Mike McQuay: Escape From New York

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.”

3:30 P.M.

The Secretary had been on Hauk’s case all morning. Things were not looking good and he was making doubly sure that every bit of the blame rested squarely on the Commissioner’s shoulders. It was the basis of all politics: cover your own ass.

Hauk smiled a little at that, because he didn’t care one way or the other anymore who got the blame for anything. And besides, the really funny part about it was the fact that Prather’s people in Washington would blame the Secretary anyway-he was the federal official on the scene, and naturally responsible.

The copter blades beat their relentless rhythm above his head, and the murky daylight burned starlike glare patterns on the machine’s bubble. They were coming up on Central Park. Food Drop.

Hauk hadn’t been on Food Drop for a long time. He used to come every two weeks to search the crowds for Jerry, but he had given all that up.

Now he was coming again, searching again-this time for someone else. Someone for whom he felt an unbreakable bond of kinship and understanding. Someone who had promised to kill him at the first opportunity.

The Park stretched out before him, cold dead ground and naked trees. Thousands of inmates were jammed, a clamoring throng, all around the outer edges of the Park; but none, by ritual and mutual consent, were coming in. They were cheering; they were cheering the food.

They got above the Park and the two other choppers closed ranks to descend. Only two of the machines held food. Hauk’s held another kind of surprise. Blackbelly pie-just in case. They came down slowly.

Hauk’s pilot was pointing out the window. “Check it out,” he said.

The Commissioner strained his eyes through the window glare. Below them, on the ground, was a large white X. It was surrounded by a cordon of inmates. Gypsies. The Duke’s people.

“Take her down!” Hauk yelled to the pilot above the motor noise, and they broke from the other copters and floated toward the spot.

He took the microphone from the controls and flipped it to P.A. so he could speak to the squad in back. “We’re going down,” he said. “Something’s happening. Be ready, but no shooting unless I give the word. Understand that. I will kill the first man who uses a weapon without authorization.”

He stuck the mike back on its cradle. There would be no repeats of the scene at the fallen plane.

They were coming down on the X. Bullseye. The Gypsies started backing away, moving for the trees. He glanced over at the other copters in the distance. They hovered just above the ground, mammoth, covered crates disgorging from their underbellies. This was the first drop of the day. There would be many others. Tremendous masses of people were converging on the food, charging across the barren ground, waving their arms. The copters lifted off and their bundles completely disappeared under the sheer crush of numbers.

Hauk’s chopper settled to the ground; the Gypies were gone, all vanished. His men were out of the machine immediately, encircling the copter for protection.

Something was laying on the ground in the clearing. Hauk watched from the copilot’s seat as one of his men ran over to pick it up. He ran back toward the Commissioner, holding it high in the air.

It was a briefcase. It was the briefcase.

The sound of the oil rig used to drive Maggie crazy, its continual thump-da-thump sound going too fast, driving the human body to move faster than it normally would.

But Brain had taught her to disassociate herself from it, and now she never even noticed that it made any sound at all.

Brain was thinking, trying to think, and Maggie was prodding him as gently, yet firmly, as she could. Moving him along the proper channels.

“He has to have an angle, Brain,” she said. “You’ve told me how bad he hates the Man. He wouldn’t just go to work for him like that”

Brain had his back to her, studying the map. “I just can’t figure it, you know? Just can’t get it straight in my head.”

She was holding Plissken’s pistol, turning it around in her hands. It was cold and gray, standard army issue. She pulled out the clip and looked it over, trying to figure out how many shots were left. She shoved it back in the gun. “It’s all too crazy to be a lie,” she said. “I believe him.”

“God,” Brain answered, his fingers traveling over the mapface. “What if he is telling the truth?” He turned to shake his bearded head at her. “I really hate that guy.”

He looked at her for a long second, and she could tell that he was finally, really, working it all out. “There are only a few places he could land a glider,” he said, his eyes getting distant the way they did when he was thinking. “Top of the Port Authority.” He shook his head. “Too low to the ground.” He stroked his furry beard. “In the Park?”