Jaeger glanced where she was looking. There were scores more of the arachnids crawling towards them. In fact, their parachute rigging seemed to be alive with the things.
‘Phoneutria,’ Narov continued. ‘Greek for murderess. We must have hit a nest as we came through.’ She glanced at him. ‘Rearing up with their front legs is a defensive posture. If you cut one, the body gives off a scent that warns its siblings, and then they really attack. The venom contains the PhTx3 neurotoxin. A nerve poison. Symptoms are very similar to a nerve gas attack: loss of muscle control and breathing, followed by paralysis and asphyxiation.’
‘Whatever you say, Dr Death,’ Jaeger muttered.
She glared at him. ‘I will fend them off. You – you get us down from here.’
Jaeger reached behind her with the commando knife and began to cut through the thick band of canvas-like material that joined her parachute harness to its rigging. As he sliced away, he saw Narov’s knife dart forward and flick a second and a third spider away.
She fended off more and more of the things, but he figured she must have missed one. It came pulsing towards him, front legs rearing up, fangs just inches from his bare hand. Acting on instinct, he flicked the knife towards it, the razor-sharp stiletto point jabbing at its underside. As the blade nicked it and drew blood, the spider balled up, rolling away and plummeting towards the forest floor.
The instant it did so, Jaeger sensed a clicking, clacking alarm signal pulse through its scores of fellow arachnids, as they sensed that one of their number had been blooded.
As one, they surged forward to attack.
‘Now they really come!’ Narov hissed.
She unsheathed her blade and lunged to left and right, stabbing at the hissing mass of arachnids. Jaeger redoubled his efforts. After a final few slashes, he succeeded in cutting Narov free, her weight dragging her down at an alarming rate before the carabiner locking her to Jaeger’s harness pulled her up short.
For a split second he tensed for his canopy giving way under the extra weight, but luckily it held fast. He reached above his head, hacked at his rigging savagely, and a moment later it too gave way.
Both he and Narov broke free, as if they were falling.
For a second or two he let them plummet – the paracord rope hissing through the belay plate – until he judged they were well out of reach of the army of deadly arachnids. Then he closed his grip on the length of paracord and snatched it vertically downwards, pulling it tight.
The friction against the belay plate served to slow and halt their fall. They were now dangling on the paracord line some thirty feet below their chutes, which were now a seething mass of enraged and highly toxic spiders.
Phoneutria. Jaeger would be very happy never to see another as long as he lived.
He’d hardly had time to indulge the thought before the first of the writhing silvery blobs launched itself after them. It plunged vertically downwards, trailing out its own rope – a thin thread of spider’s silk – behind it.
In response, Jaeger released the paracord and he and Narov plunged into the fall once more.
29
They’d barely dropped a dozen feet when they were brought to a halt with a sickening jerk. A broken strap in Narov’s HAHO suit had got trapped in the belay device, jamming it.
Jaeger cursed.
He grabbed the material with his free hand and tried to rip it free. As he did so, he felt something soft and bony land in his hair with an angry, bubbling hiss.
A razor-sharp blade slashed just millimetres above his scalp.
Jaeger sensed the knife tip tear into the Phoneutria – the arachnid balling up in agony, losing its grip and tumbling off his head into thin air. Again and again Narov’s blade chopped through the shadows as she fought off the spiders and Jaeger struggled to free the stubborn strap.
Finally, he managed to pull it clear of the belay, and they jerked back into the abseil.
‘They don’t give up easily,’ he grunted, as he let the paracord zip through the belay system.
‘They do not,’ Narov confirmed.
She held up one arm in front of his face. It hadn’t escaped Jaeger’s notice that she was left-handed. There was a horrible-looking reddish-black welt spreading across the upper surface of her left hand, and he could see two distinct bite marks.
Her eyes were awash with pain. ‘If you cut one Phoneutria, they all attack,’ she reminded him. ‘Victims describe the pain of a bite as like having fire running through your veins. It is quite accurate.’
Jaeger was speechless.
Narov had been bitten by one of the spiders that had dropped on them, yet she hadn’t even cried out. More to the point, was he about to lose one of his expedition members, and before they’d even got started?
‘I’ve got the anti-venom.’ He glanced downwards. ‘But it’s in my backpack. We’ve got to get you down, and fast.’
Jaeger jerked his right hand upwards as far as it would go. The paracord rope hissed through the belay device faster than ever, and the two of them plummeted towards the ground at full speed. He was glad of his gloves, for the doubled-over paracord was still razor-thin to hold.
He made sure his boots hit first, taking the impact for the two of them. Normally he’d have used the rope and belay system to slow them to a halt before they touched down. But it had been a race against the Phoneutria, and they were out of time. He had to get his hands on the venom antidote.
They landed in the sullen gloom.
Very little of the sunlight that filters through the jungle canopy makes it to the forest floor. Some ninety per cent of the available illumination is sucked up by the mass of hungry vegetation layered above – making it semi-dark at ground level.
Until Jaeger’s eyes adjusted to the low light levels, it would be hard to spot any dangers – like spiders.
He was pretty certain no Phoneutria would be able to follow them the full length of the fall, but – once bitten, twice shy. He glanced upwards. In the odd shaft of sunlight that penetrated the forest depths, he could just make out a score of silken threads glinting ominously, each lowering a glistening bundle of venomous death.
Unbelievably, the Phoneutria were still coming, and by the looks of it, Narov was pretty much incapable of moving out of their way.
As the spiders zipped downwards, Jaeger dragged her a few yards away from the abseil line. Then he unstrapped his shotgun, levelled it in the general direction of the Phoneutria and opened fire. The repeated retorts of the blasts in quick succession were deafening: Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom!
The Benelli had a pump action and a seven-round magazine, each loaded with 9 mm lead shot. A tidal wave of pellets tore into the arachnids.
Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom!
The last rounds erupted with the horde of Phoneutria practically sitting on the end of Jaeger’s gun barrel, the shot turning them into instant spider purée. That was what Jaeger loved about the Benelli: you just pointed it in the general direction and let rip – although he’d never once envisaged using it against spiders.
The last echoes of the thunderous blasts reverberated around him, the sound thrown back from the massive tree trunks to either side. He could hear the panicked screams of what sounded like a troop of primates, high in the treetops. Very quickly the monkeys made themselves scarce, moving fast through the branches in the opposite direction.
The noise of the gunshots had been deafening and strangely ominous.
No doubt about it, Jaeger had just telegraphed their arrival to anyone or anything that might be listening… But to hell with it – he’d needed something with real firepower to deal with the tide of Phoneutria, and the combat shotgun was most definitely built for the job.