Darkness: Captain Riley II (The Captain Riley Adventures Book 2)

by Fernando Gamboa

  They’d found Klein.

  Riley didn’t have to ask them to row harder.

  Carmen and Mutombo both turned away from the shouts and immediately dug their oars in the water with renewed strength.

  The three were exhausted, on the brink of passing out, but they knew each stroke was another second of life added to their time.

  “Let’s go!” Riley urged them again, leaning forward. “Let’s go! Don’t stop!”

  As if the cries of the Mangbetu had cowed the rain itself, it stopped as quickly as it’d started, and the light of dawn started to break between the clouds, leaving patches of indigo sky in view.

  That stretch of river was unusually straight and wide, with over a hundred yards between the two sides, which meant that the current that had pushed them along quickly now added only one or two knots to the rowers’ effort. That fact worked strongly against the three fugitives, who had far less energy and endurance than their brawny pursuers.

  Riley turned back, and his heart sank as he made out in the distance the small silhouettes of at least a dozen canoes, with several men in each, rowing vigorously toward them.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What’s—” Carmen asked, also turning.

  “Yawé!” Mutombo shouted.

  A savage howl of triumph crossed the barely five hundred yards separating them.

  The Mangbetu had seen them too.

  “Harder!” Riley insisted, digging the paddle into the water with agonizing effort. “Don’t stop!”

  He looked back an instant, enough to confirm that in the short minute that had passed, the Mangbetu had cut the distance between them by a quarter.

  In three minutes they’d be on top of them.

  Three minutes, he said to himself, looking around desperately.

  “To the bank!” he shouted, pointing left with his poisoned hand. “Let’s go to the bank!”

  It was a stupid idea, and he knew it. Carmen and Mutombo knew it too. But no one said anything.

  Even if they made it and managed to get out before they were caught, once they were on the land they’d be just as easy to reach as on the water, maybe even easier. It was jumping from the frying pan into the fire, but at that moment a few seconds more of life seemed like centuries.

  Gasping from the effort, Riley felt so dizzy he was afraid he’d pass out before they even reached the shore. But he wasn’t afraid for himself, he was afraid for Carmen.

  He decided that as soon as they disembarked, he’d order Mutombo to run with Carmen while he tried to somehow face their pursuers with the spear now lying on the floor of the canoe. Even if he secured only a couple more minutes, it could mean everything to them.

  As for himself, Riley had run out of hope. He could feel the snake venom spreading through every vein in his body, running along his extremities like burning lava.

  He shook his head violently to make his thoughts clear, discovering then a small beach surrounded by roots sinking into the water.

  “There!” he ordered. “Let’s go there!”

  He turned again and the distance had been cut to little more than two hundred yards.

  Two minutes.

  The beach was one hundred yards away.

  “Nzambe ngai,” Mutombo said then, with a hint of disbelief in his voice as he stopped rowing for a second.

  “What the hell are you doing!” Riley scolded. “Row, damn it!”

  But the Congolese ignored him and instead raised his hand to point forward.

  “My God,” Carmen said, stopping too.

  Riley thought for a moment that he was hallucinating, that the two of them couldn’t actually be that stupid. The world was upside down due to the venom, and reality was fading like it did on bad binges.

  “Look, Alex!” Carmen shouted with a hint of hope that would have been unthinkable a moment ago, still pointing in the same direction as Mutombo.

  Riley looked up to that point above the trees, though he needed to squint in order to figure out what all the fuss was about.

  “There’s white smoke!” Carmen said, anchoring what she saw with words to keep it from being only a mirage. “It’s the Roi! Our ship!”

  58

  Instead of heading for the bank, they kept rowing alongside it. Having abandoned the center of the river, where the current was stronger, slowed them down, but none of them seemed to care about that or the fact that the natives were coming at them even faster. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the boat that appeared around the bend, already starting to turn toward them.

  Just a hundred yards away, the Roi des Boers seemed to be waiting for them with the engine running and blades turning in the opposite direction from normal, fighting the current to stay in the same position. Riley felt it was like an impregnable floating castle, though days before he’d thought it an ugly, flimsy hulk.

  Then he saw Jack standing on the second deck, hand leaning on the edge, the other waving them on.

  It was only then that he realized Klein had lied. He’d implied that the Mangbetu had captured the Galician when he tried to steal the boat. He’d lied just for the pleasure of hurting them, and he certainly had lied again when he promised to let them go. If it hadn’t been for Mutombo, they may have all been long dead.

  Behind him the Mangbetu howled again, and this time it sounded terribly close. Riley decided not to turn to see how far away they were. There was no need. Based on Jack’s gestures, it was easy to tell they were right on their heels.

  “Let’s go, damn it!” Jack shouted over the din of the boat’s blades pounding the water, cupping his hands around his mouth. “Hurry!”

  If Riley had had the strength to do it, he would have replied angrily to ask what the hell he thought they were doing, but he could only grit his teeth and use the last of his strength to row hard toward the boat.

  The Roi des Boers’ paddles furiously worked to keep its position just two yards from the shore and across from a small island in the middle of the channel.

  “Careful with the rope!” Jack warned, pointing forward.

  Riley had to look twice to make out what appeared to be an esparto rope stretching between the island and the bank, less than a meter above the water, wrapped around two trees and stopping at the boat’s deck.

  “Attention!” Mutombo called, crouching to stay under.

  Riley and Carmen followed, making it with no trouble.

  If it had been nighttime, Riley thought bitterly, the natives pursuing them would have hit it, and many would have fallen into the water, setting them back a few valuable moments. A simple trick that would have worked twenty minutes earlier, but which in the first light of day was painfully obvious.

  Less than fifty yards were left between them and the Roi des Boers when a familiar buzz whistled past Riley’s right ear and an arrow struck the water next to the canoe’s bow.

  “They’re shooting at us!” Carmen burst out, apparently outraged by the new attack coming when they were so close to safety.

  “Down! Get down!” Riley shouted, without following his own advice.

  Riley led the canoe to the starboard side of the boat, around the powerful paddles that made dirty foam out of the muddy river water.

  A spear flew through the space that Carmen had just occupied, and a frustrated howl sounded close behind them. They wouldn’t miss next time.

  Then he looked up and saw Jack on the deck holding a small metal object in his right hand. He undid the end of the esparto rope and brought the object up to it, then immediately dropped the rope as if it’d bitten him.

  Riley’s bewilderment became amazement when he saw a flash run along the rope like it was a giant fuse.

  He turned in time to see the innocent rope stretched over the middle of the channel turned into an insurmountable burning barrier with black smoke and the unmistakable smell of motor oil rising from it.

  The Mangbetu tried to stop hard as they screamed. One canoe that was already too close capsized w
hen its occupants tried to escape the fire.

  “Some job you did there,” Riley said, smiling at Jack’s ingenuity.

  The man appeared over the side, hurrying them on. “Come on, damn it,” he urged. “That’ll only hold them back a second!”

  Not needing to be told twice, they paddled the last few yards until they reached the boat, and Mutombo nimbly jumped on deck, then turned immediately to help Carmen. Riley passed them the Martini-Henry and spear he still had and finally offered his right hand, which the Congolese pulled hard to get him up in one leap.

  Meanwhile, Jack reversed the direction of the Roi des Boers’s paddles, and it seemed to leap over the water, finally free to move with the current like a colt who’s finally been untied.

  Within seconds the boat that had hobbled upriver for almost two weeks at a snail’s pace had transformed into a kind of speedboat. Now the river current was added to its power, and as a result it didn’t just glide but flew through the small waves at over fifteen knots.

  Collapsed on deck, Riley saw a couple of arrows strike the water as he heard the Mangbetu’s cries of anger and frustration, furious at having not been able to catch them. Cries that grew farther away with every second that passed.

  Then he smiled, satisfied, and, completely exhausted, felt the world go dark around him the moment before he lost consciousness.

  The next thing he felt was coldness and the sense that he was drowning.

  He gasped for air and felt water running down his face and into the corners of his mouth.

  In front of him stood Carmen with a bucket in her hand, watching him with concern. As soon as she saw him open his eyes, she bent down close. “Alex?” she asked, her voice tense.

  Her face, which was always calm, was now filled with anxiety. “Alex?” she repeated, worried.

  Riley thought that was a strange question. “Yes. Of course,” he replied. “Who else would it be?”

  “Thank God,” she said with a sigh of relief. Then she took his face in her hands and kissed him on the lips.

  For a moment Riley thought he might be dreaming. It’d been weeks since Carmen had kissed him like that. Actually, he thought, like that or any other way.

  “What happened?” he asked, realizing then that someone had put him in a hammock. “How’d I get here?”

  “Mutombo lifted you.” She put her hand on his forehead to feel his temperature. “How are you?”

  He was going to say he felt fine, but then the pain washed back over his entire body. It was a pain like no other he’d ever experienced, like he’d been submerged in a tub of acid, and each of his cells burned and dissolved at the same time. Excruciating, unimaginable pain that he knew came from the venom circulating through his veins.

  He swallowed with difficulty, breathed as deeply as the pain would allow, and brought his left hand to his face. They’d changed his bandages.

  “I’m okay,” he groaned.

  Carmen grimaced. “Yeah, sure.” She pointed at the stub where his fingertip had been. “You have to tell me about that.”

  “How long have I been unconscious?” he asked.

  “Almost ten hours.”

  “Did you—” Riley held his hand in front of him as if seeing it for the first time.

  “I cauterized the wound,” she said with a nod, “but you’ve lost a lot of blood.”

  “I feel fine,” he said, trying to sit up.

  The dizziness came back immediately, and he had to lie down again.

  “No, you’re not fine,” Carmen said. “You’re pale as a corpse, and your face is swollen. But I need you awake.”

  Carmen’s tense look made him realize something was happening.

  “And Jack?” he asked, raising his head again to look around.

  Then he saw, on the other side of the deck, there was another hammock.

  “What happened to him?” he asked. “Is he injured?”

  Carmen nodded gravely. “He got an ugly knife wound in his side.” She touched her left ribs with her right hand to show where. “It’s not very deep, but he lost a lot of blood, a lot more than you.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I stitched and bandaged it as best I could,” she went on, “but he’s very weak.”

  “I didn’t know you could be such a nurse,” Riley said, forcing himself to smile.

  “There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she replied.

  “Yeah,” he said languidly. “That’s the only thing I know.”

  Carmen held his arm to get his attention back. “I didn’t wake you up for this. We have serious problems.”

  It wasn’t till then that Riley realized a strange silence reigned over the boat. “The motor stopped,” he said.

  “There’s a leak in the boiler,” she said with a nod. “We have to repair it and get out of here before they arrive.”

  “Before they arrive?”

  Carmen pointed at her ear. “Don’t you hear them?” she asked, confused.

  Riley then caught the distant sound of chants and war cries. A dark and menacing murmur.

  “They haven’t stopped following us,” Carmen said. “They’ll be here in less than an hour.”

  59

  The steam leak was the same that had appeared days before on their way there. The same opening in the same place, but this time it was about three times larger and the white lead patches didn’t seem able to close it, not even temporarily.

  As he carefully pushed in the strips of cloth Carmen was tearing from Verhoeven’s old sheet, Mutombo explained why he’d dropped anchor in the middle of the river.

  “No motor, no control,” he argued. “First repair. If river current makes hit rock under or bank, boat aground and sink.” And if that wasn’t clear enough he added, “That no good.”

  “No, not good,” Riley repeated, pulling the end of one of the strips with his scant strength.

  Sweat beaded on his naked torso, more from the pain consuming him than from the effort itself. Hovering over the pipe that went from the boiler to the engine, he wiped his brow and clenched his teeth in frustration. That damn crack had spread over nearly a third of the pipe’s circumference, and no matter how well they patched it, he didn’t think it’d be able to hold more than a few hours.

  “Okay, let’s try again,” he said to Carmen, leaning back. “Very slowly.”

  She approached the boiler, gripped the main valve with both hands, and turned it slowly.

  The steam concentrated in the boiler finally found an outlet and headed for the boat’s motor, making the needle on the gauge swing.

  Mutombo ran his hand over the bulky bandage covering the pipe and nodded with satisfaction. “No steam,” he said.

  “Increase the pressure a little, Carmen,” Riley asked.

  She turned the key a quarter turn and watched the indicator. Pressure was at one-third, just below the lower limit of the green zone.

  Riley did as Mutombo had and ran his good hand along the ugly poultice, making sure there was no trace of steam escaping.

  “Go up to fifty percent,” he told Carmen.

  She turned the key again, and the indicator needle stabilized in the middle of the dial.

  “Leave it there a second,” he added.

  For a few seconds the three waited expectantly for any change, but their tension slowly relaxed into smiles.

  “It’s holding,” Carmen said, still looking at the pressure gauge.

  “Good,” Mutombo said. “Very good.”

  Despite the stinging pain that choked him, Riley leaned back and sighed. “Finally!” he shouted. “It’s about time one goddamn thing went well on this trip.”

  But just then a sinister metallic screech came from one end of the pipe, like someone had put a cat inside.

  “À terre!” Mutombo warned, jumping back and bringing Carmen to the floor.

  Seeing that, Riley did the same, lunging against the planks as the pipe erupted in a cloud of scalding steam.

  Mutombo was the fi
rst to react. He stood up and quickly closed the boiler’s stop valve.

  It took Riley much longer to get up, and he did so slowly and with difficulty, like an old rheumatic. He examined the blown pipe and saw a new fissure had appeared just a few inches from the other.

  He shook his head and looked up. “What? That’s it?” He grumbled defiantly, opening his hands. “Can’t think of anything else?”

  Just then, Jack, who’d been left keeping watch on the second deck, appeared at the top of the stairwell. He was deathly pale and his weakness was evident in the way he dragged his words. “They’re coming . . . ,” he said, having to take a breath before he went on. “They’ll be here in less than ten minutes.”

  Carmen turned automatically to Riley with a frown. “Ever thought of keeping your mouth shut?”

  While Jack and Carmen finished pulling in the bow anchor, Riley headed for the bridge with Mutombo, who quickly had the wheel in his hands, trying to keep the Roi des Boers in the middle of the river, where the current was stronger.

  “No motor, no control,” the Congolese explained again.

  Riley knew perfectly well that without additional power from the paddles, the boat was little more than a dead leaf at the mercy of the water’s force. A dead leaf that weighed several tons but was equally incapable of controlling its path.

  Mutombo changing their course with great lurches of the rudder was more of an act of faith than a sensible solution. Without power, they could do nothing but ease their path a few degrees to starboard or port.

  Sooner or later a sandbank would appear in their way, and it would not be humanly possible to keep from hitting it. They’d run aground, and that would be that. Or worse, if instead of a sandbank they hit a rock, Riley thought, they’d crash and—

  He suddenly stopped when a crazy idea emerged from some dark corner of his subconscious.

  “Where are the river charts?” he asked Mutombo urgently.