Ghost Canyon (The John Decker Supernatural Thriller Series Book 7) Anthony Strong (popular romance novels .TXT) 📖

had concocted while they were waiting for the helicopter. “We’ve already secured the main entry into the mine, but we need to search for other ways in.”

“We’ll give it a good try,” Glendale replied. “But I have to warn you, these old mine shafts and entrances can be pretty well hidden. A lot of them date back over a hundred years and are in some mighty rugged terrain.”

“Understood,” Decker replied. “Let’s do our best, anyway.”

“Okey-doke. First things first, we need to get you guys strapped in.” Officer Parsons motioned toward a row of seats along the side wall of the helicopter. Upon each one sat a bright green crash helmet and headset with built-in speakers and a microphone for easy communication over the engine noise once the copter was in the air. Decker was about to move toward the seats, when Parsons spoke again. “Since you guys have a better idea what we’re looking for than us, one of you should sit up front in the cockpit. I’ll take a seat back here with the others.”

“That sounds like a job for you,” Barnes said to Decker.

“Makes sense,” Decker said. He squeezed past Parsons and slipped into the cockpit seat next to the pilot. There was a helmet here too, sitting on the floor next to him.

“Put that on,” Glendale instructed.

Decker nodded. He picked up the helmet and put it on, along with the accompanying headset, then clipped himself in using the harness style seatbelt. The two FBI agents and Officer Parsons followed suit in the helicopter’s rear cabin. Moments later the engine noise rose in pitch, the aircraft lifted from the ground, and they were airborne.

Chapter Fifty-One

They flew low over the uneven landscape. The pilot expertly adjusted to the rise and fall of the rocky landscape beneath them. The glass bubble surrounding the helicopter’s cockpit provided an excellent field-of-view, allowing Decker to see far and wide. This was clearly why the Las Vegas Police Department had selected the Airbus H145, which was designed specifically for operations such as the one they were now conducting. It was an amazing machine, barely a year old according to its pilot, who peppered them with abstract facts as he flew. Unlike the other helicopters operated by the LVMPD, which were used as eyes in the sky during police pursuits and for surveillance, this one was kitted out for search and rescue and medical transport flights. It had a large rear cabin area, able to support up to nine passengers, not including a two-man crew, and boasted clamshell doors at the back for easy loading and unloading. A rescue hoist was fitted near the side sliding door, although they wouldn’t need that capability on this excursion.

“Let me know if you want to circle back and look at anything,” Glendale said after fifteen minutes had passed.

“Will do,” Decker replied, never taking his eyes off the barren desert slipping away beneath them.

After a while, when they had traveled to the edge of their useful search area, the helicopter banked and turned back upon itself. They were using a creeping line search pattern, flying back and forth across the landscape, and moving outward with each successive pass. They had started above the known entrance to the Ghost Canyon Mine and flew due east following the ridgeline of the mountain and proceeded from there. It was tough going. The arid desert terrain, while vast and open, was full of peaks and valleys that cast deep shadows and could easily hide an entrance. Not only that, any remaining ventilation shafts or adits would be over a century old and overgrown with vegetation such as creosote bushes and sagebrush, which were abundant in the area.

After an hour, Decker started to lose hope.

The Mohave looked even bigger from above than it did from the ground. It was like looking for one grain of sand on the beach. Twice he thought they had something, and instructed the helicopter to backtrack, only to discover that it was nothing more than a tantalizingly shaped outcrop with dark shadows beneath.

Then, just as he was about to suggest they return to their original starting point and take a second pass over the search area, he spotted a glint of light from the base of a wide canyon ahead of them.

“There.” Decker tapped the pilot on the shoulder and pointed. “Can we get lower?”

“These canyons are treacherous, but I’ll see what I can do,” Glendale said. He pushed on the stick and tilted the helicopter’s nose down into the canyon.

A dirt trail snaked across the canyon floor, weaving away until it was lost behind a rise of land. Further away, toward the horizon, Decker could see a thin line of asphalt standing out against the ochre red background of the desert. This was the road leading to Haley. In the other direction would be Boulder city and Las Vegas. Then, as they approached the area where Decker had noticed the sun glinting, he saw something that he wasn’t expecting.

A red pickup truck.

It was parked at the edge of the trail, near an outcrop of rocks that created a natural cleft in the landscape. Sagebrush and creosote bushes choked the crevice. But it was what lay between the truck and the rocks that caused Decker to draw a sharp breath. Sprawled on the ground in a dark patch that could only be blood, arms spread wide, lay a corpse.

Chapter Fifty-Two

The helicopter had barely touched down before Decker was unclipping his seatbelt and making for the door. He jumped out, followed by the two FBI agents, and raced the short distance to the truck, and the body beyond.

It was a man, laying on his back with glassy dead eyes staring up into the bright blue desert sky. His torso was flayed open, exposed innards already crawling with flies.

Decker recognized him at once.

So did Special Agent Barnes. “This is one of the two guys we caught up at the mine entrance yesterday.”

“And that’s the truck they were driving,” Decker