The Sensory Deception (47 page)

Tahir says, “Move, move, move!”

The guards are yelling and there’s metal-on-metal clanking at the prison gate.

Now waist-deep in the flood, Farley points at Spencer and says, “Get everyone out.” Then, to Tahir, “We’re not leaving Manny.”

Tahir and Spencer work at each end of the boulder ramp guiding people up and out, while Farley works his way around the boulder to the back of the cave. Fighting the adrenaline-fueled urge to panic or take flight, he takes a deep breath and examines the collapsed wall from which the river now flows.

Almost a minute has passed, enough time for the prison guards to respond and a general alert to go out, but there is probably another minute before the guards can assemble a response.

Fighting the current, Farley reaches into the rocks. The outcropping that had formed the rear wall of the cave is now a mess of mud and rocks. He pulls at the debris. The water rises. He
reaches beneath the giant rock, touches clothing, grabs it, and pulls. It tears off in his hand. He reaches farther in and touches Manny’s back, finds his shoulder, and tugs on his arm. Farley loses his balance and the current pulls him under. He hangs on to Manny and holds his breath. He wedges his feet against the boulder and pulls. He loses his foothold and tries to wedge his legs in position a second time. He’ll have to come up for air in a few seconds, and he’s not sure he’ll be able to find Manny a second time. He pulls with renewed effort, aware that his muscles require oxygen.

He feels someone grab his waist and pull. Farley knows it’s Spencer. He tightens his grip on Manny and brings his knees up to give Spencer a better grip. Spencer pulls and pulls again. Farley’s losing his breath. He’ll gag on a lungful of water in a few seconds.

Finally something gives. In the instant, Farley thinks he’s pulled Manny’s arm out of its socket. Maybe he has, but the rest of Manny is still attached.

Farley lifts Manny above the surface. He’s unconscious. Spencer hefts the stocky gay soldier from the badlands of Los Angeles over his shoulder.

A flurry of shots rings out.

Tahir stands on the boulder ramp, just above water level, pointing a smoking AK-47 into the cave. More gunfire emanates from inside the cave. Tahir drops to a knee, raises the rifle to his shoulder, and fires a single shot. He throws the gun aside and says, “Clear. Now move.”

Spencer goes first, with Manny over his shoulder. Farley is right behind.

They sprint for the ocean. Behind them a cloud of dust and gunfire provides ample notice of their escape. They clear the ridge and cut south, straight into the heart of Sy’s kingdom.

Men emerge from Sy’s tent and raise their AK-47s but don’t fire. Farley sees Sy step out of his tent. The guards patrolling the ridge, now almost a hundred meters away, let loose automatic gunfire that kicks up dust in every direction. Farley’s team reaches the well at the center of camp and turns left toward the beach. Half the camp now lies between them and the ridge guards, who are still shooting. Some of those bullets could hit Sy’s people. Sy’s men, on the other hand, won’t fire in the direction of their homes and families. More proof that the guards at the prison are contracted mercenaries.

At the beach, where the open fishing boats and pirate skiffs await and no one stands in the crossfire, Sy’s men take aim and shoot.

Tahir yells, “Come around from the south.”

The sand around Farley dances a dusty jig. They veer around the boats closest to the water and duck behind them. The gunfire stops for an instant. It doesn’t make sense to Farley. He grabs a bowline and pulls a boat into the water. Spencer drops Manny into the boat and climbs in, along with Farley and several other people. They drop to the floor of the boat. Bullets fly overhead. They’re sitting ducks now. Farley expects the thin fiberglass to explode in a hail of death, but it doesn’t. He works his way back to the engine. It makes sense: It’s Sy’s navy, and no way will he risk destroying these boats. Even if they’re stolen, he has a chance of getting them back.

There are ten people in this boat, including the medic, Cai. At the stern, Farley checks the fuel line. It’s disconnected. This is the method Sy uses to prevent theft, a clever fuel-filter system that requires a simple adjustment to connect the line. Farley learned the system while making the documentary and described it to the others while planning the escape the previous night.

He moves forward to the helm. Still no sign of Tahir.
Damn, Tahir needs to be in this boat
.

He rises above the cover of the gunwales to navigate. The others have taken a second skiff. If Tahir is in that boat, they’ll have to find a way to reconnect.

The gunfire resumes.

The engine roars. Farley pushes the throttle and the bow leaps up and forward.

Farley’s earliest memory is at the helm of a ship. He knows the language between boats and the sea. This boat is complaining. He looks back. Two hands hang onto the stern. Farley pulls back the throttle. The bow sinks into the water. Tahir flies over the stern. Farley pushes the throttle forward.

Several minutes pass before Sy’s navy hits the water behind them. The instant Farley sees the rooster tails of pursuing boats, the two escaping skiffs curl off in separate directions. Farley heads east-southeast for the
Lazy Sod
, the anchored sailboat that Sy wouldn’t let him “have.” The other boat veers south, aiming to land as close to Kenya as possible. The level of discipline in the plan’s execution is attributable to Tahir’s insistence on selecting people with military experience for the toxic cleanup team.

There is no way to know how many of them got away, the extent of their injuries, or when, how, or if they’ll reconnect. It weighs on Farley right next to the echo of Manny’s scream as the rock fell.

It takes ten minutes to reach the sailboat. Farley maneuvers the skiff alongside and the others climb aboard. Still piloting the skiff, Farley pulls away from the sailboat and orients the motorboat directly back toward its pursuer, just fifty meters away. He then hammers the throttle all the way forward. The skiff rockets back toward Sy’s camp. Farley jumps overboard and swims to the sailboat, where Spencer pulls him out of the water.

One man cuts the anchor line as Farley yells instructions to the others for raising the sails—mizzen, main, and jib, with
spinnaker nearby. The instant the main catches the wind, a moderate westerly breeze, the boat pulls forward and picks up momentum. The mizzen and jib fill. Farley raises the spinnaker and the sailboat cuts through the waves.

Looking back, he sees Sy’s speedboat chasing the runaway skiff. Finally, something has gone right.

Farley watches the telltales on the sails: perfect laminar flow. An exuberant feeling pushes away the soured adrenaline of the escape. It’s good to be back at sea. With the sails perfectly set, Farley monitors the currents. The jet stream flows north, in the opposite direction; it’s prevailing but not strong.

Farley settles behind the oversize steering wheel.

T
wo days later, the
Lazy Sod
and its hungry crew arrive at Manda Island in Kenya’s Lamu Archipelago. The little harbor is adjacent to a small industrial airport.

Manny’s injuries include a broken clavicle, two cracked ribs, and a pretty good concussion—not to mention the bullet still in his shoulder. “Hey man, next time you leave me in the casa, huh? It’s safer in South Central, you know?”

As they tie down the boat, Farley pulls Tahir aside. “It’s you and me.”

Tahir says, “I would like an army.”

Farley puts a hand on Tahir’s arm and says, “The logistics of ten people will slow us down. It’s you and me.”

Tahir glances at Farley’s hand but doesn’t pull away. “Time is a strange adversary.”

Farley assembles the others. “This is where we part.” He makes sure that they know how to contact Bupin and VISHNU and says, “See you in California.” Then, to Cai and Spencer, “I need you to take care of Manny.”

Manny says, “Good thing not to ask me to come with you, man; workin’ for you sucks.”

Farley turns to Manny. “We’ll get you some first aid.”

“First aid? Here? I don’t think so, man. I be lucky to get me second or third aid. Same-old same-old, second-best is good
enough for the Chicano.” He says it with a sparkle in his eyes. “I bet you get the white girl first aid.”

Tahir, who has clearly not recognized the sarcasm, says, “My daughter is not a white girl. We are Persian Jews.”

“Yeah, whatever, Shah.”

Tahir and Farley run across a dusty field to the airport. Within five minutes of entering the warehouse-like terminal, Farley has Ringo on the phone quoting a credit card number to an extraordinarily tall man wearing an Air Kenya jacket.

The flight from Lamu to Nairobi takes less than two hours in a thirty-seven-passenger turboprop. In Nairobi, a man wearing an Emirates Airlines jacket holds a sign that says “Farley Rutherford.” He directs them to the appropriate terminal. Their flight to São Paulo by way of Dubai leaves in twenty minutes.

With a twelve-hour layover in Dubai, Farley has time to visit an American Express office. He picks up a credit card and some cash for clean clothes and food.

That out of the way, he calls Ringo again.

Ringo grabs the phone. Hearing Farley’s voice is like seeing Superman step out of a phone booth. He’s spent the last two hours configuring analyses. The monitors on his desk include a live display of incoming data in one window, his calculation of Gloria’s position overlaid on a map in another, and deforestation data on a third.

“I’ve got three guys monitoring the DAQ system in shifts,” Ringo says. “The sensors on Gloria are still transmitting. She seems to be protecting a little girl and has acquired an entourage of monkeys. For some reason we can’t figure, she’s been separated from the rest of the villagers. My triangulation calculation
of her position has a hundred-meter uncertainty—I should have put a GPS chip in the transmitter. But shit, the—”

“Give me what you have, facts and locations,” Farley says. The control in his voice is a salve to Ringo’s feeling of helplessness.

“Bupin got me access to deforestation data from the Rain Forest Action Network. The region they’re in is being converted to either sugarcane or coca. There could be some nasty villains when you get there.” Ringo is pacing now. “She’s on the slope of a river a few miles upstream from the Amazon proper. We haven’t seen Chopper in two days. But Farley, something’s really fucked up.” Ringo takes a breath and adds, “Chopper is hunting Gloria.”

“No,” Farley says, “he wouldn’t do that.”

“Chopper freaked out when you died—or we thought you died. Didn’t you see the video I sent Tahir?”

“I saw it, but it can’t be the whole story.”

“Watch the video again. Farley, that’s Chopper shooting the villagers.”

Farley pulls the video back up. The man shooting the rifle is only visible as a silhouette, but there’s something familiar in the way he stands. Then he hears Gloria say, “No! Chopper, stop!”

“Farley, something bad is happening.”

The phone is quiet. Farley clears his throat and finally says, “What have you got?” in his assured morning-meeting baritone.

Ringo says, “You need to understand the accuracy of the data I give you or you’ll make mistakes. The deforestation data tells us how these fires burn. It’s kind of obvious—the driest land goes up first.” He has built his model of rain forest burn rates from a combination of local geographic structure and his recollection of geologic theory from a freshman survey course and then tuned the parameters by back-testing with a decade of deforestation data. “Remember, these are
rain
forests so they’re wet all the time. The burn rate decreases along rivers so there are green
regions along the waterways that are surrounded by devastation. But! There seems to be a critical point where so much heat builds up that the fire can’t be stopped no matter how much groundwater there is. Are you getting this?”

“It would be easier to follow if I could see a map,” Farley says. Now he sounds tired.

“Gloria is staying along the river. But listen, what I’m trying to tell you is that staying next to the river only delays the inevitable. It probably seems safe to her, but it’s more like being in the eye of a hurricane. Best case: she’s on a green stretch and has a chance to escape through green jungle. Worst case: she’s on an island of green forest surrounded by fire without realizing it.”