While Rex and Tyrone collected the remaining items on our list, Anita steered us first into the visitors' lot northwest of the main entrance of the four-story, calf-shit-brindle, brick-sided Veterans Administration hospital. Old men in wheelchairs and luckier ones with walkers parked themselves along the sidewalks, accompanied by family, nurses, and comrades. All smoked cigarettes. Anita cruised slowly, looking for a space.
"Did you set a waypoint for the Woodrow Wilson coordinates when we went by?"
Jasmine asked Tyrone.
"Yep." He bent over and worked at the buttons on the Garmin. "And here as well." We all studied the building as Anita drove into the north lot, then east, and made a
U-turn by the electrical power transformer substation supplying the hospital. Huge highvoltage cables sloped down from the main towers at one side, and smaller, lower-voltage lines led to the hospital.
"Obviously every room and critical care patient as well as the operating rooms and emergency areas have power from the generator. But the police inside don't.
"The police office is on the first floor, to the right, past the main entrance," Anita said as she drove us along a two-lane road heading west through the University Medical Center complex. Finally, she brought us around a large block and parked in front of Murrah High School across the freeway from the VA to study it better. Anita pulled a sheet of paper from the seat beside her and held it up for Jasmine and me.
"I snapped this with my little Canon digital camera when I came by early this morning to visit one of my patients." She handed us the paper. It showed the front of the VA with Darryl Talmadge's room window outlined in thick pen.
"He's in a locked room guarded by totally bored MPs outside the door."
"Sidearms only?"
She nodded.
"Who has the key? The charge nurse?"
"Nope," Anita said. "It's with a captain from something called the Technical Escort Unit, bivouacked in the room next to Talmadge." Anita leaned over and pointed to the room east of Talmadge's.
"Now for the hard part," Anita said as she drove the Suburban back to Woodrow Wilson Avenue and headed for Hawkins Field, our unanimous first choice for stealing a helicopter. As expected, the airfield offered a wide choice of Bell JetRangers, the aircraft Jasmine had flown in Los Angeles for television news crews. But Hawkins crawled with security and too many people.
"Okay, plan B," Jasmine said, little knowing we would eventually run through plans C through BB as the pressure of unrelieved frustration built toward dark. For more than five hours, we crisscrossed Hinds, Madison, Rankin, and parts of Yazoo County, north past Canton and way over toward Flora and Pocahontas, south down to Byram, and finally southeast of Brandon. We found the better the airport, like Campbell Field in Madison, the more helicopters were there and the better the security.
Using an aviation map and data earlier downloaded off AirNav. com, Jasmine directed Anita to smaller and smaller fields, private airports with names like Supplejack, Root Hog, and Petrified Forest.
"Getting warm," Jasmine would say every time we'd close in on a smaller airstrip because we'd find crop dusters there, but so far no helicopters, just fixed-wing Dromader MI8s, Cessna Ag Huskies, and the occasional Ag Cat and an Ayres Thrush.
"There should be more helicopters," Jasmine said now as Anita shifted the Suburban into four-wheel drive and charted a slippery course down a narrow, tree-lined lane paved with mud from summer rains. "Mama and I won a couple of dozen lawsuits for families and school districts when fixed-wing aircraft oversprayed pesticides and seriously exposed children. And we have more and more organic farmers who will sue at the slightest hint of pesticide on their fields. Helicopters are more expensive for aerial application, but the mere threat of legal action has offered a real financial incentive to use choppers instead."
As we mulled this over, the trees gave way suddenly to a pasture.
"Eureka!" Jasmine said.
Anita eased off the accelerator
"Don't slow too much," I said. "We don't want to stick in anybody's memory."
"Okay, over there, at the far edge," Jasmine pointed. "That's a Bell B3. It'll do perfectly. I can hot-wire it in a second." She turned toward Tyrone. "Got the waypoint?"
"Yes, ma'am. Yes indeedy!"
As we approached the trees at the pasture's far edge, a deep banging, popping racket thundered down on us from above. Instants later an old bubble-nosed helicopter with an Erector-set tail burst low over the trees and made its way toward the pasture. It looked like one of the dragonfly rescue copters from an old M*A*S*H episode, but instead of a litter for wounded soldiers, this one had a long pipelike array extending left and right below the cockpit. Jasmine turned and craned her head up to follow it. The engine missed an ignition stroke and left a stutter as the sound faded.
"What a relic," I said as we entered the trees again.
"Not really." Jasmine shook her head. "More like a classic. That's a Bell model 47," she said. The engine stuttered again. "Needs a tune-up."
"Belongs in a museum," Tyrone said.
Jasmine laughed. "A lot of flight schools still use them. I learned rotary wing in one." She read the surprise on my face. "A lot of small operators who have to transition from fixed to rotary wing still use the 47 because they're cheap. Bell 47 clubs all over the world buy these, restore them, have races, and fawn over them like vintage Corvettes. The 47's a damn good bucket of bolts if you take care of it."
"And if you don't?"
Jasmine shrugged. "They crash a lot."*****
Jack Kilgore had finished off the sixteen-ounce tub of bad convenience-store coffee when his encrypted phone rang. He grimaced at the last swallow of thin acidic crap and said a small prayer of thanks he'd been able to drink it in a safe, warm, dry place free of incoming rounds.
"Kilgore."
"Barner here, sir. We have a lead on our targets."
"Excellent. Tell me about it."