Chapter Fifteen

The next morning, Lois pointed at the boat. “There’s barely room inside for the four of us. Can we all fit in?” she asked. “What do you think, Sam?”

“I thought you had a cold,” said Seabury, noticing clear eyes and no cough like he remembered last night. She wore her black jeans snug around her trim waist. A red pullover sweater hung loosely down in front and looked baggy. She stood on the dock next to Seabury.

“I took a cold capsule and had a good night’s sleep. Now, it’s gone.” She smiled, then chuckled. “Lucky me.”

Seabury extended a hand. She latched onto it, and he guided her into a seat in the middle of the longboat. Gretchen and Hornsby were already inside. The longboat—a narrow, wooden craft with a powerful outboard motor—pitched up and down in the water. In back of the boat, tiny birds dined on a hatch of brown flies spread out over the river. A small, Indonesian guide sat on a circular bench near the motor, grinning. His tall, scarecrow partner squatted down near the bow. He looked back at the dock, ready to cast off. Two young village boys ran to release the mooring line from the davit near the end of the pier.

“I think we’ll be okay,” Seabury said to Lois. “The boat might be a little cramped, but I think we can manage.” Then turning to the river guide, he said, “This is Katon, and he’s promised not to sink the boat.” Katon grinned.

“Funny,” Gretchen called out, overhearing them. “Tell him I can’t swim.” She laughed, just joking, “but tell him he’d better be careful.”

“I velly carefoo,” the guide said to Gretchen.

“You better be,” she said, shaking a playful finger at him, surprised he spoke English.

Seabury sat down next to Lois on the narrow plank bench. Worried, Lois said, “There are rapids up ahead. I heard people talking last night at dinner…how dangerous it was. A boat went over last week. Five passengers drowned. I don’t like the sound of it.”

Hornsby sat with Gretchen in the seat ahead of them. He looked back at Lois, slightly amused. “If your God is covering your back, why worry?” He extended the grin into a full smile and turned away, shaking his head a little.

The other guide at the front of the boat—the taller—wore a red scarf tied around his head, and a stain shone on the fabric. As the mooring line came back on board, he curled it beneath his feet, and the boat drifted back away from the pier.

The guide at the back cranked on the outboard, and the powerful motor roared to life. The boat swung back, turned around, and growled up the river.

All of a sudden, the sky changed. Once bright with early morning sunlight, it turned dark and bleak between the trees. A large sparrow-hawk circled above, spotted something in the water below, and swooped in for the kill. Sleek, elusive gibbon chattered under a canopy of jungle forest. The speedboat’s nose flipped up in the air, and the boat crashed down hard on the water as they powered through the waves. Clouds of a wet, heavy mist filled the air, and the spray lashed back at them from over the bow of the boat. The next village upriver was Long Begun.

“How many hours until we reach Long Begun?” Lois asked Seabury.

“The guide said its ninety miles,” he said. “At ten miles an hour…”

“My God,” Lois shrieked. “That’s another nine hours in this thing.”

“Are we complaining?” he asked with an impish grin, teasing her.

“Yes, I am complaining.”

Gretchen turned around to face Seabury. Ignoring her sister, she said, “She’s like that when things don’t go her way.”

“Gretchen. That’s not fair,” Lois said, looking a bit hurt.

Gretchen grinned, shrugged, and turned back around, snickering. In a huff, Lois crossed her arms over her chest and sulked, agonizing over every mile that passed beneath the boat. Hornsby started a pipe and leaned back in the seat, mesmerized by the depth and the distance of the country.

The morning passed quickly, and the boat continued to speed up river. The sun broke through the clouds, and the day turned warm by three o’clock. The guide pulled into a shady spot under a stand of palm and coconut trees, and they ate sandwiches and drank cold water. Fifteen minutes later, the guide pulled out in a wide arch onto the river. He turned the boat north, and they headed up river again.

Seabury listened to the sound of the boat churning over the waves when all of a sudden, the roar from a chopper down river jolted him back in his seat. Far back above the river, it winged through the sky over the horizon like a black dragonfly. It powered along in the mid-afternoon sky, a quarter mile behind the Sicilian’s boat.

Oh, boy, Seabury gulped. I knew it wouldn’t last. That cop…he’s like a shark after the scent of blood. My blood! A chill coursed through his body. Seabury turned around and stared back up river. By now, the others noticed the chopper, too.

“It’s the police,” shouted Lois, nudging Seabury. “Have you seen them?” She pointed back down river.

“Yes, for the last few minutes.”

“What are we gonna do?” asked Gretchen, clinging to the edge of her seat. “They found us. Gawd! All the way up here, they found us.”

Hornsby kept smoking his pipe and looked back at the sky, not as panic-stricken as the women. He exchanged glances with Seabury but said nothing. Meantime, the big Hawaiian thought of only one thing—an exit strategy. The boat would arrive in Long Bagun in a little over an hour. He had to have one.

* * * *

Up and down the river, the traffic thickened. Tour boats and fishing boats lined the water. Next, huge coal barges came into view followed by logging tugboats. The tugboats, with hard steel cords as tight as bowstrings, pulled huge rafts with hundreds of logs out of the heart of the forest and back down the river. On limestone banks, stilt houses hung over the water. Women prepared evening meals next to clothes strung out on clotheslines. Nearby, children played in foamy pools of polluted water and dark clouds of mosquitoes.

Seabury kept his eyes peeled front and back. Now and then, he turned around past Lois’s fleeting glances. He wondered if she was having second thoughts about being out here with him. A good girl, prim and proper–religious. Now fleeing from the police. A good girl never in trouble, business-minded, responsible, never involved in anything illegal. Seabury felt guilty about placing Lois in this situation, and the rest of the party as well.

He stared back down the river, breaking out into a cold sweat. The Sicilian’s boat was still there, powering over the water. The chopper, pasted like a black bug against the sky, winged ahead. It flew faster now, closing the distance between them. The sight of it sent a sharp, ice pick stab of fear close to his heart.

Good God, he realized. They’re here. I’m in trouble up to my eyeballs.

Seabury had been in crisis situations before. Immediately, he took control. A quarter mile away, a tributary rolled out onto the main river. He pointed and ordered the guide to head for it.

The guide’s eyes switched from side to side inside his head. A puzzled look crossed his face. Seabury pointed to the outboard motor. “Give it gas. Now!” He motioned to the chopper, closing fast. “Police. We gotta get out of here.”

A loud noise ripped through the water in back of them. The river suddenly churned and bubbled in a loud roar. The stern of the boat lowered a few inches above the water line as the speed of the engine propelled them like a missile over the water toward the tributary.

The wind blasted them. Gusts of water flew over the front of the boat and lashed at them. Seabury lower his head, gripped the edge of his seat, and saw Lois, Gretchen, and Hornsby do the same. The taller guide at the front of the boat tossed a rain jacket over him and shivered in the wind.

As they reached the tributary, the guide in back swung right and fought a current coming off the stream. He cranked the tiller hard and leveled out. Plumes of water cascaded in a rainbow flaring out on both sides of the boat. Farther ahead, a watery network of swamps and streams choked with mangroves spread out across the water. A dark wetland area ran for miles back inside the trees.

“See that grove?” Seabury pointed to a cluster of mangroves twenty yards away. “Head in there,” he told the guide amid Lois’s shrieks and shouts of protest.

“We’ll get trapped in there and never get out,” she cried.

“You have a better idea?” he asked. She shook her head and kept quiet.

Overhead, the chopper pursued them, battered by rough thermal currents of air. It winged above a dense canopy of jungle foliage, making it difficult for anyone inside to see below. In the boat, the guide reduced speed and slipped inside a labyrinth of smaller streams clustered with trees. “Quiet,” Seabury said. He held a hand up and told the guide to cut the engine.

“We’ll wait them out,” he said.

The boat slapped up and down idly in the water. The sound of a hornbill echoed overhead. Seabury could hear the chopper circling above them now, making one pass over the area and then another. They waited—Hornsby’s mouth slightly opened, the girls holding each other with startled looks on their faces. They waited another two minutes.

Seabury heard the roar of the engine, coming back again. The aircraft flew low, skimming over the tops of the mangroves. He imagined binoculars out and the cop’s face twisted up to the window. In a narrow space above the trees, the chopper passed over them. Then at last, it winged away, and silence filled the day.

Fifteen minutes later, they emerged from their hideout. Slowly, they motored off the tributary. Forest and mangroves crept down to the water’s edge and gradually receded in the distance. Seabury heard the loud, howling sound of the motor racing through his mind. As they entered the Mahakam River, a spray of water hurled over the side of the boat at him. He kept thinking, I’ve got to get out soon.