Celtic Empire (Dirk Pitt 25)

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.

Dirk kept still as the croc descended beneath him. Once it was out of sight, he swiftly swam away, this time taking smooth, quiet strokes.

“He may return for seconds,” Summer said when he reached her side.

Dirk resumed his stroke. “Let’s not stick around to find out.”

Summer jettisoned her tank, and

together they raced twenty yards up current. Angling toward the west, they slowed and continued at a measured pace.

“I hope he doesn’t have any friends.” Summer looked ahead and over her shoulder. When Dirk didn’t reply, she gave him a nudge. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“They say there are ten thousand Nile crocs in Lake Nasser.”

“Ten thousand! You were crazy for letting us dive here.”

“I liked our odds in the middle of the lake.”

“Yeah, I did, too . . . when we had a boat!”

“At least you don’t have to worry,” Dirk said, grinning between breaths. “They don’t attack their own kind.”

Summer shook her head and kept swimming, though she knew the concentration of crocs would be higher in the shallows. For now, the lakeshore was still over a mile away. With every stroke, she wondered if they’d make it that far.

They didn’t.

Ten minutes later, Dirk heard a chugging sound and stopped to look. A small ferry appeared, crossing the lake from the Sudanese town of Wadi Halfa north to Abu Simbel. Dirk and Summer swam toward its path, waving and yelling when the vessel drew near.

The ferry was little more than an open-decked motorized barge, with a small pilothouse at the stern and a canvas canopy over the main deck. A short, wrinkled man steered alongside and cut the engine as a teenage deckhand helped pull them aboard.

“Far from land,” the teen said in broken English. He stepped aside after they were on deck and began coiling a long rope as if a lake rescue happened every day.

Summer spied a handful of passengers on a bench beneath the awning and headed for an empty spot. Dirk followed, gazing at a pair of camels hitched to the rail near the bow. Leaving a damp trail of footprints, he sat down beside Summer. On his other side, an old man in faded khakis napped, his face and head tucked under a straw fedora. At his feet, a small dachshund shared in the slumber, curled against a canvas knapsack with the initials C.C. stenciled on the side.

The man stirred at the squishing sound as the twins sat down in their soggy wetsuits. He raised the brim of his hat, studied the pair through clear gray eyes, and smiled. “Interesting place to be taking a dip,” he said in perfect English. “Did you know the lake is teeming with crocodiles?”

“You don’t say?” Dirk held up his two fins, one of which showed a large bite mark, and handed them to Summer. He glanced again at the camels. They were loaded with picks, shovels, and modern camping gear. “Are those your camels?”

“Good ol’ Margy and Bess.” The old man pointed toward the animals with an arm that was brown and leathery from years in the sun. “At their age, they’re no longer ships of the desert. More like leaky tow barges.”

“May I ask,” Dirk said, “what you’re doing way out here?”

“Just a bit of archeological prospecting.”

“Aren’t all of the rich royal tombs far north, in the Valley of the Kings?”