two goons, either,” Leah said over a granola and bouillon breakfast.

“You'll know them both when you see them.” He appeared tense now that he'd awakened fully.

“What's Warm Springs?” she asked nervously as they carried duffels down to the beach. “Dave mentioned it this morning.”

“As I remember, it's a rock slide area that spilled over into the river.”

“And a suck hole? Dave said to watch for them, too.”

Glade dropped his duffels on the sand and stared at the water. “Leah, I have the feeling that the river will be the least of our worries today.”

She sat on the warm sand to retie a tennis shoe. “Where are the papers?”

Glade pulled up his shirt to expose the black plastic packet taped to his chest.

“It doesn't look very thick. What are these papers?”

“A series of letters relieving Enveco of the necessity to put the land back to rights after shale is mined, and tacitly agreeing that this fact shouldn't be publicized. It's impossible anyway.”

“Why not just bury the debris back again?”

“By the time oil is extracted, the rock will have expanded and it'll be too much to rebury.”

“So they'll dump it in canyons?”

“And leave it in mammoth piles where they found it. Rain will wash the heavy saline content from the exposed rock into rivers. Those rivers will become like the oceans and worse. It'll be very expensive to process the water for human use … what water'll be left.”

“And the deal with Welker and Swords?”

“An agreement to investigate and make public the contents of these letters.”

“And if they don't keep that agreement?”

“Norton, that reporter from the Denver
Post
will be at the campground at Split Mountain Ramp where we get off the river. He'll be camping there with his family. If it looks like a cross I'll give him the high sign. He's a conservationist and has a good friend at the Washington
Post
. Cal's son, Jerry, has a key to a bank box in Denver containing a Xerox copy of these letters plus one of the study we did for Enveco. If I give the sign to Norton, he'll call Jerry and the story will hit both papers simultaneously in three days. So, you see, Leah, it's not like I'm going into this blindly.”

He tightened the ropes that held their gear to the beached rubber boat and explained that he, Norton, and his friend Ben had made this trip last fall when Glade had hidden the papers secretly, telling his comrades nothing.

He'd called Norton from Craig before he was picked up by the State Patrol and again from the restaurant there when Leah had seen him making a second phone call.

“Won't they be watching Jerry? They were all watching Cal, I know.”

“By the time we hit Split Mountain Ramp everybody will be interested in only us. The dogs will have been called off Jerry.”

“Why the three-day delay?”

“To give us time to disappear until things have cooled.”

Leah picked up an unwilling Siamese. His fur was hot with sun. The river's roar was soothing, compared to what lay ahead of them.

“What's the matter?” He ran a finger across tears on her cheeks. But more kept coming.

“You big boob.” She leaned over Goodyear to kiss hard lips. “They aren't going to let us disappear. Once they've got those papers, even if they don't know about Norton, they aren't going to let you live to tell this story … they can't. Where could you hide from the CIA anyway, even if you got out of the country?”

“I hid all winter. I've got friends.”

“But they did find you. Welker told me everyone was waiting for you to use your supposedly secret bank account.”

“I have a place to go and I'll take you with me.” He pulled her back on the hot sand and Goodyear leapt away with a hiss.

“You won't live that long, Glade Wyndham. I probably won't either. If the Yampa doesn't get us, they will … and who will care?” She pressed a wet cheek against the scratchy beard. “No one will give up a blender today for air and water tomorrow, you blaring idiot.”

Glade Wyndham made love to Leah on the beach of Hardings Hole … leisurely … as if death could not be waiting for them around a bend in the river … patiently … as if Split Mountain Ramp was the last thing on his mind.

The gritty sand semed to cool under the shade of their bodies, began to feel as silken as satin sheets.…

“Leah, you know now, don't you? Why you wanted to come with me instead of staying with them in Steamboat Springs?”

The plastic that enveloped the Enveco papers rubbed stickily against her skin.

Chapter Thirty-three

Leah carried the doom feeling with her through the first two rapids, but was soon perfecting her technique for surviving a swollen Yampa.

“If I'm going down, it'll be fighting,” she thought and felt a pride she knew to be foolish.

What else could she do?

But the rhythmical, unmistakable clapping of helicopter blades over the river's din drowned her newfound courage.

“Keeping track of our progress,” Glade yelled behind her.

“Who?”

“Who knows? It's everybody against Harper and Wyndham right now,” he told her exultantly. Why didn't he fear danger as she did?

Hundreds of feet above them a narrow slice of sky shimmered between sandstone cliffs, and a noisy bug of human making clapped warning directly over them. Leah watched it until it was time to climb back onto the rim as white water churned ahead.

“You're getting the hang of it,” Glade said when it was over.

Leah had time to let a snarling cat out of the duffel before he said, “Mantle Ranch, coming up.”

The helicopter moved on and disappeared. The river widened, slowed, and quieted.

“This spread runs in and out of the canyon for miles. There's access by road here. Keep quiet now and pray that we can slip through.”

Sun burned through her blouse and tangled wet hair, raised color and detail from the vegetation and rocks on shore and lent glitter to sky and water.

Two giant birds, funeral gray with black necks and formal white collars shot from the shoreline to walk across the water. Making a honking clatter, they spread magnificent wings, then lifted to join the sky.

“Canada geese,” Glade whispered and she heard the click of his revolver.

“You're not going to shoot them?” She turned to meet a hard level stare.

“Not them. We didn't scare them up.” He pointed ahead.

A helicopter, similar to the one that had dangled her into a mountain lake, sat in tall grass. Several men were running toward a boat like theirs on the edge of the river.

Brian and Charlie were in the boat and another man pushed them off.

Leah saw Brian raise a paddle and Charlie raise a rifle.

“Stop, Wyndham, or we'll stop you,” Peter Bradshaw yelled from the shore.

“If you want the papers you'd better pray we get to Split Mountain Ramp!” Glade's paddle propelled them faster. But no shot was fired.

They rounded a bend in the river and Glade said, “Up on the rim and paddle like hell!”

Leah did as she was told and the Yampa responded by closing in its cliffs to narrow the water and speed up its mad rush. But it wasn't long before it stretched out again and their pursuers appeared behind.

“Damn fools,” Glade muttered. “I wonder if either of them know how to run a river.”

Leah was soon in the abyss of another angry rapids and then helping to pump out a wallowing boat. She watched with satisfaction as the boat behind her struggled through white water.

Brian and Charlie made it, though, following doggedly. Charlie had exchanged his rifle for a paddle.

“They can't risk drowning the papers—or me in case I haven't got them yet,” Glade explained and then said softly, “Leah, there's a suck hole ahead. Don't panic, but we've got to paddle to the right … and we've got to start now.”

She was on the gritty sun-scorched rim and paddling when she saw the low spume of water ahead, grayish below and thinning to white spray above. It didn't look that hazardous but she'd learned to respect the quiet warning in his voice.

Her wrists felt weak and her heart raced. She forgot the boat behind her as she fought the Yampa River.

They cleared the spume by several feet and she looked back to see a boulder the size of a house on the other side of it. The river glanced off the top, causing the spume and creating a hole in the water below … a deep hole with water rushing down in swirling vortexes on each side.

If they'd been torn from the main current and sucked into the hole they would probably have capsized or been pushed up against the face of the exposed rock and trapped there while the water spewing over from above filled the boat. To paddle out of the hole, they'd have had to paddle uphill as well as against the swirling vortex-created currents.

She watched for the boat behind them to try out a suck hole, but the Yampa made one of its unpredictable turns and she lost sight of it.

“If that doesn't get them, Warm Springs will.” Glade's voice was casual.

The Yampa moved on … slowly one minute with side canyons and forests, furiously the next and shooting them between narrow cliffs. The river was as unpredictable as her spy and Leah lived from one minute to the next. She didn't think about a future she couldn't believe existed but gritted her teeth for the next challenge, proud to be alive when they had endured an obstacle.

A sign slipped by on the shoreline, brown with white lettering,
WARM SPRINGS
. She glanced over her shoulder to see Glade drawing duffel strings around the cat's whiskers, heard the mighty clamor of a river gone crazy somewhere ahead, felt the excitement under the boat.

The Yampa swung in a wide curve and spilled into a canyon of sun-dazzled spray.

A great heap of rocks lay in a jumble on one side, narrowing the channel of the gorged river to forty feet or less. Leah looked down on Warm Springs as the river took a sudden fall to reach it.

Needing reassurance, she glanced quickly back at Glade. He sat astride the other side of the boat, his paddle raised, his lips pulled back from his teeth, his eyes eloquent with anticipation.

The Yampa bellowed anger at being throttled through the narrow chasm and the boat rushed toward the fury of spray as the river speeded up to get through the narrows and out to the freedom of a flooded riverbed.

Water hurtled against boulders and shot into the air, it flew like projectiles off the cliff face. The front of the boat lifted as if mounting a roller coaster.

The downward swoop lifted her hair from her shoulders and she took a deep breath before an avalanche of water cascaded in heavy lumps from above, splashed up from beneath and flew at her from all sides.

“Wouldn't it be wonderful if I'd never come to Colorado?” And the Yampa jerked her outside leg off the rim and up into her face. Her knee slammed into her chin and she bit her tongue.

They hung up for an instant, tilting sideways, then the boat slipped off and she was paddling again. But her partner wasn't keeping up his end of the deal and they glanced off the side of a rock, swung around and rebounded off the cliff wall.

Leah ducked to escape the cliff's overhang that would have bashed her brains into the Yampa and fell headlong into the boat, clinging to the ropes and her paddle as the boat crashed into the cliff again.

Sun, rocks, spray, and cliff face revolved in confusion. All the thrills of a man-made carnival gone crazy and coming at her at once.

Swoop … dive … swirl … nausea.… She saw a moment of sky. Whirl … buck … bend.…

Leah saw a spit of land and choked out, “To the right!” But she could feel no help from behind as the tail of the boat tried to tear away downstream. Using every last ounce of strength, Leah fought to meet the shore and get off the demon river. Below the spit, sheer cliff walls closed in on both sides. If they didn't beach now, they'd lose the chance. Couldn't he see that?

Terror gave her muscles a final lift and the boat hit the spit so hard she fell forward on her face and over onto the shore. Grabbing the rim before the boat slid back into the water and skidding backward on her rear, Leah pulled it up onto the rocks and out of the tumult. She reached to free the drawstrings on a rollicking duffel bag and then realized that she had beached the craft alone.

Glade Wyndham was not in the boat.

Chapter Thirty-four

Goodyear squirmed out of a duffel that was half full of water and fell off the pontoon to the rocks below. He lay with his mouth open and his sides thumping quick short breaths.

Leah had no time to help him. A bright orange life jacket had caught on a high rock at the bottom of the rapids.

Glade lay with his face hanging over into the water, his arms outstretched, shirt sleeves billowing as if he were bloated. The river washed over him, rolling him from side to side and finally rolling his body off the rock.

Leah grabbed her paddle and ran along the shore as he started to float downstream. She screamed his name and saw him raise his head and gasp for air, his nose streaming blood.

Stumbling over smooth, slippery-wet rocks she raced to the end of the beach where a slice of tall sandstone-cliff wall cut into the river. She had to reach him before he was swept past that point or she never would.

She waded in to her waist and found the next step a drop off. She backed away from it, her body reeling with the force of water released at last from the rapids.

“Glade!” Leah leaned forward and stretched out the paddle as far as she dared.

Glade flailed water, went under and bobbed to the surface, dark eyes molded a round, blank stare.

Another orange life jacket appeared behind him. Charlie wasn't grinning any more. He bounced off the rock that had caught Glade and shot into the air, his mouth forming a circle, his limbs waving in the mist.