Just as suddenly, the engine quit and the sputtering ended completely.
Ashley darted forward beside me. I folded the note and put it back in my pocket. What was going on?
The boat began to coast toward the edge of the channel. Blades of long grass slapped at the hull.
“The radio,” I told Ashley. “Get on the radio and let Dad know what's happened.” He had told me to get rid of it, but I thought he'd at least want to know about this new development. After that, I'd throw it overboard.
“Sure,” Ashley said. “I'llâ”
Our pilot screamed and fell over. He lay, shaking out of control, on the floor of the boat. His feet thumped a wild drumming pattern.
Only one thing could have done that to him. A neuron rifle! But who and where?
Movement ahead answered my question. A low, flat boat glided silently out of the vegetation, where it evidently had been waiting in ambush. A man stood at the front, holding with both hands a long pole that stuck into the ground beneath the water. He leaned into the pole, and the boat moved closer. He pulled it loose, lifted it, stuck it into the ground again, and leaned, repeating this quickly until he was almost at our own boat.
It was then that I saw the neuron rifle behind him on the seat of the flat boat.
But only Combat Force soldiers are authorized to have neuron rifles,
I thought.
And even then, a neuron rifle doesn't work unless its internal computer chip reads a fingerprint pattern belonging to an authorized user.
This man, in his tattered dark clothing, definitely did not look military. Nor did he look like an authorized user.
He grinned wildly, his teeth shining brightly beneath a greasy, wide-brimmed hat. He had a big, bushy black beard and equally bushy long hair. A large knife was strapped on a belt around his waist.
“Come in!” Ashley shouted into the radio behind me. “Come in. We're under attack.”
The other boat was much lower in the water than ours. The wild man stared upward into my eyes. He kept grinning.
“You can tell her the radio won't work.” He took one hand off his pushing pole and pointed to a small black box beside the neuron rifle on the seat of the boat. “This little gadget jams any electrical signals for 100 yards in any direction. It's how I got your boat engine to quit. And it's why no one can hear your friend, no matter how loud she yells into her radio.”
He grabbed a rope and put the end of it in his mouth. With clenched jaws and both hands free, he took hold of the edge of our boat to pull himself in. With a grunt and a quickness that surprised me in a man so large, he rolled over the edge and landed feet-first in our boat.
“Don't try anything stupid,” he said as he spit out the rope in his mouth. The other end of the rope was tied to his flat-bottom boat. With quick movements of nimble fingers, he tied this end to our boat, securing both boats together. “Make this easy on me. And I promise you won't get hurt.”
The wild man took a short piece of rope out of his pocket and stepped toward Ashley. “Drop the radio. Give me your hands.”
Ashley threw me the radio.
“Give me your hands,” he repeated.
“No.” Ashley kicked him in the shins.
He laughed. “Really. I don't want to hurt you. Let's get this over with.”
She tried kicking him again, but he had reached out and placed his right palm on her forehead. She couldn't reach him, hard as she tried.
The laughter left his voice. “Young woman, there is no place for you to go. You wouldn't be able to swim 50 yards before a gator got you.”
Gator?
“No, no, no,” Ashley said. “If you really aren't going to hurt us, you wouldn't try to tie my hands.”
“You're worth a lot of money if I deliver you safely, and that's what I intend toâ,” the wild man began. He had all but ignored me, assuming, I'm sure, that just because I was in a wheelchair I was useless. But as Ashley kicked at him, he backed up, almost to my legs.
In that second I threw the radio overboard. Then I pushed upward off the handles of my wheelchair and managed to wrap my arms around his neck.
The wild man grunted again, this time with surprise. He clawed at my arms, trying to pull me free.
I had no muscle control over my legs, but since I'd spent a lifetime using my arms to push my wheelchair around, I had far more strength in my upper body than most people guessed. Big and strong as this wild man was, he wasn't able to shake me loose.
He began to thrash around as I choked the air from his windpipe. I just wanted him unconscious. Ashley punched him in the stomach.
“Aaarrgh!” He thrashed harder, then moved to the side of the boat. Before I could react, he spun around so that I was hanging from his neck and shoulders above the water. “Aaarrgh!”
He was fading. I could tell by the way his attempts to yank my arms loose got weaker and weaker. But if he fell backward â¦
And that's exactly what happened. My weight pulled him toward the water, and he toppled out of the boat. With me clinging to his neck. Together we fell into the side of the flat-bottom boat.
There was a horrible thunk as his head slammed into the wood, and in the next instant, we hit water.
In shock, I let go. I gasped and water choked me. Panicked, I splashed frantically with my arms. The most water that had ever surrounded me was the fine spray of a shower on Mars. I had no idea how to swim, yet somehow my splashing kept my head above water. My eyes cleared, and I saw the side of the flat-bottom boat above me. I jabbed one hand upward, and my fingers closed on the edge. It gave me enough leverage to pull up with the other hand.
The flat-bottom boat tilted toward me as I clung to the side. The neuron rifle and black box slid toward me.
With my body weight supported by the water, I was able to pull halfway out. But that was it. I couldn't get any more of my body into the boat.
“Tyce!” Ashley shouted. “Tyce! Help me roll him over.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash. Ashley had used the boat hook to reach down for us. Holding to the side of the boat, my legs dangling uselessly in the water, I turned my head.
Ashley had managed to get the hook into the wild man's clothing. But he floated facedown. Blood streamed into the water from where he'd hit his skull.
Clinging to the flat-bottom boat with one arm, I reached for the wild man with the other. I grabbed a limp arm and rolled him over. Ashley worked the hook loose and then hooked his belt to support most of his weight. With one hand I held his head above the water. With the other arm I clung to the boat.
“I'm not sure how long I can hold him,” I groaned. With his weight dragging on me, my armpit was already numb.
I looked up at Ashley. She stood at the side of the boat, leaning over, holding the boat-hook pole with both hands as she kept the wild man from sinking. Her eyes were focused beyond me, however, and her jaw had opened in shock.
“Hold him, Tyce. Just for a couple of seconds.” She disappeared from view.
I couldn't turn my head to see what she'd seen. Without the support of her boat hook, the wild man's weight doubled. I nearly collapsed, and the flat-bottom boat tilted even more dangerously toward us.
A second later she was back, with the wild man's neuron rifle. She pointed it beyond me and the boat.
“What is it?” I shouted.
“You don't want to know!”
I saw her trigger finger pull several times.
“What is it?” I shouted again. “The rifle isn't programmed for you! It won't shoot!”
“Alligator. And it's headed right for the both of you!”
Alligator!
I'd seen them but only on the DVD-gigaroms on computer screens. Growing up on Mars, I'd spent endless hours learning everything I could about Earth. Earth animals fascinated me, and some of my favorite clips had been of the giant predators. Lions, tigers, sharks. And, of course, alligators.
My mouth instantly went dry with fear.
Alligator!
I knew it didn't bite its prey to death. No, it pulled the prey underwaterâa person, deer, anything too large to swallowâand spun it underwater in circles until it drowned. Then it found an underwater log and jammed the dead prey into place until it had rotted soft enough to tear apart.
I didn't want that prey to be me.
Frantically, I turned my head, straining until it felt like my neck would snap.
And I saw it.
Like a giant log, but with an evil, narrowing snout, it approached slowly. It was probably drawn by the sound of our thrashing in the water or maybe by the smell of the wild man's blood. Its eyes were barely above the water. Its tail twisted the surface of the water with powerful, snakelike thrusts.
“Ashley,” I gasped. “Jump into the lower boat!”
She understood immediately. That was our only chance. That she stand in the flat boat and haul us in from there.
When she landed, the flat-bottom boat swayed dangerously, but it was low enough and wide enough to give the stability she needed. She grabbed my shoulder and began to pull me upward.
The wild man was still unconscious. “No,” I said. “Him first.”
Ashley tugged him by the hair, bringing him close enough to grab his shoulders. She leaned way back in the boat to get her weight on the far side. With my free hand I held his shirt and pushed.
He was too heavy. It wasn't going to work.
I twisted my head. The gator was about 10 seconds away!
“Try harder!” I shouted.
The wild man coughed and sputtered. His eyes opened wide. For a split second, I stared into his startlingly blue eyes.
“Gator!” I shouted at him. “Get in!”
He looked past me and saw the gator.
Seven seconds away.
He gripped the side of the boat. Then, with his other hand, he grabbed the back of my jumpsuit. With a heave of his other huge arm, he flung me over the edge of the boat.
I landed hard with my chin on the seat of the boat. Stunned. Water streamed from my jumpsuit.
I pushed up on my arms. My face bumped into the little black box that he had used to jam the electrical signals.
The gator was almost on the wild man.
His hand came out of the water with his knife. He lifted it high.
The gator's mouth opened wide, showing yellow, jagged teeth and the pink, soft inside of its throat.
And as the thought entered my mind, I acted. I picked up the little black box and fired it into that wide-open mouth.
The jaws snapped shut.
The gator roared! It flipped over and thrashed from side to side.
The wild man screamed at the same time. He began to sink in the water. Ashley grabbed his arm and held him to the side of the boat. She, too, screamed.
Then it was over. The gator sank. And Ashley and the wild man gasped for breath.
“You felt that too?” he said to Ashley.
She nodded. “A shock when I touched you.”
“Trust me,” he said, recovering his breath. “It was worse on me. I was in the water. And it's a great conductor of electricity.” His massive chest heaved against the fabric of his wet shirt. Then, out of the blue, he began to laugh. “If electricity from the black box was shocking you and me, think of what it was doing to that gator.” He wiped blood from his forehead. Water dripped from his matted beard. The wild man directed his next words at me. “When that gator was coming, you could have got into the boat first.”
“Maybe,” I answered. I felt dumb lying on my stomach in the boat, my head resting on the seat, peering upward like some baby crawling on the floor. So I pulled myself up by my arms and rolled over to a sitting position. My jumpsuit was squishy with water. A few strands of green weed clung to my chest. “But I would have had to let go of you first. I was afraid you'd sink.”
“Which means you saved my life.” The wild man shook his head. Blood kept dribbling down into his eyebrows. He must have had a cut hidden somewhere under his thick hair. “Actually, twice. Because you zapped the gator with the black box. I'm not sure my knife would have done much good against that monster.”
He grinned, and his teeth flashed white against his dark, wet beard. “I guess I owe you then. That changes things so completely that I don't have much choice but to go on the run. With you.” He shook his head. “Plus you just cost me a million dollars.”
“Pardon me?”
“I'll explain later. We've got less than five minutes to clear this area. Or all of us are dead.”
As if in answer to him, we heard the roar of boat motors in the distance.
He got to his feet. The flat-bottom boat wobbled as he stepped toward our bigger boat and hauled himself into it. Moving quickly to the front, the wild man lifted the unconscious pilot and dragged him to the edge above us.
“Sounds like them,” he said. “Help me get this guy down into the flat-bottom. Because now I'd say we have less than two minutes.”
“My name is Nate!” he shouted above the noise of the engine. “Guys in the platoon called me Wild Man. Ashley and Tyce, right?”
With effortless efficiency, he had already lifted Ashley up from the flat-bottom boat into our boat. He'd done the same with me, setting me into my wheelchair as if gravity didn't exist for us. Next he'd moved forward and restarted the engine.
“Right,” Ashley answered. She gave me a strange look. I could guess what she was thinking.
How does he know our names?
I expected Nate to get us out of here immediately. Instead, he knelt by the dash of the boat and reached underneath. When he pulled his hand back, I saw a small gray box, with some wires dangling from where he had ripped it loose.
“Tracking device,” Nate shouted. “Now they'll have to find us the old-fashioned way.”
Tracking device? How could he know about that, too?