It was a gigantic brute, with a smooth-as-silk black hide, its long tail moving slowly from side to side as though it had a hungry life of its own. Its jaws were open, the needled fangs dripping saliva. Below the sloping forehead, the golden eyes looked around with an elegant disdain, its whole manner showing that it had seen nothing that caused it any fear.
“Should’ve brought the Steyr, lover,” Krysty whispered at his elbow.
“Think the SIG-Sauer’ll be enough blaster. Mebbe we won’t need to use”
The words died in his throat as he saw a dreadful sight. One of the young women, looking to be less than fifteen, had been sleeping in the long grass at the edge of the jungle. Now, the cries of the others had awakened her and she sat up, rubbing her eyes, less than a dozen feet from the huge mutie carnivore.
The jaguar threw its head back and gave a roar of triumph, so loud and menacing that Ryan felt all the short hairs curling at his nape.
The young woman turned around and saw her doom, almost close enough to touch, and gave a weak, pitiful cry for help. Then her eyes rolled up white in their sockets and she collapsed back in the grass in a total faint.
The rest of the women had all fallen to their knees, most with foreheads pressed to the dirt, all chanting in their own tongue.
The jaguar still hadn’t moved toward its helpless prey, its tail moving faster, its eyes fixed on Ryan and Krysty. There was the momentary hope that it might have fed recently and might turn around and leave the riverbank.
With infinite slowness, Ryan had half turned, so that his body concealed his right hand as it inched toward the butt of the bolstered automatic, feeling the familiar chill of cold metal against his palm.
There was a flash of lightning and a crack of thunder from the north, with its promise of a storm closing in on them. But right now that didn’t concern Ryan.
The blaster was clear of the leather, and the jaguar still hadn’t made a threatening move toward the unconscious girl. But it had lowered its rear quarters in the unmistakable pose of a cat readying itself to pounce.
The range was at least fifty yards across the foaming river, the rushing water making it much harder to judge the range and angle of the target.
“Make it a good one, lover,” Krysty whispered.
Everything happened at once.
Ryan drew the SIG-Sauer and leveled it at the big cat, finger ready on the trigger. The jaguar began its spring at the helpless girl, jaws gaping, claws extended, and the woman with the pink necklace threw herself at Ryan, hitting him just behind the knees, knocking him to the grass. The blaster went off as he fell, the 9 mm round slicing uselessly through the upper branches of a palm tree.
Despite his combat-trained reflexes, Ryan was taken totally by surprise. He rolled onto his left side, lashing out with the barrel, catching the native a cracking blow across her forehead.
She moaned and fell back, blood seeping from a deep cut over her left eye. Ryan pushed her away and came up into a crouch, knowing that he was going to be way too late.
The jaguar had seized the young native woman between neck and shoulder, bringing its massive jaws together in a hideous crunching of bone. Crimson spurted from the wound, soaking her pale yellow cotton dress. She came around for a moment and slapped and kicked at the jaguar, but the mutie beast held her with its implacable power. It shifted its grip higher, teeth snapping on the skull, crushing it with effortless ease.
Krysty had drawn her own blaster, aiming the 5-shot .38 and opening fire. But the Smith amp; Wesson had only a short two-inch barrel and the bullet went wide.
The noise startled the beast and it began to back away, sliding toward the forest’s cover on its haunches, dragging the corpse of its victim effortlessly behind it through the muddied, bloodied grass.
Krysty fired three more shots, spaced and aimed, and at least one of them hit home.