The man finished filling his needle, then just stood there holding it, like a hunter with his rifle grounded until something comes along to shoot.
Plissken gulped, feeling queasy. He wasn’t much for shots. He disliked pain a lot more when he knew it was coming. “Is that for me?” he asked sheepishly.
“Strong antitoxin,” Hauk said. “Stops bacteria and viral growth for twenty-four hours.”
“Take off your jacket,” the man with the needle said. “Then roll up your sleeve.”
Plissken crossed his arms over his chest. “That’s okay,” he said. “Don’t need it. I’ll be all right. Really.”
“Let’s go, Plissken,” Hauk said.
“But I don’t like needles.”
“Plissken…”
The Snake sighed and slipped out of his jacket, letting it drop to the floor. He walked over to the examination table, hopping up backward to sit on it. He rolled up his khakied sleeve. The man with the needle came closer.
Trying to ignore the whole business, Plissken diverted his attention to Hauk, who had walked over to the machine with all the dials. He clicked some switches and a number lit up on the machine.
23:00:05.
He narrowed his gaze to take that in when he felt the sharp stab of the needle going into his arm. He grimaced slightly.
“Over in a second,” Cronenberg said in his best fatherly voice.
Hauk got into a small box next to the machine. He came out of it with a wristwatch. He walked back over to Plissken, setting the dial as he did.
“There,” Cronenberg said, and pulled the thing out of Plissken’s arm. “That wasn’t too bad, was it?”
“Then you sit down here and I’ll do it to you,” the Snake replied.
He was just into rolling down his sleeve, when Hauk strapped the wristwatch on him. It had a readout like the machine’s. Hauk pushed a button on the side. The readout light began blinking. 23:00:01. 23:00:00. 22:59:59.
Hauk watched the blinking numbers for a few seconds, then looked up at Plissken. He said: “Twenty-two hours, fifty-nine minutes, fifty-seven seconds.”
The Snake looked from the watch to the man’s face. It was a countdown watch. “We talked about twenty- four,” he said to the Commissioner.
Hauk looked at Cronenberg. It was the kind of look that said, get your ass as far away from me as you can get. The old man drifted to the other side of the room immediately and began fiddling with the machine.
Hauk turned his glacier eyes back to Plissken. “In twenty-two hours the Hartford Summit Meeting will be over. China and the Soviets will go back home.”
Plissken watched Cronenberg with his good eye. The doctor had pulled two long rubber tubes out of the back of the machine and was fiddling with them.
“The President was on his way to the Summit when his plane went down,” Hauk continued. “He has a briefcase handcuffed to his wrist. The tape recording inside has to reach Hartford in twenty-two hours.”
“What’s on it?” Plissken asked.
He watched as Hauk worked his lips against themselves. “Do you know anything about nuclear fusion?” he asked.
The Snake put up his hands. “Never mind,” he said, “I don’t want to know.”
The doctor was walking back to the table, back behind Plissken. He had the tubes in his hands. They were attached to the machine, stretching back and bouncing like monstrous rubber bands.
“We’re talking about the survival of the human race, Plissken,” Hauk said, but it lacked conviction. “Something you don’t give a shit about.”
Cronenberg spoke from behind. “I’m going to inject you,” he said dryly. “It’ll sting for a second or two.”
The Snake didn’t have a chance to complain. He didn’t even have a chance to ask the doctor what was going to be coming out of those two rubber tubes. The man just placed them quickly on either side of his neck and pushed a button. The tubes were compressed air guns. He felt a bite, then a pop, and for just a second it felt like someone was pinching the hell out of his neck. Then, just as quickly as it had come, the pain stopped. Cronenberg removed the tubes, and Plissken brought his hands up to feel the spots. They were tender to the touch.
He heard Hauk sigh and looked up at the man. His face had relaxed somewhat, as if some good and positive thing had just happened. “That’s it, Plissken,” he said.
Cronenberg’s voice was cold as January behind him, “Tell him,” the man said.
“Tell me what?” Plissken snapped.
Hauk moved across the room, almost as if he were physically needing to put distance between himself and Plissken. “About that idea you’ve got about turning the Gulffire around 180 degrees and flying off to Canada.”
Plissken jerked his head around to Cronenberg. The man’s face was pasty white. His eye began twitching madly under the patch. “What did you do to me?” he demanded.
“My idea,” Hauk said from the other side of the small office. He was puffed up, trying to look big and mean. He was out of practice. “Something we’ve been fooling around with. Two microscopic capsules lodged in your arteries. They’re already starting to dissolve.”
He took his eyes from Plissken and paced his corner of the room in a tight circle. “In twenty-two hours, the cores will completely melt. Inside the cores are small heat-sensitive charges. Not a large explosive, about the size of a pinhead. Just enough to open up both your arteries.”
He stopped walking, turned his head and stared hard at the Snake. “I’d say you’d be dead in ten, fifteen seconds.”
The pain charged through Plissken’s eye, and he was off the table, jumping toward Hauk. He hit the man hard, hand in a death grip on his throat. The momentum carried them back to bang into a concrete wall. Hauk groaned loudly.
“Take ’em out!” Plissken screamed, squeezing hard on Hauk’s neck.
Eyes bulging, breath caught in his throat, Hauk had his pistol out, jammed into Plissken’s stomach. But the Snake was well beyond that. He’d go gladly if he could take Bob Hauk along with him.
Plissken was vaguely aware of Doctor Cronenberg beside him. The man was shaking visibly, mouth working. He was talking. Plissken picked it up with half an ear, then listened to it all.
“They’re protected by the cores!” Cronenberg was yelling. “But fifteen minutes before the last hour is up we can neutralize the charges with an x-ray.” His hands were on the Snake’s arm, touching, gently touching. “We can stop it, Snake. We can stop it!”
Plissken looked at a gagging Hauk, then at Cronenberg’s deep worried eyes. He released the man’s throat.
Deep, husky sounds came from Hauk, as he staggered away from the gray wall, hand up on his throat, massaging. He holstered his gun.
Plissken tried to swallow the anger back down to the boiler within him. He looked at the watch. It read: 22:47:01.
Hauk was taking deep breaths. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “We’ll burn out the charges… if you have the President.”
Plissken glared at him. “What if I’m late?”
Hauk straightened his tie. “No more Hartford Summit. No more Snake Plissken.”
Plissken bent down and picked up his leather jacket, draping it over his arm. He was calm again, thinking, adjusting. He stared fire at Hauk. “When I get back,” he said, “I’m going to kill you.”
The Commissioner accepted that at face value. He even smiled slightly. “The Gulffire’s waiting,” he said.
X
COUNTDOWN 22:13:36, 35, 34…
