Air Traffic Control for Lakefront Airport was not happy, calmly warning Pilgrim that he did not have clearance for the approach he was taking. He raced low over the long cup of Lake Pontchartrain, but he had slowed his descent, flying a bare two hundred feet above the surface, and he came in low over the city. In the puddles of lamplight Ben could see people on the street, watching the plane in surprise and fear, perhaps sure the plane was verging on a crash, before it went past in an instant.
The Homeland plane was the only other aircraft close to them. Pilgrim zoomed over the Superdome, rising to skirt its top, took a turn over the French Quarter, going low again, driving hard along the Mississippi River toward the Lower Ninth Ward. Below in the bright glow of the moon lay a ghostly web of roads, highways, and devastation left over from Katrina, now taking on its own sad permanence. Ben peered at wide swatches of land where nothing had been rebuilt; many homes still lay on limp and broken deathbeds. FEMA trailers dotted yards. He watched the altimeter dip: He was at two hundred feet, soaring fast over the broken city. The engines’ roar made a booming echo against the ground.
He took a hard, screaming turn, downward toward the ruins.
The crazy bastard was going to land the plane. In the streets. Vochek could see below that it was madness: power lines, still-tilted poles, front yards jagged with fencing, ruined houses, trying to crawl back from death.
The gun. Ben still held it, not pointed at anyone, and his own mouth was a thin line of worry.
“Ben. Talk him out of this.”
“He knows what he’s doing.”
Doubtful. She grabbed at the gun and slammed her elbow hard into Ben’s chest. She got both hands on the gun and tried to wrench it from his grasp.
Pilgrim turned the plane hard again, banking, slowing, searching for enough street.
The force of the sudden turn threw Vochek off Ben. He put the gun on the side away from her. Then a small but pile-driving fist hit Ben in the back of the head, smacked his face against the window. His lip split, blood smeared his teeth.
He folded himself over the pistol. He could not let her get the gun; she’d force them to land at Lakefront. The plane took another wrench to port, Pilgrim trying to slow before he ran out of road to land. As the windows dipped, Ben saw the headlights of a car on a deserted street, close enough almost to touch.
Vochek landed on his back, one arm closing around his throat, the other hand’s fingers digging for his eyes, saying, “Please, Ben, give it to me before he kills us.”
Pilgrim needed asphalt. In the moon’s gleam and the spill of light from cars and houses, he saw five threads of pavement, one a busier cross street on the edge of the neighborhood, where the roads and the lots had been swept clean. The other two choices were less-crowded roads. One had fewer houses and FEMA trailers and chain-link fences dotting the yards and was a straight shot. It had the fewest cars parked on the curb. No sign of the Homeland plane close by; they were far above, circling, watching, summoning the local police to intercept Pilgrim. Taking bets if he was actually crazy enough to land.
Well, why wouldn’t he be? He had nothing left to lose. Nothing. First time he’d been told to do anything by anyone other than Teach in ten years, and she was dead. He took no more orders. The realization steadied his hands on the controls.
He descended fast, hearing Vochek and Ben struggling behind him. A pickup truck chuffed through an intersection at a crosshatch on the road, going the opposite way, maybe thirty feet below him as they dropped. Doubt-normally a stranger-filled him, and a sour taste broke in his mouth. He could kill someone, and he was supposed to be a Good Guy, eliminating Bad Guys. A minivan, full of kids, or a car, driven by a high school girl, or a motorcycle, with some regular nice guy coming back from a long day’s work of rebuilding the nearly lost city-no, he wouldn’t let that happen.
He dove the plane down toward the empty blacktop. Had to time it just right, pull up with room to spare, bring it down on three points, with room to slow-
Then the gun erupted.
Vochek knew how to hurt. The eyes, the groin, the bending back of the finger that caused surprised agony. She worked all this brutal magic on Ben, saying, “Ben, let go,” again and again. But he wouldn’t. She stepped on his wounded foot and he howled. She got a grip on the pistol. He raised the gun and she twisted it, felt his finger depress the trigger. The gun barked. The window shattered; a flick of light hit the wing.
“Goddamn it!” Pilgrim yelled.
Ben kicked back with all his strength, trapped Vochek between himself and her window. He kept her pinned, tried to pry her hands from the gun.
“Nearly there,” Pilgrim yelled.
Wheels hit the blacktop. The plane bounced hard, Ben nearly thrown to the ceiling. He kept his iron grip on the gun. He landed back on Vochek, knocking the wind from her. Wings screamed as Pilgrim cut the engines and lifted the flaps. A boom thundered and a shiver rocked the plane, sparks dancing past the window, as a wing clipped metal-a mail box, a street sign, a chain-link fence-and the plane rumbled forward. Another shriek of protesting metal, a jarring bump, then the plane skidded to a stop.
Pilgrim turned and pulled the gun from both their hands. He put it to Vochek’s head.
“The deal is off,” Pilgrim said. “Thanks for the lift.”
“Pilgrim…,” Ben started.
“The police will be here in probably ninety seconds and we can’t trust Homeland. Come on.” He opened the door, grabbed Ben, pushed him out onto the pavement.
“Don’t do this,” Vochek gasped.
“Vochek, don’t trust anybody. I don’t want to see your lovely face again.”
Pilgrim jumped to the asphalt. Behind the plane, a pickup truck and a minivan slammed to a stop. Pilgrim ran toward the truck, his gun out and high to see, and gestured the two women out of the cab. The women stared, agog at the crumpled-winged plane on the road and the crazy man waving a gun. They obeyed, hands up, one crying.
“Very sorry, need the truck. You’ll get it back.” Pilgrim shoved Ben across to the passenger seat, climbed into the driver’s seat. He wheeled the truck hard in a circle, tore around the plane by driving on a grassy edge of the road, and roared away. Through the open window the damp breath of the neighborhood smelled of wet and decay. The sirens rose in their approach: fire truck, police, ambulance.
Above them circled the Homeland plane.
“Ben,” Pilgrim said, “I should have given you the choice to stay with her.”
“We said we’d stick together.” He thought he saw for a moment a flicker of relief on Pilgrim’s face. There, then gone. He must have imagined it.
“They’re gonna chase us hard. You ready?”
“Yes.”
Pilgrim tore along a road of houses of patchwork brick and wood, homes trying to arise from the drowned soil, stripped down and rebuilt.
“I can still hear that plane.” Ben leaned out the window. “He’s banking, trying to keep us in his sights.”
Pilgrim swerved the wheel hard, catching sight of a police car flashing sirens in the rearview, and he wrenched the pickup into a two-wheeling turn toward the thoroughfare of St. Claude Avenue and headed west.
A deputy’s car picked them up, followed, lights blazing.
Traffic was light and Pilgrim swerved and accelerated around cars, ducking onto side roads, and then back onto St. Claude. Ben braced himself for the impact that would surely come when Pilgrim miscalculated and rammed into a bumper or a barrier. Pilgrim nearly clipped a construction sign that marked where the street was being repaired, power-turned hard, drove across two yards, and veered down a side street. He was out of sight of the pursuing deputy’s car and he stood on the brakes, revved into a grassy parking lot full of cars and trucks, a banner announcing a Saturday night revival meeting, presumably connected to a church that sat back from the street, in redbrick grandeur. Slammed on brakes, nestled in between two large trucks in a loading area for the event. The jet went overhead.