Hero

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.
PHILOMEL BOOKS
A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

Published by The Penguin Group. Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P 2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.). Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England. Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd). Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India. Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd). Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa. Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

Copyright © 2010 by Mike Lupica. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

 

 

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lupica, Mike. Hero / Mike Lupica. p. cm. Summary: Fourteen-year-old Zach learns he has the same special abilities as his father, who was the President’s globe-trotting troubleshooter until “the Bads” killed him, and now Zach must decide whether to use his powers in the same way at the risk of his own life. [1. Heroes—Fiction. 2. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 3. Politics, Practical—Fiction. 4. Death—Fiction. 5. Family life—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.L97914Her 2010 [Fic]—dc22

2010001772

eISBN : 978-1-101-19837-7

 

 

 

 

THERE
were four thugs, total gangsters, in front of the house with their rifles and their night-vision goggles. Four more in back. No telling how many more inside.

So figure a dozen hard guys at least, protecting one of the worst guys in the world.

Not one of them having a clue about how much trouble they were really in, how badly
I
had
them
outnumbered.

Hired guns, in any country, never worried me. The Bads? They were the real enemy, worse than any terrorists, even if I was one of the few people alive who knew they existed.

Even my boss, the president of the United States, didn’t know what we were really up against, how much he really needed me.

When he talked about our country fighting an “unseen” threat, he didn’t know how true that really was.

When my son, Zach, was little, I used to tell him these fantastic bedtime stories about the Bads, and he thought I was making them up. I wasn’t.

The snow was falling hard now, bringing night along with it. Not good. Definitely not good. I didn’t need a blizzard tonight, not if I wanted to get the plane in the air once I got back to the small terminal near the airport in Zagreb. Which was only going to happen if I could get past the guards, get inside, and then back out with the guy I’d come all this way for. It meant things going the way they were supposed to, which didn’t always happen in my line of work.

My official line of work? That would be special adviser to the president. A title that meant nothing on nights like this. On assignments like this. The real job description was fixing things, things that other people couldn’t, saving people who needed saving, capturing people who needed to be stopped. Dispensing my own brand of justice.

Sometimes I had help, people watching my back.

Not tonight. Tonight I was on my own. Not even the president knew I was here. Sometimes you have to play by your own rules.

On this remote hill in northern Bosnia, near where the concentration camps had been discovered a few years before, I had managed to finally locate a Serb war criminal and part-time terrorist named Vladimir Radovic. He was known to governments around the world and decent people everywhere as Vlad the Bad because of all the innocent people he’d slaughtered when he was in power, before he was on the run.

To me, he was known by a code name, which I thought fit him much better:

The Rat.

I was here to catch the Rat.

Me, Tom Harriman. About to blow past the guns and inside a cabin that had been turned into an armed fortress.

Almost time now. I didn’t just feel the darkness all around me, as if night had fallen out of the sky all at once. I could feel another darkness coming up inside me, the way it always did in moments like this, when something was about to happen. When I didn’t have to keep my own bad self under control. When I could be one of the good guys but not have to behave like one.

The me that still scares me.

Time to go in and tell the Rat his ride was here.

I should have been cold, as long as I’d been waiting outside. And I knew I should be worried about what might go wrong. Only I wasn’t. Cold
or
worried, take your pick.

As I moved along the front of the tree line, seeing the smoke coming out of the chimney, seeing both levels of the house lit up, I did wonder if it had been too easy finding him. Wondered if the Bads had
wanted
me to find him, as a way of drawing me here, making me vulnerable.

But that was always part of the fun of it, wasn’t it? The finding out.

Someday when Zach is ready, when it is Zach’s time and not mine, I will have to tell him the truth about the Bads and about me, tell my kid that the most fantastic story of all
was
me.

But for now it was time to be the unknown hero again, with the jeep waiting for me on the access road, over on the other side of the woods, with the jet waiting a few miles away in Zagreb. This wasn’t the Tom Harriman who testified in front of Congress and briefed the intelligence agencies.

This was the Tom Harriman who did whatever it took to get the job done.

I began to move toward the left side of the house, my boots not making a sound, even on the frozen snow. One of my many talents, gliding like I was riding an invisible wave.

The front four men were fanned out about fifty yards from the cabin, carrying their rifles like they were looking for any excuse to use them. They didn’t know what I knew, that even if they
did
get to use them, the guns wouldn’t do them much good.

And just like that I changed the plan, called an audible on myself, came walking out of the woods, in plain sight, talking to them in their native language.

“I’m lost,” I said. “Can you help me out?”

Every gun turned toward me as the guards shouted at me to stop. But I just kept smiling, moving toward them, asking how to find my way back to the main road. I was such a stupid, they probably never met such a stupid in their lives.

The guy in charge just shook his head, turned and said something I couldn’t hear, and they laughed, all of them dropping their guns at the same time, like a fighter dropping his hands.

I was on them before they knew it.

It was as if I’d covered the ground between us in one step. Another of my talents. Michael Jordan or LeBron never had a first step like this.

I put all four of them down before any of them could get his gun back up. Wondered if they could hear the roar inside my head, the one I always heard. It was never adrenaline in times like this, it was something more, something I’d never been able to understand. Or control very well once the bell rang. Most people only see it happen in action movies, one against four, one guy using only his hands and feet for spins and kicks and jumps. Only this was no movie.

It was over quickly, the four of them laid out in the snow, arms splayed like snow angels. Done like dinner, as Zach would say.

It was then that I heard the crackle of the walkietalkie from inside one of the guards’ parkas. Heard a voice full of static, asking Toni why he wouldn’t respond, that if he didn’t respond right now, he was going to come looking for him.

I didn’t know whether the voice was coming from behind the house, one of the four back there that I’d seen earlier, or from someone inside with the Rat.