by Will Hobbs
“Don’t worry,” Rio said. “I don’t think you’ll see him again. We’ll take care of you, Diego.”
“It was all a lie! My mother is not in Chicago . . . he is no coyote. My mother is in Mexico City. My name is Diego Cervantes. I was with my father at a hotel in the mountains . . .”
Diego covered his eyes with his forearm and nearly crumpled to the ground. I had never seen anybody so overcome. “You don’t have to—,” I started to say.
The boy brushed his tears away. He needed to talk. “I was outside when it happened. My father was inside with the other two judges. I heard shooting, so much shooting inside the building. Four men with war rifles but no uniforms ran out of the lodge. One was this Carlos—”
Diego heaved for breath and went on. “A security man came to help—all he had was a small pistol. He wounded one of the criminals. Carlos killed him with many bullets right before my eyes. Carlos and the other three, they ran all different ways. More guards came, more shooting. I tried to run away but Carlos, he grabbed me and ran into the forest. He knew who I was! By then I figured out who they were: criminals who work for the drug lords and kill for money. I tried to break loose, but he knocked me down. That’s when he dropped the rifle and used his pistol instead. Watch out—he still has it! It shoots many bullets very fast. Two guards followed but they were afraid to shoot because of me. Carlos put a cloth through my mouth and dragged me with him. Too many trees, too many rocks, too many places to hide. Helicopters came much later. I saw them, but they never saw me.”
“It’s okay,” I told Diego. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not going to be okay!” he wailed. “They killed my father. I know it!”
I knelt next to him and pulled him close. He bawled his eyes out. “You don’t know for sure,” I said. “You said you weren’t inside. Your father could have survived.”
Rio and I weren’t comforted by my hollow words, and neither was Diego. He told us his mother had always been afraid this would happen. Sooner or later it happened to everyone who stood up to the drug cartels.
“My father is honest,” Diego sobbed. “So were the other two judges who came to the mountains with us. They don’t take the bribes. They put the drug lords into prison for the rest of their lives. In Mexico City, we live in fear. So many kidnappings. My sisters and I go to the international school in an armored car. At the school, there are guards at every door.”
“You’re safe now,” I told him.
“How can you say that? Carlos has that pistol in his backpack, with extra ammunition. What if he comes back?”
“He got swept away,” Rio said. “I really don’t think he could get back here even if he tried. We’re going to camp in the cave. Make something to eat. You’ve been brave, really brave. Let’s get you out of the rain and the wind.”
We grabbed some gear and took Diego up to the cave. We left him with an energy bar and water, and went back to the boats. We carried the raft and the canoe well out of reach of the floodwater. All the while, we kept looking over our shoulders. “You really think he couldn’t make it to shore?” I asked.
“It’s a minor miracle he made it this far in that rowboat. There’s a rapid around the bend. Most likely he got swept into it and capsized. Without a life jacket, he’s history.”
“He stole the rowboat from the wax makers way upstream, don’t you figure, Rio?”
“For sure. He must’ve had it hidden nearby when he walked into camp yesterday morning. The Black Hawk patrolling the river never spotted him because he was floating at night. It wouldn’t have been that hard to do. The moon was up, and there weren’t any rapids. During the day he probably had the boat hidden in the cane.”
“I’m afraid there’s not much hope for Diego’s father. At the house where the baby was born, didn’t you hear that the judges were killed?”
“I did, but all the same, it’s good you told Diego not to give up hope.”
When we got back to the cave with our second load, Diego shared another fear with us. The cartels always killed the people they kidnapped, even children, if their families couldn’t pay the ransom. His family wasn’t wealthy.
Rio and I left the cave to fetch the rest of our camp gear. We weighted the raft and canoe with smooth stones to make sure that a gust of wind wouldn’t pick them up and throw them on the sharp limestone boulders, the cactus, or the catclaw mesquite. Our rescue knives from our life jackets were all we had in the way of weapons. We unclipped them, scabbards and all, and put them in the deep front pockets of our lightweight desert trousers. They were better than nothing.
Back in the cave, we set up the table and chairs. A flat, knee-high rock served as a third chair. We rigged the stove and gas bottle, spread our tarp on the ground, and set out our cooking stuff. We also brought out all our remaining food items. It wasn’t a very impressive inventory, but we weren’t going to starve.
There’d be no skimping this evening, that was for sure. We were going to use three of our soup packets—Diego chose chicken noodle—and make a big pot of pasta. Diego gave the nod to the four-cheese sauce packet to flavor it. We ate our fill looking out the mouth of the cave, through the unceasing rain, to the flooding river. A big cottonwood tree floated by. No doubt Rio and Diego were thinking the same thing I was: The slope below the cave was so steep, we wouldn’t be able to see Carlos if he was sneaking up on us. It would also be impossible to hear him, with the cave roof amplifying the sound of the river.
After we rinsed our plates and put away the dishes, Rio brought out his cards. We taught Diego how to play Hearts, and he caught on fast after a couple of rounds. After four rounds, with Rio in the lead, the light at the back of the grotto was getting dimmer and dimmer. Diego grew increasingly anxious, glancing at the mouth of the cave as if his tormenter would appear at any moment.
Rio fished a new trick from the bottom of his dry bag—a couple of candles. The candlelight had a soothing effect on Diego, and we kept playing. It wasn’t until it was pitch-dark outside the cave, with Diego in second place, that we called it a day. We put away the things we had spread out on the tarp, inflated our ground pads, and lay down to sleep. Rio was the odd man out. He claimed that a kid from Terlingua didn’t need a ground pad.
Sandwiched between the two of us, Diego fell asleep fast. He had an angel’s face. It broke my heart to think he would wake to the loss of his father.
Chapter 17
Good Morning, Texas
COME MORNING THE RIVER was running higher yet, but the rain had stopped, and so had the wind. The skies were still leaden. Had Dolly moved on by, or was this merely the intermission before Act Two?
We ate breakfast, the last of the cold cereal. Out of earshot of the boy, Rio and I talked strategy. Here’s the question we kept coming back to: Did it make sense to sit tight and see if Dolly was gone for good, with even a small chance that Carlos was stalking us as we spoke?
We decided to get back on the river and put a bunch of miles behind us—twenty, thirty, even forty. Given the speed of the river, it might even be possible to make it all the way—forty-seven miles—to the takeout at Dryden Crossing. We would arrive days early, but the upside would be huge. The three of us would be safely off the river, and a pinpointed manhunt for Carlos could begin.
By ten in the morning, with the clouds darkening ominously and thunder beginning to rumble, we had the raft and canoe rigged. Our spare life jacket was too large for Diego, but we managed to secure it snugly by attaching it to a harness around his waist and crotch that we improvised with extra raft straps.
We put our own life jackets on, clipped our rescue knives in place, and got out the guidebook. Hot Springs Rapid, a 3 or a 4 at normal levels, was waiting four miles downstream. “It might be all washed out,” Rio said. “Then again, it might’ve turned into a monster.”
From behind us, just then, from the rock where we’d left Diego sitting, came a sudden cry like the squeal of a small animal about to be slaughtered.
His arms and his face looked even worse than before, like he’d battled the river and lost, but the evil grin on his face said otherwise, and he still had his backpack. “What’s the matter, boys? Cat got your tongues?”
Diego squirmed, broke free, and ran to us. I held him to me. He buried his face in my life jacket. He was too frightened to even look.
Carlos taunted him in Spanish. I think he called him a scared rabbit, a frightened little chicken.
“Take those knives off your life jackets, boys, holders and all, and toss them over here. You toss them anywhere else and I will shoot one of you dead as an example to the other. It will be you, Carolina. I’ll keep Texas alive to row the raft down to San Rosendo Canyon, where I asked you boys to take me in the first place. You should have done as I asked, no? What’s keeping you? Toss the knives over here now!”
We did as he said. He stepped forward and picked them up, his pistol on us all the while. He clipped the knives to his belt, one on each hip.
The killer sneered at us. “Now the book.”
Diego whimpered. I felt like whimpering, too. All I could think of was how idiotic I had been all along, starting with hitchhiking from Alpine to Terlingua. Not calling my parents from the Starlight, not telling them my uncle was in Alaska, not giving them the chance to tell me to come straight home if they thought it was best. Why didn’t I even give them the chance?
Carlos sat down on a rock with the guidebook, pistol at his side, and began to flip through the pages. He grinned when he found the page he was looking for. “Only four miles from the cave to my road up San Rosendo Canyon. The book says that the road is an ‘illegal immigration highway.’ I like the sound of that. Sounds like a good place for me and my little chicken to catch a ride.”
“We could let you off there,” Rio said, “but the road is not the kind of highway you’re thinking about—just a rough four-wheel-drive track. Chances are, it’s been destroyed in the last twenty-four hours. All the side canyons have been flash-flooding, and San Rosendo Canyon is the biggest one on the Mexican side. You can look it up. San Rosendo is flooding for sure.”
I could see what Rio was doing: building the case for Carlos keeping us alive. He would need us to take him farther down the river.
“We’ll find out soon,” Carlos said with a smirk. “It’s good to be traveling with an expert such as yourself. This Hot Springs Rapid, where San Rosendo Canyon meets the river . . . the book says it’s Class 3 or Class 4. How high do the numbers go, Texas?”
“Five means expert kayakers and rafters can attempt it, but it’s extremely dicey. Six means don’t even think about it. But the numbers in this book mean nothing during a flood. They only apply up to five or six thousand cubic feet per second, which is as high as the man who wrote the book ever saw. What we’ve got in the river now is probably five times that much water, maybe more.”
“I got this far in a rowboat,” Carlos scoffed. “All the same, I want you to row the raft the next four miles.”
“How come, if you had no problem with the rowboat? Take a look. The only rapid between here and there is only Class 1. Did you have a problem in that rapid with the rowboat yesterday?”
“Enough of this,” the thug barked. “Throw me your life jacket, Carolina.”
Rio unbuckled his, and tossed it. “Here, take mine. Dylan is in the canoe, and the canoe is more likely to capsize.”
Carlos laughed. “Okay by me, Texas. After all, I’ll be with you. If you have no life jacket, you’ll be extra careful with the raft. It’s not only my little chicken’s life you need to watch out for. Why the long faces, boys? Did you find out that little Diego can speak after all? Speak En-glish, even? Did my little chicken keep you up last night telling wild stories about me? Did he tell you what happens to judges who are too stupid to take the big money that would enable their families to live well for the rest of their lives?”
Rio feigned surprise. “What are you talking about? He told us he wished you would take him to his mother in Chicago after all, instead of back to his grandmother in Mexico.”
“Watch your step, Texas,” Carlos snarled. “You’re in the bullring with no sword. Untie the raft, both of you together. Then turn it around so I can step into the front with the little chicken under my wing. When we get to San Rosendo Canyon, don’t do anything stupid or I will dump your bullet-ridden carcasses in the Rio Bravo. Do you understand me, Carolina?”
“I understand,” I answered, trying to disguise my terror.
“Do you understand me, Texas?”
“Sí,” Rio muttered.
“Carolina! Did you hear that? Your primo just copped an attitude. Texas shouldn’t have done that. It makes me suspicious of him, deeply suspicious. As for you, Carolina, I have some old gangster wisdom for you. We have a saying that goes like this: Desconfía de tu mejor amigo como de tu peor enemigo. Trust your best friend as you would your worst enemy.”
The monster waved his big pistol and laughed derisively. He picked the life jacket up and put it on, slowly and one-handed. Lightning snapped downriver, its thunderclap reverberating through the canyon as we went to untie the boats.
At the trunk of the mesquite where we had tied, Rio and I knelt to get at the knots. “Should we land above Hot Springs, or blow through the rapid?” Rio whispered.
“Tell me what you’re thinking,” I whispered back.
“If I’m wrong about the road being washed out, he has no reason to keep us alive.”
“If you don’t try to pull out before the rapid, or pretend you can’t, how’s he going to react to that?”
“Not sure . . . he’s capable of anything.”
“Hurry up, you clowns!” Carlos yelled.
“Time’s running out, Dylan.”
“You play it by ear, Rio, and we’ll hope for the best.”
“If he decides to try to hike out, I think he’ll hedge his bets and take us with him. It’s twelve miles to that ranch. If he doesn’t make it and has to turn back to the river, he’ll still need us. I’ll make sure he knows there will be more rapids as bad as Hot Springs so he doesn’t start thinking he can row the raft.”
By now we both had our knots undone. I couldn’t speak; I could barely breathe. I returned to the canoe in a fog of fear. The rain broke loose.
“Vamanos, muchachos!” our tormenter cackled. “Hop to, let’s get in the boats. Down the Rio Bravo I go, with two rabbits and a chicken!”
Chapter 18
You Can’t Get There from Here
DOLLY WAS FAR FROM done. We flew down the canyon into the teeth of the redoubled storm. Lightning struck upstream and down. Torrents of rain slashed at us, and the wind-tossed waves attacked from all sides. Waterfalls even more spectacular than before cascaded from the canyon rims.
As we rounded the corner a mile below the cave, I slid off my seat and into the whitewater position, my knees spread wide against the hull of the canoe. I had a Class 1 rapid to put behind me. It was coming up soon, where Silber Canyon entered from the Texas side.
On a day like this, with a major rapid lying in wait only a few miles on, a Class 1 tune-up was okay by me.
Suddenly the side canyon came into view. A second later I heard the roar of flash flooding. A couple of heartbeats after that and I saw how much water Silber Canyon was dumping into the Rio Grande—hugely more than the Rio Grande itself had been running when we set out on this ill-fated adventure.
I drew a deep breath. Rio was already starting down the tongue of the rapid. The wave train waiting for him below was enormous, like a succession of rearing, white-maned horses. Class 1? No way. Class 3 was more like it.
I’ve got a spray cover, I told myself. I’m not gonna swamp. I’m also not gonna capsize. You ran Class 3 rapids bac
k home, and you got pretty good at it.
I took a quick glimpse below to see how Rio was faring. He was riding the wave train like a roller coaster, keeping the raft straight while pushing through the troughs and over the top of each exploding wave. My eyes went to Diego, up front in the raft with Carlos, hanging on as best he could. Carlos wasn’t helping him. Carlos had one hand on the grab line that ran around the raft; the other was pointing a gun at his boatman. How insane was that for Rio?
Almost too late, I focused on my own situation. I was starting down the tongue. It was steep and it was fast. There wasn’t a chance in the world Carlos had made it through this rapid with the rowboat. He must have rowed to shore above it or swam to shore below it.
Down the narrowing tongue I went. I had to hit every roller in the wave train just right: up and down and up and down and up and down until I was all the way through. A moment’s lapse and I would capsize.
I rose onto the first wave. I had never climbed a wave this high. I paddled hard to get over the top and nearly spilled in a cascade of whitewater. Leaning to my right and reaching with my paddle blade, I was able to brace on the wave, or I would have gone over.
My roller coaster was only beginning. With the rain in my face, I battled for position in every trough, fought to stay upright over the summit of every crashing wave.
I got a cheer from my cousin, parked in the eddy, as I flew past them. Diego was safely inside the raft. So was the man with the gun.
I was able to pull into the bottom of the eddy and ride it upstream to the raft. I brought the canoe alongside.
Rio pumped his fist. “Big-time, Dylan, big-time!”
“So far, so good,” I allowed. I reached for my bailer and started tossing out water. My spray covers had saved me from swamping, but even so, some of the waves had splashed into the canoe on account of the uncovered section immediately around me. The gunman’s face, watching me bail while keeping track of Rio, was all calculation, cold calculation.
