Chapter 15
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Cody Patterson sat in the co-pilot seat while Drake lifted the Bell off the dirt and climbed into the late afternoon glare.
Behind them, wrapped in a blue tarp from the cargo locker and laid out across the back bench, was Dale Weathers’s body.
He tried not to think about it because he’d be forced to admit that his friend’s death was his fault.
He watched the Sikorsky lift off and turn toward Houston with Flint, Scarlett, and the woman who had killed Dale inside.
When Drake settled into cruise, he said through the headset, “Heading for Langford. About three hours.”
“Okay,” Cody said.
The Bell ran east at three thousand feet above flat, brown land occasionally divided by long fences and ranch roads cutting straight across the scrub.
The helo’s constant vibration turned the dull ache in his wounded arm into sharp, uncomfortable throbbing. He ignored it.
Cody was an Army vet. He’d spent twenty-seven years with Carterville PD.
He’d been shot before and he’d seen plenty of shootings.
This one made no sense. The woman had options.
She could have surrendered to Scarlett. She could have run when she saw the helicopter arriving.
Why did she choose to shoot Dale and him instead?
The shooter had fired three rounds. Her marksmanship was calm and deliberate. The first two shots went straight to Dale. The third she fired at him. She’d have felled him with the fourth, but Scarlett got up the stairs and tackled her before she could kill him, too.
His rental was parked at the airport in Langford where Dale had picked him up. His suitcase was still in it. The thieves at Flint’s house last night had not stolen everything.
He’d stashed the two items he cared most about where no one was likely to look for them.
“Let’s go directly to Houston instead of Langford. The only thing in Langford is my rental, and I can pick it up later,” Cody said into the headset.
Drake’s gaze shifted to Cody briefly. “What about the pilot? We need to get him home.”
“Dale’s a friend. He works out of Austin, not Langford,” Cody replied.
Drake said, “Langford’s a small place. The locals might be willing to gloss over the situation for us so we can do the right thing here and not end up in jail. I’m not sure about Austin.”
“I’ve known Dale a long time,” Cody replied. “He was the best man at my wedding. He’s not married. No kids. We’ve got a little breathing room.”
Drake mulled it over. “Then Houston’s the better option. We’ve got wiggle room there.”
“Meaning what?”
“We might be able to hold off on reporting the homicide until we figure this thing out in Houston. We’d have a better chance, anyway.
” Drake reached down toward the side pocket of his seat and pulled out a satellite phone.
“If it takes longer than a day or two, someone is likely to notice your rental. We’d need to make arrangements. I’ll call Flint.”
Drake pushed the headset aside, pressed the speed dial, and held the sat phone against his ear.
“I’m in the Bell with Patterson. We’re skipping Langford. Coming direct to Houston. Got the body in the back.”
Cody couldn’t hear Flint’s response.
“Patterson has a rental on the ground at the airport. He says he can handle it.”
Cody preferred to handle the sedan’s contents himself, but this wasn’t the time to work out those logistics. Flint would have questions Cody didn’t want to answer.
“Got it. That works.” Drake disconnected, returned the phone, and settled his headset into place. “We’ll call him when we approach. He’ll pick us up and deal with the body temporarily. Until we can do the right thing.”
Cody nodded. “Copy that.”
They flew in silence for a while. The afternoon sun came in through the windshield at an angle that put an uncomfortably hot stripe across Cody’s good arm.
Drake flew the helo expertly. Hands steady on the controls, attention on what was in front of him, attentive to the radios and the gauges and the flight path. He didn’t waste motion and he didn’t take his focus off the work.
The storm front that delayed Dale’s departure from Langford earlier had moved through and was sitting on the far horizon. Drake held the Bell south of it.
Cody saw two dark birds soaring in a graceful dance ahead on the right. “A couple of vultures out there about the two o’clock position.”
Drake looked in that direction. “Turkey vultures. Big birds can cause big problems. One of those goes through the windshield and we could crash.” He adjusted the Bell’s heading slightly.
“How do you deal with it?”
“Give them a wide berth and go around. It’s the only thing we can do,” Drake replied. “Late afternoon’s the worst. The ground heats up, the air rises in columns, and the vultures find them and ride them up.”
Drake noticed something abnormal in one of the gauges in the middle of the instrument panel. His right hand tightened on the cyclic between them. “Hydraulic pressure’s dropping. We’ve got a leak somewhere in the system.”
Cody didn’t know how to fly a helo, but he understood how hydraulics work. “How bad is it?”
“Bad enough to put us both in the ground if I get unlucky.” Drake’s gaze flicked back to the gauge. “Hydraulics run the flight controls. As the fluid bleeds out, everything I’m using gets much harder to move.”
“You’re saying we could crash?”
Drake nodded. “And we’re a long way from anyone who can help us.”
“How much time do we have?”
“If the gauge hits zero, not long. Depends on how big the leak is and how fast we’re losing fluid.” Drake was already easing the cyclic forward to descend. He kept a close watch on the gauge. “Pressure’s not coming back. I’m putting us down while I still can.”
“What can I do to help?”
“Tighten your harness and brace for landing. We could hit hard.”
Drake scanned the country below them and picked his spot, a flat patch of pasture ahead. He banked the Bell and started the descent.
“Hold on,” Drake said.
The helicopter felt different to Cody, looser, slower, not the way it had been flying ten minutes ago. They were headed toward yellow grass, scattered mesquite, a fence on one side with no power lines and no road nearby.
Cody saw the ground coming up too fast while Drake’s entire body struggled against the controls. The helicopter shuddered and lurched on the way down, fighting the pilot all the way.
Sweat poured off him as he muscled the Bell down through the last seconds until it thumped onto the yellow grass. The skids took the weight, and Drake rolled the throttle back. The rotor wound down overhead. The air-conditioning stopped with the engines.
The cabin was suddenly quiet enough that Cody could hear his own breathing.
Drake sat with his hands on the controls for a moment. He let out a breath. Then he unstrapped his harness.
“Could be just a quick fix issue,” he said. “Stay here while I take a look.”
Drake opened his door and stepped down to the grass. Cody watched him walk around and out of sight along the side. The afternoon heat flooded through the open door. The residual cool inside the cabin made the stench of the body almost breathable.
Ten minutes later, Drake returned to the cockpit, wiping fluid off his hands with a shop rag. “The hydraulic line was damaged. Looks like one of the bullets clipped it. I can fix it, but it’ll take about an hour. Maybe two.”
“Can I help?” Cody unstrapped and stepped onto the grass, leaving the stench inside.
The pasture was hot and still. The mesquite gave no shade where they were. He flexed his wounded arm to work the soreness out of it.
Drake had the side panel off and his tool roll out on the skid. “There’s a flashlight. I’ll tell you where to aim it. But don’t touch anything. I’ve got it all laid out.”
Cody held the flashlight steady, aimed as Drake directed, until he didn’t need the light anymore. His shirt was wet with sweat now. He looked for a place to sit.
He’d closed the Bell’s cabin doors to keep the flies out, which he knew was hastening the body’s decomposition. The ride to Houston, assuming they could get the bird back in the air when Drake finished, the stench would be overwhelming.
Cody looked through the windows into the cabin at the wrapped tarp and then again at the pasture around them.
Dale deserved better. He’d been a good man and a good friend.
They’d been through a lot together. There was no virtue to be had in this situation.
Dale was gone. Nothing Cody could do would change that now.
There was nothing in Austin for Dale, even if Cody managed to get him back there. He had no family waiting. He’d told Cody years ago that he wanted to be cremated when the time came. There was no final resting place where he belonged.
Cody collected Drake’s satellite phone first. Then he approached the back of the Bell and opened the door to look through the cargo area. He folded his arm over his nose and mouth to filter the increasing stench while he took shallow breaths.
A folding shovel was clipped inside the bulkhead with the rest of the emergency kit. It was Army-issue. Dale had bought it surplus a long time ago. They’d dug many trenches with shovels like this one.
He pulled the shovel free and unfolded it.
He picked a spot fifty yards from the Bell, on a rise where the ground looked drier and the mesquite offered a little shade. He started digging. The ground was hard at the surface and softer underneath. His wounded arm objected, but he worked through the discomfort. For Dale.
Drake glanced over, noticed what Cody was doing, and went back to work on the aircraft.
As Cody dug the hole, he thought about his friend.
The good times and bad. He stopped to rest and started again more than once.
Eventually, he was deep enough in the hole that animals wouldn’t disturb the body, and the vultures wouldn’t notice it.
He tossed the shovel onto the grass and climbed out.
He walked to the Bell’s left rear door and opened it. He couldn’t breathe through his shirt this time because he needed both arms to pull the body out. The smell was intolerable. He gagged. But he didn’t quit.
Dale was heavier than he expected. Cody got him to the edge and lowered him as carefully as he could to the grass. He left the door open this time hoping to let the sickening smell dissipate. He dragged the tarped body across the pasture to the grave and wrestled him down into it.
He stood at the edge and looked down for a moment. “You should have charged me more for this trip, old friend.”
He returned the dirt to the hole. When finished, he tamped the dirt with the back of the shovel and placed a small mound of rocks into the dirt.
He pulled out the sat phone and noted the coordinates. He wrote them inside the back cover of his notebook and put the notebook back in his shirt pocket. He’d come back for Dale if he could.
He carried the shovel back to the Bell and clipped it into the cargo area where he’d found it.
Drake was wiping his hands with a rag. The side panel was back on. The tool roll was put away.
“I’m going to start her up and watch the gauge. We’re a little lower on fluid than I’d like, but we should be okay. With luck, we can take off,” Drake said as he climbed into the pilot’s seat and started the engine.
The rotors began to turn. Drake watched the gauges as he went through the process. Drake brought the engine to idle. He ran it to operating RPM.
After a minute, Drake called over the rotor noise. “Let’s go.”
Cody climbed into the co-pilot’s seat and pulled his harness and his headset on.
Drake lifted the Bell off the grass. “Two hours to Houston, give or take.”
Cody replied, “Copy that.”
The pasture and Dale’s grave fell away behind them. Drake watched the hydraulic gauge carefully, but it seemed his repairs were holding.
Cody didn’t smell the body anymore. He smelled Drake. Hydraulic fluid and sweat. He had to smell just as bad after the work in the pasture, but he couldn’t tell.
Almost two hours later, Drake landed the Bell in Houston. While Drake shut her down and started in on the post-flight, Cody unstrapped, climbed out onto the apron, and stretched his back for the first time in two hours.
He leaned in through the open door of the cabin. “I’m going to the men’s room to wash up.”
“We’ll be ready to head out in twenty,” Drake said without looking up.
Cody closed the door and started across the apron toward the small terminal building. The pad under his boots was warm from the absorbed heat of the day.
He’d covered twenty feet of concrete when he heard an engine revving.
A black sedan came across fast and stopped, blocking him from the terminal. The driver was taller, the passenger shorter and heavier through the shoulders.
The passenger side window buzzed down. The shorter one leveled a pistol at Cody’s chest.
“Get in, Patterson.”