The Devil''s Punchbowl

  Labry went to college at Mississippi State and returned home afterward; he was already working in his father’s office-supply business while I was earning my law degree at Rice. When I returned to Natchez for good, I discovered that Labry was one of the few boys from the top quarter of his class who hadn’t immigrated to another part of the country to earn his living. As mayor, whenever I looked at the Board of Selectmen with frustration, Labry’s constant presence and dogged, conscientious work gave me hope for change. I think he originally harbored dreams of running for mayor, but after I confided to him that I intended to run, he told me that I should go for it, and that I could count on his full support. He has been true to his word, and I should not repay a loyal friend and family man by dragging him into the mess that has already claimed Tim Jessup’s life.

  “Look at that!” cries Necker, pointing down to a vast, swampy island enclosed by an old bend in the river. “That’s Giles Island right there. We’re setting up to win this thing, Penn, I can feel it.”

  “I never had a doubt,” I tell him, which is true. Necker probably studied maps of this area nonstop during his flight back from Chicago.

  As we start to cross the island, a loud crack unlike anything I’ve yet heard snaps me to full alertness. What frightens me most is Necker. He’s gone from a relaxed posture to total rigidity in less than a second.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  Necker doesn’t answer. He has leaned back to look up through the throat of the balloon, and he doesn’t look happy.

  “Was that a shot?” I ask, almost afraid to voice what my instinct tells me is true.

  “Yes and no,” Necker answers, still staring up into the canopy. “Somebody just put some lead through the canopy, but that sound we heard wasn’t the gun. It was the bullet itself.”

  “Jesus.” The balloons to the west of us seem much farther away than they did ten seconds ago. “What’s the difference?”

  Necker is working fast, checking the digital equipment that rests in a pouch on the inside lip of the basket. He’s as grim as a fireman about to rush into a burning building. “It takes a high-powered rifle to make the sound we just heard. That bullet was supersonic.”

  My fear is scaling up into panic. I want to suppress it, but some reactions are simply beyond control. “What does that mean for us?”

  “A stray shotgun pellet is one thing. But you don’t hit a balloon this big with a high-powered rifle unless you’re aiming at it.”

  Before the wind carries Necker final word away, another crack makes me grab the edge of the basket in terror. This time I hear the bullet rip the nylon above our heads. Necker grabs the wooden handle of a rope that stretches all the way to the top of the balloon. It’s fastened inside a carabiner, which Necker carefully opens while gripping the handle tight in his hand. He looks like a man about to pull the rip cord on a parachute.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

  His eyes meet mine with an intensity that shakes me to the core. “We’ve got to get down. Somebody’s trying to kill us.”

  I want to help, but my mind is blank. Before I can say anything more, Necker pulls on the rope, and our balloon begins dropping like an elevator in a Tokyo office building. My stomach flies into my throat, and my feet tingle the way they do when I stand on a cliff edge.

  “Will the canopy hold together?” I ask above the rush of the wind.

  Necker nods with confidence. “We can take quite a few holes and maintain buoyancy. But if they hit a cable or cause a big rip, we’ll be in trouble.”

  “What if they hit the fuel tanks?”

  Necker gives me a grin of utter fatalism. “If they hit a tank, we’re dead.”

  The sound of the wind is twofold now, the air blowing past us horizontally, and that rushing upward as we plummet toward the earth.

  “Can we dump the tanks over the side?”

  Necker is watching the top of the balloon through its mouth. “That would take four or five minutes in my balloon, and this isn’t my balloon. I’ll have us on the ground in fifty seconds.”

  He pulls harder on the rope, and we drop still faster. I cannot bear to look outside the basket. “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Venting hot air from the top of the balloon. It’s the only way to get down fast.”

  “How fast are we going?”

  “A thousand feet a minute.”

  “How fast is that?”

  Necker purses his lips, figuring on the fly. “A forty-yard dash straight into the ground. It probably won’t kill you, but it’ll hurt like hell.”

  Shit .

  He squeezes my upper arm and winks. “We’ll be all right. I’ll do a burn right before we hit. Try to cushion it a little.”

  My heart is pounding so hard that my chest hurts. “I feel like we just jumped out of a plane!”

  Necker actually laughs. “A skydiver falls ten times this fast. Just keep scanning the ground. Watch for a muzzle flash. Somebody’s going to jail for this.”

  Steeling myself, I pan my eyes over the swampy ground bounded by the snaky bend of the old river course. There’s a thousand acres of trees down there that a sniper could hide behind. There’s no way we’re going to find him without hearing his gun go off.

  The ground seems to swoop up toward us with surreal speed. I’m trying to force my gaze away from it when Necker takes out his cell phone and speed-dials a number. “Major McDavitt? We’re taking ground fire . That’s right, rifle fire, I’d say. Could be hunters, but I don’t think so. I’m hitting the deck right where we are, maximum safe descent.” Necker gives me a quick glance. “Maybe faster.”

  A mile to the west, the Athens Point sheriff’s department chopper banks toward us and accelerates. Just as my heart lifts, another bullet punches though the canopy with the sound of a bullwhip finding flesh.

  “Goddamn it!” Necker bellows, pointing toward the levee road. “I think that came from the south,” he shouts into the phone. “Skim the levee road on your way here and see if you see anything. Try to get a license plate.”

  The helicopter makes no move toward the levee, but makes for us at what must be maximum speed. Major McDavitt has decided that survival means more than punishment.

  Necker’s jaw is set tight, but I see a wry smile on his lips. “So that’s how it is,” he says into the phone. “Medevac time. Well, you’d better call ahead to the hospital. I’m AB positive. Penn, do you know your blood type?”

  “O negative.”

  Beneath us I see an orange tractor and a propane tank beside what looks like a bunkhouse. A billy goat stands munching something beside a barbed-wire fence—

  “Stop looking at the ground,” Necker advises. “You’re turning green. Watch the horizon. I’ll tell you when to brace. Fifteen seconds. If we overshoot and land in the water, stay with the basket. It’ll float. Unless you want to try to swim right to shore.”

  “Shouldn’t we try for the water?”

  “We might not be able to swim after impact.”

  Good Lord. The gas jet roars above our heads, heat blasts my scalp, and the basket presses up against my feet like an express elevator slowing for the ground floor. “That old river’s full of alligators anyway!” I shout.

  Necker tries to laugh, but what comes out is a strangled bark. He grabs the valve of the propane tank and shuts off the fuel line. “Five seconds! Brace! Bend your knees!”

  I bend my knees and grab the upper frame of the basket, bracing against our lateral motion, which is westward toward the water. We’re moving a lot faster across the ground than I’d realized, but that may actually help us.

  The impact is like falling from a galloping horse. My knees collapse and my pelvis slams the side of the basket, jolting me from ankles to crown, and then we’re sliding over the marshy ground as the wind drags us relentlessly toward the water. Necker hauls mightily on a rope, and suddenly the canopy collapses and we shudder to a stop.

  The sudden silence is unnerving, but in seconds I hear the steady beating of McDavitt’s helicopter descending beside us.

  Hans Necker drops
to the floor of the basket like a man who died on his feet. It’s only now that I remember the gunfire that caused this crash landing.

  “Are you hit?” I ask.

  Necker shakes his head. “Ankle’s broken. One for sure, maybe both. Can you help me up?”

  “Hell, yes. Let’s get out of this thing.”

  McDavitt is already out of the chopper and running toward us. “Anybody hit?” he calls.

  “No,” I shout back. “We need help though!”

  When McDavitt reaches the basket, he helps me lift Necker over the side. The CEO grips the frame for a moment and smiles. “This old girl got us down alive.”

  “You got us down, buddy. We need to get to St. Catherine’s Hospital, Major. Ready?”

  McDavitt nods as we cradle Necker between us in a sitting position.

  “Let’s do it.”

  I thought the balloon was moving fast when we crossed the river, but Major McDavitt storms back toward Natchez at 120 knots, aiming for the helipad atop St. Catherine’s Hospital. The town’s top orthopedist is waiting for Necker in the emergency room, and the Adams County sheriff’s department chopper is flying in tandem, following us in. Paul Labry is on his way to the hospital, preparing to deal with what can only be a media crisis for the Balloon Festival.

  “How you doing?” I ask Necker, who’s sitting with his back to the wall of the helicopter’s cabin, his left calf propped on my knee to keep his foot elevated.

  “Hurts like a son of a bitch,” he says. “But it could have been a lot worse. You did good, keeping it together. A lot of people would have panicked.”

  “Oh, I panicked.”

  Necker laughs, then winces. “Damn, I’d like some morphine.”

  “Two minutes.”

  Necker nods. “Let’s talk fast then.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t believe in luck, good or bad. We weren’t the first balloon in line, or the last. But we were shot at and hit three times with a high-powered rifle. Anybody who could hit us three times could have killed us if he wanted to. All he had to do was shoot the basket. He’d have hit us or the fuel tanks, or both.”

  I look back noncommittally. “So ?”

  “So either we stumbled on a psycho hunter having a really bad day, or somebody was trying to send one of us a message. I don’t have any enemies here yet, so far as I know. What about you?”

  I stare back at the CEO but do not speak. Necker didn’t get where he is by being dumb.

  He changes tack. “A lot of people are about to ask us what happened back there. What are we going to say?”

  I’m not sure what to say, to Necker or the public. I can’t quite believe that Sands or Quinn would pull a stunt like that. Especially after I reaffirmed that I intended to do what they’ve asked of me. But who else could it have been?

  “Are we off-the-record?”

  Necker points at a headset on the floor to indicate that Major McDavitt cannot hear us. “Unless I’m dictating a press release, I’m always off-the-record.”

  I take a deep breath and look out at the spire of St. Mary’s, growing larger in the chopper’s windshield. “I don’t think you’re going to find out who fired those shots, Hans. But I may know already. Who ordered it, anyway.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “That was a message telling me to keep my nose out of something. Or my mouth shut. I’m not sure which yet. It had nothing to do with you or the race. I can’t give you details. I wish I could, but I can’t. It’s just not an option.”

  “You don’t think any other pilots are in danger?”

  “No. Not unless we get some nutty copycat or something.”

  Necker’s appraisal of me is cold and swift. “This isn’t something personal, is it? Like diddling somebody else’s wife?”

  “Hell, no. It’s criminal activity. That’s all I can say. If you could help me, I’d tell you more, but you can’t. Not with this.”

  “I know a lot of people, Penn.”

  “So do I. This isn’t that kind of problem. Money and connections won’t help. In fact, money is the problem.”

  “This is why you were late this morning, isn’t it?”

  I nod.

  “Your family’s okay?”

  “They are now. They weren’t this morning.”

  Necker winces again, then nods slowly. “I see. Okay. Tell me what I can do to help you. There has to be something.”

  I think for a moment. “Honestly?”

  “Yessir.”

  “I need this helicopter for the rest of the weekend, and I need Major McDavitt flying it. From now till Sunday night.”

  Necker shifts his leg, grimaces in pain. “You’ve got it.”

  “I’ll pay for his time, of course. I—”

  “It’s already paid for. What else?”

  “I think that’s all you can do for now. Other than that, I’d just ask that you not let this thing affect your view of the town, if that’s possible.”

  Necker smiles. “Hell, I’ve run into strong-arm stuff in Minneapolis. You get that everywhere. I only wish you’d let me help you. I take it personally when somebody shoots at me. I’d like a few words with the son of a bitch myself.”

  “If I have my way, you’ll get your chance.”

  Necker glances out the window at the hospital as we descend. “I won’t keep you, then. I’m going to be on crutches for a while anyway. Go do what you have to do. Anybody asks, I’ll say I think that shooting was some kids that got out of hand.”

  “I appreciate it, Hans.”

  “Would it help you to know where those shots came from?”

  “It might.”

  “I’ll get somebody to truck that balloon over here, and I’ll have a look at it. I know our altitude when we were shot. If the shots were through and through, I can figure the angle and probably where the shooter was standing. Approximately, anyway.”

  The chopper touches down on the roof like a butterfly alighting on a leaf. Necker smiles. “A lot better than our last one, eh?”

  Paramedics yank open the side door and motion for me to exit the cabin. As I leave, Necker grabs my arm and says, “I’ll tell Danny to be on call for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  Paul Labry is waiting for me on the helipad. I’ve never seen him this upset before. “What the hell happened up there, Penn?”

  “I told you on the phone. Somebody took a couple of shots at us. Necker had to set down hard.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. How many people know what happened?”

  “Are you kidding? With cell phones? I’ll bet most of the pilots know by now, and the town won’t be far behind.”

  “Caitlin?”

  “I don’t know. How do you want to handle this? Some people are already saying we should cancel the rest of the flights. Today’s and tomorrow’s.”

  “Pilots?”

  “No. Couple of county supervisors.”

  “I’m not surprised, but I’m not sure we should cancel. I think this was probably an isolated event. Necker agrees. The pilots are going to want input on the decision. We need to call a meeting—a closed meeting—pilots and the committee only. Let’s give them long enough to get down and packed up.” I look at my watch and give Paul a time.

  He nods. “Where? The Ramada convention room?”

  “That’s fine. I need you to handle the press on this, Paul. I’ll be at the meeting, but you’re the point man for now.”

  “What? I don’t know anything!”

  “Necker can give you the details.”

  Labry looks more upset than when I first got out of the chopper. “Where are you going to be?”

  “You can reach me on my cell.”

  Labry groans as he follows me to the hospital’s roof door.

  “Go on ahead,” I tell him. “I have to make a call.”

  “Don’t you need a ride back to your car?”

  “My dad’s giving me a ride. He’s working downstairs. You go ahead.”

  Labry starts through the door, then stops and looks back at me. “Hey, I almost forgot. I got those names you wanted.”

  I pause, momentarily confused. “Names
?”

  “The Golden Parachute partners. That’s where I was when you called. My garage. I didn’t want to say anything on the cell, you were so cloak-and-dagger about it. I had to write the names down so I wouldn’t forget. There are six partners sharing the five percent stake.”

  “Are two of them Chinese?”

  Labry nods, then produces a scrap of paper that looks like part of a grocery bag. I shove it deep in the same pocket that holds Danny McDavitt’s number. “Go on, Paul. You’re going to have a lot to deal with. Talk to Necker first.”

  As Labry shakes his head and walks into the hospital, I speed-dial 1. Seamus Quinn answers the phone with a note of amusement in his voice.

  “Seems like we spoke only this morning,” he says, chuckling.

  “What the fuck are you trying to do?” I shout.

  “What would you be talking about?”

  “You just tried to kill me!”

  “How could I do that? I’m having a pint on the Queen as we speak.” Quinn obviously assumes I’m taping the call.

  “Look, I don’t get it. I told you, I’m going to do what you want. I’m going to find your disc. But I can’t do it if I’m dead.”

  “No idea what you’re talking about,” Quinn says airily. “Unless it’s that balloon crash I just heard about.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, you must be exaggerating. If somebody really wanted to kill you, they’d have blown your fuel tank.”

  “If you were trying to send me a message, I don’t understand it.”

  “No message. But now that I have you on the phone, I do recall someone saying you had other things to do this morning than go riding in a balloon.”

  So that was the message.

  Quinn continues, “I also recall telling you to leave your cell phone switched on.”

  “A reporter’s been bugging me. I had to shut it off.”

  “Not my problem. I like to know where my mates are, remember. Gives me a sense of security.”

  I can’t even think of a response.

  “Got to run now, mate. Business is picking up, now the balloons have landed. You call back soon. I like to hear good news.”

  When the connection goes dead, something lets go in me, and I wobble on my feet. Delayed shock, probably. I grab the doorknob to steady myself, then back up and sit down on an air-conditioning unit. Hugging myself to stop the shakes, I wonder how I’m going to get downstairs to meet my father.