“You do defy expectations, Jim,” I said. “The hillbilly stereotype may never be the same.”
But O’Conner wasn’t listening to me. He’d suddenly taken a step to one side, cocking his head toward the house, then he cupped both hands behind his ears to catch more of whatever sound he was seeking. “Well, damn,” he said to himself, and ran for the kudzu tunnel.
By the time he disappeared through his back door, I could hear it myself.
“Damn,” I echoed, and began running, too.
By the time I reached the front porch, the faint sound had become the distinctive, rhythmic, and ominous beat of a helicopter rotor. Unless I missed my guess, the helicopter would be piloted by Chief Deputy Orbin Kitchings. O’Conner, one hand shading his eyes, stared toward the mouth of his hanging valley. Judging by the way the sound ricocheted off the ridges, the helicopter was flying low and closing fast. Suddenly it rose into view, climbing up out of the gorge at the lower end of the valley, almost as if emerging from the earth itself. Black with gold trim, it was unmistakably the sheriff’s JetRanger, and it was headed straight for us.
O’Conner cursed again. I was just opening my mouth to say something reassuring and probably wrong when a crack split the air. “My God, somebody’s shooting,” O’Conner said, and his head spun toward the ridge angling alongside the house. I saw sparks fly from the chopper’s tail boom as another shot rang out. “Top of the ridge,” he said. “That’s a high-powered rifle. Those aren’t warning shots—somebody’s trying to bring him down.”
As if the pilot had heard him, the chopper halted in midair, then veered sharply to the left and began weaving toward us in violent zigs and zags. Orbin had been an army pilot, I remembered. I hoped he recalled enough of his combat training to outmaneuver the sniper.
Wheels began turning frantically in my head, and I flashed back to my pot patch excursion with Waylon, and to the rage he’d shown when Orbin shot Vernon’s dog. “We need to find Waylon,” I said urgently. “Where’s Waylon?” Suddenly, magically—mercifully, even—Waylon’s truck stopped in front of the porch. O’Conner waved frantically and pointed toward the ridge just as another muzzle flash erupted. Without a word, Waylon roared to the treeline, then leapt from his truck and sprinted up the mountainside.
As bullets continued to slam into the chopper, the aircraft wove and dodged toward the spot the shots were coming from, as if Orbin wanted to confront his assailant face to face. Sparks flew as a bullet glanced off the main rotor. Suddenly a spiderweb of fracture lines painted the front windshield, and the plastic bubble burst. The helicopter seemed to leap up in surprise, then pitched forward and rolled to the left, plummeting toward the valley floor. When it hit, it collapsed with surprisingly little resistance, the remainder of the Plexiglas windows shattering, the metal tail boom crumpling like cardboard tubing. The impact was followed by near silence—a few groaning aftershocks, little else. For some reason I was expecting alarms and sirens, so the quiet seemed eerie and wrong. Then, as O’Conner and I ran toward the wreckage, came the searing rush of intense flame. Within seconds fire engulfed the cockpit, making our approach—and his survival—utterly impossible. O’Conner shielded his face, peering into the flames. “Jesus. What a godawful mess. What the hell is going on here, Doc?”
“I wish I knew. Just when I think things can’t get any worse up here, they do. I’ve heard a lot of bad things about Cooke County over the years. I didn’t realize they were all understatements.”