HL 04-The Final Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  “Come on, chucklehead, get in the stupid car,” he said.

  It was Mike.

  PART III

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Flashes

  Mike grabbed me under the arms and hauled me up. My legs felt like spaghetti, my lungs like fire. Mike half dragged me to the Jeep as I struggled to get my feet under me. When we reached the side of the vehicle, he pulled the door open and dropped me onto the passenger seat. He left me there to struggle the rest of the way in.

  By the time I got the door shut, he was in the driver’s seat beside me. He didn’t say another word, just hit the gas. The tires spun and mud spat up around us. Then the rubber gripped the ground and the Jeep started moving through the rain.

  I was curled up on my side, my cheek pressed into the seat back. My mouth hung open as I wheezed for air. The mud and rain were dripping off me.

  My head was spinning with exhaustion. I wasn’t even sure this was really happening, that it was really real.

  “Mike . . . ?” I tried to say through my gasps. My voice was barely audible over the engine noise, even to me.

  “There’s fresh clothes in back,” Mike said, working the wheel, staring hard through the windshield. “Get into them. There’s some food back there too.”

  “Water . . .”

  “Yeah, a couple of bottles.”

  Desperate for a drink, I managed to find the strength to twist around and reach into the backseat. I found a water bottle. Sucked hard on the nozzle, swallowing gulp after gulp. Then I fell back weakly against the seat back again.

  “What’re you . . . ?” It took me two tries to finish the sentence. “What’re you doing here, Mike? How did you . . . ?”

  “Long story, chucklehead,” said Mike. “And right now, I’m busy trying not to drive into a ditch or get caught by the police. Take a break, change, eat, get some rest. I’ll get us out of here.”

  So we were silent for a while. The Jeep bounced and skidded and juddered over the mud through the rain. The thunder crashed. The lightning split the sky. But it all seemed far away now, farther and farther away . . .

  I wanted to change out of my wet, muddy clothes. I wanted to eat. But I couldn’t move. I was just too tired. My eyes sank shut. I felt the world sinking away from me . . .

  A flash. Not lightning this time. This time, it was inside my brain. A flash of light—and I was there again, in the past again. In the Homelanders’ forest compound. Crouched in the night outside the lighted barracks, listening through the window to the voices of the people inside. Prince, Waylon, Sherman. Discussing their plans to assassinate the new head of Homeland Security. And then . . .

  Even if I have to do it on my own, the Great Death will not be stopped. The basic elements are already in place. Come what may, it will ring in the devil’s New Year. I will make sure of it personally if I have to.

  “Not yet, chucklehead.”

  My eyes snapped open at the rough bark of Mike’s voice.

  “What?” I murmured. “Where am I?”

  “You fall asleep in those clothes, you’ll wake up with pneumonia. Plus, if a cop does stop us, he’ll see your prison gear. You gotta change first. Then you can sleep.”

  The past—that moment outside the barracks—was tantalizingly close. I could almost see it, almost remember what had happened next. The scene continued to flicker in my mind. Pieces of it like images appearing on a broken TV, then fizzling back into darkness . . .

  Someone—the guard?—grabbed me by the shoulder . . .

  But Mike was right. I was already shivering. My fingers felt stiff and my lips unsteady. The mud was crusting on me. I had to change.

  I tried to remember that night in the Homelander compound as I forced my limbs to move. Forced myself to lift up and half climb over, half slither between the front seats into the narrow seat in back. My mouth hung open with exhaustion as I lifted a gray sweat suit with an Army logo.

  I turned in the dark, knowing they would kill me if they found me. It was the guard . . . he’d caught me . . . his bright eyes stared at me, full of rage . . .

  Then the scene was gone again, like the name of a song you can’t quite remember.

  I twisted around in the small space, working out of my muddy clothes. It felt good to get the dry sweat suit on me. Its fabric was warm from being inside the car. Then I found a heavy Yankees baseball jacket. I slipped into that too.

  The guard is about to shout. Prince will hear him. Waylon will hear him. They’ll discover me. Kill me . . .

  The Jeep bounced and bounded, nearly throwing me onto the floor. I braced myself in the tight space. When the ride smoothed out, I drank more water. I wanted to eat more food, but I was just too tired. Even as I sucked at the bottle, my eyes were falling shut again. And every time, they did, there it was . . .

  The compound. The barracks. The hand on my shoulder. The face of the guard. His angry eyes. His mouth opening to shout . . .

  I climbed wearily back into the front seat. I didn’t say anything to Mike. I didn’t have the energy. He was silent, too, completely focused on pushing the Jeep through the mud that gripped the tires and the rain that lashed the windshield.

  I turned onto my side again, resting my head against the seat back. The rain pounded on the roof of the Jeep. The thunder growled like an angry dog, farther away than before. We were getting past the storm, I thought.

  I let my eyes close as the Jeep strained forward and slid . . .

  The compound. The barracks. The hand on my shoulder . . .

  Just before I fell asleep again, there was a jolt under me. I heard Mike let out a grunt of triumph. Suddenly, the ride smoothed out. Dimly I realized: We must have gotten out of the wilderness. We must have made it back onto the pavement, back onto the road.

  But I was too exhausted to look and find out for sure. I just wanted sleep, needed sleep.

  And I needed to find my way back into the past again. To find out what finally happened . . .

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  A Very Bad Dream

  I heard a footstep behind me. I turned. The guard had completed his patrol and reached the fence. He now started walking back across the compound. He was headed my way.

  I was in the past again, in the darkness outside the lighted barracks. Part of me knew I was still, in fact, in the Jeep, dreaming. But as the moments passed, that part of me started to dissolve. The past enveloped me. I was there completely . . .

  I turned away from the guard again, back to the barracks. Prince’s voice drifted out to me from inside.

  “ . . . the Great Death will not be stopped. The basic elements are already in place. Come what may, it will ring in the devil’s New Year. I will make sure of it personally if I have to.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. The guard kept coming toward me.

  “What do you mean, everything is in place?” Sherman asked.

  “It will be.”

  “What about the C.O. device?”

  “It’s being acquired from the Russians. The arrangements are progressing.”

  “When? When will we have it?”

  “Soon.”

  “How much?”

  “Six canisters.”

  “Six . . .”

  “It’s more than enough. Six canisters can be carried by a single man. So nothing will stop it, even if it comes down to me alone.”

  I heard Waylon let out what sounded like a curse in a foreign language.

  But I was out of time. I had to get back to my barracks. Back into my bed before the guard reached me, before Prince knew I had slipped out to spy on him.

  I turned to move away from the building. But before I could, a hand grabbed me by the shoulder.

  My head came around fast. It was the guard. He must’ve spotted me, hurried quietly over the final distance. All at once, he was standing over me, clutching me hard.

  He was a large man with dark olive skin. His sunken eyes burned brightly with excitement and rage under his black beret. I saw his
teeth flash as his mouth opened to shout for help.

  But before he could, my hand shot out and clutched his throat, cutting off the shout before it could escape him. He moved to tear my hand away, but I was too quick for him. I grabbed him by the shoulder, kicked my leg up in back of him and then swiftly swept it in toward myself, knocking his leg out from under him as it came. At the same time, I put my weight behind the hand on his throat, pushing him so that when he lost the prop of his leg he went flying backward. He dropped down to the ground hard and I went down on top of him, still choking off his cry.

  My karate training had taught me where to apply the pressure to cut off the blood supply to his brain. He struggled for only a moment, then he was unconscious. He had never made a sound.

  He wouldn’t be out long, though. In a few seconds, a minute at most, he would be awake again. I had to get out of here. But where? Should I run for it? Try to get out of the compound? Or should I go back to my barracks? The guard would find me, accuse me. I would have to call him a liar. I’d already heard that Prince didn’t trust me. Could I convince him to believe me instead of his own guard?

  As I hesitated, trying to think what to do, I heard the voices inside again.

  “Did you hear something?” That was Waylon.

  Then Sherman: “No. Not a thing.”

  “What was it?” said Prince.

  “I thought . . . ,” Waylon began.

  Quickly, I dragged the unconscious guard toward the building. I managed to get into the darkness under the wall, out of sight, just as Waylon’s figure appeared above me at the window. The light from the building threw his shadow onto the ground in front of me. I looked up and saw him, peering out, searching for any disturbance.

  I heard Prince speak from inside the room, “Do you see anything?”

  A long pause as Waylon surveyed the compound. “No,” he said, drawing out the word uncertainly. “No, it was probably nothing.”

  But he didn’t move. He stayed where he was at the window, looking out. So there I was, pinned against the wall of the barracks. If I tried to break away and get back to my own barracks now, Waylon would spot me at once.

  I crouched down, holding the guard by his shirtfront, hoping he wouldn’t revive too quickly.

  “As I was saying,” Prince went on. “The point is this. You can see here. The route is set. We have agents at the entrances and exits to ensure everything goes smoothly. This is the great and final mission of the Homelanders.”

  “But then, why jeopardize it with all these smaller attacks?” I heard Sherman ask. “I mean, this assassination— won’t it make them tighten security?”

  “Let them,” said Prince. I could almost hear him shrug. “The more they try to defend themselves, the more terrified they’ll be when they find we can move anywhere, strike anywhere we choose.”

  The unconscious guard stirred under my hand. He let out a low groan. I glanced down at him, but his eyes were still closed, his mouth still hanging open.

  I looked up. Waylon was still there above me, watchful, at the window.

  Now Prince spoke again. I could hear the smile in his voice. I could picture it: that self-satisfied smile. I could hear the self-satisfied arrogance in his voice too. “America is a soft country, ripe for destruction. They are rich and isolated and they think the world is all like them, concerned with nothing but supermarkets and electronics and television shows. They think there is nothing that can’t be talked out, that can’t be solved peacefully or by passing a few dollars back and forth.”

  “Freedom makes people decadent,” said Waylon scornfully. He still hadn’t moved from his place at the window.

  “Exactly,” Prince went on. “When you attack Americans, they don’t make themselves stronger, they make themselves weaker. They say to themselves, ‘Oh, if only we are nicer to our enemies, they will see how wonderful we are and come to love us. They will stop being angry at us. They will be nice, too, and watch TV with us and go to the mall and leave us alone.’ They don’t understand that this is warfare in the name of God, warfare to the death. Two ways of life, two ways of looking at the world that can’t be reconciled. One must live and the other must perish.”

  Now the unconscious guard shifted on the ground. His eyes remained closed, but he lifted his hand and rubbed at his face as if to bring himself around. I had to do something. Now. Fast. But what?

  Prince said, “They are weary of war, but war is what we live for. They are afraid of death, but death is what we love.” I heard a chair move as if someone had stood up. “When we hit them again, so hard, right there, right where we hit them so hard before . . . I promise you, what is left of their will to fight will collapse utterly.”

  What did he mean, right there? Right where? I had to find out.

  Just then, Waylon turned away from the window. He moved back into the room, out of sight.

  It was my chance, my only chance to find out more. Without even thinking, I let go of the guard. I grabbed hold of the windowsill. I pulled myself up until I could peer over the edge and into the room.

  I caught a glimpse—a single glimpse of the scene inside. The three men in the cramped office. Prince sitting at the desk with the laptop on it. Sherman across from him. Waylon standing over him, with his hands clasped behind his back.

  Just a glimpse. I hardly had a chance to take in what I was seeing. Then . . .

  “Help me! Help!”

  The guard had regained consciousness! He was sitting up. He was shouting.

  “Help me! Help!”

  I let go of the windowsill. I dropped down to the earth. I leapt on top of the screaming guard, punched him once, hard, fast, to daze him again. I stripped his automatic weapon off his shoulder.

  And I took off, gun in hand, sprinting away from the building.

  I didn’t get far.

  Two things happened at once. I heard Waylon shout behind me: “West!”

  Then I was blinded with bright light. The guards in the towers had turned their spotlights on me. The next moment, the ground around me was riddled with gunfire, the bullets breaking up the hard-packed dirt of the compound, sending up a cloud of dust. They weren’t trying to hit me. If they had, I would’ve been dead then and there. But the gunfire pinned me to the spot, so that I couldn’t run forward. And when I turned to run back, I saw three guards charging at me, their guns lowered.

  They were shouting:

  “Drop the gun!”

  “Put the gun down or you’re dead!”

  “Put it down! Put your hands up!”

  Their voices overlapped in a threatening jumble.

  I turned this way and that, looking for a way to escape. I saw Waylon—he was in the doorway of the barracks now. His figure was turned to a black shape by the light shining in back of him.

  Guards were charging at me from every side. Guards—and my fellow trainees as well. Alerted by the shouts and the gunfire, they came rushing out of their barracks, too, surrounding me.

  For a moment, the guards stopped shouting, and there was a strange silence as if everyone was waiting to find out what would happen next. Pinned in the spotlight beams from the tower, I looked from one guard to another, clutching my gun.

  “I would put the weapon down if I were you, Mr. West.” This was Prince. He was in the doorway now too. He had pushed past Waylon and stood in front of him. His voice was soft and calm. “You have only a second to decide, you know. Then I’ll give the order to kill you. I’ll count to one,” he said. “One.”

  I had no choice. I threw the AK to the earth. I put my hands up. I was caught.

  One of the guards rushed forward to confiscate the weapon.

  Prince came walking toward me, casually, in no hurry. Waylon came behind him and Sherman came out of the barracks now as well and joined them. Another moment, and Prince stood directly in front of me with Waylon on one side of him and Sherman on the other. I had a moment to feel how strange it was to see Sherman there, my high school history teacher, out
in the middle of this murderous place. It was as if my two lives—my normal everyday past and this insane nightmare of a present— had come crashing together. Sherman was the link between them.

  Prince smiled at me, his bright, ferocious, and intelligent eyes gleaming with the glow of the spotlights. Every slick black hair was in place, his goatee neatly trimmed. He was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt open at the neck, as if he’d just come home from working at the bank and was relaxing after a long day.

  “I caught him outside your window.” This was the guard I had knocked out. He emerged from the shadows of the barracks, rubbing his throat.

  Prince glanced at him, then back at me. “Outside my window,” he repeated softly.

  “He was listening,” said the guard.

  “I was just . . . ,” I started, but I fell silent when Prince lifted his hand.

  “Don’t insult my intelligence, please, Mr. West.” He studied me a moment. “I don’t suppose you care to tell me who you’re working for.”

  “I’m working for you,” I insisted. “I came here to work for you. I was just coming to talk to Waylon about . . .”

  But again, he lifted his hand and I stopped talking. What was the use? I didn’t sound convincing even to myself.

  Prince examined me for a long quiet moment. Then he glanced at Waylon—casually, as if he were about to tell him to send out for a pizza so we could all share a late-night snack.

  Instead he said, “Torture him until he tells you everything. Then kill him.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The Final Piece

  When I woke up, the rain had stopped. It was almost dusk.

  Blinking, confused, I sat up on the Jeep’s passenger seat. I looked out through the windshield.

  A long highway ran before us through grassy hills to a darkening sky. There were a few cars and trucks ahead of us and behind us, but not many. Traffic was light and we were moving quickly. There were still lots of clouds in the sky, but they were drifting apart now. Patches of blue and rays of slanting sunlight were appearing between them. There was nothing left of the great storm.