Nate ended up with Kouwe and Manny, along with Tor-tor. Their two mates were Corporal Okamoto and Private Carrera. The group was forced to wade through the shallows to reach the bamboo-and-log constructions. As Nate heaved himself onboard, he appreciated its sturdy construction. Reaching out, Nate helped Manny guide the large cat atop the bobbing raft.
Tor-tor was not pleased about getting wet. As the cat shook the swamp water from its pelt, the rest of the group mounted their own boats.
On the neighboring raft, Kelly and Frank stood with Captain Waxman, along with corporals Warczak and Yamir. The last five teammates climbed onto the farthest raft. Olin was careful to carry his pack with the satellite gear high above his head. Richard Zane and Anna Fong helped him aboard, flanked by a stoic Tom Graves and a scowling Sergeant Kostos.
Once everyone was mounted, lengths of bamboo were used as poles to push away from shore and through the shallows. But the swamp's banks dropped steeply. Within a hundred feet of the shore, the poles no longer touched bottom, and the paddles were taken up. With four paddles per raft, it allowed one person to rotate out and rest. The goal was to continue straight across without a break.
Nate manned the raft's starboard side as the tiny flotilla slowly drifted toward the far bank. Out on the waters, the distant roar of multiple waterfalls, muffled and threatening, echoed over the swamp lake. Nate stared, shading his eyes. The highlands across the way remained shrouded in mist: a mix of green jungle, red cliffs, and a fog of heavy spray. Their goal was a narrow ravine between two towering, flat-topped mesas, a yawning misty channel into the highlands. It had been where Clark's last carved message had pointed.
As they glided, the denizens of the swamp noted their passage. A snow-white egret skimmed over the water, a hand span above the surface. Frogs leaped from boggy hummocks with loud splashes, and hoatzin birds, looking like some ugly cross between a turkey and a pterodactyl, screeched at them as they circled over their nests atop the palms that grew from the island hummocks. The only inhabitants that seemed pleased with their presence were the clouds of mosquitoes, buzzing with joy at the floating smorgasbord.
"Damned bugs," Manny griped, slapping his neck. "I've had it with flying insects making a meal out of me."
To make matters even worse, Okamoto began to whistle again, tunelessly and without the vaguest sense of rhythm.
Nate sighed. It would be a long trip.
After an hour, the little muddy islands vanished around them. In the swamp's center, the water was deep enough to drown away most of the tiny bits of land and jungle. Only an occasional hummock, mostly bare of trees, dotted the smooth expanse of the swamp's heart.
Here the sun, scorching and bright, shone incessantly down on them.
"It's like a steam bath," Carrera said from the raft's port side.
Nate had to agree. The air was thick with moisture, almost too heavy to breathe. Their speed across the swamp slowed as exhaustion set in. Canteens were passed around and around the raft. Even Tor-tor lounged in the middle of the bamboo planking, his mouth open, panting.
The only consolation was being temporarily free of the jungle's snug embrace. Here the horizons opened up, and there was a giddy sense of escape. Nate glanced frequently back the way they had come, expecting to see a tribesman on the bank back there, shaking a fist. But there remained no sign of the Ban-ali. The trackers of the ghost tribe remained hidden. Hopefully the group was leaving them behind and getting a few days head start on their pursuers.
Nate was tapped on the shoulder. "I'll take a shift," Kouwe said, emptying his pipe's bowl of tobacco ash into the water.
"I'm okay," Nate said.
Kouwe reached and took the paddle. "I'm not an invalid yet."
Nate didn't argue any further and slid to the raft's stern. As he lounged, he watched their old campsite get smaller and smaller. He reached back for the canteen and caught movement to the right of their raft. One of the bare hummocks, rocky and black, was sinking, submerging so slowly that not a ripple was created.
What the hell?
Off to the left another was sinking. Nate climbed to his feet. As he began to comment on this unusual phenomenon, one of the rocky islands opened a large glassy eye and stared back at him. Instantly Nate knew what he was seeing.
"Oh, crap!"
With his attention focused, he now recognized the armored scales and craggy countenance of a crocodilian head. It was a caiman! A pair of giants. Each head had to be four feet wide from eye to eye. If its head was that big...
"What's wrong?" Private Carrera asked.
Nate pointed to where the second of the two caimans was just slipping under the surface.
"What is it?" the Ranger asked, eyes wide, as confused as Nate had been a moment before.
"Caimans," Nate said, his voice hoarse with shock. "Giant ones!"
By now, his entire raft had stopped paddling. The others stared at him.
Nate raised his voice, yelling so all three rafts could hear him. He waved his arms in the air. "Spread out! We're about to be attacked!"
"From what?" Captain Waxman called from his raft, about fifty yards away. "What did you see?"
As answer, something huge slid between Nate's boat and its neighbor, nudging both rafts and spinning them ever so slightly. Through the swamp's murk, the twin lines of tail ridges were readily evident as the beast slid sinuously past.
Nate was familiar with this behavior. It was called bumping. The kings of the caimans, the great blacks, were not carrion eaters. They liked to kill their own food. It was why drifting motionless could often protect someone from the predators. Often they would bump something that they considered a meal, testing to see if it would move.
They had just been bumped.
Distantly, the third raft suddenly bobbed and turned. The second caiman was also testing these strange intruders.
Nate yelled again, revising his initial plan. "Don't move! No one paddle! You'll attract them to attack!"
Waxman reinforced his order. "Do as he says! Weapon up. Grenades hot!"
Manny now crouched beside Nate, his voice hushed with awe. "It had to be at least a hundred feet long, over three times larger than any known caiman."
Carrera had her M-16 rifle in hand and was quickly fitting on her grenade launcher. "No wonder Gerald Clark circled around the swamp."
Okamoto finished prepping his rifle, kissed the crucifix around his neck, then nodded to Professor Kouwe. "I pray you have another one of your magical powders up your sleeve."
The shaman shook his head, eyes wide, unblinking. "I pray you're all good shots."
Okamoto glanced at Nate.
Nate explained, "With their armored body plating, the only sure kill shot is the eye."
"No, there's also through the upper palate," Manny added, pointing a finger toward the roof of his mouth. "But to take that shot, you'd have to be damn close."
"Starboard side!" Carrera barked, kneeling with her rifle on her shoulder.
A rippling line disturbed the flat waters, ominous and long.
"Don't take a shot unless you're sure," Nate hissed, dropping beside her. "You could provoke it. Only shoot if you've got a kill shot."
With everyone dead quiet, Waxman heard Nate's warning. "Listen to Dr. Rand. Shoot if you have a chance--but make it count!"
Rifles bristled around the periphery of each raft. Nate grabbed up his shotgun with one hand. They all waited, baking in the heat, sweat dripping into eyes, mouths drying. Around and around, the caimans circled, leaving no sign of their passage but ripples. Occasionally a raft would be bumped, tested.
"How long can they hold their breath?" Carrera asked.
"Hours," Nate said.
"Why aren't they attacking?" Okamoto asked.
Manny answered this question. "They can't figure out what we are, if we're edible."
The Asian Ranger looked sick. "Let's hope they don't find out."
The waiting stretched. The air seemed to grow thicker around them.
"What if we shot a grenade far from here?" Carrera offered. "As a distraction, something to draw them off."
"I'm not sure it would help. It might just rile them up, get them snapping at anything that moves, like us."
Zane spoke from the farthest raft, but his words easily reached Nate's boat. "I say we strap some explosives to that jaguar and push it overboard. When one of the crocodiles goes for the cat, we trigger the bomb."
Nate shuddered at this idea. Manny looked sick. But other eyes were glancing their way with contemplative expressions.
"Even if you succeeded in doing that, you'd only kill one of them," Nate said. "The other, clearly its mate, would go into a rampage and attack the rafts. Our best bet is to hope the pair loses interest in us and drifts away, then we can paddle out of here."
Waxman turned to Corporal Yamir, the demolition expert. "In case the crocodiles don't get bored, let's be prepared to entertain them. Prime up a pair of the napalm bombs."
The corporal nodded and turned to his pack.
Once again, the waiting game began. Time stretched.
Nate felt the raft tremble under his knees as one of the pair rubbed the underside of the logs with its thick tail. "Hang on!"
Suddenly the raft bucked under them. The stern was tossed high in the air. The group clung like spiders to the bamboo. Loose packs rolled into the lake with distinct splashes. The raft crashed back to the water, jarring them all.
"Is everyone okay?" Nate yelled.
Murmurs of assent rose.
"I lost my rifle," Okamoto said, his eyes angry.
"Better your gun than you," Kouwe said dolefully.
Nate raised his voice. "They're getting bolder!"
Okamoto reached out to one of their floating packs. "My gear."
Nate saw what he was doing. "Corporal! Stop!"
Okamoto immediately froze. "Shit..." He already had the strap of his rucksack in hand, half pulled out of the water.
"Leave it," Nate said. "Get away from the edge."
The corporal released his pack with a slight splash and yanked his arm back.
But he moved too slowly.
The monster lunged up out of the depths, jaws open, water sluicing from its scales. It shot ten feet out of the swamp, a tower of armor plating and teeth as long as a man's forearm. The Ranger was pulled off his feet and shoved high into the air, screaming in shock and terror. The huge jaws clamped shut with an audible crunch of bones. Okamoto's scream changed in pitch to pain and disbelief. His body was shaken like a rag doll, legs flailing. Then the creature's bulk dropped back into the depths.
"Fire!" Waxman called.
Nate had been too stunned to move. Carrera blazed with her M-16. Bullets peppered the underside of the giant, prehistoric caiman, but its yellowed belly scales were as hard as Kevlar. Even at almost point-blank range, it looked like little harm was done. Its weak points, the eyes, were hidden on the far side of its bulk.
Nate swung up his own shotgun, stretched his arm over Manny's head, and fired. A load of pellet sprayed through the empty air as the beast dropped out of range. A wasted, panicked shot.
The caiman was gone. Okamoto was gone.
Everyone was frozen in shock.
Nate's raft bobbed in the wake of the creature's passing. He stared out at the spot where the Ranger had vanished, Okamoto with his damn whistling. A red stain bubbled up from below.
Blood on the water...now the monsters know there's food here.
Kelly crouched with her brother in the center of their raft. Captain Waxman and Corporal Warczak knelt with their weapons ready. Yamir was finalizing his prep on two black bombs, each the size of a flat dinner plate with an electronic timer/receiver atop it. The demolitions expert leaned back. "Done," he said with a nod to his captain.
"Retrieve your weapon," Waxman said. "Be ready."
Yamir picked up his M-16 rifle and took up watch on his side of the raft.
A splintering crash sounded behind them. Kelly swung around in time to see the third raft in their flotilla knocked high into the air, the same as Nate's raft had done a moment before. But this time, its occupants were not as lucky. Anna Fong, her grip broken, went flying, catapulted through the air by the sudden attack. The anthropologist struck the water at the same time the raft crashed back down. Zane and Olin had managed to cling to the raft, as had Sergeant Kostos and Corporal Graves.
Anna popped to the surface, coughing and choking on water. She was only yards from the raft.
"Don't move, Anna!" Nate called. "Tuck your arms and legs together and float."
She clearly tried to obey, but her pack, waterlogged, dragged her underwater unless she kicked to keep herself afloat. Her eyes were white with panic; both the fear of drowning and the fear of what lurked in the waters shone bright in her eyes.
Movement drew her attention back to the assaulted raft. Sergeant Kostos was leaning out with one of the long bamboo poles that they had used to propel themselves away from shore.
"Grab on!" Kostos called to her.
Anna reached to the bamboo, fingers scrabbling for a moment, then clinging.
"I'm gonna pull you toward the raft."
"No!" she moaned.
Nate again called. "Anna, it should be okay as long as you don't make any sudden moves. Kostos, pull her very slowly toward you. Try not to raise a ripple."
Kelly trembled. Frank put his arm around her.
Ever so slowly, the sergeant drew Anna back to the raft.
"Good, good..." Nate mumbled in a tense mantra.
Then, behind Anna, an armored snout appeared, just the nose, its eyes hidden underwater still.
"No one shoot!" Nate called. "Don't rile it!"
Guns pointed, but there was no kill shot anyway.
Kostos had stopped pulling on the bamboo with the appearance of the caiman. No one moved.
A moan flowed from the woman in the water.
Ever so slowly the snout inched forward, rising slightly as its massive jaws yawned open.
Kostos was forced to slowly draw Anna toward him, keeping her just a couple of feet ahead of the approaching monster.
"Careful!" Nate called.
It was like some macabre slow-motion chase...and they were losing.
The snout of the creature was now less than a foot from the woman, the jaws gaping open behind her head. There was no way Anna could be pulled aboard without the creature attacking.
Someone else came to this same realization.
Corporal Graves ran across their raft and leaped over Anna's head like an Olympic long jumper.
"Graves!" Kostos yelled.
The corporal landed atop the creature's open snout, driving its jaws closed and shoving it underwater.
"Pull her aboard!" Graves hollered as he was sucked under by the caiman.
Kostos yanked Anna back to the raft and Olin helped haul her on board.
A moment later, the beast reared up out of the water, Graves still clinging to the top of its wide head. The caiman thrashed, trying to dislodge its strange rider. Its jaws reared open, and a bellow of rage escaped from it.
"Fuck you!" Graves said. "This is for my brother!" Clinging fast with his legs, he yanked something from his field jacket and tossed it down the beast's gullet.
A grenade.
The massive jaws snapped at the Ranger, but he was out of reach.
"Everybody down!" Waxman bellowed.
Graves leaped from his perch, aiming for the raft, a shout on his lips. "Chew on that, you bastard!"
Behind him, the explosion ripped through the silent swamp. The head of the caiman blew apart, shredded by shrapnel.
Graves flew through the air, a roar of triumph flowing from his lips.
Then up from the depths shot the other caiman. Jaws wide, it lunged at the flying corporal, snatching him out of midair, like a dog catching a tossed ball, then crashed away, taking its prey with it. It had all happened in seconds.
The bulk of the slain caiman s
lowly rose to the surface of the lake, belly up, exposing the gray and yellow scaling of its underside.
The slack body of the huge creature was nudged from below. Ripples slowly circled it as the large beast was examined by the survivor.
"Maybe it'll leave," Frank said. "Maybe the other's death will spook it away."
Kelly knew this wouldn't happen. These creatures had to be hundreds and hundreds of years old. Mates for life, the only pair of its kind sharing this ecosystem.
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