“Parker,” I said, “as soon as Danny opens fire, you scoot. Cut the lines on the boat and pull away. Everybody got it?”

Both men nodded and said, “Yes.”

“Okay. Here goes.”

I slithered across the floor as more rounds poured into the cabin and another Molotov cocktail hit the front of the building. The fire was growing by the second.

I came to a halt near the door, looked back at Danny Ray, and nodded. Danny Ray came to his knees and opened fire. Behind him, Parker scooped Tybee up in his arms and dashed for the back of the building.

Blooom! Blooom! Blooom!

I jumped to my feet and crashed through the door as the shotgun continued to give voice behind me.

Blooom! Blooom!

The only answer to an attack is a counterattack. I launched myself outside and hit the ground running. Directly in front of me, not twenty feet away, stood Leon Wren, lighting the fuse to another firebomb. Behind him, in the darkness, a gun barked repeatedly. Off to the right and farther still, another gun coughed and flashed, but it was Leon I zeroed in on.

My arms extended straight forward, my pistol leading, I charged at the huge man. Leon lifted the cocktail. I could see the bottle, the wick burning, in perfect clarity. Just as his arm swept forward to throw, I fired.

Pop! Pop!

The bottled exploded in Leon’s hand, the flaming liquid cascading down his right arm, across his chest, and down his legs. For a fraction of a second, Leon stared down on his burning body, a look of confusion and horror on his face. Then he ran. And as he ran a high-pitched scream of tortured anguish, like the wail of a wounded animal, spewed forth from his drawn-back lips.

He flashed past me, a flaming human torch, leaving goblets of flame spattering across the ground as he ran.

“Eeee!” Leon shrieked.

Without stopping my movement, I hurled myself toward the nearest shooter, the one in the darkness, just off the edge of the clearing. In front of me, more shots punctured the night. In the glare of the burning cabin, I caught a shimmer of movement behind the muzzle flashes. I fired as I ran.

Pop-pop, pop-pop, pop-pop!

I saw a figure drop. And then I must have tripped over something, because I hit the ground hard—face-first and really hard. So hard in fact that sparks flew under my eyelids, and the breath was knocked from my body. Somehow I kept my grip on the pistol and got my lungs working again. I knew I had hit the man to my front; the absence of shots from that direction merely confirmed it.

From my spot on the ground I rapidly low-crawled to the edge of the brush and into the cover of darkness. I turned now to the other attacker.