“You’re not working for this Cellar anymore.”
“I don’t work for you, either.”
She poked Ben with her finger. “Open your eyes. Tell me why Hector would risk this takeover of a covert group.”
Ben considered. “A man like Hector only risks his business to save his business. So whatever he’s doing, it has to be something that helps him maintain his bottom line. He’s had a lot of deals lost, a lot of contracts shuttled away from him. He told me a few days ago he’s in the business of making fear go away. So maybe he needs fear to be back in a big way.”
They fell silent as Texas passed beneath them and Louisiana appeared. Ben closed his eyes, exhausted, dozed. He dreamed of Emily, of the soft pressure of her hand in his. Peaceful and quiet. He awoke with a jerk at Pilgrim’s words: “There’s another plane coming up fast on us.”
37
Ben pressed his face to the window. “It’s not a fighter jet,” he said. “It’s a private jet, but bigger than ours.”
Vochek said, “They’re too close.”
“Wait a sec,” Pilgrim said, and he pulled the earphone plug so the radio could be heard in the cabin.
“This is Pritchard. The plane will escort you to New Orleans Lakefront Airport. Upon arrival, you will toss out any weapons, leave the plane, hands on head, and then you will lie flat on the tarmac. Do you understand?”
“Understood,” Pilgrim said. “Thanks for the escort.” He clicked off the line.
“It’s just a precaution,” Vochek said. “You’ve been rogue for ten years. They just want to make sure you behave.”
“Or make sure they control us,” Ben said.
“After they kill me,” Pilgrim said, “they’ll either promote you as a reward, or kill you because you know too much.” Vochek started to shake her head and Pilgrim held up a hand. “Watch your back. At least until the ink’s dry on your promotion.”
“You’re paranoid.”
“Tell me,” Ben said, “what was going to be the end result of finding all the illicit groups like the Cellar?”
“Shut them down. They’re not accountable.”
“Right. And then what? Trials for all the participants and those who gave them their orders, a public spectacle, the dirtiest laundry of our government aired for the world to see? Or was the shutdown going to be discreet? You’d have to find a way to shut everyone up.”
“We certainly weren’t going to eliminate people.”
“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.