It was Doogie.
Doogie and the caiman fought, rolling and wrestling, grunt ing and thrashing. The caiman snapped wildly at Doogie while the injured Green Beret grappled desperately with its snout, trying to keep it closed as he had seen alligator wrestlers do when he was a child.
He still had his G-11, but it was useless now, empty. He'd reluctantly used his last few rounds to drop the two Navy SEALs who had been firing on Gaby. Then when he had seen the caiman appear in front of her and lunge, he had done the only thing he could think to do—he had leapt down on top of it.
Just then the caiman jerked its snout free from Doogie's grasp, bared its jaws and launched itself at his head. Out of sheer desperation, Doogie swung his G-11 around and without even thinking, wedged it inside the big crocodilian's mouth, propping it open, right in front of his own face!
The caiman grunted in surprise.
Its jaws were now propped wide open, like the bonnet of a car. The big creature couldn't close its mouth!
Doogie seized the opportunity and quickly unsheathed his Bowie knife.
The caiman stood stupidly in front of him, its long snout held open by the vertical G11.
Doogie tried to get around the big reptile—behind it—so that he could drive his knife into its skull and kill it, but the caiman saw him move and it swung quickly sideways, bowling into him, knocking him off his feet, sending him splashing into the muddy water.
The caiman then stomped quickly forward, stepping on top of Doogie's legs with its stubby forelimbs, causing them to sink down into the mud.
“Arggghhh!' Doogie yelled as the weight of the caiman came down on his shins. The big reptile took another slow step forward, stepping onto his wounded left thigh. Doogie roared with pain as his legs sank further into the mud.
The caiman's propped-open mouth yawned before his face, two feet in front of his nose, held open by his G- 11.
Fuck it, Doogie thought as, with a quick lunge, he reached deep inside the caiman's enormous jaws and wedged his Bowie knife in behind the G-11, positioning it vertically so that the knife's butt sat on the caiman's tongue while its blade rested up against the roof of the big beast's mouth.
'Eat this,' Doogie said as he swung his arm sideways, swiping the G-11 out of the giant reptile's mouth.
The response was instantaneous.
With the G-11 gone, the caiman's mighty jaws came rushing back together, the upper jaw chomping downwards, right on top of the Bowie knife in the back of its mouth, forcing it up into its brain.
The blood-stained blade of the knife burst up out of the reptile's massive head and the caiman's body went instantly limp, the life rushing out of it.
Doogie stared at it for a moment, stunned at what he had just done. The massive animal was still standing half on top of him, groaning involuntarily, expelling large amounts of air that it no longer needed.
'Whoa…' Doogie breathed.
Then he shook his head and pulled himself out from under the enormous creature and clambered over to where Gaby was still lying in the mud, completely dumbstruck at his act of chivalry.
'Come on,' he said, taking her hand. 'Let's get out of here.'
Frank Nash raced through the dense foliage between the upper village and the crater, holding the idol under his arm like a football.
Lauren and Copeland ran behind him, SIG-Sauer pistols in their hands.
Amid all the confusion of the aerial attack on the upper village, he and Lauren and Copeland had quickly laid one of the log-bridges over the moat and bolted across it into the dense underbrush.
'This is Nash! This is Nash!' he yelled into his throat microphone as he ran. “Aerial team, come in!'
He looked up at the sky behind him, saw the surviving Army Comanche helicopter hovering over the smoking remains of the village. Behind it, he saw another chop- pr—a third helicopter that was fatter and stockier than the Comanche. It was a Black Hawk II, the third Army chopper.
'Colonel Nash—is Captain Hank Thompson—read you,' a static- ridden voice said over his earpiece. 'Sorry— took so long—lost your signal in—overnight electrical storm—'
'Thompson, we have the prize. I repeat, we have the prize.
I am currently about fifty metres due east of the village, head ing eastward toward the crater. I need immediate extraction.'
“Negative on that, Colonel—nowhere to land up here—too many—trees.'
'Then meet us down in the other village,' Nash yelled.
'the one with the citadel. Just head due east, straight over the crater, and look down. You can't miss it. It's got plenty of room to land.'
'Ten-four, Colonel—see you there.”
The two surviving Army choppers immediately banked in the air above the upper village and thundered over Nash's head, heading toward Vilcafor.
Not a minute later, Nash, Lauren and Copeland came to the crater and took off down its spiralling pathway.
