I start pulling the kayak toward the bank, but the bottom shallows quickly beneath me, forcing me into an exposed position. The water feels like glacial runoff, stealing my breath, making my teeth chatter uncontrollably. But it’s better than what Stone is enduring. Every five seconds or so he lets off a .45 round back at the cabin windows, but he can’t keep that up forever. Panic scrambles around in my chest like a crazed animal, urging me to flight. It wouldn’t take anything, just a surrender to the current. I could float downstream for fifty yards, then climb into the kayak and be on my way.

As though sensing my panic, Stone holds the paddle and rifle along the length of his body and begins rolling across the snow toward the river. The old agent looks like a kid playing a game. Bullets kick up white powder in front of him, but he doesn’t even slow down. When he is five yards away, I yell: “Th-throw me the pistol!”

The .45 skids across the snow, but I manage to get my fingers around it before it disappears in the river. The steel feels warm compared to the water. It’s too dark to aim accurately at the cabin from here, but two more muzzle flashes obligingly appear, and I let off three shots at the afterimage on my retinas.

“Into the current!” shouts Stone.

“What about the kayak?”

“Too easy to hit! Just hang onto the rope!”

He rolls into the shallows, then hangs up on the rocks somehow. I fire twice more at the cabin, then grab his belt and drag him into the current while bullets spray water against my knees. The muzzle flashes are between the cabin and the river now. They’re coming for us.

As I grope helplessly for the kayak, Stone rises to his knees in the water, the big Winchester braced against his shoulder. He fires once, then cycles the bolt, waits three seconds, and fires again.

A fireball the size of the cabin itself explodes out of the darkness, sucking up all the air around us. I feel the pull in my lungs and sinuses as a millisecond’s image of a blazing man is seared into my brain and I tumble backward into the freezing water. The propane tank, marvels a voice in my head. One shot to pierce its skin, the second to ignite the gas . . .