Andrew Klavan - The Final Hour

Then the chopper came down right on top of him.

The whirlybird smacked into the asphalt and blew. The explosion sent a billowing dome of red flame up into the air. The thunder of the blast reached me even over my headset, even over the throb of the engine. The blast shook the Cessna as it climbed up out of its turn.

Mike and Rose stopped shouting in my headset. We were all silent. I faced forward. The flicker of flame played over the windshield as we climbed toward the darkening sky. I kept turning until I spotted the river, in the distance now. I headed for the water, the nose up, the plane gaining altitude, the city buildings sinking away below me.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then I smelled the smoke.

A second later, a black cloud lifted up from the fuselage. It was quickly blown apart by the wash of air from the propeller.

“Fire!” Mike shouted.

And then Rose shouted: “We’re on fire!”

I turned to look across Patel’s slack body, out through the window. I saw a lick of flame rising to the shattered pane.

My relief vanished in a nauseating swirl of fresh fear. Any second, I knew, the fire would reach the fuel lines. They would ignite, and the flames would rush to the gas tanks in the wings.

Then the plane would explode like a bomb.

Cut the engine!

At this point, I didn’t know whether Mike or Rose shouted the words into my headset, or the words just shouted themselves into my mind. But I knew that’s what I had to do: Cut the engine. Stop the fuel from running through the lines before the fire reached them.

I pulled the throttle all the way back. I pulled the red knob-the choke. The engine sputtered once and died. I killed the electrics. The plane went bizarrely quiet, just hanging in the air, no engine, no power. Another second and the nose pitched down toward the city below. The black smoke billowed up. The smell in the cockpit grew thicker.

We were going down. There was no way out of it. I couldn’t turn the engine back on, couldn’t start the gas flowing, not with the plane in flames. I could glide for a while, but we’d keep sinking. Eventually, we were going to crash-land.

That is, if we didn’t explode first.

I looked out through the windshield, scanning the scene in front of me, looking for a place where I could make a safe landing. The river was too far. We’d go smashing into the streets before we got there. I might try to land on the highway, but I could see in the gathering dark that it was thick with headlights, thick with cars, everyone heading toward Manhattan for the New Year’s Eve celebration.

Lifting my eyes then, I spotted a deeper darkness in the distance to my left. Hard to tell from where I was, but I thought it might be a park. There was a chance anyway. The only chance, as far as I could see.

I turned the stick and the plane banked toward that deeper dark.

With the engine off, the power gone, the plane continued to sink steadily downward in a slow forward glide. I tried to keep the nose pointed at just the right angle, just low enough to keep our speed up so the wings wouldn’t stall, but high enough to keep us aloft until we reached the open space of the park. If it was a park. If there was open space.

Mike and Rose had fallen silent again. And I was silent. The plane was quiet except for the wind coming in through the shattered window. I felt a knot of tension in my stomach as I waited to see whether there’d be anyplace to land.

As if that weren’t bad enough, suddenly I heard a throbbing noise to my left. I felt my heart seize in my chest as another chopper appeared in the sky beside me. It took me a moment before I saw that it was the police. And now there were two choppers-no, three. Alerted to the action in the sky and the crash of the Homelanders’ whirlybird, the cops were coming after us.

There was nothing I could do about it now. I had to give my full attention to the plane.

My pulse was beating hard in my head. My mouth was dry. My hand felt unsteady on the controls.

Mike leaned forward from the backseat. He clapped his hand on my shoulder. I stole a look at him-catching a look at Patel, too, where he hung forward in his harness, dead. Mike also looked at Patel, then we looked at each other.

“That was some pretty fancy flying you did back there, chucklehead,” Mike said into his headset mike. His voice came over my set.

“Flying is one thing,” I told him. “Landing’s a lot tougher.”

“Stay cool, pal. You can do this.”

I nodded and faced forward. The plane sank lower. It was a park up ahead-I could see it now. I could make out the bare branches of the winter trees. There was a cluster of them-then open space beyond, a long field of grass. If I could stay high enough to clear the treetops, I’d have a shot at landing there. It wouldn’t be easy, though. Especially with my muscles so tight with fear I could barely move.

“You’ve landed planes before, right?” asked Rose nervously.

“Absolutely,” I said. At airports, I thought. With big, long, flat runways. And an instructor in the seat beside me telling me what to do. And a plane with a working engine so I could pull up and go around and try again if I made a mistake. It was a little different being alone like this. Heading for a park in deep twilight. With no engine. With only one chance to get it right. And, oh yeah, did I mention the plane was on fire?

“You’re gonna do fine,” said Mike, as if he’d read my mind.

I was glad he had so much faith in me. That made one of us.

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.