Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

Movement, straight ahead and just above the horizon, caught her attention. Not another boat, but something moving above the marsh, flying. There was no mistaking the profile—a solid body in the middle, thinner wings stretching out to either side. It was an aircraft, but much smaller than the Villegas brothers’ plane.

The drone, she thought. But why was it flying so low? The whole point of the UAV was discreet surveillance. It almost seemed like the remote operator didn’t care if she spotted it. As it got closer, cruising just a few feet above the surface, right in the boat’s path, she realized the action was intentional. She was meant to see it.

With each passing second, it became more and more evident that the UAV was not going to veer off or ascend. It was on a collision course.

It’s a bluff, she thought. They wouldn’t destroy a million dollar drone just to kill me, would they?

Because she wasn’t sure, Jenna let off the throttle and steered right. The boat’s forward momentum kept it moving forward. Instead of carving a precise turn, the boat slid forward and started to spin. Jenna momentarily forgot about the game of chicken with the drone. She eased off the rudder and nudged the accelerator, regaining control. At that instant, the unmanned aircraft shot past, its wing tip clearing the airboat’s fan by mere inches. There was a strident whine as the drone’s propeller noise reached a climax and then was drowned out by the boat’s engine.

“What was that?” Mercy shouted.

“The drone just buzzed us.” Jenna saw that the aircraft was climbing back into the sky and circling around for another run. She knew why, too. Dodging the drone had cost her several seconds, and the pursuing airboat was now much closer.

She wondered how many men were aboard. Three men had gotten out back at the rocket facility and a fourth had stayed in the car. Subtract the one she had fought with at the alligator pond…three, then? Three trained killers against Mercy and herself. “Do you still have that gun?”

Mercy’s expression knotted with sudden anxiety, but she held up the pistol. “Why?”

Two guns. Not nearly enough to tip the balance in their favor. Besides, as she had learned from the encounter at the alligator pond, sometimes it took a lot more than a single bullet to kill a man. Still, if she did not do something, and soon, the situation would be the same, only their enemies would dictate the terms.

“Get down,” Jenna said, bringing the boat around until the bow pointed toward the approaching watercraft. “Find something to hide behind if you can.”

“What?” Anxiety transformed into panic.

“We have to take the fight to them,” Jenna explained, with more patience than she felt. “Go on the offensive. Otherwise, they’ll just run us down.”

“And just how are we supposed—” Mercy stopped herself in mid-sentence and then continued in a more subdued voice. “I hope you have some kind of plan.”

Jenna did not have a plan, and did not think she could come up with much of one in the thirty seconds it would take for them to close the gap with the other boat. Her only solace was that the killers didn’t know that she didn’t have a plan.

Run toward a gun. That wisdom had served her well thus far, but always in a literal sense. Now she was going to test it at something a bit faster than running speed.

The distance shrank faster than expected. The boats moved at least as fast as cars on a highway. She could make out the dark outlines of the other boat’s occupants, one man in the pilot’s chair—she thought it might be Zack—the other two hanging onto the passenger seats. All three wore monocular night-vision devices like her own. All three watched her approach with rapt anticipation.

When she was close enough that she could see the look of alarm on the pilot’s face—definitely Zack—Jenna steered to the right, as if to avoid the imminent collision. One of the passengers raised his pistol and started tracking her with the muzzle, anticipating the moment when the two boats would pass.

With just fifty feet separating them, Jenna abruptly steered back to the left, once more on a collision course. Zack reacted just as she hoped he would: instinctively.

Jenna was no expert with the airboat, but her uncanny ability to learn any new skill—physical or mental—had given her a sense of familiarity with how the craft would respond to even the slightest variations of speed and direction. She was still learning, but she was learning a lot faster than the men in the other boat. When she changed course, steering right toward them, Zack jerked his steering lever.