Sandra O’Connell felt sick, disgusted, furious. She would cheerfully have shot this animal at the wheel if given the chance, but she didn’t have the chance. She was as helpless now as she had been during the ordeal.
She lay there, stunned and helpless, as he rolled on. Finally, after a period of time she could not judge, he stopped again, climbed in back, picked her up and brought her to the front seat. He released her bonds, and when she started for him he belted her almost senseless.
She gave up.
“Git your pants on,” he ordered. “Time for you to get out.”
She had a hard time complying with that, and he helped, somewhat painfully, with the zipper. Finally he said, “Okay, now we both got what we wanted. Now git, and don’t fall for any more party gags again.” His tone of voice infuriated her even more. He was giving her a lecture in morality, as if she’d done something terrible and he’d meted out punishment for it to cure her of future wrongdoing.
“I’ll tell on you!” she warned him.
He shrugged. “Go ahead. See if anybody’ll listen. All you’ll do is get arrested for no IDs and passes. Hell, woman, they don’t care about people like us any more. They never did.”
He pushed her out of the cab, slammed the door, and roared off.
She collected her thoughts, looked around for the first time, and saw that she was not, as he’d said, quite in Buffalo. He’d let her out at a roadside area by the river, before he had to exit and go through another checkpoint.
What made her feel even more helpless was that the man didn’t realize how safe he was. She couldn’t read his licensing or pass information, couldn’t read the name of his trucking company, or even the numbers on his truck. What was worse, even if she knew his whole history and full address, she could still do nothing. She had police to avoid and capture to evade.
So she climbed down the side of the embankment, bruised and hurting all over, and found a culvert, and there she sat down and cried like hell.
She dozed fitfully in the culvert, finally giving it up as an impossibility. She hurt too much, so at last she made her way around and looked out on the water. It was very dark, but a large ship was going by, a Lakes tanker of some kind, and its flag, lit by stern lights, was not her flag. A Canadian ship, she thought wistfully. That must be Canada over there, she realized with a surge of renewed energy and hope.
There were other, smaller boats about as well, she saw. Small, fast patrol boats that seemed to keep closer to the other side, perhaps a kilometer or less from her perch.
She searched her memory, and recalled that a narrow neck or peninsula of Canada came over almost to Buffalo, splitting Lakes Erie and Ontario. But why the patrol boats?
Suddenly she was brought up short. She remembered idly reading that the centuries-old unfortified border between the two largest North American nations was now effectively patrolled by both sides, and that fences and guards were being erected all along it. The U.S. wanted to take no chances on an infiltration from Canada, whose borders were far less secure and much vaster than those of the U.S., and the Canadians, in turn, didn’t want anyone coming over and bringing any funny bacteria. They were hardly sealed off; there was too much economic interdependence for that. But they were a lot tougher than they used to be.
So near and yet so far, she thought. How will I ever get across?
She considered swimming. She’d always been a good swimmer, but the current was fast here and she was still uncertain of how much stamina and control she had in her body.
And yet, the mare she thought about it, the more the idea appealed. There were some bridges, of course, but they were sure to be guarded and restricted. The odds of finding a boat and being able to use it were slimmer still; the boats would be carefully watched and examined.
A kilometer, she thought again. Perhaps less. The small patrol boats seemed to come out in a regular pattern every few minutes to roughly the center of the channel, go down it for a bit, meet others coming the other way, and turn. If worst came to worst, she could hail one of the boats and take her chances. If the swim proved too much, there were alternatives like floating for a while and eventually getting back to shore on this side.
It was worth a try, she decided. She was almost ready to jump in when she saw a different looking, slightly larger white craft cruise by, spotlights trained on the U.S. bank. It wasn’t hard to make out the U.S. Coast Guard logo. The Canadians weren’t the only ones patrolling the border.
The light was haphazard and missed her easily, but the patrol gave her a moment’s pause. There was that danger, too—as well as the danger of being shot at, perhaps, by either side.
There was no choice. It was dark and the boats were far away now. She slid into the water.
It was damned cold, and that gave her some worry at the beginning, but she soon grew accustomed to it. Her wet clothing was in the way, but she was damned if she was going to shuck it and go through this to the end stark naked.
The current proved deceptively slow; dams and canal locks kept it from rushing with the force of Niagara only thirty or so kilometers north, and the old swimming skills came back to her, were there as if she’d never been out of the water. She wasn’t a particularly strong or fast swimmer, but she could swim reasonably well and for long periods. Ordinarily she could take this distance in a moderate pace, but some grapes, a piece of cake, and a hamburger and Coke weren’t the best stores of energy. She tired quickly, and let herself drift until she got her breath back, then started again.
The patrol boats with their searchlights came again, and again, but they didn’t see her. She reached and clung to a center-channel buoy for a while, until she was ready to try the rest of the way. She was in Canadian waters now, and somehow that felt safer.
Inside of ten more minutes, she was within sight of shore. Some automobile lights were moving on a road back from the dark shoreline, an indication in itself that she was in Canada now, nearly safe.
She made the other side, and faced a wooden wall that didn’t look at all hard to climb although a bit slippery. She reached the top, only three meters above her, hauled herself out of the channel and lay there on her back, gasping and exhausted but feeling exultant.
She’d made it!
Suddenly a voice said, in a slight Canadian accent not too far from her, “Just lie still there, ma’am, and don’t move. I have a rifle trained on you and it has an infrared sniperscope attached.”
She lay still as ordered, too tired to care what he said and too washed out to have made a move if she’d wanted to.
She heard the sentry or whatever he was talking on a walkie-talkie, but couldn’t hear either end of the conversation.
“What is your name and why have you swum the channel?” the sentry demanded.
“San-Sandra,” She forced herself to speak.
“Sandra O’Connell. I have been drugged and kept in a pris’n. I got away. I need help.”
The sentry relayed this through his walkie-talkie.
A couple of minutes passed with no words between them. She just lay there and looked at the patrol boats and city lights across the way and marveled to herself that she’d swum that. Now an ambulance arrived, and she heard people getting out. She turned, and was surprised to see that they wore protective suits of some kind.
They lifted her gently onto a stretcher and wheeled her efficiently to the ambulance, slid her in the back, and closed the doors. No one got in with her, to her surprise, and they were soon under way.
There was a hissing sound, which, she discovered, was oxygen being pumped into the rear chamber which was, incongruously, sealed.