Matthew Reilly - Temple

Shrieking wildly, the cat put up a hell of a fight, until finally it succumbed to their numbers and went under.

What remained near the shore was a bizarre-looking Humvee-Huey hybrid that sat half-submerged in the water about twenty feet out from the riverbank.

The whole forward bubble of the Huey had been crushed inwards by the Humvee, and now the wide jeep-like vehicle stuck out awkwardly from the chopper’s crushed front section. The Huey’s rotor housing and tail section, however, had not been damaged by the impact. Its two rotor blades just sat high above the whole ghastly contraption, immobile but intact.

Inside the Humvee, Race tried desperately to stay calm.

Slimy green water lapped against the window to his left while powerful mini-jets of spray shot in through the network of cracks in it. Looking out through the window itself was like looking into one of those aquariums where you can see both above and below the waterline.

Only this was the aquarium from Hell.

Through the window, Race saw the underbellies of no less than five gigantic caimans, all of them making a beeline right for him, their tails slinking back and forth behind them, driving their bodies toward the Humvee.

To make matters worse, a torrent of water was gushing in through the large hole in the windshield in front of him, splashing all over his jeans, creating a deep sloshing puddle at his feet.

Walter Chambers began to hyperventilate. ‘Oh my God!

Oh my God! Oh my God!” Behind Chambers, Race saw that Gaby Lopez now had a deep bloody gash above her left eye.

She must have hit her head when the Humvee had impacted against the chopper.

‘We have to get out of here!’ Lauren yelled.

‘You think!’ Race shouted, as a large silver fish with big teeth was carried in through the windshield in front of him and landed in his lap.

Just then there came a loud whump! from somewhere to his left and Race was almost jolted out of his seat as the whole Humvee rocked wildly sideways.

He turned and saw the enormous shape of a black caiman hovering at the window beside him, staring in the through the cracked glass, gazing hungrily at him!

‘Oh, man,’ he said.

Then he saw the massive reptile draw back from the glass.

“Oh, man…”

‘What? What?“ Walter Chambers said from beside him.

‘It’s going to ram us!’ Race yelled as he hastily began climbing over into the back seat. ‘Move, Walter! Move now!’

Chambers immediately started to scramble over into the back seat, too, just as the caiman outside surged forward. A split second later, the driver’s side window of the Humvee exploded inwards in a spectacular shower of glass.

The sudden rain of glass was quickly followed by the massive scaly body of the caiman as it slithered in through the window into the front section of the Humvee, riding a wave of water as it cascaded into the car.

The caiman rushed across the front seat of the Humvee, its giant body taking up all of the tiny space. Race yanked his feet into the back seat a nanosecond before its slashing jaws shot past them.

Walter Chambers wasn’t so lucky. He didn’t get his legs out of the way in time and the caiman smashed into them hard, driving them into the passenger side door, pinning them there.

Chambers screamed. The caiman bucked and snorted as it tried to get a better grip on him.

From the back seat, all Race could see was the creature’s enormous armoured back and its long plated tail, slashing viciously back and forth.

Then, abruptly, violently—and so quickly that it made Race gasp in horror—the giant caiman wrenched Chambers out through the window through which it had come.

“Nooooo!’ Chambers screamed as he disappeared out the window and was taken under the surface outside.

Race exchanged a horrified look with Lauren.

‘What are we going to do now!’ she yelled.

How the hell should I know? he thought as he looked at the situation around him.

The front seat of the vehicle was filling up with water fast, causing the Humvee to tilt sharply to the left and drop lower in the water.

‘We’ve got to get out of here before this car sinks!’ he yelled. ‘Quickly!

Open your window! We should be able to open them now!’

Water began to flow over the front seat and into the back as Lauren began to unwind her window. The car was higher over on her side, and when at last she opened the window fully, she revealed only the cold night air.

Then suddenly another giant caiman came surging in through the driver’s side window of the Humvee and splashed down into the pool of water in the front half of the vehicle.

“Go!” Race yelled. ‘Get onto the roof!’

Lauren moved fast. In a second she was out of the Humvee, climbing up onto its roof. The dazed Gaby went next—she shuffled quickly across the back seat and reached out through the window. Lauren immediately began to pull her out from up on the roof, while Race pushed her from below.

The caiman in the driver’s seat bucked and snorted, searching for its prey.

Water was now rushing over the front seat in a thick steady stream. It was almost waist-deep in the back.

Just then another caiman rammed into the rear-left window of the Humvee, causing the entire vehicle to jolt. Race spun at the impact and saw that the whole left-hand side of the Humvee was now completely underwater!

Gaby Lopez was halfway out the right-side window.

Race was the last one left.

It was then, however, as he pushed on Gaby’s feet, that he heard a sickening metallic groan from somewhere within the Humvee.

Abruptly the whole car lurched dramatically to the right.

At first he thought it was another ramming from one of the caimans.

But it wasn’t. No, this time the whole car had shifted laterally. It was moving. Moving…Downstream.

Oh, God, Race thought.

They were being carried downstream by the current of the river!

‘This is not happening,’ he said.

At that moment there came another, more familiar jolt as one of the caimans rammed the left-hand window again.

“Come on, Gaby!’ he yelled at Lopez’s feet as they dangled inside the right-hand window in front of him.

By this time, the caiman in the front seat seemed to have realised where Race and the others were and it began to shuffle clumsily backwards so that it could leap over into the back seat.

Race saw it move.

‘Gaby.’

‘Almost there…’ Lopez called back.

“Hurry up!”

Then suddenly, Gaby’s feet disappeared out the window and Lauren yelled, ‘She’s clear, Will!’ and Race leapt for the window, poked his head out through it and saw Lauren and Gaby standing on the roof above him.

The two women quickly reached down and grabbed his hands and hauled him out of the car not a second before the caiman in the front seat clambered over into the back and snapped angrily at his outward-moving feet, missing them by millimetres.

Back in the village, Nash, Copeland and the six American soldiers were all sitting—handcuffed—in the safety of the all-terrain vehicle, watching the nightmare outside unfold, when suddenly the sliding side door of their armoured vehicle was wrenched open from the outside and a blast of rain and wind swirled into the interior of the ATV.

Two soaking Germans hurried in through the door, their mudsoaked feet clanging on the floor of the vehicle. They shut the great steel door behind them and abruptly there was silence inside the ATV once again.

Nash and the others just stared at their new companions.

A man and a woman.

Both were sopping wet, and both were completely covered in mud.

They wore civilian clothes—blue jeans and white Tshirts—but with a twist: both wore black Gore-Tex holsters and compact Glock-18 pistols on their hips. They both also wore navy blue bulletproof vests.