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In the helicopter there were eight seats, five facing each other with a row of three stacked behind the row of two. Nothing about this configuration was good for Armo or Dekka since they left little room for anyone else to sit beside them, so they de-morphed as Dekka yelled, “Go, go, go! Don’t wait!”
The helicopter lifted off and veered away, skimming over trees, rising to clear the apartment buildings that lined the park and racing above the Hudson River, heading west.
Dekka, human once more, squirmed forward to the cockpit and tapped on the pilot’s shoulders. She started to tell him something but the noise of the turbines and blades obliterated speech. The pilot tapped his headphones, and at that moment the loadmaster squeezed beside her and clapped a pair over Dekka’s ears.
“Do you know where you’re going?”
The pilot shrugged. “Newark train station.”
Dekka shook her head. “No, the train’s left already, heading south. You need to plot an intercept course. The train goes one-fifty, top speed.”
There was a low curse from the pilot, who keyed his microphone to ask his controller at the base to plot an intercept with a train moving south. He preemptively banked the helicopter from almost due west to south-west.
After a few minutes the pilot was in Dekka’s headphones again. “Intercept is a no-go unless someone slows that train down. We do a hundred forty-five knots, which is about a hundred seventy miles an hour. If the train’s going one fifty with a head start, it’ll take a hell of a long time to catch him.”
“I’m pretty sure someone’s trying to slow it down,” Dekka said. “Listen, I know this’ll sound crazy, but can you get me through to General Eliopoulos on the radio?”
The pilot turned all the way around and raised the visor on his helmet to favor her with a look that suggested she was crazy.
“Lieutenant, the worst person on earth is on that train heading to DC. If he gets there and escapes us, he’ll destroy the entire US government. So make the call!”
The door of the helicopter was open, and the wind whipped clothing and hair as Dekka made her way back to the canvas jump seat between Sam and Malik.
“He says—”
“We heard,” Sam interrupted, tapping his own headphones by way of explanation. “I guess we have to hope Shade can slow the train down.”
Dekka clenched her jaw. So close! If she’d been quicker. If she’d thought of it instead of needing Sam to spot Vector’s likely next move. If, if, if.
If when Tom Peaks first rolled up in the parking of the Safeway you’d just told him to go . . .
But that wasn’t true. Not really. This disaster was not her fault; she accepted that.
“General Eliopoulos,” the pilot announced in an awed tone. Lieutenant chopper pilots did not speak to chairmen of the Joint Chiefs unless they’d just earned the Medal of Honor or been the cause of some truly spectacular screwup.
“General, Dekka Talent,” the pilot said, and handed the microphone to her.
“I suspect this is not good news,” Eliopoulos said, voice stretched and grainy in the radio.
“We are pretty sure Vector is aboard an Acela train heading for DC. Could get there in as little as an hour. We’re chasing him, but it doesn’t look good.”
The general then showed why he’d risen to become the top soldier. He went right to the point. “What kills him?”
“Fire and nerve gas, we hope. Fire for sure.”
“Got it. I’ll get some planes armed with napalm in the air.”
No goodbye, just a dead line. Okay then. “Hey, Mr. Pilot: I like your general. The man
does not screw around.”
The pilot shot her a thumbs-up and the helicopter flew on, barely above the roofs and treetops.
Dekka, not wishing to broadcast her conversation with Sam, lifted one side of his headphones and spoke into his ear. “I know you had doubts about Grand Central. Do you think you can do your thing with a fast-moving train?”
Sam tilted his head back and forth, then said, “I’m not sure, Dekka. It will sure as hell wreck the train.”
Dekka nodded and replaced her headphones.
