Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(121)
"Yes! I recognize the roof! Papa used blue metal. I can still see some of the blue! And the same porch and screen door!"
Lucy drops to fifty feet, in a hover, and turns to the left, Rudy's window lined up with the boat.
"Shoot it!" Lucy yells at him.
Rudy slides open his window. He rapidly fires seventeen rounds into the bottom of the boat as the front door of the shack flies open and Bev Kiffin runs out with a shotgun. Lucy pushes the cyclic forward to push up her airspeed.
"Duck! But stay in your seats!"
Rudy has already slapped a new magazine into his gun. Although the seats in back are directly over the fuel ceJJ, this isn't Lucy's concern. Jet-A is by no means as flammable as gasoline, and the most damage shotgun pellets might do is cause leaks. On the floor, there is Jess of the aircraft's skin to penetrate.
Rudy arms the floats.
The shotgun is pump-action with a magazine extender. Bev fires seven rounds, one right after another. Pellets shatter windows, smacking the composite skin, and hit the main rotor blade and engine cowling. If the burn can is penetrated, there's going to be a fire, and Lucy immediately cuts off the throttle and lowers the collective. Alarms go off in desperate warnings as she lowers the collective, presses the right pedal and turns into the wind, where there is no place to set down but an area of tall saw grass. Nitrogen explodes like another gunshot, and floats on the skids instantly inflate like rubber rafts. The helicopter lurches out of trim, and Lucy fights to stabilize it, realizing that at least one of the six floats has been penetrated by shotgun pellets.
The landing is hard enough to set off the ELT, or emergency locator transmitter, and the helicopter rocks in dense grass and dark, muddy water, and lists hard to the right. Opening her door, Lucy looks down. Two of the three floats were penetrated and didn't inflate. Rudy shuts off the battery and the generator and everyone sits for a moment, stunned and listening to the abrupt silence outside as the helicopter lists to the right, sinking into the muck. Not more than three hundred feet away, they can see the boat taking on water, its bow rising as it sinks.
"At least she's not going anywhere," Rudy remarks as he and Lucy take off their headsets.
Lucy unscrews a large cap on her watch and pulls out the antenna, activating her ELT.
"Come on," she says. "We can't sit here."
"I can," Marino replies.
"Nic?" Lucy turns around. "You got any idea how deep the water is right here?"
"Not too deep, or there wouldn't be all this saw grass. Its the mud that's the problem. We could sink up to our knees."
"I'm not going anywhere," Marino says. "What for? The boat's sunk, so she ain't going anywhere, either. And I'm not getting snake-bit or eaten by a f*cking alligator."
"Here's what we can do." Nic continues as if Marino isn't in the back with her. "The saw grass stretches all the way behind the shack, and I know the water's not that deep, because we used to put on high boots and collect mussels."
"I'm going," Lucy says, opening her door.
Inside the shack, dogs are barking loudly.
The problem for Lucy is that the fat float on her skid is going to make it impossible for her to lower herself gently, one foot at a time. She tightens the shoelaces on her ankle-high boots and hands Rudy her Glock and extra magazines.
Perched in the door frame like a skydiver, she says, "Here I go!"
She lands in the water feetfirst and is pleasantly surprised to find she sinks in just above her boots. If she steps quickly, she doesn't sink as much. Stepping closer, her face splattered with dirty water, she reaches out to take her weapon and wedges it into the back of her pants. She temporarily jams the extra magazines into a pocket.
Everybody takes turns holding on to guns and ammo as Rudy, then Nic, jumps out, exiting from the same side of the helicopter as Lucy did. Marino sits like an angry lump in the backseat.
"You gonna sit there until the chopper turns over on its side?" Rudy raises his voice. "Idiot! Get out!"
Marino slides across the seats and tosses Rudy his gun. He jumps, loses his balance and falls, his head hitting a float. When he manages to get to his feet, he is covered with mud and swearing.
"Shhhh," Lucy says. "Voices carry on the water. You all right?"
Marino wipes his hands on Rudy's shirt and angrily takes back his gun as both ELTs flash brightly on radar screens in airport towers and are picked up by any pilors who happen to be monitoring the emergency frequency.
They slog along, tensely keeping an eye out for snakes, hearing them rustle through the tall grass. When the four of them are within a hundred feet of the shack, pistols held high, barrels pointed up, the screen door whines open again and Bev dashes out on the pier with the shotgun, shrieking, screaming at them, insane and suicidal with desperation and rage.
Before she can even take aim, Rudy fires.
Crack-crack! Crack-crack! Crack-crack!
She hits the old wood planking and rolls into the water next to the half-sunken boat.
123
ALBERT DARD OPENS the imposing door, the front of his long-sleeve shirt spotted with blood.
"What happened?" Scarpetta exclaims as she steps inside.
She gets down and gently raises his shirt. In a tic-tac-toe pattern on his stomach are shallow cuts. Scarpetta lets out a long breath as she lowers his shirt and stands up.