crippled sprint. As he ran his head nodded up and down like a sunflower on a broken stalk. He ran toward humorless, unforgiving men who were his salvation, men who might have been fisher-folk standing in a boat beyond an unsuspected silver sky, retrieving their net to see what fabulous things they had caught.
17
The LED readout for the left tank began to slow down when it reached 21,000 pounds, and by the time it topped 22,000 it had almost stopped. Brian understood what was happening and quickly flicked two switches, shutting down the hydraulic pumps. The 727-400 had given them what she had to give: a little over 46,000 pounds of jet-fuel. It would have to be enough.
"All right," he said, standing up.
"All right what?" Nick asked, also standing.
"We're uncoupling and getting the fuck out of here."
The approaching noise had reached deafening levels. Mixed into the crunching smacking sound and the transmission squeal were falling trees and the dull crump of collapsing buildings, just before shutting the pumps down he had heard a number of crackling thuds followed by a series of deep splashes. A bridge falling into the river Nick had seen, he imagined.
"Mr Toomy!" Bethany screamed suddenly. "It's Mr Toomy!"
Nick beat Brian out the door and into first class, but they were both in time to see Craig go shambling and lurching across the taxiway. He ignored the plane completely. His destination appeared to be an empty triangle of grass bounded by a pair of crisscrossing taxiways.
"What's he doing?" Rudy breathed.
"Never mind him," Brian said. "We're all out of time. Nick? Go down the ladder ahead of me. Hold me while I uncouple the hose." Brian felt like a man standing naked on a beach as a tidal wave humps up on the horizon and rushes toward the shore.
Nick followed him down and laid hold of Brian's belt again as Brian leaned out and twisted the nozzle of the hose, unlocking it. A moment later he yanked the hose free and dropped it to the cement, where the nozzle-ring clanged dully. Brian slammed the fuel-port door shut.
"Come on," he said after Nick had pulled him back. His face was dirty gray. "Let's get out of here."
But Nick did not move. He was frozen in place, staring to the east. His skin had gone the color of paper. On his face was an expression of dreamlike horror. His upper lip trembled, and in that moment he looked like a dog that is too frightened to snarl.
Brian turned his head slowly in that direction, hearing the tendons in his neck creak like a rusty spring on an old screen door as he did so. He turned his head and watched as the langoliers finally entered stage left.
18
"So you see," Craig said, approaching the empty chair at the head of the table and standing before the men seated around it, "the brokers with whom I did business were not only unscrupulous; many of them were actually CIA plants whose job it was to contact and fake out just such bankers as myself - men looking to fill up skinny portfolios in a hurry. As far as they are concerned, the end - keeping communism out of South America - justifies any available means."
"What procedures did you follow to check these fellows out?" a fat man in an expensive blue suit asked. "Did you use a bond-insurance company, or does your bank retain a specific investigation firm in such cases?" Blue Suit's round, jowly face was perfectly shaved; his cheeks glowed either with good health or forty years of Scotch and sodas; his eyes were merciless chips of blue ice. They were wonderful eyes; they were father-eyes.
Somewhere, far away from this boardroom two floors below the top of the Prudential Center, Craig could hear a hell of a racket going on. Road construction, he supposed. There was always road construction going on in Boston, and he suspected that most of it was unnecessary, that in most cases it was just the old, old story - the unscrupulous taking cheerful advantage of the unwary. It had nothing to do with him. Nothing whatever. His job was to deal with the man in the blue suit, and he couldn't wait to get started.
"We're waiting, Craig," the president of his own banking institution said. Craig felt momentary surprise - Mr Parker hadn't been scheduled to attend this meeting - and then the feeling