32
The boat lifted free of the water, and Jenna dared to believe it might simply float up into the sky like Santa’s sleigh or ET on Elliot’s bicycle.
The illusion was short-lived.
In the instant that the front end started to rise, the tremendous weight of the engine pulled the rear of the airboat down. The craft flipped up, like a hat blown off in a windstorm. Jenna’s stomach lurched, and a throb of pain radiated through her arm as her body tried to fold itself over. The boat went almost vertical, the bow pointing at the sky. The fan chopped at the water but was unable to overcome the force of gravity. The boat rolled backward, caught in the struggle between the forces of inertia and aerodynamics. It might have continued flipping end-over-end, pinwheeling across the Everglades, but before that could happen, the drone arrived.
There were too many variables to predict an outcome with any degree of certainty, but a lot of what happened was as she had hoped. She had thought the boat might lift off, if she pushed it hard enough. She had believed her best chance of surviving a collision with the drone was to use the boat as a shield/battering ram. In both respects, her desperate plan was a success. The small victory was lost on Jenna amid the chaos that followed.
The drone struck low, almost exactly level with the engine block, and tore the boat in half. The shockwave stunned Jenna, but even worse was the heat flash, more intense than the Kilimanjaro’s explosive end. The airboat’s rapid disintegration and immediate plunge into the marsh saved Jenna’s life from the flames.
Awareness returned in a series of disconnected sensory inputs. Warm water splashed against her face. A distant engine hummed, rising in pitch as it drew close. A faint light glowed in the otherwise all-consuming darkness.
She blinked the water out of her eyes and tried to move. A mistake, she quickly realized. Not only was every muscle of her body stiff and aching, but something held her immobile. The night vision monocular still hung from the strap around her head, but the crash had knocked it askew. When she tried to reposition it, she discovered two things: the electronic display was dark, and only her right arm seemed to be working. When she tried to lift her left arm, a dull throb reminded her that there was a knife blade skewering her biceps.
Working one-handed, she unclipped the chinstrap buckle and let the useless monocular fall away. Her left eye had adjusted to the darkness well enough that she could make out silhouettes against the overcast sky, but in her right eye she saw only a uniform red haze, as if she had stared too long into a bright light. In a way, that was exactly what she had done. The night vision device was essentially a tiny television monitor positioned half an inch from the eyeball.
The engine noise grew louder. The outline of an approaching airboat emerged in the distance. As her mental reboot continued, she recalled that Zack, the man who had been stalking her and trying to kill her for the last several hours, was on that boat. She tried to move again, and was again denied. This time however, she was able to grasp the cause of her immobility. In addition to the knife stuck through her arm, she was held tight by a strap of nylon across her hips. It was the safety belt attached to the pilot’s chair. The boat had been destroyed in the crash with the UAV, but the seat had been torn loose from its mount and deposited upright in the marsh, with Jenna still safely buckled in.
The boat went silent and coasted to a stop beside her. She felt its wake lapping against her chest, and heard a splash as someone jumped into the water.
Warning bells sounded in her head, urging her to release the seat belt and crawl away to safety, but she willed herself to remain motionless. She couldn’t possibly outrun the killer, but maybe…
The silhouette of a man appeared before her. In the diffuse silvery light of the cloud-shrouded moon, she could just make out the black protrusion of a night vision monocular against the pale skin of Zack’s face.
“Damn,” he whispered, shaking his head. He extended his arm, and Jenna knew, without seeing, that there was a gun in his hand. “I guess they were right about you. You are dangerous.”
“Why?” Her question was a barely audible whisper. What she really wanted to know was who? Who was right about her? Who had ordered her death? But she didn’t have the strength to articulate that request.
Zack leaned forward. “You don’t even know what you are,” he said, and Jenna thought he sounded a little sad.
She wondered if Zack and the men with him had felt the same kind of moral reservations about their assignment that Noah and his assault team had felt all those years ago. “I’m…just…a kid.”
“Yeah, right. A kid who just killed three of my friends.”
“Just…defending myself.”
“Is that right? Pretty damn good at it, too, aren’t you? You’re every bit as dangerous as they said you were.” He straightened and aimed the gun. “Look, for what it’s worth, I have to do this, but that doesn’t mean I enjoy it.”
Jenna muttered something barely audible even to her own ears.
“What’s that?”
She repeated the words, but this time, her broken whisper was even softer. Zack leaned forward, turning his head to hear her final confession.
Just as Jenna hoped he would.
Her right hand, which had been snaking across her body toward her wounded arm, now grasped the knife hilt in an ice-pick grip and wrenched it loose with a volcanic eruption of strength. There was a burst of pain and an even greater sense of relief, as the offending piece of metal was removed from her aggrieved flesh. She ignored both and focused everything into driving the knife point into Zack’s eye.
There was a wet hiss as the blade sank into the orb, and just the slightest bit of resistance as it punched through the sphenoid bone at the back of his eye socket, penetrating into gray matter.
Zack howled, all thoughts of finishing his assignment forgotten, as Jenna drove the knife deeper, twisting the blade until both the cries and the thrashing ceased. Zack’s dead weight collapsed into the marsh, tearing the knife from her grasp.
Jenna stared at the place where Zack had stood a moment before, feeling the adrenaline drain away, and whispered, “I said, ‘It gets easier.’”
33
She sat there for several minutes, drifting in and out of consciousness, trying to find the willpower to move. She could see the abandoned airboat, just a few feet away, and that she wouldn’t survive without it.
Just need to rest a minute, she told herself. One minute more, and then I’ll move.
A minute came and went, and she did not move. Then another.
You don’t even know what you are.
What had Zack meant by that? What was she?
You’re every bit as dangerous as they said you were.
Dangerous?
Well, she had proven that, hadn’t she? How many men had she killed? They hadn’t all died at her hands, but she had broken Raul’s neck. She had driven a knife into Zack’s brain. Was she dangerous? Definitely. But who had told Zack that she was dangerous? Who knew that about her before she did? Who had unleashed the killers on her, sent them to blow up the boat, sent a drone to track her movements?
This isn’t about Noah at all. It’s about me.