Thunderbird Spirit

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “So why the discipline problem?” Dakota asked.

  “Simple,” I said. I unclenched my fists in the darkness. “I told Captain John Hummel I had stolen them.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing,” I said to cut Kendra off. I could feel tears in my eyes. A lump in my throat. I knew if I kept talking, I’d cry. Just like I’d cried alone in my car, driving down to Seattle after the trade.

  “Look,” I said, putting anger in my voice, “the coats were returned. John Hummel made a big deal about how nobody could prove in court I’d taken them, that someone else could have easily put them in my trunk. Circumstantial evidence and all that. They decided to just keep it quiet and ship me out. They gave me to Seattle as my last chance.”

  It made me sadder that, to the end, John Hummel had stood up for me. He’d made sure no charges were filed. He’d made sure I was traded, not thrown out of hockey. He was a stand-up guy. I needed to stand up for him now, as much as I wanted to tell Kendra and Dakota more, and as much as I wanted someone else to know what had really happened. Even if those someone elses were going to die the same time I did.

  “That’s the end of the story,” I said. “I want to go to sleep.”

  But of course, I couldn’t fall asleep. I stared at the candle. Too soon, morning arrived. The hatch door was opened again.

  chapter twenty-one

  At 10:00 AM, at gunpoint, Ferret Face and Eyebrows put us in a rowboat. It was connected by rope to a motorboat. They left us in the center of the rowboat, hopped into the motorboat and began to tow us toward the center of Carpenter Lake. We could clearly see the concrete wall of the dam. They towed us in a line parallel to the dam, directly toward the far shore.

  As they towed, I could have jumped from the rowboat at any time. So could Kendra or Dakota. But none of us would have been able to swim to shore. First, the two in the motorboat had rifles. If they wanted, they could shoot us as if we were crippled ducks. They probably wouldn’t have wasted any bullets though.

  Because, if I jumped from the boat, it would be like committing suicide. My feet were wired together. And my wrists were wired together in front of me. Not only had they wired them, they had also wrapped our wrists and fingers with duct tape, covering them completely, right down to the fingernails. I’d swim only as far as an average piano. To make it worse—as Ferret Face had told us with a grin—the water was so cold I would be dead in less than five minutes.

  I stayed where I was.

  “This is not good,” I said to Dakota above the chug-chug of the outboard motor.

  “This is not good,” he agreed.

  Kendra shivered. I wished I could put my arms around her. I wished I could tell her everything would be all right.

  Instead I kept my mouth shut and scanned the skies. I would hope for a rescue as long as I could breathe. I was tempted to tell Dakota and Kendra to look too. But it wouldn’t be fair.

  I saw nothing in the skies except cotton-ball clouds against blue. It was a beautiful early spring day. Hills rose sharply on both sides of the lake. Snowcapped mountain peaks rose in the distance. The lake water was flat, dotted with chunks of ice and snow from the spring thaw. Sunshine sparkled in the wake of our boats.

  I scanned the skies again. The far side of the lake was miles away. Maybe any second a plane or helicopter would appear over those hills.

  Nothing, of course.

  Twenty minutes of slow chugging later, we reached the approximate center of the lake. The men in the motorboat cut the engine and pulled on the rope connecting both boats. We drifted toward them.

  “Dakota,” Ferret Face said, “are you sorry now you betrayed the brotherhood?”

  Dakota stared through him.

  Ferret Face laughed. “He’ll be blowing up the dam anyway. Himself.”

  He brought out the end of another piece of rope and tied it to a ring on our bow.

  “It’s like this,” Ferret Face said. With both hands and a grunt, he lifted a plastic capsule. It was the shape and size of a watermelon, and it was attached to a coil of rope. “There’s a current here. It will pull you toward the dam.”

  He held the watermelon-shaped plastic capsule over the boat’s edge and lowered it gently into the water. It sank slowly, giving him enough time to let out the coils of rope attached to it. A few minutes later, nearly all of the rope had disappeared into the depths of the lake. As it reached the end of the rope, I understood. It was the rope he had just tied to our rowboat.

  “Sixty feet,” Ferret Face said. “Six stories down. Just waiting to bump against something. Like the dam you will hit in about fifteen minutes. And there is a series of underwater bombs attached to the dam by suction cups. This bomb will trigger them all. There’s a couple of sensitive springs that will make a connection and then”—he grinned—”kaboom! The dam will go!”

  He wagged his finger at Dakota. “And you, my young traitor, will go with it.”

  Ferret Face grinned again. “And to think, I have the Canadian government to thank for all my fine training in military explosives.” His grin became a snarl. “Now they can pay for my training again. The hard way. This lake will hit the town like a tidal wave two hundred feet high. Bye, everyone.”

  “Cut the chatter,” Eyebrows said. “Do you want to be on this lake when the dam goes? As it is, we’re cutting it close.”

  “Yeah, I hear you.”

  Ferret Face grabbed a fishing rod from his boat and clipped it upright in a holder at the back of our rowboat. He did the same with two more fishing rods.

  “There,” he said. “Just in case anyone sees you from a distance. It will look like you’re trying to get some spring trout.”

  Ferret Face took a knife from his pocket and sliced us loose. He pushed the rowboat away and waved at us as they roared off in the motorboat.

  We drifted toward the dam. Our hands and ankles were bound and useless. And we had a bomb, like an anchor, hanging six stories below us in the silent water. When it went off, we’d be dead. The premier would be dead. The town would be dead.

  I looked into the skies again. Where was help?

  “How can you be so calm?” I asked Dakota.

  “You’re not yelling and screaming,” he pointed out.

  “Inside I am.”

  He smiled. “Mike, you can’t control life. It happens around and to you. Good and bad. What you can control is your attitude toward it. There’s little we can do right now. But I’m going to control what I can: me.”

  Then Dakota did something that surprised and impressed me. He prayed quietly for all of us.

  When he finished, he caught me staring.

  “Faith,” he explained, understanding my silent question. “It’s being sure of the things you hope for. It’s knowing something is real even when you can’t see it. It took me a long time to understand that. Too long. Turning away from a plan to blow this dam up turned me back toward everything Dad has always tried to explain.”

  John Hummel had often talked to me about faith too. Because it had been John speaking—someone who lived up to what he said—I’d listened and tried to understand.

  It’s knowing something is real even when you can’t see it. I was scared to the point of dry throat and heaving stomach. Being sure of things you hope for. Scared as I was, after Dakota’s prayer, I did feel hope.

  I looked over at Kendra. She was smiling, trying to be brave.

  “I’d hold your hand if I could,” I said.

  “I’d let you,” she said.

  There seemed little else to say. We all stared at the dam as we drifted closer.

  Five minutes later, we were close enough to the dam to see pieces of ice stuck on the dam wall. The ice clung to the concrete high above the water level, showing how the water had dropped during the winter as it flowed from the dam. At the rate we were drifting, I guessed we had ten minutes left.

  “Can I tell you guys something?” I asked.

  The sound of my voice seemed to startle
them.

  “Sure,” Kendra said.

  I think I knew why I wanted to talk. I was sad. Too soon, I’d be gone. I wanted to be able to tell someone how I felt about my seventeen years.

  “Life is unfair,” I said. “Not once in my life has something turned out right.”

  “Mike—”

  “Let him talk.” Dakota interrupted his sister. Maybe he understood the expression on my face.

  “My mom died in the hospital when I was born. My dad liked to drink. How does a person have a chance with a beginning like that?”

  I wasn’t expecting an answer from either of them. “I want to tell you guys about the first time I stole a car. I was twelve.”

  Kendra’s eyes widened.

  “See, my dad, he never wanted to have anything to do with me. He kept shuffling me from relative to relative. I can remember each time he left me with someone new, he’d tell me that he loved me and that he had to do it because Mom was dead, and I’d think it was my fault and I deserved to be left alone. Sometimes it took him months to get back. I was a nice polite kid. I never gave anyone trouble. I wanted my dad to know I wouldn’t be trouble for him either.”

  I stared at the dam. It was the length of a couple football fields away.

  “The summer I was twelve, as soon as school was out, he took me to an aunt and uncle who lived on a farm. This time, though, he didn’t just tell me he loved me, he bought me a horse. Just for me. He told me it was a present for never complaining. He told me when he came back next time, he’d try to find a way for us to stay together.”

  My eyes were dry. My throat was free of lumps. I thought this would be hard to talk about, but it wasn’t. It was like I was talking about someone else.

  “I called the horse Lucky. Dumb name. But I was only twelve. Every morning, even before the sun was up, I’d be out in the barn feeding Lucky. Grooming Lucky. I could hardly believe he was mine. And during the day, Lucky and I would go for long rides, and I’d tell him how great things were going to be when my dad came to get us. That horse and me, we were buds.”

  I thought back, remembering how I’d woken up each day of that summer, just grinning to be alive. I thought my happiness would never end. I had a horse, and my dad was coming back for me so we could be a real family.

  “During meals at my aunt’s house, I’d sit in the kitchen where I could watch the driveway that led up to the farmyard. In the living room, same thing. I’d take the chair that let me see outside. Even when I was watching television, I’d still keep an eye out for my dad’s pickup truck.”

  I remembered the giant thrill I’d felt the evening that Dad’s pickup turned into the driveway. I’d jumped from my chair and yelled and run out of the house, just bursting to show Dad everything Lucky and I could do together.

  Now the dam was a football field away. How much time left? Eight minutes? Seven?

  I thought of how I’d been forced to talk to a dozen psychologists during my times in reform school. Not once had I told this story. Now I didn’t want to die until I got it out.

  “So one night Dad finally pulled into the driveway,” I told Kendra and Dakota. “Sure enough, there was a horse trailer behind his pickup truck. I went running out and—”

  I stopped. My eyes weren’t as dry as I wanted them to be.

  “He drove right past me,” I said. “Didn’t look. I was waving like crazy, and he didn’t even look. He drove up to the barn. I yelled and shouted when he got out of the truck, but he didn’t look back. He just kept walking into the barn. When I got there, he already had Lucky out of the stall and was leading him into the horse trailer. Dad wouldn’t answer my questions. Wouldn’t say anything. Not until the horse trailer door was closed and he was ready to get in the truck again. Then he looked at me and—”

  I took a deep breath. Kendra and Dakota were silent. I didn’t dare look at them. I was afraid I’d see pity. I didn’t want pity. I just wanted to get this story out of me.

  “And he told me he had some gambling debts to pay and the horse would cover most of them. He said life wasn’t fair, and I was stupid if I thought it was. And he drove away with Lucky and left me there alone.”

  I stared at the dam. I wondered if getting blown up would hurt. Or if it would happen so fast I wouldn’t know it had happened. “That night,” I said, continuing my story,“I ran away and stole a car. It took the cops a week to find my dad for the court appearance. The judge let me out, and I stole another car. And another. I didn’t care about being good anymore.”

  In another minute or two, the boat would be close enough to throw rocks and hit the dam. If we had rocks. If our hands weren’t wired and taped. Five minutes left?

  “Mike?” Kendra’s voice was shaky.

  “Don’t sweat it,” I told her. “It’s not a big deal. I just wanted to tell someone.”

  “Guys!”

  Dakota’s voice wasn’t shaky. It was excited. “Guys! Look!”

  We looked. Above the lake, coming toward us, was the dark outline of a helicopter! Thirty seconds later, its sound reached us.

  I glanced over at the dam. If the chopper kept moving at the rate it was, we’d have enough time.

  The outline of the chopper grew. It was dull green. A Canadian Armed Forces chopper. Big. With twin engines.

  Somehow I managed to stand, trying to show them my hands were bound. That way they’d know the fishing rods were decoys.

  The chopper moved in close, beating wind down on us and rocking the rowboat.

  “Get us away from the dam!” I shouted.

  It was useless. The engine’s roar was so loud it whipped my voice away.

  “We see you!” It was a bullhorn coming from the chopper. A man was standing at the edge of the open cargo door, looking down on us.

  I grinned. Captain John Hummel. Rescuing me again.

  “We are radioing for men to reach you from the dam!” John Hummel said through the bullhorn. “Hang in there another ten minutes!”

  Ten minutes! Ten minutes! We’d hit the dam in less than five. When we did, everything would blow. Including the chopper above us.

  “No!” I screamed. “Now! Drop a ladder now!”

  John Hummel waved and gave me a thumbs-up.

  They had less than five minutes to tow the boat away. And they wouldn’t if they thought everything was fine down here.

  Dakota was right. There was plenty in life a person couldn’t control. I often lost my temper because of it. This time, however, I was going to control the one thing I could in this situation. Me.

  I knew the coldness of the water could kill me in less than five minutes. But so would the exploding dam. With my hands tied in front of me, I wouldn’t be able to swim that long anyway, so five minutes didn’t matter. What really mattered was getting someone from the helicopter down here in less than a minute. I didn’t see any other way to get their attention.

  With John Hummel watching, I dove over the edge of the rowboat into the black, cold water.

  chapter twenty-two

  The water sucked every bit of warmth from me as I flailed with my tied wrists and tied ankles. Twice I went under, sputtering for air each time I managed to get my head above water again.

  After rising twice, it seemed I couldn’t swing my arms as hard. My legs were heavy. I was sluggish, and my sodden clothes were taking me down.

  “No!” I roared. But the water rose above my chin for the third time. Above my mouth. I closed my eyes as I started going down.

  Something grabbed the back of my shirt and lifted me.

  I found air again.

  “Wrap your arms around the ladder! Hear me son! Wrap your arms!”

  John Hummel was holding a rope ladder with one hand, dragging me with the other. He pulled me toward the bottom rung.

  I managed to get the crooks of my bent arms through the rungs. The chopper started to lift us.

  “No!”

  “What!” Hummel had his mouth almost against my ear, shouting to be heard. />
  I turned my head. “Boat! Bomb!”

  “What!”

  “Grab the boat! Get them to tow it away from the dam! Bomb on the boat!”

  He finally understood. With me clutching the ladder, he could hold a rung with one hand and wave upward with the other.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, the helicopter moved us toward the boat according to his one-handed directions.

  Hummel got his free hand on the cut piece of rope attached to the front of the boat. He lifted his hand briefly to wave the helicopter away from the dam, then grabbed the rope again.

  Slowly, painfully slowly, we edged away from the dam. Dakota and Kendra were still in the boat. John Hummel held the rope ladder in one hand, the boat rope in the other.

  “You’re crazy!” Captain Hummel shouted in my ear. I was wrapped in a blanket, shaking hard. But it didn’t matter how cold I was. I was alive. So were Kendra and Dakota. We were all in the cargo area of the chopper. “Jumping in the water was totally crazy!”

  A soldier in uniform had a pair of wire snippers and worked at cutting us loose.

  I nodded. I was crazy. But all of this was crazy.

  Below, dangling from the helicopter’s rope ladder, was the aluminum rowboat. Below the boat, dangling from a rope, was the watermelon-sized plastic capsule. And far, far below that, the tips of trees could be seen on the edge of a mountain, well inland from the lake. After John Hummel had carried each of us up the ladder—one by one, over his shoulder—the helicopter had risen straight up from the lake, making sure the bomb dangling from the boat had cleared everything. In a few minutes, when we had climbed high enough to keep us out of danger, they would drop the boat and the bomb to let it explode harmlessly against the rocks below. Even as we flew, trained military divers—dispatched by the chopper radio—were getting ready to fly to the dam and search for the bombs still attached by suction cups to the concrete dam.