by Reid, Joseph
The chopper couldn’t have been more than fifty feet in the air—low enough that I could make out the seams between the panels on its underside. It continued along its course for another hundred yards or so before banking sharply and turning back toward us.
Norgard managed to let out a “What the hell?” before the helicopter landed directly in front of our nose, blocking the path to the hangars.
My heart started racing when I got a glimpse of the pilot and copilot through its glass canopy.
Both had tattooed faces.
“Jerry,” I shouted, “we need to get out of here. Now!”
Norgard continued turning the plane until we faced the direction from which we’d come. And that’s when I realized why the rotor noise was so loud.
A second helicopter had landed directly behind us, blocking the runway.
CHAPTER 12
The second helicopter was painted navy blue, but its crew was similarly inked.
“Jerry, these are bad, bad guys,” I said. “We need to move!”
“Hold on,” was his only response.
Men started to emerge from the rear doors of the blue chopper. Each carried a machine gun.
But suddenly they, the blue helicopter, and all the scenery behind them began sliding to the right. Norgard was turning the plane again.
Without warning, he gunned the throttle, and the Cessna jolted forward.
“What’s going on?” Max said from the back.
“Our friends found us again,” I said, trying my best to sound calm. Shifting in my seat to face her, I saw the same bug-eyed expression she’d worn inside baggage claim at LAX. “Don’t worry. We’ll be okay.”
I glanced back out the windows, wondering if I truly believed my own words. Both helicopters had left their rotors spinning, and now the blue one’s tail angled up into the air as it started to lift off. “They’re gonna follow us, Jerry.”
“They might try,” Norgard said.
We rolled onto the longer runway that joined ours at an angle. As we lined up, Norgard opened the throttle. The engine’s buzz rose an octave, and the plane pitched forward, pressing me back into my seat.
Out my side window, I saw the blue chopper racing to catch us. Nose down, it was gaining quickly. Over my other shoulder, I could see the white helicopter on the opposite side of the plane, doing the same. Both were also squeezing closer to us, trying to pinch us between them.
Shots rang out, and I spotted muzzle flashes coming from the rear door of the blue helicopter.
“Faster, Jerry,” I said. It felt like we should have been airborne already, and I wondered what Norgard was waiting for.
“This is max power,” he said. “Just hang on.”
Without warning, our wheels popped off the ground. Norgard yanked hard on the yoke, and we moved into a steep climb.
When they realized we were taking off, both helicopters swerved in toward us. But as Norgard’s maneuver lifted us up and out of their way, they ended up nearly colliding, veering away from each other at the last moment before their rotor blades touched.
In the pilot’s seat, Norgard seemed oblivious to the action below. His face and body were perfectly calm, as if this were all routine. But he left the throttle open and continued to pull back, the angle of the nose steepening until it felt more like a roller-coaster climb than anything else. I could sense the raw mechanical power through my seat.
“You okay, Jerry?” I asked.
“I don’t like people shooting at my aircraft.”
“I can explain—”
“Save it,” he said. “We got speed and power over those helos. So we’re gonna climb up into the sun where they can’t see us and get the fuck out of here. Once we’re someplace safe, you can do all your explaining.”
“Run away?”
“From bad guys with guns? Absolutely.”
“Where?”
“El Paso’s closest. Less than fifteen minutes.”
“But even if we pull away from those choppers,” I said, “they can just radio for reinforcements. They’ll have someone waiting in El Paso before we get there.”
Norgard paused for a moment. “So what’s your idea, genius?”
“Return fire. Take them on here.”
He chuffed. “With what, exactly? I left my Sidewinder missiles at home.”
I pulled out the Sig.
He glanced over quickly. “You kidding? You can’t hit anything with that up here.”
“You get me close enough, I’ll hit something.”
Norgard’s eyes remained forward. We continued climbing.
“They’re going to follow us,” I said. “Trust me, Jerry—if you can dodge them, I can shoot them.”
His face turned. Even behind the aviators, I could feel the old man’s eyes measuring me. Finally, he shrugged one shoulder slightly. “I’ve always wanted to see what this girl could do if I really turned her loose.”
With the adrenaline pumping now, I pulled the earpiece out from where I’d snaked it beneath my headset. I also called to Max behind us. “Can you dig out the extra magazines from the duffel?”
When no answer came, I looked back at her. “Max?”
Still wide-eyed, she didn’t respond.
“Max!”
Finally, her eyes ticked over at me.
“Magazines. In the bag. Get them. I need ammo, now!”
Her head started to bob. Slightly at first, then more of a nod. As she reached for the duffel, I turned to Norgard. “Let’s go.”
He eased the yoke forward, and backed off power slightly. As we started leveling off, he said, “The engine and the rotor assembly on those things aren’t as fragile as you think. Aim for the tail rotors. Or the pilot.”
“Got it.”
Max passed me the three magazines, and I wedged them between my thighs. Then I unlatched the side window. Hinged at the top, it swung outward at the bottom—only a few degrees, but enough that wind began shrieking through the cabin. I braced my right arm on the sill with the Sig barrel pointed forward. That helped steady my grip.
“Ready,” I called.
“Then here we go,” Norgard said.
He eased the yoke forward and cut power. The nose of the plane dipped toward the ground, and we started descending. Slowly at first, but working with gravity now instead of against it, the plane seemed to gather speed exponentially.
“There,” Norgard said.
Although I looked all around, I didn’t see anything at first. But as he maneuvered us slightly, something glinted in the sun. A tiny speck against the sandy-brown backdrop.
The sparkling speck began to move, sliding left to right across the windshield, flashing as it went. We continued toward it, as if following some kind of blinking lodestar.
Gradually, ground details came into sharper relief as the earth grew closer. The speck grew large enough for me to see it was the blue helicopter.
I couldn’t tell whether it was actively running from us or if Norgard had simply circled us behind it. But over the course of several seconds, it changed from a pinprick dot to a small teardrop. I kept my eyes locked on the shape, while in my back and legs I could sense Norgard applying power, leveling off to maintain our angle of approach.
“Thirty seconds,” he said. In the windshield, the helicopter had grown to a quarter inch.
Steadying my arm on the sill, I eyed down the sights. Between the gusts of wind still pressing their way into the cabin and invisible bumps in the air, my platform was anything but stable. Still, I did my best to focus on the tail of the teardrop shape, to picture the rotor spinning at the end of it.
“Ten seconds.”
The dark-blue helicopter was bigger now, maybe a half inch in my vision. But I was still way out of range.
“Five . . . four . . .”
Although Norgard went silent, I continued counting in my head. We were close enough now that I could see the chopper clearly, and I locked in on the tail. At two, I guessed we were in range for
the Sig and let off four shots.
The helicopter flinched as if it were alive and startled by something. But if I scored a hit, it wasn’t enough: the chopper not only kept flying, it banked back in the direction from which we’d come.
Almost immediately, Norgard tilted us into a steep left turn. As he did, I heard automatic gunfire, and the white helicopter flashed by.
“Told you this was a shitty idea,” he said.
As we cleared the turn, Norgard opened the throttle again, and we soared upward. This time, though, instead of a smooth climb, he rocked the wings every few seconds.
Gunfire rang out again. Two hollow thumps sounded, then the side window next to me broke, causing me to pull my arm back inside the cabin.
“Hang on,” I heard.
Suddenly, the climb became a dip. We bounced several times as if clearing invisible hills before dropping into a sharp right turn. Almost as soon as we’d entered it, though, we were pulling out into an even steeper climb than before.
After several seconds soaring upward, Norgard said, “Okay, we’re clear. You’re sure you don’t want to rabbit while we can.”
“One more chance,” I said.
Without another word, the plane pitched to the left, and we started another dive. Like the climb, this one was steeper than before, and I frantically searched the drab tan expanse below for any sign of the helicopters.
“One thirty,” Norgard said. “White one.”
Sure enough, just right of the nose, I saw an impossibly small white dot. With no idea how Norgard’s vision could be that good, I reassumed my firing position at the windowsill.
Locked in on the white chopper, though, I wasn’t expecting the plane to juke hard to the right. As it did, I tumbled to my left, my seat belt the only thing keeping me from spilling into Norgard’s lap.
Gunfire crackled, and I saw why Norgard had made the sudden move: the blue helicopter had swooped in from the side. Executing a turn across our path, I saw flashes from its windows and heard two more dull thuds hit our fuselage.
Norgard had no choice but to pull up hard.
As he did, though, a buzzer began to squeal: the stall warning.
The airplane lost momentum, then twisted around. The nose now pointed directly at the ground, which started to spin slowly.
Over the electronic squealing, I heard Max scream.
“It’s okay,” Norgard said calmly over the radio. He idled the throttle and jabbed his feet until we stopped turning. As the airplane smoothed out, he pulled back gently on the yoke until we were level. The squealing stopped, and now Norgard applied power again to push us upward once more.
The blue helicopter hadn’t gone far—it continued circling above us like a shark.
As we climbed toward it, the chopper disappeared behind us, then reappeared on my side of the plane. “Get ready,” Norgard called.
The helicopter kept turning in front of us, remaining at the same altitude. Norgard applied more power, pulling us up well past the chopper’s level, before abruptly banking us over to the left. Exchanging altitude for speed, we swooped down through a turn, ending up directly behind the blue chopper.
“There’s your shot.”
I scrambled to line up the tail rotor in the Sig’s sights. Although the copter tried to waggle back and forth, to alternate speeds, Norgard matched its every move. After a cleansing breath, I let off a steady stream of eight shots in a line.
Two, then three, flashes erupted from the tail. Suddenly, the helicopter’s entire back end started swerving wildly. It began shedding altitude, but before my eyes could follow it downward, Norgard pulled us back up into another climb.
“That’s one,” he said.
As I reloaded, Norgard made periodic left turns, giving himself a chance to search below us. He continued to steal glances toward the ground until finally, he said, “Gotcha,” and pitched the nose over. “Two o’clock moving to three.”
This time the spotting was easier—the white chopper stood out against a dark-brown mountain framed behind it. I got into position in the window and waited as the dive pushed my stomach farther up into my chest than I’d prefer.
The helicopter was still only the size of a fruit fly when it abruptly changed direction. Norgard moved to match its course, and we continued descending on it, creeping ever closer. As we settled in just behind and above it, the white helicopter began flying erratically, weaving this way and that.
When it veered hard left, I anticipated it coming back right and laid down a line of six shots where I thought the tail would end up.
I was too early—the chopper did come back, but the bullets were long gone.
The helicopter continued dancing up and down, left and right. I guessed again when it would cross our nose and emptied the rest of the magazine.
The shots were too high this time, as the helicopter dipped before swerving.
As I reloaded again, Norgard’s voice sounded in my ears. “I can’t stay on him forever.”
Once I had my eyes back in the sights, I let the chopper swing back and forth a couple of times to get a sense of its rhythm. Then I let off a diagonal line of shots.
At least one of the six was a hit. Sparks erupted from the helicopter’s tail. The rotor seized, and almost immediately the body of the chopper began to spin.
Looking up from the Sig, my focus widened, and I suddenly realized how close we were to the mountain: the nearest peak was no longer a vague brown blob, but a sharply defined, craggy chunk of rock. The chopper must have been leading us in a dive through the entire pursuit.
As the helicopter careened forward and down, Norgard pulled us into the sharpest turn yet. My head jerked to the side while the force of the turn squeezed me back against the seat.
Although I didn’t see the helicopter strike the ground, the impact and explosion jolted the Cessna. Norgard once again seemed oblivious, focusing only on banking us away. With the nose down, though, as the airplane’s turn steepened, we didn’t level out of it as I expected.
Instead, the Cessna banked even farther.
Suddenly, the nose was pointed at the ground again, and we were spiraling downward.
“Hang on,” Norgard said over the radio. Although calm, his voice betrayed obvious effort.
This time seemed different from the last, the aircraft more helpless. My insides, already jumbled and uneasy from all the maneuvering, started to feel queasy.
We went through several rotations—I had no idea what our altitude was, but it sure didn’t seem like we had much to spare. Each turn revealed more detail below us: what had been brown lines across the desert sand blossomed into visible dots of scrub.
There was no stall warning this time. No noise except the engine humming as Norgard wrestled with the controls.
As the fall pressed me deeper and deeper into my seat, my heart seemed to pound against the inside of my rib cage.
Soon, I could see cracks and fissures in the ground instead of a matte floor.
A check of the instruments showed everything spinning. Already dizzy, I looked away to avoid becoming totally disoriented.
Seconds stretched into what seemed like minutes as the turns kept accelerating and the ground approached. It grew harder and harder to breathe.
“C’mon, baby,” Norgard said through gritted teeth.
Finally, somehow, he flattened us out and brought the nose back up to the horizon.
Once we were back cruising, Norgard glanced over, wearing a broad smile. “Everybody awake?” he asked. “Let’s go land somewhere.”
CHAPTER 13
Although we could have gone in any direction after the attack, because we didn’t know the exact fate of the blue helicopter, I convinced Norgard to head north to Albuquerque. It was farther than El Paso, but the airport was larger and would give us more cover and more options.
Not wanting to provide too many details, I told Norgard I was delivering Max to the FBI in Texas after the gang had attacked her in LA. Thankfull
y, he didn’t ask any questions. And while we all remained on alert through the rest of the flight, it was uneventful. Our landing—to the southwest, as the sun swelled and painted a bright-orange band against the horizon—was beautifully boring.
As Norgard tied the Cessna down, I helped Max out of the plane and retrieved the duffel. It was obvious all the adrenaline had faded for us both. I had my earpiece back in, but my muscles felt totally wrung out. Her eyes drooped like she wanted to go back to sleep.
Finally, Norgard circled back to our side of the plane and stuck out a hand. “That was an adventure,” he said.
“How’d you learn to fly like that?” I asked.
“North Vietnamese triple A is a pretty good tutor. But I’ll tell you, I shot down two MiGs, and neither was a fight like that.”
“I’m so sorry about your plane,” I said. “I’ll pay to—”
He scrunched up his face and waved his hand. “Don’t worry about it, kid. You get to be my age, a little excitement like that is worth hammering out a few dings.”
We shook hands, then went our separate ways.
A quick search on the burner phone’s GPS showed the airport was adjacent to the freeway, surrounded by a cluster of motels. Figuring we’d need food and supplies, I opted for one whose parking lot connected to a Waffle House and a 7-11. Twenty minutes later, we were locked in our room, Max poking at a salad, me wolfing down large bites from a bacon cheeseburger.
“You’ve barely eaten today,” I said.
She stabbed a chunk of tomato with her plastic fork and stared at me over it. “I’m just not very hungry.”
“Okay. But tomorrow’s gonna be another long one.”
“What time will we get home?”
I shook my head. “No way we’re getting to Austin tomorrow. Not with this little detour.”
Max’s face flushed, and she burst out of her chair. “We have to—you promised!”
I shrugged. “What do you want me to do? We just had to come two hundred miles north. Right now, I’m thinking we fly to Dallas. I’ve got some police friends there from my last case—we can check with them, see if they know anything about the gang. Then we’ll head to Austin on Monday.”
