Morgan Kane clutched at the tree limb in desperation as water filled his nose and mouth and eyes, choking the breath from his lungs and rushing to his brain like fire. He was beyond caring that his life was about to end. He would die here and now, be murdered by a bullet from Rodolfo King's expert gunmen, or perhaps skewered by an arrow from the fierce Xavante Indians who had been chasing him for the past hour. The bore wave rose to Goliath heights, hurling man and tree back up the river he had tried so frantically to escape. Then it crashed downward, sucking everything in its path into the undertow, plunging Kane into a rushing, thundering world of blackness and sound. A shadow shot before his eyes, then another and another, until there seemed to be a thousand shapes and forms swarming around him. Piranhas! With a kick he surged away, clawing at the wall of water. As his head broke the surface his lungs drank in the heavenly air. Then the splintered trunk of a kapok tree dragged him under again.
