“You stupid son of a bitch!” Stone appears beside me like a man in the last stages of drowning, his eyes furious points of light in the darkness.

I don’t reply. The water is driving toward the chute with the momentum of a locomotive, Stone and me and the kayak bobbing along in it like fishing corks. I’ve got to slow us down a little, put us a few seconds behind the kayak—

A sledgehammer blow to the chest stops me dead in the water. Purely out of instinct, I grab whatever hit me and reach out for Stone with my legs. An explosive grunt sounds beside me as Stone collides with the object, and I lock my legs around his waist.

It’s a tree trunk. A trunk the width of a man’s thigh and smooth as glass, wedged into a crack in the ledge from which it fell. The river is trying to rip Stone’s body from between my knees, but I hold him fast. With a supreme effort, I flex my stomach muscles and pull him higher in the water.

“Grab the tree!” I gasp. “Grab the tree!”

He drapes one arm over it, loses his grip, then at last manages to get both arms over the trunk.

“Can you hold yourself?” I ask, my legs burning from exertion.

He nods weakly, his face white.

As soon as I relax my leg muscles, the river sweeps both our bodies up onto the surface, holding us in near-horizontal positions. Forty yards away, halogen headlights illuminate a thirty-foot stretch of the chute like searchlights.

“Boat! Boat!” screams a voice from the roar at the end of the little canyon. A voice from the lights.

The illuminated water in the chute churns into boiling chaos as hundreds of bullets shred its surface. The kayak materializes in the headlights as though by magic and instantly explodes into confetti that sails through the bluish beams like the remnants of a child’s balloon.

“Christ,” Stone coughs.

“Listen,” I hiss in his ear, hoping my raft guide knew what he was talking about. “You go through feet first. On your back, feet first, okay? That cushions the rocks.”

He nods, his face looking bloodless in the dark.

“How long can you hold on?”

“Twenty seconds . . . maybe thirty.”

“Then we might as well go now. Save our strength.”

Stone nods, his eyes closed.

“Have you still got your pistol?” I ask.

“In my waistband.”

“Let’s do it. On three. One . . . two . . . three—”