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It wasn’t just airsickness that made my stomach roll a few seconds later.
“Goddamnit to hell!” I heard Will Matthews cry over the radio. “Be
When I glanced at the pilot beside me, I noticed that it was a woman beneath the aviator sunglasses and helmet. I knew I was in for it the second I saw her cocky smirk.
“What are you waiting for?” I said, and we fell.
Chapter 92
WE STAYED AT a low hover over the convoy of black sedans. The whirling edges of the rotor couldn’t have been more than twenty feet from the smooth glass and ornate stone building facades on either side of the avenue. I swallowed hard. Driving a car in this city was nerve-racking enough for me.
The hard, constant vibration of the helicopter made the cars below appear to tremble through the windshield when they finally pulled away from the cathedral. Now where the hell were they going?
The seat harness bit hard into my chest as we tilted forward and began to pursue.
We inched along in the air behind the convoy as it passed tony Fifth Avenue shops-Cartier, Gucci, Trump Tower. What, were they getting in a little last-minute window shopping?
An even stranger thing happened when the cars arrived at Tiffany’s on the corner of 57th Street.
They stopped!
Were they going somewhere for breakfast? Maybe Jack pla
After a pause of a full minute, the lead car finally inched out from the curb and made a left-heading west on 57th Street. As the next four cars began to follow, I thought maybe the whole strange procession was going to take a slow rolling tour of the West Side. But the sixth car surprised me by turning east on 57th. The remaining cars behind it followed east as well.
I reported the bizarre new twist over the radio.
East Side, West Side, all around the town, I thought, watching the black sedans split away from one another.
Was one group the celebrities and the other the hijackers? There was no way to know from up here.
“Is there any way for you to distinguish who’s who?” Will Matthews asked in an anguished voice.
I stared at the two lines of cars, struggling to figure it out. The combination of diesel fuel, vertigo, and the constant pounding of the helicopter wasn’t exactly helping things in the focusing department. I gave up for the moment.
If there was any clue at all, I couldn’t see it right now.
“There’s no difference I can make out,” I finally called into the radio.
“Which way?” the pilot asked, a
“West,” I decided. “Hang a left.”
At least if I was wrong, and I got fired, I thought as Bergdorf’s swung under my right shoulder, it would be a shorter subway ride back to my apartment.
Chapter 93
STRAIGHTENING THE WHEEL of the lead sedan heading east on 57th Street, Eugena Humphrey sucked in a deep breath. The heat of the cramped car was making her sweat, and the gamy stench of the ski mask the hijackers had made her wear was another distraction. Just what she didn’t need right now.
She glanced at two uniformed cops, just standing there on the sidewalk, gaping at the passing sedans from in front of an art gallery on the north side of the street.
Nobody was doing anything! How could they?
Frightened as she was, sick and tired, she knew she couldn’t break down now. She couldn’t crack. And she wouldn’t.
When was the last time she’d actually driven herself around? she thought. Ten years ago? She remembered a red Mustang she’d bought herself after her transfer out of the Wheeling, West Virginia, affiliate to LA. What a wild ride she’d been on since then.
And this was how it would end? Unwashed on Christmas Day at the mercy of some degenerate criminals. After all she’d done. All the hard work and astute decisions, pulling herself up out of nothing. She not only had risen above what the world tried to enforce as the limits of her race and class, but had tapped in to the higher limits of human potential. Become a force for good in the world, a strong force.
But at least she’d lived a full life, hadn’t she? Done just about everything there was to do.
Eugena gasped as the gunman in the front seat jabbed her violently with the pipe of a sawed-off shotgun.
“Speed it up,” he yelled at her.
At that moment, Eugena felt her despair pop and her adrenaline surge.
Speed it up? No problemo. I can certainly do that.
She hit the gas, and the V-8 engine seemed to cry as buildings and windows began to blur past. The sedan briefly left asphalt as it hit the hump of Park Avenue.
“That’s it, momma. Punch it!” the hijacker howled as they landed, showering sparks.
As they hurtled toward Lexington, Eugena’s eye caught the gleam of one of those steel telephone company nitrogen tanks on the corner. She fantasized hitting it head-on.
Outside the windshield, it was as if New York City-the world itself-was coming at her now at warp speed. An unstoppable force at an immovable object.
Chapter 94
THE LINEUP OF SEDANS was still doing a slow crawl west on 57th Street. Through the gap of sky up and down Seventh Avenue, I spotted at least half a dozen news helicopters shadowing us. There hadn’t been this much attention on slow-moving vehicles since OJ’s white Bronco.
I watched with more intensity as the convoy of cars seemed to slow by the subway entrance on Sixth Avenue. All we would need was for them to bail out into the labyrinth that is the New York City subway system.
But then the cars passed through the intersection, returning to parade speed.
Why wouldn’t they do something, make their move?
It was as if the hijacker convoy was reading my mind as it came parallel to the Hard Rock Cafe a minute later.
There was a scream of engines and a bark of spi
The cops blocking the intersection at Broadway looked like stu
The sedans seemed to be drag racing as they shot across Eighth. By the time they hit Ninth Avenue, they looked like they were taking a shot at the land speed record. The turbine of our chopper had to kick it up several notches just to stay on them.
I thought this sudden need to be somewhere in a hurry a tad peculiar, since they were speeding toward a dead end. There were maybe two blocks of Manhattan left.
Then what?
I could feel the blood leave my face as I watched the sedans scream down the final slope of street heading directly toward the Hudson River.
Would they try to ram one of the barricades? I didn’t know, but I was certain of one thing: A deadly crash was coming in seconds. And there was nothing I could do except watch from a front-row balcony seat.