It spun on, heading for a rock almost in the middle of the river. Nick saw the rock, approaching fast, and shouted again, then turned, his eyes locking on Tom and the others as they stood there watching. He shouted something, but no words reached the shore.

The raft slammed into the boulder, coming to a stop with a violent shudder. The back lifted out of the water and for a moment looked as if it would tip over. All the people on board screamed, the noise strangely reminiscent of theme parks. Backpacks catapulted into the air, and so did Nick.

He flew upward in an incredibly graceful arc, like someone bouncing off a trampoline onto a lawn. Tom followed his flight, his progress seeming to be in slow motion, but there was nothing slow or graceful about his landing. He accelerated downward, smashing onto another boulder, a brutal, buckling impact, his leg snapping sideways before he ricocheted off and disappeared into the water.

Seconds passed in stunned silence, seconds in which Tom kept seeing that moment of impact, the way Nick’s body had flailed like a puppet, the snapping of his leg. And now he was gone. He’d been so afraid in the jungle when Chris and Joel had been taken captive, yet it had ended for him here, stupidly.

He was gone, but they kept their eyes on the water, and there was a collective gasp when his head bobbed back to the surface, already far downstream, his lifeless body being pulled out into the current of the wider river. The shock in the group was palpable, but no one spoke.

And then, miraculously it seemed, Nick raised his hand out of the water, a pitiful wave before he was dragged out of sight.

Behind Tom, someone said, “He waved!”

“I don’t think it was a wave. I think it was just his body moving in the current.”

“It was a wave,” said Tom.

And that meant he was alive.

He looked out at the raft wedged up onto the rock. It appeared undamaged as far as he could tell, and everyone else aboard seemed shaken but otherwise unhurt. So they had to go after Nick, there was no other option, as broken as he was, even if he was dying or already dead by now—they couldn’t leave him.

He ran to their raft, grabbed the spare rope, and handed it to Sandeep.

Before saying anything to him, he turned to the others and said, “Carry the raft along to the point, get ready to launch it.”

Emma said, “Tom, we can’t save him. He’s gone.”