One of them was talking. “Sir, we can’t get…”
“Jesus Christ, shoot the lock!” Harker screamed.
The man’s head was darting. “We can’t. She’s pressurized the cabin!”
“Rip out the hinges!”
One of the men began pulling him to his feet. “We’ve got to get you to the pod, sir.”
“Yes. Yes. By all means.”
His mind was whirling, out of control. He was trying to move, to walk, but they were handcuffing his wrist to that stupid briefcase. That was about the last thing he needed right then.
They had him walking. His free hand fingered the gun in his pocket, just in case. They moved to the rear of the cabin. One of the men was already turning the wheellock in the floor that led to the pod.
He turned once more to the front of the plane. The man up there was having some luck with the hinges.
“The door…” he started.
“No time.”
They were easing him down into the pod. It was small and cramped-claustrophobic. There was a tiny padded seat, the walls likewise padded. The only instrumentation was a readout screen that sat in front of the seat.
Hands were fastening his seatbelt. Someone clamped an aluminum bracelet onto his wrist, and the readout board immediately lit up, showing in moving blips his life functions: blood pressure, heartbeat and temperature. He thought about how silly it was to have a machine to tell him when he died.
He looked up just once to see faces staring down at him. Every one of them wanted to be in that pod. His fingers tightened on the pistol.
Then they closed the hatch, and Harker was alone in a dark void, his only companion a blipping readout board, a perverse sort of mirror. Then, movement…
Rehme was trembling, hands over his face. “Oh god,” he moaned. “Oh god, no.”
Hauk just ignored him, his gaze fixed on the radar screen, his mind whirling, looking for alternatives. On the screen, the red blip was moving into the flashing danger area-New York City.
He glanced over at the controller. The man was white as milk, lips moving soundlessly. No one talked; they just watched the blip.
Static over the speaker, then that voice again: “What better revolutionary example than to let their President perish in the inhuman dungeon of his own imperialist prison.”
Hauk moved away from the screen, away from the congestion of men standing around it. He stood, back to the commotion, staring at nothing. The crazy woman was still talking.
“The bosses of the racist, sexist, police state are shuddering under the collective might of the worker’s rightful vengeance!”
Hauk put a hand to his hair, smoothed it, composed himself.
“Workers of the world, look up into the skies! The people have won a glorious victory.”
A crashing sound came through the speaker. A cry from the woman, a strangled rasp of, “Bitch!”
There was loud popping, distorting off the audibility range, coming through as dead air at its peak.
Bullets, Hauk thought
He spun back to the screen, hope rising. A low moan was seeping through the speaker. Then a high pitched squeal, then… nothing. Soft, purring static.
There was a second of silence, then the controller said, “He’s down.”
Hauk was out of the traffic control door before he even thought about it. Central control was down the hall; they’d know exactly where the plane went down. He heard a noise behind him and turned. Rehme was right on his heels.
“I need you in one piece,” he told the man.
There was already activity in the bunker when they arrived. They had watched the thing go down, too. Blackbellies were running everywhere. Preparing advance deployment
“Commissioner,” someone called to him as he entered. He hurried over.
It was a beanpole of a man, all knees and elbows. He was excited, pointing to a medical scanner.
“What is it?” Hauk barked.
“Vital signs monitor,” the man choked out. “We use it for shore parties. It came on just before the plane crashed.”
Hauk looked at Rehme. The man had composed himself somewhat. “Escape pod,” he said. “They must have ejected him before…”
Hauk’s eyes flew back to the screen. All the blips were active, the pulse charging.
“He’s still alive!” Hauk said. “Where the hell is he?”
“Here,” Rehme said, excitement flavoring his words. “Over here,”
Hauk moved to the man. He was standing by a bank of green glowing machines. Rehme’s hand was shaking as he pointed to a schematic screen.
It showed a geometric, three-dimensional image of Air Force One. The computer was forming the image, inventing it from radar information. The plane tracked through the air. Then, a three-dimensional image of a skyscraper moved into the frame and silently, artistically, the plane collided with it, everything breaking apart in beautiful, mathematic symmetry. From the rear of the plane a blinking red dot arched slowly away from the hulk of the aircraft.
“The escape pod,” Hauk said, and his voice came out hoarse.
Rehme had a pocketcom in his hand, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Forty degrees,” he said.
The view from the invert screen pulled wider and the red dot fell away from the plane, making a parabolic arc down to street level.
“Fifty yards from crash site,” Rehme said,
Hauk started for the door. There were no decisions now, just action. “I’m going in,” he said. “Pinpoint the crash and get to me on the pads.”
He was out the door and moving. It was going to be a long night.
VI
8:30 P.M.
The rain hadn’t started yet. The moisture was straining the dark clouds, stuffing them full like infection clogging a wound. Bob Hauk wasn’t thinking about the rain anymore, though. He was thinking about war.
The helicopters stretched out before him on the wide landing field, props beating the air, whipping it to frenzy. Their sound was grating and malevolent.
There were twenty copters; they were all painted flat black. They were screaming and angry, straining at the leash, ripping at the air with their whirring blades. They were all going crazy with the smell of blood.
Hauk was out of the air control bunker and moving toward the copters. He yelled at the first black suit that he saw. “Backpack!” he called.
The man stopped walking, his face filled with confusion. “BACKPACK!” Hauk screamed, trying to get above the horrible whines that filled the air. He pointed to his back.
The man nodded in understanding, gave him the thumbs-up sign and hurried off. Hauk started for the choppers again. He was through with war; he really was. And this was too much like it.
Leningrad had iced it for him. He took an early retirement after that one and, somehow, when he packed and came home, he had forgotten to pack his medals. It made him think of Snake Plissken for just a second. He had almost gotten to meet the man who had kept the USPF on the run for nearly five years. Now he didn’t know if he’d ever get to. Once you were dumped in the city-that was it. You were gone.
Bob Hauk knew that for a fact.
The blackbelly with the backpack ran up to him. Hauk took the black canvas sack from him with a silent nod. The man smiled broadly, his eyes glazed with the excitement. Hauk tightened his lips and moved on.
He was into the field of copters, caught in their vortex. The air swirled angrily around him. He wanted to remove himself mentally from the whole business, but he couldn’t. He’d spent too many years in the military, too many years giving and receiving orders. He would do what was expected of him. Always what was expected of him.
Black figures were blurring past, troopers in full battle dress: backpacks with survival gear, helmets, rifles, infrared goggles. Their mouths were open full, screaming, but Hauk couldn’t hear them above the helicopter noise.