Kabakov shifted in his seat. He clanked against the door handle.
“What the hell was that?”
“My dentures are loose,” Kabakov said.
“Very funny.”
Kabakov flipped back his coat, revealing the stubby barrel of the Uzi submachine gun slung under his arm.
“What’s Moshevsky carrying, a bazooka?”
“I have a cantaloupe launcher” came the voice from the backseat.
Corley shrugged his shoulders. He could not understand Moshevsky easily at the best of times and not at all when his mouth was full.
They arrived at the stadium at nine thirty. The streets that would not be used as the stadium filled were already blocked. The vehicles and barriers that would seal off the stadium when the game began were in place on the grass beside the main traffic arteries. Ten ambulances were parked close to the southeast gate. Only outbound emergency vehicles would be allowed through the blockade. Secret Service men were already in place on the roofs along Audubon Avenue overlooking the track where the president’s helicopter would land.
They were as ready as they could get.
It was curious to see sandbag emplacements beside the quiet streets. Some of the FBI agents were reminded of the Ole Miss campus in 1963.
At nine a.m., Dahlia Iyad called room service in the Fairmont and ordered three breakfasts to be delivered to the room. While she was waiting for them, she took a pair of long scissors and a roll of friction tape from her bag. She removed the screw holding the scissors together and put a slender, three-inch bolt through the screw hole in one half of the scissors, binding it in place with the tape. Then she taped the entire handle of the scissor and slipped it up her sleeve.
The breakfasts arrived at nine twenty a.m.
“You go ahead, Michael, while it’s hot,” Dahlia said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She took a breakfast tray to the elevator and descended two floors.
Farley’s voice sounded sleepy as he answered her knock.
“Mr. Farley?”
“Yes.”
“Your breakfast.”
“I didn’t order any breakfast.”
“Compliments of the hotel. The whole crew is getting them. I’ll take it away if you don’t want it.”
“No, I’ll take it. Just a minute.”
Farley, hair tousled and wearing only his trousers, let her into the room. If someone had been passing in the hall they might have heard the beginning of a scream, abruptly cut off. A minute later, Dahlia slipped outside again. She placed the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob and went back upstairs to breakfast.
There was one more piece of business to be settled. Dahlia waited until she and Lander had finished eating. They were lying on the bed together. She was holding Lander’s mangled hand.
“Michael, you know I want very much to fly with you. Don’t you think it would be better?”
“I can do it. There’s no need.”
“I want to help you. I want to be with you. I want to see it.”
“You wouldn’t see much. You’ll hear it wherever you go from the airport.”
“I’d never get out of the airport anyway, Michael. You know the weight won’t make any difference now. It’s seventy degrees outside and the aircraft has been standing in the sun all morning. Of course if you can’t get it up—”
“I can get it up. We’ll have superheat.”
“May I, Michael? We’ve come a long way.”
He rolled over and looked into her face. There were red pillow marks on his cheek. “You’ll have to get the shot bags out of the back of the gondola fast. The ones beneath the backseat. We can trim it up when we’re off. You can go.”
She held him very close and they did not talk anymore.
At eleven thirty Lander rose and Dahlia helped him dress. His cheeks were hollow, but the tanning lotion she had used on his face helped disguise the pallor. At eleven fifty she took a syringe of Novacaine from her medical kit. She rolled up Lander’s sleeve and deadened a small patch on his forearm. Then she took out another, smaller hypodermic syringe. It was a flexible plastic squeeze tube with a needle attached, and it was filled with a thirty milligram solution of Ritalin.
“You may feel talkative after you use this, Michael. Very up. You’ll have to compensate for that. Don’t use it unless you feel yourself losing strength.”
“All right, just put it on.”
She inserted the needle in the deadened patch on his forearm and taped the small syringe firmly in place, flat on his arm. On either side of the squeeze tube was a short length of pencil to keep the tube from being squeezed by accident. “Just feel through your sleeve and press the tube with your thumb when you need it.”
“I know, I know.”
She kissed him on the forehead. “If I shouldn’t make it to the airport with the truck, if they are waiting for me—”
“I’ll just drop the blimp into the stadium,” he said. “It will mash quite a few. But don’t think about the bad possibilities. We’ve been lucky so far, right?”
“You have been very clever so far.”
“I’ll see you at the airport at two fifteen.”
She walked him to the elevator, and then she returned to the room and sat on the bed. It was not yet time to go for the truck.
Lander spotted the blimp crew standing near the desk in the lobby. There was Simmons, Farley’s copilot, and two network cameramen. He walked over, exerting himself to put on a brisk manner.
I’ll rest in the bus, he thought.
“My God, it’s Mike,” Simmons said. “I thought you were out sick. Where’s Farley? We called his room. We were waiting for him.”
“Farley had a rough night. Some drunk girl stuck her finger in his eye.”
“Jesus.”
“He’s all right, but he’s getting it looked at. I fly today.”
“When did you get in?”
“This morning. That bastard Farley called me at four a.m. Let’s go. We’re late now.”
“You don’t look too good, Mike.”
“I look better than you do. Let’s go.”
At the Lakefront Airport gate, the driver could not find his vehicle pass and they all had to show their credentials. Three squad cars were parked near the tower.
The blimp, 225 feet of silver, red, and blue, rested in a grassy triangle between the runways. Unlike the airplanes squatting on the ground before the hangars, the airship gave the impression of flight even when at rest. Poised lightly on its single wheel, nose against the mooring mast, it pointed to the northeast like a giant weathervane. Near it were the big bus that transported the ground crew and the tractor-trailer that housed the mobile maintenance shop. The vehicles and the men were dwarfed by the silver airship.
Vickers, the crew chief, wiped his hands on a rag. “Glad you’re back, Captain Lander. She’s ready.”
“Thank you.” Lander began the traditional walk-around inspection. Everything was in order, as he knew it would be. The blimp was clean. He had always liked the cleanliness of the blimp. “You guys ready?” he called.
Lander and Simmons ran down the rest of the preflight checklist in the gondola.
Vickers was berating the two TV cameramen. “Captain Video, will you and your assistant kindly get your asses in that gondola so we can weigh off?”
The ground crew took hold of the handrail around the gondola and bounced the airship on its landing wheel. Vickers removed several of the twenty-five-pound bags of shot that hung from the rail. The crew bounced the airship again.