Transmission: Voodoo Plague Book 5 Read Online Free

assigned to it.  Actually,
a pretty sweet deal.  The pay and benefits of officer rank with only a fraction
of the crap that comes along with management.
    He had learned to fly his father’s helicopter in the oil
fields of west Texas when he was growing up, volunteering for the Army as the
US was just starting to escalate its involvement in Viet Nam.  By the time the
war was in full swing in the late 60s, he was flying 20 medevac missions a
day.  He did that for two years before rotating back home and training new
pilots.  I wasn’t surprised at the amount of combat flights he’d made.  The way
he’d flown when we fought the Russians had told me this was a guy who had been
there and done that.
    We talked for the first hour of the flight, then ran out of
things to say as we kept making our way east.  Tom followed Interstate 40 and
we flew at 1,500 feet.  High enough to let us have a great view for miles in
every direction, low enough to see details that we might want to investigate. 
We flew slow, cruising at about 100 knots, and I had too much time to think.
    Captain Blanchard had told me that Jackson, Rachel and Dog
had gone to help with loading evacuees onto the train when they had to move
because of approaching storms.  They had then gone into town, West Memphis, for
reasons he didn’t know.  The last communication he’d had with them was when
Jackson called to say he was coming back with a total of three souls and was
ten minutes away.
    They hadn’t been able to wait.  A massive storm was bearing
down directly on the area and they had to get the civilians and all the
aircraft out of its path.  Jackson was supposed to drive to Little Rock where
the Colonel had ordered a Black Hawk to wait for them at Little Rock Air Force
Base, but they never showed up.  That was all that was known about their fate.
    I was heartened by the news that Rachel and Dog had been
found both alive and well.  Part of me had been preparing for them never being
found, or worse, being found dead.  In the last calm moment we’d had together,
Rachel had professed her love to me, asking if I felt the same.  My head
started going down the path of exploring my feelings for her, but I quickly
shut that down.  The last thing I needed right now was emotions clouding my decision-making. 
I just wanted her and Dog safe, then I’d worry about what I was or wasn’t
feeling.
    It’s about 300 air miles from Oklahoma City to Little Rock,
and we covered that in just over four hours.  There had been numerous vehicles
we’d slowed to check out.  Vehicles that were either moving along the freeway
or showing some indication of life.  Whenever we’d see one, Tom would swing
wide to the side, drop to 100 feet and roar past to give us a good look. 
    We saw frightened families crammed into cars and trucks,
couples ranging from teenagers to elderly, and the occasional single traveler. 
All were heading west to the supposed safety of Oklahoma.  None of them were a
large, black soldier traveling with a pretty woman and a dog.  Lacking a photo,
that was the description of our search target I’d given to Tom and the door
gunner. 
    When we reached Little Rock, Tom contacted the base on the
radio and received permission to approach and land.  We were carrying external
fuel tanks, but he wanted to top us off to maximize our time in the air.  Our
expectation was that if Jackson, Rachel and Dog were alive, we’d find them
somewhere between Little Rock and the Mississippi River.  We knew they hadn’t
made it as far west as Little Rock.  If they had, there was no doubt Jackson
would have gone straight to the base and from there would have found a way to
contact the Colonel.  And that call had never been made.
    While Tom oversaw the refueling, I wandered off in search of
a latrine.  That’s the Army term for a restroom.  Right off I couldn’t remember
if the Air Force had felt it necessary to change that as well.  Regardless,
when I