Chapter 8 Bring in the Cavalry

Chapter 8

Bring in the Cavalry

I expected to see half a dozen New Orleans police cruisers waiting for me on the ramp at Lakefront Airport, but the only reception party in sight was a lineman in a yellow reflective vest waving me to a parking spot. He guided me to a stop, and I shut down the turbine.

“Good afternoon,” he said, glancing at his watch. “Will you be overnight?”

“Good afternoon. I’ll only be here a couple of hours, but if you could top her off, I’d appreciate it.”

I slipped him a folded bill, and he pocketed it without looking. There’s no rule stating a pilot should tip a lineman, but experience taught me a few bucks went a long way when I needed a favor on a parking ramp.

He called for the fuel truck over his handheld radio, and I headed through the electric double glass doors and into the FBO. The bright-eyed attendant behind the counter said, “Hello, sir. Welcome to Lakefront. Do you require any service?”

I motioned back through the doors. “He’s topping off the tanks. I’ll only be here a couple of hours, but I’ll need a taxi if you could order one.”

She said, “I’ll be happy to, but if you’d prefer, you’re welcome to use the courtesy car. If you’re only going to be here for two hours, that’s fine.”

I handed over my driver’s license and signed the logbook for the courtesy card. She made a copy, and I slid the card back into my wallet. “Do you need a credit card?”

She typed a few characters and studied the computer monitor. “No, sir. You have a card on file. We can bill that one for the fuel, and of course, there’s no charge for the car.”

I took the keys and found the sedan parked exactly where she said it would be. Airport courtesy cars are notoriously clunkers, but that one didn’t fit the mold. It was relatively new, and everything seemed to work.

A five-minute drive put me in the ER parking lot, and I hustled inside. Gator and Billy were nowhere in sight, so I stepped to the information counter. “Excuse me, but I’m looking for Cory Campbell. We delivered him by airplane a few minutes ago.”

“Are you the pilot?” she asked, and I felt the hammer falling.

“Yes, ma’am. I thought since Cory was critical, landing in the canal was our best bet for getting him into your hands as quickly as possible.”

“Well, I’ve been here almost thirty years, and that’s the first time I’ve ever seen anything like it. Give me just a minute, and I’ll find Mr. Campbell for you.”

She hunted and pecked her way around the keyboard until she pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and said, “It looks like he’s in radiology right now, but you can find his brother in curtain seven. Just go straight through those doors and follow the hall around to the left. The curtains are numbered.”

“Thank you, ma’am. I’m glad I could deliver a little excitement, but I don’t think I’ll try it again.”

She grinned, and I followed her instructions. She was right. Cory and his hospital bed were missing from behind curtain seven, but Gator and Billy sat in a pair of the most uncomfortable-looking chairs I’d ever seen.

Gator jumped to his feet. “Here, you can have my chair.”

I waved a hand. “That’s all right. I’d rather stand. How’s Cory?”

Gator said, “He’s stable but definitely concussed. They just took him for an MRI. They called in the neurosurgeon just in case they have to open him up.”

Billy said, “What do you think, Doctor?”

“I told you before that I’m not that kind of doctor, but he’s in good hands here. If he were my brother, this is exactly where I’d bring him.”

Billy said, “I can’t tell you how much it means that you’d go to all that trouble for somebody you don’t even know. Maybe it’s none of my business, but I’d love to know what a couple of doctors with an airplane were doing messing around Bayou Cane.”

Gator’s youth floated to the surface. “He’s the doctor. I’m just a dude.”

Billy said, “Still, what made you guys show up all the way down here?”

I took the floor. “Before we get into that, is there anybody you should call? Does Cory have a wife? Maybe your mother? Anybody?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s just me and him. We worked the rigs together in Oklahoma for a couple of years before signing on with the offshore company. The money’s a lot better offshore, but we’re gone a lot.”

I nodded. “I get it. Do you guys live in Bayou Cane?”

“We don’t really live nowhere. When we’re not on the rig, we live in our RV. It ain’t much, but we don’t need nothing fancy. We’re socking away money so we don’t have to work ourselves to death for the rest of our lives.”

“I don’t know much about oil rigs. What do you do out there?”

A gurney rattled down the hallway, and Billy glanced through the curtain. “That wasn’t him. I’m a driller, and Cory’s an assistant driller. He’s learning fast, so he’ll make driller… Well, I guess it depends on how this goes.”

“As I said, he’s in very good hands here, and if it turns out that they need to get him to UAB or Mayo, they’ll make that happen.”

Billy studied the white tile floor. “I already told you I really appreciate what you did for Cory, but I still can’t figure out what you guys are doing down here.”

I wrestled with the decision. Revealing too much might draw more attention than we wanted, but not taking advantage of Billy’s local knowledge could be a wasted asset. “We’re looking into a situation a little farther southwest. Have you ever heard of a company called Flambeau Exploration?”

Billy huffed. “Yeah. Everybody knows those guys. They’re everywhere, but the name of the company is a little deceiving. Nobody named Flambeau owns the operation, and they’re not just an exploration company.”

“Keep talking.”

He repositioned himself in the torture device of a chair. “Most of the time, exploration companies hire a bunch of geologists, and they study every bit of data they can find about possible new sites to drill. After they isolate a particular region, they send out more geologists and engineers to perform test drills in search of ground that’s likely to produce a few million barrels of oil. If they find what they’re looking for, they sell the information to drilling companies like Chevron or BP. You know, the companies that can afford to buy or lease a site and put up a rig.”

I made mental notes as he spoke. “And you said Flambeau is different. How so?”

“They’re real tight-lipped about it, so nobody outside the company knows for sure, but rumor has it they like to buy up what’s called ‘first right of refusal’ on oil and mineral rights, and sometimes land, too.”

“I’m familiar with the term,” I said. “It means the owner can’t sell to anyone else without giving Flambeau the first shot, right?”

“Yeah, I guess that’s how it works. I hear some of the engineers and geologists talking about them sometimes. They don’t have the best reputation in the business, but they’re a big player with a ton of money to spend.”

It was time to push my luck a little further. “All right. Maybe you can explain this to us. We saw the carcass of a wild pig while we were doing a little exploring last week.”

He cocked his head. “Exploring where?”

I said, “We were in a boat. I think they call it a pirogue down here.”

“In the bayou?”

I nodded, and he said, “It weren’t no pig. Gators would’ve gobbled it up.”

“I’m pretty sure it was a pig. It hadn’t been dead long. It was still in good shape, and there were no signs of any gators chewing on it.”

He continued shaking his head. “No, that can’t be right. Even if it had only been dead a few minutes, the gators would’ve got to it.”

Gator eyed me as if asking how far I was going to take the conversation, so I showed him. “Let’s assume I’m right, and it was a pig. Is there anything out there in the bayou that would keep a gator from eating it?”

He chuckled. “A bigger gator, maybe, but those things are eating machines, man. They’ve got a brain the size of your thumb and only think about two things—eating and…well, you can guess the other one.”

“So, there’s nothing that you know of that would keep a gator from eating any kind of meat left in the bayou, right?”

He made a show of shaking his head. “Absolutely not. I mean, I’ve heard of people falling out of boats and half a dozen gators hitting them at the same time. I don’t know what you saw, but it weren’t no pig.”

Before I could press further, someone pulled back the curtain and stepped into the space. A woman in a lab coat and glasses perched on her nose asked, “Mr. Campbell?”

Billy stood. “Yes, ma’am.”

She extended her hand and shook his. “Mr. Campbell, I’m Doctor Carmichael, the on-duty radiologist. Your brother’s condition is significantly more serious than the doctors initially believed. There is hemorrhaging, and blood and fluid are building up inside his skull. That’s likely why he’s still unconscious. He’s being prepped for surgery to relieve the pressure inside of his skull. If you’ll come with me, I’ll take you to the surgical waiting area.”

Billy turned to me as if begging for answers, so I took a step closer to him. “Go with Dr. Carmichael. They’ll take excellent care of Cory.”

I handed him my cell phone. “Send yourself a text from my phone so you’ll have my number. My name’s Chase, and he’s…believe it or not, Gator.”

He showed no reaction as he manipulated the screen and handed it back. “Thanks. I guess you guys have to go, but can I call you if I’ve got questions about what’s going on with Cory?”

“Call anytime you’d like, but the doctors here will spend as much time as you need to make you understand what’s happening.”

He extended his hand. “All right. Thanks again for what you did. It sounds like you may have saved Cory’s life by getting him here so fast.”

Dr. Carmichael said, “Wait a minute. Are you the guys who brought Mr. Campbell here in the seaplane?”

I said, “That was us.”

“Then you definitely saved Mr. Campbell’s life. He wouldn’t have survived another hour without surgery.”

Billy stared up at me, but he couldn’t seem to put the words together, so I let him off the hook. “Keep us posted, will you? I look forward to meeting Cory when he walks out of here.”

At that moment, Billy Campbell did the last thing I expected him to do. He grabbed my shirt with both hands, yanked me toward him, and hugged me as if we were long-lost family. Uncertain what to do or say, I returned the hug.

He wiped his face on my shirt as if trying to dry the tears before I saw them come. “Thank you, man. Cory’s all I got left. For real…thank you.”

Back in the borrowed airport courtesy car, Gator said, “Okay. Let’s start with the pig story. What was that about?”

I made the turn into the Lakefront Airport. “Kenneth is either lying about the body parts, or there’s something nobody can explain going on out there.”

He said, “Come on. Billy’s from Oklahoma. What does he know about gators?”

“He knows how small their brains are.”

Gator shook his head. “That dude is as crazy as everybody else down here, and there’s some trauma in that bloodline of his.”

“I’d agree with that,” I said. “I don’t know what happened to his folks, but he sure loves his brother.”

“What about Flambeau Exploration?”

I tapped the steering wheel, buying time while I came up with an answer. “This thing may have just gotten a lot bigger than we thought. It’s time to bring in the cavalry.”