Muldarga is somewhere off to my rear. I am heading back towards the cattle station, he thought.
Then Willy shrugged and kept crawling. In the short term the actual direction did not matter. But it might not be a bad plan. They won’t expect me to go that way, he told himself.
But the more immediate need to reach proper cover and to put some distance between him and the man kept him going until his trembling muscles demanded a break. He came to a shivering, sweating stop in the grass about fifty paces from the nearest rocks.
Halfway, he thought.
There was an anthill nearby and he wriggled to it and cautiously raised his head. What he saw made him sigh with relief. Mr Dragovisic was now at least seventy-five metres away. He was studying another large piece of wreckage.
The other wing? Willy wondered.
He realized he was now high enough up the slope to be able to see much of the valley floor. A litter of small pieces of wreckage was strewn along it for about a hundred metres and there were patches of torn up grass and bare earth. One wheel was visible, sticking up on a torn off undercarriage leg. Several small trees had been snapped off but otherwise there was little sign of the crash.
All Willy could hope was that the search planes would arrive before the crooks could clean up the wreckage. That idea and the one of setting up cattle pens struck him with reluctant admiration.
He is a clever bastard, and a quick thinker, Willy mused.
By then he had recovered his breath and as soon as Mr Dragovisic started walking on towards more wreckage he resumed crawling. Once again he followed a diagonal route. This brought him to a point almost directly up the slope from the wreckage of the fuselage. He could even see Mr Drew’s body sprawled in the grass.
A look around told Willy he had a problem. If I try to crawl straight up that limestone ridge I will be very visible, he told himself. I need to get further away and go up behind one of those small ridges.
But the nearest was opposite the place where the helicopter had landed. What to do? Willy lay there trembling in an agony of indecision. He wiped more sweat from his eyes and bit his lip. By now he was feeling exhausted and nauseous. His whole body seemed to be a mass of pain and bruises and his skin itched and stung.
There seemed to be nothing for it but to take the risk and go on past the place where the helicopter had landed. Willy took several deep breaths and began crawling on across the slope. All the while he was dreading the helicopter’s return. He was sure it would bring Zoltan and his rifle.
He will be much harder to get away from than Mr Dragovisic, Willy thought.
So, as he crawled desperately along, Willy kept straining his ears for the first sound of the helicopter. Despite the sweat that stung his eyes he kept glancing at the sky, hoping to see a search aircraft.
Another glance behind showed Mr Dragovisic standing and looking up at where the Cessna’s port wing tip had struck the big ghost gum. The man was now about a hundred metres away and Willy began to hope he might get away.
And then his heart seemed to clench tight as the sound of the helicopter reached him. As quickly as he could he slithered over behind a small log which lay in the grass. It wasn’t much cover but it was better than lying exposed in the open. Hoping that nothing else that slithered was lurking under it he pressed himself hard in against the rough bark. He was just in time as the helicopter clattered over the crest of the ridge almost overhead.
As the rotor downdraught shook the nearby tree tops Willy risked another look. What he saw made him gasp with relief. He had expected the helicopter to land in the same place but now he saw Mr Dragovisic waving and the helicopter swung round in a wide circle and came in to land in the clearing where Mr Drew had tried to put the aircraft down. The machine settled about a hundred metres away.
But it was facing Willy so he did not dare move. All he could do was lie and watch, sweating and wracked with pain. Then out of the helicopter climbed Zoltan—and he had his automatic rifle. That sight set Willy trembling and he whimpered as the terror coursed through him.
Mr Dragovisic walked across and spoke to the helicopter pilot and then moved back with Zoltan. Willy saw Zoltan pass him something and then saw that it was a hand-held radio. Damn! Willy thought. It was getting harder and harder. Quickly he glanced around and as soon as he was sure that Mr Dragovisic and Zoltan were watching the helicopter he began crawling quickly up the slope towards the nearest bushes.
I must get up over this ridge before Zoltan really starts looking, he thought.
But he could not move because the helicopter was lifting off. Willy didn’t have to look to know that. The engine noise told him. With an effort he controlled his neck muscles so as not to move his face and have it reflect sunlight.
As soon as the sound was overhead Willy resumed snaking through the grass. Through eyes stinging with sweat and misted with pain he saw the bushes appear to get closer with each few seconds. And then he had reached them. Gasping from the exertion he dragged himself in under the tangle, ignoring several sharp stones and dead sticks.
The bushes were a real tangle of twisted small branches and within seconds Willy had received several more shocks and realized he had made a mistake. The bushes were thickly intertwined and prickly but without thorns—but they were inhabited by numerous green ants. The first bite gave Willy such a painful surprise that he let out a muted cry. At first he thought he had been bitten by a snake or scorpion or some such creature. Then his frantically searching eyes noted the hurrying little green shapes.
“Bloody green ants! Ow!” he muttered.
But green ants were mere trivia compared to the threat presented by the two men so Willy just gritted his teeth and ignored the bites and the itchy feeling of the ants scuttling on his bare skin. Shivering with pain, shock and fear he peered back through the bushes.
The two men were standing near the trees that the Cessna had first struck and Willy saw Mr Dragovisic point up and then along the valley.
Discussing the crash, Willy surmised.
He saw Zoltan nod and then look around. The man hefted his rifle into both hands and began walking across towards the shallow gully in the centre of the valley floor. Mr Dragovisic started walking slowly along the line of the crash, his eyes scanning the ground.
Seeing Zoltan start searching along the gully gave Willy a tiny spurt of satisfaction. He had been right.
If I’d tried to hide there they would have caught me almost at once, he thought. But it was terribly evident that these men would quickly sus out what his options were. Once they find my tracks in the grass they will be up here in no time, he reasoned.
So he could not stay where he was. I have to get up over this ridge, he reasoned.
Driven by a visceral fear so intense it almost made him ill him Willy crawled up through the bushes. Now he regretted having come into them at all. It wasn’t so much the ants as the dead leaves and sticks. It was impossible to move quickly and quietly. All he could do was hope that the men did not hear him.
It took him nearly two minutes to crawl the twenty metres to the other side of the bushes and by then Zoltan was already halfway along the gully to the wreck site. Willy lay on the dead leaves and dry grass and studied the limestone slope above him through blinking eyes. There was a shallow depression or cleft running up but he knew he would have to be quick as when Zoltan was directly below him he would be able to see right up the dip.
Driven by that thought Willy scrambled out from under the bushes and up onto the bare limestone. Almost at once he gasped in pain and waves of dismay surged through him. For a second or so he had to stop to take stock of the sheer agony that swept up from his right knee cap and the pain in his hands and forearms. To his dismay, he realized that the limestone was sharp—so sharp it had cut the skin