James Patterson: Run For Your Life

At the last second, Meyer pulled the yoke back. With our wheels practically scraping the deicing truck’s top, we were airborne.

Even numb with fear, I could feel my heart beating wildly through every square inch of my body as Meyer rocketed us up. I’d been to several plane crash sights in my time with the CRU. I knew all too well what happened to the human body when it struck something at several hundred miles an hour.

The plane seemed to be standing on its tail end, climbing straight up. I stared out at the ground lights that whirled below, feeling paralyzed with fever and fear.

My mind whirled, too, wondering what Meyer had planned. Where was he heading? Out of the country?

Not that it made much difference to me.

But mostly I thought about Chrissy. I hoped to God she hadn’t seen Meyer shoot the cop – hoped somebody had found her and called home by now.

“You know how crappy it was to lose my brother – not just once, but twice?” he said, raising his voice over the roar of the engines.

I shook myself out of my stupor. All of a sudden, I felt free. I had nothing left to lose if I was going to die, anyway. And I was damned if I’d be listening to his garbage when it happened.

“I’d have some sympathy for you, asshole,” I snapped back. “Except lots of people have it tough and don’t feel the need to go around shooting innocent, defenseless people and kidnapping little girls.”

“Screw that bullshit. When I was in aviation training, they told me, ‘Kid, you see those people down there on the desert floor, looking like little ants? Well, we want you to fire these bullets the size of butter knives down on them one thousand times a minute. Don’t worry that after you’re done, there’ll be piles of bloody rags where human beings were standing. Just ignore it.’ ”

“But I’m also supposed to ignore the real assholes back here in the States. The ones who make people miserable, who don’t give a fuck if they treat somebody so bad it drives them to suicide – the selfish pricks who really make this world a mess. Leave them alone? I think not.” Meyer shook his head. “They can’t have it both ways. They taught me to kill for our country, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. But this time, I’m doing it by my own rules.”

And I thought my fever was making me sick. Now this guy was using a war vet trauma to excuse his evil.

“That was a tragedy, all right,” I said.

“Killing for this country?”

“No,” I yelled into his ear. “That you didn’t die for it.”

I swung away from him and stared out the window, trying to figure out where we were. It was hard to tell, but I knew that we’d taken off in an easterly direction.

The plane ride wasn’t helping my stomach any. It was obvious that Meyer’s piloting skills were a little rusty. Every few seconds, we’d pitch to the right or left, swoop down a couple of hundred feet and then back up again.

But after we’d been up there a few minutes, he managed to smooth it out.

“Okay, Bennett, I’m ready for the final act,” he growled at me. “Time to finish what I started. Pay the Blanchettes a little visit. Plow into their bedroom at three hundred miles an hour, and you’re going with me. I told you not to get in my way, you goddamned idiot.”

Something in me had known all along that he intended to kill us both, but I’d refused to really wrap my mind around it. But now it was for sure.

Then I thought, Oh, no, it’s not.

Although my wrists were cuffed, my fingers were free. I furtively started working to undo my lap belt.

Within another few minutes, flying dangerously low and dangerously fast, we were approaching the giant lit-up towers of Manhattan. I recognized the vast, darker rectangle of Central Park, with its tree-lined pathways and glimmering reservoir.

And I shuddered when I spotted our target – the Blanchettes’ Fifth Avenue building. It was directly ahead, looking like it was racing toward us with dizzying speed. In no time, we were so close I could see the tea lights floating moodily on the surface of the rooftop pool.

I gave the seat belt a final yank, and it came loose. Then I lurched as hard as I could to the left and head-butted Meyer.

Seeing stars, I thought I got about as much as I gave, until I saw Meyer’s blood-spurting nose mashed flat against his face. He was making a low animal noise as he went for the gun in his lap. I leaned all the way over against my door. Then I ripped my legs out from beneath the console and slammed my feet up against his chin.

The kick landed hard with both heels. His head snapped back and the gun went flying somewhere behind us. The plane was going crazy, careening into a wild arc and plunging downward. I didn’t care. I kept on kicking him again and again – his head, his face, his neck, his chest – literally trying to drive him through his door, out of the airplane. With each blow, I screamed like a madman.

I might have succeeded, except he somehow extended the steel baton and whipped it down flush between my legs. I screamed again, this time from pain, and curled up with my eyes rolling back into my head.

Meyer paused to wrestle with the airplane, managing to pull it out of its dive and aim it through the building corridors and toward Central Park. Then he hit me on the forehead. It felt like he’d cracked the whole front of my skull. The world went gray as he shoved me back down into my seat.

His last measured blow with the baton whiplashed my head so hard into the door beside me that the window broke. I saw wheeling lights and blood streaming down the interior of the plane like a dark curtain, before my body went limp and my eyes closed.

I was just about gone, but somewhere deep in my head, a tiny spark of consciousness fought to stay lit.

Mayor Carlson was on the third mile of his before-bed elliptical machine trek when Patrick Kipfer, one of his deputy chiefs, stuck his head in the doorway of Gracie Mansion ’s basement gym.

“The Commissioner,” he said. “I forwarded it to your cell.”

The mayor hit the elliptical’s Pause button and lowered the volume of the hanging TV before he lifted his phone.

“Commissioner?” he said.

“Sorry to bother you, Mort,” Commissioner Daly said. “We got a hostage situation. One of our homicide detectives, Mike Bennett. His family said a man came into their apartment and abducted him and his four-year-old daughter.”

Bennett? the mayor thought. Wasn’t he the cop who was at the Blanchettes, the one who’d wanted to shut down the party?

“Tell me it isn’t the spree killer.”

“We have to go on that assumption.”

Carlson wiped his sweating face on his NYU T-shirt.

“Goddammit. Do we have any idea where they went? Any ransom demand? Any contact?”

“Nothing so far,” Daly said. “This happened less than an hour ago. His unmarked vehicle is missing, so we’ve notified state troopers and our guys.”

“I know you’re doing everything you can, Commissioner,” the mayor said. “You think of any way I can help, let me know immediately.”

“Will do.”

The mayor stared at the Pause button on the elliptical after he placed his cell back down. Should he call it a night? No, he decided, reaching for the button. No excuses. His cholesterol was through the roof. Not to mention how tight his suits were getting these days, with all the fund-raiser food. Just do it, and all that garbage. Besides, what good would he be to the city if he had a heart attack?

He was just getting back up to pace when Patrick returned and stuck his head in the doorway.

This time, the mayor hit the Stop button as he lifted his cell phone.