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

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....

5
    In the instant before I plunged through the lake’s surface, I could see my skiff above the bass boat, falling toward it in a ponderous arc. It looked as if I’d timed the intersection perfectly.
    In the silence of that micromoment, I heard a woman scream. Or maybe it was the man: a shrill, atavistic sound so energized by fear that it was without gender.
    They saw my boat, too. They knew they were about to be crushed.
    Then gravity slammed me earthward.
    My body had been traveling over the water at more than forty miles an hour. Add another twenty-five miles an hour to that, because, if you jump from a plane, that’s the approximate speed attained during the first second or two of free fall. Mitigate the impact slightly because of the trajectory created by the combined forces of gravity, air drag, and velocity. But it was still one hell of a collision when I hit the lake’s surface. I skipped over the water like a rag doll, and then was augured deep into blackness.
    I’ve jumped into dark water many times. Jumped from fast boats, helicopters, and parachuted from planes. But there is only one other time when I’d experienced a water landing as violent—and that was not so long ago on the headwaters of the Amazon.
    I tried to swing my legs beneath me but hit hard on my left side, shoulder first. I knew enough to have arms and elbows pulled in tight against my body, chin firmly on chest, both hands shielding my testicles. Hit any other way, arms can be ripped from their sockets, teeth shattered, necks broken.
    I didn’t fight it as momentum took me deep underwater. I was aware of burning cold—Central Florida had had a frost or two this December. Was also aware of changing pressure. I let drag slow me before lifting my head upward, hands and arms out, sculling to end my descent. Then I began a slow swim toward the surface, exhaling bubbles as I went.
    Surfacing seemed to take a long, long time.
    Finally, I was breathing air again; warm, rich air that floated in layers atop the cold lake; my vision blurry because of water and my bad eyesight. Still, I could see sufficiently well to be, at once, disappointed and also relieved.
    I expected carnage, the aftermath of a boat collision. I didn’t relish such a sight, but the Russians had invited attack.
    But there was no carnage. Nor had they returned to kill me. Instead, all that awaited was the reassuring silhouette of my own skiff floating upright, engine off, not far away.
    No sign of the bass boat. For a moment, I considered the possibility that I had hit it and their vessel had already sunk, the two passengers with it.
    No. It would not have gone down so quickly.
    I searched the distance until I recognized a fuzzy, flickering image caught in the light of the nearby highway: the Russians’ boat disappearing fast, already more than a hundred yards away, still heading south. Somehow, the woman had managed to avoid the unavoidable. Impressive. But why hadn’t they come back to finish the job?
    I began to swim, thinking about it. Could the shock of what I’d done scared them into running? They’d managed to scare me into flight. Maybe I’d returned the volley.
    I decided that I would discuss it with Tomlinson in a day or two, when we were both back on Sanibel.
     
     
    I couldn’t get the engine started ...
    I figured it was because of damage caused by the ski ramp. Or maybe a stray bullet had pierced the motor’s cowling. But