Chapter Twenty-Six

The chopper lifted slowly off the tarmac, gaining altitude and moving forward as the pilot—Chip Mateo—flew the unmarked Bell 407 over Cheyenne Regional Airport's primary runway. As they passed the parking lot, Evan could just make out Blue's nose sticking out of the window he'd left partially open in his G-ride.

A GPS unit had been preprogrammed with the suspected location of the camp. When they reached altitude, Chip headed the chopper northwest. Low cloud cover obliterated the early afternoon sun, blanketing the ground whizzing by beneath them in shadowless hues of gray and brown.

Evan took out the binoculars and removed the lens cap from the 35mm camera. A telephoto lens would have been sweet, but he'd need a search warrant for any form of enhanced technology. Even though the Fourth Amendment protected a person's reasonable expectation of privacy in dwellings, there was an ever-changing legal debate on the same for aerial surveillance of open fields. Too bad, that.

To avoid anything he documented from getting tossed out of court, he'd instructed the pilot not to hover, and to maintain five hundred feet above ground level to keep them in legal airspace over people, vehicles, and structures.

"Two minutes out," Chip said.

Even wearing a headset, the steady whump-whump of the chopper's blades echoed in Evan's ears.

When they arrived, the plan was to slow to about one hundred twenty mph, then drop down while Evan took a look through the binoculars. The chopper's camera would also record video.

Chip glanced at the dashboard. "We're just about there."

As the chopper lowered, Evan could make out the fencing he'd seen when they'd driven up to the gate with the camera. "Start the video."

Chip flipped a switch. Evan held the binoculars to his eyes, focusing in. A moment later, the ground dipped into a steep valley. Two long, rectangular buildings with white roofs, corrugated doors, and loading docks came into view. A few vehicles were visible, including an old gray school bus and some pickup trucks. Inside a penned area, sheep scattered as they flew overhead. No people in sight.

What he needed was proof of life, specifically children. No proof translated to a big fat zero on the probable cause scale.

About a hundred yards beyond the larger buildings were the white houses Noah had described, and a larger structure resembling a church that he hadn't mentioned. Beyond the houses were what looked like rectangular fields of crops covered by white tarps.

White roofs. White tarps .

White tarps were often used by illegal marijuana growers to trick thermal imaging cameras by concealing heat signatures. The Bell 407 was equipped with a Forward-Looking Infrared camera that would detect radiation emitted from a heat source. The FLIR could be utilized during warrantless surveillance of agricultural crops in open fields where there was no Fourth Amendment reasonable expectation of privacy. Even with the white tarps, they might detect a heat source.

"Turn on the FLIR," Evan said. If he couldn't get in on one set of probable cause, maybe he could get in on an illegal marijuana grow and processing center.

"You got it." Chip flipped another switch just before heading the chopper over the tarped-off crops. At the edge of the valley, he took the chopper higher.

"Head north for a few minutes, then turn around for another flyover." He wanted to get one more look without being too obvious.

Minutes later, Chip banked the chopper in a one-eighty, heading them back on a direct path to the camp.

Evan picked up the camera, snapping a few shots of the tarped-off crops. A man rounded the side of the nearest building, leaning against the corner. Evan focused in, trying to get a clearer image of the man's face. Just as the guy looked up, he raised something in his hands and pointed it into the sky. At them .

"Gun! Get us out of here!"

Chip banked sharply. A series of loud pops in rapid succession pinged the underside of the cockpit.

An automatic rifle .

Two more rounds hit the chopper.

Caution lights blinked on the dashboard. Whitish liquid spattered the windshield.

The chopper balked, and the engine sputtered. Evan reached for the grab handle over the window, trying not to let his body slam into Chip's shoulder. The pilot had enough to deal with as it was.

Chip twisted the radio knob to 121.5 megahertz—the emergency frequency. Never a good sign when you're in a chopper shot full of holes.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday!" Chip said in an eerily calm voice. "November four-zero-seven-alpha-tango declaring an emergency twenty-five miles northwest of Cheyenne Regional Airport." He struggled to keep the nose of the chopper upright. "Shit."

Evan's heart slammed so hard against his ribcage he no longer felt or heard the chopper's blades beating the air. "What can I do to help?"

"Look outside and tell me what you see."

He pressed his cheek to the window. A contrail of grayish-white smoke spewed from the top of the cockpit. "Smoke coming from just beneath the rotors." Another beyond-bad sign things were about go from SNAFU to FUBAR.

"Double shit. We're losing oil pressure. Mayday, mayday, mayday," Chip repeated. Again, no one responded. "They must have hit the radio. We're on our own."

Evan fisted his hand. This was Chip's domain, not his, and he felt about as helpful as an elephant in a minefield. Bad analogy .

He tightened his other hand around the grab handle, because here they were, strapped inside a fully fueled, smoking helicopter. Basically, a flying bomb. If that bomb hit the ground, he had no doubt it would go off. With them stuck inside.

Another loud pop, this one from beneath the cowling. Smoke trailed from the chopper's nose, some of it seeping into the cockpit from behind the dashboard dials.

"Shutting off the fuel." Chip pulled on a lever. "I'm going to try and autorotate us down. Prepare for a hard landing. You might want to tighten your seatbelt."

Yeah. No kidding . His fun meter was beyond pegged.

"See if you can get a signal on your phone," Chip shouted over the noise, which had been worsening by the second. "Call 911. Give them our location."

Evan yanked the phone from his belt and punched in the call.

"We're going down fast!" Chip struggled to keep the chopper in the air. "Brace for impact!"

The chopper's nose pitched, then seemed to drop like a rock. Evan never imagined his heart could possibly beat above one-fifty while sitting immobile in a chair. He'd been wrong.

The ground came up to meet them. Just before they hit, Marlie's face came to him. Possibly for the last time in his life.

"Marlie," he whispered, then bent over in crash position.