“Probably a crocodile!” Jim called, his voice sounding as unsteady as mine. “Maybe a caiman, although it’s kind of big for one of those.”

“Well, thank you, National Geographic,” I said. “But the thing is: I think it saw us.”

“It did, it did, it did,” said Nicki, her voice filling with frightened tears.

“Keep moving,” said Palmer. “It probably won’t come down into the faster current. But the sooner we get to shore, the better. It’ll have the advantage over us in the water.”

Well, I have to say, I was looking at this creature as it moved down the bank to the river. It was maybe, I don’t know, ten feet long—as long as two short people end to end. It had thick, stumpy legs like living tree trunks. It had a snout the size of a teacher’s desk and it was a sure bet its mouth was filled with teeth the size of daggers.

With all due respect for Palmer, my guess was it would have the advantage over us pretty much anywhere.

Still, hurrying along seemed like a good idea. Palmer started moving again, tugging the rest of us after him. And now Jim used some force to pull Nicki along and I pushed in on her without giving her a chance to resist. She staggered sideways reluctantly and our line started moving again. We continued to cross.

But all the while, of course, we also continued to watch the crocodile, or whatever it was, as it tromped with a weird slow grace over the mud toward the water’s edge. Another moment and its huge body knifed into the river without so much as a splash. A flick of its gigantic tail and the dark shape of it curled around and turned in our direction.

Then it vanished from sight under the dark water.

I glanced toward the opposite shore. Still fifty yards away at least—about as far from us as the crocodile. I didn’t know how fast crocs were when they came after something, but I was guessing it was pretty fast. I hoped Palmer was right about it staying in the slower water above us because if it came this way, it would be moving downstream, with the current carrying it along.

My heart plunged inside me. If you’ve never been in this particular situation, let me tell you: when it’s a real possibility, the prospect of being eaten alive is very, very hard to stop thinking about.

And I guess Nicki felt the same way. Because when the croc submarined out of sight like that, she just panicked.

“No. No. No,” she said, shaking her head—as if she could somehow argue the situation out of existence. She shook her head some more and started to back away from the spot where the crocodile had last appeared.

“Nicki, what are you doing? Stay on course,” I started to say—but I never finished the sentence.

Because Nicki, stepping back, gave a sudden shriek as she slipped on something in the riverbed—and she lost her footing completely. She fell backward, straightening her arms. In an instant, she slipped out of my grasp.

She splashed down into the water, her other arm still in the crook of Jim’s elbow—but only just. Jim clamped his arm tight to try to hold her, but the water was dragging her away from him too.

“Don’t let her go!” I shouted to Jim—and I went after her.

Nicki was off her feet completely, on her back in the water, being pulled downstream hard. One of her hands was up over her head, the other was pincered by the wrist in the crook of Jim’s arm. The water was flowing rapidly over her face so that she had to fight to come up for air.

I slogged unsteadily toward her, my movement downstream adding to the force of the river behind me. I felt like I was going to be hurled forward at any moment. The gun strap over my shoulder and head restricted the use of my left arm, but I reached out for Nicki with my right.

“Nicki, grab hold!” I shouted to her.

I heard her sputter as the water rushed over her face again. She gasped up out of it and saw me. She brought her hand down from above her head and reached for mine desperately. I stretched. I touched her fingers. I forced my legs forward another step and another. I wrapped my fingers around her wrist.

And then Jim lost hold of her.

Nicki’s hand slipped out of the crook of Jim’s elbow. The force of the current carried her downstream quickly—and Nicki carried me. I flew forward, tripped off my feet, and splashed face-first into the river.

I went under, the water burbling up around me. I had no chance to fight the current now. It forced me along like the wind carrying a feather. I burst up into the air, catching a breath. I heard Nicki start to scream and then choke as the water rushed into her mouth. I still had hold of her wrist. Trying to keep my head up, I craned my neck around and saw her. She was downstream, turning helplessly in the current—and just below her I saw the rapids and the rocks.
The rush of the river filled my ears but I heard shouting.

“Keep moving across!” Palmer barked at the others.

“Palmer!” shouted Meredith. “You can’t just leave them behind.”

“Do what I tell you!” he shouted back—and I hoped she would, because I knew there was nothing Palmer and the others could do to help us now. Nicki and I were caught in the current. We were on our own.

The river spun us round. I caught glimpses of the first rapids coming close, coming fast, the jagged edges of the rocks jutting out of them. There was nothing I could grab hold of, nothing I could do to stop us.

Nicki went under and came up again, spitting water. The current was tossing her around like a rag doll. Scared I might lose my grip on her, I pulled her to me. Wrapped my arm around her waist. Held her fast against me. This way, at least, we’d hit the rocks together and maybe I could take the worst of it on my shoulder or back.

She tried to scream again in my arms, but again the water overwhelmed her—overwhelmed us both. We went under. I held on to her with my left arm and fought toward the surface with the other. The water was dark—just swirling green and dirt all around me. I wasn’t even sure I was heading toward the surface. Then I broke out and saw the light and gulped the air. And I looked downstream.

I realized at once that I had no chance of protecting Nicki—any more than I could protect myself.

We had come around a small bend. I could see the rapids clearly now. They stretched out before us: boiling white water swirling, rising, spitting over the tops of boulders. As a wave of water lifted me up, I caught a glimpse of the river beyond them—and I saw the falls. It was a gauntlet of roaring, seething, frothing foam with sharp rocks rising from the chaos like a dragon’s teeth—and then a sharp drop out of sight.

Once we hit that, we’d be battered to death, the two of us. There was no doubt in my mind.

But frankly, I didn’t think we were going to live long enough to die that way. Because just then we sank down into the first swirling whirlpool of white water. I clasped Nicki as securely as I could as I was spun full around sharply and then flung up to the surface. Gasping for breath, I looked downstream. I saw we had entered a smooth black, rapid flow that was pulling us inexorably toward another sucking drop of white foam from which two sharp rocks jabbed up into the air. The rocks were close together, no more than two feet apart—they stood like a sort of gateway. And I could see exactly what was going to happen when we hit them. First, we’d suffer the impact—the shock of the blow—then we’d be pulled quickly into that gap between them into the length of foaming, speeding waves beyond. After that, it was all a tumbling rush of white water. There’d be no stopping our progress until we went over the falls.

I had maybe five seconds before we hit—time enough for the full situation to flash through my mind. Five seconds—and then four…

And then I had an idea.

There was no time to think it through, no time even to wonder if it would really work. I just acted in the little time I had left. I shifted Nicki and clamped her tight against me with my right arm. With my left hand, I grabbed hold of my rifle. I stripped the strap up over my head as we rushed and spun through the black water toward the two rocks.

Already, the rocks were on us, a second away. I turned in the water, turned upstream with Nicki held in front of me so that my body would hit the rocks first, taking the worst of the impact for her. I stretched out my left hand, holding the rifle in front of us.

We hit the rock. It was a blow, all right. It caught me right in the soft spot on the side of my back. I made a noise like “oof!” and the breath was forced out of me. The shock stopped our progress for an instant—and in the next instant we were sucked into the little gap between the rocks—sucked down toward the last stretch of rapids.

The water turned us. I was helpless to stop it. It sucked Nicki through the gap first.

“Will!” she shrieked.

I went through right after her, still clasping her tight.

And still holding that rifle out in my left hand—holding it out to my side now, upstream, making sure it was the last thing to come through the rocks, making sure it was stretched out lengthwise across that narrow gap.

The rifle struck the rocks. And stuck—it was wedged across the small space, unable to pass through.

The AK-47 machine gun was close to three feet long—longer than the gap between the rocks was wide by nearly a foot. I think if we had hit any harder, it would have rattled through—the weapon might even have just shattered, just come apart in my hands. But that first impact of my body on the rocks had slowed us. The gun didn’t hit all that hard. It stayed together, and I had time to maneuver it so it was securely braced against the rocks on both ends. I held the rifle with one hand and kept my other arm wrapped around Nicki—and the rifle held us both in place.

It all happened so fast, it took me a moment before I realized—realized with amazement—that my idea had actually worked. We were held there, just above those final rapids, just above the falls.

Breathless, I looked around to get a sense of our situation.

The water continued to rush over us, to pull at us and sometimes drag us under, but we had stopped moving downstream. In fact, we were in a place where the rocks gave us some shelter from the pounding of the current. As long as I kept hold of the rifle—and Nicki—and as long as the rifle stayed wedged in the rocks, we would be safe.

At least that’s what I thought. Until I saw the crocodile.

It surfaced upstream where the white water began. As I gasped up out of the current, I caught the black flash of its head peeking out above the water. So much for it staying upstream. It was looking straight at us, coming right toward us. There was no question about what it was going to do.

It was an awful moment—awful. Even standing before the firing squad hadn’t felt as bad as this. The firing squad—that was just death, you know. A few seconds of fear, maybe an instant of pain and it would have been over. But to have this creature tear us apart, to have it devour us: to me, that was a nightmare of horror.
The croc took one look at us and disappeared again under the water. It was heading toward the rapid black flow that had just carried us into the rocks. Now the same flow would carry the crocodile to the place where we were trapped.

The beast was now gone from sight—but unfortunately, before it went under, Nicki caught a glimpse of it too.

I had seen her hysterical before. I had heard her crying and pleading as the firing squad forced us to the wall. But this was beyond that. She just went crazy now. She just started screaming. Like the girls in the horror movies, you know: just one deafening, high-pitched shriek after another—wordless shrieks and then my name. She’d get cut off as the river doused her and dragged her under and then she’d bob to the surface again, screaming and screaming.

“Will! Will! Will!”

I held tight to the rifle to stay in place, to stay above water. I swallowed hard. My spit tasted like copper. That was the taste of fear, I realized. I was sick with fear.

But I knew what I had to do.

Nicki was flailing in my arms, twisting and thrashing, trying to escape my grip, trying to get away from the invisible onrushing crocodile. But that was no good. If she’d broken out of my grip, she would have been swept immediately into the rapids and over the falls to her death. I had to use all my strength to hold on to her. But I did. And I forced her around me, forced her up to the rifle.

“Will! No! No!” she screamed as I pressed her up against the wedged rifle.

“Nicki!” I shouted—shouted as loud and forcefully as I could over the rushing noise of the water. I sank under. I pulled myself up. Gasped for air. “Grab hold of it! Grab hold of the gun! Grab hold!”

She wouldn’t stop shrieking. She wouldn’t stop flailing.

“Let go of me! Let go of me! It’s coming! Let go!”

“Take hold of the rifle! I’ll protect you!” I shouted.

Her scream became babbling words interrupted by gulps and gasps.

“You can’t…You can’t…”

“Grab hold, Nicki!”

Confused—terrified beyond rational thought—she did what I said. She put her hands on the rifle between the rocks. She gripped it.

And I, still holding the rifle myself, let go of her and ducked under the water.

It was hard to fight the current, but my grip on the rifle gave me a little leverage, and I only had to maneuver myself a few inches upstream. Then I splashed to the surface—and now I was in front of the rifle, held in place by it, while Nicki held on to it behind me.

“Will!” she sobbed. “Will!”

The water drove into my face. Gripping the rifle, I fought my way out of it. “Just hold on,” I gasped. “You’ll be all right.”

I wasn’t shouting anymore. I didn’t have the strength—I was too scared. I didn’t even know if she could hear me over the white water. I was staring in the direction I’d last seen the crocodile. I couldn’t see it now, but I knew it was still coming—I knew it was almost there, almost on top of me.

I just hoped it wouldn’t take both of us. I just hoped that one of us would be enough.

I wondered if I would see it before it struck or if it would hit below the surface and just cut me in half before I realized it was there. I wondered how long I would have to live with the agony of being eaten alive before I mercifully died.

Then I stopped wondering. Suspend the imagination, I thought. Don’t worry about anything. Pray about everything instead. It was the only way I could stay in place, the only way I could keep up my courage—what there was of it. Which wasn’t much.

As it turned out, the creature did surface. I saw the enormous bulk of it rise up out of the black flow of water. I saw its huge tail lashing as it propelled itself toward me. I saw the length of its great snout and death in its small, cold, indifferent eyes.

Nicki coughed and gasped and screamed my name one last time.

“Will!”

And I screamed. I couldn’t help it. Tears of terror flying from my eyes, I let out a ragged scream into the face of the crocodile.

“Come on, then!” I told it. “Come on! Come on!”

The river washed over me. I broke out of it and its wash of sound surrounded me. Nicki was screaming. And I was screaming. I couldn’t hear anything else but the river and the screams. I couldn’t think of anything else but the onrushing crocodile.

I never heard the gunshots at all.

All I saw was that something hit the croc’s head and something black and red flew off the place above its right eye and up into the air. I hardly understood what was happening as the beast thrashed enormously only a few yards away from me. The screams stuck in my throat and my heart seized in my chest as the creature’s great tail flew up out of the water.

The crocodile rolled over sideways and struck the rock to my left—only about six inches from my arm. The great length and weight of its body was flung away from me, and the river carried it wide of the rocks so that it went rushing past us and down into the rapids. Turning my body full around against the rifle, I saw its limp, massive form carried into the seething turmoil of the falls and out of sight. It was only then I realized that it was already dead.

Nicki went on screaming and gasping, her eyes shut tight, her hands gripping the rifle with all her strength.

Dazed, I held myself above the surface and looked around me. I saw Palmer standing on the shore. He was just now lowering his machine gun from his shoulder. Meredith and Jim were running up to join him.

Of course, I thought.

Of course he had not left us behind. He had known he couldn’t help us while he was in the water. He had crossed over first, saving the others, and then rushed down the bank to take his shot at the crocodile, to kill it before it killed me.

I ducked under my rifle and wrapped my arm around Nicki again. I held on to her and held us both in place.

“It’s all right,” I said into her ear between gulps and gasps. “It’s all right, Nicki. It’s gone now. It’s over.”

But it was a long time before she managed to stop screaming.