Burning Angels (19 page)

Like Cape buffalos, elephants had poor eyesight at anything other than close range. The light from Jaeger and Narov’s head torches was unlikely to bother them. They detected food, predators, sanctuary and danger via their sense of smell, which was second-to-none in the animal world. Their nostrils were positioned on the end of their trunk, and so sensitive was the elephant’s smell that it could detect a water source up to nineteen kilometres away.

They also had an acute sense of hearing, which could detect sounds well outside of the normal human range. In short, if Jaeger and Narov could take on the smell of an elephant and keep largely silent, the herd shouldn’t even know they were here.

They pushed onwards across a flat shelf thick with dry dung, boots kicking up puffs of detritus as they went. Here and there the heaps of old faeces were streaked with splashes of dark green, as if someone had been through flicking daubs of paint around the cave.

Jaeger guessed it had to be guano.

He flicked his head up, his twin beams sweeping the roof high above. Sure enough, clusters of skeletal black figures could be seen hanging upside down from the ceiling. Bats. Fruit bats, to be precise. Thousands and thousands of them. Green slime – their digested fruit droppings; guano – was smeared down the walls.

Nice
, Jaeger told himself. They were pushing into a cave plastered from floor to ceiling in faeces.

In the light of Jaeger’s head torch, a tiny pair of orange eyes flickered open. A bat that had been sleeping was suddenly awake. The flare of the Petzl woke more of them now, and a ripple of angry disturbance pulsed across the animals hanging from the roof of the cave.

Unlike most bats, fruit bats – often called megabats – don’t use the echo-location navigation system, in which high-pitched squeaks and squeals are bounced off the walls. Instead, they possess large, bulbous eyes, which enable them to find their way in the twilight of cave systems. Hence they are drawn to the light.

The first megabat broke from its perch – where its claws had been hooked into a cranny in the cave roof, bony wings wrapped around itself like a cloak – and took flight. It plunged earthwards, no doubt mistaking Jaeger’s torch for a beam of sunlight flooding through the cave entrance.

And then a cloud of the things were upon him.

36

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!

Jaeger felt the first of the megabats cannon into his head, as the dark horde tried to fly down the beam of light. The ceiling was over one hundred feet high, and from that kind of distance the bats had appeared minuscule. Up close, though, they were monsters.

They had a wingspan of up to two metres, and must weigh in at a good two kilos. That kind of weight going at great speed sure hurt, and with their bulging eyes shining an angry red and their gleaming rows of teeth set in long, narrow, bony skulls, they looked positively demonic.

Jaeger was knocked to the floor, as more of the ghostly forms swooped from the heights. He reached up and killed the light with his cupped hands, which also served to shield his head from the blows.

Just as soon as he had doused the light, the bats were gone, drawn instead to the sunlight seeping in through the cave entrance. As they swept out in a massive black-winged storm cloud, the big bull elephant leading the herd trumpeted and flapped his ears angrily. He clearly appreciated the megabats about as much as Jaeger had done.

‘
Megachiroptera
,’ Narov whispered. ‘Also called the flying fox. You can see why.’

‘Flying wolf, more like.’ Jaeger shook his head in disgust. ‘Definitely
not
my favourite animal.’

Narov gave a silent laugh. ‘They rely on their keen sense of sight and smell to locate food. Normally it is fruit. Today they obviously thought it was you.’ She sniffed ostentatiously. ‘Though I am surprised. You smell like shit, Blondie.’

‘Ha, ha,’ Jaeger muttered. ‘And you smell truly delectable, of course.’

Blondie
. The nickname had been inevitable. With his eyebrows and even his eyelashes dyed peroxide blonde, he was amazed how much his appearance had altered. As disguises went, it was surprisingly effective.

They picked themselves up from the dirt, brushed themselves down and pressed on in silence. Above them, the last ghostly whisperings of the bats died away. The only other noise came from behind now – the steady, ground-shaking beat of a hundred or so elephants pushing ever deeper into the cave.

To one side of the cavern floor ran a dark, sluggish waterway, which vented out of the cave entrance. They climbed over a series of ledges that took them higher than the water by a good few metres. Finally they crested a rise, and a stunning sight unfolded before them.

The river widened out into a massive expanse of water, forming a vast lake beneath Burning Angels mountain. Jaeger’s torch beam couldn’t even reach the far shore. But even more fantastical were the intricate forms that lunged out of the water in bizarre, seemingly frozen animation.

Jaeger stared for several seconds in astonishment, before he realised what exactly it was that they had stumbled upon. It was a petrified jungle – here, the jagged-toothed skeletal forms of giant palm trees thrusting out of the lake at crazed angles; there, a serried rank of hardwood trunks puncturing the water like the pillars of a long-lost Roman temple.

At some stage this must have been a lush prehistoric forest. A volcanic eruption must have rained down ash upon the greenery, burying it, Over time, the volcano had risen higher and the jungle had turned to stone. It had been transformed into the most incredible minerals: into opal – a beautiful reddish mineral streaked with fluorescent blues and greens; malachite – a gemstone rendered in stunning, swirling coppery greens; plus bolts of smooth, glittering, jet-black chert.

Jaeger had seen much of the world with the military, visiting some of the most remote terrain the planet had to offer, yet still it had the power to amaze and confound him – although rarely like it did right now. Here, in this place where he had expected to encounter only darkness and evil, they’d stumbled upon mind-blowing beauty and splendour.

He turned to Narov. ‘Don’t ever let me hear you complain about where I took you for your honeymoon.’

She couldn’t help but smile.

The lake had to be a good three hundred yards across – more than three football fields set end to end. As to its length, that was anyone’s guess. A ledge ran around the southern flank, and that was clearly the route they had to take.

As they set off, a thought struck Jaeger. If somewhere up ahead lay Kammler’s dark secret – his factory of death – there was little sign of it from this side. In fact, there was no sign of any human presence anywhere.

No boot prints.

No pathways used by humans.

Not a hint that any vehicles had ever passed this way.

But the cave system was clearly massive. There were sure to be other entrances; other water-worn passageways leading to other galleries.

They pressed on.

The shelf forced them closer to the cave’s wall. It glittered beguilingly. The rock was pierced with a myriad of frosty quartz crystals that glowed blue-white in the torchlight, their tips as sharp as razor blades. Spiders had strung their webs between them, the entire wall seemingly coated with a thin skein of silk.

The webs were thick with dead bodies. Fat black moths; giant butterflies of stunning colours; enormous orange-and-yellow-striped African hornets, each the length of your little finger; all enmeshed and mummified in the silk. Everywhere Jaeger looked, he could see spiders feasting upon what they had caught.

Water meant life, Jaeger reminded himself. The lake would draw beasts of all kinds. Here, the hunters – the spiders – were waiting. And the spider bided its time to trap its prey, as did many other predators.

As they pushed further into the cave, the thought wasn’t lost on Jaeger.

37

Jaeger doubled his guard. He’d not been expecting this amount of wildlife so deep in Burning Angels cave.

In amongst the glittering crystals and the shimmering webs there was something else too, jutting out of the cave wall at odd angles. It was the petrified bones of whatever animals had inhabited the prehistoric – now fossilised – jungle: giant armoured crocodiles; massive beasts that were the ancient forebears of the elephant; plus the heavyweight age-old ancestor to the hippo.

The ledge narrowed.

It forced Jaeger and Narov skin-close to the rock.

A sharp fissure opened up between the ledge and the wall. Jaeger glanced into it.
There was something in there
.

He peered closer. The tangled, tortured mass of yellowish brown resembled the flesh and bones of something that had once been living – the skin mummified to a consistency like leather.

Jaeger felt a presence at his shoulder. ‘Baby elephant,’ Narov whispered, as she peered into the crevasse. ‘They feel their way in the dark using the tips of their trunks, and they must fall in there by accident.’

‘Yeah, but you see those marks.’ Jaeger focused his twin beams on a bone that looked badly gnawed. ‘Something did that. Something big and powerful. Some carnivore.’

Narov nodded. Somewhere in this cave there were flesh-eaters.

For an instant, she flashed her light across the lake to their rear. ‘Look,’ she whispered. ‘They come.’

Jaeger glanced over his shoulder. The column of elephants was surging into the lake. As the water deepened, the smaller amongst them – the adolescents – plunged in over their heads. They lifted their trunks until just the tips were showing, the nostrils on the ends sucking in air greedily, as if through a snorkel.

Narov turned to check the path that she and Jaeger had taken. Smallish grey forms could be seen hurrying forward. The youngest of the herd: the babies. They were too small to wade across, and so they had to take the long way around, sticking to dry land.

‘We need to hurry,’ she whispered, a real edge of urgency to her tone now.

They set off at a jog.

They hadn’t gone far when Jaeger heard it.

A low, ghostly sound broke the silence: it was like a cross between a dog’s growl, a bull’s bellow and a monkey’s whooping cackle.

It was echoed by an answering cry.

It sent a tingle up Jaeger’s spine.

If he hadn’t heard that type of cry before, he’d have been convinced that the cave was inhabited by a demonic horde. As it was, he recognised it for what it was:
hyenas
.

Up ahead on the path, there were hyenas – an animal that Jaeger had come to know well.

Something like a cross between a leopard and a wolf, the largest can weigh more than a fully grown human male. Their jaws are so powerful, they can crush the bones of their prey and eat them. Normally they only take on the weak, the sick and the old. But if cornered, they are as dangerous as a pack of lions.

Maybe more so.

Jaeger didn’t doubt there was a pack of hyenas on the path, waiting to ambush the youngest of the herd.

As if to confirm his fears, from behind them a bull elephant gave an answering challenge to the hyena’s ghastly call, unleashing a screaming trumpet from his massive trunk. It tore through the cave system like a thunderclap, his giant ears flapping and his head swinging towards the direction of the threat.

The lead bull veered off course, bringing two others with him. As the main body of the herd surged onwards through the lake, the three bulls tore through the water towards the rock shelf – the source of the hyena howls.

Jaeger didn’t underestimate the danger. The elephants were facing down a pack of hyenas, and he and Narov were sandwiched in the middle. Every second was vital. There was no time to search for an alternative route around the hyenas, and no time to waver, much as he might baulk at what they were about to do.

Jaeger reached behind and whipped out his P228, then glanced at Narov. She already had her weapon in hand.

‘Head shots!’ he hissed, as they started to sprint forward. ‘
Head shots.
A wounded hyena is a killer . . .’

The light of their head torches bounced and spun as they ran, casting weird, ghostly shadows across the walls. From behind them the bull elephants trumpeted again and surged ever closer.

Jaeger was the first to catch sight of their adversaries. A massive spotted hyena wheeled towards the sound of their footfalls and the glare of the torches, its eyes glowing evilly. It had the typical squat hindquarters, massive shoulders, short neck and bullet-shaped head, plus the distinctive shaggy mane running down its backbone. The beast’s jaws were open in a snarl, showing off short, thick canines and rows of huge, bone-crushing premolars.

It was like a wolf on steroids.

The female of the spotted hyena was larger than the male and she dominated the pack. She swung her head low, and to either side of her Jaeger could see other sets of glowing eyes. He counted seven animals in all, as behind him the enraged bull elephants tore through the last of the lake water.

Jaeger’s pace didn’t falter. Two-handed, and aiming on the run, he pulled the trigger.

Pzzzt! Pzzzt! Pzzzt!

Three 9mm rounds tore into the queen hyena’s skull. She fell hard, her torso slamming into the rock shelf – dead before she even came to rest. Her cohorts snarled and sprang to attack.

Jaeger sensed Narov on his shoulder, firing as she ran.

The distance between them and the rabid pack had closed to a matter of yards.

38

Even as Jaeger vaulted into the air to avoid the bloodied corpses, his P228 spat rounds.

His boots slammed down on the far side and he sprinted onwards, as behind him the bull elephants closed in – the water boiling under their massive feet; their eyes blazing, ears flapping, trunks sensing the threat.

As far as the bulls were concerned, there was blood and death and combat on the path before them, on the very route their little ones needed to take. For elephants, the strongest urge was seemingly to protect their own. The entire one-hundred-strong herd was one big, extended family, and right now the bulls’ offspring were in mortal danger.