“But they can drive.” I clench my arms over my chest in a vain effort to stop shivering.

“They had to abandon their vehicles just like you. They’ve got to cover three miles on foot before they can drive. In the snow. We can beat them if we hurry. You ever been on white water?”

It’s been ten years since I’ve been in a raft, and on that trip my guide went overboard and got crushed between the raft bottom and some rocks, breaking his leg in three places.

“A long time ago.”

“The Slate is easier to run at flood than at low water. But we’ve got two trouble spots. Both slot canyons. The first one’s up ahead. It’s a class-five vertical drop, but the floodwater should shoot us right over it.”

An image of an eight-foot waterfall flashes into my head, the one I saw while trudging up to the cabin this afternoon. In my desperation to escape the guns, I somehow suppressed this memory. But that’s what Stone is talking about. Going over that falls in a plastic boat.

“Just grab the sides of the kayak,” he says, “lean back, and pray. I’ll handle the paddle. A mile farther on is the second one. Walls higher than you can reach, ending in a tight chute that’s like a piledriver. People drive their four-wheelers out there to watch the kayakers crash.”

Jesus . . .

He grabs my windbreaker with a weak grip. “If I was covering the river, that’s where I’d wait. It’d be tough shooting, though. We’ll come through that second chute like a runaway freight train, and if we clear it, we’ll be okay all the way to town. They won’t be able to find us in the dark.”

“This river goes through town?”

He grins. “Right through it. Let’s get this bus on the road.”

I slide the kayak down the rock ramp until the current is tugging it, then grab Stone by the belt buckle and manhandle him over the side near the stern. He goes rigid with pain when his buttocks hit the rock through the air-filled floor of the boat, but there’s nothing to be done. I drag the kayak the rest of the way clear, then roll over the side and into the bow.

Immediately the main current has us, pulling us to its center, gathering speed as the rising banks constrict the water in its headlong flight to the first canyon. I get to my knees and try to obey Stone’s barked orders—Lean left! Lean right! Right again!—as he expertly handles the paddle. Every twenty yards or so the bow lifts out of the water and slaps back down with a combative thunk.

“I hear the drop,” Stone says from the stern. “Lean left. We’ve got to stay in the channel.”