Ken Goddard's
Fiction-Writing Web Site
OUTER PERIMETER
Chapter One
“Bad Bird One, this is Mother Hen, how do you copy?”
Colin Cellars thumbed the mike switch.
“Bad Bird One, copy, five-by-five.”
“Bad Bird One, be advised, according to my radar, you are approaching
outer perimeter markers. Effect an immediate … oh shit!”
Colin Cellars blinked, grinned, and then thumbed the mike switch again.
“Bad Bird One to Mother Hen, please repeat that last transmission.
Unable to copy.”
The answer came back immediately.
“Mother Hen to Bad Birds One and Two, be advised, I’ve got a board full
of reds and a smoking engine. I’m shutting it down and returning
to base.”
“Bad Bird Two to Mother Hen, I’ve got your six.”
“Copy that, Bad Bird Two. Bad Bird One, remain in the pattern and
continue your sweeps.”
“Bad Bird One, copy,” Cellars spoke into his helmet mike … and smiled.
For almost twenty minutes, Cellars continued to fly the established
sweep patterns, allowing the sophisticated ground radar system to
electronically paint and then record the subtle variations in the
surrounding foliage.
Then, at the far north-eastern end of his sweep, after checking his
watch, and verifying --- visually and by radar --- that there were no
other aircraft in the area, Cellars abruptly broke out of the pattern,
dropped down to about fifty feet above tree top level, and sent the
powerful attack helicopter surging forward on a northeasterly heading.
For almost five minutes, as the air speed gage steadied around 200
m.p.h., and the powerful turbine engines roared, Cellars kept the
smoothly vibrating airship steady on the 30-degree heading.
At
the end of the five minute run, he dropped back to a relatively slow 160
m.p.h. cruising speed, briefly shifted his attention to the chronometer
at the lower right corner of the bright green tinted instrument panel,
and smiled in anticipation.
Any moment now.
He
paused to shift his shoulders against the snug web harness, and adjust
his grip on the joystick. Then, with a sudden, backwards-snapping
motion of his head, he flipped the helmet-mounted night vision goggles
out of the way. The bright green images instantly shifted to black
and shades of gray. He blinked, quickly verified his
three-dimensional position on the instrument panel, shifted the angle of
the main rotor blades with a twist of his wrist, and then brought the
joystick around to the right in a smooth, deliberate motion.
Cellars felt the surge of the powerful turbine engines and the pull of
gravity in every cell in his body as the Apache Helicopter, responding
with mechanical perfection, came around in a tight, due-easterly turn
less than thirty feet above the treetops.
It
all happened in the span of a very few seconds.
As
Cellars completed his turn, the entire panoramic view through the thick
armored glass windshield remained a monochromatic expanse of
grayish-black trees beneath a thin layer of black sky covered by
dark-gray clouds.
Then, in a display of pure magic, the edge of a far distant cloud
suddenly began to glow a faint reddish-orange.
At
that moment, Cellars sensed, rather than saw, the grayish-black blur as
it suddenly streaked upward from a barely visible gap in the trees,
right in front of his low-flying and rapidly accelerating helicopter …
and then, in a seemingly desperate, indecisive --- and aerodynamically
impossible --- move, came to a sudden stop.
The physical impact was just as stunning as the first moment of sunrise.
Cellars felt the undercarriage of the Apache rip partially away, and
then, for a brief moment, catch on something that seemed to crumble
inward … before some kind of incredible momentum wrenched the heavily
armored combat helicopter around to the right and down like a child’s
toy.
It
was his often-practiced ability to fly by instruments alone, and his
trained faith in the accuracy of his ever-so-critical horizon indicator,
that saved him in those first critical seconds as he fought to disengage
and right the crippled airship. Or at least that’s what Cellars
thought saved him, because the other possibility --- that whatever it
was he’d hit was struggling desperately trying to keep both of them from
crashing into those lethal treetops --- made no sense at all.
But he didn’t have time to think about that, because his instrument
panel was now lit up like the distant reddish-orange clouds, and the
emergency klaxons were ringing in his earphones, demanding that he do
something, right now, because …
Ringing?
Colin Cellars wrenched himself upward, his eyes blinking in shock …
until comprehension finally returned and he reached across the bed for
the phone, only vaguely aware that his entire body was covered in sweat.
“Yes … hello?” he rasped into the mouthpiece. He was breathing so
hard, he could barely get the words out.
“Sergeant Cellars?”
“Yes?”
Helicopter? What the hell …?
“This is trooper Lee, sir. Michael Lee, Region Nine CSI.
Nine-Ida-Seven. I’m sorry to wake you, but I’ve got something out
here I thought you might want to take a look at. I know you’re not
on duty right now, but ---”
On
duty? What time is it?
Cellars had to work to focus his blurred eyes and mind on the face of
the alarm clock on his nightstand. Almost midnight? Jesus.
“It’s not just that I’m off duty, trooper,” Cellars said, trying to
control his breathing. “I’m still on administrative leave, pending
a medical evaluation, which means I’m not supposed to be responding to
crime scenes.”
“Yes sir, I, uh, realize that … and I guess this really isn’t an
official call,” the trooper said hesitantly. “It just that I’m the
only CSI officer on duty this evening, and I’ve never worked a major
scene before on my own, and I sure could use a second opinion.”
“What have you got?”
“A
body. I ---”
The call suddenly disconnected, leaving Cellars with a buzzing handset
in his hand. He blinked, shook his head sleepily, and returned the
handset to the receiver.
Fifteen seconds later, the phone rang again.
“Cellars.”
“Sorry about that, sir,” the familiar voice said. “Kinda windy up
here. Trees are swaying back and forth a lot. Must be
getting in the way of the receivers.”
“You said something about having a body?”
“Yes sir. Or, at least, I thought I had one.”
“You thought you had one?”
“Uh, yes sir.”
“But you don’t any more?”
“Uh, no sir, it’s gone.”
“What do you mean, it’s gone?” Cellars demanded.
“Well, it was draped over a big branch, about twenty-five feet up, in a
big scrub oak. I spotted it from the road with my vehicle
searchlight, but I was too far away to really see anything other than a
suspicious shape. So I got in closer with my flashlight, but a
couple other big branches were in the way and I still couldn’t see
enough to be, you know, sure. And I tried to get a picture with my
electronic camera, but I was too far away to pick up anything useful.
So I went back to the car for my 35-millimeter, figuring I might be able
to pick up something with a telephoto lens and a better flash. But
when I got back to the tree ---”
“It was gone.”
“Yes sir.”
Cellars hesitated. He wasn’t supposed to be out at homicide
scenes; or at any scenes at all, for that matter. But he
remembered Lee from the recent CSI school. A young, hard-working
kid who listened carefully, asked pertinent questions, and took a lot of
notes. Proud to be the first Korean-American on the OSP, and not
the kind of officer you’d expect to call for help the first time a
camera jammed or a plaster cast of a tire track failed to set. A
suddenly missing body, however, was something else entirely.
“I
thought, you know, it might be one of those missing people we’ve been
looking for all this time,” the young trooper added when Cellars
remained silent. “The ones you were sent down here to find.”
“Is anybody there with you?” Cellars asked.
“Ah, no sir. I’m out here all by myself.”
“Who’s on call for homicides?”
“Uh, Detective-Sergeant Espinoza, sir. Nine-Delta-One. And I
did call him first, like I’m supposed to, but he said he’s been ordered
to remain on call and not respond unless we’ve got a confirmed victim.
Something about the regional overtime budget, and too many missing
persons calls that turn out to be unfounded.”
“What?”
“Yes sir, that’s what he said. It’s a new policy, I guess.”
“Since when?”
“Uh, according to Espinoza, since Captain Hightower put it into effect
last week.”
“Major … Hightower? From Internal Affairs in Salem? She’s
down here?”
“Uh, yes sir. Apparently taking over the region until Lieutenant
Talbert gets out of the hospital or they assign a new Captain.”
“Jesus, that’s just what we need,” Cellar whispered, mostly to himself.
“Uh, what was that, sir?” Lee asked hesitantly.
Cellars sighed, and then shook his head in resignation as he reached for
the pen and note pad on the nightstand.
“Never mind. Is it still raining out there?”
“Uh, no sir, it stopped raining earlier this evening. But it’s
been snowing off and on the last couple of hours.”
Wonderful.
Cellars considered,
one last time, the comforts of his still warm bed, and the repercussions
that were likely to follow if he responded to this call-out.
“Where are you at, Lee?”
“Out on the Old Mill Road, about a half mile north of forest road
one-one-seven-two, about fifty yards south of the Odane River culvert.”
Cellars paused for a moment, trying to visualize the Region-9 map he’d
been trying to memorize for the past couple of months. The
location Lee described was in a mountainous area out at the far
northwest corner of the region.
The only saving grace, Cellars decided, was that his cabin was located
about a third of the way between the station and the Odane River
culvert. It could have been worse.
“Can you hang on for another forty-five minutes or so?”
“Yes sir, no problem.”
“Okay, stay put. I’ll be there.”