A Time to Die - Smith Wilbur - Страница 53
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For all its comical appearance, the hippopotamus is the most dangerous animal in Africa. It has probably killed more human beings than all the other dangerous species put together. The old bulls are cantankerous and aggressive, a cow with a new calf will attack without provocation, and a bite from those gaping jaws whose tusks are adapted to shearing coarse river reeds will cut a man in two. The crocodile is a sly and efficient killer. This pool was the ideal haunt of both hippos and crocodiles, and Claudia Monterro was in it up to her waist.
Her wet clothing, shirt and panties and socks, all freshly washed, were draped over the reeds at the edge, and Claudia was facing away from him, leaning forward and with both hands working up a lather of soap in her hair.
The skin of her back was lightly tanned and flawless except for the pale line left by the strap of a bikini top across her shoulder blades. Her flanks were lean but elegantly shaped into the waist, and the knuckles of her spine just showed between the ridges of fine athletic muscle on each side of it.
"What the hell do you think you're doings" Sean snarled. She turned to face him, hands still in her soapy hair, eyes screwed up against the suds.
"Is this how you get your jollies?" she demanded, making not the slightest effort to cover her bosom. "You pervert, creeping and peeping?"
"Get your arse out of there before you get it bitten off by a croc." Her jibe had stung him, but even in his anger he saw that her breasts were better than he had guessed. The cold water made the points stick out at him.
"Stop gawking!" she yelled back at him. "And get lost!" She ducked her head under and then stood erect once again, soap lather streaming down her body, her hair shining and slick as a sheet of black silk over her shoulders.
"Get out of there, damn you, I'm not going to stand here arguing," he ordered.
"I'll get out when I'm good and ready."
Sean plunged straight into the pool and reached her before she could avoid him. He seized her arm, and though it was slippery with soap, he dragged her toward the bank, kicking and lashing at him with her free hand, spitting with fury.
"You bastard, I hate you! Leave me alone!"
He controlled her easily with one hand. In the other, he still held his big double-barreled rifle. His khaki shorts ran water and his velskoen boots squelched as he dragged her out. He snatched up her wet shirt and threw it at her.
"Get dressed!"
"You've got no right! I'm not going to accept this, you brutal ham-handed... you've hurt my arm." She proffered her upper arm, exhibiting his red finger marks on the skin, holding the wet shirt loosely at her side, shaking and pale with rage.
Strangely, it was her navel that drew his eyes. It stared accusingly at him from the flat plain of her midriff like a cyclopean eye, a perfect dimple at that moment more erotic than even the dense triangular bush of sodden hair beneath it. He dragged his eyes away. She was so angry she seemed totally oblivious of her nudity.
He thought she might actually attack him, and he stepped back. As he did so he looked beyond her and saw a tiny arrowhead of ripples slipping silently across the still green surface of the pool toward them. At the apex of the V-shaped ripple were two black lumps; gnarled and no bigger than a pair of large walnuts, they came at surprising speed.
Sean grabbed her arm, the same arm about whose injuries she was complaining, and jerked her back past him and away from the water's edge so viciously that she sprawled on her hands and knees in the mud.
He swung up the.577 Express rifle and aimed between the black eye lumps of the approaching crocodile. The eyes were at least nine inches apart, he calculated as he rode the pip of the foresight between them-a big old mugger.
The thunder of the rifle was stunning in the silence of the reeds and the bullet flicked an ostrich feather of spray from the surface, dead center between the eye protuberances. The crocodile rolled sluggishly onto its back, its tiny brain mangled by the shot.
Claudia scrambled to her feet and stared over his shoulder as the reptile flashed its butter-yellow saurian belly. Sixteen feet from chin to the tip of its long crested tail, its jaws clicked as its nerves spasmed from the brain shot. The fangs, as long and thick as a human forefinger, overlapped the grinning scaly lips. It sank slowly back into the pool, the creamy belly fading into the green depths.
Claudia's fury had evaporated. She was staring into the pool, shivering uncontrollably, shaking her wet hair.
"oh God, I didn't realize... how horrible." She swayed toward him, shattered and vulnerable. "I didn't know." Her body was cold from the pool, long and sleek and wet as she pressed against him.
"What is it?" Riccardo Monterro shouted from the edge of the reed bed.
"Sean, are you all right? What happened? Where's Claudia?"
At the sound of her father's voice, she jumped back from him guiltily and for the first time tried to cover her breasts and crotch.
"It's all right, Capo," Sean yelled back. "She's safe."
Claudia snatched up her panties and pulled them on hastily, hopping on one foot in the mud, turning her back to him as she picked up her shirt and thrust her arms into the sleeves. When she turned back to him, she had recovered her anger.
"I got a fright," she told him. "I didn't mean to grab you like that. Don't make any big deal out of it, buster." She zipped up the fly of her jeans and lifted her chin. "I would have grabbed the garbage man if he'd been handy."
"Okay, ducky, next time I'm going to let them bite you, lion or croc, what the hell."
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