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at staggered intervals and capturing crocodiles.
    Six months earlier, a small team of the Commission’s rangers had spent five days flying over the area where the boat had been reported. On one occasion they’d spotted what appeared to be a boat. It was on a narrow, winding tributary of the Adelaide River, difficult to observe for very long because of the thick canopy of forest. They’d radioed the location back to HQ and the Commission had organised help from the Northern Territory police. They’d packed five armed officers into a four-wheel drive and sent them into the region. The objective was to intercept the craft whenever and wherever it banked first.
    Once again the phantoms were long gone. All the police found were the remains of a day old camp on the bank.
    There had been no further sightings or rumours for five months, until just five days ago when a Flying Doctors aircraft, diverting from its normal route to avoid a storm centre, radioed the police with the sighting of a boat heading toward the northern swamplands. The Flying Doctors, like all land and air services in the region, had been asked to report any boat sightings in the desolate outer-lying reaches of the Territory.
    The Wildlife Conservation Commission’s chief executive, Harold Letterfield, acted quickly. There was no point, he decided, sending out planes or boats or a consignment of police – not into country like that. Instead he teamed the best Aboriginal tracker available with the fittest officer with the most field experience. Their brief was to follow the riverbanks, on foot, locate the hunters and keep track of them without being seen. They were to radio through the hunters’ movements on a regular daily basis. In the meantime, Letterfield had both rangers and police on standby with land and river craft.
    The moment these poachers were on their way back and in more accessible areas, Letterfield’s combined forces would pounce.
     
    That night it was Walter’s turn to take first watch. They’d been lucky thus far for the first two nights. No crocs or wild bush animals had approached their campsite.
    Greg couldn’t sleep. He listened to the relative silence of the night – the birds were quiet – and despite the humidity he felt an uncharacteristic shiver run through him.
    It was over twenty years since the Government outlawed the hunting of crocodiles. The saltwater crocodile, facing extinction at that stage, had become a protected species and in the two decades since then, their numbers had flourished once more.
    There had, of course, been isolated incidents of hunters defying the Protected Species Act. But nothing like this.
    Despite the shiver that touched his spine, Greg was looking forward to the morning. He had a love of all types of wildlife and he held a passionate belief in the Act and in the Commission’s role in upholding it. He knew that Walter felt the same. They both wanted to see these hunters stopped, and brought to justice.
    But the shiver persisted, bringing with it a strange sense of dread.
     

 
     
     
     
CHAPTER FOUR
     
     
     
    The mud flats were exposed on both sides of the river: wide, sloping mounds with reeds eddying the water, the river at low tide. The mangroves were swept by a brisk, warm wind. Greg Kovacs opened his eyes groggily, uncertain at first of where he was or what had happened. He blinked and looked about, taking in the banks overgrown with bush and trailing vines, and the low, swirling water. He was in an upright position, knee deep in the water, his arms outstretched, something digging into his wrists.
    Rope. Thick coils of it, strung between the overhanging branches of trees. He tried to move and couldn’t, and the rope cut deeper into the tender flesh of his wrists. Slowly, he began to remember: Walter had woken him before the dawn, whispered to him to stay quiet. The tracker had heard sounds that he believed were those of men. He told Greg to remain still and alert and to wield the