Dead of Night by Randy Wayne White Read Free Book Online Page A

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