Escape From New York (18 page)

“Right!” the President yelled back, voice cracking.

“What did I teach you?”

The man’s lips moved for several seconds before the words came out. “You’re the Duke of New York,” he said. “You’re A-number-one.”

The Duke smiled slightly. “Can’t hear you!”

The President screamed, a piercing, shrill cry. “YOU’RE THE DUKE OF NEW YORK! YOU’RE A-NUMBER-ONE!”

The Duke looked at Brain. “Get me the diagram,” he said softly.

Brain turned to Maggie. She nodded, reassuring. She had spent the whole night selling Snake Plissken to him. Go on, she mouthed silently.

“Don’t kill Plissken, Duke,” Brain said. “We need him.”

“That’s not what you said last right.”

He looked at Maggie again. She nodded once more, proud that her man was standing up to the Duke the way he was.

“That was last night,” Brain responded.

The Duke frowned and turned the rifle on Brain. “Get moving,” he said, and left no doubts that he meant exactly that.

Brain gulped, backing slowly away. The Duke flared back around and fired again at the President. The bullet exploded on the briefcase lock, blowing the mechanism open. Books and papers began spilling all over the ground.

Grinning wide, the Duke strode to the car, his men already running up to it.

“Let’s go,” Brain whispered to Maggie.

“Wait,” she returned. “Just a second.”

She was watching, wanting to see what the briefcase contained. It wasn’t too late to work out something else if the feeling was right. That damned Plissken. There was no reason for him to come into the city alone unless the motivation was strong. Overpowering.

The Gypsies sifted gleefully through the briefcase. They untied the President and let him away. Maggie watched carefully. Romero was there, bending down. He picked up something off the ground, a cassette of some kind. He slipped it quickly into his pocket. Nobody saw it but her.

“I’m ready,” she told Brain. “Let’s get out of here.”

CENTRAL PARK

3:30
P.M.

The Secretary had been on Hauk’s case all morning. Things were not looking good and he was making doubly sure that every bit of the blame rested squarely on the Commissioner’s shoulders. It was the basis of all politics: cover your own ass.

Hauk smiled a little at that, because he didn’t care one way or the other anymore who got the blame for anything. And besides, the really funny part about it was the fact that Prather’s people in Washington would blame the Secretary anyway—he was the federal official on the scene, and naturally responsible.

The copter blades beat their relentless rhythm above his head, and the murky daylight burned starlike glare patterns on the machine’s bubble. They were coming up on Central Park. Food Drop.

Hauk hadn’t been on Food Drop for a long time. He used to come every two weeks to search the crowds for Jerry, but he had given all that up.

Now he was coming again, searching again—this time for someone else. Someone for whom he felt an unbreakable bond of kinship and understanding. Someone who had promised to kill him at the first opportunity.

The Park stretched out before him, cold dead ground and naked trees. Thousands of inmates were jammed, a clamoring throng, all around the outer edges of the Park; but none, by ritual and mutual consent, were coming in. They were cheering; they were cheering the food.

They got above the Park and the two other choppers closed ranks to descend. Only two of the machines held food. Hauk’s held another kind of surprise. Blackbelly pie—just in case. They came down slowly.

Hauk’s pilot was pointing out the window. “Check it out,” he said.

The Commissioner strained his eyes through the window glare. Below them, on the ground, was a large white X. It was surrounded by a cordon of inmates. Gypsies. The Duke’s people.

“Take her down!” Hauk yelled to the pilot above the motor noise, and they broke from the other copters and floated toward the spot.

He took the microphone from the controls and flipped it to P.A. so he could speak to the squad in back. “We’re going down,” he said. “Something’s happening. Be ready, but no shooting unless I give the word. Understand that. I will kill the first man who uses a weapon without authorization.”

He stuck the mike back on its cradle. There would be no repeats of the scene at the fallen plane.

They were coming down on the X. Bullseye. The Gypsies started backing away, moving for the trees. He glanced over at the other copters in the distance. They hovered just above the ground, mammoth, covered crates disgorging from their underbellies. This was the first drop of the day. There would be many others. Tremendous masses of people were converging on the food, charging across the barren ground, waving their arms. The copters lifted off and their bundles completely disappeared under the sheer crush of numbers.

Hauk’s chopper settled to the ground; the Gypies were gone, all vanished. His men were out of the machine immediately, encircling the copter for protection.

Something was laying on the ground in the clearing. Hauk watched from the copilot’s seat as one of his men ran over to pick it up. He ran back toward the Commissioner, holding it high in the air.

It was a briefcase. It was
the
briefcase.

The sound of the oil rig used to drive Maggie crazy, its continual thump-da-thump sound going too fast, driving the human body to move faster than it normally would.

But Brain had taught her to disassociate herself from it, and now she never even noticed that it made any sound at all.

Brain was thinking, trying to think, and Maggie was prodding him as gently, yet firmly, as she could. Moving him along the proper channels.

“He has to have an angle, Brain,” she said. “You’ve told me how bad he hates the Man. He wouldn’t just go to work for him like that”

Brain had his back to her, studying the map. “I just can’t figure it, you know? Just can’t get it straight in my head.”

She was holding Plissken’s pistol, turning it around in her hands. It was cold and gray, standard army issue. She pulled out the clip and looked it over, trying to figure out how many shots were left. She shoved it back in the gun. “It’s all too crazy to be a lie,” she said. “I believe him.”

“God,” Brain answered, his fingers traveling over the mapface. “What if he
is
telling the truth?” He turned to shake his bearded head at her. “I really hate that guy.”

He looked at her for a long second, and she could tell that he was finally, really, working it all out. “There are only a few places he could land a glider,” he said, his eyes getting distant the way they did when he was thinking. “Top of the Port Authority.” He shook his head. “Too low to the ground.” He stroked his furry beard. “In the Park?”

He turned back to the map, his finger hurrying across its face. He stopped down south, down by the bay. He stabbed the map viciously with his finger. “Top of the World Trade Center,” he said. “Bingo! That’s got to be it”

Maggie smiled at him. Sometimes she thought that she was almost in love with Brain Hellman. “So, now what?” she asked.

Hauk walked into the control bunker and threw the briefcase on a table. Rehme turned white. Prather began to get excited. Hauk could see by the man’s face that he was already thinking of ways that he could get credit for the recovery. Prather should have looked more closely at the Commissioner’s face.

Neither of them touched the briefcase. Neither could bear that particular strain. Bob Hauk frowned; he had to do it all himself.

Not a word had been spoken. There were no words. Hauk sighed deeply and reached into the satchel. Extracting a piece of paper, he sat himself on the edge of the table and read it aloud: “Amnesty for all prisoners in New York City in exchange for President. Fifty Ninth Street Bridge. Tomorrow. Twelve noon. No bullshit or he’s dead.”

“Where’s the tape?” Prather asked, getting down to the heart of the matter.

Hauk fixed him with cold eyes. “It’s not here.”

“Well, then . . .”

“There’s more,” Hauk said. Reaching into the case, he pulled out a pair of infrared goggles and threw them on the table. Each lens had a nail stuck through it. Hauk felt as if
he
were wearing those goggles.

“They’re Plissken’s,” Rehme said softly.

Prather immediately pulled into his hard politician’s shell. His voice got domineering and hateful. “So much for your man, Hauk.”

Hauk wanted to grab him, wanted to go right across the table and rip his razored tongue right out of his mealy mouth. No one would blame him if he did, either. But he didn’t. That would have made him too much like the other uniformed maniacs. Instead, he said: “Warm up the choppers. We’re going in.”

He watched Rehme bolt out the door. He watched the entire bunker spring to life with merely a word. He felt strange inside. Dead.

CAVALCADE OF SPORTS

EARLY EVENING

Plissken saw himself at the bottom of a deep, dry well—darkness all around, a pinpoint of light far overhead. A voice seemed to be calling to him down the hole, beckoning him to climb.

He reached out his arms and felt the walls on either side of him. They were slick, oozing slime. It seemed a lot easier and more comfortable to just stay where he was.

The voice called to him again. Curious, he decided to check it out. The bucket rope was hanging down, dangling in the middle of the hole. He felt for it, found it with his hands. Taking a deep breath, he jumped as high as he could and grabbed hold, using his feet to help him on the side walls.

It was a hell of a climb, and more than once he wanted to just chuck it away and go back down to rest, but the voice was getting louder, more insistent.

He pulled and strained and finally made it to the top. The light was bright, blinding. It hurt his good eye and made his bad eye throb uncontrollably, setting his head on fire.

He focused. An ugly face with a crooked nose and breath that smelled of kerosene filled all of his vision. The face was smiling obscenely.

“Let’s go, Snake,” it said.

He shook his head and looked around. He was lying on a table in a large, wrecked dining room. The place had been gingerbread house ornate at one time, but the gingerbread of ancient times had gotten stale and crumbled away.

Gypsies surrounded him. They were all grinning widely, nodding their shaggy, moustached faces.

Plissken tried to sit up, but the pain in his head nearly blacked him out again. Shutting his eye tight, he opened it slowly, letting the pain seep in. He looked down at his leg. The arrow was gone, a dirty rag tightly wound took its place. His pants leg was soaked with blood. The blood was dry. He realized that he had been there for a long time. His shirt was gone. He was cold.

“Come on,” said the man who had woke him up.

They were levelling crossbows at him, fearful of him even in his condition. A tribute, he supposed. Somebody poked him with an ax handle. He was kitten weak, barely able to hold himself upright. Putting up his hands, he feebly tried to ward them off. It was then that he noticed that the countdown clock was gone from his wrist.

“Get up!” the man said.

They pulled him to his feet, but it was like walking in a dream, a hazy, pain-filled dream. Besides the concussion that he must have surely had, he had probably lost enough blood to qualify him for an economy rate at the donor bank. They pushed him toward the door.

Plissken wobbled through the door. His leg hurt, but he could put some weight on it if he just concentrated on the incredible pain in his head. Small consolation.

They were in a long, dark hallway. It was a wreck, totally junked and of the same style as the dining room. He heard a rumbling sound in the distance, but couldn’t quite make it out.

A hand shoved him roughly along.

He started to turn, to breathe fire at them. But he saw something that made the words burn in his own throat. Something was coming from the other direction. It was two Gypsies bearing a stretcher.

As it went past, he glanced down at it. They were carrying a man, in pieces. It looked like he had been literally torn apart. The sound came up again. It was cheering.

Dying light filtered in tiny shafts through some high ceiling transoms, but he couldn’t tell how late it was. “How about the time?” he mumbled to his captors.

They all laughed. “Time to die, Snake,” one of them said.

The sounds got louder the farther they walked. Finally, they came to the end of the hall and turned a corner, walking directly into a stentorian wall of sound.

The cheering came from thousands of voices. They were in the huge lobby of Grand Central Station, with its cloud-scraping ceiling, wide open. The place was filled with chairs, and all the chairs were filled by gross human imitators yelling and stomping their feet. It wasn’t just Gypsies, but every gang was represented: Africks, Low Riders, Chinkas, Dollies, Octoes, all were there.

The cheering increased in volume as more and more of them saw Plissken enter the room. It rang up to the ceiling and rained back down. The Snake felt as if he were on the inside of a bell.

They kept pushing him along through the frenzied crowds. They reached for him as he went by, hands everywhere, but the guards kept him from falling into those hands. They had apparently planned something a lot more enjoyable.

The smell in the room was bad, all sweat and belly gas, the granddaddy of all locker rooms. He breathed through his mouth. They kept moving him toward the center of the room. There was something there, lit by torches. He got close enough to see. It was a ring, a boxing ring. He got all the way up on it. The canvas was completely covered with blood.

He was pushed through the crudely strung ropes, into the ring itself. He glanced around the sea of faces that leered up at him—not an ounce of sympathy in the whole lot. His name had apparently lost its magic. His eyes drifted upwards. The Duke sat in a special box, surrounded by his lieutenants. He had Plissken’s rifle strapped on his back and he wore a big, contented smile on his face.