“What?”
“Hauk wants him upstairs,”
“B-but, Sarge. This here is Snake Plissken.”
The man half smiled. “And it looks like he’s slithered out again. Let’s go, Plissken.”
The Snake smiled and stood up. “Enjoyed the show, Duggan,” he said. “You’ll have to do it for real sometime.”
That brought Duggan up close, fists balled. Just what Plissken wanted. He half turned away from the man, then came back around hard, burying manacled hands in Duggan’s groin.
The man made a sound in his throat like a whistling tea kettle, then doubled over at the waist. Plissken grabbed the back of his head, then came up hard with his knee. He heard Duggan’s nose go with an audible crack, then watched as he crumpled to the floor.
“Gaaa!”
“I’m ready,” he told the Sergeant.
The man sighed again and led him into the hall. There was a contingent of armed guards waiting for him outside the door.
“Just stay calm,” the Sergeant said, settling his big belly farther over the edge of his belt. “Don’t make any quick moves, and everything will be all right”
“Docile as a puppy,” Plissken replied. And he was.
They led him out of the hootch, into the rain. It wasn’t coming down hard, but by habit he held his breath when he got out in it, not wanting to ingest any more of the gas than he had to.
The landing field that had been empty when they brought him in was now lousy with copters. He turned to look at them, but they just pushed him along. He was taken into another bunker near the Statue.
They went in, up a couple of flights, then down a dark hallway. They stopped in front of a doorway marked: COMMISSIONER. The Sergeant knocked on the door.
A muffled voice grunted on the other side of the door, and the Sergeant turned the knob. “Mind your manners,” he whispered to Plissken before swinging the thing open.
The Snake went in first, the guards right behind him. It was an office that looked like it was never used. The walls were bare: no pictures, no diplomas, no citations. The desk was empty. In and out baskets, empty. No pictures, not even a blotter. Just a telephone.
A man sat behind the desk. A hard man gone soft He squinted with powerful eyes. His face was set, strained. There may have been character in that face if Plissken had cared to look for it. He didn’t. All Snake Plissken was doing was looking for a way out.
“Take off the leg irons,” the man behind the desk said.
The Sergeant knotted up his eyebrows, but did as he was told, Plissken smiled with the unexpected good fortune. He immediately went over and sat down in a chair, crossing his legs.
The man behind the desk nearly smiled. He nodded to the guards. “All right,” he said.
The Sergeant took a waddling step toward the desk. “He’s dangerous, sir.”
“I know,” the man returned, and reached down to pull a pearl-handled revolver out of its resting place. He cocked it. “I’ll be all right.”
The Sergeant shrugged and motioned his people out of the room. He followed them, closing the door behind him. Plissken looked at the closed door for a minute. This was the best shot he’d ever had, one on one with an old softy. He turned to the man, smiling broadly. He held up his chained hands.
The man shook his head, his face without expression. “I’m not a fool, Plissken,” he said. “Maybe we’d better get that out of the way first.”
“Call me Snake,” Plissken smiled.
The man set his lips. Plissken could see that there was something definitely bothering him. He set the gun down carefully on the desk top, then he reached into the top drawer and pulled out a beige folder. He opened it and read:
“Plissken. American. Lieutenant in Special Forces Unit: ‘Black Light.’ Two Purple Hearts in Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to be decorated by the President.” His eyes came up for just a second to touch Plissken’s, then he continued. “You robbed the Federal Reserve Depository. Life sentence in New York Maximum Security Penitentiary.” He looked up from the folder again, raising his eyebrows. “I’m ready to kick your ass out of the world, war hero.”
Plissken narrowed his gaze. There was something different about this man, something he couldn’t put his finger on. He wasn’t like the others. “Who are you?” he asked.
“Hauk,” he replied. “Police Commissioner.”
“Bob Hauk?”
Hauk smiled. “You remember, huh? Special Forces Unit: ‘Texas Thunder.’ We heard plenty about you.”
Plissken remembered. Hauk commanded the air cover at Leningrad. He had lost a lot of men, too. But, look at who was on what side of the desk. “You stuck with it, then. Didn’t you… blackbelly?”
Hank’s voice came back angry. “You don’t know a thing about it.”
There was dead air between them, an absolute wall.
“Why are we talking?” Plissken said at last.
“I have a deal for you,” Hauk said, his voice cold and businesslike. “You’ll receive a full pardon for every criminal action you committed in the United States.”
Going into the folder, Hauk pulled out a piece of paper and held it up. Plissken had never seen a pardon before, but that sure looked like one. He stared at Hauk, not trusting him, not willing to trust anyone who had lived through Leningrad without being changed by it.
Hauk got up and moved around the desk. Plissken was surprised by how dirty the man was. He moved up closer to the Snake, almost close enough to reach out and grab.
“There was an accident about an hour ago,” Hauk said. “A small jet went down inside New York City. The President was on board.”
“President of what?” Plissken asked, ready to jump on Hauk if the opportunity presented itself.
“It isn’t funny, Plissken. You go in, find the President, bring him out in twenty-four hours, and you’re a free man.”
Plissken watched Hauk carefully, waiting for the punch line. It didn’t seem to be coming. “This a joke?” he finally asked.
“I’m making you an offer.”
“Bullshit.”
“Straight. Just like I said.”
Plissken sat back. He wasn’t anybody’s sucker bait. “I’ll think about it,” he answered.
Hauk took a breath, but his expression remained deadly earnest. “No time,” he said. “Give me an answer.”
“Okay,” Plissken replied. “Get a new President”
He watched Hauk’s jaw muscles tighten, but the man remained in control. He may even have been sane. “We’re still at war, Plissken. We need him alive.”
“I don’t care about your war,” the Snake answered. “Or your President.”
“Is that your answer?”
Plissken threw up his hands. “I’m thinking it over,” he snapped. He looked at Hauk again. He was really beginning to believe the man was on the level. He thought about Duggan and the steri-chamber. “Why me?” he asked.
“You flew the Gulffire over Leningrad,” the man answered quickly. “You know how to get in quiet.” He turned and walked a few paces across the room; when he turned back around his features were softer. “You’re all I’ve got,” he said quietly.
Just on the surface, it seemed to Plissken that the deal had more holes in it than a metric ton of Swiss cheese, but what the hell. He shrugged. “Well… I go in there one way or the other. It don’t mean shit to me. Give me the papers.” He reached for them.
Hauk shook his head, snatching back the papers. “When you come out,” he said, and this time he was smiling.
“Before”
“I said I wasn’t a fool, Plissken.”
Plissken fixed him with his cool, reptilian eye. “Snake,” he said, smooth as syrup. “Call me Snake.”
IX
10:14 P.M.
Plissken walked between Hauk and Rehme. It was obvious that they were uneasy in his company since they had taken the cuffs off him; it was just as obvious that he hated being in that particular corner of the universe at that particular time.
He hated Hauk, hated him just like he hated any blackbelly. Oh, the man wore a suit and talked about prerogatives, but he was still the head killer in a society of killers-Witchfinder General. He couldn’t forgive the man that. Forgiveness was nowhere to be found within the countless reflecting shards of the broken mirror that was Plissken’s spirit.