“Wait a minute,” Romero called after him.
Brain stopped, his back still to the man. Maggie looked up at him. He wiggled his eyebrows. She smiled, proud.
“Why?” Romero asked.
They turned back around. “He’s got something in his collar,” Brain said. “In the lining. The Duke wants it” They walked back to the man.
“What?” Romero asked, still blocking the doorway.
Brain shrugged. “Cyanide capsules,” he replied. “The Duke don’t want a dead President. Plissken told him about them.”
Reluctantly, eyes still wary, Romero opened the door. Maggie gave Brain a good shove and both of them were in right away. There were three other guards lounging around. The President sat like a lifeless mannequin in the corner.
“Cyanide?” Romero said, his voice climbing a hill.
Brain moved toward the President, taking a knife out of his jacket. Maggie moved away from the center of the room, hand still on the pistol, tightening.
“Might try to take it tomorrow,” Brain said.
The Gypsy put his hands on his hips. “Why would he do that?”
Brain got to the President and began messing with his collar. The man looked up at him, coming up out of a deep stupor. His eyes got wide when he saw the knife.
Maggie watched Romero, watched it all snap together in his mind. She eased the gun slowly out of her belt. Romero moved toward Brain.
“That’s just so much bull,” he said, putting a hand on Brain’s shoulder. “You’re not supposed to be in here, Brain…”
Brain flashed around with the knife, burying it to the hilt in Romero’s stomach. The man’s expression never changed. His face, already a deathshead, simply made that abstraction real. He sank slowly to the floor.
Maggie had the gun out and was firing before she even realized it. The room was small, the targets big. She blasted two of the guards down before they could even stand. The third got right up on her before the gun coughed again and took off his head.
She looked at Brain.
She smiled.
XXI
3:58:53, 52, 51…
Plissken never heard the bell, he was too busy rolling around on the bloody canvas, trying to stay alive. But Slag heard it, a recurring what-round-is-this nightmare.
The big man stopped immediately, like a trained seal, dropping his bat to the ground. He stomped over to his corner like a good little boy.
The Snake staggered to his feet, getting to the first vacant corner he saw. His body was one big welt. He was probably black and blue all over, but he couldn’t see beneath the blood that covered him from his tussle with the wet canvas.
Rolling his head around on his shoulders, he let his eye rove the crowd again. They were all yelling and sweating, getting warmed up, wagering for cans of tomato soup. Then he caught something, a glint.
A Gypsy with a red bandanna stood by the round ringer. He wore a medallion on a chain around his neck. Plissken blinked. The medallion looked familiar. It was the tracer that Hauk had given him.
The referee came back into the ring and collected the bats. He handed them to the red bandanna and got some others in their place. He went to them in turn, issuing one each: trash can lid and bat. These were bats plus. A long nail was jutting out of the end of each.
The crowd was on its feet, jumping with the lust and the excitement. Plissken put them out of his mind.
The radio was obstinate; it just wouldn’t answer. Hauk tightened the straps on his backpack and wished he was off asleep somewhere, curled up like a big dog in a sun spot.
But he wasn’t.
From habit he pulled the pearl-handled revolver out of its bed and snapped open the cylinder, checking the ammo. He flicked it closed just as Rehme came into the bunker.
“They’re ready,” the man said.
“Sure.”
“Is it go?”
Hauk looked at that damnable radio. It stared silently back at him. “Yeah,” he said finally, and let Rehme lead him out of the room.
Plissken heard the bell this time, listened closely to it since it could be the last one he’d ever hear.
He limped into the center of the ring and waited for the man-mountain. He didn’t have to wait long. Slag lumbered out, looking like some sort of crazed Roman gladiator.
The man smelled victory and came right for Plissken, no feints or parries. He growled loudly and came straight down with the bat.
The Snake got up his shield, but the force of the blow buckled him almost to the ground. His reflexes were going; he just couldn’t hold together much longer.
The bat came down again, hammering Plissken, driving him to his knees. If he was going to live to have his arteries blown up, he’d have to do something soon.
The bat was up, straining, coming down for the final blow. Plissken had one shot. Slag’s legs were unprotected. He swung out hard and low from his vantage point on the floor.
He didn’t have much strength left but what he did have went into the swing. He caught Slag on the shin, the nail sinking deeply into the man’s leg right through his boot.
Slag howled, bending to grab his leg. Plissken jumped up, jerking his bat out, a good hunk of Slag meat coming with it. The big man’s arms reached futilely for him through his pain, but the Snake slithered underneath his grasp.
He came up behind. This was it. Before the big man could turn on him, he levered the bat as far behind him as he could and came straight back over his head with it.
The blow caught Slag on the back of the neck, on the spine, and the nail sunk in all the way up to the Hank Aaron autograph on the varnished wood.
Plissken backed away; the bat stayed for supper. Slag couldn’t move. He was paralyzed from the blow. All he could do was stand there, gurgling cries seeping from his open mouth. His body, stiff, began weaving around like a top near the end of its spin. Then he simply fell over, stiff as a starched collar.
Plissken moved around him, exhaustion overpowering him. Once the fight was over, his will began to drain quickly away.
The crowd was still cheering, but this time they were cheering for him. King of the jungle. He fell against the ropes and tried to climb through, but someone rushed up to keep him in.
He saw the man through a bloody fog, focused on his warning color. Red. Red bandanna. He remembered something. Yes. The man wore his tracer around his neck.
Letting himself fall between the ropes, he made the red bandanna catch him to put him back. When the man grabbed him, he reached out and twisted the safety catch on the tracer, then pushed the button. It was all he had the strength to do.
The choppers were churning, grinding the air. Ready. Hauk put on the headset and prepared to give the order. Prather stood just outside the pads, watching intently. More than anything, Hauk wanted to go get the man and force him into the city with them, force him to live, just for awhile, the hell that formed the substance of all their lives.
He was just turning to give the order when he saw Rehme. He almost ignored it, but the man was running, charging. He was waving his arms wildly above his head.
Hauk hesiated for a second, then pulled off the headset. Rehme passed Prather and kept on coming toward Hauk’s copter. He got there, breathing hard, and began banging frantically on the door.
The Commissioner popped it open and leaned out.
“What?” he yelled.
Rehme couldn’t get his breath, kept gulping air. The words were getting lost in his throat.
“What is it?”
“Plissken…” the man said through gasps.
“What about…”
“Plissken’s tracer.”
Hauk jerked around to his pilot and grabbed him by the front of his uniform. “You get on that horn,” he ordered. “Keep ’em down. Nobody moves. Nobody moves!” Reaching out, he tore off the man’s goggles, getting eye to eye with him. “Do you understand?” he said.