The singing instantly stopped and Reverend Crockett stepped up to the pulpit. He scanned the sea of small flickering flames.
“Who’s playing the juice harp?” he asked.
“I ain’t adrift nei-ther more. ” Fonny Boy sang improv and bent a few notes. “I ain’t prinked up in nei-ther Sunday shoes with my pockets puffed out, but a freehearted boy, he ain’t never been poor!”
Gasps sounded all around him and voices called out praise Jesus and thank you, Jesus and it’s a miracle! Then Fonny Boy’s mother was stumbling out of a pew and clutching Fonny Boy in her arms, and next his father was lifting him up in the air, tears streaming down his weathered face. Everyone on the island figured Fonny Boy was dead when they heard about the Tory Treasure and the capture of the dentist. Since there was no mention of Fonny Boy in connection with this news, the Islanders assumed the poor young man had been pushed overboard by the greedy Dr. Faux.
“Grasp hands in a mazy dance of praise!” Reverend
Crockett proclaimed. “The Lord is dealing out grace and has blowed the breath of life back into this drownded boy!”
“Praise God!” Fonny Boy’s mother cried. “He’s brought wer baby back from the dead!”
“I’m a die if I was dead!” Fonny Boy said, confounded and deeply moved as it began to occur to him that the entire island had been gathering in the church, perhaps nightly, to pray for him because he was lost at sea. “The dentist, he returned me right ‘fore dark. ”
A rumbling stirred throughout the congregation as helicopters thundered overhead, shaking the roof of the church.
“That’s it!” Reverend Crockett boomed in disapproval. “The dentist is back on Tanger?”
“No!” Fonny Boy exclaimed backward.
“Whur’s he at?”
“He’s follering his way to the airstrip!” Fonny Boy replied.
“That bad man from the main, he pulled ever one of my teeth!” Mrs. Pruitt said loud enough for all to hear.
“And mine. ”
“And mine. ”
“Yass! Mine, too. ”
“He must be fixin’ to escape on the helichoppers!”
Loud, outraged voices ran together into a deafening rumble before Fonny Boy could explain, and the island’s entire population streamed out of the church and moved in a determined, united candlelit front toward the airstrip, which was only a five-minute walk away, because nothing on the island was far from anything else.
Soldiers dressed for combat were climbing out of two Black Hawk helicopters when they saw a cloud of small flames floating in their direction. Andy picked up the strange display of light as he thundered fifteen hundred feet overhead at the same moment Unique pushed a button and zipped open the box cutter’s blade.
“What’s going on down there?” Hammer said before she could restrain herself.
“You better not try anything or all of you are dead!” Smoke threatened as he looked out the window at the moving sea of lights and the big Black Hawk helicopters. “What have you done? What the fuck’s happening? Tell me now!”
Possum’s attention was riveted to the syringe in Smoke’s hand, and he knew Smoke well enough to figure out exactly what would happen next. The instant the helicopter was safely down, Smoke was going to stab Popeye through the flag and inject her full of rat poison, then he would shoot Hammer and Trooper Truth and keep Cuda and Possum as his road dogs on this forsaken island forever. Suddenly, Possum noticed Unique twitch as if she were having a seizure as she unfastened her seat-belt.
“Bye-bye, Popeye!” Smoke said in a mean, mocking tone as he pulled the protective orange tip off the syringe.
“No, Unique!” Possum screamed, and Andy instantly remembered Possum’s saying in an e-mail “It was Unique” in reference to whoever cut on Moses, and Moses talking about an angel who promised him a unique experience. Andy yelled, “Mayday!” into the mike as he slowed down, lowered the helicopter’s nose, and shoved the cyclic to the right, rolling the 430. For a hair-raising second, they were upside down, then warning alarms went off and emergency lights began to flash and the helicopter suddenly flared like a rampant stallion.