Adirondack Attack. Jenna Kernan

head lifted as the chopper swept over them and took a position downriver, hovering low and then dropping out of sight. It would be waiting, he knew, low over the water to pick them off when they made the next turn.

      Hug the right shore on the first turn and the left on the second. That was what she had told him, but his wife was very clearly making a path to the right on this second turn.

      Dalton struggled to follow against the pull of the river that tried to drag him left. On the turn he saw the reason for her warning. There before him loomed the largest logjam of downed trees he’d ever seen, and it rushed right at them. Waves hit the barrier and soared ten feet in the air, soaking the logs that choked the right bank of the turn. The pile of debris seemed injected with towering pillars of rock.

      It occurred to him then why most groups did not run this section of the river and never after a release from the dam.

      Erin performed a neat half turn, riding a wave partially up the natural dam as the second kayak flipped. The river dropped her back and she pulled until she grasped a branch near the shore. She held on as the river tore the empty craft from hers. The empty vessel bobbed up beyond the logs and sped downriver as Erin struggled to keep hers from being dragged under the web of branches.

      He tried to mimic her maneuver but instead rammed bow-first into the nest of branches. The water lifted the back of his kayak while forcing the bow down and under the debris.

      “Grab hold,” Erin yelled.

      He did, managing to grip the slimy, lichen-covered limb as the kayak continued its path downward and into the debris. He used both feet to snag the shoulder straps of his pack as his watercraft vanished beneath him. His stomach burned and he knew he could hold his pack or the limb, but not both. His current physical weakness infuriated him, but he dropped his pack. It fell to his seat in front of the red cooler decoy. Both his gear and the kayak were pulled under.

      He hauled himself farther up on the debris as his kayak resurfaced beyond the fallen tree limb where he clung and his craft was whisked away.

      He sighed at the loss, but with his feet free he could now climb to a spot above where Erin was snagged. He help move the nose of her craft back and clear of a branch. Then she dragged and pulled herself toward the shore. Just a little farther and the current calmed. Erin shoved with her paddle and reached the shallows as he scrambled beside the log dam.

      How many seconds until the chopper realized they were no longer on the river?