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“It’s about a fifty-foot drop into a river.”
“A lazy river, right?”
“Whitewater. Class 4 at least.”
“Okay, sunshine, enough narrative.”
Remi pulled her head back inside and took another look through the rear window. “He’s almost on the bridge. Clearly, the sign doesn’t worry him.”
“Let’s hope he knows more than we do.”
They crossed the halfway point.
A moment later they felt the Range Rover dip slightly. Now double loaded, the bridge began undulating like a jump rope being flicked vertically at both ends. While the movement was but inches, the differing weights and positions of the vehicles began to feed upon each other.
“Interference wave,” Sam muttered.
“Pardon?”
“Physics. When two waves of disparate amplitude combine—”
“Bad things happen,” Remi finished. “I get it.”
The Range Rover was rising and falling erratically now, six inches in each direction, Sam estimated. Remi felt her stomach rise into her throat.
“Do we happen to have any seasickness pills?”
“Sorry, my dear. We’re almost there.”
The bridge’s opposite side loomed before the windshield. Twenty feet . . . ten. Sam set his jaw, waited for the Rover to begin its downward plunge, then goosed the accelerator. The speedometer shot past twenty-five kph. The Rover bumped over the last crossbeam and onto solid ground.
Remi glanced out the rear window. Her eyes went wide. “Sam . . .”
He turned. Without the Rover’s compensatory weight, the police Passat was absorbing all the motion. The bridge lurched upward, then dropped suddenly, leaving the car suspended for a split second. It was just enough. The Passat dropped but landed slightly off line. The driver’s-side front tire dropped into the center gap. With a gunshotlike crack, the nearest crossbeam gave way. The Passat tipped sideways onto the driver’s door and slipped farther into the rift. The forward third of the car, including the engine compartment, was now dangling in space.
Remi murmured, “Oh, God . . .”
On impulse, Sam opened his door and got out.
“Sam! What are you doing?”
“For all we know, he’s just a cop doing what he was ordered.”
“Or he’ll happily shoot you when you walk up to his car.”
Sam shrugged, then walked back and opened the Rover’s tailgate. He rummaged through his pack and found what he was looking for: a fifty-foot coil of quarter-inch utility paracord. Careful to stay on the Passat’s “up side,” he walked down the plank until he was even with the passenger-side door. Below him, the river rushed past, frothing and sending up plumes of spray. He crouched down and examined the chassis; the situation was more precarious than he’d anticipated. The only thing keeping the Passat from falling was the driver’s-side rear tire, which was wedged between a plank and a crossbeam.
Sam called, “Do you speak English?”
After a few moments’ hesitation, the cop replied in a French-Malagasy accent, “A little English.”
“I’m going to get you out—”
“Yes, thank you, please—”
“Don’t shoot me.”
“Okay.”