Excerpt from "Sweepers"

The dog pulled once more on Train's wrist, and then let go and whirled out into the water. But the leg injury quickly brought him floundering back into the shallows. Train got the picture: the dog wanted that thing that was floating down the river. But what the hell was it? He hurried downstream along the bank, pushing his way through beached snags, muddy underbrush, embedded beer cans, and wet rocks. The main current was visible fifty feet offshore, creating swirls over submerged rocks and raising a gray bow wave along a stranded tree trunk. He realized he was losing ground in his attempts to keep up with whatever that was, but the dog persisted, splashing through the shallows, half swimming, half leaping, trying desperately to keep up with that thing out there. The river was a couple of hundred yards wide, with a long, low island running down the center. The Maryland shore was visible only as a darker line beyond the island.

Train finally gave up trying to get through the tangle along the shore and jumped down into the water, which shocked him with its icy grip. The bottom felt like gravel, but there were unexpected potholes, and he lurched along like a drunk, head and eyes down to see what he was stepping into, trying to keep upright while catching up with whatever was out there. The dog: where was Gutter?

He looked up, and saw Gutter out in the river now, paddling furiously towards the thing, his head bounding in and out of the water as he flailed his way out into the channel. Train stopped, and then pushed forward as he realized how fast that main channel current was. He was already twenty feet behind the action out there, but try as he might, he couldn't go any faster, and he knew that he would never last in that cold if he tried to swim out there. To retrieve what? He still didn't know, but he trusted the dog's instincts. He wished he could see the damn thing, but it was indistinct, log-like, but glistening in the silvery starlight reflecting off the channel currents. The rushing noise of the river drowned out his own breathing as he swatted away overhanging branches, trying to keep up while not stepping into the potholes in the gravel shelf that ran along the bank. As he pushed through the tendrils of a leaning willow tree, he thought he heard a distant engine sound, but he ignored it, keeping his eyes on the dog.

Gutter was catching up with the thing, but the cold water was also catching up with the dog. He kept going, paddling hard, but the shiny black head was coming up out of the water less frequently. Then Train's right foot stepped off into nothing at all and he was underwater, swimming hard to escape what felt like a small whirlpool, the black water shocking him again with its icy grip. He surfaced some twenty feet away from the bank and felt a moment of panic as he felt the strength of the current, but then he saw Gutter's head bound out of the water about fifty feet ahead of him, eyes white, no longer in pursuit of the thing but swimming for survival. He thought he saw the thing hang up on the white branches of a snag.

He yelled to the dog to hang on, more to let Gutter hear the sound of his voice, and began to swim in earnest. He was not going to lose Gutter. The effort of swimming was staving off the cold, although he knew that was an illusion, that the energy equation would very soon be working to kill him in this icy water. Then he heard the engine noise again, and suddenly the river's surface was awash with light, light streaming down from above. He stopped swimming and looked up to see a helicopter flaring out above the water downstream, perhaps a hundred yards from him. Then the helo disappeared in a cloud of its own down-wash, a billow of spray that was rapidly advancing up towards him and already enveloping the struggling dog. The pilot evidently saw what was happening and lifted out of ground effect, as Train swam harder, his energy galvanized by the appearance of the helo.

After sixty seconds of hard going, he drew abreast of the dog, and could finally see what they had been pursuing. It was a bag of some sort, rolling slowly against the snag in the current. Rubber from the looks of it, it sides puffing out as if it had air trapped in it. He closed in on as the helo came back, the powerful, blue-white spotlight hurting his eyes as it dazzled through the cloud of spray. He collided with the submerged trunk of the snag and reached out and grabbed the bag, and then reached for Gutter, who was on his last reserves of energy. To his astonishment, something inside the bag moved, and then moved again. Then he recognized what the thing was: a goddamned body bag.

Karen?! Great God, was Karen in there?

He momentarily lost his grip on the dog's collar, and launched back out into the current to retrieve the struggling animal, and then had to fight like hell to pull them both back upstream to the snag. He caught a glimpse of a face at the top of the bag, but the features were missing. Was she dead? He ended up holding on to the dog's collar with one hand and to one of the straps on the bag, whose buoyancy acted like a long, slippery life preserver, while his body straddled the trunk of the snag.

The helo swept closer, the noise and the dazzling light almost overwhelming his ability to think. The cold had him now that he had stopped swimming, and he sensed that the dog was choking in his grasp. He tried to change his grip on the dog and lost his grip on the bag again, going under with the sudden weight of the dog, and then both of them rolling to the surface again, just in time to collide with a submerged rock that knocked the breath right out of Train. When he surfaced again, he was alone on one side of the rock, blinded by the spotlight, and gasping for breath. The helicopter, hovering just upstream of him, was invisible in the spray, but the down-draft felt like an arctic blast, turning his facial muscles to cold rubber. He peeled off the face of the rock and slipped down-river backwards now, spinning as he hit another whirlpool. Then he saw the bag, with the dog at one end, clamping on with his teeth, going with him about twenty feet away. Something slapped the water near his head, and he looked up. A helmeted figure was leaning out of the helicopter, with one foot out on the skid, the other inside, a wire cable in his hand, trying to steer a life-ring closer to Train.

Train had to decide: take the ring, or drag it over to the bag. He wanted to direct the helo over to the bag, but the guy would never understand. So take the ring, get up there, explain what he thought was in the bag, and then go back for the dog and the bag. He grabbed the ring as it swung by his head, thrust his right shoulder into it, and then his neck. But it was too small. He could not get it around his chest, and he was suddenly exhausted by the effort of even trying. He pulled his right arm out of the ring, and looked helplessly up at the blazing light and the silhouette of the man on the skid. The pilot was good, he thought idly, really good. He was keeping the helo right on top as they drifted down the current. Except that it looked like they were approaching something, some dark mass downstream, and he thought he could feel the current tugging at his hips and legs, getting more turbulent.

The life-ring popped out of the water and zipped up towards the bottom of the helo, where the figure on the skid did something. Then it was coming back down, slapping the water practically on top of Train's head. This time it wasn't a ring, but a navy-style sling collar. Recalling his Marine training, and with his last reserves of strength, Train went under water and came back up through the collar sling, both hands and head through the sling, and then gripped the attachment point where the sling was mated to the cable. He was hoisted immediately upwards, his feet smacking something hard in the water, another rock. As he approached the underside of the helo he saw the words US Park Police painted on the belly of the aircraft. Then he was dangling next to the hatchway on the helo. He looked down and saw the bag and the dog clearly for the first time since going in the water. Good boy, Gutter. The dog had a death grip, literally, on the end of the bag, which looked like a headless porpoise in the water. But it was still buoyant.

Then he was being hauled roughly into the cabin of the helo, the rescue wire man yelling something at him from behind the face shield of his helmet.

Train tried to answer, say something, but his face was frozen and his lips didn't work. He grabbed the front of guy's flight suit as he felt the helo begin to lift.

"Someone in the bag!" he yelled, trying desperately to make himself heard over the noise of the helicopter's engines and rotors.

"What?" the rescue man shouted back at him.

"Someone in the bag! Someone in the bag! Get the goddamned bag!"

The crewman gave him a thumbs up to signal that he understood, and then pulled his lip mike closer to his mouth to tell the pilots. Train sank down on the deck of the cabin and tried to get control of his breathing. The helo stopped rising fifty feet above the river, the big spotlight fixed on the bag and the dog, the aircraft spinning around to stay just downstream of the bag. Too far to drop, he thought. Yeah, like you could really do anything. Have to. Have to get back down there, get a hook on that bag. Let them lift the bag, he'd stay in the water with the dog, then they could come back for him. My, God, Karen was in that body bag, he just knew it. The crewman was shaking his shoulder and bending down.

"No way to get the bag! No exposure suit! You sure someone's in that thing? Alive?"

"Yeah," Train shouted back. "Put me back in. It's a body bag. It's got straps. Send down a hook. Get the bag, come back for me and the dog."

"No way, Man. You can't go back down there!" the guy yelled. "You're done."

Train looked back out of the hatch. The helo was back over the bag, maybe thirty feet above it, the spotlight drifting back and forth across the bag. Gutter was still clamped on, but his eyes were closed. The water looked black. But at least no rapids. The guy saw him looking, figured it out, and started to reach for him. But Train was already moving, swinging out of the cabin and onto the skids, the down-wash whipping his sodden clothes.

"Hook!" he yelled. "Gimme a hook!" And then he slid off onto the skid, holding on to the cold, wet aluminum for a second before dropping into the freezing water. He cringed as he hit, instinctively trying to pull his legs up under him, waiting for the shock of hitting a rock, but thankfully it was deep water. But goddamned cold water. It felt like fire this time, painful, every inch of his skin immersed in the icy-hot grasp of the current.

Go. Swim. Move. The helo was coming lower, but there was no hook. He used a hard breast stroke to get over to the bag, and grabbed a strap. The lower end of the bag submerged, bobbing beneath the black surface. He worked his way around to the end where the dog was hanging on and yelled some encouragement to him. He patted the lumpy shape in the bag, and thanked God body bags were waterproof. He thought he felt the lump move again, but then there was a steel hook dropping close to the water alongside the bag. Train grabbed it, felt the wallop of a static shock discharging through his elbow into the water, and then the hook was yanked out his hand as the helo lifted for some reason. Train swore, but then the hook was back as the crewman, once again swung out on the skids, now only fifteen feet above the river, worked the rescue hoist. Train dragged the hook back along the bag and tried to snap the hook onto a strap, but his hands weren't working. He stared at the dog's face, its eyes shut, its teeth gleaming white against the glistening black rubber. His own brain numbed by the cold, he tried to figure out what to do next. Then the hook was yanked again and he re-focused, and with a huge effort, pushed the moused hook over the heavy strap. He raised his right hand and gestured to lift. He was tempted to hold onto the bag as the wire tightened, but he didn't know how strong the cable was. Or that he even could hold on. But the dog could. Train grinned lopsidedly as he saw that Gutter, eyes slitted open now, wasn't going to let go of that goddamned bag for anything.

And then he was alone in the river, as the helo pilot maneuvered to keep the aircraft stable against the sudden weight on one side. The spotlight moved sideways, and Train relaxed, not so cold now, letting the current just carry him, no longer having to struggle quite so hard. He looked out across the water and realized he was way out in the middle of the river, the black banks on either side several hundred feet away. The helo was stationary over the river as they worked the lift, and his view became clearer as he sailed downstream. He watched as the bag, now dangling lengthwise, with the unlikely shape of the big dog holding on with its teeth near the hook, lift up to the cabin hatch, and then disappear into the cabin. The helo moved even farther away and up as the crewman and the pilot worked to redistribute the load inside, which was when Train felt something, a deep rumbling vibration behind him. He made a lazy turn in the water, frustratingly slowly, his cold- numbed senses resisting his efforts to bring them back to life, and looked downstream. Something wrong with the river. A near horizon, a line of darkness visible against a curtain of silver spray that seemed to span the main channel, a line that was maybe four hundred yards away. And approaching. He tried to think. Why was there a line in the water. He couldn't understand it. And then he did.