Man gringo, but he’d be okay, if only he could get away. He was a well-trained helo pilot with over one hundred hours in this model of Eurocopter, and all he needed now was to put some distance between himself and the attack by los Vaqueros. He knew the Gray Man and the girl were chasing after him up the stairs, so he’d kicked the pilot out of his chopper, handed him one of his .45s, and gave him orders to shoot anyone on the roof until DLR could get the fuck out of here.
As he rolled the sleek chopper to the left and began gaining lift, the back door opened up behind him. It was too loud to be heard without screaming at the top of his lungs, but as he lifted off, he did just that. “I told you to wait on the roof for—”
He felt the hot barrel of a submachine gun press into the back of his head. “Land!” It was the girl, screaming into his right ear.
He couldn’t believe it.
He looked back over his shoulder, saw the girl, and then, behind her, the Gray Man himself climbed up through the open door. DLR increased the throttle and pushed the cyclic stick forward, almost throwing the American back out the door. Finally, the American fell in for good, rolling all the way across the floor and grabbing onto a cargo tie against the wall. Laura had a good hold on DLR’s seat, and though the gun wavered from his head for a moment, she jammed it back seconds later. “Land! Land, or I shoot!”
“You gonna shoot the pilot, you dumb bitch?” he asked, screaming and laughing at the same time. He had no idea if the Gray Man could fly a helicopter; it was a fair bet he could, so de la Rocha increased speed and jacked the chopper violently to the left and right, desperate to keep the aircraft on the verge of falling out of the sky. This way, even if the gringo assassin
He planned on heading into downtown Puerto Vallarta. He owned the cops there, and they would protect him from these two
The chopper shot to the north, zigzagging and shooting just feet above the ocean waves. Though concentrating most of his faculties on flying, DLR did take his left hand off the collective for a moment to pull the .45 pistol on his left hip. He kept it hidden from view of Gamboa and the Gray Man, and placed it under his left thigh where he could access it in an instant.
Laura kept the gun on DLR’s head as she looked at Gentry. “Can you fly this?”
Court was still trying to get his bearings. Climbing into the helicopter while DLR tried to shake him out had kicked his ass. He felt bruised or broken ribs and an incredible pain in his right knee where it made hard contact with the metal floor as he slammed down inside the cabin.
She repeated her question, screaming over the noise. “Can you fly a helicopter?”
Court crawled over to the door, careful to hold on to a handle behind the copilot’s seat so that he couldn’t be pitched out, and then he pulled the door shut. It was quiet in the craft suddenly; the three could now speak in near normal voices.
“Six! Tell me, can I kill this
Gentry had been trained on rotary wing craft, yes, but that was a long time ago, and the few craft he’d flown had not been nearly so complicated as this big machine. Now, as he looked around at computer screens and dials and switches and levers and lights, he knew the answer to her question. “No! Don’t shoot him!”
De la Rocha laughed loudly, pulled back on the cyclic stick, and the chopper quickly began gaining altitude. “You hear that, bitch? If I die, then
Laura held the Micro Uzi against DLR’s head. He flew the helicopter higher and higher, feeling safer by the second. He headed north out into the bay and closer to the lights of downtown Puerto Vallarta. “You can’t shoot me, Laura!” he repeated, as if he wanted to be certain she understood the stakes. “If I die, then you die!”
They were five hundred feet in the air now.
Laura looked to Court with her big brown eyes.
Gentry saw the eyes turn to narrow slits.
She turned back towards Daniel de la Rocha. Shrugged. “Then I guess I die,
“No!” screamed Daniel de la Rocha.
“No!” screamed Court Gentry.
Their shouts were drowned out by a short but loud burping burst of the Uzi. The back of de la Rocha’s head exploded and sprayed across the lighted instruments and screens and the large glass windscreen. The remainder of DLR’s lifeless body sagged forward in its harness. A .45-caliber pistol dropped out of his left hand.
The helicopter’s forward momentum slowed and ceased, and then it twisted slowly to the right until the lights of the Malecon were in full view. It tipped forward, nose down. The bloody windscreen left the bright lights of the resort city and went dark as the black ocean rushed up to meet it.
Laura crossed herself and began to pray.
Like a wild animal Court scrambled and crawled over Laura Gamboa on his way to the copilot’s seat. He used his hands and knees and elbows; he felt weightless for a moment, clenched the seat back with his right hand to hold steady just as he grabbed hold of the cyclic control in the center of the console in front of the seat. He pulled this back hard—too hard, in fact—and the craft righted itself quickly, sending Gentry chest first into the radio controls between the seats. The breath was knocked out of him, but he kept crawling forward, twisting his body and diving now to get his hand on the collective on the far side of the seat. He turned it, increased the pitch and the throttle, and he felt the helicopter surge forward again, arresting its downward spiral.
But now he found himself facedown on the seat of the helicopter he was piloting, and the hard turn to the right was keeping him pinned there by centrifugal force. He let go of the cyclic for an instant, just long enough to reach down to push the left antitorque pedal to the floor. This brutal movement caused the high-tech aircraft to stop spinning suddenly, and Gentry rolled forward in the seat, finding himself all but upside down now as his feet were in the air, hanging over the headrest.
“What are you doing?” Laura asked. She had stopped praying enough to watch the American’s odd actions.
“Help me!” he screamed frantically. She took his feet and pushed them over to DLR’s lap, again the helicopter lost momentum and lift while Court struggled into the seat, but he finally got both hands and both feet where they belonged and brought the Eurocopter to straight and level flight with no more than twenty-five feet between the belly of the helo and the ocean’s surface.
They streaked north over Bandaras Bay; one hundred yards off their right side the lights of the Malecon disappeared and the hotel district of Puerto Vallarta came into view.
Court sucked in cool night air, his first deep breath since getting the wind knocked out of him.
He looked to his left. DLR’s all but headless body hung to the side. Blood dripped down his bare chest.
Laura was still seated behind him. “You said you could not fly a helicopter,” she said it with a smile.
“Listen, I think it would be best if we try to land on the water.”
“When is landing in the water better than on the land?”
Court hesitated. “When the pilot sucks.”
Laura looked at him. “You are not joking, are you?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“All right,” she said. And she returned to her prayers.
Five minutes later a Eurocopter EC135 came to an awkward hover ten feet above the water in the Marina Vallarta, just north of the city. Those few on the decks of their yachts at this time of the night saw the spectacle of the hesitant aircraft: it hung low to the right for a moment, then low to the left; then it dipped forward, found itself straight and level about five feet above the water; and then, inexplicably, the main engines sounded like they were manually switched off. The craft dropped straight down into the water, the propellers disintegrated on impact, and the chopper began sinking rapidly.
