beautifully vibrant rainbow colors that strung out across the width of the city in never-ending, shimmering streamers.
But Hauk wasn’t watching the sky. He was looking toward a tiny black dot overhanging the edge of the tall building. It may have been a glider. Then again, it may have been a shadow.
“Plissken,” he whistled low, wishing an answering tone would come floating back to him like a responsive echo. “Plissken.”
It had been over six hours since the man’s last radio contact. Plissken could have been dead. In six hours he could be dead and stiff with rigor mortis, and Hauk would be worrying about nothing. He could have just cracked under the strain and taken the glider and tried to put distance between himself and the prison, hoping that, somehow, distance would burn out the killers in his chest.
Bob Hauk didn’t believe either one of those scenarios, though. He knew Plissken, knew his kind of man. That’s why he picked him for the job. He knew that the Snake was out there somewhere, alive and fighting, and he wished more than anything in the world that he could get in there and give him a hand. Time was running short.
“Plissken.”
The air was crisp, fall air. It wafted gently, slowly dragging the morning light in with it. Maggie liked the morning. It made her feel that things were possible, new beginnings. There had never been anything in her life to make her feel that new starts were possible, but she was alive. Life was hope. She breathed deep, taking in a lungful of the morning air. It was laced with the aroma of roast dog.
It was a gray morning, just like all mornings. The Duke hadn’t let her and Brain leave after he got Plissken. He was thinking about them, thinking about whether or not to kill them. Brain was worried about it, but she wasn’t. The Duke needed gas, and Brain was the only one who knew how to get it to him. The Duke was running things because he was jungle smart; he knew what he needed to survive. No. He wouldn’t be getting rid of Brain.
The Gypsy men stared at her, let their eyes rove up and down her at will. Some of them had been sterilized, some hadn’t. She could always tell it in their eyes. The normal ones wanted her, wanted her down on the concrete or bent over a car fender. That, she could understand and deal with. The others, the neuters, they wanted her dead. They wanted to kill every reminder of their life before and the things they could never have again. They wanted to mutilate her; it was all right there in their faces.
She kept a long pin way back in her free-flowing hair. Its sole purpose was to go for the eyes of the animals with blood on their minds.
She stayed close to Brain, close so that everyone would know who she belonged to. Brain, in his usual fashion, was staying close to the Duke. The platforms spread out around them, the myriad campfires of the Gypsy horde slowly dying after the morning meal.
There was excitement in the camp today, more than the usual. It was food day in Central Park, the end of the month drop. It was also the day that they made their final arrangements about the President.
Duke and Brain had moved to the station wagon that had brought them last night In the daylight, the car was a mess. It looked like it had sat there undriven for years. It was badly battered, scraped and smeared with blood.
The Duke was tying the President to the fender of the thing, propping his briefcase up on the hood, chain extended. He carried Plissken’s rifle. Maggie stood at a short distance, watching them.
She had thought that Brain had made a bad mistake when he turned Snake over to the Duke. There was something about the man that made her trust him. He was too desperate, too determined, to be anything but what he said he was.
But Brain didn’t think about that. He was too scared of the Duke to even think straight about anything. His cowardice had messed him up more than once.
He couldn’t help it; she knew that. There were a lot of things about Brain that bothered her, that she would change if she were able, but he was all she had and she was going to hang onto him. He provided some sort of stability to her life, and Maggie realized that stability was the only thing keeping her sane.
Brain and the Duke were walking back toward her from the car. They were talking.
“I don’t care,” the Duke was saying. “I want that diagram, Brain.”
“But Plissken said something about a time limit.”
They came up to stand beside her. Brain reached out and squeezed her arm reassuringly. She hugged him quickly, and under his coat she felt the jutting metal of the pistol she had given him.
“What time limit?” the Duke asked. He raised the rifle to his face, sighting down the barrel at the President.
“On him,” Brain answered, pointing.
The Duke fired, and the bullet exploded on the fender, near the President’s head. The man was shaking, mouth open.
“Hold still, damnit!” the Duke yelled at him, and aimed again. “That’s a lot of crap,” he told Brain. “He’s the President, for God’s sake.” He fired again. This one exploded on the hood, near the briefcase. “Aren’t you the President?” he yelled.
The man began nodding vigorously.
“He’s the most important man outside of me,” the Duke said, and drew his lips tight. “Right?” he yelled.
“Right!” the President yelled back, voice cracking.
“What did I teach you?”
The man’s lips moved for several seconds before the words came out. “You’re the Duke of New York,” he said. “You’re A-number-one.”
The Duke smiled slightly. “Can’t hear you!”
The President screamed, a piercing, shrill cry. “YOU’RE THE DUKE OF NEW YORK! YOU’RE A-NUMBER- ONE!”
The Duke looked at Brain. “Get me the diagram,” he said softly.
Brain turned to Maggie. She nodded, reassuring. She had spent the whole night selling Snake Plissken to him. Go on, she mouthed silently.
“Don’t kill Plissken, Duke,” Brain said. “We need him.”
“That’s not what you said last right.”
He looked at Maggie again. She nodded once more, proud that her man was standing up to the Duke the way he was.
“That was last night,” Brain responded.
The Duke frowned and turned the rifle on Brain. “Get moving,” he said, and left no doubts that he meant exactly that.
Brain gulped, backing slowly away. The Duke flared back around and fired again at the President. The bullet exploded on the briefcase lock, blowing the mechanism open. Books and papers began spilling all over the ground.
Grinning wide, the Duke strode to the car, his men already running up to it.
“Let’s go,” Brain whispered to Maggie.
“Wait,” she returned. “Just a second.”
She was watching, wanting to see what the briefcase contained. It wasn’t too late to work out something else if the feeling was right. That damned Plissken. There was no reason for him to come into the city alone unless the motivation was strong. Overpowering.
The Gypsies sifted gleefully through the briefcase. They untied the President and let him away. Maggie watched carefully. Romero was there, bending down. He picked up something off the ground, a cassette of some kind. He slipped it quickly into his pocket. Nobody saw it but her.
“I’m ready,” she told Brain. “Let’s get out of here.”
XIX
