Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Something struck the rail beside her head, sending a tremor through the wood. She heard another hiss and splash. One of the gators had made a grab for her, missing by inches. The impact was the last straw for the railing. With one last tortured squeal, the nails pulled free, and the barrier dropped, along with the two bodies sprawled atop it.

Jenna’s attacker scrabbled in vain for a handhold. She felt him scrape past her and then heard a splash and a howl of denial that was abruptly silenced amid a tumult of growls, snapping jaws and the distinctive sound of bones cracking.

Jenna however, didn’t fall. She could still feel the ground beneath her legs, but there was something else there, too. A weight was pressing down on her feet, holding her in place. Then she was pulled, dragged back up onto terra firma.

“Mercy?” she croaked, her throat still on fire from her assailant’s chokehold.

“I’ve got you,” came the reply. Mercy’s voice was taut with effort, but to Jenna it was the most beautiful sound in the world. She reached out and felt a hand close over her own, hauling her away from the precipice.

Jenna savored the feel of solid ground beneath her body, and she even welcomed the throb of pain from injuries old and new. Hurt was a lot better than dead. For a few seconds, they both just lay there, panting from the exertion.

Finally, Mercy spoke again. “So, was that what you had in mind?”

Jenna almost laughed, but the quip reminded her that this minor victory would count for nothing if they didn’t keep moving. “Not quite,” she replied, rolling over and rising to her hands and knees. She had lost both the gun and the phone in the struggle, but her groping hands found the former and something else as well: the man’s night vision device.

She turned it over in her hands, feeling the hard lens at one end and the soft rubber eye cup at the other, and held it up to her eye. Nothing. She continued exploring its exterior until she found a small knob. She twisted it, felt it turn and click, and then there was a flash of green as the device turned on, and the world lit up like the dawn.

That’s more like it, she thought, as she settled the straps over her head and locked the monocular into place. It was heavier than she expected, but the discomfort was a small price to pay for the ability to see in the darkness. Jenna got to her feet. Her first few steps were halting. The green display played havoc with her depth perception, but she found that her unaided eye, even though virtually night blind, still helped her see the world in three dimensions.

She turned back to Mercy who was gazing up at her, pupils fully dilated and shining like little white buttons. “We can’t stay here.”

As if to underscore the statement, the display grew almost painfully bright as an artificial light source appeared from somewhere down the path that had brought them here.

“Damn it.” She hauled Mercy to her feet. “I thought we’d have more time. Come on.”

“Where…?” Mercy didn’t seem to know how to finish the question.

Jenna steered her back onto the wooden platform that crossed the alligator pond. With the night vision device, she could see everything in stark detail. A writhing mass of alligators was entangled with the collapsed rail section, biting and snapping at each other as they fought over what remained of the man she had shot.

She looked away and focused on what lay at the far end of the platform. Beyond the alligator pool, the platform descended to a wooden dock that ran the length of a narrow canal. A flat bottomed metal boat with something that looked like an enormous fan mounted at its aft end was moored to the dock.

“That,” Jenna said, pointing to the airboat, “is what I had in mind.”





30



4:06 a.m.



Mercy squinted at the airboat. “Do you know how to drive one of these?”

It was the first time Jenna had ever laid eyes on one of the Everglades’ famous flat-bottomed watercraft, but she had grown up on a boat, and she was confident that she could figure it out. She quickly identified the steering lever, a mechanical arm that controlled a set of louvered vanes behind the fan—push the lever and vanes would direct the flow of air one way, pull and they’d go the other. The engine that turned the huge fan was no more complicated than an outboard motor, and it took just a few seconds for her to prime the fuel line and start it up.

She had known about the boat because she had seen it on the satellite map. She had also seen the network of deep canals that marked the designated routes of the rides. The picture was a couple of years old, but she was sure the boat would be there. Airboat rides through wild gator country were all part of the day’s fun at Gator Station.