Louis Paolo gripped the stick of the Bell 427 helicopter and swore softly to himself. He’d been cursing almost constantly since he lifted off from the field at Anacortes. The dickwad whom Hargreaves had arranged to borrow the helo from had been an hour late, making Louis late in return. The sun would be down by the time he reached Briar Bay Island. Before he’d finished his preflight check, the rain had added to his problems.
He was out of practice. He’d known it, and now he was bitching himself out for the lack. After leaving the Army, Louis had jumped through all the dull civilian hoops to get his private and commercial licenses. He’d been diligent about maintaining them, too. But making daytime hops between airports just to rack up the required hours hadn’t been enough to keep his edge. Flying in this visibility was just the kick in the balls to remind him.
At least the Bell was up to date. Louis had filed a Special V flight plan with Anacortes before taking off, only to cancel the clearance when he was away from the control tower’s airspace. Once he saw that ATC had stopped following his flight path, he changed course and kept the craft at an easy three thousand feet over the San Juans.
He hoped he wouldn’t have to regret that sneaky move. Nobody watching meant nobody coming to his rescue if things turned to dog shit.
Before long he was relying solely on the instruments to guide him. The rain and wind were coming almost straight on. Looking out the windscreen was like staring into a shower nozzle.
On approach to Briar Bay, the island might not have existed at all. Black on black obscured by a downpour. He slowed as the GPS indicated he was close. Still he saw nothing. Only when he was within a few hundred feet did he see a glimmer that revealed itself to be a large building, heavily lit from within. Shit. The thing looked like a giant spiky crown. So out of place in the storm it might as well be a hallucination.
The island’s helipad was on the western side, Hargreaves had said. Closest to him. He slowed the Bell’s approach to hover two hundred feet above the waves and off what little he could make out of the shoreline. He’d been warned that the pad was a work in progress—no ILS, no pilot-controlled beacon. Not even an illuminated letter H.
Louis switched on the helo’s landing and search lights and gave the stick an ounce of pressure.
He started at the midpoint of the island and traced its coast north-northeast, toward the shining building. It followed that any landing pad would be near the island’s main structures. Waves rolled past under the beams of his lights. Swells going south, choppy as fuck. At least he wasn’t coming in by boat. That would have made for a long damn day.
The dock appeared in the beams first, with a seaplane moored on its interior side. Then Louis caught a glitter of white in his peripheral. Almost directly inland at his nine. He pivoted the Bell to shine the lights in that direction. There were the perimeter lights. Crap, a bunch of ground crew standing with flashlights wouldn’t do much worse. Plus, the idiots had put the pad too close to the trees.
He grimaced and brought the Bell in. Slowly. He hoped the land was solid after all this rain. He could just see the skids getting stuck in the fucking mud—
BANG
The Bell shuddered as if shaken by a giant’s fist. Louis’s head whipped around toward the noise even as the helo yawed suddenly right and his body lurched with it. The tail rotor. He’d hit something. A high-frequency hum like a tuning fork wedged in his skull made his teeth rattle. Fuck the helo was going sideways and up. He pushed at the stick, trying to even her out, but shit he’d lost it somehow maybe the rotor was broken and shit shit shit the massive blazing glass building was RIGHT THERE RIGHT