spectacle, the dirtiest laundry of our government aired for the world to see? Or was the shutdown going to be discreet? You’d have to find a way to shut everyone up.”
“We certainly weren’t going to eliminate people.”
“But you weren’t going to give them passes or pardons,” Ben said.
“No, I suppose not.”
“Forgive me for not wanting to step in front of a firing squad,” Pilgrim said.
The gleam of New Orleans, dimmed since the storm, began to unfold beneath them. The radio sounded, the Lakefront Airport-where jets such as theirs would normally land-gave Pilgrim approach instructions.
Now they arrowed across the width of Lake Pontchartrain, the huge lake to the north of New Orleans, one source of the deadly tidal surge that flooded the city. Coming up fast on the city proper.
The radio repeated landing instructions.
Pilgrim scanned the controls. He listened to the reported positions of the planes around him, gauging distance and speed, measuring their own distance from Lakefront and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International.
“This’ll work,” he said, half to himself, then he dove the plane toward the waters of the lake in a steep dive.
Ben pressed his face to the window; the Homeland plane veered downward as they shot toward earth, trying to stay close to them.
“He’s crazy, Ben, for God’s sakes!” Vochek grabbed at Pilgrim and one-handed he shoved her back in her seat.
“Ben, give me the gun, now,” she said.
“No.” He didn’t point the gun at her but he kept it close. “He knows what he’s doing.”
“You’re as crazy as he is,” she said.
Air Traffic Control for Lakefront Airport was not happy, calmly warning Pilgrim that he did not have clearance for the approach he was taking. He raced low over the long cup of Lake Pontchartrain, but he had slowed his descent, flying a bare two hundred feet above the surface, and he came in low over the city. In the puddles of lamplight Ben could see people on the street, watching the plane in surprise and fear, perhaps sure the plane was verging on a crash, before it went past in an instant.
The Homeland plane was the only other aircraft close to them. Pilgrim zoomed over the Superdome, rising to skirt its top, took a turn over the French Quarter, going low again, driving hard along the Mississippi River toward the Lower Ninth Ward. Below in the bright glow of the moon lay a ghostly web of roads, highways, and devastation left over from Katrina, now taking on its own sad permanence. Ben peered at wide swatches of land where nothing had been rebuilt; many homes still lay on limp and broken deathbeds. FEMA trailers dotted yards. He watched the altimeter dip: He was at two hundred feet, soaring fast over the broken city. The engines’ roar made a booming echo against the ground.
He took a hard, screaming turn, downward toward the ruins.
The crazy bastard was going to land the plane. In the streets. Vochek could see below that it was madness: power lines, still-tilted poles, front yards jagged with fencing, ruined houses, trying to crawl back from death.
The gun. Ben still held it, not pointed at anyone, and his own mouth was a thin line of worry.
“Ben. Talk him out of this.”
“He knows what he’s doing.”
Doubtful. She grabbed at the gun and slammed her elbow hard into Ben’s chest. She got both hands on the gun and tried to wrench it from his grasp.
Pilgrim turned the plane hard again, banking, slowing, searching for enough street.
The force of the sudden turn threw Vochek off Ben. He put the gun on the side away from her. Then a small but pile-driving fist hit Ben in the back of the head, smacked his face against the window. His lip split, blood smeared his teeth.
He folded himself over the pistol. He could not let her get the gun; she’d force them to land at Lakefront. The plane took another wrench to port, Pilgrim trying to slow before he ran out of road to land. As the windows dipped, Ben saw the headlights of a car on a deserted street, close enough almost to touch.
Vochek landed on his back, one arm closing around his throat, the other hand’s fingers digging for his eyes, saying, “Please, Ben, give it to me before he kills us.”
Pilgrim needed asphalt. In the moon’s gleam and the spill of light from cars and houses, he saw five threads of pavement, one a busier cross street on the edge of the neighborhood, where the roads and the lots had been swept clean. The other two choices were less-crowded roads. One had fewer houses and FEMA trailers and chain- link fences dotting the yards and was a straight shot. It had the fewest cars parked on the curb. No sign of the Homeland plane close by; they were far above, circling, watching, summoning the local police to intercept Pilgrim. Taking bets if he was actually crazy enough to land.
Well, why wouldn’t he be? He had nothing left to lose. Nothing. First time he’d been told to do anything by anyone other than Teach in ten years, and she was dead. He took no more orders. The realization steadied his hands on the controls.
He descended fast, hearing Vochek and Ben struggling behind him. A pickup truck chuffed through an intersection at a crosshatch on the road, going the opposite way, maybe thirty feet below him as they dropped. Doubt-normally a stranger-filled him, and a sour taste broke in his mouth. He could kill someone, and he was supposed to be a Good Guy, eliminating Bad Guys. A minivan, full of kids, or a car, driven by a high school girl, or a motorcycle, with some regular nice guy coming back from a long day’s work of rebuilding the nearly lost city-no, he wouldn’t let that happen.
He dove the plane down toward the empty blacktop. Had to time it just right, pull up with room to spare, bring it down on three points, with room to slow-
Then the gun erupted.
Vochek knew how to hurt. The eyes, the groin, the bending back of the finger that caused surprised agony. She worked all this brutal magic on Ben, saying, “Ben, let go,” again and again. But he wouldn’t. She stepped on his wounded foot and he howled. She got a grip on the pistol. He raised the gun and she twisted it, felt his finger depress the trigger. The gun barked. The window shattered; a flick of light hit the wing.
“Goddamn it!” Pilgrim yelled.
Ben kicked back with all his strength, trapped Vochek between himself and her window. He kept her pinned, tried to pry her hands from the gun.
“Nearly there,” Pilgrim yelled.
Wheels hit the blacktop. The plane bounced hard, Ben nearly thrown to the ceiling. He kept his iron grip on the gun. He landed back on Vochek, knocking the wind from her. Wings screamed as Pilgrim cut the engines and lifted the flaps. A boom thundered and a shiver rocked the plane, sparks dancing past the window, as a wing clipped metal-a mail box, a street sign, a chain-link fence-and the plane rumbled forward. Another shriek of protesting metal, a jarring bump, then the plane skidded to a stop.
Pilgrim turned and pulled the gun from both their hands. He put it to Vochek’s head.
“The deal is off,” Pilgrim said. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Pilgrim…,” Ben started.
“The police will be here in probably ninety seconds and we can’t trust Homeland. Come on.” He opened the door, grabbed Ben, pushed him out onto the pavement.
“Don’t do this,” Vochek gasped.
“Vochek, don’t trust anybody. I don’t want to see your lovely face again.”
Pilgrim jumped to the asphalt. Behind the plane, a pickup truck and a minivan slammed to a stop. Pilgrim ran toward the truck, his gun out and high to see, and gestured the two women out of the cab. The women stared, agog at the crumpled-winged plane on the road and the crazy man waving a gun. They obeyed, hands up, one crying.
“Very sorry, need the truck. You’ll get it back.” Pilgrim shoved Ben across to the passenger seat, climbed into the driver’s seat. He wheeled the truck hard in a circle, tore around the plane by driving on a grassy edge of the road, and roared away. Through the open window the damp breath of the neighborhood smelled of wet and decay. The sirens rose in their approach: fire truck, police, ambulance.
Above them circled the Homeland plane.
“Ben,” Pilgrim said, “I should have given you the choice to stay with her.”
