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.
35
Jaeger hauled himself on to the riverbank.
He sank to his knees in a sodden, exhausted heap, his limbs burning, his lungs gasping for breath. To any watching eyes he would appear more like a mud-encrusted, semi-drowned rat than a human being – not that he expected many to be watching.
For hours on end he’d quartered the Rio de los Dios searching for Irina Narov. He’d scanned the river from bank to bank, searching everywhere and yelling out her name. But he’d been unable to find the slightest sign of her, or the raft. And then he’d discovered what he’d most feared to find: his pack and the canoe flotation bag, still lashed together, but torn and shredded by caiman tooth and claw marks.
The battered remains of the makeshift raft had drifted into the shallows a good distance downstream. On an adjacent mudbank Jaeger had discovered one unnerving sign of the woman he’d tried so desperately to safeguard: her sky-blue headband, now sodden and torn and stained with mud.
Still he’d continued to search the riverbanks as far as he could go, but even as he’d done so, he’d feared his efforts were futile. He figured Narov must have been thrown from the raft, even as the caiman’s dead body had thrust him deep into the river’s inky depths. The rapids and the caimans would have done the rest.
He’d fought for the best part of a minute to regain the surface, but it was still enough time for the raft to have been swept completely out of his sight. Had it still been intact and afloat, he’d have been able to see the makeshift craft. He’d have been able to catch it and draw it into land.
And had Irina Narov still been with it, he might have been able to save her.
As it was… Well, he didn’t like to contemplate Narov’s exact fate, yet he didn’t doubt for one moment that she was gone. Narov was dead – either drowned in the Rio de los Dios, or torn apart by ravening black caimans; and most likely a mixture of the two.
And he, Will Jaeger, had been unable to do anything to save her.
He struggled to his feet and stumbled further up the muddy riverbank. In the dark shock of the moment, his training began to kick in. He slipped into full-on survival mode; it was all he knew how to do. He’d lost Narov, but the rest of the expedition was still out there somewhere in the jungle. There were eight people presumably waiting at that distant sandbar; reliant upon him.
Right now they had no coordinates to make for; no way to head towards the air wreck. And without a way forward, there was no easy way out of this savage Lost World; no exit strategy. To withdraw from a place as remote and as seemingly damned as the Cordillera de los Dios took a great deal of planning and preparation, as Jaeger well knew.
If Narov’s loss were to mean anything, he had to get himself reunited with his team and get them on the move. He had to lead them to the site of that wreck, and to do that he had to get himself to the sandbar – although the odds of him doing so were rapidly turning against him.
He proceeded to empty out the contents of his pockets, plus those of his belt pouches. After the chaos of the river crossing, he had no idea what if any of his kit remained. The rucksack had been rendered useless – shredded by the caimans and voided of its contents – but as he scanned his meagre possessions, Jaeger began to count his blessings.
His single most vital piece of kit – his compass, stuffed deep in a trouser pocket and zipped tight – was still there. With that one piece of equipment alone he stood a chance of making it through to the distant sandbar. He dragged out the map from his trouser side pocket. It was sodden and battered, but just about usable.
He had both map and compass; it was a start.
He checked his chest-mounted knife. It was still there, clipped firmly into its sheath; the knife Raff had given him; the one he’d put to such good use during the epic fight on Fernao beach – the fight in which Little Mo had been killed.
So much death; and now one more to contend with.
36
What Jaeger wouldn’t have given to have Raff alongside him now. Had the big Maori been here, Narov might have lived. There were no guarantees, of course, but Raff would have helped him fight off the killer caiman, and one or other of them would have likely escaped unscathed from that first attack, and so been able to safeguard the raft and its precious cargo.
But Jaeger was alone, Irina Narov was gone, and he had to steel himself to the hard facts. He had no choice. He had to go on.
He continued with his kit check. He had two full bottles of water slung in his belt rig – although the Katadyn filter was gone. He had a little emergency food, the roll of paracord that he’d used to lower Narov and himself from the canopy, plus two dozen rounds for the shotgun.
He dumped the shotgun shells. They were a useless deadweight without the weapon.
Amongst the few other bits and pieces that the kit check revealed, his gaze came to rest upon the shiny form of the C-130 pilot’s coin. The Night Stalkers’ motto glistened in the sunlight: Death Waits in the Dark. No doubt about it – death red in tooth and claw had lurked in the dark waters of the Rio de los Dios.