In a flash, I realize what must be happening. I recall how at the end of my Firestorm quest, Dargon cut off one of my fingers and planted a tracking device in the plaster cast. Like father like son. The colonel let us go, but he must have planted a bug in one of the canoes. In our last conversation, he compared me to Moses. Now, too late, it occurs to me that Ramses reconsidered and sent his army after the Israelites, to wipe them out. “It’s the colonel’s men,” I tell Ernesto. “They followed us here.”

“This way! To shore!” Ernesto shouts and directs the canoes toward the near bank. But as if anticipating his command, a submachine gun opens up from beneath the trees on the near bank, less than fifty feet away.

The first blast rips a three-inch hole in the chest of the governor general of the free and wild Amazon.

Our fearless leader is blown clear out of his canoe by the blast. Time slows down. He seems to hang in midair, his arms waving. A long stream of blood unthreads from his chest while his handsome face is contorted in pain and disbelief. Then a second burst of bullets rips his body nearly in half, and he disappears into the river.

There are shrieks from nearby canoes. Everyone sees what is happening, but no one knows what to do.

The chief paddles us quickly away from the gun on the near bank, to the center of the river. The other canoes follow us out, but there’s no place to hide.

The ambush has been well planned. We can’t get away by paddling back upriver because the guns are on either bank, right at the narrows. If we try to pass between them, the crossfire will blow us to matchsticks. If we stay out here, they’ll pick us off one by one. And we can’t escape downriver, over the rapids, because it would be like trying to go down Niagara Falls in a barrel.

The canoe right next to us comes under fire. The man standing at its prow manages to dive off. A second later, the four men and one woman remaining on board are shredded alive. Their bodies dance grotesquely as bullets thud into them, and then skulls and chests explode and riddled, eviscerated corpses are blasted over the side.

“Jack!” I look over. P.J. is half standing, horrified. “We’re next.”

She’s right. I can almost feel the soldiers on both banks adjusting their aim. But she’s also wrong. Because there’s no way I’ll let that happen. Even the best traps have a way out, and the only possible escape from this one is roaring just in front of us. Every now and then, someone does make it down Niagara Falls in a barrel.