River Run

by Toni Dwiggins

  The only question in my mind was if this crater was created entirely naturally—a consequence of ages of trickling water, or a fracture that widened enough to evolve into this collapse feature—or if Reid had something to do with expanding it. A blast?

  “I'm moving forward,” Walter said, at last. “Wait for me.”

  Walter took an excruciatingly cautious time moving forward, testing the integrity of the rock with every step.

  The floor held firm.

  He waved us forward. We came cautiously and gathered alongside Walter behind the rubble curb.

  We looked into the crater.

  As when we'd first entered the tunnel, our light beams jigsawed, painting the rock walls below in strobe-lit flashes. Flash—silvery Muav near the top. Flash—greenish Bright Angel below that, Bright Angel as far down as I could see. Rough walls. Crumbly maybe. Flash—a glistening on the far wall, the trickle continuing its downward course.

  The crater, from where we stood, was not fully revealed. We needed to move closer.

  Walter took the lead, gathering us to the curb.

  It was a lot to take in. We needed more light. We needed floodlights.

  Still, our attention was sucked into the great hole. In the strobe flashes of our puny beams I began to pick out the lay of the land. Down below—fifteen feet? twenty?—there was a rock shelf, not bare rock but rubble, a mix of silvery limestone and greenish shale. The stuff must have tumbled there, accumulated there, when the floor of our tunnel collapsed, although I would have expected more of a pile, a jumble, and this rubble shelf appeared flattened. As if raked. As if somebody had gone to some trouble. Somebody had to clean up, after the collapse. And might as well smooth it out, as best possible.

  Walter said, “There's something...” And he moved, to the right, along our rubble curb. The rest of us followed. From our new viewpoint we again aimed our headlamps down into the cavern.

  Strobing. Flashing. Glimpses.

  On the rubble shelf there was something lumpy and it looked, I thought, when I'd stabilized my beam upon it, like a disheveled sleeping bag, and then somebody else's beam caught on something blocky, and it looked like a backpack. It was a backpack. And then our light beams went crazy again, everybody looking for the owner, for the hiker, for the person who'd ended up down in this crater, and I refused to think for the body.

  Nobody spoke. There was only the drip drip drip of water.

  Wes was kneeling on the curb. Quillen got him around the waist.

  And then the whistling sound started up. The sound I'd heard outside. In here, with us. Not the wind.

  Somebody's beam caught something down below the shelf.

  It was dazzling.

  I gaped.

  Pete blurted, “Where did that come from?”

  And then somebody's beam sliced across the field of dazzling white to the far wall—to the sector, I thought, if I'd got my bearings right—where the trickle ran down the wall.

  There was a body.

  In fetal position, one arm around the knees. One arm flung out. As if reaching.

  Wes screamed, “Becca!”

  After an eternity, there came the sound of laughter.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  “I'm going,” Wes said, moving for the coil of rope on the floor.

  Ranger Molina, unpacking the rest of his gear, looked up and said gently, “Have you ever done a rappel? If not, I'll have to teach you. That'll take time. Or, I go down and aid her right now.”

  Wes froze.

  I recalled Wes at Becca's karst cave, frozen. Not a caver. My heart squeezed.

  “You go,” Wes finally said. He turned from us and stared down at the silent figure in the basin.

  There was nothing for any of us to do but watch, as Pete placed three cams into cracks in the limestone wall, and then linked the cams to create a master anchor point, and then attached the rappel line, and then got into his climbing harness and attached himself and his medical kit to the rope.

  Quillen had already taken Pete's radio and headed out of the tunnel to call in a full team. This was going to be a steep-angle rescue. Tricky.

  There was nothing for the rest of us to do but wait.

  WE NEEDED FLOODLIGHTS.

  Aside from our narrow headlamp beams, everything was in inky shadow.

  Pete's beam striped the shale wall as he descended.

  Wes and Walter and Reid and I all focused our lights on Becca.

  Reid demonstrated shock at the sight of his niece down there.

  The figure had a female's hips, and there was no question which female. Not Megan Schrader—the rafting party did not have backpacks. This female, down there, had come with a backpack and, so it seemed, dropped a PFD along the way. I thought about Neely's scenario, when we'd found the vest. Becca goes after her uncle, hitching a ride on a passing raft, taking a backpack should the need arise to hike into the canyons.

  Clearly, the need arose.

  I wondered how she'd found her way here. And with whom. And how she fell into the cavern. And with what malevolent help.

  I thought of the red-haired girl in the photo at the Devil's Nose Lodge—with her lime-green Dachshund barrettes. She looked so young.

  The woman down there—hair frizzing out from beneath a wool hat, everything a grimy gray from hat to boots—looked like she'd been there for a long while. She'd made camp on the rubble shelf. And then, at some point, she'd climbed or tumbled down to the astonishing clean white basin below. For the water? She'd clearly found that little pool below the trickle down the wall. And then, I presumed she hadn't been able to climb back up to her camp, although it didn't look far. Injured. Dehydrated. Sick.

  Still, she looked, to me, like a tough survivor.

  Out of the corner of my eye I stole a glance at Wes. He was rigid. That was some force of will to just stand there and watch. To keep silent, because Pete had not wanted anybody to shout again, to startle Becca into moving, to avoid exacerbating any injuries. And so Wes did as he was told.

  He looked, to me, like a hero.

  When I peered down again, Pete was nearing the bottom.

  He turned to get a look at his landing zone and his light swept the basin, painting in one slash the extent of the deposit. I'd been trying to wrap my head around its existence since we'd gained our first glimpse, and now I tried to wrap my head around the size. Thinking holy shit Harvey, something of interest? That's some quintessential academic understatement.

  Maybe he was holding back, until ready to publish. Only he never got the chance. He went to Bolivia, instead.

  I snapped my attention back to Pete. His light now focused on the floor directly below him, and then he touched bottom.

  He unhooked himself and the med kit from the rope. He took a step, and paused, as if testing his footing, and then satisfied he hurried over to Becca.

  She lay unmoving. Silent.

  I feared we were too late.

  I heard Wes choke back a cry.

  Pete knelt beside her and spoke. “Becca? Can you hear me?”

  We heard him.

  She heard him. She moved her head, slightly. Enough.

  And then she spoke, her voice raspy and garbled but it sounded as though she said, “Lazlo?”

  And Wes expelled a breath and hissed, “Who?”

  Walter shushed him—sound travels in here—keep quiet until she's stabilized, until Pete gives the okay.

  And then I heard steps in the tunnel behind us and turned to see Agent Quillen standing quietly, and he made the 'okay' sign. Help is on the way.

  I nodded and turned my light back to help illuminate the scene below.

  Pete had the med kit open and was leaning over her, fingers on her carotid, and then he tried to slide a blood pressure cuff on her arm but she lifted it, she was trying to wrap her arm around his shoulder, trying to give him a hug.

  And then she laughed once, loud and shrill, and Pete looked up to us and tapped his temple.

  I got it.
Hallucinations. I assumed Wes got it, because he called, “It's me, Becca.”

  She began to cry.

  Walter and I sandwiched Wes.

  Pete cradled Becca's head and put a water bottle to her lips and she choked off the crying and drank, and tried to grab the bottle from Pete's hands to no doubt drain it dry but he gently pulled it away. She said, clear as crystal, “Get a grip, Becca,” and then she eased enough for Pete to cuff her arm and check the pressure, and he nodded, and then he got a survival blanket from the med kit and wrapped her.

  While she lay still, Pete took the opportunity to reach over to the little pool and dip in a finger. He put it to his tongue. He spat. He looked up at us and shook his head.

  I got it. High in dissolved solids. Super saline. Essentially, sodium chloride.

  The water was too salty to drink.

  Before I could turn to Reid and level blame, I noticed that Agent Quillen had walked the ledge walkway that ran alongside the crater. He'd gone as far as he could go, all the way to the end, in front of the debris plug. He was looking up, his headlamp illuminating the top of the pile of broken rock, where the joint must have intersected the top of the tunnel.

  And then he nodded to himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  WE WAITED DOWN BY SHINUMO Creek.

  When Pete's SAR team had arrived, they evicted us from the tunnel. No room in there for non-essential personnel.

  Wes sat alone, hunched on a boulder, looking like he'd just run the gnarliest rapid of his career.

  Walter and Quillen and Reid and I sat on another cluster of boulders. There was no shortage of rocky seats, in the brushy bouldery Shinumo. We filtered water and drank deeply. Everyone seemed to have a deep unquenchable thirst.

  Everyone seemed drained.

  And then Quillen broke the silence. “This your doing, Mr. Lassen?”

  Reid answered, wearily, “No.”

  “What happened with Becca Warren?”

  “No idea.”

  “What the hell is that cavern?”

  “Ask Walter. He brought us here.”

  Quillen looked to Walter.

  Walter didn't shift his focus from Reid. “Your field, but I'd say that deposit in there was laid down by the transgression of ancient seas. Formed as an isolated basin, at the transition between the Bright Angel and the Muav. And it remained buried through the ages, until that trickle of water did its work, opening a crack in the tunnel floor. Expanding it, through the ages. And Harvey, exploring the tunnel, found the cavern. Right, Reid?”

  “I wouldn't know. Was that in his field notes?”

  “Hinted at. He wrote 'found something of interest' and a salt bed this size—in the Grand Canyon—would qualify, yes? A breakthrough find. Don't you agree, Reid?”

  “Unexpected, yes. Breakthrough? There are other deposits in the Canyon.”

  “On this scale?”

  “There's the notorious Blue Springs—that's a major point source of salinity for the Colorado.”

  “Would you say this deposit could give Blue Springs a run for its money?”

  “In theory.”

  “In practice.” Walter gestured up the Bright Angel slope, where he'd found the bore holes. “Blast up there, cause a big enough landslide, opening the sequestered basin. Expose the salt bed to flooding from Shinumo Creek. And the creek takes the salts to the Colorado. A new and perhaps major point source. Do you see it, Reid?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Quillen said, “Let me help you, Mr. Lassen.”

  Reid took a long drink from his water bottle.

  “I took a stroll down to the end of the tunnel,” Quillen said, “and found something surprising in that blockage, where the broken rocks are piled. Evidently that's a plugged joint—as Walter explained to me on the way out—but a trickle of water found its way through. What if that joint was fully unplugged, Mr. Lassen?”

  “I don't see how.”

  Quillen struck out, knocking the bottle from Reid's hand.

  Reid flinched.

  “That's how. Boom. A blast from the plastique explosive planted there. And then the previously plugged joint becomes a high-flow pipe and water drains freely. And it flows down into our tunnel, and then down into the cavern. And there it would... What's the term, Walter?”

  “Mobilize,” Walter supplied.

  “Thank you. I love learning stuff. The water would mobilize the salt and flush it down to the creek. In case the flooding doesn't occur often enough, or reach high enough. You have redundancy.”

  Quillen glanced down at the trickle of water from Reid's bottle. It was headed for the creek.

  Reid bent to reach for his bottle.

  Quillen kicked it away. “No you don't, Mr. Lassen. You don't get to carry out your scheme.”

  Reid straightened and, astonishingly, laughed. “Interesting theory. Wrong man.”

  Walter's eyebrows lifted.

  And now I had to laugh. Seriously? We've got the wrong man? The weakest defense in the book.

  Quillen said, “You have someone in mind?”

  “Gary Phipps,” Reid answered.

  Walter and I exchanged a look. Harvey's son, who supposedly blamed Reid for Harvey's death. Who had hoped to prove himself, to Harvey. Gary Phipps, here? Engineering all this?

  “One-upping his dad,” Reid elaborated.

  Walter snorted. “You're saying Harvey told Gary about the discovery?”

  “Makes sense.” Reid pushed off his boulder and moved to the clump of brittlebrush where his water bottle had come to rest. He retrieved it, throttled it with his good hand, tipped his head back, upended the bottle, and opened his mouth to catch the few drops that remained.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  WES WAITED FOR THE SAR team to carry the litter down to the level area beside the creek. Ten seconds after the team lowered the litter to the ground, Wes was on his knees alongside it.

  The rest of us stood well out of the way.

  At first all I could see was Wes and the group of rescuers in their gray-green ranger pants and yellow T-shirts and belts thick with ropes and carabiners and cams and ascenders, and then they shifted for a moment and I saw Becca strapped inside the basket. She was unmoving, but there was a helmet on her head and an oxygen cannula in her nostrils, and that told me what I wanted to know. She was alive.

  Wes reached into the basket and took her hand, carefully, as if it might break. “Hey Becks, big water at Serpentine.” His voice nearly broke.

  Her fingers curled around his.

  Reid stood beside me. I glanced down at his good hand, which hung at his side. His fingers twitched.

  “All right,” Ranger Molina said. “Let's move on.”

  With practiced skill the SAR team urged Wes to his feet and out of the way, and then they raised the litter and started down Shinumo Creek.

  They had to pass us by, and when they did, Becca's head turned our way.

  Seeing her up close, I was shocked. Her face was dead white, but for the bruises and scratches and scabs. Her skin was dry, stretched, drawn over sharp cheekbones. Her eyes—mossy green, I recalled, in that photo at the Devil's Nose—were dulled and sunken.

  And then, surprisingly, she smiled. No, she grinned, a big wide happy grin that showed gray teeth and a chipped front incisor. It was a beautiful thing to see. I expected she'd flashed it for her rescuers and I expected that had been enough, for them.

  I smiled in return.

  But she wasn't smiling at me.

  She was smiling at Reid.

  He said, softly, “Becca.”

  She answered in the big voice that had produced that loud guffawing laughter. “Hi, Uncle Reid!”

  WE TRAILED WES AND the rescue team downcanyon for a short distance, and then they led the way into the rocky draw that cut up through a break in the Muav cliffs and led us, eventually, onto a broad terrace far above Shinumo Creek.

  An NPS helicopter was parked there.

  The rescue team t
ook a break while their medic attended Becca once again. With Wes in close attendance.

  Reid remained with us. Taking a break with us. Drinking from a water bottle labeled NPS. Staying far away from Becca.

  I wondered how it had all gone down. Becca found her way to the confluence of White and Shinumo, and there she lost her PFD. On her own? Maybe she followed Reid—maybe Reid and his fellow rafters. Had she heard them talking? Intercepted them? At some point they'd led her to the nearly hidden tunnel, because it was unlikely she'd found it on her own. And then, Reid's got a problem. His niece knows something she shouldn't. So he shows her his cool cave. Pushes her in. Or, maybe, she trips and falls. And his problem is solved—all he has to do is walk away. Well, not quite. Wouldn't he need to rappel down and make sure? Maybe he had no time. Maybe his fellow rafters were nearby—and they weren't up for something like this. In any case, the next time Reid is in the Shinumo, on his own, he has a broken arm in a cast, so if he goes back to check on Becca, he's unable to rappel down. Which gives him even more reason to keep us from finding the place.

  Of course, I could have it all wrong, about Uncle Reid. It was not entirely out of the question that she had found her way to the cavern all on her own. She spied on Reid and his buddies, hiding in the brush outside the entrance, and later went inside, on her own, and came abruptly to the cavern. And tripped. And fell in. And Reid had no idea. Possible.

  I studied Reid. He was watching the medic at work. Hoping for another round of Becca's laughter, more saltwater delirium? Hoping for traumatic brain injury, from her tumble into the cavern? Hoping for amnesia? After all, he'd experienced it—or pretended to—after his own trauma on the river.

  Quillen got to his feet and said he needed the men's room and headed for a brushy gully away from the crowd.

  Walter followed suit.

  I spotted the female SAR member emerging from a boulder field in the opposite direction, and I, too, decided this was as good a site and time as any.

  When I finished and started back toward our resting place, I was distracted by a shout from Wes. “Cassie, you rock!” He was waiting to follow Becca's litter onto the chopper. I gave him a thumbs-up in return. You too.