L aks’s sixth sense—or maybe his seventh or eighth, he’d lost count—told him when it was time to dog-paddle to the left bank of the Columbia and clamber up onto the rocky shore. The sun had broken the horizon as he had snorkeled along beneath the dark surface of the river, but the place where he crawled up onto the land was still deep in the shade of the precipitous eastern bank. On the opposite shore there was practically nothing visible in the way of human habitation—just the same sort of pine scrub where his uncle had dropped him off north of the border. Laks peeled out of the wet suit and changed into the outfit that had been stashed at the top of his waterproof pack: T-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and a bandanna that he could use for the time being as a keski. He weighed the wet suit down under rocks beneath the water. The pack itself looked scarcely less ominously tactical, but it contained a rolled-up duffel bag into which he transferred the other stuff they’d given him: a change of clothes, some American snack food, a water bottle.