'You'll have to go climbing, mate, Rusty's voice was full of laughter. 'Thank you very fucking much!' The shooter unbuckled his seatbelt for the fourth time that day. They had been flying the bush edges on the Stuart mountains at first light, making good kills but, as the day wore on, the deer had gone bush. The flier had been forced to use the siren mounted under the chopper to drive animals through the trees, while Gray shot them in their twos and threes down through gaps in the forest canopy. It was difficult shooting, but the tally mounted steadily. The major complication was that there were few places Rusty could get down so Gray could drop off the skid, hook the animals to the hovering chopper and climb back on board. Now, he was forced to bale out into a tree and climb down to the ground to hook up the deer, then attach himself to the long chain hanging from the belly of the 500. He would ride the chain as Rusty lifted him and the cargo out to a place where he could gut the animals.

Unplugging his intercom and easing out on to the skid, Gray picked a branch four feet below him and dropped down, his arms grabbing for the trunk. The ground was fifty feet down, but he didn't dwell on the fact. He held on, head down to protect his eyes from the twigs and debris that filled the air, blown by the down draught of the rotors. The Hughes flared up and away and the windstorm was gone.

The shooter climbed down to the ground, while Rusty searched for a place to land to hook on the eighty foot chain. When the 500 returned, the chain dangling like an umbilical cord from the cargo hook under its belly, the shooter had just dragged the last carcass into a tiny clearing. His red jumpsuit was like a beacon for the pilot. Rusty hovered and lowered the chopper and the chain down through the gap in the trees.

The clearing, such as it was, had been caused by the collapse of a dead beech. The rotting tree had fallen, opening a gap in the canopy, and the remains formed slippery, leg-breaking traps covered in bush lawyer. The shooter slipped, slithered and cursed as he worked to move the 120-pound dead weight of the big hind into position.

Gray used three of the half-dozen nylon strops he wore wound around his waist to loop the animals around their necks and attach them to the hook on the end of the chain. This completed, he tied another strop to the chain to form a foot stirrup and pulled on a pair of leather gloves before waving Rusty away. He didn't look up at the hovering chopper. The rotors were clipping the trees and the air was wild as the power went on and the 500 climbed vertically, lifting its load out of the bush.

Riding the chain was dangerous. Cargo hooks had been known to fail, or shooters to slip off in the cold air, fingers numbed, to plunge to their deaths. From the first time Gray had done this, all those months ago, he enjoyed this sensation. He didn't think 'what if?' - he'd lived that in the Asian jungles. Every day on patrol in the first months had started with that question. In his second year he adopted another phrase and attitude from the Americans: 'Ain't nothin'.' They said it to cover any and every eventuality. If it happened, it happened. that was it, end of story. There had been a certain comfort in acceptance. he had learned to live and perhaps die with that.

He was thousands of feet above the lake and 100 above the steeply sloping bush faces below him, as the rotors thrashed the thin air, clawing the chopper up towards a bare ridge where it could land. He always concentrated on the spectacular view. It was a clear day this side of the hill. From his swaying vantage point, the shooter could see it all through watering eyes as he was dragged across the sky. Otto's boat was a tiny white speck carving a wide furrow in the still waters of the lake as it ploughed towards Glade House. Beyond the lake the land rolled through gold-red tussock, and beyond that was the lush green of the fertile Southland plains that stretched away towards the distant blue haze of the sea.

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