Escape From New York by Mike McQuay Read Free Book Online

But he was a soldier, a professional soldier, and the call of battle was like sex to him. He was getting sucked in.
    He kept walking until he caught sight of the command copter. It bore, in shining gold, the seal of the USPF. He looked at the icon of the eagle in the seal’s center. Its eye was staring and angry; its talons were wrapped around a length of barbed wire. The word COMMISSIONER was stenciled neatly just below the shield.
    Opening the copter door, he hoisted himself into the big machine. He had a hard time getting himself situated in the seat with the bulky pack on his back. He wouldn’t be wearing it except that a regulation had come down saying that all personnel who entered the prison most wear survival gear. It was his own regulation.
    When he got squared away, he shut the door. It cut down the outside noise considerably. The radio speaker blared static in front of him. He pointed to it.
    “Traffic control?” he asked loudly.
    The man grunted, yelling. “Yeah. Rehme’s on it.”
    A headset with attached mike was lying on the console. Hauk picked it up and put it on his head, juicing the transmit switch. “Rehme . . . this is Hauk. You there? Over.”
    Rehme’s voice came back firm and in control. “I’m here.”
    “You got the location? Over.”
    “Yeah . . . we’re talking about the south. Somewhere around the corner of Beaver and . . . uh . . . Nassau.”
    Hauk didn’t know the city that well. “Listen, Control. Where the hell is . . .”
    “You know where Battery Park is?”
    “Sure.”
    “Just get to Battery Park and look for the smoke.”
    “Gotcha.” Hauk started to toggle off, then, “Is he . . . how’s the monitor?”
    “Vital signs are still positive,” Rehme’s distorted voice said. “He’s still alive. Good luck.”
    “Thanks.”
    Hauk nodded once to the pilot and stuck his thumb in the air. The man lifted them off at once, pointing them to the north and east. The other copters went up too, buzzing, crying. Hauk felt as if he were in the middle of a flock of carrion birds.
    Bob Hauk had come back from the war feeling old, used up. He came back to find that he had lost his family. His wife was just gone, no trace or even conjecture as to what could have happened. Of his two grown sons, Walt died in the L.A. fire bombing; Jerry was caught looting a supermarket in Chicago. They said he was crazy. They sent him to prison. In New York.
    Hauk was all empty inside. He felt like a Halloween jack-o-lantern that had had the guts removed and a lit candle stuck inside to make it look like the thing was alive.
    He came to the prison to find Jerry, but they wouldn’t let him inside. So he hired on as a trooper, but when they found out who he was, they offered him the job of Commissioner. Nobody else would touch the job with a hundred-foot bayonet.
    Hauk didn’t want it either, but it was the only way he could think of to find his son. For several years he went into the city every chance he got, but it was a useless exercise. The only records kept were of the prisoners going in. Once inside the city, they were on their own—for life.
    Within the anarchy of the city itself, it was worse than useless trying to find anything out—it was madness. Hauk had beaten his head against the wall of silence so many times that he felt as if he were permanently bruised.
    Then one day, he just quit looking. He had drained out what little bit of life force that had been left within him, finally and irrevocably, until only the burnt-out shell remained. That had been a year ago, and he hadn’t been anywhere near the city since.
    The pilot was pointing down at the shoreline. “There’s the Park,” he said loudly.
    Hauk followed his finger down to the dark open ground without buildings. Somehow, it looked better at night. He couldn’t see the barren ground and skeletons of trees that had once been fertile and alive.
    He switched on the transmitter. “This is Hauk, over the Battery . . . we’re