Smoke continued to bump Andy’s head with the pistol and threaten to kill Popeye if Andy and Hammer didn’t do exactly as they were told.
“I know you got guns, so hand them back here, ” Smoke ordered over his mike.
Just fly the helicopter, Andy told himself.
“Hand them back here now!” Smoke’s cruel voice sounded in Andy’s headset.
“I’m flying, ” Andy replied. “It takes both hands and feet to fly and I’m not about to start rooting around for any alleged weapons until we’re on the ground. ”
“I don’t have a weapon, ” Hammer answered as she wondered if she dared turn around and shoot Smoke with the nine-millimeter pistol inside her Harley purse.
She supposed this was not a good idea. Nailing Smoke wasn’t the problem at such close range, but if he happened to fire his gun because she’d fired hers, then Andy might be wounded or killed and it would be up to her to fly and she didn’t know how. Not to mention, if her bullet passed through Smoke and penetrated the helicopter, severe damage might be the result and they could crash. She looked out at the dark waters of the James River as it opened up into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and remembered her fear of drowning.
“Sit back and shut up, ” she told Smoke in the severe tone she reserved for suspects. “We’re over the bay now and the last thing you want is for us to lose control of the helicopter. If we go down, everybody drowns. You’ll be trapped inside, beating on the doors, trying desperately to open them, but you won’t be able to because of the vacuum. So you’ll struggle in the frigid pitch dark as water fills the cabin and you’ll die slowly. ”
“Chill, ” Cuda begged Smoke. “Just chill, man. I don’t want to drown!”
Possum kept Popeye snugly wrapped in the flag and hugged her hard. Smoke sat back in the seat, playing with the syringe while Unique stared weirdly at Trooper Truth’s neck, a box cutter wrapped so tightly in her delicate hand that her nails had pierced her palm and drawn blood. She felt no pain, only the blast of heat and intense frequencies and vibrations rolling up from her Darkness.
Andy checked a flight chart and entered Patuxent’s frequency on the radio, and minutes later raised the military tower on the air. “Helicopter zero-one-one-Delta-Bravo, ” Andy said over the radio.
“One-Delta-Bravo, ” the tower came back.
“Are restricted areas six-six-oh-niner and four-zero-zero-six hot?” Andy inquired.
“Negative. ”
“Permission to transition through them at one thousand, en route to Tangier Island, ” Andy said.
“Permission denied. ” The tower said exactly what Andy thought it would.
“Roger, ” Andy said as he entered code 7500, for hijacking, into the transponder and then gave Hammer a thumbs-up.
He was going to transition through the restricted areas anyway, and now that Patuxent had him on their radar and knew his tail number and realized there were hijackers on board, the military would respond. He pulled in more torque and was grateful for a tailwind that propelled them along at a ground speed of one hundred and seventy knots, and fifteen minutes later entered Patuxent’s airspace.
Andy took a deep breath and switched the 430 over to automatic pilot. Smoke had no way of realizing that Andy’s hands and feet were now free, and Andy slowly reached down and slipped the pistol out of his ankle holster. Following his lead, Hammer withdrew the nine-millimeter from her bag, and both of them tucked the guns under their legs so Smoke wouldn’t see what was happening should he climb back up on his seat and glare into the cockpit again.
Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux didn’t know what was happening, either, when they walked along Janders Road in plain view and couldn’t find a single sign of an Islander. Lights in many of the small houses were off, and not a single golf cart or bicycle rattled past in the chilly dark. The island had been deserted this way ever since Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux slipped off the mailboat after an unsuccessful attempt at bribing the captain to look for the crab pot with its yellow buoy.