He moved back to the next car and closed the door behind him. He heard muted screams and cries from farther down the train. The passengers must have hit a bottleneck. As Sean had said, sooner or later they would run out of train.
Once again, he slashed through the floor and tore at the wires. All he could do was slow them down. The fact that the train had not stopped meant one of two things. Either their attackers had a man in the engine room, or the conductor was unaware of what was happening.
He looked out the window. If anything, the train seemed to be speeding up. The landscape outside rushed by faster and faster.
He heard more crashing and screaming on the other side of the door. A hail of bullets shattered the window. Then the door buckled and bent as they began to force their way through again.
Caine crouched low behind a row of seats. The door gave one last metallic groan, then crumpled inward and tore loose from its track. The men charged forward into the car. Caine popped up from his cover and opened fire.
Muzzle flashes burst from the barrel of Caine’s pistol as he fired at the lead thug. The man squeezed off a shot of his own, then stumbled backwards, falling into his comrades.
Bullets struck the seat next to Caine. He ducked back down as the albino barked orders to his men. Caine thumbed the release lever and slid the magazine from the butt of the pistol. He checked his ammo supply, counting the bullets left in the narrow channel that cut through the side of the magazine. He had less than half a load left.
Not good.
Caine dove sideways, firing as he flew through the air. He saw blood spurt from the remaining thug’s shoulder as one of his wild shots tore through the man’s clothes. The albino tracked Caine’s movement with his pistol and opened fire.
As Caine crashed to the floor on the opposite side of the car, a barrage of gunfire tore through the seats above him. Shredded fabric and tufts of cotton stuffing exploded into the air. The wispy white fibers floated in the smoky haze, like heavy snow, drifting down onto his face.
Caine waited until there was a lull in the deafening storm of gunfire. He popped up and aimed his pistol at the albino. He had the man dead in his sites.
Before he could pull the trigger, the albino grabbed the thug in front of him, the one whose shoulder Caine had nicked. He charged forward, pushing the man in front him like a battering ram.
Caine stepped into the aisle and fired. His gun roared as he pumped round after round into the twitching, bloodied body.
Caine readjusted his aim and fired a final double tap through the crook of the thug’s arm, trying to hit the man behind him. But the pale, ghostly figure twisted his lean body out of the way. Safe behind the shield of human flesh, the albino continued to push towards him.
Now empty, the pistol’s slide locked back, and Caine felt the trigger go flat.
Without missing a beat, he hurled the useless gun towards the man advancing on him. It bounced off the thug’s lifeless head and clattered to the floor. The albino dropped the body and leapt towards Caine. As the pale man ran screaming towards him, Caine saw him raise his cane and tug at the handle. A long, thin blade slid out. He tossed the empty sheath of the cane aside.
The albino swung his arm, slashing the sword in a wide arc in front of him. Caine leapt backwards. The razor-sharp edge of the weapon passed inches from his chest.
Caine took a cautious step back. He kept his eyes on his opponent’s blade as it sliced through the air in front of him.
The albino eyed him and smiled. “Ni shale wo de didi,” he hissed. “Xianzai, nin jiang jiaru ta zai diyu!”
Caine shrugged. “Whatever you say, pal.”
His enemy snarled and lunged forward with his blade. Caine dipped backwards and grabbed a service cart that was parked behind a row of seats. He yanked the cart out into the aisle. It slammed between them, blocking the albino’s progress.
As the pale, leering man tried to kick the cart out of the way, Caine took another step back. He grabbed the rails of the luggage racks that lined the roof on either side of the train car. Pulling against the bars, he lifted his legs up and kicked forward. He felt the ledges buckle as the strips of metal just barely supported his weight. His feet struck the albino in the chest full force, knocking the man backwards.
The man cursed in Chinese as he tumbled back and struck the ground. The sword fell from his grip and rolled under the seats. His dark glasses tumbled from his face. He snapped his head around, staring at Caine through squinted, demonic eyes. Caine leap over the cart and charged towards him. Suddenly, the train car went pitch-black.
A roaring echo filled Caine’s ears. He realized they were passing through a tunnel. He paused for a moment. A second later, he squinted as bright sunlight once again flooded through the windows. The train screamed out of the tunnel.
He looked down. The albino crouched on the floor. He was rummaging through the bloody jacket of the thug Caine had riddled with bullets. Bright beams of sunlight struck the man’s pale face. He shielded his eyes with a free hand as he continued to frisk the body.
Caine snarled and lashed out with a kick. His foot slammed into the albino’s ribs with a loud thud. The man rolled backwards onto the floor of the car. As he turned onto his back, he whipped up his arm and pointed it at Caine. He was holding the dead thug's gun.
Screaming darkness once again filled the car. The train plunged into another section of tunnel. Caine saw a burst of orange muzzle flash cut through the blackness as the albino fired the pistol. The bullet missed, striking the window on his right.
Caine heard glass shatter. The roar of rushing wind drowned out all other sounds as they charged out of the tunnel. Papers and debris whipped around them. The albino stood up, again shielding his squinting eyes with his free hand. He aimed the pistol again. His arm was shaking as the three-hundred-kilometer wind buffeted them from the broken window. Caine lunged towards him and swung out with his left arm. The blow knocked the man’s aim wide.
The gun fired again, and another window shattered behind Caine. The wind in the car intensified. It gusted through the two broken windows like the concentrated exhaust of a jet engine. A few purses and small pieces of luggage whirled around them as if grasped by a miniature tornado.
Caine turned his body sideways and rammed his shoulder into his opponent’s chest. He pushed forward, and they slammed down into a row of seats. Caine gripped the man’s throat in one hand and the wrist of his shooting hand in the other. He slammed the man’s hand into the next row of seats. He struggled to dislodge the weapon from his grasp, but the albino displayed the same uncanny strength as before. Caine could not make him release the gun.
The slender man drove a knee up into Caine’s abdomen. Caine winced in pain and loosened his grip on the man’s neck for a split-second. He felt the man’s weight shift beneath him. They tumbled forward into the crevice between the seats. The albino was on top of him now, forcing the barrel of the gun towards his face.
Caine squeezed the man’s throat harder. His attacker coughed and spit. The man continued fighting against Caine’s grip. The gun moved closer and closer to Caine. The albino’s pink eyes bulged, but his thin lips curled into a smile.
Caine stared at the man’s hand as he struggled to push the weapon back. Before, in the prison, he had counted six fingers on the man’s hands. Now, he counted four … three fingers and a thumb.
“Who are you?” he gasped over the wind. “Who are you working for?”
The man’s voice came out in a harsh croak as Caine’s fingers dug into his neck. “You kill my brother,” he snarled. “Now I kill you. Then I make your friends bleed!”
Brother? That was it, Caine realized. This man isn’t the albino from the prison … They were twins!
The man grunted as he struggled to aim the gun at Caine’s head. Like his twin brother, his strength seemed uncanny compared to his slim frame. The gun moved another inch closer.
Caine’s arm trembled. He was exhausted, and he knew it was only
a matter of time before his strength gave out. He heard a rattling noise above them. He looked up and saw the luggage rack vibrating in the high-speed wind.
The muscles in his back and legs screamed in protest as he forced both their bodies up off the floor. He let go of the albino’s neck. Reaching up, his fingers grasped at the thin metal rail. He grabbed the edge and yanked down with all his strength.
The shelf buckled and tore loose from the side of the train car. An avalanche of suitcases and bags tumbled down, striking the albino in the face. The gun dropped away, and the man leaned back to avoid the barrage of luggage. Caine kicked his attacker off him and leapt to his feet. His fingers wrapped around the handle of a suitcase as he charged forward.
A shadow descended over them. Caine turned to his right. Through the destroyed doors of the train cars, he could see down the length of the train ahead of them. A curtain of black darkness was streaking towards them.
They were heading into another tunnel.
He has sensitive eyes, Caine thought. This is my chance.
The albino recovered and swung the pistol towards Caine. Then the roaring darkness engulfed them. In the blackness, Caine ducked down and charged forward. The gun roared, but the shot went wide, filling the car with a brief burst of light. Caine pushed forward, driving his opponent back towards the shattered window.
Sunlight flooded the car as the train streaked out of the dark tunnel. The albino paused for a split-second and again brought his hand up to shade his eyes. Caine was right in front of him, already moving to attack. He swung the suitcase up with both hands.
The heavy bag slammed into the albino’s chest. The man fell back into the shattered window. Behind him, Caine saw blue sky and brown, brush-covered hills. A river snaked lazily below them. The tunnel had emerged onto a narrow bridge. The train streaked across the elevated track. They were hundreds of feet above the plunging crevasse of a river valley.
Caine swung the bag again, this time in a sideways arc. The suitcase slammed into his opponent’s chest. The man grunted from the impact as the powerful blow shoved him back into the shattered window. His strange, pink eyes opened wide with fear as he realized he was wedged into the window frame. He dropped the gun and grasped the edges of the window, struggling to pull himself free.
Caine dropped the suitcase and grabbed a red emergency handle mounted next to the window. He pulled the lever down. The entire window assembly fell from the train, yanking the albino with it. The man’s scream rose above the howling wind as he flew away from the car. His body plummeted down towards the tiny river below.
His cry faded to an echo as he disappeared from view. The train sped away, leaving the bridge behind.
Emergency brakes screeched to life. Caine’s body lurched forward as the train slowed down. We’re finally stopping, Caine thought. Maybe the window release had triggered the emergency brakes. Or maybe whoever was guarding the controls realized the albino wasn’t coming back.
Either way, they had to get off the train.
The rear door of the car slid open, and Jia ran towards him. Sean and Alton followed behind her as the car came to a stop on a curved section of track. Several passengers peered at them from behind their seats as the trio entered Caine’s car. Caine couldn’t understand the crowd’s panicked mumbling. The look of fear in their eyes, however, was clear enough.
Jia turned and shut the door, blocking them from view. “What happened? Did the police find us?”
Caine shook his head. “Definitely not the police. They’ll be here soon enough, though. We have to put some distance between us and this train.”
He looked out the shattered window to his left. Outside he saw a steep, sloping hillside, covered with dry brush and scrub. Wrapping a discarded jacket around his arm, he cleared the remaining fragments of glass from the frame.
“Everybody out. Let’s go.”
He hopped out the window and felt his legs groan in protest as his feet struck the hard ground. He reached up and helped Jia down. Sean and Alton jumped out after her. The scrawny lawyer fell to his side and rolled a few feet down the hill.
He coughed and wheezed as he stood up and brushed the dusty earth from his clothes. He pointed down the hill. A few rusted, abandoned cargo containers lay in a clearing.
“I know this place. There’s a service road about a mile down the hill, past those containers. Warehouse nearby, lots of trucks. Maybe we catch ride?”
Caine eyed the small man and thought for a second. Sean seemed to trust him, but Caine knew nothing about him. Even if Alton was what he appeared to be, a sympathetic stranger, he could still be a liability. Jia too, for that matter. The more time he spent with these people, the more danger they were all in.
But at the moment, he didn’t see an alternative. He was a fugitive in a foreign country. He didn’t speak the language. He was unfamiliar with the terrain, and he didn’t have any friends here. For now, these two were his only allies.
He nodded. “Down the hill it is. Let’s move.”
They made their way down the steep slope, sending small trails of rocks and dirt tumbling down the hill. They soon disappeared into the countryside, leaving the long sleek train behind them.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Rebecca lifted herself up on her hands and crawled back to her chair. Her hair was damp, and plastered across her flushed face, and her workout clothes clung to her skin. The foam mats on the floor beneath her stank of sweat and disinfectant. No matter how many times the facility wiped the mats down, they could never remove the lingering odor of human exertion.
It was late, and the gym, a tiny brick building on Kalorama Road, was empty. She was friends with the owner, a Brazilian martial arts instructor named Yasmin. Due to Rebecca’s erratic schedule, they had worked out a special arrangement. Yasmin lent her a key, and she was free to work out after hours. She had not visited the sweat-infused room since her injury in Thailand. But when Josh had suggested some specialized training, she remembered that she still had the key.
Rebecca had worked out at this gym many times in the past, and the smell didn’t bother her anymore. It reminded her of sparring, and her physical training classes at Camp Peary, Virginia. The facility was known by CIA recruits as “The Farm." The nine-thousand-acre Army Experimental Training Activity site served as a boot camp of sorts for those inducted into the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.
To begin basic hand to hand combat training at The Farm, all new recruits had to pass the APFT: the Army Physical Fitness Test. For Rebecca, a political science major fresh out of Princeton, it had been the greatest physical challenge of her life. It had also been the first test she had ever failed.
Now, as she struggled across the mats towards her wheelchair, she remembered picking herself up back then. In the middle of her test, she had lost her grip. She’d fallen from the chin up bar to the mats below. She remembered being thankful for the deluge of sweat dripping from her face and hair. The sweat had hidden her tears from the instructor and her classmates.
That incident alone was not enough to fail her; the rest of her scores were subpar as well. But she had not given up. She pushed through the pain and humiliation. She trained more, trained harder. She took up running in the early mornings.
Day by day, mile by mile, she built up her endurance. She increased her strength. Her body leaned out and lost the soft padding and extra pounds she had put on in school. And more importantly, her mind grew stronger, sharper. With each passing mile, she grew more confident and challenged herself to do more. She pushed herself farther, both in her physical training as well as her other areas of study at The Farm.
She took the test again. She passed. She kept running and never looked back.
“Earth to Rebecca,” Josh said. His eyes twinkled, and a mischievous smile played across his lips. “You still with us? Got to keep your head in the game.”
He reached out a hand to help her up, but she ignored it. Grunting with exertion, she pulled herself up
into the chair and released the wheel locks.
“You know, I think you take way too much satisfaction in beating up on a girl in a wheelchair,” she gasped.
Josh laughed. He brushed a hand over his short, military-cut hair, dislodging his own fine mist of sweat into the air.
“That’s nothing compared to how satisfied you’ll feel when you knock me on my ass," he replied. "You came close that time, I know you can do it. Remember, being in the chair gives you some advantages. You’ve got a lower center of gravity. You can pivot faster than I can, and the extra weight gives you more momentum. Ready to try again?”
She nodded. “Absolutely. I have to do this. I can’t … I don’t want …”
The words dried up in her throat as she thought back to the night before. The dark alley, how easily her attacker had controlled her movements. When she closed her eyes she could still smell the scent of rotting flowers. She could see the open maw of the van, its gaping darkness threatening to swallow her whole. If her attacker had succeeded, if he had managed to trap her in that black abyss …
“Hey, I get it,” Josh said softly. His voice pulled her up from her mental well of fear and self-doubt. “Look, plenty of guys I served with in Iraq got hurt. They found themselves in the same position as you. Fighting was all those guys knew, and all of a sudden it was taken away from them. I trained them, taught them special techniques, showed them how they could use the chair as a weapon. But the most important thing I did was I showed them that they weren’t helpless.”
“Yeah, well in case you didn’t notice, I’m not exactly a two-hundred-pound Marine," she said.
Josh shook his head. “Strength and size can be a factor, sure. But intelligence, awareness, and willpower are much more important. And as much as I love those jarheads in my class, I’ll tell you right now, you are way smarter than any of them. Hell of lot more stubborn too.”
She couldn’t resist cracking a smile. “Okay, fine. Any pointers, Mr. Miyagi?”
Red Phoenix: A Thomas Caine Thriller (The Thomas Caine Series Book 2) Page 19
