She unbuckled her belt and stood up though her legs were still wobbly. “Might be an idea. Where’s the rifle?”
He moved to collect it from where it was stashed, broke it open to load it, snapped the action shut, then passed it to her. “Think you know what you’re doing?”
“I’d prefer a dirty great cannon,” she muttered, making her own checks and feeling it all coming back. “But I do know which end of this thing shoots.” She swung up the rifle and took aim through the chopper’s reinforced forward windshield. “If there really is a croc out there where do I shoot him? Right between the eyes? They’ve got tiny brains haven’t they?”
“I’ve never had the pleasure of finding out. Just don’t miss or it will come right after me.”
“Then me.” She slicked stray tendrils off her forehead.
“I’m ready if you are.”
“Then let’s do it!’ he said.
He plunged straight down into the water which only a week before would have been over his head. “Fuselage appears to be unscathed,” he called to her eventually, his eyes scanning the waxed, glinting sides. “I want to check the shafts of the tail rotor. Keep your eyes peeled for ripples in the water.”
“Struth, what’s with you? Of course I will. We’re dinner otherwise. They’re there. I know they’re there.”
“Yeah? Well I’m the guy in the water.” Daniel moved about near soundlessly in the swamp stirring up the mud on the bed so the shining water turned dark and murky. Sandra followed him from one side of the helicopter to the other, her keen young eyes focused on the surface.
“Skids are in a web of roots and vegetation,” he yelled to her. “That’s the danger. They’ll have to be cleared.”
“I bet there are leeches in there?” Her voice was level, her face pale but resolute.
“Too right. The little buggers are stuck to my legs.”
“Oh how vile! You can’t do anything, can you?” she called.
His voice came back to her sounding perfectly in control.
“I’m going to use my old faithful Swiss Army knife. I have to clear that vegetation. Just cover me.”
She watched him plunge beneath the muddied waters coming up with coils of vines and gnarled roots that he tossed away across the swamp.
Only now could she smell the stomach-turning odour of mud and rotting vegetation. “Finish soon, Daniel,” she begged him. Her whole body was vibrating with tension and the rifle felt very heavy.
“Doing my best!” he grunted and plunged again.
A brilliant sun burned down on the small clearing, the paperbarks and pandanus standing all around like sentinels. Sandra had never felt so exposed in her life.
Hurry, hurry, Daniel.
She saw his sodden dark head decorated with trails of luminescent green slime emerge at the very moment she spotted thirty feet beyond him an arrowhead of ripples across the stagnant surface of the swamp. Then at the apex of the triangle nostrils and behind that twin blackish bulges about twenty-two to twenty-three centimetres apart.
Eyes, that glinted gold!
She was so panicked for a moment she felt she might pass out. It was coming at surprising speed for such a great cumbersome creature. It was surging towards the challenger in its territory ready to dismember it limb from limb and stash the feast for a week later.
Horror was as sharp as a drill. “Get out!” she yelled. “Daniel, get out. It’s a croc.”
His lean, muscular body shot out of the water, his strong arms lunging at the body of the helicopter towards the open cockpit, hauling himself up.
Sandra took aim down the sights of the handsome bolt action rifle which had been fitted with a small telescope to make distant targets appear closer. Her whole face was pinched tight with control while she waited for the precise moment the giant reptile’s brain, situated midway between the eyes, would be dead centre in her range. God help them if the action jammed!
Now!
She held her nerve. Her finger that had been holding steady on the trigger, squeezed… The butt plate kicked back into her shoulder as the firing pin struck the rear end of the cartridge.
The noise was deafening in the torrid, preternatural quiet of the swamp.
“I’ve killed it. I think I’ve killed it.” Her voice was ragged. There were runnels of sweat running down her face. “Did I?” she called to him for confirmation, “or did I just nick it?” Now the crisis was over she was shivering. “I should have had an M16.”
“Sorry, they belong to the armed forces.” Swamp water was streaming off him, as he stood within the chopper, his boots oozing mud. Leeches were feasting off him. “No worries, you got him all right,” he assured her. “Didn’t you see his yellow belly as he rolled?”
“Hell I’m good!” she congratulated herself. “I hope he’s not just playing dead? Maybe he wants both of us to think so until it’s time to make a leap into the cabin.”
He shook his head. “What do you want, a tooth for a trophy? You got him, Sandra. Good and proper. I would never have guessed you could shoot so well. You turned into Annie Oakley right before my eyes.”
She staggered away to sit down. “Who’s Annie Oakley anyway? One of your girlfriends?”
He moved to the edge of the doorway, beginning to remove the brown and black leeches with the help of his Swiss Army knife. “Hell, Ms Kingston, none of my girlfriends can shoot like you. You could give a lot of guys lessons. Annie Oakley, for your information, was a famous American markswoman. Supposedly Buffalo Bill’s girlfriend though I believe she married someone else.”
“Maybe it was a sore point she could shoot better. Uugh!” she shuddered, watching him remove the bloodsuckers with no show of revulsion. “How’s this for adventure? What are you going to do to top it?”
A lock of wet raven hair flopped over one eye. He tossed his head to dislodge it. “I could carry you on my shoulders across the swamp?”
“No thanks.”
“Changed your mind about going back with me?”
She hugged herself, rocking back and forth. “What do you reckon went wrong?”
“Too early to say.” One leg was clear.
“You seemed pretty sure it was tinkering before?”
He kept silent, concentrating on the sickening task to hand.
“Do you mind answering?”
“Maybe I was a little too quick off the mark back there. The chopper will be checked out. Accidents happen all the time.”
“There’s nothing Uncle Lloyd and Bernie would like more than to see me dead,” she said.
And I’d be a bonus, Daniel thought.
CHAPTER THREE
SANDRA awoke with a start. She ached all over. That’s what happened when you had to be winched into a helicopter. She rolled over onto her back, throwing an arm across her eyes. She was in a hotel room back in Darwin, waiting for Daniel to make a reappearance. He had remained with Moondai’s downed chopper while Air Rescue had ferried her back to Darwin. She really ought to get up, take a shower, tidy herself up. Everyone had been very kind to her, smoothing her way. She knew people would have been just the same had she not been Rigby Kingston’s heiress.
It