water.
More silence.
Wavelets slapped against the earthen walls of the pit.
Race's entire body was tensed, waiting for the caiman to appear. He gripped the steel grappling hook in his hand like a club.
The water's surface was completely still.
Total silence.
Race could feel the fear building up inside him.
Fuck-fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck-fuck.
He wondered how long the reptile could stay under—
The attack came from the left, just as Race was looking to the right.
With a loud roar, the caiman exploded up out of the water next to him, its jaws bared wide, its enormous two- ton body rolling through the air.
Race saw the reptile instantly and on a reflex dived sideways, splashing into the water as the caiman shot past him and slammed down into the slime again.
Race clambered to his feet, spun around, then dived again as the caiman made another lightning-quick pass at him, snapping its jaws in front of his face with a loud fleshy smack.
Race was covered in mud now, but he didn't care. He rose out of the water again—right next to the earthen wall of the pit—and turned just in time to see the caiman come rushing at his face.
He ducked—let his body drop straight down, under the surface and the caiman went thundering over the top of him, slamming nose-first into the muddy wall of the pit.
Race surfaced to the cheers of the Indians standing up on the rim of the pit. He waded right and found himself stand ing in deeper water. He began to unloop the rope attached to the grappling hook.
He looked up at the rim of the pit.
Fifteen feet, not far.
He was standing waist-deep in the water now, unlooping the rope. As he did so, he quickly glanced about himself, to see where the caiman was.
And he didn't see it.
The caiman was nowhere to be seen.
The pit was completely bare.
It must have gone under again…
Race looked fearfully at the water all around himself.
Oh, shit . . . he thought.
And then abruptly he felt something slam into his leg at tremendous speed, felt a searing pain shoot through his ankle. Then he was yanked beneath the surface.
Race went under, opened his eyes, and through the inky water all around him, saw that the caiman had his left foot inside its mouth!
But it didn't have a good grip on him and it opened its mouth for a split second to get a better one.
That was all Race needed. No sooner had the big reptile released his foot than Race yanked it clear and the caiman's jaws came chomping down on nothing.
Race surfaced, with the grappling hook's rope trailing through the water behind him, desperately gasping for air.
The caiman came up too, surging out of the water after him, snapping wildly, catching the grappling hook's rope in its jaws, slicing through it in an instant. As the rope was cut, Race lost his balance and fell clumsily away from the reptile into shallower water.
He turned quickly, at exactly the same moment as he saw the caiman come rushing in at him from the side, its jaws wide, its tooth-filled mouth filling his field of vision, and with nothing else left to call on, Race just jammed the grappling hook—together with his entire right arm—into the caiman's wide-open mouth!
The big reptile's jaws came crashing down on his arm——just as Race hit the release button on the grappling hook's handle.
At that moment, a nanosecond before the caiman's razor- sharp teeth clamped down on his right bicep, the grappling hook's pointed steel claws sprang outwards with monumental force.
The caiman's head just exploded.
Two of the pointed steel claws burst out from its eye sockets, and in that Single disgusting instant, both of the caiman's eyes were blasted out of its head—from the inside— replaced by the razor-sharp tips of the two steel claws.
The grappling hook's other two claws exploded out from the underside of the caiman's head, ripping through the softer skin there, puncturing it with ease.
The two claws that had shot through the big reptile's eye sockets must have penetrated its brain on their journey through the caiman's skull. As such, they'd killed the massive animal in an instant—freezing its jaws in mid- chomp—and now Race sat on the floor of the pit, with an enormous eighteen-foot caiman attached to his right arm, its long triangular mouth poised over his exposed arm—its teeth millimetres away from his skin, its immense black
