Authors: Lewis Perdue
We sat in stunned silence—Rex, Tyrone, Anita, Jasmine, and I— sandwiched in among the gear jamming the big Chevy truck's capacious interior and overflowed to the roof rack.
Jasmine leaned toward Anita. "Can you follow those tracks?" Jasmine pointed to a set of muddy tire ruts leading into the pasture. "Maybe they're around a bend of trees or something."
Everything rattled as we bounced across the pasture trying not to think about the increasingly obvious fact.
"This is my fault," Jasmine said, her voice low and burdened with second thoughts. "We should have visited all those little airfields after dark. The choppers have to go somewhere to refuel."
"Just keep praying," I said as we bounced across the field.
"Worse comes to worst, we'll locate one tonight and if we don't have time, we'll try again tomorrow night," Tyrone said.
"Might have to," I said. "But it also gives our buddies with the Blackhawks more time to find us."
Worse looked as if it were coming to worst, then we rounded a peninsula of trees and spotted the dragonfly silhouette of the old
M*A*S*H
chopper resting on a trailer. A blue tarp covered the bubble nose. The newer helicopter was nowhere to be seen.
"Oh, boy," Rex said, his voice flat and dull. "Oh freaking boy."
Anita pulled up to the old helicopter and stopped. Even after she put the Suburban in park we all sat there silently absorbing the unspoken reality facing us.
"Shake it off, guys," Jasmine said. "It could be a lot worse." Then she got out and walked around the helicopter climbed up on the trailer and shined her flashlight into some sort of inspection port on what looked like the tail-rotor gearbox. Next, she rapped on the near-side saddle fuel tank and checked out the pesticide hopper fastened behind the cockpit.
Then she unsnapped the bungee cords holding the tarp and let it drift to the ground.
Feeling proud and proprietary, I couldn't take my eyes off Jasmine, climbing into the cockpit, sitting in the pilot's seat, and looking slowly around her then down at the instrument panel. My respect for her grew as I saw the subtle displays of her knowledge and competence as she inspected the craft. After a while she smiled, looked over at us, and offered a satisfied nod. Then she climbed down and made her way back to the Suburban.
"Well, the good news is that this is a G model of the Bell 47, which means the Franklin internal combustion engine is at least two hundred horsepower rather than one seventy-eight, which we see a lot," she said.
"Oh, Lord, bless you for twenty-two horsepower," Rex said sarcastically.
"Rex!" Anita barked at him.
"Okay, all right," Rex mumbled softly.
"The aircraft's still here," Jasmine continued, "because the trailer tire on the other side is flat."
"So why didn't they fly it out like the other one?" Rex asked.
"On something as old and slow as this one, you want to save your engine and airframe hours for something that makes you money," she said.
"So… I guess this is the ultimate good-news, bad-news thing," Rex said. "The good news is we have a helicopter; the bad news is we have a helicopter."
Laughter cut through some of the tension.
"This one's okay?" I asked Jasmine.
"Well, it just has to be, doesn't it?"
"Enough gas?"
She nodded.
"How about the stuttering from the engine?"
"Sounded like a fouled plug," Jasmine said. "I'll check once we excavate Rex's tools."
The moon had started to dip below the trees as we piled out of the Suburban, pulled on dark coveralls and boots.
"One more thing," Jasmine said. "The 47 is a lot slower than the Jet Ranger. We can cruise around seventy-five knots… eighty-two or eighty-three miles per hour. It'll add another ten or fifteen minutes to the flight time."
Time had become our enemy and this latest news urged us on faster. We used the bolt cutters to get rid of all the chains and padlocks, then rolled the light helicopter off the trailer with surprisingly little effort.
Rex and I unloaded the Suburban and tried to figure out what we could strap to the skids, under the fuselage, and to the forward portion of the tail frame. We soon realized we'd need to leave a lot of the gear behind.
While Rex and I struggled to sort out the gear, Tyrone and Jasmine unbolted the pesticide hoppers and removed the spray boom. With help from Anita, they hot-wired the simple ignition circuit, then patched the SuperNova spotlights' coiled power wires directly into the helicopter's twelve-volt electrical system.
Rex and I rigged a makeshift net from half-inch climbing rope and strung it from the front to the rear of the skids on both sides in roughly the same places the old
M*A*S*H
choppers carried the wounded.
The makeshift net also offered Rex and me a safer platform from which to ride the skids, necessary because the cockpit held only two people.
"Careful of the right side where the rear skid frame meets the tail," Jasmine warned us. "The exhaust pipes get really, really hot."
The moon sank from sight as our watches raced toward 4:00 a.m. Dawn would follow soon. We'd be toast if we hadn't finished before it was light. Then, shortly before 4:15 a.m., we rolled out the floppy strip of metal-grid reinforcing wire used for light-duty concrete pavement like sidewalks and driveways. It was a good twenty feet long and eight feet wide. We stiffened it lengthwise with three lengths of half-inch steel rebar cable tied to the grid. Then we connected two "vees" of rope to each side of the metal grid and a single piece of rope from the apex of the vees.
Rex and I climbed into our safety harnesses, checked our packs, and put them on. We put on our red helmets, as did Tyrone, who was our loadmaster and might have to climb out on the skids to hand us equipment depending on what transpired. He had put on his safety harness and helmet earlier.
I had the dead blond woman's H&K automatic in a thigh holster and spare magazines in the cargo pockets of my coveralls. Rex had a worn, nickel-plated .380 Colt automatic pistol with white grips my mother had left him in her will. Jasmine and Tyrone had the matching .357 Ruger revolvers. They also had the M21 between them, but I doubted it would come in handy. If we got into a firefight, we were doomed.
As Jasmine fired up the helicopter's engine, Anita gave Rex a kiss and a hug, then drove away.
Rex and I slipped on our goggles and stood next to the metal grid as Jasmine lifted the helicopter about five feet off the ground. Her hover was unsteady at first, then grew more and more solid.
Using the walkie-talkies, Rex and I had her hover over the wire grid as we attached the ropes to the skids of the chopper. Then Rex made his way over to the left side of the craft. I climbed aboard my side and snapped my safety harnesses to the tail frame and radioed for Jasmine to lift off. I held on tight as she lifted slowly up into the dark sky.
"Hold a minute," Rex's voice played in my radio earpiece. An instant later, brilliant light shot from his side. The SuperNova light on my side was snapped to one of the grid ropes with a carabiner. In the illumination of Rex's light, I spotted the metal grid spinning about, trying to keep time with the rotor downwash.
We landed for an instant to fix stabilizing lines from two of the metal grid's corners.
It was 4:30 A.M. when we took off again. I lay almost prone on top of the gear, head forward, legs splayed for bracing.
I pulled the night-vision spotting scope from my overalls and trained it ahead to keep an eye out for power lines. It made me wonder what other unseen terrors waited in the dark.
David Brown leaned against the windowsill of the commandeered office on the fifth floor of the federal office building in Jackson, Mississippi, and looked down at the nearly deserted stretch of Capitol Street. A newly lit Marlboro hung from the corner of his mouth.
Brown drew on the Marlboro and let the smoke drift out his nostrils. A knock sounded on the door behind him, then he heard it open.
"What now?" Brown mumbled without turning. In the window's reflection, he saw his assistant's silhouette outlined by the light spilling in through the open door.
"I may have something"
Brown turned around. "What kind of something?" He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at his watch. It was 4:32 A.M. The sky would be brightening soon with the predawn glow.
"Call records from Stone's phone Verizon wouldn't release them without a subpoena."
"Worthless bastards." Brown sucked the Marlboro down to his nicotine-yellowed fingers. "We've got to be able to get what we need without having to get some bleedingheart judge involved."
"Yes, sir, well… We found calls to someone here in Jackson, a man named Rex, last name undetermined."
"Come on! How can someone have
Undetermined
as a last name?"
Brown's assistant shrugged. "He's a cipher. He's a contractor and took care of the maintenance on the apartment building where Stone's mother last lived."
Brown scowled as he dropped the Marlboro on the polished linoleum floor and crushed it out with his shoe. "Tell me something useful for a fucking change."
"This Rex character is married to a doctor who works at the VA where Talmadge is being held. The MPs on Talmadge's floor spotted her this morning."
Brown smiled broadly. "We've got that cocksucker now! Let's make that bastard pay for all the trouble he's caused, him and that nigger bitch."
The assistant turned his face away from the slur.
"Get moving!" Brown barked. "Tell the VA to double the guard. Move Talmadge to another room; get the Jackson cops out there. Warm up our troops and let's make sure these slimefucks have a properly warm reception."
With Tyrone navigating by her side, Jasmine homed in on the Garmin GPS waypoints set the previous afternoon. I clung desperately to the makeshift rope netting with one hand and with the other kept the night-vision monocular trained ahead to keep us from snagging anything but air. Down on the right, the brightly lit parking lot of the Mississippi Highway Patrol headquarters sailed past. The VA loomed larger, dead ahead.
I pressed the transmit switch on my radio.
"Showtime," I said. "Rex, you ready with your lines?"
"Ready," he said.
"Tyrone?"
"Here."
"You might want to turn on the M21's scope and use it to scan the shadows." "It's all shadows, man," Tyrone replied.
"You got that right," I said.
I tucked the night-vision monocular in the calf-height cargo pocket of the coveralls
and got ready with my side of the rope that suspended the metal grid beneath us. The VA hospital sat on the left now, and a row of high-voltage electrical pylons on the right. The University Medical Center dominated the view straight ahead.
The earth eased up toward us and passed underneath at a slower and slower pace until we had reached the electrical substation supplying the VA hospital. I whipped out the night-vision monocular, passed my hand through the carry loop, then trained it below on the thick wires slouching off toward the VA.
I keyed my radio. "Jasmine?"
"Here."
"Rotate to the left about one hundred and fifty degrees and hold your position." In moments, we were positioned directly above the wires. "Okay, down maybe
twenty feet. Rex, you ready?"
"As ever."
"Okay, Rex, slip the knots and hold on."
I let the night-vision monocular swing from its carry loop as I leaned down and
From the peripheral horizon of my focused attention, I registered a siren and the flash of emergency lights. I grabbed both ropes in one hand and took a final look below through the night-vision scope. I let the scope drop and used that hand to key my radio.
"Down a bit more," I said.
Suddenly the darkness split apart with thunder that rocked my chest like a howitzer; that same instant, night became day as an electrical sunrise chased the darkness
Rex and I let go the ropes as Jasmine gunned the Bell 47's engine, accelerating us away from the substation, back the way we had come. There now were few lights in the hospital and none in the parking lot. Jasmine kept us low for the moment. As we passed east of the loading dock, I heard the emergency generator roar to life.
An instant later, sparks streamed downward off a piece of lit primer cord, then a second, a third, and three more afterward. Three almost evenly spaced blasts followed almost immediately. The final three had much longer fuses. Rex had suggested the halfsticks of dynamite as a diversion. As I looked back, flames leapt from a full garbage Dumpster.
Then Jasmine took us out over Woodrow Wilson Avenue, where we quickly spotted Darryl Talmadge's room. As Jasmine moved us in toward the roof, I unhooked my harness from the safety line securing me to the helicopter's tail, then snapped the carabiner to a bowline knot tied in the end of a piece of the half-inch climbing rope. Another bowline was tied about five feet higher than this and had a sling and a sack of gear carabinered there.
As Jasmine brought us in to the VA's roof, a blast rocked the far corner of the hospital, sending a small ball of fire rolling up maybe fifty feet. Then came the final two blasts. Those had been the long fuses.
As Jasmine moved us gently into position, something that looked like a flashlight flickered in the room next to Talmadge's.
"Light next door!" I said into my radio.
"Clocks ticking," Rex said.
Jasmine brought the helicopter down softly, keeping enough rotor lift to avoid crushing the roof. From a duffel roped to the skids, I grabbed the hand sledge cable-tied to a hank rope, then swung it through Darryl Talmadge's window. Rex and I rappelled down and entered after kicking away the remaining shards of glass.
Things were all wrong.
Talmadge was not in his bed.
Then, the door burst open.
"Get the fuck out of my way, you two-bit rent-a-cop, or I will fucking blow your tiny nuts off!"
David Brown, in full SWAT gear, and followed by his assistant and two other Customs officers, brandished his H&K submachine gun at the VA's lone security guard at the main entrance at ground level.
Before the guard could respond, a brilliant flash and bang rumbled from outside, then the lights went out.
"That just fucking ices the damn cake," Brown said. "And where the hell's our backup?"
"Still waiting for authorization!" Brown's assistant tried to explain that media coverage, the previous day's lawsuits, and the deluge of law enforcement complaints to the state's senators and congressional delegation had chilled the cooperation Brown had demanded. The Army was double-covering its ass, the FBI was rethinking its earlier, reluctant cooperation, and the Jackson Police Department was outright hostile to them.
"Well, you better fucking get your sorry act together or I'll shred your worthless ass when this is all over!"
Three more blasts rattled the windows around the security screening area in the VA's main entryway.
"Listen," Brown said as the explosions echoed away. "It's a fucking chopper. Those idiots are trying to break Talmadge out!" He turned and pointed the MPS at the security guard. "Take us up there."
The guard hesitated until Brown thumbed off the safety.