Hoyle stared with grim fascination at the bottleneck where the brushwooder had disappeared.
“The raft,” Ryan repeated coldly. “Otherwise, I break both your knees with a rock and toss you in the river.”
“Over here.” Hoyle peered at the cave walls for a moment, then got his bearings. He made his way carefully along the ledge to a spot where a triangle of rocky spikes jutted from the wall. “I’ll need some help.” He put his hands on either side of the area around the three rocks and started to pull.
Ryan stepped forward and added his own muscle to the effort. The section of rock came out slowly, with a grating sound that ripped through the swish and swirl of the raging river and a vibration of friction that ran through Ryan’s arms.
“Hiding place for emergency rations and our gear,” Hoyle explained. “We’ve used this river before.”
“You didn’t come up it,” Ryan said.
“No. Usually we use it to go down. Sometimes we can travel two, mebbe three days by river. A lot faster and easier than going overland.”
The block of stone came out faster at the end, nearly tumbling Ryan off balance. Dropping the heavy weight into the water moving just below his ribs now, he reached out and caught a fistful of Hoyle’s shirt as the man nearly slid back into the torrent threatening to pluck them from their perch.
Krysty reached into the opening and dragged out an olive oval of thick plastic and vinyl. She held on to it with difficulty as the river fiercely tried to take it away from her.
“I’ve got it,” Hoyle said, closing his hands over the vinyl with Krysty’s.
“Ryan,” J.B. called.
Even as Ryan turned to look, bullets lanced into the whirling caldron of water filling the basin. At least two men clung to the ledge above them, shooting blindly down into the water in an effort to take out their targets. J.B. triggered two 3-round bursts at the men, but they’d moved back into the rock and made difficult targets. They were also evidently wearing body armor of some type, because the Armorer’s rounds knocked dust from their clothing.
Ryan raised the Samp;W shotgun to his shoulder and squeezed the trigger. At the distance, with the choke adjusted, the razor-edged flechettes spread into almost a man-size pattern.
They slashed into the two brushwooders and sliced them from their position, cutting easily through whatever body armor the men might have scavenged. Their screams of pain ended suddenly when they dropped into the raging water.
When Ryan looked back at the raft, he saw that Jak had joined Krysty and Hoyle in trying to maneuver it above the water. The oval’s size made it awkward; the footing made the efforts treacherous.
Hoyle reached into the center of the oval, snaking a hand through the folded wrinkles, then yanked. As he withdrew his hand, the oval started to unfold on its own with a prolonged hiss.
“Compressed air,” Hoyle said. “It’ll fill the raft. Scavenged this emergency raft and a couple like it over the years from ships and boats that went down around Vancouver a few years back when I was working on trade and barter for my next home-cooked meal. When I signed on with the Heimdall Foundation, I figured one of them might come in handy one day here.” He shook his head. “I sure do hate being right when it comes to shit like this.”
The raft continued to flop, and the dimensions became clear. It would be a tight fit, but Ryan thought they would all squeeze in. The way he figured it, if things got tight, the Heimdall Foundation men were ballast.
“What’s this you were saying about the Heimdall Foundation?” Doc demanded over the roar of the river.
“Place I work for,” Hoyle answered. “Bernsen knows more about it.” The man struggled to hang on to the raft as the current tried to rip it from him, Krysty and Jak.
Doc turned his attention to the man he was keeping watch over. Bernsen had turned green in the dim light, his attention focused on the bottleneck of cave walls. Doc shook the man and began to question him.