The Devils Punchbowl - Greg Iles

I shudder as the canopy makes a ripping sound, but Necker only smiles and squeezes my arm with reassurance. “That'’s normal. These things seem like they'’re coming apart in a high wind, but that’s because the rigging’s so flexible. Can you imagine what an old clipper ship must have sounded like tearing across the Atlantic?”

As we rush along above Highway 61, rising through five hundred feet, I silently repeat my day’s mantra:

Accidents are rare, accidents are rare….

I hope we stay low today. Last year a different pilot and I got caught in an updraft and “stuck” a mile above Louisiana. Rather than having the romantic ride most people experience, I was stranded in the clouds, with a view much like the one you get from a jetliner: geometric farms and highways, cars the size of ants. But today is different. The landmarks of the city are spread below me

with the stunning clarity of an October morning. To my right lies the Grand Village of the Natchez Indians, a carpet of green meadows and ceremonial mounds beside St. Catherine’s Creek. I scarcely have time to orient myself to the mounds before we race onward toward the river.

“Glad you made it,” Necker says, slapping me gently on the back. “We’re looking good. It’s actually lucky you were late.”

“Glad to help. It really couldn'’t be avoided.”

The CEO nods but doesn’'t question me. “They’ve shortened the race to the first target only. Nobody’s going to be able to maneuver well in this wind.”

I try to conceal my relief that this will be a short flight. Some balloon races are long and complex, like magisterial wedding processions. Others are brief and chaotic, like car chases through a mountain village, with pilots trying to divine invisible crosscurrents of wind like oracles opening themselves to revelation. Today’s event is the latter type, but there’s a certain majesty to the seemingly endless train of balloons stretching from the Louisiana Delta ahead of us back to Buck Stadium, which is now merely a fold in the green horizon. Two helicopters fly along the course like cowboys tending a wayward herd, but they have no control over their charges. The balloons go where the wind blows.

Necker has read the winds well. Where Highway 61 veers north toward Vicksburg and the Delta, we continue westward toward Louisiana. Far to my right I see the abandoned Johns Manville plant, to my left, the shuttered International Paper mill, and the scorched scar that is all that remains of the Triton Battery Company. All those plants came between 1939 and 1946, and the last shut its doors only a few months ago. So much for Natchez’s smokestack industries. But the beauty of the city remains undiminished. From this altitude it’s plain that the modern town grew over dozens of old plantations, and there’s far more forest than open ground. It makes me long for the days before the lumber industry came, when—the saying goes—a squirrel could run from Mississippi to North Carolina without once setting foot on the ground.

As downtown Natchez drifts past like a ghost from the nineteenth century, I hear bass and drums pounding from the festival field beside Rosalie. A moment later I sight the crowd swelling and mov

ing like a swarm of ants before the stage. Then we’re over the river, its broad, reddish-brown current dotted with small pleasure craft, the levee on the far side lined with the cars of people watching the balloons pass.

Far ahead, near the horizon, I can see our destination: Lake Concordia, an oxbow lake created by a bend in the river that was cut off long ago. Sometimes Annie and I go water-skiing there with friends who have boats, such as Paul Labry and his family. Thinking of Labry brings a knot of anxiety to my throat. In the rush of boarding the balloon, I asked him to get me the names of the Chinese casino partners for me. So easy to do. But have I needlessly—and selfishly—put him at risk? Probably not, if he follows my orders exactly. But will he, not really knowing what’s at stake?

Labry and I are only a year apart in age, but we went to different schools, and that can be an obstacle to close friendship in Natchez. After forced integration in 1968, the number of private schools doubled from two to four. Labry and I attended the two original ones: Immaculate Heart and St. Stephen’s. The new schools were “Christian academies” that stressed conservative ideology and athletics over academics. There wasn'’t much mixing between the four institutions, and I probably spent more time with the public school kids than with the “Christians” or the Catholics, who stuck together like an extended family. But in the eleventh grade, Paul Labry and I were sent as delegates to the American Legion Boys State in Jackson. I knew Labry only slightly when I arrived, but after spending a week with him among strangers, I knew I’d made a friend I should have gotten to know long before.

Labry went to college at Mississippi State and returned home afterward; he was already working in his father’s office-supply business while I was earning my law degree at Rice. When I returned to Natchez for good, I discovered that Labry was one of the few boys from the top quarter of his class who hadn'’t immigrated to another part of the country to earn his living. As mayor, whenever I looked at the Board of Selectmen with frustration, Labry’s constant presence and dogged, conscientious work gave me hope for change. I think he originally harbored dreams of running for mayor, but after I confided to him that I intended to run, he told me that I should go for it, and that I could count on his full support. He has been true to his

word, and I should not repay a loyal friend and family man by dragging him into the mess that has already claimed Tim Jessup’s life.

“Look at that!” cries Necker, pointing down to a vast, swampy island enclosed by an old bend in the river. “That'’s Giles Island right there. We’re setting up to win this thing, Penn, I can feel it.”

“I never had a doubt,” I tell him, which is true. Necker probably studied maps of this area nonstop during his flight back from Chicago.

As we start to cross the island, a loud crack unlike anything I’'ve yet heard snaps me to full alertness. What frightens me most is Necker. He’s gone from a relaxed posture to total rigidity in less than a second.

“What was that?” I ask.

Necker doesn’'t answer. He has leaned back to look up through the throat of the balloon, and he doesn’'t look happy.

“Was that a shot?” I ask, almost afraid to voice what my instinct tells me is true.

“Yes and no,” Necker answers, still staring up into the canopy. “Somebody just put some lead through the canopy, but that sound we heard wasn'’t the gun. It was the bullet itself.”

“Jesus.” The balloons to the west of us seem much farther away than they did ten seconds ago. “What’s the difference?”

Necker is working fast, checking the digital equipment that rests in a pouch on the inside lip of the basket. He’s as grim as a fireman about to rush into a burning building. “It takes a high-powered rifle to make the sound we just heard. That bullet was supersonic.”

My fear is scaling up into panic. I want to suppress it, but some reactions are simply beyond control. “What does that mean for us?”

“A stray shotgun pellet is one thing. But you don'’t hit a balloon this big with a high-powered rifle unless you’re aiming at it.”

Before the wind carries Necker final word away, another

crack

makes me grab the edge of the basket in terror. This time I hear the bullet rip the nylon above our heads. Necker grabs the wooden handle of a rope that stretches all the way to the top of the balloon. It’s fastened inside a carabiner, which Necker carefully opens while gripping the handle tight in his hand. He looks like a man about to pull the rip cord on a parachute.

“What are you doing?” I ask, trying to keep my voice steady.

His eyes meet mine with an intensity that shakes me to the core. “We’'ve got to get down. Somebody’s trying to kill us.”

I want to help, but my mind is blank. Before I can say anything more, Necker pulls on the rope, and our balloon begins dropping like an elevator in a Tokyo office building. My stomach flies into my throat, and my feet tingle the way they do when I stand on a cliff edge.

“Will the canopy hold together?” I ask above the rush of the wind.

Necker nods with confidence. “We can take quite a few holes and maintain buoyancy. But if they hit a cable or cause a big rip, we’ll be in trouble.”

“What if they hit the fuel tanks?”

Necker gives me a grin of utter fatalism. “If they hit a tank, we’re dead.”

The sound of the wind is twofold now, the air blowing past us horizontally, and that rushing upward as we plummet toward the earth.

“Can we dump the tanks over the side?”

Necker is watching the top of the balloon through its mouth. “That would take four or five minutes in my balloon, and this isn’t my balloon. I'’ll have us on the ground in fifty seconds.”

He pulls harder on the rope, and we drop still faster. I cannot bear to look outside the basket. “What are you doing?” I ask.

“Venting hot air from the top of the balloon. It’s the only way to get down fast.”

“How fast are we going?”

“A thousand feet a minute.”

“How fast is that?”

Necker purses his lips, figuring on the fly. “A forty-yard dash straight into the ground. It probably won'’t kill you, but it’ll hurt like hell.”

Shit….

He squeezes my upper arm and winks. “We’ll be all right. I'’ll do a burn right before we hit. Try to cushion it a little.”

My heart is pounding so hard that my chest hurts. “I feel like we just jumped out of a plane!”

Necker actually laughs. “A skydiver falls ten times this fast. Just

keep scanning the ground. Watch for a muzzle flash. Somebody’s going to jail for this.”

Steeling myself, I pan my eyes over the swampy ground bounded by the snaky bend of the old river course. There’s a thousand acres of trees down there that a sniper could hide behind. There’s no way we’re going to find him without hearing his gun go off.

The ground seems to swoop up toward us with surreal speed. I'm trying to force my gaze away from it when Necker takes out his cell phone and speed-dials a number. “Major McDavitt? We’re taking ground fire…. That'’s right, rifle fire, I’d say. Could be hunters, but I don'’t think so. I'm hitting the deck right where we are, maximum safe descent.” Necker gives me a quick glance. “Maybe faster.”

A mile to the west, the Athens Point sheriff’s department chopper banks toward us and accelerates. Just as my heart lifts, another bullet punches though the canopy with the sound of a bullwhip finding flesh.

“God

damn

it!” Necker bellows, pointing toward the levee road. “I think that came from the south,” he shouts into the phone. “Skim the levee road on your way here and see if you see anything. Try to get a license plate.”

The helicopter makes no move toward the levee, but makes for us at what must be maximum speed. Major McDavitt has decided that survival means more than punishment.

Necker’s jaw is set tight, but I see a wry smile on his lips. “So that’s how it is,” he says into the phone. “Medevac time. Well, you’d better call ahead to the hospital. I'm AB positive. Penn, do you know your blood type?”

“O negative.”

Beneath us I see an orange tractor and a propane tank beside what looks like a bunkhouse. A billy goat stands munching something beside a barbed-wire fence—

“Stop looking at the ground,” Necker advises. “You’re turning green. Watch the horizon. I'’ll tell you when to brace. Fifteen seconds. If we overshoot and land in the water, stay with the basket. It’ll float. Unless you want to try to swim right to shore.”

“Shouldn’t we try for the water?”

“We might not be able to swim after impact.”

Good Lord.

The gas jet roars above our heads, heat blasts my

scalp, and the basket presses up against my feet like an express elevator slowing for the ground floor. “That old river’s full of alligators anyway!” I shout.

Necker tries to laugh, but what comes out is a strangled bark. He grabs the valve of the propane tank and shuts off the fuel line. “Five seconds! Brace! Bend your knees!”

I bend my knees and grab the upper frame of the basket, bracing against our lateral motion, which is westward toward the water. We’re moving a lot faster across the ground than I’d realized, but that may actually help us.

The impact is like falling from a galloping horse. My knees collapse and my pelvis slams the side of the basket, jolting me from ankles to crown, and then we’re sliding over the marshy ground as the wind drags us relentlessly toward the water. Necker hauls mightily on a rope, and suddenly the canopy collapses and we shudder to a stop.

The sudden silence is unnerving, but in seconds I hear the steady beating of McDavitt’s helicopter descending beside us.

Hans Necker drops to the floor of the basket like a man who died on his feet. It’s only now that I remember the gunfire that caused this crash landing.

“Are you hit?” I ask.

Necker shakes his head. “Ankle’s broken. One for sure, maybe both. Can you help me up?”

“Hell, yes. Let’s get out of this thing.”

McDavitt is already out of the chopper and running toward us. “Anybody hit?” he calls.

“No,” I shout back. “We need help though!”

When McDavitt reaches the basket, he helps me lift Necker over the side. The CEO grips the frame for a moment and smiles. “This old girl got us down alive.”

“You got us down, buddy. We need to get to St. Catherine’s Hospital, Major. Ready?”

McDavitt nods as we cradle Necker between us in a sitting position.

“Let’s do it.”

I thought the balloon was moving fast when we crossed the river, but Major McDavitt storms back toward Natchez at 120 knots, aiming

for the helipad atop St. Catherine’s Hospital. The town’s top orthopedist is waiting for Necker in the emergency room, and the Adams County sheriff’s department chopper is flying in tandem, following us in. Paul Labry is on his way to the hospital, preparing to deal with what can only be a media crisis for the Balloon Festival.

“How you doing?” I ask Necker, who’s sitting with his back to the wall of the helicopter’s cabin, his left calf propped on my knee to keep his foot elevated.

“Hurts like a son of a bitch,” he says. “But it could have been a lot worse. You did good, keeping it together. A lot of people would have panicked.”

“Oh, I panicked.”

Necker laughs, then winces. “Damn, I’d like some morphine.”

“Two minutes.”

Necker nods. “Let’s talk fast then.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don'’t believe in luck, good or bad. We weren’t the first balloon in line, or the last. But we were shot at and hit three times with a high-powered rifle. Anybody who could hit us three times could have killed us if he wanted to. All he had to do was shoot the basket. He’d have hit us or the fuel tanks, or both.”