can
are
CHAPTER
57
Despite our enthusiasm when we climbed aboard Danny McDavitt?s helicopter, it didn't take long to figure out that even with the first-class equipment aboard the Athens Point JetRanger?and Kelly?s proficiency at reading a FLIR screen?the mathematics of our mission are going to kill us. Even assuming that Caitlin?s ?rivers? clue meant the Mississippi River, and confining our search to the sixty miles of river between Natchez and DeSalle Island (the site of the hunting camp where Shad Johnson had his picture taken with Darius Jones), we?re conducting the equivalent of a single-aircraft search for a lifeboat over a small sea. Actually, our situation is worse, because at least on the ocean, it?s a matter of sighting a boat on empty water. Moreover, my sixty-mile figure was calculated as the crow flies. Flying the tortuous bends of the river easily doubles that distance, while covering both banks doubles that again. If we try to search more than a half mile deep into Mississippi or Louisiana, the square-miles numbers go stratospheric.
Compounding this, we?re flying at night, using infrared radar to see through the darkness. Because FLIR sees everything with a temperature warmer than the earth, Kelly is having to sort through the thousands of living creatures moving or sleeping on the ground below the chopper, hoping to find something that looks suspicious. We?'ve landed seven times already, checking out groups of dogs that
seemed to be kenneled in out-of-the-way places. In almost every case we found ourselves in hunting camps, and in one case were almost shot at by an irate landowner. McDavitt feels sure that complaint calls have already been made, and if anyone wrote down our registration number, the pilot could be in deep trouble. Nevertheless, he hasn?'t asked to return the ship to the airport. Like the rest of us, he knows that we may be Caitlin?s only chance.
We?re flying at fifteen hundred feet, our speed sixty knots, which Major McDavitt and Kelly agree is ideal for FLIR work. It keeps the chopper out of the ?dead man?s curve? (high enough to perform an emergency autorotation in case of engine failure), but low enough for good FLIR imaging. Kelly also told us that fifteen hundred feet is high enough to present a difficult target for small arms at night. The former Delta operator is sitting in the left cockpit seat, his eyes glued to the screen before him. McDavitt?s in the right seat, flying the ship and holding position whenever Kelly says he wants to take a closer look at something. I'm sitting in the cabin with Carl Sims, listening to Kelly and McDavitt work the land below, and thinking about the afternoon?s events.
Per my instructions, Kelly searched Shad Johnson?s house while Shad was at work, and his office immediately afterward, but Kelly didn't find the thumb drive. He also searched Ben Li?s yard for signs that anything had been buried or unburied recently, and found nothing. Finally, Kelly spent a couple of hours trying to track down Sands or Quinn, hoping that one or the other might lead him to Caitlin. While he?d seen plenty of Jiao, her daily routine as regular as clockwork, he hadn'?t found a trace of either Irishman.
While Kelly was busy with this, I had Chief Logan trace the license plate that Carl picked up in his rifle scope on Sunday night. It had been stolen off a similar make of vehicle from a parking lot in Baton Rouge. The SUV?s owner hadn'?t missed it. I personally checked out the owners of the land where Kelly and I had made our kayak landings, but both were absentee landlords who leased to hunting clubs and had little idea what might be happening on their property.
The one positive development of the afternoon was that Jewel Washington had located a hospital aide that she believed had removed the thumb drive from Tim Jessup?s rectum prior to his body being transported to Jackson for the autopsy. The aide didn't
admit this outright, but Jewel thinks he will for the right price, and that he might crack under aggressive
