be over: Project Valhalla would be stopped, and there might even be time left over to help Garth. Isn't that worth the risk?'
'Lippitt may be right,' I said to Rafferty. 'Maybe you and I are being too paranoid. There must be
Rafferty shrugged, then went behind his desk, opened a drawer and took out a green telephone. 'Go ahead and make your call, Mr. Lippitt-but do it on this telephone; the call can't be traced. Also, I might suggest that you don't tell him we're up here. If he insists on knowing where you are, tell him you and Mongo are at a pay phone on Roosevelt Island.'
Rafferty went to a window looking out over the East River, and I sat down on the edge of the desk as Lippitt picked up the receiver and dialed a number. He got the general himself after ten minutes, and then spent almost a half hour talking to him. During that half hour I watched relief and joy spread across his face like a gentle fire of mercy, burning away a thick detritus of horror and hopelessness, fear and frustration, making him seem almost young again.
When Lippitt had finished, I spent fifteen minutes on the phone with the general, telling the same story but providing additional details when I remembered them. The general seemed sufficiently impressed with it all, supportive, grateful, and anxious to assure me that he believed our story. He assured me that a large armed force would be at the Institute within a very short time, and that every effort would be made to guarantee Garth's safety and force Siegmund Loge to prepare an antidote to whatever was poisoning our systems. When I hung up, I was almost happy.
Neither Rafferty nor Lippitt seemed happy. Lippitt had joined Rafferty at the window. Their backs were to me, but there was something in the stiffness of their stances and the tense angle of their shoulders and necks that I didn't like.
'Lippitt, Rafferty? What's the matter?'
Neither man answered, and so I hopped off the desk and went across the room to join them. As they stepped apart to make room for me by the window, an olive-drab helicopter swooped past and rushed to join a force of a few of its brothers and sisters around Roosevelt Island, in the middle of the East River, a half mile or so to the north.
We didn't need binoculars to see what was going on.
Power boats of every description-including a couple with Coast Guard and Navy markings-were converging on the island from both north and south. Military and NYPD helicopters hovered over the island, occasionally descending to disgorge soldiers and black-gloved Warriors in civilian clothes. Residents of the apartment buildings on the island came out and stared in awe as teams of armed men raced around the island, in and out of the buildings, searching for a certain dwarf with smoked glasses and an old, bald-headed Defense Intelligence Agency operative.
'I'm sorry, Lippitt,' I said sincerely.
'Yeah,' Lippitt answered with a kind of grunt. 'Me, too.'
Rafferty opened a wall safe, took out a.45-caliber automatic and a box of shells. He loaded the gun, put it and the box of shells in the pocket of a tweed overcoat, which he'd taken out of a closet. Lippitt and I were still staring out the window, our energy drained by entropy, our hope eaten away by despair.
'Gentlemen,' Rafferty said as he stood by the door of the private elevator in his office, 'it's time to go.'
32
We descended in the elevator to the underground VIP parking garage, hurried to Rafferty's sleek black limousine. Lippitt and I got in the back, lay down across the seat.
'I have a private plane at Flushing Airport,' Rafferty said as he got behind the wheel and turned on the engine. 'Nobody in official circles knows about it, and, for obvious reasons, I keep it serviced and ready to go at all times. It's only a two-seater, but I think we can manage to squeeze Mongo in.'
'At this point, I don't much care if you strap me to the wing.'
'You're leaving?' Lippitt said to Rafferty. 'Just like that?'
Rafferty laughed. 'What would you suggest I say in my letter of resignation, Lippitt?'
That got a grudging smile out of the old man. 'Right,' he mumbled. ''Gone to save the world' might seem a bit grandiose.'
We came up out of the garage, turned left on Forty-ninth Street, then south on Second Avenue. Suddenly Rafferty braked to a stop. 'Roadblock,' the telepath said, leaning back over the seat. 'Police and Warriors; they're looking in all the cars.'
'That's it,' Lippitt said, opening the door on his side as I opened the door on mine. 'Rafferty, we'll meet you at Flushing Airport.'
'Wait!' Rafferty said, turning off the engine and starting to open his door. 'I'll come with you! You may need my help!'
'No!' Lippitt snapped. 'We don't need a mind reader to know what's going to happen if they catch Mongo and me in your car, or you with us. If the two of us are caught, you're the last person left on earth who can stop Project Valhalla. Stay with the car and get out to the airport.'
'It's an isolated hangar on the north side of the airport!' Rafferty shouted as Lippitt and I rolled out into the street from opposite sides of the car, slammed our doors shut. 'Good luck!'
Keeping low, using the stopped cars as cover, Lippitt and I sprinted across the avenue and up Forty-ninth Street.
'There's a subway station at Third Avenue and Fifty-third!' I gasped as I sprinted, pumping my arms.
'Right!' Lippitt shouted. 'That's where we go!'
By the time we'd gone three blocks, we'd picked up three pursuers-Warriors. They were fast, but we were damn well motivated; we made it to the subway entrance, spun around on the metal railing and leaped down the stone stairs.
With Garth in their hands, my life insurance policy had run out.
Lippitt and I bounded down the steps, knocking over two businessmen, three black-jacketed members of the Stinking Skulls, and one nodding junkie. We reached the platform just as a train was starting up, raced beside the accelerating train toward the black mouth of the tunnel, fifty to sixty yards ahead of us. A shot rang out, sharp as the crack of a giant whip in the stone and steel chamber, and something tugged at the left side of my parka. More shots rang out, whizzing over our heads and skipping off the platform around our feet.
We reached the mouth of the tunnel barely a few yards ahead of the train; now it was either stop and get punctured with bullets, or jump into the path of the onrushing train. Naturally, we jumped. I landed on the gravel with my legs pumping, stumbled, but managed to keep going, darting to my left and hugging the cold stone wall as the train roared past. I'd heard Lippitt land on the gravel just behind me, but now I was alone. I kept moving down the tunnel, sidestepping along and hugging the wall, as steel whirred past a few inches from my back.
Then the train was past, sucking sound and air with it, leaving me with a roar in my ears and a large steel wrecking ball in my chest where my heart should be. I wheeled around, took off my glasses and saw a familiar figure hugging the wall almost directly across the tracks.
'Lippitt!'
'Mongo!' The D.I.A. operative turned from the wall, held out his arms. 'I can't see a fucking thing down here.'
'Stay where you are! Move around too much and you're likely to get fried!'
Taking care to avoid the electrified third rail, I went across the tracks and gripped his arm. Leading the old man by the hand, staying close to the wall, I jogged down the tracks, turned into what appeared to be a maintenance access tunnel, kept running as flashlight beams bobbed past the entrance behind us. We kept running until there were no more lights, no sounds, behind us. I stopped to allow us to catch our breath, leaned wearily against the wall.
