PART TEN
1
The Pajero had landed upside down at the river’s edge, five or six metres below us, doors open, windscreen smashed. It bucked and wallowed as water the colour of chocolate pounded against the wreckage. Any second now it would be snatched away and hurled downstream.
Bastard hadn’t been any luckier. The river at this point was around thirty metres wide, and I watched as he floundered, went under, and bobbed up again about halfway across, almost indistinguishable from all the other lumps of debris swirling downstream.
I started ripping off my jacket.
Charlie rolled his eyes. ‘Nothing we can do, lad. F*ck him. Anyway, we got Crazy Dave.’
I shook my head. Later, Bastard could die a slow and painful death, as far as I was concerned, but right now he was here, and Crazy Dave was a million miles away. ‘He’s our route out of this shit! He’s got the contacts; he can get us over the border.’
There was nothing Charlie could do to help. His ankle was f*cked, and the rest of him was falling apart. This one was down to me. I pulled my shirt out of my trousers and half jumped, half tumbled down the slope towards the maelstrom.
The water surged past at a fearsome pace, carrying all before it. Huge branches crashed over the rocks ahead of me.
There was a screech of tearing metal as the Pajero finally lost its grip and thundered downstream. I watched it for about a hundred metres, until the river bent sharply to the left and it disappeared.
And that was where I spotted him. The force of the current had carved out the subsoil for a ten-metre stretch along the far bank, exposing a latticework of tree-roots that gleamed white against the mud, like the ribs of a putrefying corpse. Bastard had his arm hooked through one of them.
He didn’t stand the slightest chance of hauling himself up and out of the mud, let alone over the edge of the bank. There was no way I’d be able to either, and I hadn’t spent a lifetime on the Big Mac diet.
I could see he was yelling at me big-time, but I couldn’t hear a thing above the roar of the water.
I scanned the stretch of river between us. He must have fetched up where he was after being catapulted into it midstream. I’d need to enter the water much further up if I was going to have a chance of hitting the bank before I was swept in the wake of the Pajero, and on around the bend.
I scrambled over the mud thirty or forty metres upstream, past the jagged skeleton of a small wooden footbridge that had been unable to withstand the force of the flood.
I plunged in up to my calves and pushed on, fighting the freezing current until I was up to my waist and the sheer weight of the deluge whipped my legs from under me. I kicked and thrashed, but might as well not have bothered. Nothing I could do would stop me going under.
I went with the flow until my lungs threatened to burst and I started taking on water through my nose and mouth, then somehow managed to kick myself back to the surface.
My head spun and my eyes were streaming, but I caught sight of him again as I fought for breath. Like me, he was struggling to keep his head up, clinging to the tree root for dear life.
The water took me under again and I was suddenly more concerned about sucking in air than getting to the other side.
I wrestled my way to the surface once more, and saw that I was now almost at the far side. I could let the current do the rest.
Seconds later, my fingers closed around Bastard’s tree root.
He was cold, disoriented, frightened. He grabbed me, desperate to stay afloat, but only succeeded in pulling me under.
I kicked and jerked my way back up, fighting to keep my grip on the root as the current tore at my legs.
‘No!’ I kicked out at him. ‘Compose yourself, for f*ck’s sake! Stop!’ Down at this level, the roar of water was deafening.
I jackknifed away from him, trying to keep him at arm’s length. I knew he was panicking big-time, and there was no way I wanted us to head to the bottom of this vortex together.
The bank was steeper than I’d thought. There was a chance I could heave myself out, but it would take a crane to lift him clear.
‘We’ve got to swim back across! I’ll help you, but no grabbing . . . We won’t make it if you f*cking lose it, OK?’
He stared at me with glazed eyes, his teeth chattering with cold. ‘I can’t swim.’
For f*ck’s sake.
I scanned the boiling surface of the water on either side of us. The trunk of a pine tree had lodged itself against a rockslide just short of the bend in the river. Its roots faced slightly upstream, creating a V-shaped breakwater. The aluminium rectangle of Bastard’s carry-on glinted among the debris bobbing in the slower-moving water at its centre.
Bastard was staring at me wild-eyed. He tried to speak but couldn’t.
I let go of the tree root and crashed hard against the fallen pine.
I grabbed the carry-on and flung my free arm over the trunk. I hooked a leg over a branch, but the rest of me still trailed in the river. I let myself be buffeted by the force of the water until I managed to draw breath and heave myself up. I lay there for a moment, my knuckles whitening as I fought to hang on to the handle of the carryon. Then I started to crawl slowly towards the bank.
I hauled myself upright and made my way back upstream.
Bastard saw me coming. ‘Get me out of here, now!’
It was like being accosted by 250 pounds of stranded bull walrus.
‘Hey! I’m here . . . Here! What the f*ck’s keeping you?’
For a split second I toyed with the idea of cracking him on the side of the head with the carry-on and watching him float away. Then I gave myself a reality check. If we lost Bastard, we lost our broker. I began to lower myself down the bank and back into the water.
‘This is our raft,’ I yelled. ‘Grip the f*cking thing as tight as you can and don’t let go. I’ll hang on to you. Now kick . . . Come on, kick!’
He nodded obediently but didn’t move. The carry-on bounced up and down in the swell between us.
Bastard was experiencing Fear Up big-time at first hand. He couldn’t bring himself to let go of his anchor. I punched down hard on his hand to get him to release, and we were away.
I locked my hand on the collar of Bastard’s blazer, kicking to propel us out into the current to clear the fallen tree.
Bastard was putting all his energy into keeping his head above water.
‘Get kicking! F*cking help me here!’
The signal finally made it from his ear to his brain and he kicked. The current grabbed us and we thundered past the pine tree. The further we travelled, the closer we were being thrown towards the far shore. It was only a matter of time before my boots hit the riverbed.
I struggled to my feet and half pulled, half dragged Bastard into the shallows. A few moments later, he was lying beside me on solid ground.
I took off my shirt and T-shirt, and twisted as much water out of them as I could. To make the most of what was left of my body heat, I had to get some air into the fibres. That was what I told myself anyway. The rain soaked them as fast as I could wring them, but somehow the whole process made me feel better.
I put the shirt and T-shirt back on, then knelt to take off my boots. I fumbled to undo the laces with numb, trembling fingers. Finally I wrung out my jeans.
Once I was dressed again, I tucked everything in, trying to minimize the number of ways in which the wind could get to me.
A familiar voice boomed down at us from what was left of the road. ‘That was really big of you, lad, but you needn’t have bothered.’
I looked up at Charlie and shrugged.
His eyes twinkled. ‘I could easily have made do with a carrier bag.’
Bastard lay beside me like a beached whale.
I kicked him. ‘Time to move. Check you’ve still got your ID.’
Bastard dug around and pulled out his wallet.
He gave it a squeeze and fished out the laminated card. ‘You really do need me, don’t you?’ He had the faintest of knowing smiles on his face. ‘Well, f*ck you.’