Fatalis

Chapter Fifty-Six

Sitting in the passenger compartment of the highway-patrol helicopter, Gearhart was concerned when he couldn't raise Lyon on his radio. Poking his head into the cockpit, the sheriff asked the pilot to call Deputy Russo in the Bell.

There was no response.

Gearhart sat back in the vinyl seat. He looked out the window as they made a thuddingly noisy pass over the dark terrain. He felt, for a flashing instant, that he was back in Vietnam, being airlifted from a combat zone and waiting to find out if the rest of the platoon made it out in the second chopper. He hated that feeling then and he hated it now.

The flight took less than five minutes, though Gearhart knew before they reached the site that something had happened. There was no light in the sky and no call to indicate that the chopper had followed the cat to another location. His initial concern was that the chopper might have collided with one of the peaks in the dark; though Deputy Russo was an experienced night flier in the mountains, she did not usually travel this far southeast. Then he began to hope that they'd experienced mechanical trouble and had set down somewhere.

But Gearhart's hope was blasted when the highway-patrol pilot reported seeing wreckage among the trees up ahead. Gearhart jumped from his seat. He squeezed into the cockpit between the pilot and copilot and looked out as the chopper approached the site. They had cleared a five-hundred-foot hill and dropped to two hundred feet.

The scene was horrific. Brightly lit by the jiggling white searchlight, Gearhart saw that many of the trees had been stripped of leaves. As they neared he could see the helicopter nestled among them. Worse than the horribly twisted rotor was the sight of the chopper itself. Lying on its side, it reminded Gearhart of a beached whale-helpless despite its formidable size and power.

But the helicopter wasn't badly damaged, and Gearhart still hoped that Lyon and Russo might be alive. The pilot dropped lower. Only then, as the remaining leaves parted, could they see inside the cockpit.

"Oh, shit," murmured the pilot. "Sheriff-"

"Go lower!" he yelled.

The pilot obliged.

The sight was shocking, even to Gearhart. Lyon 's body was lying across that of Russo. They were savagely mangled and bloody beyond imagining. Though the windshield was shattered, the dismemberment hadn't happened in the crash. Gearhart had seen rotor wounds and crash injuries. These two looked as though they'd been pushed through a paper shredder.

"Put me through to the California Army National Guard," Gearhart said. "The Fortieth Division Support Command in LA, General Brewer."

The pilot obliged.

While he waited, Gearhart looked down at the wreckage. He didn't know what had brought the chopper down; that would be for the investigating engineers to figure out. But he knew what had mangled the passengers. Except for the presence of the bodies, the blood distribution was the same as in the fish truck they'd found on the beach. The cats had probably gone in after the chopper went down and finished the two off.

Gearhart looked out at the sinkhole. He wondered if the animals were there watching, waiting for them to make a move.

They wouldn't have to wait long, Gearhart vowed.

Not long at all.