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.
XX
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.