Collision

“But you weren’t going to give them passes or pardons,” Ben said.

“No, I suppose not.”

“Forgive me for not wanting to step in front of a firing squad,” Pilgrim said.

The gleam of New Orleans, dimmed since the storm, began to unfold beneath them. The radio sounded, the Lakefront Airport-where jets such as theirs would normally land-gave Pilgrim approach instructions.

Now they arrowed across the width of Lake Pontchartrain, the huge lake to the north of New Orleans, one source of the deadly tidal surge that flooded the city. Coming up fast on the city proper.

The radio repeated landing instructions.

Pilgrim scanned the controls. He listened to the reported positions of the planes around him, gauging distance and speed, measuring their own distance from Lakefront and Louis Armstrong New Orleans International.

“This’ll work,” he said, half to himself, then he dove the plane toward the waters of the lake in a steep dive.

Ben pressed his face to the window; the Homeland plane veered downward as they shot toward earth, trying to stay close to them.

“He’s crazy, Ben, for God’s sakes!” Vochek grabbed at Pilgrim and one-handed he shoved her back in her seat.

“Ben, give me the gun, now,” she said.

“No.” He didn’t point the gun at her but he kept it close. “He knows what he’s doing.”

“You’re as crazy as he is,” she said.

Air Traffic Control for Lakefront Airport was not happy, calmly warning Pilgrim that he did not have clearance for the approach he was taking. He raced low over the long cup of Lake Pontchartrain, but he had slowed his descent, flying a bare two hundred feet above the surface, and he came in low over the city. In the puddles of lamplight Ben could see people on the street, watching the plane in surprise and fear, perhaps sure the plane was verging on a crash, before it went past in an instant.

The Homeland plane was the only other aircraft close to them. Pilgrim zoomed over the Superdome, rising to skirt its top, took a turn over the French Quarter, going low again, driving hard along the Mississippi River toward the Lower Ninth Ward. Below in the bright glow of the moon lay a ghostly web of roads, highways, and devastation left over from Katrina, now taking on its own sad permanence. Ben peered at wide swatches of land where nothing had been rebuilt; many homes still lay on limp and broken deathbeds. FEMA trailers dotted yards. He watched the altimeter dip: He was at two hundred feet, soaring fast over the broken city. The engines’ roar made a booming echo against the ground.

He took a hard, screaming turn, downward toward the ruins.

The crazy bastard was going to land the plane. In the streets. Vochek could see below that it was madness: power lines, still-tilted poles, front yards jagged with fencing, ruined houses, trying to crawl back from death.

The gun. Ben still held it, not pointed at anyone, and his own mouth was a thin line of worry.

“Ben. Talk him out of this.”

“He knows what he’s doing.”

Doubtful. She grabbed at the gun and slammed her elbow hard into Ben’s chest. She got both hands on the gun and tried to wrench it from his grasp.

Pilgrim turned the plane hard again, banking, slowing, searching for enough street.

The force of the sudden turn threw Vochek off Ben. He put the gun on the side away from her. Then a small but pile-driving fist hit Ben in the back of the head, smacked his face against the window. His lip split, blood smeared his teeth.

He folded himself over the pistol. He could not let her get the gun; she’d force them to land at Lakefront. The plane took another wrench to port, Pilgrim trying to slow before he ran out of road to land. As the windows dipped, Ben saw the headlights of a car on a deserted street, close enough almost to touch.

Vochek landed on his back, one arm closing around his throat, the other hand’s fingers digging for his eyes, saying, “Please, Ben, give it to me before he kills us.”

Pilgrim needed asphalt. In the moon’s gleam and the spill of light from cars and houses, he saw five threads of pavement, one a busier cross street on the edge of the neighborhood, where the roads and the lots had been swept clean. The other two choices were less-crowded roads. One had fewer houses and FEMA trailers and chain-link fences dotting the yards and was a straight shot. It had the fewest cars parked on the curb. No sign of the Homeland plane close by; they were far above, circling, watching, summoning the local police to intercept Pilgrim. Taking bets if he was actually crazy enough to land.

Well, why wouldn’t he be? He had nothing left to lose. Nothing. First time he’d been told to do anything by anyone other than Teach in ten years, and she was dead. He took no more orders. The realization steadied his hands on the controls.