“I’m Romero,” he rasped.
Hauk walked right up to him, smelling the rot that rolled out of his mouth and passed for breath. “I’m Hauk.”
“I know.”
Romero smiled broadly, a grinning deathshead smile. All of his teeth had been filed down to tiny, razor sharp points. He spoke slowly, dragging the words up painfully through the slime pit of his lungs. “If you touch me,” he said, “he dies. If you’re not in the air in thirty seconds, he dies. If you come back in, he dies.”
Hauk just stared at him, trying to read behind the lifeless, sunken eyes. Couldn’t.
“I have something for you,” Romero said, and held out his hand. Hauk reached out, never taking his eyes off Romero’s. The man, chuckling softly, dropped something lightly in his palm.
Hauk looked down to see a small, rolled up cloth.
Blood had soaked through it. He looked once at Romero’s grinning teeth and unwound the wrapping. It contained a finger, severed at the third joint. There was a ring on the finger. And on the ring-the Presidential seal.
Hauk raised his eyes once more to Romero.
“Twenty seconds,” the man said.
“I’m ready to talk.”
“Nineteen. Eighteen.”
“What do you want?”
Romero just grinned-a mask, a grinning demon in human disguise.
“Seventeen. Sixteen.”
Hauk realized that the man had no idea what he wanted. He started backing away, never taking his eyes from Romero. He waved his hand above his head.
“Let’s go. Let’s go!”
There were shouts, confusion. They didn’t want to go. The tension was built and demanded release. Somewhere in the smoke, a gun went off.
Hauk was screaming now, trying to control them with his fury. “Hold your fire, goddamnit! Hold it!”
“Fifteen. Fourteen.”
Hauk turned his back on Romero and ran into the midst of his people. He started grabbing them, turning them back toward the distant copters.
“We’re getting out of here,” he screamed. “Let’s go! Now!”
They started turning, reluctantly.
“Move, damnit! Run!”
Finally they turned and committed, putting the stoppers back on their lust for a little while, Hauk made sure they were all leaving, then turned back to Romero. He was gone.
He ran quickly to the command copter and ordered the pilot into the sky as soon as he got in. His insides were jangling, raw, exposed nerves.
They had him. The lunatics had the President, and god only knew what they had in mind.
It began, finally, to rain.
VII
EXECUTIVE CONFERENCE SUITE
8:53 P.M.
Hauk walked alone down the unlit hallway. Office doors were open down the hall’s length, some of them spilling globs of harsh neon light out into the corridor like tiny drifts of white, powdered snow. It had been a long time since Hauk had seen snow that was any color except dingy gray brown.
The Secretary of State was waiting for him in conference. He had been traveling in a follow-up plane that came behind the President’s, to avoid any accidents that could claim too many important lives. He was going to ask what they were going to do about the President.
Hauk had a very specific feeling about that. He felt that they should simply get themselves another President. He wasn’t going to say that to the Secretary, though. He was too much of a soldier for that
He arrived at the conference door and hesitated for a second before going in. He looked like a wreck. His face and clothes were dirty and sooty from the smoke. His eyes burned and his mouth was dry and overridden with a taste of plastic. He had lost his coat out on the landing field.
The Secretary was a man used to taking orders, not giving them. He would want Hauk to take as much responsibility for whatever was going to happen as he could. Hauk didn’t like that, but he didn’t see any way around it.
He opened the door. It was bright in the room, garish. The Secretary had turned on every light in the place, almost as if he were afraid of dealing with the dark corners. All the windows were shut tight to keep out any trace of the gas that wasn’t coming down with the light rain outside. It was stuffy in the room due to the lack of circulating air. With no ventilation, cigarette smoke hazed the air, hanging down in sleepy, drifting clouds.
The Secretary sat at the big walnut conference table, red telephone by one arm, already-full ashtray by the other. He was a slight man dressed in a gray suit. His eyes were fixed, staring vacantly at the large map of the city that occupied the entire wall opposite him. His face was probably amiable generally, but now that it was transfixed by worry it was an ugly face. He seemed, like most politicians, to be on the very edge of exhaustion, with a small outer fence of desperation the only thing holding him in one piece.
Hauk was not going to like working with him. Politicians were wait-and-see folks; they were let’s-check-it-out-in-the-polls-and-then-compromise-it folks, who weren’t used to any real decision-making.
The man came to his feet when Hauk walked in. His spirit lightened, almost as if he were literally transferring his burden over to the Commissioner.
“Mister Secretary,” Hauk said.
The man was around the desk and vigorously pumping Hauk’s hand. That was something the man could relate to. “Bill Prather,” he said, and fixed Hauk with a professional stare. “Am I glad to see you.”
Hauk looked the man over. He had a full head of silver hair, but it didn’t mean that he was old. He was of very indeterminate age, probably somewhere between forty and sixty. He had a good set of teeth and the easily accessible face of a favorite uncle, back when people still had uncles who weren’t crazy.
“Bob Hauk,” he responded, and broke the Secretary’s grip on his hand.
“What’s the news?” Prather asked.
“Not very good, I’m afraid,” Hauk answered.
The Secretary walked back to the desk and took a cigarette out of the pack, even though another one was still smoldering in the cut glass ashtray. He fidgeted getting the thing into his mouth, his hand visibly shaking when he lit it “Give it to me,” he mumbled around the smoker.
Hauk walked up to the opposite side of the table, resting his hands on its top. “The President went down in the prison,” he said, then moved away from the table, over to the big map.
He pointed to Battery Park. “He went down around here. We sent a task force in immediately, but it was too late. They already had him.”
The Secretary exhaled a lungful of smoke. “They?”
“The prisoners,” Hauk answered.
Prather shrugged broadly. “Well surely, Commissioner, you must just go in and take him out.”
Hauk walked back to the table again. “It’s not that simple,” he said quietly.
“Why not?”
“These people are very dangerous, I…”
“Come on, Hauk,” Prather said, and his tone was condescending. “This is your prison. Don’t you have any control over your own prison?”
Hauk felt the anger rise up his throat. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the cloth-wrapped finger and tossed it onto the table. The wrapping came loose as he did so.
“No, sir,” he said. “I don’t”
Prather’s mouth fell open when he saw the finger. His body convulsed slightly and he turned his head. “Hauk,” he choked. “Put it away. Please.”
Hauk stuck the finger back into his pocket “Those people rule themselves in there, Mister Secretary. All we do here is keep them from getting out.”
The man turned back around, breathing deeply. The false bravado was gone completely; all that was exposed now was the frightened shell of a petty bureaucrat who was in over his head. “How could such a situation…”
Hauk put up a hand to silence him. “Listen,” he said. “I didn’t invent the fucking system, you people did.”
“I don’t think I like your tone of voice.”
Hauk drew himself up full. “Fine,” he said, and turned to the door. “You handle things then. I’m going to go home and get some sleep.”