The singing instantly stopped and Reverend Crockett stepped up to the pulpit. He scanned the sea of small flickering flames.
"Who's playing the juice harp?" he asked.
"I ain't adrift nei-ther more. " Fonny Boy sang improv and bent a few notes. "I ain't prinked up in nei-ther Sunday shoes with my pockets puffed out, but a freehearted boy, he ain't never been poor!"
Gasps sounded all around him and voices called out praise Jesus and thank you, Jesus and it's a miracle! Then Fonny Boy's mother was stumbling out of a pew and clutching Fonny Boy in her arms, and next his father was lifting him up in the air, tears streaming down his weathered face. Everyone on the island figured Fonny Boy was dead when they heard about the Tory Treasure and the capture of the dentist. Since there was no mention of Fonny Boy in connection with this news, the Islanders assumed the poor young man had been pushed overboard by the greedy Dr. Faux.
"Grasp hands in a mazy dance of praise!" Reverend
Crockett proclaimed. "The Lord is dealing out grace and has blowed the breath of life back into this drownded boy!"
"Praise God!" Fonny Boy's mother cried. "He's brought wer baby back from the dead!"
"I'm a die if I was dead!" Fonny Boy said, confounded and deeply moved as it began to occur to him that the entire island had been gathering in the church, perhaps nightly, to pray for him because he was lost at sea. "The dentist, he returned me right 'fore dark. "
A rumbling stirred throughout the congregation as helicopters thundered overhead, shaking the roof of the church.
"That's it!" Reverend Crockett boomed in disapproval. "The dentist is back on Tanger?"
"No!" Fonny Boy exclaimed backward.
"Whur's he at?"
"He's follering his way to the airstrip!" Fonny Boy replied.
"That bad man from the main, he pulled ever one of my teeth!" Mrs. Pruitt said loud enough for all to hear.
"And mine. "
"And mine. "
"Yass! Mine, too. "
"He must be fixin' to escape on the helichoppers!"
Loud, outraged voices ran together into a deafening rumble before Fonny Boy could explain, and the island's entire population streamed out of the church and moved in a determined, united candlelit front toward the airstrip, which was only a five-minute walk away, because nothing on the island was far from anything else.
Soldiers dressed for combat were climbing out of two Black Hawk helicopters when they saw a cloud of small flames floating in their direction. Andy picked up the strange display of light as he thundered fifteen hundred feet overhead at the same moment Unique pushed a button and zipped open the box cutter's blade.
"What's going on down there?" Hammer said before she could restrain herself.
"You better not try anything or all of you are dead!" Smoke threatened as he looked out the window at the moving sea of lights and the big Black Hawk helicopters. "What have you done? What the fuck's happening? Tell me now!"
Possum's attention was riveted to the syringe in Smoke's hand, and he knew Smoke well enough to figure out exactly what would happen next. The instant the helicopter was safely down, Smoke was going to stab Popeye through the flag and inject her full of rat poison, then he would shoot Hammer and Trooper Truth and keep Cuda and Possum as his road dogs on this forsaken island forever. Suddenly, Possum noticed Unique twitch as if she were having a seizure as she unfastened her seat-belt.
"Bye-bye, Popeye!" Smoke said in a mean, mocking tone as he pulled the protective orange tip off the syringe.
"No, Unique!" Possum screamed, and Andy instantly remembered Possum's saying in an e-mail "It was Unique" in reference to whoever cut on Moses, and Moses talking about an angel who promised him a unique experience. Andy yelled, "Mayday!" into the mike as he slowed down, lowered the helicopter's nose, and shoved the cyclic to the right, rolling the 430. For a hair-raising second, they were upside down, then warning alarms went off and emergency lights began to flash and the helicopter suddenly flared like a rampant stallion.
"Crash position! Crash position!" Andy yelled over the intercom as he cut the throttles back to flight idle, shoved the collective all the way down and glided the helicopter with nothing but air moving up through the blades to keep the helicopter from dropping like an anvil.
There was nothing special about deliberately cutting the throttles midair. Andy practiced autorotations regularly and not only was good at them, but he loved the excitement of landing a four-ton machine without the help of its engines. Another little trick he liked was to wait until he was thirty feet off the ground before pulling in power again and flying off, which was what he did now, and suddenly the helicopter was thundering into a high performance takeoff that shot it straight up into the night. At five hundred feet, Andy cut back the throttles again and smiled at Hammer as the warning bells began screaming again and he started down in yet another autorotation. He went through this perilous routine three more times for good measure, and was not at all surprised when he finally lowered the landing gear and set down that Smoke, Cuda, and Possum were ashen and doubled over in fetal positions, and Unique was on the floor, out cold.
"I'll get Smoke, you get the girl!" Andy yelled at Hammer as they flung open the back doors while the blades turned and rotorwash gusted like a gale. "Watch her! She's our slasher!"
Andy pointed his pistol at Smoke, who was dazed and had long since lost his gun. Andy yanked the monster out of the cabin and tossed him on the tarmac like a sack of rags while Hammer grabbed Unique. The sea of candles drifted around them in a circle as soldiers rushed over to see what the hell was going on.
"Pirates!" Andy announced to the stunned Islanders as he snapped handcuffs on Smoke's wrists and Hammer Flexcuffed Unique's ankles and her hands behind her back as she drifted in and out of consciousness and drooled.
"I'm sorry, " Andy said to the soldiers. "I had to violate your restricted areas because I was being held at gunpoint as I suppose you determined from the code I squawked. If you wouldn't mind helping me by grabbing that other pirate out of the back, the one who's throwing up in a bag? But leave the smaller fellow alone. His name is Jeremiah Little and he's an innocent hostage. We'll take him back to Virginia with us. "
"I know four-thirties. Want me to shut her down for ya?" one of the soldiers asked.
"Thanks, " Andy replied as Popeye covered Hammer's face with kisses, and Dr. Faux crept near and gave Hammer an insincere, patronizing pat on her black-leather-covered back.
"I don't know what happened, exactly, but I certainly am glad your dog is all right. Isn't it amazing how pets are like children? I know how much I love my cats. If you don't mind, " Dr. Faux said to Hammer, "I think it best I ride back to Virginia with you. I assume you're leaving right away?"
"Yass, cart him away!" commanded Reverend
Crockett. "We don't want neither contact with him ever. Warrant him!"
"No!" The island's entire population talked backward in unison, their voices rising above rotorwash and the chop-chopping of slowing blades. "Return him to the main!" they began to chant.
Well, race fans, what a night!
I suppose the bad news is there was no Tory Treasure, or at least not in the spot marked by the yellow buoy, which apparently had done nothing but drift with the bay's current until the water got shallower and the crab pot finally got snagged on eel grass about a mile off the Virginia shore. But what matters is the only treasure the Islanders cared about was Fonny Boy, and way to go, Officer Reggie, for singlehandedly catching the escaped inmates!
But how about our boy Donny? Now, I'm sorry to say I was caught up on a case last night and missed the race, but I watched TV and the endless replays of his Big Move when he was running side by side with No. 4 and an accident on Turn 4 took out the No. 33 Chevy and caused a seven-lap caution with a restart on lap 94. Darned if Donny didn't take advantage of a perilous situation by making his Big Move.