Chapter 31

Sheriff Warner spooled up the department's search and rescue helicopter as soon as he saw the white, four-wheel drive pull up to the helipad. The man getting out of the truck didn't look like Jamal, but he didn't care. They were all the same, maniacal, blood-thirsty robots.

The airport was busy for a Monday morning. A corporate jet screamed down the runway in front of the idling helicopter. The airport had expanded when the rehab center opened, and it wasn't surprising to see private jets, carrying important people with addiction problems, coming and going.

The guy getting out of the Chevy was a stocky Latino with crew cut, black hair. He carried a rolled up map and a fat, aluminum rifle case. Without a word, Rodrigo stowed the case in the back, within arm's reach, then climbed aboard the helicopter and put on his headset. He unrolled the map and pointed to a spot near the road where O'Donnell was last seen. Tom nodded, checked that the engine was at operating temperature, and then advanced the collective lever. The helicopter rose, turned north, and headed for the old Drunken Engineer Mine.

Sheriff Warner hoped this wouldn't take long. He had an important package coming in from Denver and he wanted to get back home before the weather went sour. The gray clouds forming over the mountains looked threatening. The latest weather reports indicated a large front would be moving through early in the afternoon, bringing the first snow of the season.

Though they could talk through their headsets, neither broke the silence as the helicopter streaked through the air at 120 mph. When they reached the area indicated on the map, Tom slowed and hovered. Rodrigo reached behind him and opened the aluminum case. He brought out a bolt action, hunting rifle with a powerful scope mounted to the top. He put the scope to his right eye and scanned the mountainous terrain below.

Rodrigo quickly spotted two sets of tracks that the SRT-8 had carved into the gravel. One set was irregular. There were gaps in the trail where it looked as if the wheels hadn't touched the ground for long stretches. The other track was smooth and connected.

Rodrigo had seen the wrecked Jeep a few hours ago. They had raided the salvage yard and found the missing SRT-8 and the white Porsche after killing the Driscol girl and burning her house down. Seeing the tracks, he was amazed the Jeep hadn't rolled all the way down the steep, gravelly slope.

Rodrigo slowly scanned the slope until he spotted an arm in the crosshairs. Coyotes, or some other scavenger, had dragged it from its previous owner. He looked in the area surrounding the arm until he found O'Donnell's body. He motioned for Tom to move in.

The only place to land was near the stream, where the slope flattened out. The moment they touched the ground, Rodrigo grabbed the case and headed to the corpse, which was several hundred feet away from the helicopter. As he made his way across the rocky ground, he found O'Donnell's M-16. It had bounced out of the Jeep and landed far from the body.

Tom stayed with the chopper and thumbed through an off-road magazine he had brought from home. He couldn't wait to get back and play with the new toys coming in by special delivery. With winter approaching, he knew the goodies in the package would let him go hunting, even after the worst snowfall. Soon, the trophy room would become a little more crowded.

Rodrigo reached O'Donnell and started stuffing what was left of him in a customized body bag. The local wildlife had scavenged much of the flesh from the body and stripped off most of his clothing. The only things still intact were his combat boots and bullet proof vest. Rodrigo noted two bullets mashed into the vest. The hollow points had flattened and looked like deadly lead flowers.

"Shit," he muttered, "little bitch wasn't messing around." There had been speculation about the bullet holes found in the Jeep and it looked as if Liv Driscol had hit her mark. "Must've been his lucky day."

As he had done many times before, Rodrigo zipped up the body bag, attached a time delay fuse, and ran back to the chopper. Twenty seconds later, the thermite infused bag caught fire. The heat was so intense that it destroyed all traces of O'Donnell within minutes.

Rodrigo reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out his satellite phone and called Max. As the phone rang, he slung O'Donnell's M-16 over his shoulder and climbed into the waiting helicopter.