The Beasts Of Valhalla

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.

"Stop, or we'll shoot!"

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.

"Shit," Lippitt said with genuine passion.

"That about says it all. I think we've got a problem. It's a long way to Flushing Airport, and we've got a river to cross. The streets of New York just aren't safe for citizens who happen to be bald-headed or slight in stature."

Lippitt stared off into space for some time, his jaw muscles clenched. "Fuck this," he said at last, pushing off the wall. "I've had enough of dark, underground places; one Mount Doom in a lifetime is enough. Let's get the hell out of here."

"Jolly good idea. It probably isn't that far to the next station, or to a manhole. But what good will it do to go up into the streets? There are a hell of a lot of people up there looking for us."

"How's that creepy internal guidance system of yours working?"

"It's still creepy, and it's still working."

"Which way is the East River?"

I pointed to the rock wall on my left.

"That's where we're going as soon as we can get out of here."

"Christ, Lippitt, this is no time to go senile on me. The last time I looked, there were a lot of bad guys floating around in the East River."

"You let me worry about the bad guys, Frederickson. Go."

I stayed put. "What do you have in mind?"

"Cutting through all this bullshit. Find us a manhole. We're going uptown."

"Why? What's up there?"

"The heliport."

"Ah."

Nervous time as we came up out of a manhole into the middle of a street, darted across, and padded down the sidewalk toward the river. We stopped at the end of the block, pressed back against the side of a building and peered across the East River Drive at the heliport on the river where an Army Jet Ranger was parked. The pilot was casually leaning against a wooden railing, talking with a burly man who wore black leather gloves.

There was no way we were going to get across the narrow access bridge without the men seeing us.

Lippitt picked up a sharp-edged piece of broken pavement, put it in his pocket. "Walk fast," he said, stepping directly in front of me. "Stay in step, and try to stay hidden. I'm going to kill the first man who makes a move for his gun."

Off we went, with me feeling like second banana in an old vaudeville act as I tried to stay out of sight behind Lippitt's flowing overcoat.

"We're going to make it," Lippitt said in a low voice as we reached the point on the bridge directly over the center divider on the East Side Drive. "They don't quite know what to make of me, and at the moment they're just staring. I'll take the Warrior. You see what you can do with the pilot, on your left."

What I did with the pilot, as Lippitt cracked the Warrior across the jaw with the piece of pavement, was jump out at him from the folds of the overcoat, shout, then kick him in the groin. He crumpled to his knees, then went down as Lippitt turned and finished my job with a hard, straight right to the Army captain's temple. Lippitt grabbed the men's guns, sprinted toward the helicopter, ducked under the idling rotors and leaped up into the cockpit. I ran around to the other side and just managed to climb up and close the door before Lippitt opened the throttle, pulled back on the joystick and sent us shooting into the air.

Lippitt, it seemed, was an expert helicopter pilot-at least he impressed the hell out of me as he effortlessly swooped us around, then started down the East River Drive, toward Roosevelt Island; as far as I could tell, we were flying no more than five or six feet above the roofs of the cars below us, and I hated even to think about the heart attacks and collisions we were leaving in our wake.

"See if you can spot Rafferty's Lincoln anywhere down there," Lippitt said as he hopped us gently over an elevated walkway. "If nobody saw or reported us rolling out of his car, he could be halfway to Flushing by now. If not- "

"Not," I said as we swept past Forty-seventh Street and I spotted his car pulled up onto the long, brick plaza there.

"Where?" Lippitt asked, pulling back on the joystick and sending us soaring aloft.

I told him. Lippitt made a lazy circle, eased back on the throttle, and virtually putt-putted us over the tops of a couple of buildings, then descended directly down toward the plaza. Keeping back, peering over the edge of the door, I could see a lot of upturned faces. One of the faces belonged to Victor Rafferty; he was spread-eagled across the trunk of his car, and was surrounded by police and Warriors. One of the Warriors held a familiar-looking.45 and box of shells.

As Lippitt hovered at treetop level just over the Lincoln, I rolled out of my seat back into the cargo bay, kicked open the bay door, and threw out the helicopter's rope ladder.

Lippitt threw the switch that activated the craft's PA system. "All right, gentlemen," he said in an affected, electronic southern drawl that must have carried all the way to Central Park. "Thank you very much for your assistance. We'll take custody of this man now."

Southern drawl or not, Rafferty knew the sound of the cavalry when he heard it. While police and Warriors looked at each other, Rafferty looked up and saw me. He pushed away a Warrior, leaped into the air and grabbed hold of the bottom rung of the ladder.

"Go!" I shouted, but Lippitt had felt the tug and already yanked back on the joystick. We shot up, headed back toward the river.

The sudden movement of the helicopter had thrown me to the floor. Keeping a firm grip on an anchor line strung through pins in the ceiling, I inched forward, looked down. Rafferty was still on the ladder; exhibiting incredible upper-body strength, Rafferty had managed to haul himself up and was clambering up toward us. The problem was that someone else had exhibited great legs and incredible upper-body strength; there was a Warrior on the ladder right behind Rafferty.

Rafferty reached the top. I grabbed the back of his coat, hauled him in just ahead of the Warrior, who was now trying to brace himself against the wind drag at the same time as he aimed a pistol up at me.

Shhh.

I cut through both support strands of the ladder with one swipe of Whisper; Warrior and rope ladder entwined as both fell down toward the river.

Two NYPD helicopters, searchlights blazing in the darkening sky, swooped down behind us. Lippitt made a tight turn, headed across the river. He dipped down behind a huge Pepsi-Cola sign, turned back. He flew under the pursuing helicopters, back across the river; he kept going, flying straight down the narrow corridor of Fiftieth Street as he entered the concrete and steel jungle of Manhattan. The two helicopters behind us, piloted by men who were obviously a lot saner than Lippitt, abruptly pulled up and soared over the tops of the skyscrapers.

Flying with his lights out just above the rush hour traffic, Lippitt hung a right on Fifth Avenue, sliced off the tops of three trees, and headed uptown. Fifth Avenue was wide enough for sane men to fly on, and the two helicopters dropped down out of the sky and resumed the pursuit. We could see another Jet Ranger approaching us. Maneuvering in an ascending semicircle across Central Park to get a proper angle, Lippitt turned left on Eighty-first. He kept going, shooting over the Henry Hudson Parkway and out over the Hudson, seemingly on a collision course with the cliffs on the other side. At the last moment he veered to the north and went upriver, the tips of his rotors just inches from the New Jersey Palisades, his landing skids just feet above the water, so as to avoid radar.

Behind us, the lights of the pursuing helicopters swooped and circled in confused patterns. Lippitt flew under the central span of the George Washington Bridge, swooped up, circled, then brought us down to a soft landing in Fort Tryon Park, near The Cloisters.

We were quite alone.

"Not bad, Lippitt," I squeaked when I could finally make my vocal cords work.

"Yes, Mr. Lippitt," Victor Rafferty added drily. "That piece of flying was almost outstanding."

Lippitt turned around in his seat. "You got any cash, Rafferty?"

"Yes. About two hundred dollars."

"Good. Mongo and I are down to change and a few gold coins, which I'd hate to have to give away for cab fare. You're dressed like a diplomat; you should be able to hail us a taxi down on Riverside Drive. I think that's safest."

"Right," Rafferty replied easily, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. "That really was a nice piece of flying, Mr. Lippitt. Thank you for leading the rescue party."

"I've got two things I want to say. First, I'm sorry for the mess I got us into." He paused, glanced sharply at me. "Second, I trust I'll hear no more talk from you about me being senile." "Not a peep."