Boot Camp (20 page)

This might be our only chance.

“Ready?” I ask.

Pauly bites his lip, his eyes darting back and forth. But Sarah is already pushing herself up. “Let's do it.”

I slide my arm under her shoulder, and we step out of the woods.

And into trouble.

“Additional privileges will be your reward for rising through the levels.”

Two hundred yards to our left, just where the road begins to curve around a bend, the shiny new maroon sedan is parked in front of a small yellow house with black shutters. A woman in jeans and a man in a cowboy hat are standing at the front door as if waiting for someone to answer the doorbell. The woman sees us and points. The man in the cowboy hat quickly turns his head.

Pauly sprints away. I more or less pick up Sarah and follow. We dash past the sign for Don's Daily Boat Rentals and around the brown wooden shack.
Beyond it is a short green lawn, then a rickety wooden dock sticking out into the river with four dented old aluminum skiffs tied to it.

The dock bobs and wobbles unsteadily as we run onto it. Each skiff is about fifteen feet long with three bench seats and a small black outboard on the stern.

“You know how to drive one of these?” Pauly asks.

“Used to,” I answer as I help Sarah down into the middle seat of the last boat. The red plastic gas can reads full. I pump the black plastic ball, open the choke, and give the pull cord a good yank. The engine comes to life and revs with a cloud of white smoke. But before we go, I have an idea and climb up onto the dock.

“Pauly, quick.” I jump down into the boat behind ours. In the stern gunnel is a screw stopper for draining the boat when it's in dry dock. I start to undo it. “See what I'm doing?” I hold up the stopper, then toss it into the water.

“Yeah.” Pauly moves down to the next boat and does the same. I leapfrog him and do the third boat. Cold water seeps through the holes and into the bottoms of the boats.

“Way to—,” Paul starts to give a little cheer as we climb back into the first boat with Sarah in it, but he freezes with his mouth open. I twist around and see why. Harry is barreling around the shack at full speed. Rebecca follows, hobbling.

“Untie the bow!” I yell.

Pauly knows what to do. I twist the throttle wide open, and the outboard engine whines as the bow lifts and we start to accelerate away. Behind us the dock rises
and drops under Harry's heavy footsteps, but there's no way he's going to catch us now.

The dock grows smaller as we head out into the river. Harry stands at the end with his hands on his hips and a furious expression on his face. Rebecca is next to him with her arms crossed. We watch them from the boat for a few moments, unsure whether to let ourselves feel the elation of escape. But Harry and Rebecca just stand there. As incredible as it seems, we've done it!

In the boat, Pauly turns and faces forward, taking the wind in his face, his plastic-bag vest rattling in the breeze. The river must be at least a mile wide. The far shore looks green and forested with houses set among the trees. The water has a slight chop, and as the boat gains speed, it begins to bang and bounce, kicking up white wings of spray on either side. Huddled on the middle seat, Sarah faces me with her back to the wind, the edges of her plastic-bag vest rippling, her head bobbing every time we bounce off a wave. For the first time in hours she smiles. Her lips move, but her voice is lost in the wind and engine noise.

I point to my ear. “Can't hear you. Talk louder!”

“I said, pretty good for a city boy!” she yells. But the words have hardly left her lips when the smile is replaced by widened eyes and a jaw dropping in surprise as she stares past me back toward shore. Harry and Rebecca have jumped into one of the other rental boats, and Harry yanks on the starter cord while Rebecca unties the bow rope. A puff of white smoke rises behind them as they leave the dock in pursuit.

Sensing that something is wrong, Pauly swivels his head and looks. His lips move. The words are lost in the wind, but I think he's just said, “They're gonna sink.”

Harry must be so intent on chasing us that he didn't notice that the stopper was gone. There's almost always a little rain collected in the bottom of these boats, so the water inside probably didn't even register in his mind. By now we're a quarter of a mile out in the river, leaving an ever-broadening white wake. The Canadian shore is three quarters of a mile away. It's hard to imagine Harry and Rebecca will make it that far.

Sarah gives me a concerned look. These boats have no cushions or life preservers. And the river water is cold. Even if they know how to swim, they'll probably succumb to hypothermia before they can reach safety.

Pauly's face goes somber as he figures it out too. Is our freedom worth two lives? But if we go back to warn them, we might get caught. The Canadian side is getting closer. Now I can see the windows in the houses and a car driving along a road.

Pauly and Sarah continue to stare back. Three hundred yards behind us Harry's boat bangs and splashes over the waves, kicking plumes of spray from both sides. Did Harry notice the stopper was out and stuff a rag in its place?

By now we're almost halfway across. Individual trees are beginning to come into focus. Behind us, Harry's boat is no longer bouncing over the waves. It sits deeper now, pushing water ahead of it like a tugboat.

Pauly and Sarah study me as if waiting for my decision.

You didn't go through all that pain and suffering and come all this way to turn back now.

If the places were reversed, there's no way Harry would come back and save you.

But you can't let people die.

Can you?

Our skiff bangs over the waves. The opposite shore is getting close. I can see each tree clearly, boats, docks, a bright yellow kayak pulled up on a lawn.

Well behind us, Harry's boat is low in the water, hardly moving anymore.

Ahead of us are several resorts with docks. I head for one where the windows appear to be boarded up for winter. Now, instead of giving me searching looks, both Pauly and Sarah look away. As if neither can meet my gaze.

Moments later I slow down and ease the boat beside a dock, then reach over the gunnel and steady it so Pauly can help Sarah climb out. Sarah glances toward the boarded-up resort and then—sensing that something isn't right—turns to look at the idling outboard motor, and then at me. “Aren't you coming?”

I shake my head.

Standing beside her on the dock, Pauly purses his lips, then nods as if he understands. Sarah blinks, fighting off tears. “It's not fair.”

Out in the middle of the river Harry's boat is no longer moving. Instead it sits almost level with the water.

“I better go.”

“You're a good guy,” Pauly says glumly.

Tears start to fall from Sarah's eyes. She kneels down on the dock, takes my face in her hands, and kisses me on the lips. “Thank you.”

“Say hello to your aunt for me,” I tell her.

Sarah glances at Pauly, who lowers his gaze and looks away. She turns back to me, her dark eyes glistening wet. “Garrett… there is no aunt.”

“Huh?” I don't get it.

She takes my hand and squeezes it. “There's an aunt in Minnesota, but we made up the one in Toronto.” She wipes a tear from her cheek. “We were afraid if we said we didn't know anyone in Canada, you wouldn't help us. You'd think it was hopeless.”

I'm stunned.
Of all the people
… I never thought they'd lie to me.

“Then what are you gonna do?” I ask.

“Try to make it on our own,” Pauly says. “No matter what, the American authorities can't get us here. Listen, Garrett, we had to do it. We would have died in that place.”

Brilliant manipulators.
Strangely I don't feel angry. I almost admire them. They were desperate. I can't blame them, because like me they didn't belong at Lake Harmony.

“Try to understand,” Sarah pleads.

“I understand.” I push the boat away from the dock and turn it around.

Believe me, I understand …

By the time I get back out to the middle of the river, Harry's boat is swamped. He and Rebecca are sitting
on the bench seats, holding on to the gunnels, the cold river water up to their waists, watching me with silent expressions. Rebecca's teeth are chattering, her lips are blue, and her jaw is trembling uncontrollably. I stop my boat about thirty feet away.

“Come back to watch us drown?” Harry snarls through clenched teeth, as if he refuses to let me see how cold he is.

“Not my thing,” I answer.

“Then what do you want?”

“If I save you, promise you'll take me back to the Canadian side.”

“I'd rather drown,” Harry answers.

“For God's sake, Harry,” Rebecca blurts.

“You go with him; I'll stay here,” Harry says belligerently.

“What's the big deal?” I ask. “So what if three of us get away? Aren't you the one who said that the great thing about this business is there's a never-ending supply?”

Harry stares angrily at Rebecca, as if he knows where those words came from. She hangs her head. Just then three big air bubbles break the surface behind them, and the stern of their skiff starts to sink. The nose tips skyward, and Rebecca screams. I move my boat closer, kill the engine, and reach over the side to help her. The skiff rocks as she climbs in and flops onto the seat. She's soaked, dripping from the chest down, and shivering from the cold. Just as his boat begins to slide backward and disappear beneath the surface, Harry leaps forward and with a splash grabs the gunnel of
my skiff, nearly tipping it over. Once the boat steadies, Rebecca and I pull him in.

A moment later they're sitting on the center bench, dripping wet, teeth chattering behind blue lips. Harry's lost his cowboy hat. He pulls off his cowboy boots and about a quart of water pours out of each one. I climb back to the stern and grab the pull cord to restart the engine.

“I'm going to Canada,” I tell Harry. “And you're going to let me go when I get there.”

He grits his teeth and looks like he wants to kill. But then his eyes relax and his mouth softens into a smile as he looks past me. The distant wail of a siren cuts through the air. A black and white speedboat is racing toward us with red lights flashing. It's kicking up a white plume six feet high and leaving a broad wake. A police boat.

“You must demonstrate your allegiance to Lake Harmony's program.”

As I look longingly toward the Canadian shore and try to judge the distance, a heavy dose of disappointment weighs down my shoulders. There's no way I'll get there. That police boat is ten times faster than this old aluminum skiff. In no time it pulls within a dozen yards of us. There are three officers aboard, all wearing black bulletproof vests. The younger two prop M19s on their hips. The older officer, probably the captain of the boat, holds a cocked forty-five-caliber semi-automatic. These guys mean business.

“Hands on your heads,” the captain orders. “You take that boat without permission?”

The answer is obvious.

“What's the story?” the captain asks.

“The young lady and I are bounty hunters,” Harry reports with forced calmness. “We work for Lake Harmony a school that specializes in—”

“I know what Lake Harmony is.” The captain cuts him short.

“We were hired to apprehend this young man and bring him back.”

“Then why is he driving the boat?” the captain asks.

Harry goes into his folksy, friendly act. “With all due respect, sir, the young lady and I are awful cold. If you'd like to bring us in, I'll be glad to explain.”

At the police station it takes hours to straighten things out. Don, the owner of the boat, has arrived. He's a large man with a deep, bellowing voice like a bull's. His demands for restitution for the skiff that sank reverberate through the building. A lot of phone calls go back and forth between the police and Lake Harmony and between Harry and Lake Harmony.

At one point, while Harry and the police are in an office on a speakerphone to Lake Harmony, Rebecca and I are left alone on a wooden bench in the hall. My flip-flops are gone; my feet are bare. They've given Rebecca a pair of gray sweatpants and a navy-blue hoodie with A
LEXANDRIA
B
AY
PD printed in white letters.

“Nice outfit. Think you'll get to keep it?” I ask.

Rebecca shakes her head. “My stuff is in the laundry room drying. Soon as it's ready, I'll have to give these things back.”

“Too bad. It could be a souvenir, you know?”

We share a smile. Rebecca tugs at the drawstring on the sweatshirt's hood. “Can I ask you a question? Why did you do it? You could have gotten away.”

“You and Harry would have died.”

A telephone rings somewhere. Two police officers come down the hall carrying cardboard Pizza Hut boxes. Neither one looks at Rebecca or me. The smell of the pizza reminds me of how long it's been since I ate a real meal.

“Do you know what's going to happen when you go back?” Rebecca asks.

I slowly nod my head yes.

Rebecca turns away and doesn't look at me again.

It's close to midnight when we finally leave the police station. A thin crescent moon hangs in the black sky. The ground is icy under my bare feet.

“Turn around,” Harry orders.

“Why?” I ask.

The answer is his hand on my shoulder, roughly spinning me. He yanks my arms behind my back, and I feel hard metal handcuffs close around my wrists. I guess since I wasn't formally charged with a crime, the police didn't feel the need to restrain me. But out here in the cold night air it's a different story. Holding my arm, Harry leads me to the rental car and shoves me into the back, then slams the door.