Chapter 76

76

"Please, Colleen. It's not as hard as it seems," I said.

"I don't know about this," Colleen said, her arms folded tightly across her chest. "It must be twenty feet to the water. If I don't die hitting the lip of the falls on the way down. And I can hardly even swim."

"I'm telling you, Colleen. It absolutely can be done. You're not going to need to know how to swim," I said. "Just follow me up the pole and I'll show you how to do it just like a SEAL."

Without waiting for an answer, I turned and headed up the pole, happy to hear her scrambling up behind me.

At the top, I grabbed the cable and made my way out on it a few feet.

"Just keep the cable between your legs and bend your right knee. Wrap your right instep around the cable. Let your left leg hang down straight and pull yourself across with your arms like an inchworm."

I looked back at Colleen. She looked petrified.

"You can do this, Colleen. The weight of your left leg hanging down really balances you. This way, if you get tired, you can take a break."

That's when it happened.

There was a boom from up river, and the cable suddenly exploded at my feet and I was falling like a rock.

The cable I'd been hugging moved me out over the river in a Tarzan swing and then disappeared from underneath me.

And then I was headed straight down in a free fall.

I saw the dark raging waterfall beneath me, the shimmer of the moonlight on it and the bubbling white water beneath it rising up.

As I fell in a kind of slow motion, my eyes locked on the waterfall's stone edge.

I was going to hit it, I realized.

Shit, this is going to hurt , I thought as I tried to get my feet below me so I wouldn't hit headfirst.

But I was wrong.

I just missed the lip of the edge of the falls. By a whisker . The waterfall passed by the tips of my toes and then the tip of my nose by about a centimeter. I hit the water at the bottom of the falls hard in a kind of pencil dive and then went under, felt the bottom and kicked up.

I broke the surface of the freezing cold water with a gasp of breath.

"Shit!" I cried as I spotted Colleen, half the river away, still at the top of the pole.

I could see that she was yelling something at me but it was fruitless. I couldn't hear a thing over the roar of the waterfall.

Suddenly, there was another booming gunshot and a chunk of the pole next to her exploded.

Get down off the pole , I wanted to scream as I treaded in the ice-cold water.

I watched as she wisely began to scramble down the pole and I swam toward her side of the river. She reached the edge by the lip of the falls and stopped.

What are you waiting for? I thought, realizing then how panicked she was.

"Jump, Colleen! Jump!" I screamed.

She just stood there, shaking her head. I could see she was crying now.

That's when we heard a new sound.

Dogs were barking furiously in the woods behind the little brick building.

"I'll come back for you!" I yelled.

I couldn't look back at her. I turned and started swimming for the opposite bank, knowing that her only chance at rescue depended on me getting out of this river in one piece.

I promise I'll come for you , I thought.

I swam as hard as I could along the gushing water and then heard a whistle and as I hit the shore, a big hand seized me by my forearm, helping me out.

Mathias pulled me up on my soaking feet, and when I looked up, I was shocked to see that Mario was there. He was drenched, too.

"You made it!" I said.

"Whadya think? Fuhgeddaboudit!" Mario said, hugging me.

"Where's Colleen? Is she in the water?" Mathias said.

I shook my head.

"No. She was still on the pole. I heard dogs as I crossed. We have to assume they've caught her. But we can't worry about that. We're of no help to her unless we get out of here now."

"Come on, then," Mathias said. "Let's get to the truck. Hurry."

We climbed up a steep bank onto the bike path and then ran up toward the Route 4 parking lot. We were in the trees approaching the guardrail about fifty feet away from it when a police SUV blew past us and screeched to a stop behind the truck.

Seeing that there was only one cop in it as it went past, without thinking I leaped over the guardrail and tore across the parking lot and crouched at the back of the SUV just as the driver door opened and a cop stepped out and began turning at the sound of me.

But I was already off my feet.

I knocked the gun clear out of the cop's hand as I slammed into him like a wrecking ball. I heard the back of his head clunk loudly as it bounced off the doorframe as he fell.

We came down in a pile to the asphalt and after I quickly retrieved his gun, I rolled him over and realized that it was a female cop, a surprisingly pretty one with her blonde hair tied up in a bun.

I saw I had knocked her clean out. I had just taken her pulse to confirm she was still alive when I heard Mathias roar on the panel truck.

"Come on!" Mathias called.