THE REVERSE CURRENT - Cold River Run

Five in the morning is the worst hour to d

Five in the morning is the worst hour to die.

The world is neither dark nor light, just a cold, grey soup that smells of damp silt, dead water hyacinths, and human fear.We were back at the river.

Not by choice, but because when a deal falls apart in the hills, greed always drags you right back to the water.The fog was so thick you could taste the lime in it.

It hung over the border river like wet wool, deadening every sound.

I stood knee-deep in the mud beneath the willow overhang, my boots completely submerged, my toes long past feeling.

My right hand was buried in my coat pocket, fingers stiff and white against the cold iron frame of

Vance’s revolver.Blackie was there.

He had come back.

He was sitting on a low flat stone right at the water’s edge, holding a cheap aluminum briefcase tight against his belly like an infant.

He hadn’t slept in two days.

The dark circles under his eyes looked like bruised plums, and his teeth kept clicking together in a fast, rhythmic chatter that he couldn’t stop, no matter how hard he clamped his jaw.”Where’s the rest of it?” Blackie rasped.

His voice sounded like dry gravel dragged across tin.Seng was standing three feet to my left, his face slick with a mixture of cold river mist and sweat.

He was holding one of the two rubber-wrapped bundles of morphine base.”It’s all here,” Seng hissed, his eyes darting frantically toward the treeline behind us. “Twenty-five kilos.

Open the case,

Let’s get this done before the morning mist lifts.””I want to check the seal on the second bag,” Blackie said, his voice rising into a sharp, hysterical edge. “You brought a different bag!

This isn’t the rubber you had at the safehouse!”“It’s the same fucking bag!” Seng snarled, stepping closer, his boots making a heavy, wet shluck in the mire. “You’re losing your mind,

Open the case!”“Don’t come near me!” Blackie shrieked, pulling a short-barreled snub-nosed revolver from his slicker.I didn’t draw my gun.

My brain felt cold, detached, almost numb.

I looked past them, out into the grey wall of fog drifting over the main channel.There was a noise.

Not an oar hitting a gunwale.

Not a bird.It was the dull, heavy thud of a rubber boot stepping off a sandbar fifty yards downstream.

A single, solid step.”Seng,” I said.My voice was barely a whisper, but it cut through their argument like a blade.”Shut up,

Leo!” Seng barked, not looking at me, his fingers digging into the rubber wrapping of the base. “Blackie, put the gun down and open the—”A white light exploded out of the mist.It wasn’t a flashlight.

It was a high-intensity halogen searchlight, blinding and ice-cold, piercing the fog like a solid beam of glass.

Seng full in the face, turning his skin chalk-white, highlighting every bead of sweat on his lip.Then came the shouts.

Harsh, overlapping, metallic screams amplified through mega-phones from three different directions at once.”POLICE!

DOWN ON THE GROUND!

DROP THE WEAPONS!”The world disintegrated in less than two seconds.Blackie didn’t drop.

He let out a high, squealing shriek like a pig caught under a gate, turned, and tried to sprint toward the wooden skiff moored in the reeds.

But he didn’t let go of the briefcase.

He held the aluminum box against his chest with his left arm while firing his snub-nosed revolver blindly into the white light with his right.POP!

POP!The gunshots sounded thin and pathetic in the heavy fog, like dry firecrackers popping inside an empty tin can.Instantly, the darkness beyond the light erupted.Automatic fire. TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK-TAK!Red tracer rounds cut bright, glowing arcs through the grey mist, ripping through the willow branches overhead, sending a shower of shredded leaves and bark down onto our heads.

The air filled with the sharp, acrid stench of burnt cordite and copper.I didn’t think.

I didn’t reach for

Vance’s gun.As a child, when the reverse current took me,

I had learned one thing: when the world above you turns to chaos, you go under.I threw myself sideways off the mudbank, diving headfirst into the pitch-black river.The water didn’t just feel cold; it felt like a physical blow, a solid wall of ice that slammed the breath out of my lungs in a single, agonizing gasp.

My eyes snapped open underwater.

Everything was a murky, churning yellow-grey, illuminated from above by the strobe-like flashes of gunfire and searchlights.The current caught me immediately.

It was heavy, fast, swollen with winter rain, dragging my heavy wool coat down like a sack of wet salt.I kicked violently, thrashing my legs, my heavy boots fighting the drag of the river.Above the surface, the noise was deafening.

Bullets were hitting the water around me with sharp, cracking thuds— CRACK!

WHACK! —sending spouts of cold spray into the fog.I forced myself to stay down, swimming with long, desperate strokes along the muddy riverbed, my hands clawing at the submerged roots and smooth gravel, letting the swift current sweep me downstream away from the bank.My lungs burned.

A hot, oily pressure built up behind my eyes, screaming for air.When

I finally broke the surface, thirty yards downstream,

I came up under the heavy, low-hanging branches of a fallen banyan tree that rested in the reeds near the opposite bank.

I grabbed a submerged root, pulling my head up just far enough to get my nose above the waterline, gasping for breath in shallow, silent twitches.Back at the exchange point, the heavy firing had stopped.The halogen searchlight was still burning, a bright, cruel beam pinned against the mudbank.Through the shifting curtains of fog,

I saw figures moving.

Men in dark tactical slickers with green border-patrol insignias were moving fast, their boots splashing through the shallows.Blackie was lying face down in the mud right at the water’s edge, his body perfectly still, the aluminum briefcase still trapped beneath his chest.

A dark, wide stain was spreading outward from under his ribs, turning the shallow river water a dull, muddy crimson.Seng was on his knees.Two officers had him pinned by his shoulders, forcing his face down into the wet gravel.

His coat was ripped open, his gold teeth glinting under the searchlight as he screamed into the dirt.

He wasn’t cursing.

He was weeping, begging, shouting names, throwing out every word he knew in a desperate, frantic bid to buy one more breath.”It’s

It’s not mine!

Vance is on the ridge!

The guy in the coat swam across—!”An officer slammed the butt of his rifle down into the back of

Seng’s neck.Seng’s head hit the mud with a dull thud , and the screaming stopped.

They yanked his arms behind his back, snapping heavy iron cuffs over his wrists, and dragged him up the bank like a sack of wet laundry.I pulled my head deeper into the roots, the freezing river water lapping against my chin.I watched them throw

Seng into the back of a grey military haulage truck parked on the upper trail.

The iron tailgate slammed shut with a heavy, final CLANG that echoed across the water.That was the last time anyone ever saw

Seng.He didn’t go to a county jail.

He didn’t get a trial.

In the borderlands, when a small-time operative gets caught with twenty-five kilos of raw base and a dead buyer, he simply vanishes into the deep, quiet machinery of state custody, swallowed as completely as if he had stepped into a reverse eddy.I stayed in the water for two hours.I didn’t move a muscle.

The cold crept through my skin, through my fat, through my muscles, until it settled deep into the marrow of my bones.

My fingers went numb, then white, then completely devoid of sensation, locked around the slippery tree root like frozen talons.When the searchlights finally clicked off and the sound of the truck engines faded into the distant hills, the river went dark and quiet again.I dragged myself up onto the far bank, crawling on my stomach through the tall, razor-sharp elephant grass, gasping, shivering so violently my jaw clicked like a stone on iron.I reached into my wet coat pocket.Vance’s revolver was still there.

Waterlogged.

Useless.I lay in the tall grass on the foreign side of the river, staring up at the grey morning sky through the mist, listening to the quiet, endless rushing of the water flowing past.I was alive.

I had no money, no goods, no shoes, and my partner was gone.

I was breathing.