In the Shadow of Falcon's Wings

CHAPTER 6 DARK WATER

The men closest to Dodge’s exposed flank made the first move. Hurricane’s sheer size alone was enough to give the remaining ruffians pause. Marten, confident that the smaller man posed no significant threat, kept his revolver trained on Hurley, but did not fire. Hurricane was truly a bear of a man, and Marten correctly recognized that a wounded and enraged Hurley might do a lot of damage before finally going down.

Dodge had no time to consider any of this. A length of chain came whipping toward his head and he barely had time to throw his duffel bag up to parry the assault. The chain thudded ineffectually against the cloth, but the man’s counterpart moved in from the other side, swinging a length of board adorned with rusty nails.

In the moments before the attack had commenced, Dodge had thought about the fighting techniques he had learned as a young man in Brooklyn. He had never been a brawler, but had been a better than average wrestler and as a budding sportswriter had spent a lot of time at boxing gyms. One lesson came back to him now; always follow a block with a counterattack.

He ignored the man with the club and instead threw all his weight behind the duffel bag. With luggage leading, he slammed into the torso of the chain-wielder and bowled him backward over the gunwale. The African stumbled over the edge and plunged into the river, while Dodge pitched forward onto the sodden deck planks and slid into the bulkhead.

The unexpected turn of events caused a momentary lull in the attack. No one had expected Dodge to offer any sort of resistance, and although the thugs still held three-to-one odds, they now viewed their foes with just a little more caution. A crewman holding a length of pipe moved to back up the other assailant and both men stalked toward Dodge as he scrambled to his feet, his back against the waist high gunwale and his luggage hefted as a shield.

Before the men could coordinate an attack however, a bloodcurdling scream erupted from behind Dodge. He risked a sidelong glance at the crewman he had knocked into the river, and saw the man thrashing in a panic. Then, just as abruptly, he vanished under the surface as if snatched by a submerged hand. Dodge caught a glimpse of something black and scaly swishing in the muddied water, and realized that jumping overboard to escape the attack would be a classic ‘frying pan to fire’ blunder. He didn’t have time to consider other alternatives because the two crewmen chose that moment to charge.

Hurricane’s situation remained a tense standoff. The two crewmen facing him had yet to make their move, despite a torrent of curses from Marten’s mate. The fury of his words was not enough to motivate them to risk the titanic fists of Hurricane Hurley. Despairing of the impasse, the mate charged forward and stabbed his pistol toward the big man’s chest. Hurley’s response caught everyone by surprise.

Hurricane did not unleash his thunderous physical power against his foes, but instead merely tossed his bag at the advancing first mate. The duffel slammed into the extended pistol and deflected the barrel down in the same instant that the man squeezed the trigger. The slug tore a ragged hole in the deck near Hurley’s left boot, but the giant’s stance never wavered. The mate wrestled the smoking firearm back up, but as the barrel came level with his target’s chest, he saw that Hurricane was no longer a defenseless mark.

Faster than the eye could follow, Hurley had unlimbered a pair of guns — to call them ‘pistols’ did not begin to express the size of Hurricane’s firearms of choice — from beneath his bush jacket. The guns were enormous. Although they appeared to be just right for his massive grip, it had to be remembered that, when held by Hurley, a Colt M1911 looked like a ladies pocketbook derringer.

Dodge had written extensively about Hurricane’s hand cannons. The customized semi-automatic pistols had been commissioned and designed by John Moses Browning specifically for Hurley. Patterned after the Howdah pistols — large bore handguns used in India to hunt tigers from the backs of elephants — the guns put the power of a big game rifle into a rapid-fire handheld package; handheld for Hurricane, that is. Most mere mortals had difficulty holding one of the seven-pound hunks of iron on target, and those who managed to pull the trigger were liable for a bone cracking recoil. Each gun held a magazine with six hand-loaded .50 caliber cartridges, likewise custom ordered for Hurley. Only two of the weapons had ever been made and until this moment, Dodge had believed the guns, like so many of the things in the Falcon chronicle, to be an elaborate tall tale.

Marten’s mate didn’t get a very good look at the guns. He saw only the gaping barrels pointed directly at his eyes, and even that was only a brief glance. The pistols thundered simultaneously and the hooligan’s eyes along with everything else above his nose, vanished in a crimson cloud.

One of the rounds continued unimpeded to blast apart one of the upright posts holding up the tin awning, peppering the stunned Marten in a shower of splinters. The sudden pain of wood spurs ripping into his flesh jolted the treacherous skipper into action, and as one corner of the overhang drooped down between himself and Hurley, he dove for cover behind the onboard engine.

Hurricane’s guns spoke again, blasting one of the crewmen dead center in the chest and punching him back under the misshapen awning. The other fellow was marginally luckier. His last minute attempt to remove himself from the line of fire had almost worked; the half-inch slug merely knocked a fist-sized chunk of flesh and bone from his shoulder.

Hurley did not curse the rare off-center shot, but instead brought his guns to bear on the pair of men assailing Dodge. Both thugs had done an abrupt about-face at the first pistol shot and now cowered in place in his sights. He checked his fire, not to mercifully spare their lives, but simply because Dodge was right behind them.

Marten chose that instant to snap off a blind shot that was partially deflected by the collapsed metal awning. The bullet caromed from the corrugated tin and caught one of the crewmen in the jaw, spinning the unfortunate fellow around to send him crashing into Dodge. Hurley answered with a shot that rang the engine cowling like a bell. With his attention diverted, he was a split-second too late to prevent Dodge and the wounded crewman from toppling over the gunwale.

“Dodge!” Hurley holstered his pistols as quickly as he had drawn them and rushed to the edge, but Marten seized the moment to unload his weapon at the big man. Hurricane caught a glimpse of his friend as the dark water swallowed him, but the fusillade forced him back behind the rudimentary cover afforded by the demolished tin shelter.

Dodge managed to suck in a breath before the river closed over his face. For just a moment, all he could think about were the horror stories he had heard of waterborne tropical illnesses, and he clamped his mouth shut to avoid ingesting the murky fluid. Then something brushed against his leg and all concerns about microscopic predators went out the window.

The bump he had felt was the wounded crewman, thrashing in a total panic because he, unlike Dodge, had caught a glimpse of the crocodiles lurking in the marsh at the river’s edge. His hysterics were the wilderness equivalent of a flashing neon sign, and a brace of fifteen-foot long reptiles eased smoothly from their lair and shot toward him like torpedoes.

Dodge willed himself motionless, trying more than anything else to imitate a drifting log. He didn’t know if crocs were that gullible, but he reckoned he stood a better chance by not drawing attention to himself. A moment later, the air in his lungs buoyed him back to the surface. The sight that greeted his mud-streaked eyes was something that would forever haunt his dreams.

The wounded crewman, still screaming like the damned, was caught in a crushing grip across the abdomen by one of the immense crocodiles. A second leviathan had clamped its jaws down on a leg, and to Dodge’s horror, twisted itself violently in the water. There was an awful cracking, tearing sound as the man’s knee joint came apart. The triumphant croc rolled back onto its belly and thrust its snout triumphantly skyward, and then in a single gulp devoured the severed limb.

A cascade of blood stained the surface of the thick water, marking the location of the feast for the rest of the herd that now splashed from their resting place, eager to pull off a few chunks for themselves.

Dodge fought the panic that crawled up his spine and stayed perfectly motionless. A gentle current was pushing him away from the embattled riverboat and further from the relative safety of shore. His feet occasionally dragged across the bottom, but he was too far out to stand up.

He cursed himself for not having thought to bring a weapon. Hurricane had his guns, Falcon had always carried the hatchet his ancestor had used fighting with Rogers’ Rangers, but Dodge didn’t have so much as a pocket knife — not that any sort of weapon would be much use against the armored monsters that lurked along the edge of the Congo.

Something brushed his outstretched fingers and he started involuntarily; it was only the nail-studded timber the ill-fated crewman had been using as a bludgeon. Dodge took it in his grip. Better than nothing, I suppose. The crocs however had noticed the sudden movement and those that were on the fringe of the feast turned their hungry gaze in his direction.

Hurricane had heard the bloodcurdling screams but didn’t know their source. In his mind’s eye, it was Dodge being ripped apart — another comrade lost on his watch. During the battle at the White House at least, Dodge’s fate had been uncertain; there was nothing uncertain about a plunge into crocodile infested waters.

Marten however did not relent in his attack. Bullets sizzled through the air, blasting chunks of wood from the dilapidated craft’s gunwales or pinging off the tin awning mere inches from Hurricane’s hiding spot. At least ten shots had been fired; Marten was either able to reload his revolver with lightning fast fingers, or possessed more than one weapon. Hurley assumed the latter.

He forced back the berserker rage that often arose when his friends were imperiled, and instead applied his not inconsiderable intellect to the immediate task of defeating the treacherous Marten. He let Marten get off two shots to his one, and with deft fingers topped off his magazines; a good thing about a fifty-caliber round was that its size made reloading a snap. That, and it puts big holes in bad guys, thought Hurricane, letting his weapon do the talking.

Hurley put all his chips on twelve. As soon as Marten let his twelfth shot fly, the rampaging giant broke from cover and side-stepped across the deck, his guns alternately thundering toward the engine behind which Marten cowered. The renegade skipper stayed down, giving Hurricane a chance to glance over the side.

His heart did a somersault. Dodge was still alive, but a gaggle of crocs was bearing down on him, now more than thirty yards from the boat. Hurley targeted the beast nearest his friend and let lead fly.

Normally, a round from a handgun would have the effect of irritating a scale-armored crocodile, not unlike pebbles thrown by a small child. The bullets from Hurricane’s cannons however, were more like the stones from David’s sling. His first shot blasted into top of the beast’s flat skull, right between its eyes, and skewered it like a bug on pin.

The stricken animal’s death throes broke apart the concerted charge. Its whipping tail stunned two crocs in its wake, sending them splashing back to shore in a primal panic, but the rest veered around the thrashing corpse and renewed the attack.

The sight of Hurricane at the edge of the boat, raining Hell on the black-snouted carnivores was just the thing Dodge needed to pull himself back from the brink of despair. A second croc squealed as a slug punched into its torso, tearing its innards to shreds inside its armored barrel, but for every dragon slain by the giant, there were two more splashing from the shallows to take its place.

Almost too late, it occurred to Dodge that staying still wasn’t helping anymore. His abrupt decision to start paddling away from the onslaught spared him from a pair of snapping jaws, but the reprieve was brief. Another gullet gaped, close enough for him to count the rows of peg-like teeth.

Dodge threw himself sideways, and in the same motion jammed his captured club into the beast’s throat. The trap snapped shut on the length of wood and the crocodile immediately shook its head vigorously, trying to break its prey’s spine. Dodge, still hanging onto the timber by one hand, was hurled back and forth, but before he could think to let go, the croc changed tactics and dove beneath the surface.

Dodge was sucked once more into the river’s dark embrace, drawn to the bottom by his fierce hold on the club. The crocodile did not differentiate; the piece of wood was merely an extension of its meal’s body. All it had to do was wait for the victim trapped in its jaws to drown, and then the feast would begin.

A cry escaped Hurricane’s lips as Dodge went under. All thought of avenging himself on Marten evaporated, as did his hesitation for entering the bestial battle in the waters below. Holstering his empty pistols, he leaped onto the transom and launched himself out over the river.

The bow of the vessel rose from the water as his full weight bore down at the stern, throwing the frantic Marten from his hiding place. The wounded and dead members of his crew were likewise catapulted into the air, but did not share the luck of their captain who managed to snare a handhold. Their bodies sailed over the side into the slavering jaws of a dozen crocodiles.

As big as he was, Hurricane would have been outmatched by even a single Nile crocodile. The fearsome carnivores, named for the waterway where they had first been discovered, were arguably the most rapacious species in Africa; they had to be in order to feed their massive bodies. The average length for the creatures, whose range extended to nearly every part of the Dark Continent where water was plentiful, was sixteen feet and a healthy adult might weigh more than 500 pounds. They were bigger, stronger and faster even than the awesome Hurricane Hurley. But you wouldn’t have known it to look at him.

He came down with both feet directly on the back of one croc, driving the creature into the depths. His landing was so forceful that the reptilian snout was plunged into the murky mud at the bottom where suction held it fast. The croc, a complete stranger to panic, launched into a spasm of thrashing but succeed only in miring its stubby forelegs as well.

Hurley caught a blow from the doomed beast’s tail, but his berserkergang was fully on and he barely felt the impact that would have killed a lesser man. A pair of jaws yawned before him, but he gripped the animal’s throat and thrust its head into a second opened mouth, removing two threats at once. He oriented himself on the place where Dodge had disappeared, and launched out with massive strokes like the oars of a war galley.

Still trapped in the darkness below the surface, Dodge got his other hand on the timber and started pulling. It was a fierce tug of war against a creature three times his size, with jaws that were the equal of an industrial vise. His lungs were on fire, but all he got for his efforts was a palm full of splinters. Then the croc jerked his head sideways and wrenched the board from his hands.

Although he had lost his only weapon, Dodge now realized that he was free of the crocodile’s death-grip. Unsure of which way was up, he picked a direction at random and started kicking. Several seconds passed before he rose to the top and greedily sucked in a breath.

The boat was now nearly fifty yards away and in between it and him was a small army of crocodiles. A face, barely visible in the distance, rose into view from the vessel’s deck, and Dodge’s spirits fell again. It was Marten.

The villainous river pilot was bloodied, but his countenance wore the expression of a man victorious. Marten gazed down the visible length of the river for a moment, and then took the helm of his idling craft. The engine was coughing and smoking due to damage from the gun-battle, but it could still turn the screws, and at the skipper’s guiding, the boat turned away from the dock and began chugging upriver.

Suddenly a geyser of muddy water exploded in front of Dodge, and from its midst emerged Hurricane, one arm wrapped around the snout of a thrashing crocodile while the other gouged at its eyes and nostrils. When Hurley saw Dodge, a fierce grin split his face.

“Get to the —”

The hoarse shout was cut off as the leviathan’s struggles took its rider once more under the surface, but Dodge got the message. Most of the crocodiles had relented, preferring the easy pickings from the remains of the crew to this pair of tough nuts. There remained three between Dodge and the shore however, not counting the one Hurricane now fought.

Dodge swam with the current, adding its speed to his own as he angled toward the reedy bank, but it wasn’t enough. The crocs were faster; there was no way he was going to make to shore. Then, salvation hit him in the face… literally.

He jerked involuntarily, once more thinking the worst, but the object that had glanced off his cheek did not belong to the animal kingdom. Quite the contrary, it was a plant, a root actually, of a sapling that had sprouted on a moss clump in an overhanging tree branch and extended its tendrils down to drink from the river. Dodge immediately seized at the fibrous cords, but when he tried to climb, his raw fingers slipped uselessly on the slick surface. He tried lifting himself up to grip the root between his legs, but he couldn’t seem to get his knees high enough. The reptiles, sensing that they had finally run their prey down, closed in.

Dodge marshaled all of his frantic energy into a single effort, stretched his arms as high as they would reach, and hauled on the root. His panic gave him additional strength, but it was the boost he got from planting a foot on the snout of the nearest croc that got him clear of the water. The pack snapped at his heels and tried to grip the root, but he deftly avoided their strikes. Then the unthinkable happened.

Dodge felt himself drop once more toward the water. He tightened his grip, but his descent only hastened. In fact, his grip was secure; it was the tree that had failed. The African mahogany tree, which played host to the plant that now served as Dodge’s lifeline, had drunk mightily over the years from the marshy soil from which its seed had sprung, but the trade off for such abundant and easily obtained moisture was a superficial root system anchored in soft mud. For years it had been canting lazily toward the river as the seasonal floods undermined its foundation; now Dodge’s weight was the final straw.

There was a cacophony of shrieks as a horde of lounging colobus monkeys was evicted from their resting place in the crowned treetop. The small primates were suddenly everywhere, swarming over Dodge as the entire trunk plunged toward the river. Dodge was still hugging the root to which he clung when the Congo embraced him once more.