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.