The Final Hour h-4

by Andrew Klavan

  The Cessna dipped lower and lower. At that slow speed, every breath of wind made the plane jump and wobble. The controls felt unsteady in my hand.

  It was getting pretty dark down there below, but I could still see the trees plainly and the field beyond them was becoming clearer as we came closer. I could sense the police choppers hovering around me, but I didn’t dare to look. I was too busy, peering down too hard, trying too desperately to make sure there were no people in the park below who would get in my way. If there were, it would be a disaster. But no, the park seemed to have emptied out as the cold winter night came on.

  I started, held my breath, as I caught a glimpse of flame in the window beside me. By the time I looked over, it was gone. But I could still smell the smoke. I knew the fire was growing. I knew that time was running out.

  The darkness seemed to close over us as we glided down and down toward the level of the trees. As the plane got closer to the field, I could see the ground was less flat than it had looked from farther away. I could see the uneven contours, the slight rises-and the obstacles too-trash cans, benches, sandboxes. It was hard to find enough room to set the plane down safely.

  But I was out of options. There was no way to climb back toward the sky, that was for sure. The plane went on sinking steadily. My heart banged in my chest. The Lord’s Prayer played in my head like a broken record. The tops of the trees rose toward me.

  Then everything seemed to speed up. The end came very quickly.

  We went over the trees-close, very close, but we cleared them. Now the dark ground rose up suddenly like a beast’s back. I lowered the plane’s flaps and lifted the nose. The plane dropped fast, rushing forward at the same time. The field came up to meet us, the park racing past the windows.

  A hovering moment-then the wheels touched down-hard-very hard. The jolt threw me forward against the harness and brought my teeth snapping together. The plane bounced and lifted back into the air and dropped down again even harder this time. I tried to control the Cessna with the foot pedals, but the nose skewed farther and farther to the side.

  Then the plane turned and dipped. There was a sickening crunch. The landing gear seemed to collapse under us and the wing thumped against the earth. There was a loud crash as something smacked into the rear of the fuselage. The plane went slantwise.

  Then we stopped. It was over. We were down.

  Everything was quiet. I sat there, dazed.

  Then Mike started shouting. “Get out, Charlie! Get out! Get out fast-now-before it blows!”

  His voice brought me back to myself. Quickly, I ripped off my harness. I found the door latch in the dark and shoved the door open. I tumbled out into the cold December air.

  Confusion. The plane on fire. The Cessna’s crumpled silhouette flickering into relief as the flames rose. The police choppers hovered above me, sending white spotlights down on top of me. I couldn’t hear their engines. I couldn’t hear anything but my own heart pounding in my ears.

  Then I ripped my headset off and I heard the pound of the choppers and I heard Mike shouting.

  “Come on, come on!”

  I saw him inside the plane. He was struggling to get out of the backseat before the Cessna exploded. There were no doors in back. He and Rose had to push the seat forward and climb over it before they could exit.

  “Mike!” I shouted.

  I rushed toward the burning Cessna. Avoiding the rising flames, I stuck my head in through the open passenger door. Mike was in the back, struggling with Rose.

  “I can’t…,” I heard Rose say. “My leg. Go on, Mike, get out.”

  I saw Mike trying to shove him into the front seat.

  I pulled the front seat forward to make way for him. I felt heat as the fire rose beneath me. The police spotlights swept over me, then were gone, and in the sudden dark I saw the flickering red light of the flames.

  “Clear out, Charlie!” Mike shouted. “She’s gonna go! Clear out!”

  I ignored him. There was no way, no way I was going to leave them there. I reached deeper into the smothering smoke and heat and grabbed hold of Rose. I tried to drag him forward into the front seat. He let out a shout of pain.

  “My leg!”

  “Lift him toward me, Mike!” I shouted.

  “Get out, I said!” he shouted back.

  “Lift him to me or we all die!”

  Mike let out a curse at my stubbornness but did what I said and hoisted Rose up until I could grab him under the arms. Rose let out a scream of pain as I dragged him into the front seat. He went on screaming and I went on pulling him until we were both outside, both clear of the fire.

  I lost my balance and tumbled backward onto the grass. Rose fell on top of me. He screamed one more time and rolled off me. I sat up as the police spotlight swept across us. Then it was gone and there was just the red firelight, bright and steady now. The flames rose up from under the fuselage, up over the cockpit, blocking the exit.

  “Mike!” I screamed.

  I scrambled to my feet.

  “No!” Rose shouted at me. “Stay back!”

  I rushed toward the plane. I felt the heat of the fire tighten the skin on my face. I fought my way toward it, trying to beat the smoke and flames away with my hands.

  “Mike! Mike!” I kept screaming.

  And Rose was screaming behind me, “West, get back! Get back!”

  The noise of the low-flying choppers filled the air. Their spotlights swept the darkness. The shadows of tree branches moved crazily everywhere like skeletons in a dance. There was the noise of sirens, too, growing louder. Cop cars approaching in the night.

  Through all the confusion, another sound reached me. A sort of hollow bump. Was that it? Was the plane about to explode? The flames rose up higher around me.

  The next second, something hit me hard in the chest. I went flying backward away from the plane, backward out of the firelight, out of the spotlights, into the night.

  I went down on my back hard-and Mike came down hard on top of me. He had thrown himself out of the plane, through the flames. He’d thrown himself right into me, tackled me, driving me to the earth.

  Just in time. The Cessna exploded.

  There was no big blast, just a dull, hollow, echoless thud. The flames expanded upward and outward in a spreading ball. The three police helicopters, flying low, shot up and away into the air to escape the fire. Their spotlights yawed and crisscrossed.

  Chunks of hot metal and drifting fire started to come down all around me. I tried to dodge them, but Mike held me where I was, covering my body with his.

  When he rose up, I saw him clearly in the firelight, his face streaked with dirt, the dancing flames reflected in his eyes.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  I rolled over and sat up, feeling the heat from the fire wash over me.

  “Patel,” I said. “He’s still in there.”

  “No, he’s not,” said Mike. “It’s just his body, Charlie. Patel is gone.”

  I didn’t like to think of Patel’s body stuck in that burning plane, but Mike was right, and there was nothing I could do about it now.

  “What about you?” Mike asked again. “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” I said. “Not much. I’m all right.”

  “Rose?” asked Mike.

  I turned and saw Rose sitting up halfway, clutching at his leg with one hand. His face was contorted with pain.

  “I’ll be okay,” he said through gritted teeth. “But my leg’s busted.”

  “All right,” said Mike. “We’ll get you help.”

  “No,” said Rose. He had to shout now over the roar of the flames and the growing howl of the sirens and the beat of the choppers, too, which hung higher in the air to stay clear of the fire, but were still directly above us. “You’ve got to get out of here-before the cops arrive. If the police stop you, you’ll never get there in time.”

  Lit by the flames from the plane, Mike scanned the area. I could see him thinking it through.


  “Go,” said Rose. “I’ll be all right. I’ll get them to help, send reinforcements. They have to believe me now. All those lives at stake

  … They have to. Go, Mike. Go on.”

  After another second, Mike nodded once. He turned to me.

  “Let’s do it,” he said.

  He didn’t have to say it twice. I leapt to my feet.

  Without another word, Mike took off, sprinting away from the spotlights into the deeper shadows beneath the trees.

  I paused. I nodded once at Rose-one nod of goodbye and thanks. Rose nodded back.

  Then I followed Mike into the darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Escape

  I had no idea where we were or where we were going. I just followed Mike. He seemed to know the way, dodging and weaving through the park with absolute certainty. I remembered Milton One had told me he’d been studying maps all night.

  At first, the choppers didn’t come after us. I think they’d lost sight of us, trying to get away from the exploding plane. But as Mike and I raced through the darkness, I heard the pulsing throb of their rotors growing louder behind us. I looked over my shoulder and saw their powerful spotlights sweeping the night. One of them seemed to have stayed behind with Rose. The other two were looking for us.

  “Keep close,” Mike shouted back to me.

  I did. He ran along a line of trees, his path tracing the shapes of their shadows. The shifting patches of dark thrown by the tree trunks and the bare branches gave us some cover and Mike made the most of it. All around us, the chopper spotlights swept back and forth over the grass, searching and searching.

  But they’d lost us. By the time we reached the edge of the park, the throb of the rotors was growing dimmer as the choppers headed off over the trees in the wrong direction.

  Following Mike, I stepped off the soft grass onto hard pavement. And I stopped. Mike was there, standing at the edge of the sidewalk. I followed his gaze, looked up and saw tall buildings standing black against the night. Their windows were broken and lightless. They seemed abandoned.

  Mike slapped my shoulder and gestured with his head. He started running again. I went after him.

  We wove down these dark, abandoned streets. There were no people anywhere. It seemed the city-or the borough-wherever we were-was completely empty.

  Then we turned a corner-and suddenly there the people were. On a broad brightly lit boulevard, a large crowd moved in a steady line past stores and under streetlamps. There were police everywhere, too, standing on the outskirts of the crowd, scanning the people closely as they passed.

  Mike and I stood on the corner of a shadowy side street. He swiped at his face with his hands, trying to use his own sweat to wash the grime off his cheeks, trying to make himself look as normal as possible. I did the same.

  When he was done, Mike gave a quick tug at my elbow and started moving again. I followed him.

  We joined the masses, moving with the human tide. In the distance I could hear sirens, lots of sirens. Then there came the beat of the choppers too. I looked up and saw a police helicopter hovering in the air right above us. When I glanced over at the patrolmen on the ground, they were all murmuring into their walkie-talkies. I figured they were getting the word about the crash in the park and our escape. I figured they were being told to look out for us. I felt the policemen’s eyes on me as we passed by them-I felt sure they were all looking straight at me. But I guess Mike knew that in a crowd like that, it would be hard to pick out any one person. Anyway, he shoved his way into the center of the throng and I went with him and no one spotted us.

  We walked steadily along, pushed and carried by the flow of people. After a few minutes, I saw where we were heading. There was a subway stop on the corner up ahead. It was a stairway leading down from the sidewalk, the opening in the pavement surrounded by a low green barrier. At least one branch of the river of people was flowing into the opening and cascading down the stairs. Another few seconds, and Mike and I were cascading down with them.

  As the lights of the streets, and the cold of the evening air, gave way to the muted light and the dank stuffy atmosphere of the enclosed subway station, I felt myself relax a little. I felt safer here, belowground, out of the open, away from the choppers.

  As we reached the bottom of the stairs, I looked around the station, peering over the heads of the people around me. There was a ticket booth in the tiled enclosure and ticket machines against the wall and a row of turnstiles leading to the subway platform. There were more cops also, patrolmen in blue uniforms: one in the ticket area, two more that I could see on the platform, watching the crowds.

  Mike muscled his way to the ticket machines and came back to me with a ticket. Then he motioned me toward the turnstiles. The crowd grew denser as the turnstiles slowed the people’s progress. We pushed in close to the thickening mass. Reached the turnstiles, swiped our tickets, pushed through. We walked directly past one of the patrolmen guarding the platform. My shoulder nearly brushed him as I went by, we were that close. I felt my breath catch as his eyes went over me, but then we were past him-and the next moment, the train shot into the station, the windows flashing as it roared and rattled past.

  The train slowed, stopped. The doors opened. No one left the car. The crowd just poured in like water into a funnel. I had to shoulder my way through the dense mass to make it on. Then the doors closed and Mike and I were crushed together, packed in so tightly with the others I could hardly breathe.

  The train started moving again.

  Someone shouted drunkenly, “Happy New Year!”

  We headed into Manhattan.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Into the Darkness

  It was a long ride. The train rushed through the tunnel, blackness at the windows. The crowd held me tight, immobile-which was just as well. Left to stand alone, I might have collapsed. I was that exhausted.

  The madness of the past hours flashed through my mind. The flight over the river. The sudden death of Patel. The wild helicopter chase close to the city streets. The sight of the chopper caught in the phone wires. The gunman falling through the air to his death. The chopper exploding. And the Cessna, landing without power in the park. The crash. The fire. Getting Rose and Mike out. The race through the streets…

  And New Year’s Eve was just beginning.

  It was not so long ago, I thought to myself, I was an ordinary guy, an ordinary kid in an ordinary town, doing the sorts of things you do every day. You know: getting through school, hanging with your friends, thinking about girls and sports and computers and did I mention girls? There were days in that old life when I wondered if anything really exciting would ever happen to me. There were days now-lots of days-when I wondered if the excitement would ever stop, if I would ever have a quiet dinner with Beth or play a round of Medal of Honor with my gang, or just, I don’t know, listen to music, shoot some hoops, whatever, you know, the things you do.

  I missed life. I missed ordinary life. I wondered if I would ever see ordinary life again. I didn’t realize how good a thing it was until I lost it.

  I stood crushed in the crowd. I stared into empty space. I guess I was feeling sorry for myself a little. Sorry and so tired I didn’t know how I was going to make it through.

  The train crossed into Manhattan and headed south. I stared into space. Something funny came into my mind then. English class. I know: What a weird thing to think about. But suddenly I saw myself sitting there at my desk, listening to upbeat, roly-poly Mrs. Smith reading a Rudyard Kipling poem at the front of the class.

  “If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew / To serve your turn long after they are gone, / And so hold on when there is nothing in you / Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on’…”

  It was strange, I thought. At the time she read the poem, I don’t think I was even listening that closely. But now the words came back as if they had been written specifically for me:

  Hold on when there is not
hing in you except the Will which says to them…

  “Hold on,” said Mike, his voice rising above the roar and rattle of the car. “It’s the next stop.”

  I saw the train begin to slow. Lights flashed in the darkness of the window. Then the scene out there opened into a large station: Columbus Circle. The train stopped. The door opened. It was like releasing water through a dam. The people poured out with enormous force. Even if I’d wanted to stay on the train, I wouldn’t have been able to. I was carried out onto the platform in the tide.

  I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The crowds had been dense out in the borough, but they were nothing compared to this.

  The station was big-a broad interior space with several platforms, several tracks, visible through columns. People seemed to be coming from every direction, pouring up stairways and out of corridors, converging in front of the exits. More people than I’d ever seen in my life.

  At first I was carried helplessly along in the massive human tide, up the stairs, toward the turnstiles. But before we could exit the station, Mike caught hold of my arm and pulled me to the side, against the massive swirling mosaic on the wall. We pressed against the multicolored tiles as the people flowed past us. Another opposing tide of people was flowing back into the station, back down toward the platforms, at the same time.

  Mike rose up on tiptoe, stretched his neck, and looked around.

  Then I heard him murmur, “This way.”

  We joined the flow of people moving away from the exits, down a different flight of stairs, back toward the platforms. I hardly knew where we were going. I just followed Mike and went with the crowd.

  We came out onto another platform now. A train had just arrived here. Its doors stood open and people were pouring out, then pouring in. The people who had just left the train were moving in a sludgy mass toward the exit. Others who couldn’t fit on the train were lining up along the edge of the platform to wait for the next one.

  Mike kept moving, pushing against the thick cluster of bodies until we broke through and forced our way down the platform. I kept right behind Mike, but it wasn’t easy. I had to shoulder my way through the small spaces in the crowd.