Perfect killer

CHAPTER 84

Jasmine jinked the wounded old chopper up, down, and sideways to throw off the shooters. The erratic movement bungeed us like a paddleball. Rex, Talmadge, and I clung together to dampen the wild gyrations.

Looking back, I caught a split glimpse of the shooter with the submachine gun falling off the roof. The shooting stopped then, but the spray of aviation gasoline grew worse. The droplets of high-octane gasoline sprayed from the right fuel tank, immediately above the dangerously hot exhaust.

Our wild oscillations evened out as we made our way across I-55 and over the Pearl River forest and flood plain.

Jasmine steered us east toward a waypoint Rex and Tyrone had set the previous afternoon. In my night-vision scope, the tops of the tallest trees passed not more than fifty feet below. I scanned the area ahead and caught sight of a set of towering high-voltage pylons. I keyed my radio.

"Do you see the high-voltage lines ahead?"

Tyrone answered, "I've got them in the sniper's scope. Our van's just beyond."

"The wires might be a moot question," Jasmine said.

Before I could ask her what she meant, the spray of aviation gasoline stopped and the engine stuttered.

Rather than throttle back as I expected, I hear her rev the engine faster and louder than ever. We climbed erratically into the predawn sky.

"We're close to the van. I can autorotate to it if we have enough altitude." The engine stuttered and roared according to no pattern, but her calm, matter-of-fact words dampened my desperation.

Rex tapped on my helmet. "There," he yelled into my ear, and pointed toward the white van he had "requisitioned" from the airport long-term parking lot and positioned among the trees beside a construction site.

Suddenly the engine choked, tried to restart, then died, leaving us with unpowered autorotation's lazy, low swooshing. Closing in ahead, the open-girdered arms and legs of the electrical pylons clutched at us like giant robots. Red flashing lights warned us away.

The low, sixty-cycle hum of electricity reached us before we spotted the wires.

"Jesus!" I yelled when I saw the light of first dawn frosting the huge cables. The helicopter might clear the wires, but not its dangling cargo. If the wires snagged us, certain death awaited everyone.

"Climb up to the skids," I yelled in Rex's ears.

We let go of each other and commenced all new erratic trajectories that unbalanced the helicopter further. Rex and I hauled up on the ropes for all we were worth as the wires grew closer.

Darryl Talmadge mumbled the Twenty-third Psalm. I remembered the words clearly from having recited them every day at the start of school in Itta Bena. Silently, I said them along with him as I strained to pull us up.

About the time we got to the part about the "valley of the shadow of death," I was fearing evil more than I ever had before. I thought of Jasmine, Camilla, and what life meant, and I climbed harder, faster.

On the other side, Rex had reached the skid and levered himself up.

Above me, Tyrone leaned out, hauling on my rope.

The wires reached for me. The hair on my body stood up from the electrical field around the wires. One spark and the avgas saturating the helicopter and my clothes would ignite.

I grabbed the skid as the loop of my rope, still draped below us, slid gently over the first wire. With Talmadge strapped to me, I could not pull myself up on the skid, and as our feet headed for the last wire, I swung our legs upward.

My cup ranneth over when we cleared the last wire.

Rex was up on the skid, but Talmadge and I were half on and off, ready to be crushed no matter how soft the landing. As the ground rushed up toward us, I slid us down the rope again. As we neared the ground, I unsnapped us from the rope, then I let go and rolled as soon as my feet touched the ground.

Suddenly, a muffled thump filled the silence as the first of the chopper's skids sank deep into the newly graded dirt. The chopper's momentum rolled it over. The powerless rotor dug once into the soft earth, then stopped.

I freed myself from Talmadge and rushed over to the chopper. Rex had already climbed out.

"Well, any landing you can walk away from is okay by me," he said as he stood up, his coveralls slick with the bright red clay.

"Word," Tyrone said.

My heart soared when Jasmine's head appeared. I rushed through the boot-sucking mud to help her climb down.

"Sorry about the landing."

"One of the best ever," I said, hugging her tight to me. Talmadge finished the Twenty-third Psalm. But before his "Amen" faded, three SWAT-clad men with Heckler amp; Koch MP5A submachine guns rushed from behind the white van.