Dead of Night

4

The woman looked like a sprinter because she was. An athlete. She had that kind of freaky quickness. I was still a hundred yards or so away from the communal docks, running as hard as she was, when I heard an outboard engine start.

Her ox-sized accomplice wasn’t as fast. Him, I almost caught. He was jumping aboard when I came sliding around the storage shack that separated the golf cart path from the marina basin.

They were in the bass boat, the one with the oversized engine-left in the water for a reason, I now realized.

The woman was at the wheel, already gunning away. I went charging down the dock, thinking that if I timed it right I might be able to vault myself aboard, yank the key from the ignition, and then escape by tumbling into the water before they had a chance to beat the crap out of me.

Leaving them stranded on a small island would be as good as catching them. Just hide out until the cops showed.

But the woman knew how to drive fast, too. She was no stranger to water and boats. Clear of a mooring piling, she rammed the throttle forward. The stern-heavy skiff lifted like a rocket before leveling onto plane, already moving fast through the basin toward the channel. The g-force catapulted Ox-man backward onto the stern deck, and he came close to rolling off into the water. He screamed something in Russian-I have no idea what. It was a scream of fear, not anger. Maybe he didn’t know how to swim.

I grabbed my skiff’s lines and jumped behind the wheel. I wanted to follow them closely enough to find out what marina or dock they were using as a land base. No confrontations, no problems. Their boat had a high-performance engine, but so did mine-a recently mounted 250-horsepower Mercury Optimax that I kept shielded from law enforcement types with a black engine cowling that claimed less horsepower.

I’m not a speed freak. I’d yet to push this engine beyond the modest threshold of forty miles an hour, my favorite cruising speed. But those of us who know how fast bad, random things can happen at sea tend to build in little safety hedges. If I ever get caught on the fast edge of a really bad storm, or in a tight and nasty situation, an extra twenty-five horses might make all the difference-or so I tell myself.

I used the additional horsepower now, throttling into the bass boat’s expanding wake. There was no moon, but the trail was easy to follow in the winter starlight because of the froth of overoxygenated water stirred by their propeller. I watched my speedometer, illuminated in red, move from forty to fifty and then fifty-five-and I still had a couple of inches of throttle left.

Fifty-five in a boat feels dangerous, especially at night. Sixty seems crazy. I held her steady.

The speed created a wind stream that made my cheeks flutter, eyes teary. I leaned forward, hands tight on the wheel, concentrating on the black water ahead. The closer I got to the bass boat, the narrower its wake would appear… and it had already narrowed a lot in a short time.

Most boats with high-powered outboards also have what’s called a “dead man’s switch” near the helm. Mine is next to the ignition, attached to a coiled red wire that clips to the belt. Fall out of the boat, the engine shuts off automatically. Because I don’t relish the idea of trying to outswim an empty boat that is making fast circles around me, coming ever closer, I always use the switch.

I reached now and clipped the wire in place.

I was gaining on them.

I spotted the bass boat just a minute or so later. Saw the metallic glitter of fiberglass and chrome, saw two people silhouetted by the lights of the busy highway that was ahead and off to our left.

It was the road that paralleled the channel, not far from the waterskiing area I’d noted earlier. I’d marked it mentally because the unlighted buoys and the floating ski jump made it a dangerous place at night.

The Russian woman was steering for it.

When I was thirty yards or so off their stern, I backed the throttle, matching my speed to theirs. We ran that way briefly before they turned and sprinted ahead. I’d been spotted.

Which was okay. I was just playing good citizen; a bird dog for the police.

I caught the boat a second time, and maintained the same safe distance astern. As I did, I fished the little handheld VHF marine radio out of its holder beneath the console, pressed the squawk button, declared that this was an emergency transmission, and did any law enforcement agency copy? Within a few seconds, a woman’s voice came back, saying, “This is Port Canaveral Coast Guard. What’s your emergency?”

I told the woman I’d interrupted two people assaulting a man on Night’s Landing, Lake Toho, and that they were now escaping by boat. I gave her Jobe’s name, his address, and told her that he needed medical attention. I was careful not to use police jargon such as “perpetrators” and “victim.” It’s something solid citizens don’t do, so the usage makes law enforcement types suspicious.

We were inside the ski area now. With my peripheral vision, I’d already seen a couple of plastic, pumpkin-sized buoys flash by. Hit one of the ropes or chains that were attached, and the Russians were in for one hell of a jolt. The same was true for me.

Holding the radio to my ear, I listened to the lady Coasty say, “Our duty officer strongly recommends that you break off pursuit. I say again, end your pursuit. We are notifying the Bartram County Sheriff’s Department. Let them handle it. We can’t allow you to put yourself in personal danger.”

I pushed the transmit button. “Recommendation noted. No danger, no plans to confront. I’m just following. And they don’t seem to be carrying any-”

I was about to say “weapons” when I was interrupted by a loud th-WHACK, and the hull of my skiff jolted as if someone had just slammed it with a sledgehammer. For a confusing moment, I thought I’d hit one of the ski buoys. But then the hull shuddered again-th-WHACK-and I knew that I was taking fire. Someone in the bass boat was shooting.

I told the lady, “Out for now,” and dropped the radio as I turned the boat sharply to the right, then back to the left, then to starboard again, making myself a more difficult target.

I’m not a fool, nor am I particularly brave. When someone is shooting, and you can’t return fire, the wise course is to run. That’s exactly what I was trying to do. I was scrambling like hell on an arc that would turn me in the opposite direction. The Coast Guard was right: Let law enforcement handle it.

So I was squatting low in my swivel seat, head ducked, eyes barely above the steering wheel, making my zigzag return to Night’s Landing, when I again heard the piercing sound of lead hitting fiberglass and felt the skiff jolt. Simultaneously, I felt a burning sensation on my right ear.

I touched the side of my head. Felt something warm, slick. More blood. My nose was still swelling and leaking after my collision with the wall…

Bastards.

They had no reason to continue firing. I’d broken off pursuit, yet they were still plinking away. Their behavior wasn’t just violent; it was senseless. And vicious.

It scared me. They scared me.

Throwing the wheel to port, then starboard, I continued to run. A moment later, though, I felt a sudden percussion of air above my head; a shock wave vacuum that I associate with a bullet passing close to the auditory canal. They were still firing at me.

That did it. The combination of fear and anger-the two are often associated-did something to me, caused an emotional overload felt as a physical chill; a sensation not unlike being dosed with a shot of liquid hydrogen. Cold fury-maybe the term comes from that.

Furious. I certainly was. So mad I behaved irrationally. I turned my skiff toward the white hedge of wake created by the bass boat, then slammed the throttle forward.

Or maybe it was a credible reaction. A military maxim came into my mind: When defeat is certain, the only practical course is to charge the bastards and attack with all assets.

Reasonable or not, I took the offensive. If I was going to die by their hand, I wasn’t going to die running.

I backed the throttle slightly when my skiff began to push sixty-five; then slowed again when I saw the first ski buoy sweep past. I stayed low, using the front of my boat like a gun sight, aiming it directly at the black vacancy that marked the terminus of the bass boat’s expanding white wake.

They would be there in the blackness.

We would soon meet.

Once again, I spotted their boat in the panning car lights of the adjacent road. I closed within forty yards before they saw me. Maybe they thought they’d scared me off, or hit me with one of their wild rounds.

I saw their vessel fishtail, and recover-a measure of their surprise.

I wasn’t done, nor were they.

Off to my left, two abrupt geysers of water kicked spray onto the deck. Shooting again as they tried to accelerate away.

Ahead and to my left, I could see the vague outline of the ski ramp. Did they see it?

Yes… but only at the last second. I was close enough to watch them veer sharply, ramp to their right, then swerve back on course. They would soon pass directly in front of the ramp, with me only a few yards behind, if I continued at my current speed. But our intersecting angles, I realized, gave me an unusual attack option.

A ski ramp at an intersecting angle…

It was an option too crazy, too lunatic risky to deserve rational consideration. But I wasn’t rational, so I didn’t pause to think about it. I just did it. Let it happen, watched it play out as if from a higher aspect, making up the moves as I went.

I touched the dead man’s switch to make certain it was still attached to the ignition and my belt. I removed my glasses and jammed them securely into the baggy front pocket of my fishing shorts. Then I pointed my skiff at the base of the ski ramp where the ramp’s incline entered the water. As I did, I used the throttle switch to tilt my engine upward, moving the angle of the spinning propeller toward the sky. Gradually, instead of pushing the hull only forward, the propeller’s thrust was also pushing the back of my boat lower in the water while raising the bow.

I had plenty of speed. With my hand fixed on the throttle, I gauged the bass boat’s speed and angle, trying to time it just right. I continued to steer toward the ramp, determined to hit the thing dead center.

Spend time around Florida’s waterways and you’ll acquire all kinds of useless information that may become useful if you live long enough. I’d seen boats go over ramps at boat shows, which was maybe where I’d learned that the standard competitive ski ramp is several boat widths wide and five or six feet high. The ramps have a gentle, engineered pitch that can vault a skier, or boat, a couple hundred feet through the air.

But what was the optimum safe speed? That figure was buried in my brain somewhere. Had I heard that boats towing ski jumpers travel at forty miles an hour? Or was it fifty?

I couldn’t remember. A troubling lapse.

To compensate, every few seconds I glanced at the speedometer, aware that if I hit the ramp too fast I might not have time to bail out before my skiff nose-dived back into the water. Watched the needle read 50… 45… 48… 45… figures varying with my indecision as the ramp grew huge before me… the bass boat out there in front now… maybe going faster than I thought.

I’m going to miss them, damn it…

Which is why I panicked, burying the throttle forward as I hit the ramp bow-high. It added a final rocket thrust of acceleration that sent me careening toward outer space-stars bright up there-as the deck beneath me listed wildly to starboard, accompanied by a terrible screeching of fiberglass on fiberglass.

I was on the ramp for only a couple of seconds, but it seemed longer… and suddenly my boat straightened itself as we went airborne. I was floating, weightless, holding the steering wheel, fighting to steady myself like some novice astronaut experiencing zero gravity for the first time.

Intense concentration can add to the illusion that things are happening in slow motion. From high over the water, I turned my head to look. I could see that the bass boat was directly beneath me-a circumstance I hadn’t anticipated. If I bailed, and landed on their boat instead of in the water, the impact would probably kill me.

Slow motion or not, I knew I had very little time to react. Yet, I now had to wait a scary, tilting instant longer before throwing myself out of my skiff.

The sense of weightlessness continued as I shoved myself away from the steering wheel and floated out into the dark and spinning stratum that partitioned sky from water…