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.
The man nodded, gulping.
Hauk let him go and climbed out of the copter, leaving his backpack behind him on the seat. He couldn’t feel his body as he ran. His concentration was all centered. He was moving eyes, moving toward the bunker.
Plissken stared at Slag’s motionless form on the canvas. He couldn’t tell whether the man was living or dead. He was just laying there, eyes staring abstractly at the high ceiling. The crowd was chanting again, but the words were different this time:
“Snake, Snake, Snake!”
He staggered over to the big man, and fell to his knees beside his prostrate form. The countdown watch was still hooked on his unmoving wrist.
“Excuse me,” Plissken said, and unstrapped the thing from Slag’s arm. He looked at it before he put it on, 3:39:22.
He put it on and slowly, painfully, creaked back up to stand on his feet. He raised his arms straight up, fists clenched in the victory salute. He looked defiantly up at the Duke’s box. The man wasn’t even watching him. He was listening intently to one of his men, and from the look on the Duke’s face, he wasn’t getting very good news.
Plissken kept his eye on them, even as he acknowledged the crowd. Something was up. Something big.
When the man finished talking, the Duke jumped up and ran from his box, all of his people hurrying behind. The man who had delivered the message stayed behind in the box. He began waving his arms for silence.
It took a while for everyone to see him, but they finally did. The noise in the room died down to nothing. Plissken couldn’t believe the change. Absolute silence ruled the mammoth room. The crowd got quietly to its feet, listening.
The man spoke loud enough so that his words were driven home on the crowd the way that Plissken had driven home the baseball bat. “The President’s gone!” he yelled. “Brain took him!”
It was like a fire in a madhouse. The whole place went immediately berserk; people were screaming, running in all directions, chairs overturned and flew through the air. These people had had one chance at freedom and it was suddenly snatched away from them.
They weren’t taking it well.
Plissken no longer mattered. Plissken was nothing. Brain was everything. Brain was all that mattered. They wanted Brain. Climbing through the ropes, the Snake limped away with the crowd. He wanted Brain, too. And he figured he knew where he could find him.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The tracer let out a steady piercing whine. It was at once the most grating and beautiful sound that Hauk had ever heard in his lifetime. He watched, impatient, as Rehme tried to triangulate the signal on the radar screen in the control bunker. The man kept fiddling with the dials, muttering to himself.
“Hurry up,” Hauk said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The Secretary had wandered in after them and stood off to the side, straightening his tie, waiting to see which way it was going to roll before he committed himself.
“There,” Rehme said, pointing. A faint dot had appeared on the radar scan. “Grand Central Station.”
Hauk banged a fist happily down on the table top. “I knew that son of a bitch was alive!”
All at once, the transmit signal started faltering, breaking up. Then it died, choked off.
“It’s gone,” the Secretary said, and he sounded almost happy.
“The signal only lasts fifteen minutes,” Hauk told him, then turned to stare at Rehme. “Down load the choppers. We’re in a stand-by situation.”
Rehme gave him the thumbs up, and slapped him on the back as he hurried out the door.
“Is that wise?” Prather asked, walking up close to Hauk. “Anybody could have pushed that button.”
Hauk found a chair and sat heavily. “Only Plissken knew there was a safety catch,” he returned, leaning his head back. He would have closed his eyes, but he was afraid that they’d stay closed. He sat up straight, shaking his head. “Well give him a little more time, just to make sure.”
Plissken found his leather jacket back in the dining room. He slipped it on, though the pain in his upper body made it a laborious process. Finding an exit, he limped out into the already darkening sky. He had missed the whole
