Andrew Klavan - The Final Hour

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…

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.