the 13th Hour (38 page)

"What the hell is going on?" Sam yelled.

"Took the words right out of my mouth," Paul said, shaking his head. "After everything I've done for you, after everything you said this past year. I really thought you had become human, gained a heart."

"From the lips of God," Sam said. And though his words were sarcastic, there was pain in his voice.

"You're always looking for a fight."

"Do you realize the wealth contained in here?" Sam pulled the mahogany box from the front seat of the car. "Do you realize what we could do with this?"

"Why do you say
we
? That word has never existed in your vocabulary. You always wanted the easy way, the lazy way, getting angry at the world when it didn't provide for you."

"You left me a fucking note,
Please consider what you're doing, you know where I'll be waiting.
Was it to fuck with me or do you want a piece of this now?" Sam held out the box.

"I wanted you to think how easy it is to catch you."

"You knew exactly what I was doing. You could have called the cops--"

"Seems you already did that."

"Why would you leave the box if you knew I'd take it? You thought a little note could change my mind?"

"Sam." Paul stared at his brother with disappointment. "You've never done anything like this. Give me the box. Let me try to make things right."

"What, are you crazy?" Sam exploded. "You're not taking this from me."

"No one ever needs to know you were involved, there's still time."

"Time for what?" Sam railed against his brother. "You think you can make this all go away? You think you can just erase the robbery? Make the others give all those golden knives, swords, and guns back? I don't think they'd be too keen on returning the diamonds." Sam laughed. "You truly are a golden boy, aren't you? All your life thinking only in absolutes, black and white. Well, Paul, the world's a messy place. And you know, you're right, I spent my life thinking the world owed me something, that I should be provided, for but you taught me the truth. We have to take what we want, snatch it before someone else does."

Out of nowhere, bullets erupted around them, tearing up the ground, ricocheting off the planes and cars. They turned to see Dance running at them, his police-issue nine-millimeter Glock pointing straight at Sam.

Sam and Paul dove out of the line of fire, taking refuge behind a large Cessna Caravan, the low underbelly and thick fuselage of the converted freight carrier providing perfect cover.

"Give me the keys to your plane," Sam yelled as he knelt on the ground.

"What? You haven't flown in twenty years. It's not mechanical gauges and meters anymore, it's a glass cockpit. This thing is more complicated than any puddle jumper or computer you ever touched."

"Up, down, left, right." Sam pulled Shannon's extra gun from his waistband and aimed it at his brother. "Keys, please."

"You're going to kill yourself," Paul said, ignoring the pistol.

"Maybe." Sam peered around the nose of the plane. Dance was sixty yards away and fast approaching. "But I'm not going allow anyone else to have that pleasure."

Sam jammed the gun against his brother's heart. There was no fear in Paul's eyes, no tremble of panic or alarm, there was just a profound sadness, a disappointment that the brother he had thought he could reason with, the brother whom he had never stopped loving, could even consider taking his life.

"You really want to leave Susan a widow?" Sam barked. "What about your daughters, would you trade a pair of keys so they could have you in their life for twenty more years?"

Against his better judgment, Paul reached into his pocket, pulled out his keys, and handed them to his brother.

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.

S
EEING
S
AM
D
REYFUS
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."

W
ITH 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."

"Again, you assume I'm stupid." Sam took a painful breath, the crimson stain on his shirt growing wider as his face grew ashen. "I'll figure it out."

Nick finally stood, realizing what was about to happen.

"You have to stop him," Nick shouted at Paul as he came to his side.

"Stay out of this," Paul yelled at Nick without taking his eyes off Sam. "I know what I'm doing."

"You don't understand," Nick pleaded. "If he takes off--"

"He's my brother, dammit, I don't know who you are, but I just saved your life, so stay out of this before you get yourself shot."

Without warning, Sam shot at the tarmac. "I suggest you listen to my brother; he's never wrong."

Paul looked at Sam, at the growing wound in his side. He squeezed the exotic gun in his hand out of sheer frustration.

"If you're going to shoot me, if you want to kill me, now's the time," Sam challenged.

Paul Dreyfus dropped the Peacemaker where he stood and took several steps forward.

The two brothers stared at each other, the moment hanging . . .

"Sam," Paul said. "Please . . . ?"

Without another word, Sam slammed the door closed, revved the engine of the Cessna, and pulled away from the small field, the plane picking up speed along the small access road.

N
ICK GRABBED THE
Colt off the ground. He spun out the cylinder, grabbed four bullets from his pocket, and refilled the chambers. He took off down the tarmac after the plane and without hesitation, began firing. With his shots going wide, he stopped and took a knee, steadied his aim with two hands, and continued his barrage at the fleeing Cessna.