Richard Doetsch - The 13th Hour

Sam tucked the box under his arm, checked the clip in his gun, and ran. The Cessna was only thirty yards away, pointed out at the access road, ready to fly. He sprinted as fast as a forty-nine-year-old could, his lungs huffing from a lifetime of cigarettes.

Dance had cut the distance by half and the bullets began to ring out in one-second intervals like clockwork.

Sam pushed with everything he had; he would make it. He would escape this town and this murderous cop, and once airborne, he was home free. The three locks on the mahogany box would take time, maybe months, but he had the basic plans from Paul’s files. There was no doubt in his mind that he would breach the case, and once he did…

He was just five yards from the plane when the bullet hit him in the side, a tearing, searing pain that knocked him from his feet, sending him headfirst toward the ground. And as his forehead hit the black tarmac, the box tumbled from his hands, bouncing end over end under the Cessna 400.

SEEING SAM DREYFUS across the field with his brother Paul, standing next to a bevy of planes, the mahogany box tucked under his arm, Dance lost himself in his rage and stormed from his car, pulling his gun from his holster and raising it to take down the man who had betrayed him.

But in his rage he had left Nick alone in the back of the Taurus.

With his hands cuffed behind his back, Nick quickly tucked his knees to his chest and pulled his cuffed wrists down and under his rear, pulling his legs through his arms, thankful that swimming and workouts had kept him limber. He reached over with his bound hands to Shannon’s body. The blood was thick and caked within his shirt, no longer flowing out, as his heart had stopped almost a half hour earlier. Nick fumbled in Shannon’s pockets and found the cuff key. Pulling it out and inserting it in his restraints, he freed himself.

He grabbed Shannon’s pistol, the Austrian-made nine-millimeter Glock, checked the butt of the gun, and found the magazine clip missing. He pulled back the chamber and found it empty. He tipped Shannon’s body over, looking for more clips on his belt, but they were gone. Brinehart wasn’t that stupid. He hadn’t put Nick in the car with a dead man and a loaded weapon.

Nick took the gun anyway and smashed the butt against the window, shattering it. Sweeping the pieces of safety glass away, he climbed through the window, opened the front door of the car, and popped the trunk.

He ran around to the back of the car and tore open the duffel bags. He pulled the towels out, dumping the exotic weapons on the trunk floor-swords and daggers, rapiers and… guns.

He picked up the elaborately engraved, gold-inlaid Colt Peacemaker, the one that would be stashed in his garage. He didn’t need to test it, he knew it worked, it was the one that Dance would use in the future to kill Julia if he weren’t stopped now. He spun the cylinder and popped it open. He dug through the bag and saw the silver-etched bullets scattering the bottom. He grabbed a handful, filled the six chambers, tucking the rest in his pocket, slammed the cylinder closed, and took off in an all-out sprint.

Running as fast he could, Nick finally caught sight of Dance standing over the prone, bleeding body of Sam Dreyfus. He pushed himself even harder as he watched Dance lay his gun to the back of the thief’s head execution-style. Without hesitation, Nick raised the gun and fired three shots in quick succession, sending Dance running for cover among the planes and cars.

Nick worked his way closer to Dance, peering around corners and under the planes’ bellies. He was careful to check his back, to check the sides so as not to be caught in an ambush.

He came upon Shannon’s Mustang. Nick slowly looked under the vehicle and saw the feet of the man crouched there in wait, unaware of his position. Nick slowly crept around the car, silently working his way around the back. Then he felt the barrel of a gun at the back of his head.

“Drop the gun,” a voice said. “Hands on top of your head.”

And as Nick complied, dropping the gun, he realized his foolish error. He had never been under fire before and had rushed his conclusion. It wasn’t Dance’s feet he had seen; it hadn’t been Dance he was so cleverly sneaking up on. It was Paul Dreyfus, who had now disappeared to a new location.

Nick slowly turned and looked into Dance’s eyes.

“I can’t tell you how much I wish I had killed you already, but that regret won’t happen again.” Dance’s finger contracted against the trigger, slowly pulling it back when…

Nick’s left hand shot out in a blur, snatching and twisting the gun from Dance’s hand. In a fluid motion, he threw the gun to the side as his right fist came up and exploded into Dance’s jaw. He leaped at him, pummeling him with blow after blow to the face, to the ribs, knocking him to the dusty ground, unloading upon him all of his anger, all of his desire for revenge for everything that Dance had done, for everything that he would do in the coming hours: Julia’s death, Marcus’s death, Paul Dreyfus, Private McManus, his own cousin, Shannon, Dance’s flesh and blood, who had come to Nick’s aid.

Nick would stop it all from happening, he would stop Dance in this moment, it all would end here. He would remove Dance from the future no matter the consequences to himself.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, a cloud of dirt hit his eyes, blinding him, disorienting him. And his head snapped to the side as Dance’s punch caught him in the ear. Again and again, Dance hit with adrenaline-stoked rage. Like a cornered animal he fought back, finally beating Nick onto the ground.

Nick lay there, his head spinning, struggling to move. And before he knew it the gun was once again where it had started: against his head.

“No time for soliloquies,” Dance said, wiping the blood from his face as he wrapped his finger about the trigger.

And the gunfire exploded, the.45-caliber parabellum round hurtling out of the barrel, through the air, and through the side of his skull. Dance stood there momentarily, stunned, nothing but confusion in his head-and the silver bullet.

And Dance fell to the ground dead.

Nick rolled over to see Paul Dreyfus in a crouch, a two-fisted grip on the exotic Colt Peacemaker.

“I was in Nam. A medic,” Dreyfus said with a deep breath. “But I was a hell of a shot.”

WITH A GIANT roar, an AS 300 passenger jet hurtled down the south runway behind Nick and Paul, startling them from the moment, its screaming engines hurling it at over 150 miles per hour, finally lifting it gently into the blue, late-morning sky.

Nick and Dreyfus turned to see Sam hoisting the mahogany box up onto the seat of the Cessna 400. He reached in, hit the primer, then the ignition switch, and the Teledyne Continental engine coughed to life.

Bleeding from his side, Sam turned to face his brother and held up the gun, waving it back and forth between Nick and Paul as he climbed into the small, two-seat Cessna.

“Sam, please,” Dreyfus shouted over the noise of the propeller. Though he still held the large Colt, it dangled unthreatening at his side. “You haven’t flown in years.”

“Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t do,” Sam shouted back. “My whole life, that’s all you’ve done, control everything. My job, my paycheck. Life comes so easy for you, Paul-”

“We can work this out,” Dreyfus pleaded at the top of his lungs.

“What the hell are you talking about? I don’t need you anymore,” Sam said as he patted the box.

“You’ll never get it open! It’s a three-inch titanium-core box, that’s what makes it so heavy, the mahogany is just for show. The three locks only work with three specific keys, which must be turned simultaneously.”