“Here comes the storm,” Big DD said.
“Ten more minutes, then,” Butler said, following the river in a long, lazy S and working the stick to keep the helicopter steady in the relentless crosswind that made flying the unfamiliar craft a little dicey. Having the rear doors off did not help things.
Indeed, in the back seat, Vincente was getting pummeled by the wind and said into his mike, “Gotta be blowing thirty knots. What’s the ceiling on wind for this bird?”
Before Butler could answer, Big DD said, “Got ’em both, crossing that sandbar.”
Butler saw Cross and Sampson now, about three hundred yards ahead and approaching a back channel opposite Burnt Creek. He wasn’t seeing the raft, but no matter. They were sitting ducks for a marksman like Vincente. This mission was all but over.
“Your game, JP,” Butler said into his mike.
“Take a diagonal run to their right,” Vincente said, moving to lean out the left side of the helicopter to get a clean shot at them.
Butler swung the chopper slightly off angle and accelerated toward Cross and Sampson, who were running into the back channel even before Vincente opened fire, bullets skipping off the river, the sandbar, closing on both men as they tried to scramble up the bank.
A fifty-mile-an-hour gust blasted the side of the helicopter. Vincente’s shots went wide as he was thrown completely out the side of the chopper, where he dangled by his harness and tether.
Vincente was yelling something, but Butler paid no attention. Another gust hit, swinging the tail end of the bird so violently the rear rotor almost struck one of the pine trees on the west bank of the river.
The wind died down slightly. Butler got control of the helicopter and listened to Vincente curse in Spanish as Big DD leaned over, grabbed his tether, and pulled him back inside.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Vincente said. “I think I cracked a rib.”
“Not until we’re done,” Butler said, taking the chopper in a loop upriver and then down, heading toward the last place he’d seen Cross and Sampson as they tried to crawl up the riverbank and get to the trees.
“Got their raft,” Big DD said. “And their tent. In the woods, east bank.”
“They have to be right there, JP,” Butler said, swinging the helicopter broadside.
Vincente grunted as he slid across the back seat, got his foot out, and braced on the right step. Another gust hit, smaller than the earlier two but bearing the first wave of BB-size hail that broke over and around the bird.
Butler could barely see for a second before the wave passed and there was Cross, forty yards out, leaning out from behind a stout pine tree and aiming a shotgun.
“Kill him, JP!” Butler yelled a split second before Cross fired.
Buckshot spiderwebbed the windshield, door, and nose on Big DD’s side, obscuring Butler’s vision and striking Vincente’s left arm and the side of his face.
Blood poured down his cheeks and forehead from five different wounds. But Vincente was a warrior. He wasn’t down. He wasn’t out of the fight.
“Swing starboard!” Vincente bellowed as he tried to aim his rifle at the tree where Cross had been hiding.
Butler hovered the helicopter, then angled it toward the bank, realizing his mistake in the next second. Back in the shadows of the trees and the peppering hail, Sampson was on one knee aiming a scoped hunting rifle at them.
It must have been one hell of a heavy gun because it left a hole the size of a dime going through the windshield, broke the sound barrier as it went by Butler’s right earmuff, blew through the roof, and hit the rotor housing.
Butler felt the helicopter shudder and the stick turn dull but he did not lose control as he swung the bird away from the riverbank and flew downriver, hoping they weren’t going to have to ditch the chopper in the middle of nowhere.
Chapter
84
“Shoot them again, John!” I shouted as Sampson ran forward in the pelting hail. He cleared the trees, went to one knee, and aimed downriver at the retreating helicopter, already vague in the hail, and fired again. But this time I didn’t hear the tremendously satisfying sound of metal meeting a three-hundred-grain bullet fired from a .375 Ruger at less than sixty yards.
“Missed him that time,” Sampson said as he got up, his forearm shielding his eyes from the wind and the hail. He came over to where I’d taken refuge on the leeward side of a big ponderosa pine.
My heart was still slamming in my chest. “Who the hell were they? The cartel? M’s men?”
“Take your pick,” Sampson said, panting with adrenaline as he turned his back to the tree. “I want to know how they knew where we were.”