"You got a plan to get us out of here?" Kate asked.
"I'm working on it," I replied. I figured it sounded more encouraging than no.
The tent roof sloped steadily downward toward us, and through the crowd I caught a glimpse of open street and pale gray sky. I pushed aside a nurse in blood-spattered scrubs and broke for the edge of the tent. It wasn't till I could feel the kiss of fresh air across my face that I saw him.
He was a mountain of a cop, with dark deep-set eyes peering outward from a fleshy face, the features of which were twisted into an angry frown around a mustache the size of a small woodland creature. His barrel chest strained the buttons of his uniform blues as he approached, nightstick in hand. I sized him up as he approached, wondering if I could take him down. I was pretty sure the answer was no. A shame, that – he didn't look like one for talking.
I released Kate's hand and stepped clear of the tent, my hands raised in surrender. My crutch clattered to the ground, and I had the sudden, queasy realization that if this didn't work, I couldn't exactly make a run for it. Kate, for her part, had the good sense to stay a few steps behind me, hidden in the bustle of the tent, although if I didn't deal with this guy quick, it wouldn't matter – there were a bunch more just like him bringing up the rear.
"Stay where you are!" he shouted, his sandpaper growl slathered with a goodly helping of Bronx.
"I'm unarmed!" I replied. His eyes narrowed in suspicion, nearly disappearing between the flesh of his cheeks and meaty brow. If he hadn't planned on frisking me before, he sure as shit was gonna now.
Fine by me. The closer I could get to him, the better chance we had.
"Put your hands on your head." I complied. The cop holstered his nightstick and approached. "Now turn around." Again, I did as he asked.
His hands were the size of hams, and he was none too gentle patting me down. My muscles tensed in anticipation. When he gave my bum leg a good thwack, I made my move. And by made my move, I mean fell down.
Well, mostly, at least. Mr Suspicious here made my job easy by not skipping over the pound of gauze I had wrapped around my wound, and who could blame him? After all, the bandage gave me ample room to stash a weapon, and I was plenty shifty. His only mistake was in not knowing it was my hands he had to be afraid of.
When his hand connected with the bandaged meat of my thigh, I let out a wail. My leg buckled. That part wasn't just for show, but I'd expected it – in fact, I was counting on it. I twisted as I fell, so that we were chest to chest when he did his cop-ly duty and caught me. Or, rather, we would have been chest to chest, had my hands not been between us.
I plunged them both deep into his chest, grabbing hold of his soul with all I had. His eyes went wide, his features slack. The medical tent, the station, the pavement beneath our feet – all of it disappeared, replaced with a swirling morass of grays and blues and the occasional shining points of light, sparkling like stars as they orbited breakneck all around us. This was a good man, I realized – touched by darkness, but not consumed by it. It was then that I resolved not to kill him.
Soul in hand, I yanked, and now it was the cop who wailed. His pained cry brought tears to my borrowed eyes, but I had no time for such sympathies. His wails died suddenly as he collapsed, shuddering, to the ground – in shock, no doubt. But my work was not yet finished. I took care to reseat his soul just as I had found it, hoping that when he regained consciousness, all would be right in his world. Somehow, though, I doubted it. I only hoped I hadn't changed him for the worse.
When I released my grip on his soul, the world lurched back into focus. I found I was sprawled out on Park Avenue, lying half on and half off of my new cop-friend. Our tussle, which lasted a second at most, had drawn a small audience – two EMTs and a nurse on their way into the medical tent stood frozen in their tracks, staring. All looked puzzled by what had just happened, and at least one of them – a lean, angular Latina EMT – was clearly measuring the odds that I was dangerous against the odds the cop needed her help.
I took pity on her and clarified the matter: I popped the snap on the cop's holster and slid free his piece – a sleek black Glock 9mm, lighter than I'd anticipated. Then I hobbled back to the tent and grabbed Kate by the wrist, yanking her out into the street. I couldn't help but notice the cops in the tent were closing fast. In seconds, they'd be upon us.
"What are you waiting for?" I brandished the gun at our trio of onlookers. "The man needs help!"
Without a word, they sprung into action, racing to the felled cop's side and checking for vitals. Now it was Kate who stood frozen in obvious puzzlement, watching as they loosened his uniform collar and tried in vain to rouse him.
"Kate, come on!"
But she didn't respond – she just stood there, watching. "Did you…" she asked, the question trailing off to nothing. "I mean, is he–"
"He's unconscious," I replied. "With luck, he'll be just fine. You won't though, unless we get moving."
That seemed to shake off her preoccupation with the unconscious cop. She followed my lead as I hobbled north-west toward Vanderbilt. My leg was throbbing again, but I ignored it, gritting my teeth against the pain and forcing this meat-suit into a jog. Even Kate, uninjured, struggled to keep up.
"Sam, where the hell are we going?"
But as we rounded the corner onto Vanderbilt, her eyes went wide. Just fifty yards away sat a medevac chopper, idling in a makeshift pen of police barriers at the intersection of Vanderbilt and Forty-third.
"I'm not exactly sure," I replied. "But I know how we're gonna get there."
26.
"Sam, you can't be serious." Kate stopped dead in the street, looking first at me, and then at the helicopter that sat idling in the center of the intersection – its upper rotor still, but its engines emitting a high, keening whine.
"The way I see it, Kate, we don't have a lot of options."
"But we can't just steal a helicopter."
"We're not stealing a helicopter – we're hijacking one. And of course we can; I'm one of the bad guys, remember?"
"It's not that – it's just, I mean, they're not going to let us get away with it."
"Kate, they're not going to let us get away period, if they have their way. This is the only shot we've got."
From behind us, shouting. Our pursuers had cleared the tent, and it was clear now they weren't the only ones on our tail: two parties of six or so uniformed men had just finished flanking the tent on either side, and onlookers pressed ever tighter to the police barriers that cordoned off the station as officers on all sides of us abandoned their posts to join the chase. Standing in the empty stretch of street between the tent and the makeshift landing pad, Kate and I had nowhere to hide. As the men approached, guns drawn, I grabbed Kate by the arm and together we ran for the chopper. This time, she didn't argue.
The helicopter was facing north-east toward Fortythird, away from us, and the cabin door was open, though we could not see inside. Kate and I approached the door cautiously, creeping toward it along the tail. A glance behind us told me our pursuers weren't so psyched about our exit plan – the whole lot of 'em were sprinting toward us, shouting and waving like madmen in an attempt to alert the flight crew to our presence. Doubtless there were at least that many more approaching from the other side of the chopper, and it was only a matter of time before every cop, National Guardsman, and SWAT unit in the city descended upon our location. The time for caution had passed.
I wheeled toward the door, gun at ready. Inside the cabin were two flight nurses, both lean and efficient and rendered genderless by their flight suits and helmets as they busied themselves stowing gear and inventorying supplies. When they saw me, they froze. With a twitch of my gun barrel, I suggested they vacate the vehicle. They caught my drift just fine, and climbed out of the chopper, hands held high.
I gestured for them to back away, and reluctantly, they complied. One of them spoke, though the words were lost in the wail of the engine. Then I caught movement out of the corner
of my eye, and I realized the words were not for me, but for whoever was on the other end of that helmet mic.
The pilot had climbed from his perch behind the controls and was sneaking through the cabin – toward the open cabin door, and toward me. In his hand, he held a flare gun. I spun, leveling my piece at his face, and he stopped short, my barrel a scant inch from the bridge of his nose. The flare gun clattered to the cabin floor, forgotten, and he, too, raised his hands. I liked this one, I decided. He was brave, but not stupid. He was also the only one of the two of us who could fly this fucking thing, so by my count that was two reasons I was glad he hadn't made me pull the trigger.
My pilot-friend again made for the cabin door, though slowly this time, as though anticipating my demand that he follow his crew. I shook my head and waved him back inside. Though his eyes were hidden behind the reflective visor of his flight helmet, I saw his features slacken as realization dawned. He climbed back into the pilot's seat, while behind him, Kate and I clambered aboard.
"Get this thing in the air!" I shouted, but this time, it was he who shook his head. He tapped the side of his helmet, twice, and gestured toward a headset hanging from the console before him.
I slipped on the headset, which looked to me like an old pair of headphones, and adjusted the microphone before repeating my command. "It'll take a minute," came the crackling reply.
"It takes any longer, and you and I have got a problem – you get me?" I pressed my gun tight to the base of his neck, and he nodded – a jerky, frightened gesture. "Just fly us out of here, and you have my word you won't be harmed." Again, he nodded, though if I were him, I probably wouldn't have believed me.
There was a tap on my shoulder, and I damn near jumped out of my skin. It was Kate, and she looked worried. I lifted one earpiece, and she leaned close, shouting: "Sam, we've got company!"
A glance out the open door proved her right: the cops had set up a perimeter around the chopper, just outside the barriers that marked off the landing area. Two men, crouched behind riot shields, crept across the landing area toward us, buffeted by the breeze kicked up by our rotor, which now swung lazily overhead.
I nodded toward the flare gun that lay on the floor of the cabin. "See if you can't slow 'em down a bit – and get that door closed!"
She nodded, retreating to the back of the cabin. Over the whump, whump of the rotor above, and the chatter of the police in my headset, I didn't even hear the flare go off. But the gray of the afternoon was shattered by a sudden orange-red burst that sent the uniforms surrounding us diving to the pavement, and forced their advance team to scamper backward toward the barriers. The pilot did his damnedest to ignore the spectacle outside, instead focusing his attention on the confusion of dials and switches that comprised the helicopter's control panel. I allowed myself a thin smile as I realized we might actually make it out of there alive.
The chopper rocked on its skids as Kate slid shut the cabin door. Then the rock became a lurch as we leapt skyward. We hovered just a few feet above the street, motionless but for the gentle pitch and yaw of the chopper as she was buffeted by the wind.
"What now?" asked our pilot.
"Just fly."
"Where?"
"Anywhere." He nodded, and we began to climb.
Below us was a flurry of activity as our pursuers swarmed the landing pad. Too late, the order came to take us down – shot after shot rang out, audible even over the racket of the chopper. As we rose, I heard a dull thud, and the helicopter shuddered.
"Are we hit?" I asked, a little more panicked than I would have liked.
The pilot nodded. "Feels like they dinged our elevator. Long as we don't lose it, we'll stay up all right – but it's gonna be a bumpy ride."
We continued upward, the helicopter hitching and shaking like a carnival ride too long past inspection. The pop of gunfire beneath us faded to nothing as we cleared the rooftops, pitching southward in slow, jerky arc that eventually brought our bearing east.
"No," I said, again pressing the gun to his neck, "keep us over the city. You think I'm gonna let you take us out to sea and ditch this thing?"
He maintained his heading. "If you expect to crash us into a populated area, you'd better pull the trigger – alive, I won't let it happen."
"I told you, I've got no intention of killing you – or anyone else for that matter. Just keep us over the city, and soon enough, we all go our separate ways. Or you could keep on heading east and see what happens when I get angry."
The pilot hesitated, but only for a moment. Then, without a word, he turned the bird around. He was going easy on the throttle, but whether it was because of the chopper's ever-worsening tremors or to give the authorities on the ground a chance to keep up, I didn't know. Besides, I couldn't exactly tell him to hurry if I had no idea where we were headed, and right now, our speed was the least of my concerns.
No, what worried me was the radio.
"Hey," I said, gesturing toward my headphones, "these things got a volume knob?" He looked confused for a moment, and then pointed at the console. I fiddled with the knobs he'd indicated, flinching as I inadvertently changed the frequency, and my headset filled with static. Eventually, though, I found what I was looking for, and the police band rang loud and clear in my ears.
"… two suspects – one a teenaged girl, possibly a hostage…"
"… chopper headed northeast along Park, approximately forty miles per hour…"
"… flight nurses were evacuated – only the pilot remains…"
I sat lost in the radio transmissions for God knows how long, only snapped back to reality by a tug on my sleeve. It was Kate. Her brow was furrowed with worry, and she tapped at her ear with frustrated urgency as I stared, puzzled, back at her. Finally, she yanked the headset off of my ears, and I heard what it was she wanted me to hear.
It was a low, rhythmic whumping, out of sync with the thudding of our own blades. I looked from window to window to find the source of the noise, and soon enough, I spotted it: a news chopper, keeping pace with us maybe fifty yards to our left. Mounted on their nose was a camera, on a sort of swivelling rig that allowed it to pan from side to side. Right now, though, it wasn't panning anywhere – it was pointed right toward us.
It looked like our days of staying off the radar were over.
All right, I thought. No need to panic. All we needed was a plan, and we'd get out of this just fine.
And that's when everything went to shit.
There was a screech of rending metal as our damaged elevator tore free of the chopper's tail, and then a horrible racket like a golf ball caught in a box fan as it got chewed up by the tail rotor. The world outside the cabin lurched sideways and began to spin. Our pilot doubled over, and the cabin filled with the acrid reek of sick. As our pilot slumped across the control panel retching, his task forgotten, the chopper dipped precariously. Kate slammed head-first into the cabin ceiling, collapsing in a heap onto the floor. And then a hand, strong as iron, closed around my neck.
I struggled against the pilot's grasp, so impossible in its strength, my arms flailing wildly as I struggled for breath. His face split into a grin, and he pulled me close, breathing two words into my ear, somehow audible even over the roar of the chopper: "Hello, Samuel."
Fuck. Bishop. Apparently the bastard had nothing better to do than sit around and watch the news.
The world around us continued to spin, and I felt curiously light, as though I were barely even there. I thought then that it was just the lack of oxygen, playing tricks on my brain. It hadn't occurred to me that the chopper was going down.
I clenched shut my eyes and forced myself to focus. It wasn't easy, what with Bishop squeezing the life out of me while my overwhelming dizziness made my limbs heavy and uncooperative. If I didn't do something fast, I was gonna lose consciousness, and Kate was as good as gone. It was then that I realized I still had the gun.
I tried to bring the gun to bear on the pilot/Bishop's face, but he just sla
pped it away with his free hand, cackling with delight. A second try, the same result. I realized that as long as he had my neck in a vise, I was at a disadvantage. That's when I decided to shoot him in the wrist.
I pressed the barrel to his arm and pulled the trigger. The sound was deafening, and my face was spattered with blood and gunshot residue in equal measure. Still, it did the trick – Bishop's hand withdrew, his borrowed face twisted in pain. Thanks to the lurching of the chopper, the shot had been a graze – a diagonal furrow maybe two inches long, halfway up the forearm. In truth, I was grateful – if I'd shot the pilot's wrist clean through, he'd have bled out in no time flat. Least this way, I had a shot at saving him – but that meant I had to knock him out, and quick.
Bishop struggled to climb from his seat, his wounded arm clutched to his chest, but he was just as offbalance as I was, and he staggered backward into the chopper's control panel. I braced myself against my seat and kicked him in the face. His head snapped backward, his nose spouting blood. I kicked him again for good measure, and he tumbled to the cabin floor.
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