Burning Angels

32

Jaeger kicked off with his boots, forcing his body outwards into space and letting gravity do the rest. The rope hissed through the belay plate as he plummeted downwards in an abseil, the floor of the crater coming closer with every second.

Some fifty feet below him, Narov was hanging on her climbing gear: a D-shaped carabiner clicked into a chock – a wedge-like piece of metal jammed into a convenient crack in the rock face, with a strong steel loop attached. She was well anchored as she waited for Jaeger to reach her, after which she’d begin the next leg of the descent.

The eight hundred metres of near-vertical rock that formed the interior face of Burning Angels crater made for some fourteen separate abseils, on a sixty metre climbing rope – which was about the maximum size that a man could carry.

It was proving to be quite an undertaking

Some seventy-two hours earlier Jaeger had sat in stunned silence. Peter Miles’ briefing had left little to the imagination. It wasn’t just about Ruth and Luke anymore. Quite possibly, the survival of the entire human species was at stake.

As honeymooners might, he and Narov had flown club class direct to the main international airport here, before hiring a 4x4 and heading west into the sun-baked African bush. After an eighteen-hour drive, they’d reached Burning Angels Peak, pulled over, locked their hire vehicle and begun their epic climb.

Jaeger’s boots made contact again, and he kicked hard, booting himself away from the cliff face. But as he did so, large chunks of rock broke off and plummeted downwards… towards where Narov was hanging on her climbing gear.

‘Rock fall!’ Jaeger yelled. ‘Watch out below!’

Narov didn’t so much as glance upwards. She didn’t have the time. Instead, Jaeger saw her grasp with her bare fingers at the rock face, as she scrabbled to flatten her torso to its surface, pressing her face into its sun-warmed hardness. Against the massive expanse of the crater she looked small and fragile somehow, and Jaeger held his breath as the mini-avalanche crashed down.

At the last instant, the boulders smashed into a narrow lip of rock just above where she was positioned, ricocheting outwards and missing her by bare inches.

That had been close. If just one rock had hit, it would have cracked her skull open, and Jaeger wouldn’t be able to rush her to a hospital any time soon out here.

He let the last of the rope whistle through his fingers, and pulled to a halt beside her.

She eyed him. ‘There are enough things here that want to kill us. I don’t need you as well.’ She seemed fine. Not even shaken.

Jaeger clicked himself on to the climbing gear, detached from the rope and handed it over. ‘Your turn. Oh, and be careful with the rocks. Some of them are a little loose.’

As he knew only too well, Narov wasn’t great with his teasing sense of humour. Generally she tried to ignore him, which just made it all the funnier.

She scowled. ‘Schwachkopf.’

As he’d learned in the Amazon, she was fond of that German curse word – idiot. He presumed it was something she’d picked up during her time with the Secret Hunters.

As Narov readied herself, Jaeger gazed westwards over the crater’s steaming interior. He could see where a massive archway sliced right through the crater wall. The opening allowed the lake due west of there to flood in during the height of the rains, so boosting the level of the floodwaters in the crater.

And that was what made this place so very dangerous.

Lake Tanganyika, the world’s longest freshwater lake, stretched north for several hundred kilometres from here. The lake’s isolation and its vast age – it was some twenty million years old – had enabled a unique ecosystem to evolve. Its waters harboured giant crocodiles, huge crabs and massive hippos. The lush forests that crowded the lake were home to herds of wild elephant. And with the coming of the rains, much of that life was washed outwards from the lake and into Burning Angels crater.

Between Jaeger and that imposing archway lay one of the caldera’s main waterholes. He could barely see it, due to the lush forest cover. But he sure could hear it. The blow and suck and bellowing of the hippos reached him clearly on the hot and humid air.

A one-hundred-strong ‘bloat’ was gathered there, mushing the waterhole into the mother of all mudbaths. And as the merciless African sun beat down and the waterhole began to shrink, so the massive animals were forced closer and closer, hippo tempers fraying.

No doubt about it, that kind of terrain was to be given as wide a berth as possible. The watercourses linking the mud holes were also to be avoided. They harboured crocodiles, and after Jaeger and Narov’s encounter with one of those murderously powerful reptiles in the Amazon, they didn’t fancy another.

They’d stick to dry land wherever possible.

But of course, even there was danger.