Death is Forever

her taut nerves.
    “You’re certain Dog Four is off in that direction?” she asked finally.
    “Yes.”
    “Maybe he’s lost.”
    The drone of the engine began to strengthen once more, consuming the stillness.
    “And maybe we’re lying in a pool of cold water,” Cole said grimly. “He’s doing legs of a search pattern. When I tell you to look down and be still, do it.”
    A chill moved over her skin. “What if he spots the Rover?”
    Cole didn’t say anything. He just looked at the angle of the sun. Darkness wouldn’t come in time to do any good. All he could do was hope that the trees he’d parked the Rover beneath provided enough cover. Having flown over the Kimberley himself, he knew how thin a cover the trees gave.
    Like everything else that survived in the scorching land, the foliage of the gum and acacia trees was thin and grew in such a way as to minimize the amount of sunlight reaching the surface of the leaves. In the outback, leaves were narrow and hung straight down rather than broad and spread at a right angle to catch every bit of light.
    The engine noise came closer, echoing off the limestone hills and between the steep walls of the ravine. Erin didn’t need Cole’s terse order to hug the ground. She was already there. She pressed her cheek into the hot soil and wondered how the land could seem so empty one instant and be so full of danger the next.
    The sound reached a peak, then gradually fell away once more as the helicopter turned onto a different heading.
    “He’ll fly right over the Rover if he stays on that tack,” Cole said. “If the chopper lands, I’m going to head for the Rover. If I don’t come back and someone else starts calling for you, get up and walk into the open.”
    “But—”
    “But nothing,” he cut in savagely. “Your chances of surviving alone out here in the dry are the same as mine of surviving an arctic blizzard buck naked. Street might have a reason to keep you alive. The land doesn’t give a damn whether you live or die.”
    Cole took off his hat and mopped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand as he studied the terrain. The bed of the dry ravine was narrow and twisting. It led up a gradual slope toward a notch between two low hills half a mile away. The heat was fierce. The lid of clouds only made it worse, but the heavy air conducted sound very well.
    Both of them heard the instant the helicopter changed its heading.
    “Why is he concentrating here?” she asked.
    “Because it’s one of the few places around where the growth is thick enough and the land rough enough that a Rover could be hidden. He might even have equipment sensitive enough to pick up the Rover’s metal frame.”
    “Or a signal hidden somewhere in the Rover?” she asked unhappily.
    “Doubt it. I checked. Anyway, he’s looking, not homing in.”
    The noise of the chopper surged suddenly. It had changed headings, approaching them once more.
    Much too close.
    The sound of the rotors ricocheted around them. Erin tried to drag air into her aching lungs. It was like trying to breathe through wet wool. She closed her eyes and willed the chopper to disappear.
    The noise slowly abated.
    She let out a sigh. Before she could speak, the sound changed, increasing steeply, then dropping abruptly to nothing as the helicopter landed.
    “He spotted the Rover,” Cole said.
    He came to his feet in a rush, shucked off all burdens but the shotgun and a pocket full of shells, and ran down the streambed. The savage heat and bogs of sand slowed him, dragging at his feet, turning his lungs to fire and his muscles to lead. The Rover was a mile away, a distance he normally would have covered in eight minutes. Under these conditions, he would be lucky to make it in twelve.
    He was still four hundred yards from the Rover when the helicopter revved and lifted into the air once more. The chopper held at one hundred feet and began spiraling out from the Rover in a clear search pattern. Dust lifted in thin billows.
    Then the chopper veered and began heading straight toward Cole.
    He turned and sprinted toward the thin cover of the stream-side gums. Just beyond, at the foot on a steep rise, there was a tumble of limestone boulders, legacy of a landslide during the wet. He reached the rocks while the helicopter was still a hundred yards away. With the sound of the approaching chopper filling his ears, he searched for cover. The best he could find was an undercut where an old flood had eaten