Six hours earlier:
Osman handed me a limp kif cigarette and a pack of matches before he jumped back onto the Arawelo and started belching orders at Yusuf. "It will calm your nerves," he told me. I guess I looked like a ghost - people had been telling me all morning how pale I was. I didn't think Osman's weak hashish was going to help so I shoved the joint in my pocket after waving him my gratitude.
The boat pulled away from the Coast Guard dock with a rattling of pistons and a blast of hot exhaust from its diesels. Osman brought it around slowly, backing and filling with a series of slow-motion turns. The girls on the deck held to the rails or to lashed-down boxes of armaments and looked wistfully over the green grass of Governors Island. I had hoped not to see Ayaan before she left but there she was on top of the wheelhouse like a homecoming queen on a particularly rusty parade float. She looked down at me and I looked up at her. Our eyes met for perhaps the last time and we seemed to communicate on some non-verbal level, some wavelength of respect I couldn't really define. Finally she shot me a smile that made me queasy and then she turned to face the harbor.
I headed back toward the aircraft hangars at a jog - timing was a big part of Jack's plan and I wouldn't be the one to screw it up. The big tubular Chinook helicopter - a CH-47SD, the newest and fanciest cargo helicopter the Armed Forces have - sat on the lawn waiting for me. I dashed up the rear loading ramp and hit the switch to close it behind me, then jogged forward through the cabin, cavernous now that we'd torn out all the seats and rattling like the inside of a concrete mixer. Kreutzer already had the Super-D's tandem rotors spun up to speed and he was ready to get airborne. He had protested of course when we asked him to fly us out to Central Park but Jack had certain powers of persuasion. Namely he told Kreutzer that if he didn't volunteer for the job we would just leave him on Governors Island to starve. When Jack says something like that people tend to assume he's not bluffing.
As soon as I reached the cockpit Kreutzer took us straight up a hundred feet and then pushed forward so hard I toppled backward and landed on my ass. He looked down at me from his pilot's seat as if he might start laughing.
"How many flight hours do you have on this thing?" I shouted over the roar of the engines.
Kreutzer snarled back, "More than you, asshole." Fair enough.
Carefully I climbed up into the navigator's seat. Jack, in the co-pilot's seat, handed me a stick of gum to help pop my ears.
We streaked across the harbor and into Brooklyn airspace, keeping low and moving fast. We were taking the first of many dumb risks this mission would require. While we were certain that Brooklyn was swarming with the dead and that some of them would see us we could only hope that Gary's ability to use the dead as spies didn't extend to that kind of range... or, perhaps, that he wouldn't be paying attention to the outlying boroughs.
The position of my seat kept me from seeing down to street level so I was thankfully spared the sight of any surprised-looking dead who might have spotted us. All I saw was the occasional building flashing by right outside my window - the courthouse, the Williamsburgh Savings Bank clock tower, the Jehovah's Witness headquarters. As we passed into Queens Kreutzer brought us up another hundred feet and banked toward the river. "Last chance," he said.
I frowned in confusion - then looked out the canopy at the ground below. We were even with the UN complex, the Secretariat building as white and shiny as a tombstone where it towered over the corpse-choked East River. My brain did a reversal of perspectives and I realized what he was saying. We could just fly over there right now and get the drugs and leave. I could call Ayaan and abort this suicide mission. I didn't see any pigeons - maybe Gary had actually kept his word and cleared the way for us.
So close. It was right there. Right there!
Jack put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. He wasn't threatening me, or even reminding me of my responsibilities. Just emotional support, from a guy who I would have thought incapable of such. I turned to nod at him and sank back into my crewseat.
It wasn't long before Kreutzer had us hovering over the Queensboro bridge where it crossed Roosevelt Island. As close as we dared to get to Manhattan in our noisy conveyance. I got up from my seat and looked down through the nose windows. I could see the dead far below, crowding around the bridge pylons, their heads craning upwards and their hands reaching for us.
"I don't know if either of you has accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior," Kreutzer said, turning sideways in his seat, "but now might be the time."
We ignored him and headed aft to the cabin. Jack and I took turns sealing one another into hazmat suits, just like the ones Ayaan and I used when we first came to Times Square a few days - or a lifetime - back. These were Coast Guard issue, meant for use during toxic spill cleanups, so they were thicker and more unwieldy but I had tested mine out and knew I could still walk in it. When we were suited up Jack ran me through the basics of fast-roping. He fitted me with a nylon harness that looped over my thighs then attached a descender - an aluminum figure eight - to my crotch with carabiners. When he was done he opened a hatch in the belly of the Chinook with a burst of white light and hooked up a winch for our lines. One end of the line went through my descender in a complicated loop. Jack attached a safety line to the back of my harness and I was good to go. "See you downstairs," I said, trying to sound tough. Jack didn't respond so I held my breath and stepped out through the hatch.
They call it fast-roping because "falling like a rock" doesn't have the same military jargon feel. I could slow myself down if I didn't mind burning my gloves - the friction from the ropes got intense - but I spent most of the descent in free fall, just like Jack had taught me. Falling objects all descend at the same speed - Galileo proved it - but when you're carrying a fifty pound pack it sure feels like you're dropping even faster. I slowed as I neared the ground, grabbing hard at my line until my gloves literally began to smoke and then flexed my knees just as I touched the concrete roadbed, rolling away from the impact so I didn't break my ankles.
In a second I was up and holding the rope while Jack followed me down. We unclipped the various lines and harnesses and waved at Kreutzer, but he was already slipping sideways in a wide turn that would take him well out of sight of Manhattan. In a few seconds he was hidden behind a row of buildings and the world was suddenly silent, only my breath and the creaking of my suit to keep me company. Jack had expressly forbidden speaking during this part of the mission, just in case. All it would take was one dead man to notice us and we would fail, and our lives would be forfeit.
The bridge rose away from us on either side, a tendril of concrete flanked by high iron towers. To the east lay Manhattan, the Upper East Side and then Central Park. We had a long walk ahead of us. We got started without a word.
