Andrew Klavan - The Final Hour

“Mike is in the gym, studying maps,” said Milton One. “Same as he’s been doing most of the night. Rose is upstairs in the big room, calling everyone he knows, trying to convince them the threat is real. Same as he’s been doing all night.”

“Patel’s outside getting the plane ready,” Dodger Jim added.

“The plane…?”

“Eat, Charlie. I mean it,” said Milton One. “It’s going to be a long day. You won’t make it without food.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said desperately. I pointed at the television. “They’re already gathering in Times Square. We have to do something.”

“We will,” said Milton One in that same calm voice. “And the first thing we’re going to do is eat.”

I was frustrated, but I saw the sense of it. I grabbed the plate. Grabbed some silverware off the butcher block. Quickly, I shoveled eggs into my mouth, swallowing them without tasting them.

“Tell me what happened last night,” I said through a mouthful of food. “What did I see? What did I do?”

“You screamed like a banshee for one thing,” said Dodger Jim. He smirked as he said it. I had given him a couple of knocks awhile back during a fight we had. He didn’t seem too sorry that I had been in pain.

Milton One rolled his eyes. “The important thing you did is you remembered.”

The images began to clear. It came back to me. I stopped eating. “The laptop. The laptop in the barracks.”

“Prince was apparently showing his friends the route he would take to get to Times Square. You saw a map,” said Milton One. “A map of the New York City subway system with a route through the tunnels illuminated on it.”

“The subways…,” I murmured.

“You were able to trace the route on a map Mike showed you.”

“Yes…,” I said. It came back to me. “That’s right.”

“Security is extra tight,” said the newswoman on television, “but if people are afraid they’re not showing it. They’re coming to the Big Apple in droves…”

On the screen, groups of people cheered and waved, celebrating the New Year.

“Well, then, if we know where Prince is going…,” I began to say.

But now Rose walked in. I-and Jim and Milton- turned to look at him.

He was wearing slacks and a wrinkled button-down shirt. He was carrying a battered leather briefcase in one hand. I would say he looked grim, but he always looked grim, his mouth tight, his intelligent eyes alert. He looked at our expectant expressions. We didn’t even have to ask the question out loud.

“I’ve got some assurances from the NYPD that there’ll be a powerful police presence along the route we think Prince will take,” he told us with a sigh.

Slowly, I laid my empty plate down on the butcher-block table. “A powerful police presence…?” I asked. “What does that even mean?”

“Probably?” said Rose. “It probably means it’ll be harder for us to get where we’re going.”

“Where are we going?” I said.

Before Rose could answer, I heard the Cessna engine start up outside. It roared and throbbed.

The next moment, Mike walked into the kitchen.

He nodded once at Rose. “I’ve got the layout down solid,” he said. “I know every inch of the way.”

Rose nodded back. “Good.”

The detective set the leather briefcase on the table. He opened it. Reached in. He brought out a deadly-looking pistol, a 9mm Glock. It was already stuck in a shoulder holster. He handed the gun and holster to Mike. Mike was wearing a dark tracksuit. He pulled the jacket off and slipped the holster on over his sweatshirt. As he did, Rose brought another pistol out of the briefcase. This one he handed to me.

“Waterman gave you some weapons training, didn’t he?” he asked.

“Some. The Homelanders gave me some too.”

“Good. I don’t want you to blow your own head off.”

“I’ll do my best.”

I took off the baseball jacket and strapped the weapon on over my sweatshirt. It felt heavy and somehow dark beneath my arm.

Now Patel appeared in the doorway. We could still hear the plane’s engine rumbling and pulsing outside.

“We’re ready to go,” said Patel.

I looked at them, all of them. Mike, Rose, Patel. Dodger Jim. Milton One. I looked from one face to another.

“What are we going to do?” I asked them.

For a moment, none of them answered. Then, finally, Mike said, “We’re going to stop them, Charlie.”

I stared at him. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Just us?”

Mike took a long breath. Then he nodded. “We’re all there is,” he said.

The Cessna flew low over green rolling hills. Then, after a while, Patel found the highway and we followed its winding white path. As the winter sun sank and the pale blue of the sky grew deeper, small cities appeared sparkling below us and then melded into thick forests or faded away into empty fields.

Soon more highways seemed to join the one we were following, becoming a snaky tangle of pavement amid the surrounding foliage. More cities seemed to rise beneath us. In the intervals between them we saw broad highways flanked with gas stations and malls. The dusk gathered slowly and the world turned gray.

I was sitting up front in the passenger seat again, Rose behind me, Patel next to me, Mike behind him. I peered through the side window at the changing light outside and the changing scene below.

“There’s the river,” Patel said to me finally. His voice crackled over the headset and under the thrum of the engine. There were bursts of static and distant voices on the radio, but the volume was very low.

I followed the gesture of his hand, looked ahead through the windshield and saw where the graying landscape reached what at first seemed like a sudden ending. Then the darker gray of the river became visible, a long, thick line. Another little while and I could make out the water, the low December sun behind us sending a fanning, sparkling line across it to the far side.

“And look there,” said Patel, pointing to my side.

I turned and looked. Far off against the deep blue distance, I could make out the Manhattan skyline, a jagged dance of stone. The lights were just beginning to come on in some of the windows.

“Nice, huh,” said Patel kind of wistfully.

“Awesome,” I said. It was. An awesome, amazing city.

“I grew up there,” he went on. “In Brooklyn, over on the other side.”

“No kidding.”

“I miss it now, I’ll tell you.”

“Sure,” I said. “Home, right?”

“Exactly. Home.”

“I miss mine too,” I said-and I felt it. As far away as I’d been, as much trouble as I’d seen, I’d never felt as far from being reunited with my family and friends as I felt just then. Just then, to be honest, it seemed impossible it would ever happen.

“A city like New York,” said Patel. I glanced over at him. He kept one hand resting lightly on the plane’s yoke and the other lying limp on his leg-the way pilots do to keep from oversteering. He gave me a smile, trying to sound relaxed and cool. But I could tell he was feeling the pressure too. We all were. “A city like New York gets into your blood somehow.”

“Does it?” I said doubtfully.

“You don’t like it?”

“New York?” I shrugged. “I like it okay.”

“You’re more of a small-town guy, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess. To me, New York is kind of noisy and crowded and-I don’t know-like, overwhelming.”

I heard Patel laugh a little over the headset. It was sort of a sad sound. He was thinking about home. “I’ve heard people say that,” he said. “I never noticed.”

“In New York, everyone’s always walking around really fast with these serious looks on their faces. What’s that about?”