Iron Rage. James Axler

clear as long as we keep away from the water,” she said. “We just need to figure out how to drive these bastards off so we can work on getting the Queen under way again.”

      â€œAt least we’ve got plenty of ammo,” Arliss said. Though the Queen’s crew preferred black powder blasters—indeed, preferred fleeing to shooting, whenever the option offered—they kept a hefty store of all kinds and calibers of ammunition in the hold. It was something they could always trade, and be pretty sure of catching a profit, too, almost regardless what they traded for it.

      â€œRight,” the captain said. Despite her horrible wound, she seemed strong and in command of herself. Ryan knew what it felt like to step up in emergencies, disregarding your own wounds. If he hadn’t shown that knack early on, he’d never have made it out of Front Royal alive, after his brother Harvey’s treachery cost him his eye and left him with a scar down his face.

      â€œI saw,” Doc said, stepping toward her tentatively with his outsize LeMat wheel gun in his knobbly-knuckled hand. “I am not sure it is safe to stand so close to the water, Captain. These Nile crocodiles have a reputation as being quite aggressive.”

      She waved him off with her stump. “Light some torches,” she commanded. “I bet they don’t like fi—”

      In the midst of a big wave of water a huge, pebble-scaled form erupted from the creek. Tooth-daggered jaws opened what seemed a whole yard wide. Before anyone could react, they snapped shut on the captain around her waist.

      â€œHold fire!” Ryan shouted. He tucked the SIG back in its holster and charged.

      The croc was a monster, at least twenty feet long. It was shaking Trace in its jaw like a dog with a rat as it backed toward the water.

      Ryan reversed his panga. Gripping the hilt with both hands, he took a running dive toward the immense reptile.

      The wide-bladed panga was not meant for stabbing, especially, but it did have a point. He aimed to bring that down on the spine behind the horror’s triangular skull.

      But the croc was heaving too much. The panga sank into its neck a full six inches as Ryan landed half on the croc, half in the water.

      The croc whistled in pain and fury, but it did not open its mouth and release its prey. Instead it started to roll away from Ryan, either in a premature death roll meant to drown its captive, or more likely as a simple animal reflex to get the injured site away from the thing that had caused it unexpected pain.

      Trying to mute his own awareness of the scaled, toothy horrors that could be wriggling toward him with their bulging eyeballs fixed on his legs, Ryan maneuvered himself to straddle the beast. He wrenched the broad blade free with the same effort it would have taken him to deadlift an engine block.

      The croc had made a tactical mistake. Its back was armored well enough to shed bullets that hit at any kind of angle, if the crocodiles and gators he’d tangled with before were any guide. But its pale belly was vulnerable. As soon as Ryan saw the flash of yellow hide, he plunged the panga down again.

      It sank into the beast’s chest, between its scrabbling forelegs. He twisted the blade, hoping he’d hit the heart. Then again he didn’t know where the nuking thing was located.

      The crocodile roared. Meaning at least it opened its jaws—meaning it let Trace go. Ryan was in no position to confirm that fact, though, because before he could yank the panga free, or even let go of the handle, the monstrous creature had sped up its roll—dragging Ryan right along with it as if he were a rag doll.

      For a moment he felt the crushing sensation of incredible mass on top of him. The thing had to have weighed a ton or more, at that size. The air was blasted out of his lungs in an involuntary yell. Had the mud beneath not been so soft, taking him into its slippery embrace and cushioning the weight, the behemoth surely would have crushed him to death.

      The beast kept rolling. When the unendurable weight came off Ryan, he managed to let go of the panga’s hilt and somehow get one boot and one knee planted into the muck.

      He was also able to draw his handblaster. He pressed its muzzle almost into the croc’s throat, right at the base of the long, triangular head, and started cranking off rounds. He figured if anything would cause handblaster rounds to penetrate the croc’s notoriously hard skull—not a triple-big target as well—it was a lot of them, from below, at near-contact range. The fact that the copper-jacketed 147-grain 9 mm bullets had a lot of penetration for a handblaster didn’t hurt.

      The croc began to thrash from side to side. The water around it was maroon with blood except when its visibly diminishing efforts churned it to froth. That was pink.

      Ryan flung himself away from the monster. It was still strong. A death-throe crack of the tail could pulp his hips or snap his spine like a baby’s arm.

      Trace was on her feet but bent over and staggering in knee-deep water. She had her good arm pressed to her gut where the jaws had closed, but she waved her stump, its compress now soaked red with blood from her struggles, at the shore and the stunned watchers.

      â€œThanks,” she croaked. “I’m all right, all right, I’m fit to fight—”

      She was yanked right out from behind her words and under the water in a flash. There was surprisingly little disturbance on the surface where she vanished. It was as if she’d never been.

      Even Ryan was shocked immobile by the suddenness of her disappearance. But being Ryan Cawdor, he didn’t stay that way longer than a heartbeat or two. Instead he hightailed it for solid land. He was not diving into a river full of nuking killer crocs to wrestle with one big and strong enough to make the captain, who was no small woman herself, simply disappear like that.