Ghost Flight

34

Jaeger kicked across the first open stretch of water, keeping both hands on the raft. Narov lay before him, curled into a ball, unmoving. It was crucial that he kept going straight and steady. If the raft were spun violently or became unbalanced, she would tumble off, and would be as good as dead in the water.

She was too far gone to fend for herself, or even to swim for it.

Jaeger’s eyes scanned the river to either side. He was almost level with the surface, giving him a weird, otherworldly perspective. He figured this was what it must be like to be one of the Rio de los Dios caimans, cruising the waters mostly submerged and hunting for their prey.

He searched to left and right, checking for any that might be heading their way.

He was twenty yards from the mudbank ahead when he sighted the first. It was the movement that drew his eye. He watched as it slithered into the river a good hundred yards or so upstream. Ungainly on land, the massive creature moved with a deadly grace and speed as it entered the water, and Jaeger felt every muscle tensing for the fight.

But instead of heading downstream, towards them, the caiman turned its snout northwards, nosing its way upriver for a good fifty yards or more. Then it climbed out on to a mudbank and went back to what it had been doing earlier – sunbathing.

Jaeger heaved a sigh of relief. That was one caiman that clearly wasn’t feeling hungry.

A few moments later he felt his boots touch the bottom. Wading now, he pushed the raft up on to the first patch of land – a stretch of boggy sediment a dozen feet across. He moved to the front of the craft, and began to haul it onwards, his limbs burning with the effort. With each step his legs sank up to the knees in the black, clinging mud.

Twice he lost his grip completely, falling on to his hands and knees and getting splattered all over in stinking filth. For a moment he was reminded of the swamp that he and Raff had hidden in on Bioko island. Difference was, there had been no giant caimans to contend with there.

By the time he reached the edge of the deeper water again, he was covered from head to toe in putrid black gunk and rotting matter, and his pulse was thumping like a machine gun with the exertion.

He figured there were two more shallow mudbanks that he couldn’t navigate his way around; that he’d be forced to cross. No doubt about it, he was going to be utterly finished by the time they reached the far side.

If they reached the far side.

He waded in again, pulling the raft after him, then resumed the prone position behind it. As he kicked out and propelled the craft towards the centre of the river, the current tugged at it more powerfully. Jaeger was forced to struggle with all his might to keep it balanced, his legs pumping to make any headway.

Downstream the water was shallower, but faster moving near the bank. Jaeger could see the river getting turbulent as it coursed over rocks that created a stretch of white water. He needed to get across before they were swept into those rapids.

The raft neared the second of the mudbanks. As it did so, Jaeger felt an unexpected touch. Something had brushed against his right arm. He glanced up, only to find that it was Narov’s hand. Her fingers reached out, curled around his, and she gave a faint squeeze.

He didn’t know quite what she was trying to tell him; reading this woman was nigh-on impossible. But maybe, just maybe, the ice queen was starting to melt a little.

‘I know what you are thinking.’ Her voice barely reached him, reduced to a half-whisper as it was by all the toxins burning through her system. ‘But I am not being intimate. I am trying to alert you. The first caiman – it is coming.’

Using his wrists to keep hold of the raft, Jaeger grabbed both weapons. He held them by their pistol grips, index fingers curled around the triggers, barrels menacing the water to left and right, his eyes scanning the surface.

‘Where?’ he hissed. ‘Which side?’

‘Eleven o’clock,’ Narov whispered. ‘More or less dead ahead. Forty feet. Closing fast.’

It was coming at them in his blind spot.

‘Hold tight,’ Jaeger yelled.

He released his grip on the weapon on his left, slipped free the knot that held the combat shotgun, grabbed it and dropped off the raft, diving beneath it, kicking hard with both legs. As he came up on the far side, he caught sight of a massive black snout knifing through the water towards him, a ribbed, scaly, armoured body snaking out behind it a good five metres or more.

It was a black caiman all right, and a real monster.

Jaeger levelled the weapon just as the caiman’s jaws yawned wide before him. He was staring down its very throat. There was no time to aim. He pulled the trigger at close to point-blank range, his left hand jerking the pump action backwards and ratcheting in another round, and another.

The impact of the repeated shots blew the reptile’s giant head clean out of the water, but it wasn’t enough to halt its forward progress. It might have been killed instantly, a blasted funnel of lead shot tearing into its brain, but still its bloodied corpse slammed into Jaeger with all the force of a 400-kilogram beast.

Jaeger felt the air being crushed out of his lungs as he was driven deep down under the raft, the dark and turbid waters closing all around him.

Above, the bloodied mass of the caiman’s front end came to rest with a sickening crunch, its dead eyes staring hungrily, its lacerated jaw slamming down into the forward arm of the raft.

The lightweight craft lurched alarmingly, the impact half breaking it in two. Moments later, the limp, lifeless weight of the caiman’s corpse began to slip below the surface of the river.

The stricken craft keeled over still further, the muddy water beginning to lap around Narov’s head and shoulders as it cannoned off rocks and was swept into the first of the rapids.

She sensed that it was going down. For a moment her muscles tensed as she tried to hold on.

But the effort was too much for her.

Finally Jaeger forced his way back to the surface, lungs choking out the fetid water of the Rio de los Dios. He’d been down deep and long fighting for his life and he felt half drowned. For a long moment he struggled for breath, his body screaming out for oxygen and desperate to drag the life-giving air into his system.

To either side of him were more caimans, closing in on the corpse of the monster he had just killed. They were drawn by the smell of blood. As Jaeger had been driven down towards the riverbed he’d lost his combat shotgun, and he was pretty much defenceless now, but the caimans weren’t paying much attention to him.

Instead, they had one of their own to feast upon, and the taste of the blood thick in the water was driving them wild.

For a long moment Jaeger tried to orientate himself, and then he too was dragged into the rapids. He tried to protect his torso as he was swept against the rocks, keeping his feet downstream to push off any obstacles and his arms out to the sides to steady himself.

He pulled himself into the slower current at the edge of the white water and did a 360-degree sweep, scanning for the raft. But as he eyed the river all around him, he couldn’t seem to locate it in any direction. The lightweight craft had completely disappeared, and its loss made his blood run cold.

He kept searching, growing ever more frantic, but still there was no sight of the makeshift craft.

And as for Irina Narov – there wasn’t the slightest sign of her anywhere.