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.
Noise came from behind him. Someone else was being led up to the ring, and the cheering increased in volume again. Then there was a chant, a name being called over and over.
“Slag. Slag. Slag.”
The man climbed through the ropes. He was huge, the biggest man Plissken had ever seen. His muscles were toned and rigid, oiled to glistening in the torchlight. He was an ox, a machine. There wasn’t an ounce of fat on him. He wore black tights and shiny knee boots.
The Snake backed away, leaning against a corner post. His eye went to the man’s hand; he was wearing Plissken’s watch. He squinted and turned his head sideways to read the face. It read: 4:02:15.
He looked into Slag’s face. The man smiled slowly, evilly-almost as if he understood.
Hauk sat in the control bunker, the stationary eye in the middle of the swirling hurricane of activity. He watched the outside monitor screens. The choppers were warming up on the pads again. All of them. But this time there would be no holding back, no restraint. No discretion.
It was all out of control. This time the blackbellies would go in with their guns screaming, and they wouldn’t stop screaming until they ran out of ammo. Once unchained, the black-suited killers wouldn’t stop until they had destroyed everything they could find.
It wouldn’t get the President back. It wouldn’t help the Hartford Summit. It wouldn’t even find Snake Plissken. It was lust. The simple lust for death…
And he would be giving the order.
The microphone sat before him. He picked it up, Just as he had done so many times in the past hours. He stared at it, quiet, mocking. His lifeline of air. He flipped it on.
“Plissken,” he said, low, almost a moan.
“Plissken…”
The rules were ample: no rules. Plissken kept darting his head around, looking for a way out, but Gypsies with long knives and bows had formed a circle around the ring, making sure he stayed put. Slag was clenching and unclenching his massive fists. Nobody needed to tell the Snake that it was a fight to the death. He figured that out.
The Duke was making a speech. Through the pain and the tension and the noise, he tried to focus on it.
“… And they sent in their best man. And when we roll down the Fifty Ninth Street Bridge tomorrow, on our way to freedom, we’re gonna have their best man leading the way… from the neck up, on the hood of my car!”
And the cheering went up again, and applause. The room was awash with noise, drowning in it. The Duke held up his hands for silence, and the roar died down to a growl.
“Let’s do it!” the man screamed through cupped hands, and the cheering came up again.
A Gypsy climbed through the ropes carrying two baseball bats. Louisville sluggers. He gave one to Slag, then moved to Plissken, grinning wide enough to crack his face.
Plissken took the bat and watched the Gypsy get the hell out of the ring. He wished that he could enjoy such a luxury. A man wearing a grotesque Halloween mask that looked better than the real faces, stood at ringside with a hammer. As soon as the bat boy got out of the way, he struck it to a bell. The fight was underway.
The big man’s face was a sag of flesh, as if his muscles simply got tired that high up and were pulled down by gravity. He rearranged the flesh into a hard frown and began stalking the Snake.
Plissken limped as far away from the man as the ring would allow. Slag came for him slowly, bludgeon raised high above his head. The Snake gave it all his concentration, and the crowd noises disappeared completely from his hearing. All that remained was Slag. They were the whole universe, and one of them had to die.
Plissken figured that he still had four hours left.
The big man faced off slowly, weaving back and forth, and Snake, reptile that he was, never broke eye contact. Slag lunged, his eyes giving him away a second before. The bat swung out as Plissken ducked. It whooshed over his head.
The bat arced back the other way, faster than Snake could have believed possible. He rolled in the direction of the blow, going to the sticky canvas, all pain wiped from his body in the mental rush to survive.
The big man was right on top of him. He tried to get to his feet, but the bat was there, right there! It connected hard on his shoulder, picking him off the ground and sending him flying against the ropes.
He went down hard, and the bat was there again, coming straight down. He rolled and the thing whapped the ground, shaking the whole ring.
“Are you sure he’s down here?” Brain asked nervously as they walked the dark hallway toward the storeroom.
Maggie put an arm on his back, patting-also pushing. “I heard them say so. Just relax, would you? This is the easy part.”
Maggie kept reassuring him, kept him pumped up. She was positive that this was their only way out and there was no chance that she was going to let Brain fag out on her. The muffled cheering barely reached them where they were, but it never left her hearing. It was Plissken they were yelling about. He was in there getting his head knocked off by Slag. Too bad. He would have been a tremendous help to them. Now they were going to have to do it all by themselves-if Brain would just hold together.
“I wish Snake was here,” he told her.
“That’s the first time I’ve ever beard you say that,” she responded, and smiled when he jerked his head to her. He smiled back, a nervous, frightened smile.
They came up to the storeroom door. Brain stopped and looked at it. Maggie reached out and knocked before he changed his mind.
The door opened, and Romero stuck his head out. He snarled with his pointy teeth, the skin on his skeletal face stretched tight as a drum head. He was wearing Cabbie’s hat, slightly tilted, to the side of his head.
“Where’d you get that?” Brain asked.
“Got it from Cabbie,” the man responded in a whisper voice. “Traded him.”
Brain was shifting his weight from foot to foot, pulling on the hem of his cloth jacket. “For what?” he asked.
Maggie pinched him on the back, trying to make him stand still. He was blowing the whole deal.
“What are you so nervous about?” Romero asked, his sunken eyes glaring.
“I gotta see the President,” Brain blurted out.
“Who says?”
“The Duke,” Brain said, nodding his head and looking around. He wouldn’t meet Romero’s eyes. Maggie reached a hand into her jacket and grasped the automatic.
“No, he doesn’t,” Romero answered, and his voice had gotten rough like sandpaper.
“I’ll tell him you said that,” Brain said with contrived self-righteousness. “Come on,” he snapped at Maggie and turned on his heel.