police questioning. I wasn'?t prepared to tell Logan to arrest the man yet, but I did call Shad and tell him I was now positive he had the thumb drive, and that if he destroyed it, I would make good on my threat to send him to prison, one way or another.
I?'ve brought along the file on Edward Po that Peter Lutjens sent to my father?s house, but despite my having taken Dramamine before we took off, efforts to read the dense type by the cabin lights have twice brought me to the point of vomiting. All I know at this point is that the file summarizes a shocking maze of criminal activities and associations spanning the globe, with personal and psychological profiles of Po and his associates that trivialize the Blackhawk bio Kelly gave us when he arrived. The one thing my limited study of the file has made clear is why William Hull and his task force are so aggressively pursuing the crime lord.
We?'ve been airborne for hours, and the combined vibrations of the engine, the main rotor, the tail rotor, and the buffeting air have pushed me past my limit. If our goal were anything but rescuing Caitlin, I would have begged to be taken back to the airport long ago. During the first half hour of the flight, I leaned forward and tried to read the screen myself, but I soon got a headache. The FLIR unit is set to ?white-hot,? which means the images detected by the sensor mounted beneath the chopper?s nose are displayed in a gradient from black to white, black being coldest, white hottest. A deer running along the ground appears bright white against black, but the scenes Kelly has to sort through are much more complex. Vehicles appear white on their hoods (where the engines are) and also beneath (where heat is radiating), but dark near the trunk. Most of the roads appear lighter than the land they cross, and buildings register differently, depending on how well heated and insulated they are. In several cases Kelly spotted dogs beneath sheds by seeing them from the side, but none of these sightings led to anything. Worst of all, vegetation degrades the system, so whenever we get into heavy cover, Kelly?s job becomes that much tougher.
Carl has tried to keep me upbeat, but like me he knows that in spite of our best efforts, if Caitlin is being held one mile north of Natchez, our initial assumption that she?s being held to the south
doomed our mission before we lifted off. That assumption was based on the sites where we encountered evidence of dogfighting, as well as the island where Shad Johnson probably attended a dogfight himself. In addition, most of the better deer camps are to the south, though there are certainly some famous ones to the north.
?Penn?? says Kelly. ?We?re about three miles east of the Red River now. It doesn?'t flow into the Mississippi for a good ways yet, but I wondered if you might want to head over and take a quick look.?
?If we try to fly every river and bayou that drains into the Mississippi along here, we?ll run out of fuel in no time.?
?We?re using it fast, as it is,? says McDavitt.
?Let?s stick to the Mississippi,? I decide. ?Louisiana bank, is my guess, based on what we know.?
?Okay.?
?If we?re that far south, we?re about to leave Concordia Parish. Now that I see how tough this is, I think the practical thing is to stay within twenty miles of town. Let?s start flying a grid search of the Louisiana bank, starting close to the river and moving slowly westward.?
?You figuring they want to stay close to town?? Kelly asks.
?I think they have to. They don'?t know what we might do, and they need to be able to react fast. I think we have to play the percentages.?
?We still looking for dogs??
?I think so. Don?t you??
?Yeah,? Kelly says wearily. ?I'm just starting to think there?s more damned dogs in Louisiana than people.?
?You?re doing good. The next pack you find could be guarding her.?
?Oh, I'm staying with it. I'm gonna find that girl. When I think about her tied up somewhere with those sons of bitches??
?Kelly??
?Sorry, man. Let?s do it, Major. Take her back north.?
McDavitt banks wide, and my stomach rolls again.
CHAPTER
58
Walt Garrity stands at the periphery of a crowd that looks like a New York film director?s idea of a Southern lynch mob. Under the roof of a dilapidated barn, two dozen people have gathered to watch dogs try to kill each other in a shallow pit. Boys of eight or ten tussle around the edges, worming their way through the adults when they hear a shout indicating a change in the status of the dogs locked together at the center of the circle. The men are dressed in camo or overalls, the women in T-shirts and halter tops made tolerable by hissing propane heaters behind them. Two dowdy women have babies slung on their hips, and one white-whiskered man who must be ninety sits in a wheelchair at the edge of the pit, apparently a place of honor.
The expressions on their faces look exactly like those Walt has seen in photographs taken at lynchings. The women are bug-eyed with rapture, fascinated, even aroused by the primal spectacle. The men look grim yet ecstatic, riding an intoxicating flood of testosterone sparked by the sight of blood and combat. They watch the canine battle with total absorption, occasionally making comments, then screaming in frustration or jubilation when the fight takes a turn, and changing their bets according to the fortunes of their chosen dog.
The two pit bulls?a brindle called Genghis and a black named Mike?have been in the pit for nearly an hour, their handlers goad ing them from the corners, but no real damage was done until a few minutes ago, when Genghis sunk his jaws into Mike?s brisket and began trying to rip his foreleg off.
At Walt?s side, Ming stands motionless, her eyes forward as though watching the fight, but she must only be catching glimpses through the heaving mass of bodies in front of her. When she and Walt arrived?they were driven here in a limo by a casino bouncer?the crowd gaped at Ming in her silk kimono as though she were an alien being set down among them. The women reacted like territorial cats, practically baring their teeth at the incomprehensibly foreign beauty. Ming looked back at them the way a cloistered princess might look down upon her subjects while she waited for Walt to lead her where he would. It was their age disparity that broke the tension. After the crowd realized that Ming was ?with? Walt, serving as his hired escort for the evening, she was slotted into place as a whore, and the world made sense again. Walt chose a spot that was close enough to the pit to make it seem as if he actually wanted to see the fight, but far enough that blood wouldn'?t spatter their clothes.
He hasn?'t seen a dogfight in fifteen years, and he?d hoped never to do so again. The practice had waxed and waned in popularity in Texas during his tenure as a Ranger, but there had always been a core group of fanatical breeders who kept at it year after year. Rangers always had more important cases to work, but occasionally they would run afoul of dogfighters during an anti-gambling crusade. Such crusades were always politically motivated?they tended to come just before state elections?and thus very unpopular among the Rangers. Busting gaming operations was a no-win proposition. People loved to gamble, and they were going to find a way to do it, no matter what the law said. Fighting that reality meant risking life and limb to generate headlines for some politician, while the best you could accomplish was a brief interruption of the illegal activity. This dogfight was a prime example of the lure of the forbidden. Gambling was legal right across the river at Natchez, yet here stood this pack of fools, betting hard-earned money on something that could send them to the penitentiary for ten years.
Twice in his career, Walt had actually stopped dogfights in progress. It was hard to imagine a more chaotic scene of flight. While
the panicked spectators raced for their trucks or four-wheelers?and sometimes even horses?the handlers would snatch up their dogs and hightail it into the woods, leaving their vehicles behind. The aftermath of those cases was always the same. After tracking a handler or owner to his home, Walt would find dogs chained in such pitiful conditions that he wanted to manacle the owner to one of the poles and let the dogs into the house to live. In one case he?d actually done that, but only for half an hour, while he waited for the state troopers and animal control officers to show up. He?d hoped the experience might give the owner some empathy for his dogs, but it
