Patricia Cornwell - Isle of Dogs

The minihorse was unfamiliar with the command and did nothing as Cat ran past, and the governor squinted about in confusion and patted for his magnifying glass. Regina, who as a child had annoyed and injured mansion staff and family by butting them in tender places, lowered her NASCOIFED helmet-head and pawed the ground with her red patent-leather high tops, building up steam as she suffered a violent atavistic throwback to her primitive programming. She rushed the inmate and butted him in the groin, knocking him off his feet and sending him sailing through the air and body-slamming into Trader. Then she pounced on both of them, sprawled across their chests, and hollered as she banged their heads together and strangled them. Hooter hurried over to assist, while cheering NASCAR fans encouraged the fat girl to slam into them again and stomp their pedals to the metal and blow their asses off the track.

Smoke continued to bump Andy's head with the pistol and threaten to kill Popeye if Andy and Hammer didn't do exactly as they were told.

"I know you got guns, so hand them back here, " Smoke ordered over his mike.

Just fly the helicopter, Andy told himself.

"Hand them back here now!" Smoke's cruel voice sounded in Andy's headset.

"I'm flying, " Andy replied. "It takes both hands and feet to fly and I'm not about to start rooting around for any alleged weapons until we're on the ground. "

"I don't have a weapon, " Hammer answered as she wondered if she dared turn around and shoot Smoke with the nine-millimeter pistol inside her Harley purse.

She supposed this was not a good idea. Nailing Smoke wasn't the problem at such close range, but if he happened to fire his gun because she'd fired hers, then Andy might be wounded or killed and it would be up to her to fly and she didn't know how. Not to mention, if her bullet passed through Smoke and penetrated the helicopter, severe damage might be the result and they could crash. She looked out at the dark waters of the James River as it opened up into the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay and remembered her fear of drowning.

"Sit back and shut up, " she told Smoke in the severe tone she reserved for suspects. "We're over the bay now and the last thing you want is for us to lose control of the helicopter. If we go down, everybody drowns. You'll be trapped inside, beating on the doors, trying desperately to open them, but you won't be able to because of the vacuum. So you'll struggle in the frigid pitch dark as water fills the cabin and you'll die slowly. "

"Chill, " Cuda begged Smoke. "Just chill, man. I don't want to drown!"

Possum kept Popeye snugly wrapped in the flag and hugged her hard. Smoke sat back in the seat, playing with the syringe while Unique stared weirdly at Trooper Truth's neck, a box cutter wrapped so tightly in her delicate hand that her nails had pierced her palm and drawn blood. She felt no pain, only the blast of heat and intense frequencies and vibrations rolling up from her Darkness.

Andy checked a flight chart and entered Patuxent's frequency on the radio, and minutes later raised the military tower on the air. "Helicopter zero-one-one-Delta-Bravo, " Andy said over the radio.

"One-Delta-Bravo, " the tower came back.

"Are restricted areas six-six-oh-niner and four-zero-zero-six hot?" Andy inquired.

"Negative. "

"Permission to transition through them at one thousand, en route to Tangier Island, " Andy said.

"Permission denied. " The tower said exactly what Andy thought it would.

"Roger, " Andy said as he entered code 7500, for hijacking, into the transponder and then gave Hammer a thumbs-up.

He was going to transition through the restricted areas anyway, and now that Patuxent had him on their radar and knew his tail number and realized there were hijackers on board, the military would respond. He pulled in more torque and was grateful for a tailwind that propelled them along at a ground speed of one hundred and seventy knots, and fifteen minutes later entered Patuxent's airspace.

Andy took a deep breath and switched the 430 over to automatic pilot. Smoke had no way of realizing that Andy's hands and feet were now free, and Andy slowly reached down and slipped the pistol out of his ankle holster. Following his lead, Hammer withdrew the nine-millimeter from her bag, and both of them tucked the guns under their legs so Smoke wouldn't see what was happening should he climb back up on his seat and glare into the cockpit again.

Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux didn't know what was happening, either, when they walked along Janders Road in plain view and couldn't find a single sign of an Islander. Lights in many of the small houses were off, and not a single golf cart or bicycle rattled past in the chilly dark. The island had been deserted this way ever since Fonny Boy and Dr. Faux slipped off the mailboat after an unsuccessful attempt at bribing the captain to look for the crab pot with its yellow buoy.

"I swanny! Maybe the Rapture done come, " said Fonny Boy, who had heard about the Rapture all of his life. "And we've been left 'cause we ain't fittin' for Heaven 'cause of all wer sins!"

"That's silly, " the dentist replied in frustration.

He was hungry, cold, and tired, and he was imagining all of the watermen out in their bateaus, finding the Tory Treasure. He wondered if the Coast Guard had rounded up all of them and placed them under arrest, or if the watermen had found a way to extort cooperation from the authorities. Plain and simple, Dr. Faux didn't know what was going on, but he was spooked and wished he had never been so foolish as to pad his dental bills, lie to Medicaid, take advantage of children, and ruin people's teeth for the sake of profit.

When they eventually reached Fonny Boy's house, no one was home there, either.

"My mama, she should be in thar raisin' a fire and renching the dishes. She never goes out after dark, " Fonny Boy marveled as his fears grew. "I'm of a mind Jesus come down on His cloud and everybody's gone, save us!"

"Stop it, " the dentist insisted. "Nobody's gone up in a cloud, Fonny Boy. That's a fairy tale. Now there must be an explanation for why the island is deserted, so let's just get your family golf cart and drive around. I suggest we head over to the airport and see if anything's going on over there. "

But the golf cart's battery was dead, and this just increased Fonny Boy's feeling of foreboding and damnation.

"I guess we'll walk, " Dr. Faux decided, turning around and heading in another direction that cut through a marsh. "I will admit this is strange. If everyone's out in the bateaus looking for the treasure, then why did we see so many bateaus at the docks when we got off the mail-boat?"

"Shhhh!" Fonny Boy said with a finger over his lips. "I hear a helichopper! It must be the Guardsmen!"

The dentist strained to listen and detected the distant thud-thudding, and he heard something else, too.

"Singing, " he said. "Do you hear it, Fonny Boy?"

Both of them stopped on the footpath, the brackish air stirring their hair as they listened hard to the faint sound of gospel singing that was carried almost imperceptibly by the wind.

"It's coming from the McMann Leon Methodist Church over thar on Main Street, " Fonny Boy said with breathless excitement. "But I don't have neither notion why. The church, it don't have neither meetings on Saturday night. "

Fonny Boy and the dentist began to hurry in that direction as the sound of helicopter blades got louder and they spotted two bright moving lights high up in the star-scattered sky, coming in from the west. Fonny Boy broke into a run and didn't care if he left the dentist behind.

"Hey! Wait for me!" Dr. Faux called after him. "Well, never mind, I'm heading to the airstrip to see if I can fly the hell out of here on one of those helicopters coming in!"