In a panicked scrabble they dashed away from the falling grenade. It hit the ground in between them and exploded on impact, ripping up huge chunks of ancient roadway and the earth beneath and blowing it out in a mushroom of flame.
Two of Ming’s men were too slow and were almost instantly incinerated. Another fared little better and had most of his flesh roasted like a joint of meat.
Xan had the sense to follow the American and Ming, several footsteps behind, and as the blast wave rippled out, it plucked all three off the ground and hurled them into the icy water.
His head throbbing from the pounding Ming had given him and the concussion of the blast, Raine broke the surface and gasped for air, turning to face the two Chinese soldiers who had landed in the water alongside him.
Ming had lost his weapon, but Lieutenant Xan had not.
He moved quickly, bringing the water-proof weapon up to aim at Raine’s chest, point blank.
All Raine could do as he treaded the deep water was raise his hands in submission.
That was when, without a single sound and in the blink of an eye, the soldier was dragged beneath the surface of the water in an explosion of startled bubbles.
Dread dawned on the American and the Chinaman at the exact same moment.
Beneath the water, they felt the current surge and, peering nervously down beneath their feet, they saw the mammoth coils of the leviathan undulating as it digested its human prey.
Ignoring each other, both men threw themselves forward and swam for the water’s edge.
But they were both too slow.
Raine felt a sudden, intense and agonising weight wrap itself around his body, crushing his chest, mere moments before he was dragged into the dark domain of the monster.
17:
Leviathan
Nathan Raine thrashed manically, losing sight of Colonel Ming. The giant snake, an anaconda he guessed, clutched him in its coils, its giant girth squeezing. He felt muscles, incredibly strong, clenching beneath silky skin and he gasped for breath but was rewarded only by choking. He panicked and futilely smacked the snake with the palms of his hands—
He saw Ming, in a similar predicament, struggling, eyes bulging, gasping for air and drinking in the stale water. The coiled lengths of the snake slithered and twisted and brought the two men close together.
Raine saw his chance. As momentum and serpentine muscle brought him near to Ming, he reached out and plucked the Chinaman’s dagger from his combat webbing. With only seconds of consciousness left in him, he jabbed the blade deep into the snake’s flesh. He felt the beast contort in pain a second before a giant head whipped around, gnashing at him. But by that point the snake’s hold on him had loosened and he slid through its coils, out underneath and kicked to Ming’s side.
He repeated the process, stabbing the monster again and then ducking for cover, dragging Ming with him.
They broke the surface in a splutter of gasping breaths but already the anaconda, unwilling to lose a meal tastier than crocodile flesh, twisted and glided through the water towards them. Its terrifying head broke the surface, slicing through the fire-lit water like a shark. It closed on them, immense jaws opening—
Raine pushed to the side just before the anaconda’s jaws came crashing down on nothingness. Ming had duplicated his actions on the other side of the four foot girth, reaching out and holding on to the side of the snake’s head, careful to avoid its jaws. It was far safer to cling to the side of its head than be in front of it, Raine decided.
How the serpent had grown so staggeringly huge was beyond him. Everyone had heard tales of the giant anacondas spotted by the early European explorers but most had been ridiculed. There was no ridiculing this monster, however. Perhaps, secure in a world away from human interference, sustained by crocodiles, themselves massive, it had simply grown to such astonishing proportions. Perhaps it was simply a different sub-species of anaconda, one glanced at by a handful but never documented by science. There were enough folk tales from Amazonian tribes attesting to as much.
The other possibility which, bizarrely shot through his head at such an inopportune moment, was that perhaps it had been affected by the tachyon radiation emitted by the Moon Mask.
He hoped to live long enough to find out.
The snake dived again, thrashing from side to side to shake him and Ming loose. Again submerged, Raine held on for his life as they tore through the water. Wounded and angry now, the snake bucked and heaved its considerable weight. It smashed itself into the side of the waterway, almost knocking Raine free. In retaliation he jabbed the dagger into the side of its head.
The massive creature reared up out of the water and Raine saw his chance. He was yards away from the bridge and so he pushed off the snake and dived for it, feeling jaws closing just behind him.
Ming jumped also and landed, bent over the side of the stone blocks of the bridge, legs dangling above the water, arms scrambling for purchase. He fared much better than Raine, however, who crashed shoulder first into the bridge and was unable to find purchase. He dropped towards the water, arms cart-wheeling. His hands automatically closed around Ming’s trouser leg and he held firm. The Chinaman grunted and kicked.
“Let go!”
Raine glanced at the behemoth snake. It had over shot its mark, darted beneath the bridge, but now twisted its agile body around on itself, contorting its muscles to sway its length, propelling it forward: directly for Raine.
“Pull me up!” he gasped.
“Let me go!”
“Pull me up, you asshole!”
Ming’s grip on the top of the bridge was slipping.
Death ploughed through the water towards them.
“I helped you, now you help me!”
“If I pull you up, I’ll kill you anyway!” Ming admitted without pause. He kicked again, violently. Raine slipped, dropped, regained his hold, feet touching the water.
“How you Americans say? Eat my shorts?” He laughed at himself.
The snake’s head rose, its jaws opening, aimed directly at Raine… and the lower half of Ming’s body.
“I won’t,” Raine replied, “but he might.”
With that, he pulled the pin from his last remaining grenade, thrust it into the large pocket on Ming’s thigh and then pushed off from the Chinaman’s body, diving into the water, streamlining his body to drop as far down as possible.
The snake’s jaws closed around Ming’s legs and lower body and with a petrified shriek of primordial terror, the colonel was torn from the bridge and pounded into the water.
The grenade detonated.
The explosion blasted apart both Ming and the snake’s head in a grotesque balloon of blood and snake brains which plumed in the water and jettisoned through the air, splashing against the bridge and the nearby temples.
The snake’s body twitched momentarily before finally floating motionless on the surface.
Raine broke the surface to witness his handiwork. Frenzied splashes nearby told him that the crocodiles had witnessed the death of their own tormentor and they dove towards the bloodied carcass. Raine dragged himself out of the water and darted away from the danger it posed before glancing back around at the melee of death as the crocs tore the leviathan apart.