The Running Man

MINUS 033 AND COUNTING

The red second hand on his watch made two circles. Another two. Another two. “RICHARDS!”

He raised the bullhorn to his lips. “SEVENTY-NINE MINUTES, McCONE.”

Play it right up to the end. The only way to play it. Right up to the moment McCone gave the order to fire at will. It would be quick. And it didn’t really seem to matter a whole hell of a lot.

After a long grudging, eternal pause: “WE NEED MORE TIME. AT LEAST THREE HOURS. THERE ISN’T AN L/G-A OR A DELTA ON THIS FIELD. ONE WILL HAVE TO BE FLOWN IN.”

She had done it. O, amazing grace. The woman had looked into the abyss and then walked out across it. No net. No way back. Amazing.

Of course they didn’t believe her. It was their business not to believe anyone about anything. Right now they would be hustling her to a private room in one of the terminals, half a dozen of McCone’s picked interrogators waiting. And when they got her there, the litany would begin. Of course you’re upset, Mrs. Williams, but just for the record… would you mind going through this once more… we’re puzzled by one small thing here… are you sure that wasn’t the other way around… how do you know… why… then what did he say…

So the correct move was to buy time. Fob Richards off with one excuse and then another. There’s a fueling problem, we need more time. No crew is on the jetport grounds, we need more time. There’s a flying saucer over Runway Zero-Seven, we need more time. And we haven’t broken her yet. Haven’t quite gotten her to admit that your high explosive consists of an alligator handbag stuffed with assorted Kleenex and change and cosmetics and credit cards. We need more time.

We can’t take a chance on killing you yet. We need more time.

“RICHARDS?”

“LISTEN TO ME,” he megaphoned back. “YOU HAVE SEVENTY-FIVE MINUTES. THEN IT ALL GOES UP.”

No reply.

Spectators had begun to creep back in spite of Armageddon’s shadow. Their eyes were wide and wet and sexual. A number of portable spotlights had been requisitioned and focused on the little car, bathing it in a depthless glow and emphasizing the shattered windshield.

Richards tried to imagine the little room where they would be holding her, probing her for the truth, and could not. The press would be excluded, of course. McCone’s men would be trying to scare the tits off her and undoubtedly would be succeeding. But how far would they dare go with a woman who did not belong to the ghetto society of the poor where people had no faces? Drugs. There were drugs, Richards knew, drugs that McCone could command immediately, drugs that could make a Yaqui Indian babble out his entire life story like a babe in arms. Drugs that would make a priest rattle off penitents’ confessions like a stenographer’s recording machine.

A little violence? The modified electric move-alongs that had worked so well in the Seattle riots of 2005? Or only the steady battering of their questions?

The thoughts served no purpose, but he could not shut them out or turn them off. Beyond the terminals there was the unmistakable whine of a Lockheed carrier being warmed up. His bird. The sound of it came in rising and falling cycles. When it cut off suddenly, he knew the fueling had begun. Twenty minutes if they were hurrying. Richards did not think they would be hurrying. Well, well, well. Here we are. All the cards on the table but one. McCone? McCone, are you peeking yet? Have you sliced into her mind yet? Shadows lengthened across the field and everybody waited.