until Summer’s tank was nearly empty, then they surfaced.
Dirk scanned the lake. Far to the north, he spotted the boat. He turned to Summer, who floated alongside, clearing her mask.
“Are they gone for good?” she asked.
“I think so. Thanks for the undertow. That was the closest haircut I’ve had in a while.” He rubbed a hand over his scalp.
“Quite the hit-and-run driver. I had a pretty good view of events from downstairs. Whoever was driving that boat had little regard for his own men.” She nodded toward the second gunman’s body, which drifted a short distance away.
“I didn’t see who was driving,” Dirk said. “The other two were our armed friends from Amarna and Assiut.”
“Hard to believe they tracked us all the way here.”
Dirk gazed at the vast expanse of empty water and the arid wasteland around the lake. “A good place to kill someone without eyewitnesses.”
“But not a great place to be abandoned without a boat. Do you think they were trying to kill us for what we already know?”
“That, or what we might find at Faras.” Dirk pointed to the camera attached to Summer’s B.C. “You got the pictures?”
“I got them. Whether they have any bearing on what we’ve already found remains to be seen.”
“Speaking of bearings, do you prefer to swim west or east?”
They were nearly dead center in the lake, with a two-and-a-half-mile swim in either direction to reach shore.
Summer glanced west, then turned east. She tensed, her eyes large with fear. “I don’t think we want to go east,” she said in a bare whisper.
Dirk turned toward her gaze.
Barely thirty feet away, a pair of cold yellow eyes protruded just above the surface, eyeing the two with lethal desire.
31
The Nile crocodile was a beast long worshipped by the ancient Egyptians. A favored god named Sobek took the form of a crocodile. Depicted with a man’s body and a crocodile head, he was believed to have created the Nile and provided strength and power to the pharaohs. Yet Sobek was also considered a dark god who required appeasement to protect the people from his river-dwelling manifestation. As an homage, live crocodiles were often kept in temple pools, and mummified crocs have been found in numerous ancient tombs. Yet the deadly reptile was rightfully feared as well.
Brother and sister cared little about the ancient treatment of the animal that had roamed the region for thousands of years. All they knew was that Nile crocodiles in Africa inflicted twenty times more fatalities a year than all of the combined shark attacks around the world. That, and the fact that the fifteen-foot behemoth in front of them appeared more than a little curious.
“Give me your fins,” Dirk whispered, “then get behind me and slowly back away.”
Summer slipped off her fins and passed them underwater to Dirk. She moved with desperate slowness, despite her heart’s pounding. She tried not to look at the croc as she pushed away and stroked backward.
Dirk treaded water until Summer gained a healthy distance, then he eased to his left. The croc eyed him for a minute, then its powerful tail whipped the surface, and the reptile cut through the water like a green torpedo.
Dirk turned and stroked as fast as he could. He swam on the surface, intentionally splashing his strokes and kicks to draw the croc toward him. He didn’t hesitate to see if the animal was following, he just swam like he was on fire. He needn’t have worried. The croc took an immediate bead on him.
It was a race Dirk had no chance to win. Propelled by its massive tail, the Nile crocodile could swim in bursts of up to twenty miles per hour.
Dirk wasn’t trying to outrace it, only lead it to an easier target. The second gunman’s body had started to drift downstream, but still bobbed a short distance away.
As Dirk raced for the bearded man’s body, he could sense the croc closing. Nearly to the gunman, he heard a loud snap and felt a tug on his swim fin. He kept swimming, up to and past the bloody body, then he stopped and held his breath.
The croc’s open jaws surged out of the water and clamped down on bone and flesh. With a whip of its tail, it pulled the gunman beneath the surface. Descending into the lake, the croc followed its preferred method of killing—by drowning prey while locked in its powerful jaws—not knowing that in this instance the prey was already dead.