Poseidon's Arrow

42

IT TOOK ONLY A FEW SECONDS FOR ANN TO PANIC.

Striking the water cleanly, she kicked hard, with her hands outstretched in front of her, driving deep into the Ohio River. The water was warmer than she expected, easily in the seventies. Reaching a comfortable culmination point, she arched her torso and tried to stroke with her hands. But with her wrists bound by the cuffs, she couldn’t do it.

A momentary flash of terror struck, telling her she was going to drown.

“Relax. Relax. Relax,” a voice repeated in her head.

With her heart pounding, she forced herself to hold still and drift with the current for a few seconds. It calmed her nerves, and she began scooping the water with her bound hands in a doggie paddle that would carry her to the surface. But in the inky black water, she no longer knew which way was up.

The answer came quickly when her shoulder grazed the corroded underside of the barge. She pushed herself away and drifted clear, holding on a few more seconds, before ascending slowly into the cool night air.

The current was swift, and she found herself moving away from the barge and towboat. She looked back and saw Pablo running along the dock, scanning the water. Spotting Ann’s head bobbing in the river, he pulled his Glock out of its holster.

Ann instantly took a deep breath and rolled beneath the surface. She couldn’t tell whether he fired at her, but there was no sense in giving him a target.

She glided more easily beneath the surface this time, holding her breath for nearly a minute, while kicking and paddling with the current. When she surfaced again, she was more than a hundred yards from the barge—all but invisible in the darkness to anyone on the dock. Still, Pablo had disappeared from her view.

She turned her attention downriver, searching for a place to go ashore and find help. But the dock was on the outskirts of town, and the nearside riverbank was dark and empty. A sprinkling of lights glistened a short distance ahead on the opposite bank, marking the small town of Metropolis, Illinois.

Feeling the lure of safety, Ann began kicking and paddling toward the lights. She struggled for a few minutes, fighting the downstream current. Then she realized her efforts to reach the town would be in vain. The river was almost a mile across, and the current would sweep her well past its lights before she could reach the other side.

The awkwardness of swimming with bound wrists increased her fatigue, so she rolled over and rested by floating on her back. Looking into the sky, she noticed a pair of red flashing lights in the distance. Turning herself over, she studied them as they flashed—airplane warning lights. In their brief stabs of illumination, she could see they were affixed to a pair of tall concrete smokestacks. They could only be part of a riverfront power plant.

As she floated past the lights of Metropolis, she worked her way back toward the near shore. The riverbank went black for a mile, and Ann began feeling cold and alone. But she continued to track the blinking red lights and eventually drew closer. A haze of light at the base of the stacks crystallized into a profusion of bright lights that engulfed the power plant. The lights were set well back from shore, but as Ann passed a shrub-lined bank she spotted a thin inlet that had been cut from the river to the plant.

When she approached the mouth of the inlet, she began kicking hard. The Ohio’s current tried to drag her past, but she broke free of its grasp and entered the inlet’s calm waters. The cut ran about a third of a mile toward the plant, where the water supplied the coal-fired steam boilers.

Exhausted from her final struggle against the current, Ann made for the nearest bank. She rested in the mud for several minutes, then pulled herself off the bank and climbed up a berm that had been graded on top for vehicle access.

She shivered in her wet clothes as she hiked toward the power plant, smelling the rich odor of burnt coal. As she drew closer, she counted several vehicles parked around the plant. Thankfully, a sizable night shift was on-site. Headlights flickered to her left, and she saw a white pickup truck move slowly from the parking lot, an orange light flashing atop its cab. Ann quickened her pace and began waving her bound arms as soon as she thought the driver might spot her.

The truck sped up and turned onto the berm. It bounced along the narrow track and stopped in front of Ann with a swirl of dust. She raised her cuffed hands and approached the open driver’s window. “Can you please help me?”

Her voice quivered when she saw Pablo stick his head out the window, brandishing a portable GPS unit keyed to her handcuffs and the Glock pistol.

“No, my love,” he said in a cruel voice. “It is you who can help me.”