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I pull him up and leverage him into a fireman’s carry, then bump my way through the door. Brian cries out again and then he’s quiet, and I think the lucky guy has passed out—which may prove to be a blessing in the next few minutes.
I maneuver to the rear along the narrow catwalk. Then I manage a controlled fall down a ladder, hit the ground, and stumble but stay upright, my patient still on my back, as the train slides by.
“Come on, Brian,” I say, “let’s go for a little stroll.”
No illusions, no dreams now.
I do the very best I can.
I stagger along the rough terrain of the dirt and gravel between the two sets of tracks, and when I glance back I see the train slowing down, slowing down, as—
The southbound locomotive passes the stopped one and continues moving along, slowing at a glacial pace.
I keep moving as best I can.
Poor Brian.
He seems to be getting heavier with each step.
Boom, boom, boom.
The charges go off.
I’ve failed. Not Jeremy, not MI6, not even the CIA.
All mine.
I keep moving, Brian getting heavier, and a sharp, dark temptation comes to me,of dumping the dying guy here and still making a run for it.I pull up short, awaiting the first whiff of toxic chemicals, imagining the burning in my nostrils and lungs, the drowning in my own fluids here on dry land.
Thump, thump, thump.
There’s a heavy roar as the familiar-looking NYPD helicopter comes down for a landing. The copilot’s door opens, and Joe Woods—crash helmet, flight jacket, flight suit, and all—races to help me with the wounded train engineer. We move back to the helicopter, each of us ducking our heads as we pass beneath the rotor.
Joe opens the rear passenger door and we fairly toss Brian in. Then, with Lisa screaming, “Move, move, move!” we both clamber aboard.
The door is barely shut and I’m on the floor of the helicopter as it lifts up and roars away. I get on my knees and gaze back at the two trains, watching the clouds start to form.
I failed.
Chapter122
THE HELICOPTERraces back toward Manhattan, and with tired hands I put on the earphones and mic, then go back to poor Brian. Joe is working on him, putting an oxygen feed on his face and then using his mic to call ahead to the New York–Presbyterian/Lower Manhattan Hospital, reading out Brian’s vitals.
Joe puts his hand over the mic and says to me, “We’ve lucked out! That’s a new helipad, first in the city!”
Luck.
I just nod and sit against the door, not bothering to get in the passenger seat, knees up to my chest, arms wrapped around them.
Some luck.
Only a few minutes pass before I hear the change in the Bell’s engine sound. Lisa cleanly and quickly lands us on a large helipad bounded with a chain-link fence and with a circled orangeHin the center. Joe gets up and I help him with the door, and a squad of doctors and nurses run out of a nearby cubelike structure, pushing a crash cart and a gurney. Joe yells the latest stats into the ear of a physician, her light-blue scrubs fluttering in the wash from the rotor, and in seconds the wounded Brian is placed on the gurney.
Standing on the hospital roof, I watch Joe slam the passenger door shut, race around the front of the helicopter, and resume his position as copilot. After he fastens himself in and closes his door, Lisa guns the Bell’s engine and off she goes, returning to duty without a look back at me.
Good for her—though I don’t envy what the rest of her day will be like.
I’m with the nurses and doctors as an IV drip is put into Brian’s arm, a fresh oxygen hose is draped through his nostrils, and there’s a big push as they run back through the entrance door, just yards away. I follow them into an open elevator. When the door shuts, I see Brian’s left hand drop free from the gurney.
