Something scratched his hull. Thorn peered over the side and saw a braided net concealed a few inches below the waterline, and he yanked the throttle back, throwing the gears into reverse to keep from tangling his prop in the mesh, but he was several seconds late.
Strands of the net wrapped around the blades and shaft, almost instantly binding tight, and the Evinrude strained, belched, and the engine seized.
The cove went still.
Thorn drifted forward a few inches before the netting tugged the skiff to a halt. On two sides of the cove the mesh had been stretched to the banks, where dozens of aluminum stakes were hammered into the muck and sand to hold the main lines taut. A snare, a boat killer. Though it would have been easy enough to avoid if he’d been paying attention.
He tried to tilt the engine up, but could only raise it a few inches, the props still trapped firmly below the waterline. On his knees he bent over the transom to inspect the situation. The strands of braided nylon were thin and would be easy to slice with one of the knives he’d brought. Except the mesh had circled the shaft so many times, the metal was buried several inches deep, which meant that sawing through the tangle could take a while.
Rising, he went back to the console and slipped the gears into neutral and turned the ignition key. The engine fired up, belched, and died. He tried a second time and the engine made an even uglier belch.
So that was it. Once he managed to cut away the mesh, he’d have to tear open the engine and track down the issue. But it sounded serious, a blown piston ring or head gasket. Neither of which he was equipped to repair.
Which left nothing to do but swim to shore.
He stepped around the console and surveyed the cove.
At the edge of the sandy beach, a two-tiered wooden storage rack held a half dozen kayaks painted dull primer black.
As he was turning away, Thorn saw an odd shape slung out on the sand. He stopped, came forward, stepped up on the casting platform, and squinted to be sure.
Yes, basking in the sun on the beach was an enormous serpent, a healthy Burmese python. Its head and a couple of feet of its body were exposed, but its hindquarters were hidden in the shadows of the foliage. It was as thick as a goal post, sleek and shiny with blotches on its dark skin outlined in a shade of gold like drizzles of butterscotch. Ghastly and gorgeous.
For the last few years since pythons first appeared in the Everglades, they’d been devastating the ranks of foxes, raccoons, possums, and marsh rabbits, and multiplying so fast they’d begun to push east into the western suburbs of Miami, while others headed west into the outskirts of Naples and Fort Myers. Though these days they were being relentlessly hunted by airboat sportsmen and park rangers and herpetologists, their population was still exploding into the thousands.
Folks in the Upper Keys had thought they were safe from the invasion because the big snakes didn’t tolerate salt water for sustained periods. And a lot of salt water buffered the Keys from the freshwater Everglades. But recently biologists discovered the pythons had found a clever way to cross those barriers. By moving from one brackish estuary to the next, they’d managed to hopscotch south to the Keys, where now they’d taken up residence and were snacking on local egrets, possums, and feral pigs. Even a few deer had been found under digestion in the bellies of some larger specimens.
Thorn’s arrival in the cove had stirred the water, and ripples were sloshing against the sandy shoreline. That small disturbance roused the snake from its sun-dazed slumber. It lifted its head, swiveled it side to side, absorbing the situation. Then the python began a slow glide out into the sunlight, coming and coming till its length was fully revealed.
Fifteen feet, maybe longer, well over a hundred pounds. And it continued to slide forward to the shoreline, where it nosed into the water and disappeared into the basin to investigate.
SEVEN
THORN KEPT WATCH TO SEE where the big snake was headed, but lost it in the dark water. Maybe he’d spooked it, sent it off to a more secluded spot. He peered into the water for a few minutes more but saw no sign of it.
From the bow of his skiff, the shore was a good forty feet away, an easy stone’s throw. A half minute’s swim.
But to be sure the snake was busy elsewhere, he opened his tackle box and gathered a handful of split shot, then tucked the pry bar in the waistband of his shorts.
He stepped up onto the bow deck and edged forward until the toes of his boat shoes jutted beyond the rub rail. He looked across at the closest spit of sandy beach, chose the shortest angle.
He slung a few of the lead weights to the far corner of the basin, then waited a few seconds and plunked two more into the widening riffles of the first splashes, then sailed the last handful into the same splatter. Enough of a distraction to give him a decent head start.