After an hour I went out to the pool and sat in the shade, waiting. Forty-five minutes later, I heard the wup, wup, wup of the approaching chopper. I quickly walked to the elevator and I took it to the rooftop. I stepped out just as the chopper was touching down.
Chuck was at the controls. He smiled at me and gave me a sign that I shouldn’t approach. He had a guy in the seat next to him. The guy got out and ran over to me as the blades slowed.
The guy was my age and reminded me a lot of Bill. Sandy hair and freckles. Ratty sneakers, baggy rumpled red-and-white shorts, washed out T-shirt. Lean and muscular.
“I have a harness,” he yelled. “I’m going to strap you in.”
I was holding my hat on my head with both hands. “Sure,” I said. “Whatever.”
Minutes later I was buckled into something that looked like a full-body chastity belt. The guy tugged on the straps, and when he was satisfied everything was secure he threw an arm around me and moved me forward. “Show time,” he yelled. “Come with me.”
We hunkered down and ran to the helicopter and climbed in. I was directed to the seat next to Chuck and given a headset with a microphone. The second guy took a seat behind me. Chuck revved the engine, and before I had a chance to throw up, the chopper lifted off. It’s amazing what you can force yourself to do when you’re saving the free world.
I could hear Chuck talking in the headset.
“This is Ryan behind you,” Chuck said. “He’s going to help us. We need a third person for this kind of a maneuver.”
I nodded. I was disoriented, fighting panic, not wanting to look like an idiot in front of the two men. My lips were numb and there was a lot of clanging in my head. I leaned forward and put my head between my legs. I felt Chuck’s hand on my back.
“Breathe,” he said. “You’ll be okay as soon as we get away from the city. I’ll be flying over water and you’ll lose the vertigo.”
&n
bsp; I kept my head down and concentrated. I thought about Bill as a kid. No help there. I thought about Hooker. Hooker thoughts were better. I got him naked. Okay, I was on to something. Here was an image that could compete with the panic of flight. I had the naked Hooker walking around in my head, and I realized we were over open water, and Chuck was right about the vertigo. It disappeared when we left Miami.
I could see the reef below us as we skimmed along the Keys, passing over pleasure boats and schools of fish. And then we were over ocean, flying toward Cuba, heading west of Havana.
My stomach rolled when the three islands appeared in front of us. The boot, and the bird in flight, and a third island that looked like a cupcake iced in bright green frosting.
“There it is,” Chuck said over the headset. “The island is coming up. It’s the one shaped like a boot. I’m going to do a couple flyovers to make sure nothing is going on down there.”
We took a straight route to the island and flew over high enough to get an overview.
“No boats in sight,” Chuck said. “That’s good.”
He circled the island at a lower altitude and then he followed the stream, buzzing the treetops.
“Okay,” he said to me. “This is it, Barney. Tell me where you want me to drop you.”
“What?”
“That’s the plan, right? You want to go down to pick up the canister.”
“Yeah, but not me!”
“You’re all we got, honey,” Chuck said. “That’s why we’ve got you in the harness. I have to fly. And Ryan’s the drop-and-pull man. You can’t do either of those.”
“Omigod.”
“You said this was important. And that we had to get the canister up fast,” Chuck said to me. “Life or death?”
I swallowed and nodded.
“Then do it. Ryan’s going to hook you up to the cable. Don’t make a move until he tells you. He’ll drop you to the water. He’s a pro at this. He does search-and-rescue and adventure diving. I’m not flying my usual sightseeing mosquito. This helicopter is designed for this sort of thing. We’re going to give you a collar and an extra line for the canister. When you get into the water I’ll give you some slack. You said the canister was only about fifteen feet down?”
“Yes. At the mouth of the estuary, dead center.”
“You’re not going to have great visibility. The blades are going to move the water and churn up sediment. Don’t waste time. Get down there and try to find the canister. Ryan’s going to take your headset and put you into some foolproof scuba gear. You’re going to have a flashlight on your wrist. Shine the light at us if you want to get pulled up, or just follow the cable to the surface. Once you get the canister secured we’ll bring you in. We’ll bring the canister up after we get you on board. There’s not a breath of wind today. This should be pretty easy.”