Flood Rising (Jenna Flood #1)

The other boat slewed sideways, out of control, and one of the gunmen was catapulted from his seat like a guided missile. Jenna ducked as the hurtling body sailed through the air toward her. There was a resonant gong as his body hit the fan’s protective wire covering, following by a strident rapid-fire chattering as the bent metal screen struck the whirling blades. The entire boat shook with the impact. A second impact rattled beneath Jenna as the two boats scraped past each other. Amid the chaos, Jenna heard several reports, and she caught a glimpse of Mercy hunched down behind one of the seats, firing into the other boat at almost point blank range.

Then, just as quickly as it had arrived, the collision was behind her, and the two boats moved apart. Her boat hadn’t sustained any structural damage, though something was rattling against the fan blades like a playing card in the spokes of a bicycle. The noise was an assault on the senses but there was nothing she could do about it. She ground her teeth and steered into a broad turn. Mercy remained crouched down behind a seat back, unhurt.

There was no sign of the man that had been ejected from the boat. He’d been stunned or perhaps even killed by the impact. Either way, the marsh had already claimed him. Zack was just beginning a sluggish turn, and Jenna wondered if one or more of Mercy’s shots had found its mark.

But the battle was not over. She had scored a small victory but if she didn’t press her advantage, she would lose it. She lined up the bow of the little airboat, and opened the throttle once more. The clamor of the fan blades beating against the bent piece of the wire screen reached a fever pitch, climaxing with an eruption of noise and another vibration that shook the entire boat, and then the noise vanished. Jenna glanced back and saw that a portion of the wire screen had broken free, exposing the whirring propeller blades just a couple of feet behind her head.

She felt the boat starting to drift left, and realized that one of the steering louvers behind the fan had been damaged. She tried to correct by turning against the drift, but no matter which way she turned it, the bent vane pushed the boat in the opposite direction. But she did not ease off the throttle. She knew from experience that speed had a way of smoothing out rough seas. She worked the rudder back and forth, keeping the boat on a more or less straight course, and charged the other boat once more.

She couldn’t tell if either man was wounded, but both were preparing for another open water joust. The passenger was concealed behind a seat. Zack did his best to hunker down in place, presenting as small a target as possible. Jenna doubted the men would fall for the same trick, but her experience with sparring had taught her the importance of the feint. She would make them think they knew what she was going to do. Then she would do something else. What exactly, she was still trying to work out. Part of her wanted to just ram the other boat, driving over the top of the two killers. While that would be very satisfying, it would also destroy both boats and leave them stranded in the middle of the swamp.

Zack seemed to divine her intent, and as she closed with him, he accelerated, pushing the boat so hard that Jenna thought she could actually see it starting to float above the water’s surface. The move caught her by surprise, and she barely had time to steer away. Mercy attempted to shoot them, but a fusillade of return fire forced her down. Jenna ducked as bullets smacked into hard surfaces all around her.

That none of the rounds hit her was not quite the miracle it seemed. The shots were not well-aimed and seemed to serve no other purpose than to keep Mercy from returning accurate fire. The boat drew near before Jenna could take any other action, and then, just as it was about to pass, almost close enough to touch, a large moving shape filled the display of her night vision device.

In the instant it took for her brain to process what she was seeing, the man had made the leap to her boat and was on her, driving the naked blade of a knife at her throat.





31



4:26 a.m.



Jenna’s body reacted faster than her brain. She threw her hands up to block the knife attack, catching the man’s forearm, and thrust both feet out for leverage. Her right foot was still on the throttle, and she unthinkingly jammed it down, sending a surge of power to the fan. The sudden acceleration did more to save her from the slash than her flagging strength. The man fell forward against her, his arm folding at the elbow, the blade’s lethal trajectory interrupted.

The man pushed away from her but kept one hand planted against her shoulder, pinning her in place as he wrenched free of her grip and drew back for another thrust.

Run away from a knife. Yeah, right.

It wasn’t very big—just a folding pocket knife, the blade not even three inches long—but as it flashed toward her, it looked like a sword from The Lord of the Rings movies. Jenna knew, with a sick certainty, that even if she survived this, she was going to get cut.