Hunted / Season 1, Episode 5
The Billabong
APEX Season 1, Episode 5: "The Billabong" --- [CHAPTER 1: DESCENT] The helicopter hit the water at 2:47 PM, and Jack Callahan's world became chaos. One moment he'd been flying over Australia's Northern Territory, watching the endless brown landscape scroll beneath him. The next, the engine had coughed, stuttered, and died, and the Robinson R44 had begun its terminal descent toward a murky waterway that Jack recognized with sickening certainty. A billabong. An outback water hole. Crocodile country. He had maybe three seconds to react. He killed the collective, put the helicopter into autorotation, and aimed for the shallows at the water's edge. The skids hit mud, skipped once, and the aircraft rolled onto its side with a shriek of tortured metal. Jack hung from his harness, disoriented, blood streaming from a gash on his forehead. Water was already seeping through the cracked canopy. Move, his brain screamed. Move NOW. He punched the harness release and tumbled into knee-deep water that reeked of decay and heat. His left leg buckled—something wrong with his ankle, probably sprained—but he forced himself upright and scrambled toward the bank. The billabong was maybe a hundred yards across, choked with reeds and dead timber. The kind of environment that saltwater crocodiles loved: murky water, plenty of cover, unsuspecting prey coming to drink. Jack hauled himself...