Amazon Adventure (on-going)

Chapter One

Ollie braced himself to take a picture of a school of electric-blue tangs framed by shafts of sunlight. Putting his flippered feet down on some coral, he steadied himself and started to take some photos. A few metres away his twin sister, Scarlett, followed a turtle behind a large coral outcrop.

Ollie felt his right leg drop. Frowning, he glanced down and noticed that his leg had slipped in to what looked like a large hole in the reef, half way down his calf. He gave an experimental tug but was distracted by the school of tangs suddenly enveloping him. Pleased with the pictures he started to swim off but was suddenly brought up short as he found his leg stuck. Alarmed, he saw his foot was trapped in the spongy maw of a giant clam that had been camouflaged by the reef. Unnoticed the clam had slowly closed its shell around his lower leg while he took his pictures.

Ollie tried to stay calm and looked carefully at the shell locked around his foot once more. It was nearly two metres across and the soft tissues around the opening of the clam shell were brilliant hues of blacks and blues, purples and reds, while the outside of the shell was convoluted and white with sea squirts and limpets dotting that the surface. He mentally went over what he knew about giant clams... nothing! He wished he had paid more attention during his marine biology classes; fourteen years old was definitely too young to die. Ollie gave another tug and this time his foot seemed to lodge even tighter.

'C'mon McKenzie, think. Think!' Ollie panicked.

Clouds of bubbles shrouded him as panted in desperation. He twisted and turned, trying to pull his foot free. It didn't work. Ollie checked the dive computer on his wrist and his eyes widened in disbelief as he found that all his struggling meant he only had a few minutes of air left. He stopped moving and attempted to slow his breathing as his mind raced through his options.

'Cut his foot off!' No. That would have to be a last resort. Cut! His diving knife! Ollie frantically fumbled for the knife strapped to his other leg then jerked his hand back in horror as he realised that he'd left it aboard the Aurora because the sheath had been broken.

He looked around urgently for Scarlett, but all he could see was a curtain of bubbles rising from behind a brain coral a few metres away. Ollie tried another experimental twist but he was well and truly stuck. He wasn't sure if the tingling sensation he could feel in his foot was pins and needles from lack of blood supply or if his foot was actually being eaten by the digestive juices within the clam. Schools of small silvery fish darted around his swim mask and Ollie could feel the sudden pull on the demand valve as his air started to run low. Now in full blown panic he reached behind him and used the dive watch on his wrist to urgently bang on his tank. His began to black out and his vision started to darken and blur around the edges as he tried to gulp on air that wouldn't come. With the last of his strength Ollie made one final effort to bang his watch on his air tank. The 'clunk' sounded feeble. Ollie froze as a shadowy shape flicked in to view at the edge of his darkening vision. Ollie slowly turned to follow the shadow and he bit down hard on his mouth piece to stop from screaming as a predator of the deep, a great white shark, gracefully skimmed past, one black expressionless eye locked with his.

At four and half metres and over a thousand kilos, the battle-scarred marauder languidly propelled itself around its prey, lazily assessing him as a potential meal. A snaggled array of razor-sharp teeth crowded the animals slightly open jaws while small zebra-striped pilot fish swam around its dorsal fin. Ollie gave one more desperate attempt to pull his leg free as his air finally ran out. The upward stream of bubbles from his mouth piece slowly dribbled to a stop and Ollie slipped into unconsciousness, hanging motionless in the water, trapped by his foot. The great white sensed easy pickings and with a quick flick of its tail it bumped Ollie's arm with its snout before gliding off and circling above him. The shark swam out wide and banked gracefully like a fighter jet, this time faster. The muscular torpedo zeroed in for the kill, jaws open.

Scarlett had heard the dull metallic clanging noise and rose slowly from behind her coral outcrop, annoyed that her brother had to get her attention the lazy way. Annoyance gave way to shock as she took in the spectacle of the huge shark circling the limp form of her brother. Paralysed with fear she watched helplessly as the shark came in and bit him on the air tank and she knew that the next pass would be fatal. Adrenalin flooded her body and without thinking she finned with manic determination toward the shark.

The shark's jaws opened for the final kill when suddenly a loud flash and concussive 'whump' went off close to the animals head. The shark jerked away in surprise and swam off through the rays of sunlight in to the hazy distance. Scarlett dropped the now useless bang-stick and pulled Ollie's head up. She could see his eyes closed, lips slack around his mouthpiece. She tugged at him to pull him to the surface and was momentarily puzzled when he didn't move but she quickly saw that he was stuck fast in the clam. Unsheathing her dive knife she reached down to the clam and jammed the blade in and sawed through the adductor muscle close to the clams hinge. The two halves of the clam immediately went slack and dropping the knife in her haste, she pulled Ollie's leg free.

Scarlett fumbled the weights from both their vests and dropped them on to the reef. She then added air from her tank to her vest to make it buoyant and holding Ollie by his buoyancy compensator vest, or BC she started to haul him towards the surface ten metres above. Scarlett wasn't worried about decompression sickness, the 'bends' as it was also known because they weren't very deep. Using her fins she started to accelerate them faster while keeping half an eye out for the shark. The effort was excruciating, she could feel her air reserves beginning to empty as it became harder to suck the air from her scuba tanks and her leg muscles cramped and burned with the strain.

The surface was getting closer but Scarlett knew that each passing second without air for Ollie would bring him a step closer towards brain damage or even death. She struggled upwards and then they exploded through the surface into bright sunshine. Scarlett spat out her regulator and pushed up Ollie's face mask and pulled the mouthpiece from his lips. Large waves rolled beneath them as Scarlett flipped Ollie onto his back, trying to stop water entering his mouth. She grabbed an inflator tube from his vest and blew air into his BC to make it float. Nothing happened. Scarlett shouted at him and shook him by the shoulders.

"Ollie! Ollie! Wake up!" She then noticed the rips in Ollie's vest around the air tank where the shark had tried to bite him; the vest was useless. Using all her strength, Scarlett trod water with her fins to try and keep them both afloat.

Ollie remained unconscious, head slack and lolling backwards. Five hundred metres away the ocean research vessel, Aurora sat at anchor like a white splinter on a deep blue background. Exhausted, Scarlett groped for the distress flare strapped to her leg and sobbed with frustration as she struggled to pull off the rip tab to activate it. The flare whooshed and sizzled into life as bright orange smoke billowed outwards. Scarlett held onto it with one hand and waved it weakly above her head. With the other hand she held on to her brother, trying to keep his head above water. She hoped someone on their ship would see them as the distress flare only worked for two minutes but luckily there was little wind to disperse the smoke so it rolled along the surface of the water like a cloud. Scarlett fought down rising panic as every eddy of water that swirled against her legs felt like it was the returning shark.

The Aurora was owned by their father, GordonMcKenzie and they spent every school holiday with him but they were expected towork when aboard the ship. Their father had asked his children to catalogue thedata from some mud core samples from a recent drilling operation in Japan butOllie and Scarlett had found it tedious. The twins had sneaked off half waythrough their chores and gone to the moon pool in the late morning, donnedtheir diving gear and swum down below the ship where no one would have seenthem. It had seemed like a good idea at the time; nip off for a quick dive overthe Great Barrier Reef, take some underwater photos for their homework and thenback in time for lunch. They could clean and stow their dive gear and no onewould be the wiser. Now Scarlett was bitterly regretting it as she realised theenormity of their predicament. Choking on seawater, Scarlett struggled to keepher brother afloat as another wave engulfed them; and then she saw it, a dorsalfin slicing rapidly towards them.