THE COLUMBIA RIVER
Laks’s sixth sense—or maybe his seventh or eighth, he’d lost count—told him when it was time to dog-paddle to the left bank of the Columbia and clamber up onto the rocky shore. The sun had broken the horizon as he had snorkeled along beneath the dark surface of the river, but the place where he crawled up onto the land was still deep in the shade of the precipitous eastern bank. On the opposite shore there was practically nothing visible in the way of human habitation—just the same sort of pine scrub where his uncle had dropped him off north of the border. Laks peeled out of the wet suit and changed into the outfit that had been stashed at the top of his waterproof pack: T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and a bandanna that he could use for the time being as a keski. He weighed the wet suit down under rocks beneath the water. The pack itself looked scarcely less ominously tactical, but it contained a rolled-up duffel bag into which he transferred the other stuff they’d given him: a change of clothes, some American snack food, a water bottle.
It was very quiet here, as there was next to no traffic on the roads and only a faint lapping of water along the bank. Laks’s ears—which were better now than they had been before he’d been fixed up in Cyberabad—picked up a faint whir. He swiveled his head to and fro until he picked out its source: a little drone hovering just above the river’s surface about a hundred meters away. It smelled safe. He paid it no further mind. There had been no drones shadowing him in Canada, but apparently the United States was a different story. It was, as all the world knew, a completely insane and out-of-hand country, unable to control itself. Men like the Texan could get away with anything; but by the same token, so could Indian military intelligence.
A two-lane highway ran along the top of the bank. He followed
it south along a sweeping curve and came in view of an old bridge where the river was crossed by another such road. Around their intersection, half a mile farther along, was a small town built on a generous stretch of flat territory. The shoulder of the road broadened and flowed without any clear dividing line into the gravel parking lots of a few roadside bars, diners, and convenience stores. Laks’s ride was idling in one of those. It was a semi-trailer rig carrying a forty-foot shipping container. They hadn’t told Laks anything he didn’t actually need to know, but it was easy enough to guess that the container had arrived recently at Tacoma or Seattle and been collected by this driver. Laks walked right past it without looking very closely. But there was nothing to see. It looked like a million other trucks.
Half a minute later he heard it revving up, now a couple of blocks behind him. It pulled out onto the road, which doubled as the town’s main street. Laks turned around and stuck out his thumb. The truck slowed.
It could be inferred that the driver—who looked Indian—had been instructed to talk to him as little as possible. When asked his name, he simply glanced up at the dome light and then looked pityingly back at Laks. Thanks to Uncle Dharmender, the meaning was clear. “You can sleep back there” was the extent of his conversation. Oh, and he held up a certain kind of widemouthed plastic container that Laks well recognized. During the months he’d spent bedbound from vertigo, he had made frequent use of them. “For urination, please!”
Running athwart the semi-tractor behind the seats was a foam mattress. Tucked into clever built-in cabinets around that were a tiny fridge, a microwave, and some other conveniences. An overhead rail supported a blackout curtain that could divide the cabin in two. It looked tempting to Laks. On the other hand, it was a beautiful morning in eastern Washington. So he sat there and gazed out the windshield for an hour or so as the driver silently, patiently, and at no point exceeding the posted speed limit, maneuvered the rig along a country road that wound through rocky, rolling
ranch territory, going brown in the heat of summer, framed by hills carpeted with dark evergreens. It was evident from the sun and from road signs that they were headed generally south, toward Spokane. They passed through a couple of small towns and a reservation for the other kind of Indians. In due time they verged on the outer fringes of the city, with the same lineup of big-box stores and fast-food places as everywhere else, and sleepiness overtook Laks. He took off his shoes, crawled into the back, and pulled the curtain.
He was awakened by the unaccustomed stillness of the truck. Its engine was still idling but it had ceased moving. He pulled the curtain back and was surprised to see that dusk had fallen. He must have slept for something like ten hours. They were just off an interstate highway, in the vast parking lot of some kind of commercial truck stop. The highway ran north-south and was bracketed between ranges of rugged hills. The last light of a gaudy sunset was silhouetting the ones to the west and reddening the scrub-covered slopes of those to the east. The truck driver was nowhere to be seen.