This will be over in seconds and we’ll get the hell out of here and go back to Mexico where we belong.
Chapter
95
Upriver on the west side of the canyon, Sampson watched and heard the family of four screaming with delight as the raft bounced off a rock at the top of the whitewater section, then slid off and down into a steep chute that threw a wave over the boy and the girl in the front.
Sampson knew that as rapids went, the one below him was relatively mild. At least when compared to the big, dangerous, rolling ones on the Salmon River in Idaho. And the dad appeared capable and comfortable with his oars. After that first jarring hit off the rock and the bounce and spray at the bottom of the chute, he expertly piloted the raft through the rest of the rapids, and within minutes they were out of it and floating a little slower across deeper water. Sampson could hear their laughter fading when he spotted their blue raft coming downriver with Alex’s dummies, looking for all the world like two fishermen with their hoods up in the rain.
What amazed Sampson was how, after a spin or two upriver, the raft had stabilized and floated nose-first in the quickening current down the last straight before that right-hand bend into the rapids. But the raft got sideways coming around the turn, smashed off the far bank, and went right up on top of the rock in the tight spot, where it hesitated and shuddered.
Sampson was sure the raft was going to take on water and capsize, but it slid off and careened into the chute. Water sprayed up over the bow, and John took off, running north along the trail and over that gap in the ridgeline.
Now he could see almost a mile to the north, with a commanding view of the burned slopes and pockets of live trees ahead of him, the canyon and river below, and the mountain ledges, steep pitches, and benches above it.
Sampson moved through the rain another fifteen yards and threw the .375 Ruger over the top of a downed tree trunk. Once he had the bear gun solidly in position, he glanced back down at the rapids and saw the raft and the dummies still bouncing and careening through the churning whitewater. He picked up his binoculars to scan the hillsides on both sides downriver and almost immediately saw a man high on the west side, four hundred yards away. The man waved an orange cloth, dropped it, and picked up an AR rifle.
That looks like Durango! Sampson let go of the binoculars and started to get behind the .375, knowing it was a long shot for a bear gun shooting a heavy bullet. But then he caught movement some two hundred yards straight north of his position on his side of the river.
A second man with an assault rifle emerged from the woods there and ran out toward a drop-off in the terrain. Then a third man with an AR appeared on the opposite side of the river, a good hundred yards closer than Durango. That man started shooting down at the raft. So did the guy on Sampson’s side of the South Fork. Snugging the stock of the Ruger into his shoulder, he moved the scope onto that gunman.
He thumbed off the safety and got the crosshairs on the cartel man’s chest a split second before the gunman jerked and arched as a well-placed bullet blew through him. It exploded out the cartel man’s left side, throwing a heavy blood spray into the air before the sound of the shot finally carried from far downriver.
The dead narco tumbled down the slope toward the river.
Chapter
96
I had been moving cautiously north ever since the family went into the narrows, praying to God I’d see one of the cartel men instead of the monster grizzly bear that was stalking in the forest somewhere ahead of me.
The beast’s tracks were no longer on the trail, but I’d seen where it’d left it, pressing down grass and snapping brush and branches as it headed diagonally northeast toward the river. It wasn’t until I stopped to watch our raft go around the bend and into the narrows that I saw movement that became a man carrying an AR rifle about a hundred and fifty yards ahead of me.
His attention was off the trail toward the river and for a second, I thought for sure he’d seen the bear. But then he darted into the trees where he’d been looking.
I took a few more steps and picked him up again, moving through the woods toward a ledge high above the South Fork. He walked out onto the ledge, aimed toward the river bottom, and let go a burst of gunfire.
Someone across the river on the east side opened fire with another automatic weapon. I’d just found the second shooter in my binoculars when a shot from way downriver buckled him.
The narco on my side seemed puzzled by that shot but fired at the raft again. Thanking God for the rain, the green khaki clothes I wore, and the gunman still shooting, I stooped over and ran at him.