Fear No Evil

Chapter 87

We rounded another bend in the river. Sampson was sucking wind from rowing so hard.

“Gotta rest,” he said, gasping.

“You rest. I row,” I said. “Durango saw us. He’s coming after us.”

Sampson moved off the rowing bench and let me take his place. I put my back into it and got us going at a good clip downstream before I said, “I think those were M’s men in the helicopter.”

“Yeah, coming back after us. But Durango and his men were too good to pass up.”

“It cost them. That helicopter’s like swiss cheese.”

“So how did both of them find us? And how did the cartel know to wait in ambush for us there?”

“Like I said, we didn’t remove our phone batteries a couple of times, maybe that’s it,” I theorized, sweat pouring off my brow as I kept rowing.

“Maybe, but it doesn’t explain Durango and his boys. He knew we were coming downriver.”

I wrestled with that for a moment before it dawned on me and I stopped rowing to look down at my belt. “It has to be,” I said, yanking it off and tossing it to John.

“What has to be?” he asked as I started rowing again.

“The GPS transmitter Mahoney made me put in that belt. Durango had to have known I was wearing it when he ran a wand over me. He probably got its frequency.”

“Which means they can still track us,” Sampson said, cocking his arm to pitch the belt.

“Don’t,” I said.

Before he could ask why, we both heard a roar ahead of us.

“We’ve got quicker water coming at us. Spin the raft around and slow us down. You’re going to want to see where you’re going.”

As I turned the raft, I said, “Look on the OnX map. I remember seeing creeks coming into this stretch on both sides.”

Sampson studied the app on his phone and said, “Helen Creek on the east and Snow Creek on the west. Both about four miles downstream.”

“Gets dark soon, but we’ll make it. Which side has more cover?”

“Snow Creek,” he said.

“Good,” I said as the current began to quicken and the roar of the first rapids intensified. “Now get that transmitter out of my belt and find my empty Nalgene bottle.”

Two hours later, with the sun gone behind the mountains and the shadows lengthening, I took the Nalgene bottle with the transmitter inside and set it in the fast water. It quickly disappeared from sight downstream.

We dragged the raft fifty yards into the woods there, went back to the tree line with our guns, and waited. I figured they’d come through before dark, and we’d have a chance to turn the tables on them.

But I could barely see my hands much less the front bead of my shotgun when I heard voices in Spanish and the sound of oars in the swift water. The raft made squeaking noises brushing rocks, but I could not see it.

Then Sampson whispered, “Night vision.”

Peering toward the river through my binoculars, I made out the telltale green glow of four pairs of night-vision goggles before they vanished and we heard their raft and oars headed downriver, chasing a Nalgene bottle.